Boyfriend Soup

Trying to go on a diet makes you learn a lot about yourself. Such as: how much you whine when you're hungry; how unfulfilling some foods can be; how much I craved simple things like tomatoes. So I quit. I was unhappy, I needed food, and I quit the exclusion diet. And the first thing I did after quitting was ask my boyfriend what he wanted for supper.

"I'll make anything for you. Just tell me what you're craving and I'll make it," and I was ready for some crazy request since this guy is as food-crazy as I am. And he blind-sided me.

With vegetable soup.

Day 1: I want tomatoes and sugar.

Yesterday was really frustrating. As a celiac, I'm used to going to the grocery store and not going through most of the sections because I can't eat it. I can have all of the produce, any juice, canned veggies/fruit, and I know a good section of potato/corn chips I can have. There's even a small gluten free section I can pick from if I felt like it. But that's all changed with starting up the Elimination Diet.

The Elimination Diet:
A special diet used by doctors to discover whether certain foods are making someone ill. It involves not eating foods that might be causing the problem until later, when you add individual items back into your diet.

My mom has done this, my friend Tim has done this. And I'm still consistently getting sick, even when on a strict gluten free diet. So this leads me to believe that I'm allergic to something on top of gluten. After getting the sheet of safe and eliminated foods, I delayed. Thanksgiving: delay. Christmas: delay. New Years Eve: delay. Recover from New Years Eve food poisoning: delay. And now I have to do this.

Saskatoon Farmers Market

I rarely get to the Farmer's Market here in Saskatoon. I have a bad memory: I show up late; I show up not-at-all. But this morning while chilling in bed with a book, my boyfriend started texting me about a funny looking cucumber he took a picture of at the Estevan Farmers Market. And then my brain did something funny. It did two things: 1) It remembered that I ran out of garden cucumbers. 2) It's goddamn Saturday morning. Farmers Market. NOW.

And then I bought everything.

Concerning Paper

I like today. It's been a pretty simple day, where I haven't turned on any music for background noise. A quiet, contemplative day of reading books and waiting to see if the mailman was going to bring me anything. He didn't, but at least I got a postcard from the Netherlands yesterday. I can't be too mad.

As a snail-mail nut, I really enjoy using Postcrossing to send and receive postcards. I've got a tidy little collection going on, and I needed a way to display them instead of making another pile of papers on my desk or bookshelf. I even put it on my "To-Do in 2012" list so that I would force myself to come up with an idea. This is what I came up with:

To-Do in 2012, #9:  Find a place to display and store my received postcards

On a day where life seems to be about all the little pleasures, I have a few small things that make me happy.

Cheese + Buns = Genius

Today is the sort of day that forces you to slow down. With a weather forecast calling for about 20 to 30 millimetres of rain, you're forced to become a home-body. I can't spend 2 hours digging up my garden like last night. I can't weed or plant seeds. I'm stuck inside, and I don't mind it. Over a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of tea, I get to contemplate my most recent (and amazingly delicious) baking attempt: Tapioca Cheesebuns.


There's only one way to prove how awesome these buns are. Photographic evidence.
Exhibit A:

Puffy, airy, soft, delicious.

And Exhibit B: the recipe.

The Result of Waiting

I've been waiting all morning. Waiting for something to happen naturally that I could easily do in the microwave: soften butter. But I'm bringing both my eggs and butter to room temperature by waiting. Because I am making cupcakes. Cupcakes are worth the wait.

room temperature (noun): a temperature of from 15° to 25°C which is suitable for human occupancy and at which laboratory experiments are usually performed. The natural enemy of spontaneous bakers.

I've been whittling away the time by cleaning and reading. We've been bestowed a small amount of snow over the past two days, so things feel a bit chilly. I've bumped up my thermostat a whole half degree. I know, I'm spoiling myself. I also decided to spoil myself with some hot chocolate (or hot cocoa. Is there a difference between the two?) while reading my new book: "As Always, Julia".

In the spirit of the book (the letters between Julia Child and Avis DeVoto), where there was no internet and recipes were handed about by word of mouth, through letters, or books: I decided to not use the internet to figure out how to make hot chocolate. And then I thanked the gods for companies writing recipes on the sides of boxes. Specifically, I love you Fry's Premium Cocoa.

• On a quick note before the recipe: I was surprised to see the New Allergen Information notice on the cocoa. I hadn't noticed it in the grocery store, so I had a mild panic attack in the kitchen. Thankfully, Fry's doesn't contain any gluten, but now it says "May Contain Milk". Seeing as how, yes, I use lactose free milk (because it makes me feel muuch better) but I am not diagnosed lactose intolerance, I decided to plunge ahead with my indulgence anyways.

• Second side note: Does anybody else drink lactose free milk? Have you noticed 2% M.F. being much richer than you remember normal milk being, or is it just me? And do you feel like lactose free milk keeps nicely, even past the expiration date? Usually I'm a strict follower of the expiration date, but lactose free milk seems absolutely fine to me.

Enough of my gabbering: onto the richness of cocoa!

The 90%-Gluten-Free Man of my Life

Doing the gluten free diet on your own is a difficult thing. Alone is difficult, period. That's why I think there are so many support groups when people are overcoming something difficult: alcoholism, medical treatments, etc. The list could go on forever. I never got into a support group after being diagnosed with Celiac Disease. I'd feel somewhat silly, seeing as how I refuse to wear most of my emotions on my grubby sleeve.

But I do have a support group, in a way. A one on one counselling service. My boyfriend. I figured there were three phases (generally) when it came to how he dealt with my Celiac Disease, so I'll outline them here...

Ready to raise baby plants

I grew up in a greenhouse run by my grandpa. He's got the greenest thumb of anybody you'll ever have met. And since he only has one thumb, it's a super concentrated green thumb.

I'm assuming that my dad got a little bit of the genetic green thumb (but he's never gone outside long enough to garden. Us pale folk are delicate creatues in the sunlight). My mom has a tad of the brown thumb. She can kill tomato plants like it's an art. Mix my parents together, and I think I got a brownish-green thumb.

I've always loved growing plants. And now I live in a house that has a garden, and I signed the lease for another year. I'm going to garden. But I hate germinating plants in expensive peat moss planters, or those plastic things. I want something cheap. Then I read "Grow Great Grub", which suggested using cardboard tubes to germinate plants. Awesome. But the bottoms were left open in the book. And the whole tube was used. And then I read this article that I found on craftgawker:

http://gardentherapy.ca/seed-starting-containers-pt-1/ 

And my first thought was "I need to do this right away". So I put on a few episodes of Eureka, and found my happy place to make a few dozen baby planters. I'll show you how. Let's gather our materials.

Fire > BBQ > Oven

Even though I live in the middle of a city in the middle of the Canadian prairies, I love water and I love camping. I specifically love camping at a site that you can only reach by water (on a canoe). So, eight months into my relationship with The Boyfriend, I decide to test the waters (literally) to see if he likes my favourite and adored pastime. 

To Do in 2012

Happy 2012, everybody! It's nearly been a year since I last posted, and really I have nothing to blame but laziness. Laziness is a big thing in my life, but my friend Kim Schmidt (@sneakyfox on twitter) has come up with a way to get things done throughout the year that appeals to my OCD: a list.


{Just a quick aside, if you haven't been reading Kim's blog, you should head over and check it out:

http://sneakyfoxproductions.com/blog/ 

She's very crafty, so expect some amazing tutorials and craft posts. Her writing is as enthusiastic as she is in real life (just check out all the exclamation marks). Head over to her site, look at her photography, and look up the last several To Do in 20XX lists she's done. }

If you're one of those people who adore making lists and have immense satisfaction in crossing out items, you might want to try this! It's simple: categorize your life (work, school, hobbies, interests, things you've always wanted to do), write anything that comes to mind (don't limit yourself by what you think you can't do!), and you'll be surprised how many items you end up with. Some items might be easy and some might be difficult; you may only be able to complete some items at the far end of the year. That's how this list works: give yourself something to reach for during the entire year.

So here's my list of Things to do in 2012. I'll be updating this post throughout the year with things that I finish!