Reid Me

Because I am a frugal person, and the stores that regularly (or somewhat regularly) carried one of my favorite gluten-free bread mixes, Chebe, aren't carrying them any longer - I had to take matters into my own hands. Curtesy of Chebe.com If you haven't tried Chebe's line of mixes, you should.  My brother sent me a couple of their mixes for bread sticks and cheesy bread back in 2007 when I was in a bit of a gluten-free food desert.  Needless to say, it was really nice to have a mix that was quick and easy, and yummy. Since then, I've gotten back into my baking habits and since I couldn't find Chebe products in any of my tried and true local stores, I took to Google.  I already knew that this type of recipe, using tapioca starch, was already a mainstay in Brazil.  In my search, I learned that the bread is called Pao de Queijo.  There's a very nice looking recipe over at thekitchn.com (one of my favorite recipe sites), but it's pretty involved and I...

You know what I love about the internet?  Blogs.  Food blogs, to be exact!  There are millions of them.  Do a search for food blogs and you come up with 1,260,000,000 of them!  I like to bake, and I have to eat gluten-free, so before Ms. Hasslebeck on The View had her on GF book and before more stores and restaurants started serving gluten-free food, we had blogs.  Obviously I'm not telling you something that you don't already know.  Just Google your desired dish, or even just the ingredients you have, and boom, thousands of options for your nightly dinner or dessert! Something I've been talking about getting for a while is a crock pot.  We had one way back when, and never used it.  Now, with the two kids and my hubby and I busy with work, easy meals are far more desirable.  What easier than a crock pot meal??  I do casseroles, rice, pasta, etc. but you can't quite get the same effect as you do with a slow cooker.  A couple o...

Some things are easier to resist than others. So here I am, one week after I started a dairy-free week and I must say, I failed.  I made it six days.  But on the sixth day, there was gluten-free pizza!  This was my first time getting to try gluten-free pizza made fresh from somewhere other than my kitchen.  Did I mention there was gluten-free beer? Okay, so I had some left-overs yesterday, too.  There was mozzarella and Gorgonzola, quite the combination along with crispy bacon, butternut squash, cucumbers and other tasty veggies.  It was sinful.  It was heavenly.  It was delicious.  And I knew that I was totally weak, had absolutely no will power, no ability to say no.  Then again, for someone who pretty much gets stuck eating salads everywhere I go due to limited options, I was not going to settle for a salad when there was gluten-free pizza on the menu! Reid-Me.blogspot.com I did learn a few things this week, though.  I ...

Wow, it's been a while since I've blogged.  Well, blogging hasn't been on the top of my list of things to do lately, mostly because it's been a VERY long list of things to do...   See, I could be blogging about Occupy this and Occupy that or the recent school closure discussions that have been hovering over San Diego Unified like a stinky cloud lately, but I wont.  No, today I really just feel like blogging about myself. As a gluten-free eater I've had to rearrange my diet and pay more attention to nutrition labels.  As the mom of a daughter who was born with a dairy and soy allergy I got used to delving deeper into the nutritional content of everything in the house.  I had to remove all dairy and soy from my already scant diet while nursing my daughter, which aided in my milk supply drying up and me losing all of my baby weight rather quickly.  I noticed after I stopped nursing my daughter I still had trouble digesting dairy (or soy, who knows). Ooo...

Ah, the pictures in the cookbooks can be so deceiving and they really truly are either "staged" or photo shopped...I swear.  My cooking never turns out like the pictures.  Most of my dishes come out looking like limp versions of the photos.  However, I am getting better at the whole presentation thing. Here is the photo from the cookbook:     Here is my finished product:   So, lighting aside, and minus the fancy-schmancy plates, they look pretty similar.  Tasted pretty darn good too.  I am no gourmand and I don't have any technique but I can say that I'm trying to make more tasty meals that my kids will eat.  I am not Martha Stewart or even Rachel Ray...just a mom with a mission - to make sure my kids grow up healthy, eating right and getting the best variety of foods possible.  We are capable of making our children well-rounded eaters and lovers of all kinds of food.  "Food explorers" is what my mom always called us.  We ...

I must admit, I've always loved food.  Eating food is and has been one of my favorite pastimes.  Now, cooking the food, not so much.  Which is why the running joke is "That's why I married a chef!"  I have always been a better baker than a cook.  I make a mean spaghetti and meatballs and I've gotten quite good at making quiche; but still, my abilities as a honest-to-goodness cook are lacking. No wheat, oats, barley, gluten or rye! To make matters more interesting, I am gluten-intolerant.  I was born this way, as was my brother.  It wasn't until after my brother was born and had a more severe reaction that my mother realized I had the same intolerance.  For quite some time in my adolescence I was able to tolerate some gluten and didn't follow a gluten-free diet at all.  Needless to say, I probably should have.  After my son was born I had the hardest time with my gut.  I had to call in sick to work because I was in so much pain...

So after much mulling over, I've decided to start blogging.  Not because I've deemed myself all important, I just have some important things to say . I'm a wife and a mom , I write grants for a small non-profit in DC that helps low-income families become more self-sufficient.  I am also gluten-intolerant, which makes cooking meals in my house a bit more tricky and interesting.  I pay attention to politics because I believe that you can't complain about the system unless you participate in the system.  I love my children and I want the best in life for them.  I am an active participant in my son's school and plan on keeping it like that until my daughter graduates.  I don't really do PTA, though, there's only so much I can do.  I am a very lucky wife - my husband is a chef and makes the most incredible meals!  I'm working on the whole cooking thing myself...I must say, I'm getting better. I am a sociologist at heart. I have a degree in Soci...