Category Archives: Life Untangling

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Meal Planning – Gluten Free

GF meal planning is pretty much the same as any meal planning, but I’ve found it very important for staying ahead of hunger that would lead to poor decisions (that I will regret later) so I’m including it here and early as part of an effective GF transition.

If you need more detail, that’s fine too. I’ll have the basic forms this week, and more specifics from my own menus next week.

 To Begin

First of all, download my  menu worksheet (my loving gift to you).

Second, make a list of all the meals your family currently eats: Spaghetti? Meatloaf? Mac and Cheese? Chili? Sloppy Joes? Big Mac?

Don’t worry yet whether they have  gluten-containing ingredients.  The point at this stage is just to write down all the meals you know.  Meals you need a recipe to make are fine, as long as they’re familiar enough for you to make at the same speed as the recipes in your head.

Once they’re on paper to look at you can consider what favorites are worth creating substitutions for.

Optional-but-recommended third-step: divide your your collected meals into categories (and it’s okay to put the same meal into  more than one category).

Any category-designation is fine.  I use main-protein (Salmon, caribou, chicken) and/or format (soup, 9×13 casserole dish, slow cooker) depending on the needs of the menu.

Having categories allows you to simplify your planning by narrowing the options of any given day.

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The Tipping Point

I’ve wondered a long time what to call this… lifestyle we’ve taken on with the move just over a year ago.

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.

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Gluten Free Pancakes

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. {shrug} still the longest one we’ve had. I think.]  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.  (Silly person.)

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. I took pictures 😉

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Avoiding Gluten

One of the few things eating advisers agree on is the value of eating foods without labels.  Foods that look the same (or nearly so) when you prepare them as when they were grown: vegetables, meat, dairy, fruit, even fats. Everyone may quibble over the best kinds of these, or the “correct” ratios, but all will agree you will be stronger and healthier if these dominate your food-choices.

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.

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Animal Talk: The Rabbitry Learning Curve

This is Mneme.  She is 6 months old and having her first litter Friday.

(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.

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M-B #9: More About Cognitive Functions.

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 extraverted, 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 extraverted (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.)

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Starting Gluten Free — Sandwich Bread Recipe

If you learned you needed to drop gluten, chances are you froze.

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.

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The Twisting Track of my Mind.

So, it’s funny to me how my mind really compartmentalizes.

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.

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Gluten Free Flour Mixes

I have two flour  mixes I use for all my baking.

Flour Mix A is my interpretation of Amy’s (at Simply Sugar and Gluten Free) bean-based flour mix.  All of the components are “ready” (from bags) in my pantry, so it’s by fall-back, especially when we haven’t ground grains in a while.

  • 22 oz. sorghum flour
  • 28 oz. garfava flour
  • 17 oz. potato starch
  • 8 oz. tapioca starch

Amy says this can be used 1-to-1 to replace standard flour in traditional recipes.  When working recipes by weight I use 5-5.5 oz per cup called for.

 

Flour Mix B is the simplest I’ve yet tried, and my favorite as long as I have a stock of ground grains (Yes, I know you’re *supposed* to grind your grain right before you use it, but our mill is hand-crank, and I will happily accept my husband’s labor of love filling all the flour containers in the place every couple months).  This idea/ratio came from Gluten Free Girl‘s Muffin Recipe post.  GFG is also the site that introduced me to the (nearly failproof) system of weighing ingredients rather than scooping out cups.

Weights allow me the latitude of substitution and experimentation so important to me as I find what I (and my family) enjoy most.

  • 70% (by weight) ground whole grains – Any combination
  • 30% (by weight) starches – Any combination

    • Isn’t that awesome?! So simple.  Easiest way to do it is with grams and start with either 700 or 1400g of grains than add 300 or 600g of the starches.

    For this one, also, I use 5-5.5 oz for each cup of wheat flour called for in a standard recipe.  Yup. By weight these mixes are completely interchangeable. I use both for anything, except when I know I’m going to want a finger in the batter, then I’ll just use the 70/30 mix, because the flavor of un-cooked bean flour is beyond nasty.

With either mix, combine components and whisk together thoroughly.

Over the next couple weeks I hope to write out my most commonly used recipes.

a) Because I’m always talking about them when I meet (or discover) people who also live gluten-free.
b) Because I’ve had some very frustrating moments when I knew *exactly* what I wanted to make, but had misplaced the recipe

Lately I’ve been getting (outwardly) organized.  As in, stuff I would have labeled *extreme* in my former life.  Working a schedule, menu planning for a month (would you believe it’s actually easier than for a week or two?), avoiding foods on personal evidence and a guess.

“Dedication, to the uninitiated, looks like obsession.”

But it’s been completely defensive.  And so with this.  I find this method (blog-keeping) to be the best way to keep from misplacing something.  SO.  Maybe one or two more M-B posts and then we’ll do my GF *bests* for a while.  Till then check the recipes category for what’s already up and if you need something in a hurry.

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Myers-Briggs #8: Appreciating Differences

Whole charts have been created about how different combinations of Type make for different sorts of friendships or conflicts.

For example, you’re likely to have a fairly easy friendship with someone who shares your two inner letters, because you approach the world with a similar orientation.

Or, if your outer two letters are the same, you might be good roommates because you have relatively similar habits.

When your inner two letters are both reversed, you become one another’s “enigma,” wondering what in the world makes that person tick?

An ISTJ might be the hardest for me to truly understand (or me for them), but we tend to tolerate each others’ presence fairly peaceably.  We may neither of us want to be the other, but I think we are able to appreciate the unique contribution of the other person’s type.

The truly hardest type for me to appreciate is the Innovator, aka SP, quadrant. What they’re good at are things I don’t feel a need for, and it’s hard to value a group if you don’t see them as fulfilling a necessary role.

~ ~ ~

This really bothered me.

Here was a group of people (almost 50% of the population!) that I admitted I couldn’t see the value of.  Not only did it mess with my view of myself as an accepting, loving person, it seemed really unhealthy.

I read all the reasons of course (they’re in every typing book or article-series out there), and I understood them cognitively, but I was embarrassed by how little difference the information made.  None of the examples I saw in my real world were helping, either.

So I prayed about it.

Yes, I prayed about a personality quadrant. I hope you can understand why.

About this same time I was working to figure out the types of the people closest to me (some were taking the quizzes, some weren’t).

My parents and my husband were of deepest interest to me; my parents (I’ll admit) because I wondered how who they were had affected who I am, and my husband because, well, he’s so perfect for me, and I’ve got this private research going with type-pairing in successful marriages and my own little personality theory about the marriage’s M-B type.

Anyway, because of how balanced they all are (or maybe it’s just how well I know them?) they were as tricky to suss out as I was.

What I ended up doing (instead of trying to pick their preferences) was jumping to the deeper level of cognitive functions. (Please understand this has everything to do with how long I’ve been playing with this theory, not something I expect anybody to try.)

My husband has a delightful mix of traits that I appreciate in both my parents, but at a level I like so much better (which is perfect considering I live with him now, not them).

  • They all have a solid Fi (they’re much at ease than I when encountering opinions different than their own)
  • Jay and my mom both bemoan their poor memories (but since they know their weak spot, they know how to compensate for it, so they both are very conscientious and careful to remember important things) I called this Se
  • All of them are good at producing a quotable soundbite in a please-help-me crunch of time.  Which makes sense because Te is the natural opposite of the Fi I already mentioned.
  • And for Mom and Jay, the natural opposite of Se is Ni, which is my dominant process, and may explain why I can feel like I have a such a good connection with either one of them

(I’m giving this process much more organized and incremental that I ran it in real time, but I wanted to offer a model in case anyone else should find it useful.)

Now, for all that my mom and my husband are both very detail-oriented (Se), my husband is more fun to be around (sorry, Mom).  In terms of hierarchy, my mom’s Te is over her Se, while for my husband it’s reversed. She works before she plays. Sometimes to the extent that I wonder when (if!) she plays.

I lined out the remaining order of preferences and made a shocking discovery.

Best-fit I have for Jay is ISFP.

I am married to an Innovator.

And when I said that sentence aloud, I responded with, Yes, I knew he was brilliant but I didn’t know he was SP!

I checked my “math.”  And I laughed, and thanked God for his many good answers to many prayers.

Now I can appreciate SPs like I never knew I would, because I am learning how many people I already love and appreciate are this type.

And the ones that bug me?  Yeah, Innovators  also make the highest percentage of my bug-me group, but that’s to be expected.  We are most irritated by that most different from (or the most similar to) ourselves.

But God is always gracious: What he designs is good, and I firmly believe that if you ask any designer to elaborate on the brilliance of his design he will be happy to oblige.