Quick sandwich bread and NOT so quick repairs

Sometimes living a GF life is not as easy as it would be to live a "normal' life. A life where I could eat all the pasta, bread, cereal, Chinese, Mexican and any of  the other foods in life that I adore.

 Or where I could just go to the store and pick up a loaf of sandwich bread, or any bread for that matter, and be on my merry way home to sit down to a sandwich of my choosing with pretzels and a not so small glass of home made iced tea.

But, I can't or more like I shouldn't and so I make the breads that my family and I eat from scratch . Which takes time, time that I don't always have nor time that I don't always want to give up to stand in the kitchen, where it gets really, really HOT no matter if I bring in a fan when I bake ANOTHER loaf of bread or a dozen muffins or what ever my family happens to be out of or will be needing.

But, if we want bread , well if I want bread :), then I have no choice and time is just one of the many things that you learn to give up when you do your best to lead a GF life.

So Wednesday after I dropped  my van off at the dealer FOR. THE. THIRD. TIME. , in hopes that it would FINALLY get fixed, and after the internet tech came and fixed our internet, which we had been with out for 5 days, for the second time. I sat down at my computer to see if I could find a few recipes for GF sandwich bread that I could bake in no time flat.

One that I would not have to spend a good 30 min. mixing all the ingredients together, then wait 45m-1hr. for it to rise AND then bake for 1hr. before we had hot, steaming, fresh bread that we could make chicken salad sandwiches or even pb&j sandwiches.

AND I FOUND ONE!! Well a few to be exact.

I chose to give this one a try, it is by Nicole from gluten free on a shoestring.com.

all my ingredients

I actually use her recipes a good deal, to either bake or to even get ideas on how to alter gluten filled recipes so that I can enjoy the things that I like to eat again  I like how she gives really good step by step instructions with her recipes.

my pretty egg whites

I also enjoy her sense of humor :0). Or how she will take the time to help a person find ways to "tweak" her recipes to meet their health needs or even just a personal baking preference.

ready for the oven

 And how she connects with the people who read her blog on a personal level, taking the time to answer questions or even to reply to some off the wall comment. :0)

almost forgot my tent

my finished product :)

 Over all I liked this bread. It had good texture and taste and it held up well to my chicken salad and when I used it for sub night and the process was just like the name says, quick, but it was missing something.
I can not explain what, but something.
I will make this again, but it will be more of my go to bread when I am needing to make a loaf a bread in a short time frame.


As I was making this loaf and helping the kids with there school work and all the other things that I had to do,  I was waiting for the dealer to call me about my van, which they had had since 8am, and I finally received "the call" at 4pm saying that they had to order another part for it, which would not be in till Monday, and that they would be sending their driver to pick me up so I could come get my van.

The driver FINALLY showed up at 5:15pm and I still have a broke van, but I have a go to bread when I am in a time crunch.

Staycation, Part 1, Sciport

Happy 4th of July!!

 GI Joe is on his way to the Air Force base in San Antonio , he has some medboard doctor appts at the hospital there, and wont be back till late on Friday evening.
So it is just the kids and me for the next 3 days.

GI Joe is actually on summer block leave, but because of his medboard status,(GI Joe was wounded during his deployment to Afghanistan and is now being medically discharged , aka medboard, from the Army :(, he is not allowed to go within a certain mileage radius from Fort Polk unless he gets an approval from his case manager because of doctor appts that can pop up at the last minute that he needs to be available for.

Which made it very difficult to plan any sort of "normal" vacation this year that was inside the radius.
But, we still wanted to have some sort of time as a family getting away from military life and enjoying our summer in the process.

So we decided to take mini staycations during the next two weeks. Something that we would all enjoy, but would keep us in the radius and allow us to leave Polk in the morning and be home in time for bed.

Our first stay-cation was to the Sciport in Shreveport, about 130 miles, or a little over 2 hours, from Fort Polk.

 The first part of the drive there is a long winding road in the middle of no where. With nothing but trees and more trees.

trees in front

more trees :)

It takes an hour or so to go down this road before we hit La10, sometimes it flies by other times I want to leave the kids on the side of the road ;)
Which is why we have a dvd player in the van, to help past the time and to save my nerves :)

don't they all look so thrilled

After about 30 min I turned on the dvd player.

Ian 

Gabriel

Sasha still playing on my phone

me and GI Joe ( and yes he is driving;)

Once you hit La10 the speed limit is 75 and so the time and miles just whiz by and you are in Shreveport before you know it.

chicken statue

I forgot to bring diapers and wipes for Ian, so we actually ended up taking a detour to the nearest store to buy some when we saw the chicken. Not sure why it is there ??

Once we finally got to the Sciport , we spent the first hour in the lobby, the kids did not want to leave the piano and there is a Tornado wind machine that they had to do a few times along with some other cool stuff.

playing on the piano

An hour is all GI Joe could handle before he told us all we either move on or we will go home, because he did not drive 2 hours to stay in a lobby. ( got to love his direct approach )

learning how to sail by the stars

trying to land an airplane

getting carried by Daddy

being silly

always time for a nursing "break"

working on a human body part puzzle

and the last stop of the day, the mud

 By the time we were ready to leave all 3 of them were pretty exhausted and it made for a very peaceful ride home.

I would not say this is one of the best sciports I have been to, but it was nice and for the price you can't really beat what they have to offer.

But the important part was that everyone had a great time and we got to spend some family time away from Fort Polk, while enjoying our summer.

Phone calls, hair cuts and GF Moneky Bread Saturday

It was a very rough start to my Saturday morning. GI Joe received a phone call from one of his soldiers, at 0630, needing him to come "rescue" him from the side of the road, somewhere between here and I10.

It aggravated the heck out of me and so I was not so "nice" to GI Joe as he was getting dressed and he left without saying goodbye :(.

About 30m later I sent him a text apologizing to him for being a "not so nice" wife.
( one of the things I love about GI Joe is that he is always there for you and would give you his last dollar and the shirt off his back even if it left him hungry and cold. and I lost site of that at 0630)


After I sent the text to GI Joe I tried to go back to sleep, but just ended up laying there for another 20m, so I decided I would take full advantage of the fact that all 3 of the kids were still asleep and get my work out in for the day.

Gabriel woke up about 10 min into my 45m Turbo Fire workout and then Ian when I had 20m left.
Which made the last 20 very interesting and take a little longer than 20m :o)

During this past week Gabriel had been asking for monkey bread, one of his favs, and I had been having a hard time during the week blocking of time to make it for him, so after my workout I set about doing just that.
Using this  recipe for  Gf monkey bread

the ingredients

Both the kids and myself used to eat monkey bread, store bought kind, at least once a week,
before I found out that I had gluten sensitivity. We have not had it in some time.

(This morning no one was "eager" to help Mom out in the kitchen, so it was all up to me :).

Gabriel playing on my Nook

Sasha sleeping

and Ian was alternating between watching baby first tv

Ian

and playing in the kitchen.

Ian

I had never made monkey bread from scratch before, so I was very worried about how the taste and texture would "measure up" to gluten filled monkey bread, which in turn made my progress v e r y s l o w.

the batter

After the batter was finished, I got to make 36 dough balls, ALONE!! ( yay! me !)

and yes, there are 36

After I was done rolling all the dough balls, they had to sit for an hour, so I choose this time to do other things around the house and get myself some breakfast.

after the rise

Then came the drudging part: first in melted butter, then the topping mixture and lastly into the pan

the assembly line

all ready for the oven

By the time I was ready to put the monkey bread into the oven, GI Joe was already home and so we decided it would be a good time to cut Gabriel's hair. So I watched and he cut :)

Ian watched too

a closer shot

GI Joe actually learned to cut hair while he was deployed to Afghanistan, for a year, on his men , since they were no where near a barber.

Gabriel

my "beast", he is so hairy

He, I mean we :), actually finished cutting Gabriel's hair right when the monkey bread was finished baking.

right out of the oven

Talk about your perfect timing.

my clean cut little boy

( he humors me with the taking of pictures, as you can see)

and onto the plate

I must say this was really, really good. We ate a little over half of the ring and probably would have eaten it all if I had not reminded the kids and myself that we would not have any for tomorrow if we eat it all today.

Next time, and there will be a next time I am sure, I will definitely be using Sasha and Gabriel "power" to make the 36 dough balls, while I sit and drink my coffee :)

Banana pancakes and school

Yesterday I woke up STARVING and SORE as all can be.
I think that my body is trying to revolt or maybe that is just me wishing that it would so that I could just stay in side and not work out, either way I am not going to fall for it. But man I am still sore :/.

When I came down stairs I was really wanting something with bananas, but nothing sounded good nor was there anything simple and quick that came to mind.

So I left the breakfast for later, made my iced coffee and moved on with my day. About an hour later I thought it might be a  good time to eat before I passed out .

After looking around I decided to make a quick breakfast pancake just for uno, ME, using 3 items that I LOVE TO EAT any time of the day, bananas , eggs and PB, YUM!!!!

my ingredients

After I mashed up the banana really good I added the PB and the egg and mixed , then poured the "batter" into a frying pan and cooked just like a regular pancake, over medium heat, till it was done.

my banana pancake batter

it's ready

After it was finished cooking I topped it with another good scoop of PB and fresh strawberries, and dug in!!!!
It was very filling and the taste and texture were pleasing.
(I did notice as I was cooking it that it was not wanting to come together as I thought it should and I could not figure out why, until I posted the pix of the ingredients, my egg was to small. I used a really good size banana , but a regular size egg instead of a L or Jumbo egg. Duh, me :)

After I ate and cleaned up it was time for school work, yes we do school work during the summer off and on, the kids even managed to convince me to let them open and use some new school items that I had already purchased for our upcoming school year, which were a HUGE success.

(  It was funny to see how serious the kids were and so I decided to mess with them and take pictures :)

Gabriel doing his Bible studies with his new crayons

Sasha working on English with her new pencils and thinking putty

The rest of the day was spent running food and drinks to GI Joe, who was on CQ for 24 hours, running errands and cleaning house :).


My workout, which I did when Ian was down for his nap, was Chalean Extreme Lean 2 dvd ( weight lifting) and Extreme abs dvd.

I am already noticing that my appetite is starting to pick up and that I am finding my self hungry about 3-4 hours after I eat and that I am downing water more than I normally would.

Hello weight, we meet AGAIN

I was not a very athletic person as I was growing up. Never played sports, hated PE class, unless we were playing volleyball and took the bus no matter the distance , even if I could have walked it faster.

As time went on, and I "matured", I started dabbling in working out here and there , but never really committing myself for the long haul and would loose interest just as fast as I gained it.

All of this lead to my weight and my clothing size doing a yo-yo action over the years. Which, as we all know, is not the greatest for a person's health and nor does it really do anything for your self esteem.

After each baby, and we have 5, I would tell myself that I was going to start working out and eating right ,so I would loose the baby" fat" that I still had and that in doing this I was showing my kids how to live a healthy life and, also, making sure that I was going to be around for them as they got older.

I would stick to this for maybe 6 months and then I would be right back to eating the same way and not making time, but excuses, for the gym.

This went on for a very long period of time, years to be truthful.

Then when I was diagnosed with Crohns in 1998, I took a long and hard look at the way I was eating and made necessary, life changing adjustments that I  have kept , till even today.
But, I still was not making the time for exercise.

So I continued on the weight loss/gain train and learned to keep, at least, 3 sizes in my closet at all times, so that I would not need to spend money on a new wardrobe each time my weight fluctuated in either direction.

Fast forward to 2010, after I have had baby #4 and GI Joe leaves for Ga. for 3 months, I suddenly find myself with more time and less people to take care of and a membership to a well known gym. I start taking class 3x a week, discovered I enjoyed running and so I would run on 3 other days of the week and lift weights right after , with only Sunday as my day off.

I felt so great, both mentally and physically and I actually liked myself, which was a major first for me. I vowed that when GI Joe came home and we moved to Fort Polk that I would continue working out and taking the time for myself that I needed, no matter what. That he WAS going to understand and would actually have the time to sit with the kids after he got home from work while I rush off to the gym.
Yeah, that lasted for all of about 5 seconds.

The Army has away of becoming , what some wives jokingly call, the "other woman" or the " mistress" of the soldier and it happens right under your nose and by the time you realize this it is to late. And so my 6 days a week work out schedule did a step down routine, 5, 4, 3, 2 till finally I was lucky if I was getting to the gym 1 day a week or even a walk around the track.

This went on for awhile then one night I saw an infomercial for Turbo Jam and really liked what I saw so I bought the dvds and committed to working out at home before Sasha and Gabriel got up or GI Joe home from PT in the morning. And I LOVED IT!!!

Then I became pregnant with baby #5, aka Ian :), and made the necessary adjustments to my work outs and kept on working out all the way through my pregnancy.
But, did not find it so easy to pick up where I left off after I waited the 6 weeks post baby to start working out again. Life with a new baby, 2 other children and a deployed husband does not leave a lot of time for working out or anything else for that matter. I did not find my work out "grove" till Ian was almost 5 months, and decided to buy chalean extreme and Turbo Fire then I started my 20 week transformation to a leaner, stronger and healthier ME!!!

After GI Joe came home I started noticing that I did not have all the extra time that I had had while he was deployed and so I would skip my work outs here and there , until finally I was not working out at all , but still eating like I was so all the weight that I had lost I was not so slowly gaining .

Until I am now at the same weight that I was a month after having Ian, who is now about to be 17 months old and not really liking myself to much these days. Finding that I would rather not leave my house because finding something to wear is a very low feeling experience for me.

Then the other day a friend of mine from back home, Jackie D., posted on her FB page about doing a couch to 5k, I had never heard of this so I looked it up and became very intrigued. I mean after all I had been a runner , in my previous life, and I enjoyed running , so why could I not do this too??. I could only come up with one reason; I am here in La and Jackie is in Tx. Well that was not a deterrent  for Jackie she did not see that as a reason to not train "with her" , what's a few hundred miles :).

She set the start date as July 23 for our 9 week couch to 5k program, but I wanted to do something , like NOW.

So I sat down and made a list of all the workouts that I enjoy;
running
eliptical
Kick Boxing

weight lifting
power walking
Pilates
and set my mind to coming up with a routine that I know I would want to stick with, that I wont get so easily bored with  and that will help me to , not only, loose a few pounds before I start my couch to 5k plan with Jackie, but would, also, help me to gain back some of the self confidence that I have lost.

 I decided that I will do some sort of cardio on M,W and F, weight lifting and core training on T and Th and Pilates on Sunday. I have chosen to not set a certain time frame every day to work out, even though it is recommended that you do , because I have noticed that my days change from day to day and that I need to be flexible with all my time and available for my family when I am needed, even if that means that I have to work out at 4p and race home to shower and cook dinner with GI Joe, at least I have done my work out and made the ME time that I need.

5k HERE I COME!!!!

On Tuesday I started my "routine"

 Tues. was Lean 1 dvd from Chalene Extreme
Wend. I went to the gym and did an elliptical /treadmill combo workout, going for distance not calorie count or pace.
15 min on the elliptical, which included a 5 min warm up ( total distance 1.08 miles)
10 min power walk on the treadmill ( did a 4.0 pace)
5 min run ( did a 5.5 pace)
10 min alternating 1min run followed by a 1 min power walk  ( my run was at 6.5 and power walk 4.1)
( total distance on treadmill was 2.98 miles)
10 min elliptical , which included 3 min cool down ( total .75 miles)
over all I covered 4.81 miles

Needless to say I was very sweaty and red faced when I left the gym on Tues and still sore from weigh lifting on Monday. But, I felt GREAT!!!

New recipe day

I had to take the van to the dealership this morning to have the BCM, that was just replaced, looked at, my van has been acting funny again and not wanting to start like it should.

So since the kids and I were going to be stuck at the house most of the day, or at least till the dealership called , I decided that I would try out a new recipe for GF and DF banana chocolate chip bread  that I found a few weeks ago by glutenfreegoddess , one of the blogs I follow.

( it was either that or clean and do laundry, and well, I prefer baking over cleaning and laundry any day :)

Bananas are a staple fruit in our house. I buy them as often as I buy milk, which is once a week.
I like how versatile they are and how I can just pluck one from the bunch and toss it in my purse for a quick on the go snack for myself and the kids.

But, what I don't like is how they tend to turn brown so fast at certain times, if we don't eat then quick enough, especially during the summer months.
Which means during the summer I tend to do more baking with bananas, then I do during other times of the year.

my ripe bananas

The original recipe called for the bread to be corn and egg free as well, but since I did not have lite olive oil, nor do I like the taste of olive oil when I bake, I used canola oil and I also used cornstarch. I did not add any eggs , just because I did not want to, and I only had 2 bananas instead of the 3 that were called for.

all my ingredients

my helper

Normally when I bake GF I use my mixer, but since I did not need to use that much flour I was able to do it all by hand, well okay more like I used Sasha power :) ( that's what kids are for, right???)

my muscle

And it never fails every time I go to bake or cook Ian likes to take all my dirty measuring cups and play with them. I find it funny and cute, especially since he thinks he is being sly and that no one sees him take the stuff off the counter. ( I hope this is not his future profession, if so he is in for a long "stay" some place not so nice)

my thief

they make great teethers, too

my super cute bread pan my BFF Andrea gave me for Christmas

my bread dough ( tasted good too ;)

By the time it was ready to go into the pan and the oven Sasha was sore so I got to put it in the pan.
(I like how I go to bake and the all flock to the kitchen to help, at times it drives me insane, but I just have to remind myself, it is times like these that I will miss the most when they have all left the "nest". )

in the pan and the oven

Ian waiting for the bread to bake

fresh from the oven, and smelling so GOOD

want a slice???

I have to admit, to date, this has been the BEST tasting banana bread I have ever made, whether GF or not.
Even Gabriel asked for seconds and he normally is a one slice type of guy.

This I will be adding to my 'little green book" of recipes and will be making again for sure, with maybe just a few more chocolate chips added to the mix ( for Sasha of course ;0).