Getting Ready for Fat Tuesday!

Fat is certainly appropriate!  We haven't even hit Tuesday yet, and I already know it is going to be the most unhealthy day I have had in MONTHS!  Yes, months....even worse than Christmas!!!

So, Fat Tuesday....Todd and I had discussed having a housewarming party tomorrow and going all out with the decorations and food, but then decided against a mid-week party.  So, we had absolutely no plans.  Well, lo and behold our spontaneous friends didn't want to miss out on a fun night so they decided today to host a pancake dinner at their house tomorrow!  Enter Elizabeth, who's brain is in full gear planning how she can partake in pancakes and all the food fun with a gluten and casein allergy in tow!  Pancakes are the easy part, bring homemade batter and my own pan with me!  However, a girl cannot live and party on pancakes alone!  Enter gluten free, dairy free king cake recipe thanks to Jules Gluten Free Flour blog who almost always has me covered!  You can see the full recipe here:

http://blog.julesglutenfree.com/2012/02/king-cake/

I won't bore you with all the details of the recipe, you can certainly read all the way through it if you would like.  I didn't even read all of it, just used common sense and did what I wanted for the most part (yeah, yeah I know if Todd's reading this, he is thinking "what's new??")  So, here is a pictorial of my baking venture:

Looks normal already, doesn't it??

Loving our huge island, it is perfect for everything!!

Even rolled fairly easily sans gluten and traditional binders....

I even got to use my brand spankin' new Emile Henry pizza stone....

...and while it was baking, I made powdered sugar in my Vitamix with the dry container!!  It is so much cheaper than buying it at the grocery store and I know exactly what is in it!!

 ...and you know I had to make my own colored sugars with raw sugar and natural food coloring...none of that chemical junk!  I have to make up for my sugar vice, after all!

Ah, fresh out of the oven!!

Iced, sprinkled with sugar and ready to go!!!

...here's to hoping this actually makes it to the party!!

Valentine's Day Getaway!

I must admit, Todd is not the romantic type (then again, are there any guys who truly are??)... but when he wants to, he can be!  On Monday afternoon, these roses arrived at the door....

With this note....

So, yesterday we left for Santa Ynez/Santa Barbara for the night (beaches and wine country in Southern California)!  We walked around the little streets and in and out of wine tasting rooms and shops in Solvang.  It's a little danish-style town where all the wineries have tasting rooms.

Wind blown and struggling to do a self portrait -
hate it, but don't have any others unfortunately!

I have been trying to figure out what to do with the remnants of tin tile from our backsplash.  While in one of the shops, I found this....

Oh, and this amazing chandelier with shade that I am wanting to recreate in one of our upstairs rooms!

Had to take this picture discreetly! ;)

What started so fun went downhill quickly....our dinner reservations were lost, and having a huge gluten allergy made it near impossible to find a replacement so we had dinner at the bar in our hotel....romantic, right??  Todd caught three different basketball games during dinner, so I'm sure he wasn't that upset!  That is, until whatever we ate made him sick .... which was a complete role reversal!  Usually, I am the one on vacation sick because I unintentionally ate something I am allergic to!  Luckily, Todd made a full recovery by this morning!  We headed to Santa Barbara and spent the day there shopping for a watch for Todd and ate at an Italian restaurant where I had an amazing gluten free pasta for lunch!

For Valentine's Day, I thought we were doing our normal thoughtful $20 gifts (since we buy everything large ticket anyway, and that's almost too easy).  So, I designed and printed our First Dance song lyrics and decoupaged them to canvases.  Todd picked "Georgia on my Mind" as our wedding song because that is what he would text it to me while we were dating long distance.  So, while I was busy decoupaging my little heart out....

....Todd was purchasing these .75 carat princess cut diamond earrings to match my ring!

I'm starting to get the trend here.  For our anniversary, I made Todd something out of cotton as it was out second year together and that is the traditional gift.  Todd came home bearing gluten free baking classes with Jim Dodge.  For Christmas, I decided I would get him back by breaking the budget and getting him the SodaStream he had been talking about for the previous year, and you guessed it....he showed me up with a sewing machine and stocking stuffers.  So, I thought we were back to our old thoughtful gift song and dance for Valentine's Day, but apparently not!!  Unfortunately, I am not sure I can top this four prong Valentine's day anytime soon.....diamonds, dinner, roses, and a night away!  I'm feeling a little spoiled right now, and I LOVE it!!

Halloween is Here!

It has not felt like Fall here for two reasons.  The first being that the leaves are not changing color, they are just dieing and falling off the trees (the ones that do, that is).  The second reason being that our house has been a mess of drywall dust, pallets of tile, buckets of grout, plywood for kitchen countertops...I think you are getting the point.  I have wanted to put out Halloween decorations, but it is pretty much pointless, since it will just be one more thing to dust!

Yet, us crazy people wanted to embrace the fact that we are living in LA and all of the fun costume shops! So, what did we do?  Decided to throw a Halloween party, of course!  Clearly, not being able to entertain like we usually do has gotten to us!  We spent last night finalizing our costumes and the menu.  While the menu consists of mostly easy appetizers and desserts, I was having a huge craving for pumpkin bread I couldn't curb.  Todd and I headed to Whole Foods last night to buy the last can of pure pumpkin (no, seriously it was the last one) and everything else we haven't had in our house for months!

Maybe I should explain why this pumpkin bread venture is so crazy....our kitchen is still not complete, we have plywood for temporary countertops, no fridge, no stove, no working sink, BUT we do have a working oven!  In addition, we have 4 contractors here today grouting tile in our foyer (which is of course the route to the sink we are using for dishes), prepping floors in the kitchen, installing the tub in our bathroom, and prepping for our glass shower enclosure.  Yet, amidst all of the bustle I managed this:

I am feeling so accomplished this morning!  It is not even 9 am yet, and I am on my second load of laundry, Breck got a bath (twice after walking through the grout!), and now there are two loaves of gluten free and dairy free pumpkin bread in the oven!  I am going to spend the rest of my day preparing for our party and carving pumpkins with some fun ladies I have met out here!  Wonderful start to my Friday! :o)

Happy thoughts!

I am having a rough day!  The closing of this home has been quite an ongoing frustration!  It seems every time one thing is handled, another issue that is out of our control arises.  I have had one of those days where you spend your entire day on the phone, yet seem to get nothing accomplished!  Long story short, we are more thank likely not closing on Friday.

To combat the anxious, frustrated emotions I have had I thought I would blog about something happy instead!  Of course that would mean food, more specifically dessert!  Todd and I made a gluten, sugar, and dairy free blueberry cobbler in the toaster oven with coconut ice cream in the blender last week and so now I will share this amazing happy thought with you!

I used 1 cup frozen blueberries, 1 teaspoon lemon juice, and 1/4 cup agave mixed together for the base, and then I made a mixture of coconut and almond flour with palm oil and coconut milk for the topping.  The ice cream I made by freezing coconut milk (the real, high quality stuff made by Thai Kitchen, not the Silk brand watered-down kind) and then putting it in the blender with agave and vanilla extract.  I am ashamed to say that Todd and I split this little dish of cobbler and polished it off with the ice cream!  Amazing!!!! ...healthy food doesn't have to be bad!

Going into the toaster oven!

Completed perfection!

The final product!  Once I stopped eating long enough to get a picture!

Hotel Living

I'm beginning to think Todd and I should be on a reality TV show.  There has been no lack of "drama" in our lives, and we certainly would not need writers to come up with great story lines!  There are days when Todd and I can't do anything but sit back and laugh at the comedy of mishaps, horrible timing, and lack of structure in our lives right now!

Just today, I was on the phone with our cell phone provider trying to update our address to the PO Box we just opened.  The customer service rep was requiring I verify my address in order to update it.  I rattled off 3 addresses, and couldn't remember the zip code for one the one they had on file before finally getting it correct!  Turns out they had our last hotel address on file which they pulled from my return address on my last payment.  I know the woman on the other end of the line probably thought I was crazy, in fact she asked, "You don't know your address?".  No ma'am, I know my address (wait, do we actually have an address other than a rented 3" x 3" space??), I just don't know which one from the last 2 months you might have on file!

And last night, in 4 square feet of counter space, Todd and I made a spaghetti dinner using a blender and stove eye.  Yet, the toaster oven and blender take up most of the counter, so our dinner was prepped in something closer to one square foot of space.  I'm not quite sure how we did it other than we both seemed to be holding something that wouldn't fit on the counter in one hand while prepping with the other hand.  We also took our ground meat out of the small, condo size fridge to find the back is colder than the rest of the fridge, and our meat was frozen.  We might have also somehow managed to blow a fuse in the wall outlet by simply overloading it with the blender, but we fixed it so no one needs to know!  All this to say, we did eat, and it was delicious!

Our gluten free spaghetti dinner,
devoured on the closest thing we have to a dinner table,
the coffee table!

Cooking in a hotel is difficult enough, but cooking while taking my food allergies into account is even more difficult!  With our lack of appliances and space, Todd is having to eat gluten and casein free for the most part.  We just don't have the space and ability to make 2 meals each night.  So, my biggest challenge has been to make foods that I can eat, and that Todd wants to eat!  I think we have been quite successful, as we have made everything from chicken tortilla soup from scratch to Breck's dog food!  I wanted to share a few pictures of the things we have been enjoying!

Fruit salsa which has been enjoyed with 100% corn chips

Mini cornbread muffins made in the toaster oven!

Lime cake (gluten, egg, sugar, and casein free) with vegan buttercream icing.
I know you won't believe me, but this is so delicious,
you wouldn't know it was so "without"!!

Quick breads (gluten free) in the toaster oven

Strawberry sorbet (and Breck's extra food in the bag)

Today, we made things easy by having a lunch date at Whole Foods!  I love being able to partake in a buffet that actually has foods I can eat on it...and Todd loves the Tacqueria and pizza bars!  ...and tonight, we are grilling brats in the toaster oven with gluten free buns.  But for now, I am back to watching the kitchen episode of the Nate Berkus show.... getting ideas and dreaming of the day I will have a real kitchen!!!