GF Success!

So, I made gluten-free zucchini bread today and it was a RAGING SUCCESS! Thanks very much to my good friend, we'll call her "Dia-T" (not to be confused with my other good friend "Tiny T") and her blog Gluten Free in SLC. I was surprised by a few things:

1. It was so MOIST! (I hate that word, but it is very appropriate here). All the GF baked stuff I've had until now has been super crumbly and dry. This was soooooooo good!

2. It tasted really good! The flavors and textures were very close to non-GF zucchini bread, and I only noticed a very fine grit right at the end of my chewing and right before swallowing.

3. It was so light! I was surprised at how light this seemed to me, compared to eating glutened stuff. I never noticed before, but when I eat glutened baked goods, I feel this heavy filmy-ness (I don't know how else to describe it) in my mouth. The contrast between that and GF baked goods was interesting and so different, and I can only explain it as feeling "lighter".

4. I didn't have itchy eyes while baking. So, I have always thought that when I make things with flour that I must be breathing in the flour dust and it is irritating my eyes or something, because that happens to me every time I bake. My eyes get itchy/watery and my nose gets itchy too. That absolutely did not happen today! And let me tell you, tapioca starch is dusty and I think I breathed in more of it than I actually put in my bread! Sheesh, that stuff flies everywhere, but I had no itchies after baking! Again, weird, but something I just took for granted was "normal" until trying something different.

So, I was very heartened by this initial success. I know GF baking/cooking can be hard, and I was scared and didn't want to fail and get discouraged and give up. I count this as a little blessing that will encourage me to persevere! I'm sure I'll make a bazillion batches of gross stuff in the future, but this was a nice start to my(very slow and reluctant) exodus out of the land of Gluten. Thanks everyone who had a hand in my first success!

Brain Cloud! I knew it . . . but I didn't know it!

How is it already the middle of August?! We've had a few cooler days this last week, and it made me realize that fall is just around the corner. Sad and happy all at the same time! We have been so busy, the summer has flown by! And I realize it's been a few weeks since I've blogged.

I've had so many things going through my brain lately, I'm not really sure why. It feels like there have been a lot of new and exciting things going on in our life, even though I can't really pinpoint what any of them are. Weird? My mind seems to have taken a "productive" or "creative" turn lately, and I have a bazillion projects and ideas that I want to do/work on that my brain is just overwhelmed and needs to find some clarity! So, if anyone has any suggestions on where I can get some of that, let me know. :)

Here are some things I've been thinking about of late,in no particular order, and probably leaving many of the things I've been thinking about out!:

1. Family History Work-Holy cow, have I caught this bug! And Ben too! We actually went out to the middle of Nowheresville, Ohio last weekend and tromped around some graveyards taking pictures of graves of people that Ben is related to! And I think we're going to do it for my side of the family in the next couple of weeks. Turns out we both have Ohio ancestors! And, don't worry, I'm still working hard on my Norwegian ancestry, although there's something going on with the Norwegian National Archives website that is making it hard for me to do more at the moment. Some sort of restructuring that I don't really understand because the announcement gets lost in Google Translation . . . (Tamsin? any ideas?)

2. Foot/Leg Rehabilitation-Stagnant, but with a possible breakthrough this evening. This has been a hard injury for me. I'm not used to not being more active, especially in the summer. I don't like having to be careful and patient. But, tonight, I stretched in a very different way, and was immediately able to touch my toes! right after! My hamstring has been SO tight, and this is what I believe has been the biggest contributor to my plantar fasciiitis, so a loose enough hamstring to touch my toes is a BIG deal.

3. GF Cooking/Baking- Thanks to the good ole' Type 1 Diabetes, I think I'm slowly heading on board the gluten-free train, never to return. I'm not testing positive for Celiac via the blood test yet, but I have tried spurts of GF eating and goodness gracious does it seem to make a difference! My digestion is slow and gross when I eat gluten, which makes my blood sugars very unpredictable. When I don't eat it, I don't feel gross, and I have predictable blood sugars. Ugh. I'm still totally in denial, and am right now of the mind that "if I ever test positive then I'll take it completely seriously" and until then am trying to avoid gluten when possible. Probably not the best attitude, but I'm not ready to make that behavior change yet! But right now, I'll eat it when we go out with friends, or if there's something particularly tasty that tempts me. So . . . it's all a big "we'll see" at this point. I did actually go out and buy some "alternative" flours and am going to start experimenting with baking using them. I love to bake so much, and if the time comes when I have to give up gluten completely, I absolutely could not live with out baked goods. So, I'm looking at this as preparation and having some fun experimentation time in the kitchen. Sorghum flour, tapioca flour and xantham gum, let's figure you guys out!

4. Missionary Work- With so many family members serving missions right now, missionary work has been a theme in my life lately. I'm a very reluctant member missionary (I'm a big fat chicken!) but lately, we've had little opportunities here and there to help out the missionaries in our ward and it hasn't been too scary. We've been reading from Preach My Gospel for FHE and it has helped give me a refresher course of the basics about the Gospel and the Church that would be helpful when trying to explain what I believe to other people. Plus, it's just beautiful to remember that God has a plan for everybody, that He's involved in our lives, and that Someone cares about us. Those really are the main messages about the Gospel that we want to tell people, right? Beautiful!

5. Random Projects-I have ever so many projects rolling around in my brain that I want to work on. Anything from "Make the switch to natural household cleaning products" to "lose some weight" to "paint some portraits" to "finish a quilt you started 1.5 years ago" to "organize food storage" to "finally finish reading the Old Testament" (sheesh). I even have a little notebook that I write down all the projects I want to do in, so I don't forget about them. Then, when I finish them, I can cross them off. On the project note-

6. Painting-My heavens why haven't I painted in so long!? I recently picked up my brushes again after an I-don't-even-know-how-long painting hiatus, and man does it feel good! There is something about linseed oil that is soothing to my soul. SOUL SOOTHING, people! Maybe it's the heavy fumes? I bought an easel (this one, only in black-thank you 40% off on-line coupon for Hobby Lobby), got an old LP to use as my palate (thank you Mrs. Kretchmar's art class for this idea), set myself up in the spare room and started painting again. Also, I trashed the liquin my BYU art instructor had me start using, that stuff ruined my painting for awhile, I think.

And that's my brain. Cloudy, yes. Exciting though, I think so.

Oh, and did I mention I rocked my latest A1C? 6.5, baby!

Another great quote from the Ensign:

So in the August Ensign, the first article is about Love at Home and contains a bunch of quotes from President Monson. Here's one of the quotes I really liked:

"Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved."

A Call for Conviction

Oh, how I love The Ensign! I love that we can get a magazine every month FILLED with amazing talks, lessons, poems, songs, stories and art all about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

I absolutely loved this talk by Elder Holland that was in this month's Ensign: Faith to Answer the Call. It's about pioneers, but more about having and developing faith and strength. My favorite quote:

"And so I issue a call for the conviction we all must have burning in our hearts that this is the work of God and that it requires the best we can give to the effort. My appeal is that you nurture your own physical and spiritual strength so that you have a deep reservoir of faith to call upon when tasks or challenges or demands of one kind or another come. Pray a little more, study a little more, shut out the noise and shut down the clamor, enjoy nature, call down personal revelation, search your soul, and search the heavens for the testimony that led our pioneer parents. Then, when you need to reach down inside a little deeper and a little farther to face life and do your work, you will be sure there is something down there to call upon."

Norway.

I'm so completely saddened by what has happened in Norway today. My thoughts have been turned towards Norway a lot these last few weeks as I have been fervently working on some genealogy and have discovered so much about my Norwegian ancestors. I was lucky enough to have made some amazing and dear Norwegian friends in college, and my heart just aches for them and what they must be feeling right now.

Since I first heard the news about the bombing, and then the shooting and all of the details that have been coming out about the two incidents, I keep thinking back to how I felt on September 11, and have been just aching for my Norwegian friends and their families and their fellow countrymen and how they must be feeling today.

I don't really know where I'm going with all this, I just wanted to let them all know that I'm thinking about them, praying for them, and am just praying for peace in this crazy world.

We're having a heat wave . . .

. . . a tropical heat wave! The temperature's rising, it isn't surprising (etc.)!

Seriously guys, it's crazy hot here! We've been in the mid 90s all week with humidity in the 60-70%! Don't get me wrong, I can handle my heat, but when you slap on that 60-70% humidity, it is ROUGH!

We're having something called an "extreme heat warning" or something like that, and they (whoever "they" are) are telling everyone to stay inside, drink lots of water, check on your elderly neighbors, etc. They're even opening fire hydrants all over town to help people cool off. It's kind of good that they are opening them, because if they city doesn't do it, people will just open them on their own anyway and that creates all kinds of problems (or so the local news tells us). Even our poor air conditioner, which usually does an amazing job, is struggling to keep up with the heat. We have it set at 70 and for the last couple of days it has struggled to keep our inside temperature at 72/73! Poor thing! There is just too much water in the air!

But, it's really not all that bad, and I'll take the heat and humidity over the cold and grey ANY day. The sun has been shining non-stop for a week now, which is quite the achievement for little ole' Ohio! I think it's going to be like this until Monday, and hopefully then we'll just have some normal Ohio summer weather (hot in the day, storms at night--love it!).

And until then, I'll keep singing and dancing to music from "White Christmas." :)

A visitor!

We have had a busy week this past week! Ben's mom came up for the week for a visit! Ben's dad works in Dayton, commuting every Monday morning 7 hours from their home in High Point, then working 40 hours in 4 days, and then drives back Thursday night! Talk about a long commute! Well last week, because of the holiday, he came up on Tuesday & left Friday and he brought Ben's mom up with him to spend time with us! It was so fun!

We went to the Columbus Zoo, took her to the Church historic sites in Kirtland one day, visited the Columbus Park of Roses, made a cheesecake, ate at City Barbecue (and had some Cheerwine!), had Graeter's ice cream, and generally just had a grand old time. We'd love to have her back anytime. And we'd love to have any of our family or friends for a visit any time, too!

On Saturday we went to the Church cannery/storehouse for the first time to can stuff for our own home food storage. I'd never done that before and it was SO fun! We spent about $30 and got tons of food storage. We're really excited to go back and expand on what we got this time. Every time I go to the Bishop's store house or to help with various church welfare projects, I'm always so impressed with the church's welfare system. It runs so smoothly and every time I interact with it in some way it is so easy for me to feel how inspired that program is! As a past recipient of church assistance myself, I have such a tender spot in my heart for this program!

Any way, it was just a really great experience and it's been a great week!