It’s something I’d consciously wanted for over five years, and probably on some level since I was a kid (what little girl doesn’t want to be surround by cute furry things that she’s in charge of?).

Okay, maybe the necessity of both components is unique to me.

But somehow a herd of rabbits and a flock of chickens is hard for me to name.

It helped when I took over the animals’ daily care (my good husband had been doing it all as a gift to me, but that meant the only time I interacted with the animals I was managing was during breeding and birthing.  It felt too unbalanced).

We are in the process of planning a garden, and a rather extensive first-go, at that; but even the seed-starting is a month or two away, and doesn’t seem quite real.

Then, yesterday, we jumped at the chance to get our own milk goats. And now, with that addition, calling our place a little homestead seems legitimate for the first time.

We had a power-outage last night.  Lasted something like four hours. [Okay, I checked with Jay and he says it was more like 2.5 hours.  So we got to see how prepared we were/n't for emergencies.

We have our woodstove, so heat wasn't a problem, and our kitchen stove is propane, so we have the cook-top at least (the oven requires electricity).

With everyone clambering for food, I decided (feeling clever) to make pancakes for dinner.

But then was thwarted by not being able to find my scale (it was in a back corner.  Someone else must have put it away).

And while that should scare me into transitioning my recipes into dry measures (cups), I think I'm just motivated to buy extra batteries for my scale. You see, having learned the variation possible in each batch of flour (the 70/30 version at least) I prefer the consistency of weights.

So we had pancakes for breakfast instead and I took pictures

The recipe:

Wet bowl

• 12 oz. soured or buttermilk
• 3 large eggs
• ¼ cup melted butter
• ½ Tablespoon vanilla (1 ½ teaspoons)

Dry Bowl

• 12 oz. GF flour blend (I prefer the taste of the 70/30 blend in this recipe)
• 2 T palm sugar (brown sugar's fine too, I'm just trying to get away from cane sugars)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon xanthan gum (*critical* ingredient: xanthan gum is what makes this recipe produce puffy pancakes.)
• ¾ teaspoon baking soda
• ¾ teaspoon salt

Mix wet and dry in their respective bowls then combine in a single bowl and stir until smooth.

Grease cooking pan (necessary if pan isn't non-stick coated. Otherwise experiment with your own cookware) and proceed as normal for cooking pancakes:

When the surface is 350° (a surface thermometer will verify this, or a finger-flick of water droplets will skitter across the surface), ladle your batter across the surface.

I get pretty consistent 4" pancakes from a full gravy ladle.

If you don't have a surface thermometer (or your pan like mine is too small to spare the real estate) you'll have to do more babysitting till you learn the relationship between the batter and your stove.

Watch for bubbles on the edge of your pancakes.

This indicates the heat has gone through the batter, assuring you won't find a slimy center within that crunchy outer shell...

Moving on.

Flip like the pancakes you've been mastering over the years, and aim for your favorite color.  My perfect "plays well together" has the pancakes cooked for about 2 minutes on each side. This seems to give me a good color while insuring cooked centers.

~ ~ ~

Now, I am working at reducing my caloric intake, but I will not do that at the expense of [my definition of] convenience.

That is, I have to be able to eat what I’m feeding my kids, or else what was the point of making us all eat GF?

I’ve surrendered my growing-up ideal of powdered sugar or straight syrup (over another serving of butter.  Now I  skip the extra butter (they were already cooked in it, after all) and use plain applesauce sweetened with a taste of maple syrup.

My menfolk just use the straight applesauce, but I still prefer that syrup taste mixed in.

Completely my favorite pancake recipe now.

Hope you enjoy it too!

None of these whole foods contain gluten in their original form.

In point of fact, very few “real foods” contain gluten at all.  Gluten is a specific protein that only appears in a limited number of grains: wheat, spelt, barley and rye.

That doesn’t sound too bad, right?

If you have a “whole foods” approach to eating– the type where you maximize label-less foods– you are well on your way to going gluten free “the easy way.”

Shirley Braden of gfe (gluten free easily) writes about this all the time. I heartily recommend her blog for food ideas and encouragement for the newly shell-shocked GF transitioning, especially her (PDF) tip sheets that include such hope-inspiring titles as 50 GF foods you can eat today, and 50 meals that are gfe

GO. Benefit. Be encouraged.

The difficulty in going gluten free, then, isn’t the limited number of foods available. The difficulty comes down to relearning.  New basics. New habits. Too many of our go-to food are contaminated, and most of the ostensible replacements are prohibitively expensive (if we’re being sensible) and/or a huge disappointment pleasure-wise.

Eventually, if you want to be happy as GF-for-life (GFFL), you’re going to have to make peace with your kitchen, and the amount of time you will spend there, for the rest of your life.

The food you make, the skills you will master, will strengthen you.  You don’t have to embrace it right away, but prepare your mind for it.  Anticipate it. Look forward to the time when the work that is hard now will become the invisible step to your new favorite meal.

~ ~ ~

No longer can you just grab a bottle of salad dressing or a box of cereal or a loaf of bread from the store shelf.  Now you have to read labels.  Now you have to learn code words for hidden gluten– like malt, or malt-flavoring (it’s a type of sweetener made from barley– one of the gluten grains).

Always read labels.

The hard part about avoiding gluten comes with labels: a discouraging number of foods have been contaminated that would otherwise be gluten-free naturally.

And of course there’s bread, that you’re just going to have to make on your own if you want it good or regularly.

Some of you think this is awesome: a new way to explore and conquer. Others are ready to cry (or already have).

My transition story has me stuck in the middle.  I “live for the learning curve.” I like to explore new things. At the same time, I crave mastery. I want to know it’s possible to get something right, and that I do.

Cooking can be a way to indulge these (sometimes conflicting) elements of my personality. The summer before I went GF I joined Weight Watchers and (with the weekly encouragement/admiration of my group and group-leader) became a fairly creative cook. I grew a sense of mastery in the kitchen.

But when I learned I ought to cut out X, Y, Z, Q and R.  I hit overload way-fast.

Here’s what I learned about going GF permanently:

In the beginning, I needed recipes that just. worked.

I didn’t care about “points” (WW terminology) or even “healthy” very often.  I just wanted to have food to put on the table that wasn’t going to make me feel sicker.

I went to GlutenFreeGirl.com, M.A.G., and pretty much limited myself to those, so as not to overload further. The voice of those women (and especially Erin at M.A.G., who was juggling multiple allergies for multiple children), showed me a world “beyond the looking glass” where they had reached a new normal.  It gave me hope.

And hope, as I’ve been meditating on this year, is the critical element for any endeavor.

But as soon as I had a few of those (namely sandwich bread and pancakes– recipes I have since replaced with what I use now), I got antsy and resentful.

I was creative, doggoneit. And smart. There was no reason to be tied to other people’s *exact* experience.

I wanted a chance to discover things too.

And that sparked another round of digging and learning. And pancakes.

Very, very good pancakes.

(That’s one of my favorite thing about rabbits so far: their due-dates are so much more predictable than humans’)

The three Muses (so named because all of their line have “mythic” names and came from one breeder, as opposed to the B-rabbits, whose names, originally enough, all begin with B) were housed in a single cage until they reached breeding age.  We culled a few cages to empty, split out the girls and bred them that same day.  Or tried to. We bred all three of “The Muses” when we separated them, but only Mneme took.

This has been our learning curve: taking General Principles and filtering them through actual experience.

None of the trio seemed particularly interested.  Well, there was the one who wasn’t actually mean to the buck (Mneme), but the other two were not at all cooperative.

Come to find out, when does are housed together they will often get along fine but the subservient does will not accept the buck until they’ve been on their own for a while.

Sure enough, we rebred the “femiNazi” does a couple weeks after separating them, and they were all sweetness and light.

Lesson learned.

~ ~ ~

In May I bought the B-rabbits, a set of 5-week-old siblings. At the end of June we bought adult stock: three does and two bucks (for maybe-too-much money). Less than a week later one of the senior does broke her own back.

Yup. We walked out to the cages with the kids tugging great-grandma’s hand, eager to show her the first animals on our new hobby farm and… Hera was dragging her hindquarters.

I brought her back to the breeder to be sure (internet sources blame bacterial sources for similar symptoms), but there was nothing to be done and Hera was dinner the next night.

The breeder was very gracious and sent me home with a doe kit, just because she had an extra. Made me feel better about what we’d spent.

Turns out meat buns have a high risk of broken bones.  They have been selectively bred for generations to have a lot of meat (muscle) and less bone.  This so that the feed will go to building meat rather than bone.

One statistic I heard– I hope to test this for myself– is that a dressed rabbit carcass yields 97% of its weight in meat.  I know for chicken the number is only 50%.

Rabbits can easily break their own backs.  When you have that much muscle hinged on bones this fine, all they need is to have their front end immobilized as their back end exercises those great muscles, and snap goes the back.  Jay thinks the fox haunting our place last summer might have passed by, freaking her out enough for the back-breaking calisthenics.

Lesson learned.

Kinda makes you ready to be extra-careful in the way you carry those little bundles of muscle.

~ ~ ~

Rabbits are instinctive mothers. Not nurturing mothers.

This means they will dug a nest, pull hair, and feed the babies in their nest, but they’re not going to make sure those babies get into the nest in the first place.  Baby rabbits have a rooting-esque reflex that urges them to crawl down and/or to warmth.

But this is only useful if they are strong enough to crawl and warm enough to stay alive to do so.

~

Our second breeding, due in September, was a tremendous success and failure.

Europa had eight perfectly formed little kits.  I found them at morning feeding, cold and stiff on top of the hay in the nesting box.

In Freya’s box I saw two on top of the hay.  Inside there were two more.  I was afraid they were dead too, at first, but then I felt a butterfly’s kiss of movement.

We brought them all in by the wood stove, but only those two at the bottom of Freya’s nest survived. Ten out of twelve lost.  One survivor we kept for our second herd buck.

What we learned from this loss was to check frequently on due-day.

This policy has saved 8 kits so far.

Lesson learned.

I wish we didn’t have any more painful lessons to learn, but I already expect we will have a big one at the end of this summer: culling named stock.

It’s not something I look forward to, and I know breeders are warned not to name stock animals, but I need words to understand and order things.  So I’m already bracing myself.

And maybe I’ll know after this fall if naming is worth the cost.

  So there’s the wall and cabinets.  I think just about everyone who saw the kitchen (in our first months living here) assumed that these were the colors the house came with and we were just too busy to “fix” them.

Cue awkward pause when I affirm I picked everything out and painted it myself.

(The brightly colored squares in the black frame are our schedule and monthly menu.  I’ve nearly got the kids broken of asking me what’s for dinner.  They know I’ll just tell them to go read the chart. )

Here’s my full half-full sink and my organized collection of continually-in-use on the black shelf.  Note the Tape/CD player.  Music (or a story to listen to) is an important part of my work-cycle.  That’s an albino lizard climbing my window, over the sink.

And here is the last wall.

That’s a propane stove, and on top of the fridge are the plethora of egg cartons we’ve been given for sharing our bounty.  Not that we’ve ever been able to fill them all, it’s just, well, there’s space, so why not?

I’m too short to see them without looking apurpose.

This is from last spring.  Jay was trying to get away during Chase and the girls weren’t going to let that happen.

And here is Elisha, considering whether he likes holding something without a sphincter. Cute can win-out, if no one reminds him. (He’s this way about the young rabbits, too. Less so as they get older and more… self-controlled.)

Acknowledging from the beginning I’m treading on thin ice, here’s what I’ve learned about cognitive functions.

First of all, if you want to refer back to the typing children post (and maybe even the original processes post), because the four groups we divide children into are what we refer to as the cognitive functions.

iNtuition
Sensing
Thinking
Feeling

With two worlds to notice/spend time in (the inner world and the outer world), each of the cognitive functions develops first in one of those two directions.

When a child is developing his or her Dominant function s/he will do so in his/her preferred world.

That is, as in introverted, dominant-intuitive, I didn’t follow my mother around all day telling her stories. I spent my story-creating time *alone* (or, when I was a bit older, with a single trusted friend).

In contrast my extroverted, dominant-intuitive daughter once shouted at her brother (who’d reached his limit), “But I can’t tell it if nobody’s listening!”

My N is introverted (Ni).  The stories are rich, but largely private. As a child I hid in the basement to tell my stories aloud.

Melody’s N is extroverted (Ne).  The story doesn’t exist if there’s not someone else participating.

(This is not an ultimate definition, but CFs are slippery things, and I’ve found examples the easiest way of getting a clearer view of them.)

I’ve already given an example of Fi vs. Fe.  Here’s a story about Fi vs. Te.

So far I think there’s a pretty good chance that Elisha is INTJ.  He’s almost 6, and definitely got the dominant-iNtution preference.

Earlier this year Melody came storming out of the bedroom all riled up.

“Elisha told me [RULE!] And I already *know* [RULE!]”

Elisha trailed after her with this great NT look of dazed investigation.  There was nothing of the tattletale or lecturer in his aspect, and I had a moment of awareness.

“He’s not telling you because he thinks you don’t know, Melody.” [Can you see how this violated her Fi?  She thought he was challenging her grasp of her value system.] “He’s telling himself what he knows. Thinking out-loud.”

That is a developing Te: thinking externally, verifying through interaction with the world.

I don’t know if either of them got anything out of my revelation, but the issue hasn’t reached flashpoint since.

~ ~

This issue diffused so quickly it made me think about another (potentially sibling-type) conflict I didn’t respond to with as much awareness:

~

My girls are 17.5 months apart.  This means that in a lot of ways they are like twins, the younger entering a particular developmental stage before the older has left it.

This memory has me experimenting with the type I guessed for my oldest, and since ISFJ works with this story, that’s the type I’ll use for this illustration.

Ne vs. Si

When both girls were talking, but still in car seats (the toddler type), Melody used to harass her older sister, Natasha, by asserting, “The sky is orange!”

For reasons deeply mysterious to me, this would completely wig-out Natasha.  She would scream and holler that no the sky is blue and [tears streaming down her face] beg us to make Melody stop.

Yeah. Big fun in the car.  Can’t remember it happening any other time; she must have been bored.

Looking back with cognitive functions (CFs) and typing on the brain I can see an organic conflict.

Natasha was developing her introverted sensing.  She was in a modality of taking in detail and correlating it to her own experience, what she personally knew from life already.  Melody (I’m sure the first time it was completely innocent. Only the first time), with her extroverted intuition, was looking at possibilities or non-reality as a plaything.

These dominant functions collided.

Fe vs. Fi  redux

A couple years later, the tables inexplicably turned.  Now it was Natasha getting that I’m gonna start a fight twinkle in her eye and say (sometimes quiet enough that we in the front couldn’t hear), “Hey, Melody. The sky is orange.” Then sit back and revel in her power to invoke an explosion.

Fast-forward a few years, and each girl is now working on her auxiliary function.

Now Natasha is aware of her effect on others (Fe) and skillfully using it to press her sister’s buttons.  The particular button being pushed in this instance is Melody’s Fi. Her internal conviction of The Truth.

I was just mad.  I came up with that classic line that became a household staple: “Don’t. cause. problems.” And we eventually got past the deliberately-provoking stage.

For you skeptics out there, this really can work.  It’s the same principle as Don’t pick your nose and Say please. Sure you can’t *force* the behavior (or non-behavior) but you can normalize it, and largely that seems to work.

~ ~ ~

Looking at it the conflicts through the lens of type/CFs provided a level of rationale that I can really appreciate. It makes the falling-apart make sense.

As a writer, I *need* things to make sense.  We can’t always see motivation in real-life, but in fiction everyone is making their decisions for a reason (or several). This is one reason fiction is tidier than real life.

~ ~ ~

None of this CF stuff is set in stone, mind you, and really only needs to be used as much as it is useful to your understanding of yourself and others.  I find it useful because it adds meaning (however small) to the petty conflicts of my children.

You might say it defines the subtext.

You are a capable, resourceful person and have mastered many challenges in your not-too-long life. And there’s a part of your mind saying No big deal. We can do this.

Then there’s the other part.

The tired part that probably is the reason you even considered taking on this extra burden (and it is a burden) of learning-under-pressure.

When I began, I felt like I was one ripple from drowning (of course, that was about the same time I discovered depression), but that’s all I’ll say about that for now.

At this minute everything seems huge and you just want something to feel normal.    

Well, as long as you don’t expect it to be *the same* I do want to offer you a recipe that will at least give you something useable to replace sandwich bread in your life. Then you might be able to feel a little more normal. If you’re a sandwich family.

Just make sure the fillings you choose are gluten free. Some sandwich meats have gluten-laced “natural flavors” added, so check your labels!

This is the way I make Amy Green’s Perfect Bread, once or twice a week.

First thing to know about GF bread: it’s faster (no kneading), and it’s runnier. More like quick bread (think banana bread) in consistency.

You put it together like quick bread too. (I’ll explain the new ingredients at the end.)

And, yes, you really do need to measure like this.  You will have a much higher success rate from go if you use recipes developed and conveyed in weights.

Once you get the feel of GF baking you’ll be able to play more and with more variables if you are solid in your weights and ratios.

Dry bowl:

Whisk together

• 26 oz. flour blends¹
• .5 oz. xanthan gum²
• .5-1 oz. sugar
• .5 oz. yeast

Wet bowl:

In your stand mixer (if you have one) combine

• 20.5 oz. warm water (~2.5 cups) hot to the touch from the tap is fine.
• 4 large eggs (ideally at room temperature)
• 4 oz. oil (~ ½ cup)
• 2 scant teaspoons apple cider vinegar

Stir the dry into the wet and scrape down the sides.  Once you’re sure nothing will escape, turn mixer to high for 1-minute.

Just as you would have done something like this to “develop the gluten” in wheat bread, this “activates the xanthan gum.”  Esentially, it adds to the body and springyness of the loaf.

If you’ve ever had supermarket GF bread you know how needed that is.

After a minute of mixing, stop the machine and add

• 2½ teaspoons salt³

Then mix on high for another two minutes.

Line two 9×5 bread pans with parchment paper (you’ll be able to reuse it– and the next time around the paper will be molded, so it’ll be much easier), and zero the scale with one prepared pan on it.

Pour in dough until the scale says 1lb, 13oz. (or thereabouts). Repeat for the other pan.

With wet fingers or the back of a wet spoon, shape the dough into a traditional loaf shape, then set in a warm place and cover with plastic.

When the top of the loaves are about even with the rim of the pan, set oven to 350°

When oven is at temperature cut slashes in the top of the loves (optional) and place the pans in the oven (not optional).

Cook 45-55 minutes, turning half way if your oven necessitates it.

Bread is done when a thermometer stuck in the middle reads 206°

And you’ll get used to what it looks like, too.

For the best shaped loaf, allow to cool slowly.  I follow Amy Green’s progression:

1. First five minutes in the pan
2. Next ten minutes “offset” but still in the pan (allows the moisture to escape, preventing a soggy loaf)
3. Cool the rest of the way on the stove/a cooling rack.

GF bread is a finicky animal: you get it to show up with the right weights, measurements and ratios, but if you don’t finish well it could end up looking like one of the starving cows from Pharaoh’s dream. It “ate” everything, but can still end up looking emaciated.

If that happens (and it hasn’t happened to me yet with this progression) don’t quit.  All the details get easier after the first batch.

We use this for sandwiches (egg, PB&J, grilled cheese) and after a day or two, if it lasts that long, finish it off with french toast.

I do freeze the second loaf the same day I make it (once it’s cooled).  Like all GF bread it dries out crazy-fast, so making a batch when you have plans to use it will result in the most enjoyment.

¹ I use ~50/50 of both my blends, since they’re already mixed up and I’m just pulling scoops as I go.  Be aware that these are all new and unfamiliar flavors to begin with. One of the posts in my head includes a sort of chart with mild- to strong-flavored grains ranged along a spectrum.

Rice will probably be the least distracting flavor to begin with, but unless you can get a hold of “superfine” grind, the texture will be gritty, and not like the soft bread you’re looking for.

Millet and sorghum are the next mildest. You might try a blend of those with your 30% starches and see how that works for you.  Almond meal is another option (for a familiar flavor) in the 70/30 mix.

² It’s in the GF aisle and expensive. Yes, you need it in the beginning. There are alternatives, but you’ll know better how to judge them if you start here.  Consider this version zero on your variabilities chart.

³ Three teaspoons (one tablespoon)would probably be fine, too, but I wouldn’t go less.  I’m sort-of afraid of the taste of salt in my bread, so I’ve stuck with this since it works for me.  Salt is necessary for a good flavor; it’s easy for bread to get bland.

It’s called a “warmy” in our home, and the kids each got one for Christmas (a fun surprise, since they knew their cousins were getting one each, and I made a second set after they went to bed Christmas Eve).

These next two are a couple of the pictures I wanted to include in this post.  They were the chosen ambiance for each room.

That’s the Elephant Thread-Holder you see to the left of the large quilt has a fun family story behind it.

My mom has a giraffe-shaped piece of wood full of finish-nails that holds her spools of thread in relative tidiness.

Early in my marriage I was very busy with quilting and sewing, and building up a healthy spool stash of my own.  I was the second child to leave the nest, and my parents began the long project of streamlining their household.

Behind the kitchen sink, all my growing-up years, as long as I could remember, there was an elephant-shaped cutting board.  My dad had made it of the bit of bathroom counter top he’d cut out years ago to put the sink in.

I knew it was old, and probably unsanitary and all that, but it was still hard to watch it disappear. Well, our second Christmas (I think it was) Jay hung out at my parents’ place more than usual, and surprised me with this thread board (with pretty matching dowels rather than nails) still slightly sticky with my favorite wood stain.

He had taken the blocky, familiar shape and recreated it as a memory-keeper that served a real and needed purpose.

And it was a total surprise.

This is my kitchen wall (three weeks ago. Now the picture at the top has been changed, and the slogan,

Ut tensio sic vis

has been added below the two bottom pieces.

It doesn’t have a clean/literal translation, but the meaning of the saying is “Strength in proportion to stretch.”  That is, think of a spring, or a bowstring.  The tighter it’s stretched the more force in contains.

I like how the words look, and use it as a reminder to let the tightness I feel focus my strength, rather than snap me.

And here is Natasha’s birthday party on the 14th. We had another -30 party and a handful of dear friends who joined us to make the celebration complete.

Yeah, that’s a doll in the middle of those candles.

We used a dress-form pan and filled it only part way so it would be a little-girl cake. (I looked through a few stores before I found just the right little girl doll to use for the centerpiece.)

So there you are: the highlights of January. Oops.  Sans rabbits.  But Jay’s on the editing computer now, so I’ll have to do it some other time.

I can be really tired (or excited) in one area, and it can affect any other area.

And I can think of something else and completely shift my focus, and I forget what was weighing on me before.

For example:

Last couple of days I’ve been working out the next month’s menu

Somebody remind me to tell you about menu-planning for the month, rather than the week. Would you believe it’s easier?! (Maybe not faster, though.)

Then today I let a corner of my mind loose in The Novel, and 30-minutes on the treadmill flew by in a storm of delightful speculation and investigation.  I came back to the house more energized than when I left (which is good, because my body’s not used to the renewed demands yet.

So I was all keen to shift off the menu and work on the novel for a while.

Then I saw the time, realized the lights would be going out soon in the rabbit/hen house, and I had to decide if I wanted to bring my angora doe back to in finish plucking her

I got her back plucked clean Saturday night; need to finish the rest.

No, it doesn’t hurt, she sits quietly in my lap the whole time.

But I decided I wanted to write *something* so I framed a thinking-outloud email about the story ideas, to untangle them, then another to a local group that’s doing a “wool expo” in April.  Asked if they’d consider rolling angoras into the event {grin}.

Then, as I considered what I next wanted to put up here at the scrapbook (more M-B? GF cooking?  Lotso links to my fav recipes or foods of my own?) I got an email from a friend who is in the process of switching over to GF for her whole family.

And I thought of the other folks in recent months who have announced (or whispered) to me that they are embarking on the scary unknown path of Gluten Free and with each story I remembered my strong overwhelm, and I wished I could bring them home and cook them a simple dinner and tell them it doesn’t have to be scary (forever).

So, in dearth of clambering requests for more M-B talk, I’ll shift gears for a while.  We’ll squeeze into my little kitchen, and I’ll show you what I know, and how I made it not-scary for me.