Sunday, February 6, 2011

Holidays are over, New Year's on the move

I know I have been slacking since it's been almost 2 months since I've posted anything. There was the craziness of Christmas which was great. Got together with most of the family. My idea ended up in having somewhat of a reunion Christmas with my Mom's dad's family. Every year growing up, Christmas Eve morning was spent with them. We always had a big family breakfast at my Great-Great Grandparents & after that wound down we'd go next door to my Great-Grandparents & do presents and whatnot there. All of us kids would run around in the backyard & pasture. The boys would be chasing the geese & chickens etc.

My Great-Great Grandparents have both been gone since 2006. The family breakfast ended with them. We still would make an effort to go see my Great-Grandparents for Christmas. The last Christmas we visited with them was in 2008. My Great-Grandma passed away a few months later & shortly after my Great-Grandfather moved out of state to live with his youngest son's family. My Great-Grandma's funeral was the last time that I ever saw him until he was flown back for his funeral last year. It's just so odd how time flies. My Great-Great Grandparents are gone, all their sons are now gone but at least 5 of their grandchildren & some of their family got together this year on Christmas Eve. They were extremely religious & most of us that are left are not quite so any longer but I'd still like to believe they would be proud of us & happy that we all set aside time at Christmas to get together & catch up.

I didn't mean to be so down in my post but the holidays are always a hard time for me. Remembering how things were 10-20yrs ago. When I was born I had 9 grandmothers & 6 grandfathers and I am blessed to have memories and remember each one of them. I only have 3 grandmothers & 2 grandfathers left but I gained a step-grandfather. That's a lot of change in 27 years with most of it happening in the last 5.

Christmas was definitely good though. It was so much fun with Keegan this year. Instead of being more fascinated with the wrapping paper like his first Christmas he was actually interested in what was inside the paper. He has some very funny & interesting quirks about him and we discovered a few more at Christmas. If a piece of paper came off in his hand he would hold it until someone took it from him rather than dropping it on the floor. He also kept wanting to put the presents back in the wrapping paper so he could take them out again. He got a lot of really great toys & he plays with them all a lot. We left some at each of the grandparents house so he had more toys to play with there, since we have a huge collection piled up in our living room.

The most exciting thing that he got this year is his battery operated John Deere Tractor. In the picture below he's also wearing his John Deere boots & his new cowboy hat that his grandparents bought him. His Aunt & Uncle saw the boots at the Boot Barn & once they told his Grandparents about it, they had to buy them for him. The problem with taking him to the Boot Barn is that he's obsessed with hats so I didn't think he'd make it out of the store without having to have one. As you can see, I was correct haha.


It's been a rocky month or so after Christmas. It seems like we've spent most of the time sick. I got the flu real bad the week after Christmas. We were supposed to go to the Zoo but we all ended up getting sick. We were all better for maybe a week when I started getting sick again. Of course is spread to everyone like crazy & even though I was on antibiotics mine ended up turning into pneumonia again.

I truly believe that being sick is the worst time to have to eat gluten free. When I had the flu all I wanted was chicken noodle soup. For me that used to always be just a bag of chicken ramen. Oh man how I loved it. What I ended up getting was a Garlic soup made with rice paper noodles. It was ok & at first it filled the soup craving but the seasoning after a while was just too overpowering. Still it was a 99 cent, throw it in the microwave gluten free soup. Thank you Trader Joe's for having something easy & edible in a time of crisis.

I was still looking for that easy chicken noodle soup though so I started experimenting. I got another one of the Garlic soups & just didn't put the seasoning in it. Instead I put in some chicken bouillon to see if I could get what I was after. This had real promise but I think I put in too much. Then again, I was sick so who knows if it was me or the soup.

It's still not perfect but I came up with a combination when I was sick with pneumonia that is pretty dang close. My Mom bought some shirataki noodles for me to try as spaghetti the week before I got sick & they were the best! I had been eating a corn spaghetti & it was ok but a little too crunchy. So anyway, the shirataki noodles made me think of ramenshirataki noodles on hand.


Our other big thing we did cooking is that we finally made gluten free Biscuits & Chocolate Gravy. We use the Cook & Serve Chocolate Pudding mix as gravy & luckily it was already gluten free. Then we used the Gluten Free Bisquick & followed the instructions on the box to make the biscuits. The biscuits were ok, they didn't really taste like anything but they were more crumbly & grainy which seems to be the problem with most gluten free bread types. With plenty of chocolate gravy on top they were pretty darn yummy. Even Keegan loved them.











I know this is a long one but I had to catch up. Hopefully I can get back into the swing of making time to right. Also trying new recipes. Today is SuperBowl Sunday & my husband found the perfect thing for us to try to make. I'm very excited to try them because I sure do miss corn dogs & cheese sticks! So now I'm heading off, we're going to start cooking very soon. Hopefully no later than next weekend I'll have the recipe & pictures up to go with it.

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