Gluten-Free 'Nana Bread

My husband loves bananas, and I love baked goods.  In a sense, banana bread represents a marriage of our different tastes.  [I suppose it kind of represents our marriage, actually.]  Baking gluten-free can be real pain in the rear, though.  Remember from last week's post where I explained that gluten helps dough rise and keep its shape? Well, when you're baking without gluten, one of two things often happens:

-Whatever you're trying to bake won't rise [even though the recipe said it was supposed to]

-No matter how long you bake your goodies for, the center refuses to cook.

However, I found a banana bread recipe that actually works.  It cooks inside and out, and even looks like bread by the time you're done with it. 

Best part is, it even tastes good.

The recipe comes from Hodgson Mill's website. The original recipe has you create a mix of different kinds of gluten-free flours, but I found that just using the company's multipurpose baking mix works just fine.  

Gluten-Free 'Nana Bread

Adapted [Slightly] from Hodgson Mill

Prep: 30 mins
Bake: 55-60 mins @ 350 degrees fahrenheit
Makes: 1 loaf

Ingredients:

• 2/3 C granulated sugar
• 1/3 C butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 C mashed ripe bananas
• 1/4 C buttermilk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 C Hodgson Mills multipurpose baking mix [this happens to be the whole box]
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp baking soda

And…Go!

1. Combine sugar and butter in large bowl until creamy.


2. Add eggs one at a time; mix well.


3. Stir in mashed bananas, buttermilk and vanilla extract.


4. Combine multipurpose baking mix with baking powder, baking soda, and salt.


5. Stir dry ingredients into banana mixture and mix well.


6. Pour into greased loaf pan [8 1/2 x 4 1/2 inch].


7. Bake for 55 to 60 minutes at 350 degrees or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean.  [Keep an eye on your bread while its baking.  Mine got pretty roasty-toasty and I had to cover it with foil after 20 minutes.] 


8. Cool for 5 minutes and then remove from pan onto cooling rack.      

 Two notes about gluten-free bread:

-Gluten-free bread doesn't do as well at room temperature like regular wheat bread.  You don't have to, but I would recommend refrigerating your 'nana bread.

-Slices of gluten-free bread have a really bad habit of falling apart.  [Again, remember from last week about how gluten helps hold bread together?]  However, there is a way to combat this unfortunate problem!  All you need to do is lightly toast your slice of 'nana bread.  Added bonus: it is once again nice and warm after spending time in the fridge.

Happy Friday readers, and enjoy!

An Introduction to Cloth Diapers

I have been doing the cloth diaper thing since my daughter was born in January.  However, my introduction to cloth diapers happened three and half years earlier when a friend of mine was changing her child's bottom - with a cloth diaper. I knew at that point that I, too, was going to use cloth diapers.  I had no real reason for choosing to use cloth diapers, just simply that I wanted to be different.  And cloth diapers counted as something different.

As I did my research I realized that there actually are good reasons to choose cloth diapers.  Cloth diapers create less trash waste, provide a "natural" alternative to disposables, and can keep your monthly grocery bill down.  For my family, using cloth diapers meant that we would save money.  And saving money meant I still would get to stay home while my husband went to school full-time at Arizona State University.

 I spent 9 pregnant months researching everything about cloth diapers.  It didn't take much for me to start feeling really confused, though.  I didn't know my fabrics, the acronyms made no sense,  the variety of diapers was mind boggling. Using cloth diapers seemed really complicated and overwhelming to me.

I started using cloth diapers with a lot of apprehension.  Josh actually had to get me to start using them because I kept saying, "oh, let's just wait until tomorrow."  I was surprised when cloth diapers turned out to be so simple.  

Hence, the spawning of this series, The Poop on Cloth Diapers.  My goal for this series is to provide a simplicity-based guide to the world of cloth diapers.  I won't be getting into a lot of the nitty gritty side of cloth diapers, so there will probably be some questions you have that I won't answer.  I want this series to be a sort of show-and-tell, saying, "Look!  Cloth diapers aren't that scary!"  I promise to keep my sentences short and my jargon to a minimum.  I am not writing about cloth diapers to convince you that they are better, but to provide helpful and, hopefully, enjoyable information to those who are interested.

Over the next five weeks, I will be answering these questions:

So What Exactly Is A Cloth Diaper?
What's the Deal With All These Styles?
Can I Do This Cloth Diaper Thing?
How Do I Get Started?
What All Do I Need?

Stay tuned for next week!

What is Gluten?

If you had asked me that question two years ago, my answer would have been, "Wheat.  Right?"

Well, yes,  But there is more to it.

This post is for those of us who are just learning about gluten, and what it can do to those whose bodies don't like it. 

Gluten is basically a protein.

It is mainly found in wheat, barley, rye, malt, and triticale (a hybrid of wheat and rye)

What gluten does is make dough elastic, helps it rise, and is what makes bread oh-so-chewy-delicious.  These properties of gluten make it an ideal additive and filler in many processed foods.  

The problem is, there are people out there whose bodies don't like gluten.  If they wind up eating some [knowingly or not], their body will react.  The reaction will be based on one of three reasons:

The body is sensitive to gluten.  The term "gluten sensitivity" is kind of the catch-all phrase.  It simply means that the body doesn't like gluten and responds negatively.  If someone is sensitive to gluten, their body will react to eating gluten mainly in the digestive tract.  Possible symptoms would be diarrhea, bloating, gas [often the stinky kind], and abdominal pain.  In rare cases people will also get migraines, feel overly-tired, hyperactivity, joint pain, and even schizophrenia.  If they avoid eating gluten, they will feel better.  For some people [but not all], the sensitivity will go away over time and they can eventually eat gluten again.

Within the spectrum of gluten sensitivity, there are two specific diagnoses that doctors may find out is the case for someone.

A person is allergic to gluten.  This means that their immune system wrongly thinks the gluten is harmful, and reacts to it.  Common signs of a gluten allergy would be an upset stomach, rash, eczema, or in extreme cases, swelling of the throat and anaphylaxis.  It would be similar to someone who had a peanut allergy.  A person with a gluten allergy will have to avoid gluten completely in order to prevent having an allergic response.  In some cases, like children, people will "grow out" of the allergy.  Some people have it for their whole lives.

A person has celiac disease.  Celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder.  What this means is that the body actually attacks itself instead of the gluten, causing long term damage to the person's body. In the case of celiac disease, the body attacks the cilia which line our intestines when that person eats gluten.  Our cilia are what help us digest nutrients from food.  For a person with celiac disease, they can't get enough nutrients from food because their cilia are destroyed, and they will show signs of malnutrition.  They may have serious stomach and intestinal issues [like diarrhea, gas, abdominal pain, etc.], unexplainable weight loss, nausea, vomiting, no appetite, and even can be lactose intolerant.

For people with celiac disease, they have to stop eating gluten permanently.  By keeping their system free of gluten, their body will eventually rebuild the cilia in their intestines [we're talking years].  The only way for them to keep their body healthy is to avoid eating gluten all together for the rest of their life.

So what's the point of all this?  I found that understanding what gluten was and how it affected the people I know  helped me be able to jump on board with the whole avoiding gluten as much as possible.  When I thought about how awful it would be to feel like crap [literally] all the time, I suddenly had an urge to dump everything in our kitchen that possibly had wheat in the ingredients.  I also developed a new appreciation for just how hard it is to eat gluten-free.  

I want help my husband feel better all the time.  I  also want to to make it easy for others to understand what eating gluten-free means.  

Over the next few months I am going to work on posting recipes that don't have gluten in them.  I am also working on creating easy references to restaurants and fast food places that offer gluten-free options. The goal is to make all this information into a database for people who are new at a gluten-free diet [or even those who have been at it for years], and also for people who are having a friend over for dinner who can't eat gluten.  

Happy Friday readers!  Hope you have a great weekend!

For more information about celiac disease, visit the Celiac Disease Foundation. 

Flushable Liners for Cloth Diapers [AKA: A Solution For The Poo Factor When Not At Home]

My wonderfully awesome friend, Andrea, posted the very first ever comment on my blog! [High five Andrea, and thanks!]  I was super appreciative of her comment, but also she posted an interesting question.  This question I think is one that all moms and soon-to-be moms and really anyone who has been around children think about: 

What do you do with the poo? 

Her question specifically related to dealing with your baby's deposits while you aren't safe at home to deal with them discretely.  For my readers who don't use cloth diapers yet, the common way of getting said deposits off the diapers in a  safe environmentally-friendly way is to use a diaper sprayer [also known as hand bidets].  They are attached to you toilet's plumbing, and you simply spray the poo off the diaper into the toilet and flush.

So what do you do when your sprayer isn't an option?  Like vacation, or road trips, or a trip to the zoo?  

I thought about a couple of options specifically for a vacation scenario; say, you're staying with family for a week and got permission to use their washing machine. 

The first one I thought of was, "well, I suppose you do it the old-fashioned way and dunk the diaper in the toilet until the poo comes off."  Then I thought of the one time I actually did that.  It wasn't a pleasant experience - I'll spare you the nasty details. 

Then I thought, "Well what about a spray bottle?  It would be kind of like a diaper sprayer, but travel size!"  Not going to lie, I was pretty proud of myself for coming up with this.  So, I told Josh, and he said, "You should probably actually try that out before you tell anyone that idea."  Fine.  Lucky for me, only an hour later I had a poopy diaper.  So I snagged my spray bottle full of water and went to work on it over the toilet.

Conclusion:  It's better than dunking.  It's also a lot of work for not a lot of results.  I only got half the poo off and gave up.

So we went internet hunting for ideas.  Turns out, there is actually a product designed for this very problem.  They are called Flushable Liners.

Even better, we have a roll of them sitting in a drawer, just waiting for this very moment.

I decided to just throw them out as a possible answer to Andrea's question, because people all over the web think they're pretty nifty.  I also decided that I should probably give them a whirl for a day or so to see for myself just how they work.

So, how exactly do these things work?

 First, you pull a liner out and place it on top of your diaper [I tried every variation of diaper, and they all work with the liners].

Then you put it on your child. When you go to change your child, you simply dispose of the dirty liner, either in the trash or toilet. They are biodegradable and shouldn't clog your toilet.  [Disclaimer:  know your house's plumbing.  If you don't think it can handle a bunch of these liners going through your pipes, then don't send a bunch of them through your pipes.  Please.]

Some moms I know have children who poo on schedule.  If your kiddo is like that, these things will be fantastic.  All you need to do is put a liner in before your child's regular depositing and clean up is easy!  For those of us with children who like surprises, you will probably have to put a liner in every diaper.  Here's the good news: using a liner for every diaper isn't going to break you.  A roll of 100 liners cast around $8.  I found a 100-count roll of the brand I use for $6.   

So if you used a whole roll of liners while visiting grandparents, you would spend $8.  Or you could buy 100 disposables and spend $25.  Not bad.

Another neat tip I found out is that you can use the liners to protect diapers from rash creams or medications. Once again, they are a less expensive alternative to disposables.

Conclusion.

The flushable liners work better than I expected so far.  Adelle hasn't made any deposits yet, so I'm still waiting for it.  [She did have prunes for dinner last night though, so I  think I should get lucky soon.  I'll let you know what happens.]  I was worried the liners would stick to the diaper when they got wet.  Envision trying to pull wet toilet paper off off the floor.  However, after a few wet changes, I found the liners rolled off the diaper without you having to touch them.

[Update: Dellie finally got the prunes through her system.  Good news!  The liners worked.  They protected the diaper from the poo and I was able to simply dump the liner with the poo into the toilet and flush.]

I hope to hear some awesome stories in the comments section about your experiences using liners, or even other ways you found to deal with the poo factor while out and about!

Hope you all have a great week!



*this is a link to Amazon's affilliate program, so if you choose to buy these liners through the above link, a percent of your purchase will come back to support this blog.  Thanks!*

Gluten-Free Through The Drive-Through [At Wendy's]

I am extremely proud to say that we have not eaten fast food since we moved last week.  This is a really big deal for us, because my husband and I would find every excuse in the book to eat out "just this once."  We were in the middle of errands and needed the boost; we were stressed and needed a little Taco Bell pick-me-up; it was Friday and we needed to celebrate surviving another week; the list could go on.  Reality is, fast food was a comfort thing for both of us.  And we really don't have the budget or the calories to regularly spend on that kind of comfort.  

Its pretty difficult to eat out when you're not supposed to eat wheat. However, there is a time and a place for fast food.  If there wasn't, I don't think it would exist.  So what does a person do if they're allergic to/intolerant of one of the most common ingredients found in fast food?  Struggle through the company's re-donculous allergy spreadsheet, get really frustrated, and get the hamburger anyway.  And then pay for your sins for the next 24 hours. 

I started compiling a list of foods that Josh could eat at fast food places because I didn't like to see him suffer.…actually, its because of selfish motives born of midnight stink bombs under the sheets.  I found that Wendy's is a pretty good place for people seeking gluten-free options that don't suck.  I didn't create an exhaustive list of every possible thing you could get that was gluten free, but instead a quick reference of menu choices that you could look at while waiting in line.

Here's the Wendy's menu, revamped sans gluten!

Sad news, Wendy's fries didn't make the cut.  Apparently they are okay, but they are cooked in the same grease that other food with gluten is often cooked.  Bummer.

This information was compiled based on Wendy's information packet found here. They state that their list does not include temporary menu options, and was last updated June 2012.

I hope that you find these mini menus to be helpful in your next excursion through the drive through!

Cloth Diapers and the Chaotic Life

The official blog schedule for The Little Mother has been decided upon - at least for now :) Diaper Duty on Mondays and Gluten-Free Fridays.  There may be extra posts here and there, but you can count on those two to happen every week [save a natural disaster or something equally as terrible…like the flu].

Welcome to the the first Diaper Duty post!  I hope that Monday postings will be a stress-free learning zone about the world of cloth diapers.  I felt I needed to post something legitimate about cloth diapers, but I wasn't feeling ready to unveil a little mini-series that's been in the works.  I want to make sure its really, really good before I finally let the series loose upon the world wide web.

The goal for this post is to give an example of how cloth diapers work in the real world.  You don't have to be a super mom to make them work for you.  Take, well, yours truly as an example of a not-so-super mom making the cloth diaper thing work: we officially survived living in complete upheaval for two and a half months, and cloth diapered our child almost the whole time.  I say almost because of two exceptions.  The first was when we were living in a hotel in Waikiki and washing diapers was not an option, and the second was when Adelle developed a no-fun diaper rash from poorly washed diapers [more on that below].  

There were five things I learned about cloth diapers this summer:

1. Cloth diapers can work with a chaotic life.  We moved into our in-laws' basement, visited scores of family and friends all over the state of Colorado, helped move our in-laws into a new house, moved ourselves into my parents basement, and started feeding Kiddo solid foods. We did all this while Adelle was wearing cloth diapers.

2. Cloth diapers demand their own suitcase when being moved.  We had a carry-on suitcase completely, 100% filled with cloth diapers.  That suitcase carried enough diapers to only have to do laundry every third day.

packing diapers - like trying to stuff a cloud in a box

3. It will take time to understand the marriage between your cloth diapers and a new washing machine.  I went from a regular top loader to a high efficiency machine.  I learned that my mother-in-law's washer requires extra rinses.  Like 4 extra rinses.  Or else Dellie gets a bum rash.

4. Gas dryers are the bomb. OK, so this isn't something I learned about cloth diapers specifically, but I really wanted to point this out for reasons of relativity. Our diapers dried a whole lot faster in the in-laws' gas dryer than our old electric one. [Gas dryers can also be a bomb.  I also learned that this summer when I woke up to the smell of rotten eggs one morning.  Turned out the dryer hook up was leaking.  Good thing no one smokes in this house.]

5. Anyone can use cloth diapers.  Everyone who babysat for us over this summer ended up using cloth diapers.  Everyone who hung out with the three of us saw us use cloth diapers. No one walked away thinking cloth diapers were a bad idea by the time I was done blathering about them.

We finished the rest of our move in disposables.  We weren't sure that our new place was going to have a washing machine [or dryer, or fridge!], and the idea of having to lug a stinky bag of diapers to a laundromat while unpacking and getting settled sounded like way too much work.

The one thing I will hand to disposables, they do have an edge when it comes to convenience.

Anyway, thanks for reading my first ever rant about cloth diapers!  I hope that this post about my experiences with cloth diapers while making a huge life transition holds at least a bit of inspiration.  Cloth diapers really aren't hard.  They're even kind of fun if you give them the chance :)

Your turn! To my readers who have/are using cloth diapers:  What's the craziest life event you've tackled while using cloth diapers?  A relative's wedding out of state?  Weekend trip at the lake? How did it go?

Lazy Sunday Casserole [from Kayotic Kitchen]

Welcome to the first ever [and slightly late] Gluten-Free Friday!

Being the first post on this blog about gluten-free eating, I figured it would only be fitting to add two more firsts to this first:

First first: this is my first time cooking dinner in our new kitchen.  Frozen pizza doesn't count.

Second first: this is my first time cooking this recipe.  I have a really bad habit of trying new recipes when I invite people over for dinner, so I usually have no idea how bad, or good, the meal will turn out.  My motto has become, "there's always takeout."

When I found this recipe on Pinterest, my stomach instantly growled.  The pictures of this meal look delicious.  I took some of my own pictures just because, but seriously, nothing can compare to the original ones. 

This recipe is made with pretty simple ingredients - veggies, meat, chicken broth, balsamic vinegar, and italian spices.  No need to hunt for special gluten-free alternatives with any of the ingredients.  

[Note: All types of vinegar except malt vinegar are naturally gluten-free.]

Here's the link to the recipe:

Lazy Sunday Casserole (from Kayotic Kitchen)

Post-meal Assessment: 4 of 5 stars

Josh: 3.5 or 4.  He thinks it would go well if the sausage was cut smaller and served over rice. [My husband is pretty stingy about giving stars away, so I would just mentally add another star to everything he rates.]

Becky: 4.  She would have given it a 5 if there weren't any onions in it.

Me: 5.  I really liked the flavor of the balsamic vinegar cooked into the sausage and veggies. The bitter vinegar taste disappears, leaving a nummy balsamic flavor, which I am a huge fan of.

Dellie: 4.  She kept chewing on the carrot despite making numerous faces. 

carrot fishing

Head over and take a look at the recipe at Kayotic Kitchen, and give this meal a try!  It easily feeds four people, and can probably be stretched to more servings if served over rice.

Happy Friday everyone!

P.S. this meal pairs well with chocolate dipped ice cream bars for dessert :)

I Finally Learned How To Spell Humongous Tonight.

This is for anyone who was wondering what its like living in Phoenix.

Apparently we are in the middle of the hottest week of the year, according to everyone we have met over the last two days.  Good timing on our part.

Moving down Monday night turned into more of an adventure that we would have liked.  Our plan for a 14 hour drive through the night became a 20 hour drive through the night and part of the next day.  Two hours in, lights on the moving truck dashboard started flashing and making noises - turned out that the coolant was low [lot of fuss for such an easy fix].  Funny thing about the truck problems, we had a very similar thing happen to us [almost exactly] 4 years ago when we moved from California.  Two hours into our drive, the trailer hitched to the moving truck started acting up, and we had to stop and get it fixed.  If something happens to the moving truck the next time we move cross-country, I'm going to start paying closer attention.  To what, I don't know.  I'm not all that sure what exactly it would mean, but I'm guessing something important.

 Huge kudos to Penske, though!  Both last time and this time around, the company got someone out to look at the problem as quickly as possible.  I know a track record like ours doesn't look too good, but their customer service has been good enough I still plan to use them again. 

The trip also reminded me why I like cloth diapers better than disposables.  Kiddo started getting really fussy the last 45 minutes of the trip.  I didn't think much of it, being that she was probably hungry and sick of her car seat.  When we finally got to our new house, I found out the real reason she was so mad.  She had a HUMONGOUS poo-splosion through her diaper, upwards into her armpit.  And her brand new car seat was christened as well.

You may not believe me, but this is truth, people.  That never would have happened in a cloth diaper. Unless it was put on wrong.  And that's why I use cloth diapers.

Keep cool readers!  I know we're trying!

Its Like Rocket Science!

There's a reason rocket launches start their countdown days in advance.  Because something with a lot of logistics can get complicated really, really easily; and when something doesn't go as planned, having the extra days is really, really helpful.  

Yesterday:

We had a pretty significant hiccup in our moving plans yesterday.  Our household goods (which will be known hence forth as "our stuff") were scheduled to show up, and we had wrapped our entire week around said event.  However, the moving company let us know at 1 p.m. that they were not going to be able to get our stuff moved out until the next day.

So instead we went and bought Adelle a new convertible size car seat for the drive to Phoenix.  And then we went and saw the new Batman movie.

Today:

We already had two really big and important things we needed to get done today.  Adding a full day of moving our stuff from one truck to another was the last thing we needed.  But we faced the day head on and killed it. 

[Now I am afraid the day will turn into a zombie, then come back and bite us in the rear.]

that's only half of our stuff

no one could ever spell our last name correctly in Hawaii

What crazy amazing things did we accomplish? Let me tell you.  All three animals went to the vet and got health certificates.  Almost all of our stuff got packed into the moving truck.  And we survived the Social Security office and got Adelle's replacement card.  Yes, we lost her card during the initial move from Hawaii.

Now something that actually relates to cloth diapers!

We have decided to temporarily switch to disposables for the move.  Driving down with kiddo in cloth wouldn't be a big deal, except we aren't sure that our new place has a washing machine.  And holding onto stinky diapers until we got a washer would be, well, stinky.

Every time I switch Adelle over to disposables I'm reminded of how much I like cloth diapers.  Disposables have a smell when they get dirty that cloth doesn't emanate in the same way. Also, in my experience, disposables leak poo more easily than cloth does.

Send a little prayer our way tonight; we have an incredibly full weekend saying goodbye to friends and family.  The moving truck is incredibly full too.  It's going to be hard to make the last bits and pieces fit.

Happy Friday to you all, and I hope you have a fantastic weekend!

And So It Begins

Dear Reader,

We are currently one week and counting until we begin The Great Adventure. 

Its really too bad you can't create echo sounds when typing words.  If it was possible, the Great Adventure would be loud and echo-y.  I guess I will just have to do with capitalization and italics instead.

We [being myself, my hubby, our 6 month old daughter, two dogs, and the cat] will be moving to Tempe, Arizona early next week.  To the people of Phoenix and the surrounding areas, this is your warning.  The size of our moving truck alone will make a permanent crater in the landscape.  Not like you guys need any more of those.

The reason for this bit of insanity on our part is to send my husband off to college at Arizona State. Where he will be a student full-time.  And I will work to spend as little money as possible over the next few years.

Two years ago, my husband and I sat down at talked through what we wanted our family to look like.  We realized that my husband's job in the Army wasn't going to allow the family life we wanted.  So we decided that when his enlistment term was finished, he would leave the Army and use the GI Bill to finish school.

We both have done time as college students in years past, and trying to keep one mouth fed and clean on a student budget is hard enough.  We're trying to do it with six mouths.  Granted, three of them are a lot less picky than I was in college, but the reality of what we are trying to accomplish is a little daunting.  And crazy.  But I figure since we're crazy enough to try doing it, there might be readers out in the world wide web who would be crazy enough to be interested.

I also want this blog to be a resource on two topics that are close to my heart: using cloth diapers and eating a gluten-free diet.  [I should probably interject at this moment and say, no, I am not an environmentalist, even though I really sounded like one in that last sentence]. Here's a quick scoop on the why's:

• I found that the world of cloth diapers can be confusing and misleading to future parents.  Most conversations I have with friends and family about cloth diapers goes something like this, "You're crazy, but good for you.  I could never do that."  I really, truly believe that cloth diapers are not hard.  I want to use this blog as an outlet to share my passion and to provide a resource that simply explains using cloth diapers.

• Over the last year, my husband has discovered that he has a sensitivity to gluten.  My natural tendency is to eat as many rolls on the dinner table as I'm allowed, so learning how to eat [and cook] without gluten has been an experience.  I want to use this blog also as an easy go-to resource for others like me who are just beginning the learning curve involved with eating gluten-free.

I realize that these topics have very little to do with each other, except that my goal is to make simple resources on both topics.  I truly hope that this blog will be fun, informative, and relational for you as a reader.  And I truly hope over the next few weeks to get this puppy up and running!