We all make mistakes

Last night, my son wanted pizza, and I checked the refrigerator, expecting my bag of Trader Joe's almond meal to be there, and it just wasn't.

Confused, I searched the pantry, figuring a bag MUST be there, since I tend to buy almond meal whenever I don't need it, and thus I usually have at least two, sometimes three bags hanging around.

When it became clear that there was, in fact, no almond meal, I wasn't entirely sure what to do. My son suggested I tried almond butter. I thought this was a fine idea, and made my recipe (which is not even a recipe; I've never written it down although I should) basically the same way I always do.

I spread out the almond butter mixture and cooked it for the same amount of time I usually cook my pizza crust, then added the tomato sauce and sliced goat cheese.

Somewhere during this time my son was very disrespectful and lost his dinner pizza privileges.

This was just as well, because also during this time, I took out the pizza, cut it up, and tried to eat some.

I think I knew before I took a bite, but I did it anyway. It tasted... terrible.

It was raw in the middle, oddly sweet (why almond BUTTER has some kind of sweetness but the almond MEAL doesn't seem to, I'm really not sure), and just... gross.

I threw out most of it, and was happy that I am at a point in my life where I can do such a thing without feeling madly guilty about wasting expensive food.

I guess I could have put it back in the oven but ... eh.

THEN I realized that I'd forgotten to cook the ten pounds of chicken I bought, way too late for me too cook it, have it cool, and then put it away.

So my son had canned salmon for breakfast the next day, since we were out of pretty much everything except the food we send with him for lunch.

Every day is so not perfect. We deal and go on. :)

Sorry guys

Hi everyone. I know I haven't posted in a while. My husband and I have been writing a LOT and I am losing my mind.

Seriously, I was thinking to myself, "Oh, I don't have to cook tonight." Except that I do. The raw chicken in the fridge still happens to be there. It did not magically cook itself and shred itself into neat Tupperware containers. I made pork roast yesterday and that was fine, but pork roast is not chicken.

So. Chicken tonight. It's OK. :)

More cheese!

Trader Joe's has started carrying a sliced goat cheese. Or they've carried it for a while, and I never saw it before. Whatever, it's SCD legal!!

It does have egg in it for some reason, so if you're not able to have egg, then you'll have to stay away.

Ingredients: Pasteurized goat's milk, salt, starter culture (does not specify if cow dairy starter or not so if you are sensitive, please use common sense), microbial rennet, lysozome (enzyme from egg white).

ETA: Reader Natalie asked me a few more questions as to how I can be sure this cheese is legal. Here's what I told her:

The key is in the starter culture and in the carb count.

The back of the cheese package lists 0 grams of carbohydrates per serving and the ingredients list rennet and starter cultures. Both are used in aged cheeses (even if they aren't aged for a very long time -- the goat cheddar I use is only aged about three months). Unaged illegal cheeses are very soft and don't really hold a shape when sliced -- like ricotta or mozzarella.

This packaged cheese is a firm cheese that is sliced. This is another clue that tells you it is an aged cheese.

Since this is packaged as "Dutch" cheese it is likely a type of gouda or edam. Both are legal.

Hope that helps!

Susan :)

Blog updates

I'm planning to decommission the pages that have the stage one and stage two recipes. For one thing, they're messy (using tags and linking to them is a far better way of doing this) and for the second thing, a lot of my recipes are wrong!

I will post the old recipe and the new recipe together when I do new entries, just so you know the history. I'm also going back and tagging recipes that somehow escaped the tagging process the first time around.

As an example, my almond butter brownie recipe was wrong! I was shocked. If you look in the tags list on the right side of the blog, you can find it tagged under "desserts" and "stage two".

So, expect some new blog entries with some old recipes. They'll be newly tagged, and you'll still be able to find them quite easily.

I've also got some new recipes that I'll be posting soon too! :)

Merry Christmas!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday. We did! Although I really need to make mayo. Sometimes I can't even look at another piece of plain chicken with olive oil. LOL.

I wanted to talk a little bit about prep time when it comes to cooking. I've been getting a little more adventurous in the kitchen, and I've realized the value of prep.

You know how when you watch a cooking show, everything is measured out ahead of time in cute little bowls? Veggies are chopped and ready to go, and eggs are pre-broken?

Well I learned there's a reason for that! :)

For some recipes, you do need to do actual prep. It makes the cooking process go much more smoothly. I can't even tell you the times I was sweating that I wouldn't have enough time to chop up the chicken before the onions burned. It was a very "duh!" moment for me.

But don't worry! It's not hard, and I promise you don't need a cute little set of matchy bowls to do it. So if a recipe requires prep, I will describe the best way to go about it.

Plus I have a willing sous chef... my son! His auntie Cathy bought him his very own Spongebob apron for Christmas, so he's ready to go in the kitchen this year!

We'll talk again soon. Promise. :)

Long time no post and cooking marathon!

I actually wrote this post a few weeks ago. I apologize, as my life seems to always be crazy.

I'm going to spend some time evaluating the blog while I'm on vacation. I really do want to keep up with this more, but making it a priority has been a challenge... especially when you read the rest of this post!

I hope you're all doing well and having a good holiday season. :)

*****

My husband and I own a pretty large and successful podcasting company and so occasionally we go to comic conventions to promote said company. Since my son and I are on SCD, you can imagine this complicates things.

Not only do I have to bring food to the convention, but I have to have things sufficiently prepared so that we don’t starve for the week following said weekend. With no cooking time for most of the day Saturday and Sunday, things have to be planned in advance.

So Friday I needed to take the day off from work because I had to get all the food together for the weekend and upcoming week. I started cooking a little before 8 a.m. I put carrots on to steam, butternut squash in the oven, and a large beef roast in the crock pot. The squash would take over an hour, so I wanted to be sure that it would be done before we started running errands.

Once the carrots and squash were finished, I left them to cool and we went out. We went to a couple of other stores and then Costco. First we got gas for the car and then went in to get a few things, mainly for Jeffrey although I needed some of Costco’s awesome organic eggs and fresh pineapple as well.

Got back home, put the food away, and had lunch. I also managed to make some script edits I needed to make for one of our podcast productions.

Back out to get an oil change, and then we went to Jons, which always has incredible prices on meats. I picked up nine pounds of bone-in chicken breasts for 99 cents a pound, and I got six pounds of ground beef for meat loaf as well. I don’t know how much I paid for the beef but it was under 2.99 a pound.

Back home again, and I put the chicken in the oven. I knew it would take about an hour, maybe longer, and I was starting to worry because it had to be done, cooled and put away before I left at 5:20 p.m. The chicken was done a little after 4 p.m. and it was cool enough for me to pull all the meat off the bones at 5 p.m. So I managed to BARELY make this deadline.

My husband also managed to chop up the peppers I wanted to put in the meatloaf during this time. Yay. So those were chopped and put in the fridge for later.

I turned off the crock pot just before we walked out the door since I knew it would take hours for the roast to cool off.

Off to my son’s school, where I volunteered for the fall festival from 5:30 to 7 p.m. My son had a super time! I had fun too. :)

Back home! I asked Jeffrey to help me mix the meatloaf because somehow I’d managed to cut my thumb on something and having an open wound with raw meat didn’t seem like a very good idea. :/ He concurred and I measured out all the spices and got the eggs for him and such.

So we got the meatloaf in the oven right after getting back home. I knew it would take an hour. It was done just about the time my son had to go to bed. I pulled it out to cool and I knew I was out of time as far as cooking went, because nothing else would cool off in time. While it cooled I put the beef roast, carrots and butternut squash away. Yes, I left the carrots and squash out all day. Yes, they’ll be fine. Really. I do it all the time. :)

Saturday was crazy because I had to pack up our meals for the convention AND get myself ready within an hour, and I got confused and thought I would have more time to do it. Sigh. I don’t know how I managed to get everything done within an hour, but I did it! We were gone all day as the convention was from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. I went to panels, networked with people, and chatted comics and podcasts, which is exhausting in its own way. I brought enough food for lunch and dinner for both me and my son and it worked out pretty well.

After getting home and going through all the bedtime routine stuff with the kid, I made brownies because there was no other time for me to do it.

Sunday we were gone all day again, but the convention ended at 5 so we only needed to bring lunch. There was plenty of food in the refrigerator when we got back, so while my son had dinner, I put the pineapple in as soon as we got home because again, there was no other time to do it really. It takes 90 minutes to cook pineapple so it was done and cool by bedtime, which is when I asked my husband to please put it away because I was so tired of messing with food. He did so cheerfully. LOL.

And now it’s Monday and I’m at work, and next weekend is another convention so we’re going to do it all again.

But because of my planning, we have brownies and pineapple done for the week, plus beef roast, chicken and meatloaf – which should last us through Friday.

Of course the food will be running out by then. I have half a day off on Friday, but no car, so I’m going to have to work out what my husband will need to pick up for us before then…

Onward. :)