New Year's Resolutions-Awkward Hugs Style

New Year’s Resolutions 2014

Be 5’8” This one is going to be difficult, because I am currently 5’3” and not 10 years old.  But: I put on a sweatshirt the other day and the arms seem shorter, so either I’m growing again, or it shrunk in the dryer.  It’s probably the dryer thing…

Get my car paid off. This one is achievable in that it will be paid off by the fall.  It may seem like cheating to put something on a list that is inevitable, but shut up…it’s my list.

Not get upset with all the New Year’s Resolution Gym people.  Every year, I get inappropriately angry at all of the people who show up at my gym in January and February.  I should be EXCITED for them because THIS is the year they are going to get FIT! But really, I’m annoyed because I have to fight for treadmills until they give up on their goals mid-February.  Really, I just need to go to the gym later in the evening until the excitement calms down a bit.

Make breakfast.  I don’t like oatmeal, and that is the easiest thing for me to have that is ‘breakfast-y’ now, so unless I make muffins or coffee cake or something over the weekend for the week, most of the time my breakfast either consists of coffee and potato chips or sometimes leftovers.  This year will be different!  At least until February…probably…

Stop hating on leggings.  I bought a pair at Target a couple of weeks ago and guess what?  They are CRAZY COMFORTABLE! Will I wear them out to dinner or with a tank top? Hell no…but they are perfect lounging attire.  P.S…I’m starting to dress like I did in middle school.  Leggings and a sweater?  What’s up, 1995?

Attempt to control my Netflix Binging problem.  I discovered Sister Wives on Netflix recently and watched four seasons in a week.  A week! But I also discovered Sons of Anarchy and Justified because of Netflix streaming, so its powers can be used for good as well as evil.

Stop talking about getting knocked up around my mom.  Apparently she doesn’t think it’s funny, so I should probably stop joking about getting her a grandchild this way.  Probably.

Go on my Hanna Road Trip.  I’ve decided that I need to visit all of the towns in the western US and Canada named ‘Hanna’.  Most of them look like I will get murdered by a toothless old man just by driving into the town, so it should be a fun trip.  Anyone else in? Stops will include Hanna, Alberta (actually looks like a fun and normal town-thanks Canada!); Hanna, South Dakota; Hanna, Utah; and Hanna, Wyoming.  There are towns names Hanna in other states, but I’ve already been to those states, so no thanks!  Also, there are Hanna’s in Iran, Poland and Pakistan, so…I won’t be visiting them anytime soon either.

Run Market to Market.  This is legitimate and I start training for it in late February.  I also hope to do Dam to Dam again this year because I love that course.

Infuse more vodka. Everyone wins when I do this J

24 Hour Pity Party

I grew up in a pretty 'Get Over It' kind of house.  Which means you were allowed to have a pity party for 24 hours if something crappy happened and then you just needed to buck up and move on.  This mentality has come in quite handy in the last few months!  Several people have commented to me how well I seem to be doing with all the food changes and how it doesn't seem to really bum me out.  I refer you to the concept of the 24 Pity Party.  

It has not been a super easy process, and oh my Cher do I miss some food items.  I'm pretty sure I would shave my head to get to eat a plate of nachos without getting violently sick, but...no longer an option!  This time of year was already hard because of the trays of Christmas cookies that seem to turn up everywhere! 

So today, I was having a bit of a pity party for one.  My brother-in-law makes an amazing cheesecake for Christmas dinner and this year I don't get any.  Boo for me.  I did, however, make another huge batch of dairy free cocoa mix and have candy cane vodka ready for Christmas Eve AND Christmas Day, so I'll just drink up while everyone else lays around clutching their full bellies :) I'll stick with my hot beverages! No belly ache, and it's not passing out if it's Christmas afternoon and everyone else is napping too... See, that Pity Party was less than five minutes!  

My mom makes these amazing caramel rolls for Christmas morning that we have renamed Erotic Rolls because one year, my Aunt Billie celebrated with us and the sounds coming out of her while she was eating them were really uncomfortable and hilarious all at the same time, thus, the rolls have been renamed!  I refuse to have my family alter everything because of my hot mess of a digestive system, so I made vegan pumpkin muffins to share as well.  For actual Christmas dinner, I can have most of the dishes and am making a side dish of wild rice and cranberries to share too (minus the garlic and onions).   Everybody wins.  And if they're nice, I'll share my candy cane vodka too :)  

This has nothing to do with anything except that it is awesome and stars Eric Northman himself, Alexander Skarsgard.

So Merry Christmas for those of you who celebrate and Happy Wednesday Off of Work (Maybe) for the rest of you!  Hope you don't get any coal, unless you deserve it.  

P.S...I am officially obsessed with this song...and you should be too!  

Happy [Vegan, Gluten Free, Peanut Free, Apple Free, High Fructose Corn Syrup Free] Christmas Baking!

This year marks my first attempt to make a bunch of holiday cookies and treats because FISP [Fuck It Stay Positive]. 

When I was little, we would take a weekend each December and just freaking BAKE!  Candy cane cookies, Russian tea cakes, sugar cookies iced by my 5 year old artistic self (did you know sometimes Santa is blue?), buckeyes (if you don’t know what this is, I feel sorry for you-not having this as a child is basically child abuse), and more.  We’d have cookies cooling all over the house and then plate them up for neighbors, church people, teachers and ourselves.  This is totally an Iowa thing, and it’s an awesome tradition.

Over the years, I’ve successfully made gluten free candy cane cookies (they were just a bit bigger and flatter than the glutinous version) and gluten free sugar cookies, but as there is an extra challenge this year now that eggs, dairy and everything else that makes baking pretty easy and painless have all been removed from my diet.  Here’s a rundown of Holiday Prep 2013 with pictures and recipe links!

PS…photographs are not professional, because a) they are taken with my cell phone and b) I don’t care J

Candy Cane Vodka http://www.scarymommy.com/candy-flavored-vodka/

I made this last year for family with regular candy canes and it was AMAZING so I wanted to continue the tradition this year but modified with high fructose corn syrup free candy canes.  These do exist and I found them at the local coop.  They’re about as expensive as you’d expect though!  Also, make sure vodka is gluten free.  This tastes really good with hot cocoa (dairy free hot cocoa mix here)

Because organic candy canes don’t have the extra food dyes, the color is a little bit weird, so the picture is of the first step of the process and not the finished product, but I’m happy to report that the candy canes themselves tasted good and everything is better with vodka and hot cocoa. 

Thumbprint Cookies http://www.waldorfmoms.com/2012/12/quick-gluten-free-and-vegan-christmas-cookies.html

I was a little nervous about making these because I needed them to turn out the first time.  Did you know almond flour is expensive?  I mean…all gf flour is expensive, but holy crap is almond flour costly…  I wandered all over the grocery store trying to find jam without apple fruit pectin and I think I found one that works, but it still listed fruit pectin but didn’t say apple fruit, so I went with a wing and a prayer and bought raspberry cranberry jam.  

It was a good decision…that stuff is DELICIOUS!  The thumbprint cookies turned out tasting great!  Not a very sweet cookie, but the jam helps balance that out.  Also, as you can tell, the cookies may not look perfect, but I direct you back to postscript b) I don’t care about how good everything looks.  That might be the goal for Holiday Baking 2014, but for 2013, I just want to find recipes that work!  I think next year I’ll make half the batch with jalapeño jelly because that makes it look more Christmassy, plus jalapeño jelly is awesome.

Cinnamon Sugar Pretzels http://lifestooshorttoskipdessert.blogspot.com/2010/12/yummy-cinnamon-sugar-pretzels.html

THESE ARE AMAZING.  This is the easiest recipe in the world, it makes your house smell awesome and it involves ingredients you already have in the house.  I recommend Snyder’s GF pretzels because they are delicious and easily found in the grocery store. 

Chocolate Peppermint Cookies http://www.thesensitivepantry.com/the-sensitive-pantry/2010/2/8/chocolate-peppermint-cookies.html

This is round two.  I made a batch last weekend that I ended up throwing out because I didn’t read the recipe properly and didn’t do the egg replacer to water ratio correctly and it was a hot mess. 

Round Two: Still not perfect, but all right.  I ended up refrigerating the dough longer than an hour because I made the dough and then went to the quilt shop to work for a few hours and then came back and starting the baking process. 

Here’s what did not work: the whole rolling out the dough and cutting cute shapes out.  It was less of a sticky mess than the batch I threw out, but still a bit of a sticky mess when I rolled it out and tried to cut cute heart shapes.  So instead, I scraped up dough off of the wax paper, flattened it on the cookie sheet and baked it.  Toward the end, I got even smarter and rolled the dough into a ball and THEN flattened it on the cookie sheet and it looked more like Thin Mints as a final product.  I ended up baking the full 15 minutes, and my sister thinks I overbaked, but I don’t know that I did because you want the cookie to be crispy.  Next time I make them, I will roll out the dough and flatten because those turned out looking the best.

What did work: they taste like Thin Mints.  The icing is delicious and I might just start making it and pouring it over anything I make.  Mashed potatoes, steak, oatmeal…you name it.  Even my sister liked them and she is usually very supportive of what I make, but not a fan of second helpings of things I make J

Holiday Bark http://www.thesensitivepantry.com/the-sensitive-pantry/2009/12/4/holiday-chocolate-bark.html

Also super good!  Again, mine doesn’t look like the pretty internet pictures, but this is super easy and you could probably add anything to the top of it to accommodate your dietary needs.  I kind of smooshed everything down onto the chocolate.  “Smooshed” is a technical term that means: take your hands and just smoosh down everything.  I used dairy, soy and nut free chocolate chunks and they melted really well in the microwave.

Also, because there wasn’t room in the fridge, and I live in Iowa, I put the pan out on the back porch to harden and it was perfect!  10 degree weather is perfect baking weather, btw…

Good luck with your holiday baking!  And if at first you don't succeed, try again!  Or, just make a huge batch of the cinnamon sugar pretzels. Seriously-they taste like what I think I remember Teddy Grahams tasted like!

You Win Some, You Lose Some

I've reached the point where I'm starting to test food items to see if I can reintroduce a few things back.  It's been...interesting.

  

The Good News:

I can tolerate avocado if eaten in small quantities, so my options at sushi restaurants has just expanded a bit. 

The Bad News:

My attempts to see if onion powder and garlic powder are ok have been colossal failures.  Farewell tator tots (giant crocodile tears on that one).  This weekend I tried again with GF chicken strips that had garlic powder in the batter.  My roommate was out of town for a wedding, so I thought this would be a good time in case I had a bad reaction.  Bad reaction is an understatement :(

The Great News (because I'm a white girl in America):  I ordered a pumpkin spice SOY latte today to see what would happen because its fall and because I'm (as just mentioned) a white girl who lives in the US.  NO NEGATIVE REACTION! Happy dance :)  Also this is good news because the homemade Dairy Free Pumpkin Spice Latte I made earlier this fall was not good.  

So, breakfast continues to be the biggest challenge, mostly because I'm not a huge oatmeal fan and I also can't seem to get out of bed at a reasonable time in the morning. I have two go-to restaurants that have been good, and I've figured out tailgate season by just bringing my own food.  

Fairy Godmother

You can't see my wings, but on August 13th, I became a Fairy Godmother.  On August 13, Charlie (or as he will be referred to from now on by me...Piglet) decided that it was time to be in the world.  Unfortunately, he wasn't supposed to show up until October 13th.  When he was born, Piglet weighed just over 2 pounds and was eight weeks early.  Today he weighed in at 4 lbs 4 oz and poohed all over his plexiglass castle, his father, his awesome camo sleeper, and...me.  And it was awesome.  I actually had to pick his mother up off of the floor she was laughing so hard.  What a difference a month makes.  When I first visited Piglet in the hospital, he was two days old, I couldn't see him and his Mama, one of my closest friends since college, was understandably exhausted, worried, hungry, stressed, and did I mention exhausted?

Just think of me as Merryweather :) wiith better cleaning skills

Today, I got to hold him (don't tell his grandparents, but I was the first non-medical person other than his parents to hold him and feed him-perks of being a fairy godmother) and feed him and hopefully, tomorrow, this miracle baby gets to home.  If every nurse in that NICU is as awesome as Piglet's nurse today was, he had fantastic care the entire time.  

FISP

Well, folks...it's official.  I'm officially OFFICIALLY the Worst Dinner Guest Ever!  Saw a specialist last week, who, according to his page on the McFarland Clinic website is my age...that was a little weird.  Apparently, my digestive system sucks even worse than earlier presumed and I've been put on a low-FODMAP diet.  Google it.  I dare you. Apparently my body doesn't digest fructose.  I'm Fructose Malabsorbant.  I didn't even know that was a thing.  He also wants me to stay egg and dairy free for a month and then reintroduce because since I'm probably also intolerant (but not allergic) to those, he wants to check reactions after everything has been cleared out of my system.  So now, (the short list) I am not able to eat gluten, dairy, eggs, apples (farewell Angry Orchard Cider), onions, garlic, high fructose corn syrup (hey...guess what's in EVERYTHING?), asparagus, broccoli, brussels sprouts (which happen to be my three favorite vegetables), all legumes (farewell, dear hummus) and watermelon (which is no big loss...never a big fan).  Also...remember that recipe I went on and on about since I love chicken salad and mayo is out and I also love guacamole?  Yup!  NO MORE AVOCADOS.

Now, this is where FISP comes in.

Fuck

It

Stay

Positive

Because at this point, what else is optional?  I survived my first tailgate of the season by bringing a super delicious crab, arugula and quinoa salad, grapes, Snyders GF pretzels, a banana and my new favorite invention, the WINE JUICE BOX. And because it was so wicked hot out, I was double fisting all afternoon with water, so was not hungover Sunday morning.  Nice :)  FISP.

So, it's a gorgeous Labor Day in Iowa (thank you humidity for finally breaking yesterday. And since Labor Day is officially the beginning of fall, I'm creating my favorite fall drink at home.  Can't wait to drink my dairy free pumpkin spice latte on the porch.  Recipe HERE.

Wisconsin cousins came down for the first ISU game of the year!  As a Panther Clone, I cheered for both teams.

I'm kind of famous...

No big deal...just an interview with the ISU Alumni Association. :)

My Kind of Town

Sad Day

Today I realized that I can't have Rolos anymore.  Today is a sad day. :(

I'm going to go cry in the closet for a couple of hours...

You Can Take My Mayo, But You Can't Take My Freedom!

So, Braveheart was a truly bad movie, but it is so quotable that you have to love it.  Guess what!? Eggs are out now too.  I'm not a huge mayo person, but I do love chicken salad.  So, I got on the Google machine and started searching.

Full disclosure: I LOVE GUACAMOLE!  And in our family, we eat it all the time.  And then I found this recipe. It combines two things that are amazing: chicken salad and guacamole.  So tonight, I'm testing it out.

Even more disclosure...I'm not a food photographer.  It's going to be pretty obvious the minute you look at my pictures.  Also, how awesome is that cutting board?  I'm pretty sure it was a Target special in 2002 and is still going strong.

So the recipe said it would take 50 minutes and it ended up taking me about an hour and forty five minutes.  Apparently I didn't 'pound the chicken' hard enough.  TWSS.  So it was too thick and took FOREVER to cook through.  Prepare yourselves for some amazing photography skills...

Wait for it... Step One-marinate the chicken.  This marinade was amazing tasting and I will totally utilize it for grilled and baked chicken moving forward.

Step Two-cut up stuff.  I was supposed to also include cilantro with this, but I couldn't find my grocery list when I got to the store tonight and considering I was buying all of the ingredients from memory (and I have never made this before), only forgetting one thing was pretty amazing.

Red Pepper, Red Onion, 12 year old cutting board and knife I think I 'borrowed' from my mom a few years ago with no intention of returning.  But look how fine that pepper is!

Step Three-Cook chicken.  So...here's where I had some issues.  Apparently, my chicken was still too thick, so when I cooked it on the stove, it was still pink in the middle, so I decided to stick it in the oven.  Twenty-five minutes later...it was finally done.  And still super juicy.

Doing it's thing on the range...

Doing it's thing in the oven...forever....

Cook chicken cook!! 

Finished product was delicious, was nice and lime-y without being too lime-y and hit the spot.  Who needs mayo when you have avocados?  I ate the salad with tortilla chips, because that's how I roll.

Guacamole Chicken Salad Recipe HERE

So far, dairy and eggs are now out, but coffee, alcohol, corn and these cookies are all safe:

Lucy's = Happy

RIP Dairy Queen...1984-2013

RIP Dairy Queen.  It’s ‘official’.  Today was the first day I could reintroduce potential allergy foods back into my system and the first thing I tried was dairy.  I didn’t even get halfway through the cheese stick before I felt gross.  I ate the whole damn thing anyway.  You never know when you’re eating that last piece of Pizza Ranch pizza, or that last bite of Blizzard that it will be your last.  And when it’s gone, it’s really gone.

It won’t be OFFICIAL official until I get the prick test at the doctors, which hopefully will be either August 28 (my appointment) or shortly thereafter.  The prick test sounds more like a potential boyfriend test than an allergy test, but who am I to question science. 

I’m not too worried about eating around a non-dairy diet, and I’ve already put in a request for an ice cream maker for my birthday so I can make my own with coconut milk.  Ah, ice cream…  I owe my love affair with ice cream to my Grandpa Coles.  He was obsessed with ice cream and they always had gallon buckets of it in their basement freezer…a highlight of every visit was a trip down the basement stairs with a bowl and the ice cream scoop.  And if unaccompanied by a parent, we went CRAZY. Scoop upon scoop of chocolate chip.  That was his favorite ice cream flavor and there was ALWAYS chocolate chip ice cream in the basement.  I don’t remember ice cream in our house growing up, but it was definitely a treat and part of the fun of visiting Grandma and Grandpa.  And when they came to visit, ice cream was always part of the meal-usually it meant a trip to the Marble Slab, this awesome ice cream shop that makes Cold Stone Creamery seem like slop that was on Welch Avenue in the 80s. 

He passed away in 1994, right before I started seventh grade, nineteen years now…which seems ridiculous.    I buy chocolate chip ice cream (or cc mint, which is even MORE delicious) every once in a while in his honor but it’s never the same when it’s not scooped up in a wooden bowl straight out of 1967 and eaten in the family room watching old Popeye the Sailor movies on VHS with my cousins.  My grandparents always hosted each grand kid (there were twelve of us when he died-three more came later) for a week every  summer and Grandpa was notorious for ‘afternoon trips’ to DQ so he could sneak extra ice cream ‘for us’ [for him…but I never questioned the man!]

You could fit a lot of ice cream in these bad boys...

So, one potential food allergy down, 22 to go!  Tomorrow I’m having coffee for the first time in twelve days and I’m almost giddy with anticipation. 

Here's My Thing About Pinterest...

I have a love/hate relationship with Pinterest, as I'm sure 97% of all Pinterest users do.  Who has time to make the super complicated desserts?  Just give me ice cream... I use it mostly for recipes and sewing pattern ideas [super cool single girls in their early 30s sew....duh] but it is super entertaining to see what other people pin.  My favorite thing ever [get used to this sentence starter....I use it a lot] is when people pin eight exercise and healthy eating pins followed immediately by twelve double chocolate, super caramel coated, cheesecake/pie/cookie recipes.  Oh ladies...[let's be honest...it's ladies] :)

Recipe 

Meanwhile, last year I made this for Thanksgiving dessert substituting GF graham cracker crumbs [we also had tacos and margaritas and it was awesome] and it is amazingly delicious.  Tomorrow I introduce dairy back.  I bought two cheese sticks at Target tonight and it was very exciting.  This is how I roll. :)

I am currently at the tail end of an elimination diet.  It's this glamorous thing where you get to eat very limited things while trying to figure out what food allergies you might have.  It's actually pretty cool because I've lost about five pounds since I started nine days ago and although the caffeine withdrawal was a bummer early on in the process...I barely [lying through my teeth] miss a Mini French Silk Pie [no pie crust please] Blizzard from Dairy Queen on the occasional Sunday afternoon when it's hot.  Or cold. Or Tuesday.

This is one of the greatest inventions of the last forty years. 

Here is a list of what I haven't been able to eat since last Monday: corn, peas, beans, bacon, sausage, hot dogs [gross anyway], lunch meat, citrus fruit, dairy [farewell, sweet Blizzard Prince], tea, coffee [sniffle], kool-aid, pop [yes-this is Iowa-it's pop], eggs, peanuts, processed foods, sugar, wheat [I've been gluten free since 2006], chocolate, food colors and dyes, nuts, alcohol [gasp!] AND soy.

Have no fear, I haven't been starving.  It's summer, and that means a lot of delicious produce.  My sister and I went up to my parent's house in rural north-central Iowa this weekend to get our chicken meat from their chickens [this is a normal thing that everyone does, I'm sure] and my mom loaded me up with fresh vegetables from their garden because I think they are petrified that I might have the [whisper] cancer...even though initial doctor's visit blood work came back normal.  Success!  Like tonight, dinner is brown rice and chicken sauteed with fresh green beans and broccoli.  Rock on! I'm pretty sure at the end of the day it is going to be dairy or eggs or both.  Fingers crossed for just dairy :)  RIP Mini Blizzard.  I've gone out to lunch once since I started it, and it was literally the scene in the diner from When Harry Met Sally.  Waitresses love me.

Invite me to your dinner party and I'll bring an amazing dessert! And probably raw carrots...

A friend sent me this graphic when I started and it's basically awesome. This is not a 'I have food allergies, wah wah wah' kind of blog, but this is part of my life, so enjoy some recipes that maybe you get to add cheese to...you jerks :)

So yeah, I'm like Sally, just not as Meg Ryan-y...This is me in a restaurant, except with less pie...