First go round.... =o)

Thanks alot kiddo, now you have me doing this. And you know who you are. :o)

Now the decision lies in whether or not do post my meanderings or whether to put it in Mushy's perspective. So much to share and ramble on about. Things I've learned, am still learning on the almost vertical learning curve, and dealings with the pets. HA HA...

A bit about me I guess.... I reside in New Mexico for now, but dream of the tropics. I'm fast running up on the big 50, scary huh? LOL.... married, to an amazing man, now only have 3 obstinate vacuous chihuahuas, (the smart one passed on), and 3 cats with very very different personalities. No kids, but do have 2 nephews who are a whole other story. :o)
I recently discovered my health issues were more than I thought or surmised. And through my learning to understand these issues, I found a common thread, alot of them are tied to food intolerances. And my homeopathist confirmed that I had a wheat intolerance. Which is different than allergy and is not celiacs. So..... while learning to live without wheat in the diet I have been learning to convert alot of old family favorite recipes to include cobbler and bread using non-wheat flours. What an adventure! Also trying new breads and foods like pastas without wheat has had it's own funny moments and tears too. Problem is for me, I was always a pasta addict since I was little, and this cutting out until I found good pastas that were tasty and had the right texture lead to no end of stress and tears. I have though figured out the secret to converting bread recipes somewhat, the basic thing for me to keep in mind is I am making bread batter not bread dough. I grew up watching my grandmother make bread, so I had it ingrained in me that bread dough had to be a certain texture and feel. LOL LOL... well I made two lovely art deco type, or very artistic topped bricks. They never rose, because I had too much "dough" flour in there. Once I figured out that it had to be a sticky shiny batter like consistency, wow, then I turned out a fabulous tasty loaf of bread! WOO HOO.... I figure I am on my way now. Although I was so bummed out about the "bricks" and my hubby encouraged me to just go ahead and throw them out, but my frugal consciousness wouldn't let me because the flour cost so much at first. So I figured there must be something I can do with the "bricks". It took me about a day or so and then AHA! I realized I would make bread crumbs out of them! Use the crumbs in my meatloafs, to bread fried chicken with, etc. Well the two dense tasty brick filled a gallon sized ziplock bag, geez, now I have enough for 2 or 3 years! LOL

One adventure I had that makes me laugh though is buying different types of wheat free breads to try out and get an idea of what tasted good to me and which way I might want to go on the flours for my breads. One of those poor unfortunate loaves was made from brown rice flour. These loaves from this particular company are double packaged and the inner package has a "dessicant" pack in them and they are sealed to preserve the shelf life of the bread. So one morning I made my lunch to take to work of chicken salad, put the mix in the container, and put a couple of slices of the brown rice bread into a baggie to assemble the sandwich during lunch. Sitting there in the campus center with my father and make my sandwich, take the first bite and I swore I had actually gotten the dessicant packet and eaten that by mistake! OH MY GOD! That bread clean sucked all the moisture out of my mouth! I couldn't get enough water into my mouth to finish chewing and swallowing it! Oh lord.... it was awful! And stupid me because I don't like to waste anything, I continued to eat my sandwich! LOL Lots of water with that lunch! Even toasting the bread, while it helped a bit didn't help enough with the palatability of it. I tried to finish the loaf, even threw out the dessicant packet, but thank heavens science took over and I got to throw it out without guilt. Other than the lovely bricks, most of my other baking tries have been very very successful!
Pastas.... I personally wouldn't recommend corn spaghetti, that episode made me cry. I was so wanting pasta for supper after work one evening, so I took the package of corn spaghetti out to cook it. Thought what the heck we'd try it. Brother.... that was a resounding failure. Cooked it according to directions, the ends clumped and glued together, the spaghetti became angel hair in size and the water turned to gruel, YUCK! It kinda grossed me out. I tried to serve it, hubby said he didn't think it was too bad and I just busted out in tears. I was so disappointed. And while I tried it, I personally thought it was gritty and that was a turn off for me. We have found though that we like the brown rice based pastas and they cook well. Even the Lasagna did good, no precooking, so now I just need to remember to make the sauce soupier. LOL

Ah well.... as this is a work night, time to hit the hay. :)