Gluten-Free Experimenting and Gardening

Hello Everyone. The motivation to write hit tonight! I hope everyone has survived the heat wave that came through. Our hottest day in the cities was 103° and our conditioner is currently broken. I somehow managed to survive!

Sooo, the past 3 or 4 weeks, no matter where you see me in my home, this book is sitting close by because I either just sat down to read it or I just set it down from reading it!

I've been experimenting.

This next photo is of rice and potato flour bread machine bread. It IS HEAVY! I didn't get the recipe from the book titled above though. I got it from the AiA cookbook, which I ordered. Soooo, the bread.

Heavy.
Slightly flavorless.
Biscuit-like.
Excellent with peanut butter and honey!!

It just needed a little more salt and sweetner. Oh, and butter. Next time I'll add an egg, lighter flour and more salt with butter instead of oil. You can totally tell how heavy it turned out. Brick similarities.

This next loaf - Flax Seed - turned out much better.

Fluffy. Just look at the photo!
Light.
Flavorful.

I added pumpkin seeds and that was good, but I used Bob's Red Mill all purpose gluten-free flour. I'll never use that again. They used two bean flours in their flour mix and it left and under-taste that I couldn't get over.  I gave the loaf and the flour to my mom. She seemed to like it. :)

I plan to keep experimenting. I have to. I can't give up my breads and muffins.

I've been eating gluten-free for a while now and started to experiment with eating foods that contain gluten. Most recently, I ate some split pea and ham soup from Campbell's. I ate about 1/2 cup and I started getting the worst stomach cramps. I used to think this was from MILK! I will still experiment, however. I haven't had any cramps from milk, I'll mention.

I woke up at 4:15 AM this morning and couldn't get back to sleep for some reason.

So I did a little gardening bright and early - musta been before 8 am. Yup, I was shovelin' rock. Do I care about my neighbors? Ummm...no.

I added 4 new plants.        

My gardens in the back yard are doing nicely. They survived the heat. I took this photo before the hot heat though. My Lupine is too cute when it is just a baby! It looks like baby corns or asparagus.

That's about all for food and gardening. Nothing too strenuous. I'll be starting a second part time job soon but I still plan to keep writing on the blog. That's what I seem to do - keep on keepin' on! The sewing bug will come around again, I just know it.  It's part of my nature. :)

Until next time... happy days!