Pizza, Pie?

First of all, I'd like to start this post by saying WOOHOO!  YOU WANT PIES WITH THAT IS BACK, BABY!  You think I'm excited about that?  That doesn't even compare to the excitement I harbored for this month's challenge:  Pizza Pie.  Now whether you believe a pizza is technically a pie or not is not the point here folks.  The point is that Erin from Milk & Honey finally chose a theme that encourages the savory (though sweet and creative pizzas are also encouraged.)  Some of my favorite pies are savory ones, so I welcomed this theme with open arms (and open mouth.)  And I mean, I have an excuse to make pizza!!

Towards the end of April, I made a vow to start working on bread products with the two allergen free flour mixes I'v been perfecting.  So far I've made rolls, a double-crust pie, and now, a pizza dough!  I used the recipe that the genius Jeanne of Four Chickens adapted and it worked insanely well.  I've been trying to find or make Gluten-Free pizza since 2007 folks, and this is the first time I really felt, damn, that's finally pizza, free of everything I can't eat.


But where would a pizza be without it's toppings?  For this Pizza Pie Challenge, I decided to go all out and make a pizza that would make my toes curl, my eyes roll and my tongue dance with delight, and I have three letters for you all: B.L.T.

This B.L.T. pizza is a mix of the sweet, salty, and savory that I love so much.  It's a twist on a classic, as instead of lettuce I used leeks (yum!)  The fresh bacon, leeks, and tomatoes along with perfect spices on this amazingly stable and allergen free crust totally rocked my world.  I can't wait to see what the other awesome creatives came up with here!

B.L.T. Pizza

(Bacon, Leek, and Tomato)

Ingredients:

1 allergen-free crust prepared via Four Chickens blog or your own favorite

2 slices bacon or turkey bacon

1/2 pint of fresh grape tomatoes, rinsed, drained, and cut into small circles

1 stalk of leeks, just the steam cut into slices and quartered

3 cloves of garlic chopped or diced (I like smelly pizza, feel free to reduce)

a few oz shaved fresh parmesan cheese

a few oz Kerrygold vintage cheddar cheese

thyme, basil, black truffle salt, pepper to taste

olive oil

Directions:

Prepare crust according to recipe.

While par-baking the crust prepare toppings as follows:

Fry bacon in olive oil until desired crispiness, remove and drain on paper towels. Tear bacon into pieces.

Throw leeks and garlic into bacony oil and saute until soft.  Remove leeks/garlic and drain.

(stacking process)

Remove par-baked crust and brush lightly with olive oil.

Arrange grape tomatoes on crust followed by leeks/garlic, bacon, desired amount of parmesan and slices of cheddar.

Sprinkle to taste with fresh thyme, basil, black truffle salt and pepper.

Put in the oven and cook for 6-8 more minutes and remove.

Cry tears of joy in anticipation of eating something so good you may just foodgasm.

Of course, even though the crust is allergen free, the dairy and meat I chose to put on the pizza compromises the allergy status of it, but there's no reason you couldn't tailer it to your own needs.  Now stop looking at my pizza and go be creative!

Food Allergy Awareness Week

Marked by the joyous celebration of Mother's Day, us food allergics rang in Food Allergy Awareness Week.  FAAW which is taking place right now (5/9-5/15), is an opportunity to examine your communities in a different light.  I'm guessing that some of you who already read my blog are allergics yourself.  But what if you're not an allergic?  Maybe an allergic-curious?  There's an angle for you!  The FAI's suggested giving up a food for the week.  This sacrifice is I believe, is the FAI's way of getting you to feel what it might be like to be an allergic for a small portion of time.  Maybe those who don't understand or can't imagine what it would be like without mentioned food will become more sympathetic to others.

I think that having people give up a food for a week in support of the allergic community is a good idea, but I would go one step further and suggest people give up one of the top 8 allergens instead.  The top 8 allergens are: Wheat, Milk, Fish, Shellfish, Eggs, Soy, Tree Nuts, and Peanuts.

As someone who is not able to eat 6 of the top 8 allergens, and is now having to limit my intake of eggs (thanks to the chickens pumped full of soy), I feel I can comprehend a great deal on the topic of sacrificing a common food.  Its not just the sacrifice of not eating a food though.  For me, eating one of my allergens quickly becomes a dangerous situation.  I've had horrifying allergic reactions, including losing consciousness.  Last year, someone accidentally put a pine nut in my salad and I was deathly ill for 3 days straight with my body doing some very unpleasant things which I will spare you from reading the details of.

I love the idea of someone trying to give up one of the 8 allergens for one week's time.  It encourages support and empathy and a special compassion for those suffering from food allergies.  But if one of the participants are accidentally fed the ingredient they are avoiding, what will happen to them?  Nothing.  So on top of asking you readers to give up a top 8 allergens, I ask you to really get to know your allergic family members, friends, teachers, community leaders, and bloggers.  Ask them what its really like to live with food allergies on a daily basis.  Read about food allergies and try eating out once while trying to avoid one of the top 8.  Educate yourselves and others and taper back from judging the mother of a peanut allergic child who is begging you not to pack a peanut butter & jelly sandwich for your child (a small inconvenience to you can save her child's life.)  If you work in the restaurant industry, learn about proper allergy safety, cross contamination, and sanitation.  Remember to be sensitive instead of snippy to those with special food needs.

As a very food allergic person, every day there's a sense of danger where there should be a sense of normalcy.  Please take a moment to think about how a food allergy can affect someone's life this week.  After all, awareness of each others' needs allows for the danger to turn into normalcy one day.

Keep Your Eyes on the Pies

"Anyone can cook!"  Perhaps my favorite line in a Pixar pic, said exuberantly by Chef Gusteau in the brilliant movie, Ratatouille.  Those of you who think "cartoons" are for "children" might want to take a minute and stop strangling your inner child and examine that Ratatouille is a movie that shares the shear joy of cooking with everyone- big, small or rat.  I've cheesily repeated that line to myself while meditating over quite a few experiments in the kitchen.  In fact, I have a stuffed Little Chef in my kitchen to remind me to keep on keeping on, even when allergen free goods seem impossible to compose.

Now I'm no rat, but when I started baking Gluten Free, a lot of weird things started happening.  Huge failings.  Hard as rock rolls.  Cookies and cakes that never cooked all the way through.  I-guess-you-could-call-them-muffins muffins.  I had given up on conventional, traditional baked goods for a time.  I experimented with other baked goods and alternative ways of creating traditional goods.  For example, I abandoned the usual pie crusts, and tried using fudge, cookie dough, GF crumbs, hash browns and mashed cauliflower (for the savory.) 

I secretly missed double crusted pies.  I mean, making pie was one of my favorite things to do pre-GF.  My favorite was fresh apple pie in the fall, and without that regular crust, it just didn't taste the same.  Well one day not too long ago, Shauna of the Gluten Free Girl tweeted about the amazing Jeanne at Four Chickens.  I saw that Jeanne had made a pie crust, and not only did it look beautiful, it looked too easy to make.  It seemed so simple to me that I figured, how can this possibly work?  Well, it worked!  And it worked like a charm.  Jeanne actually has many recipes for all the bready, baked goods I haven't been able to crack yet with no recipe, including choux pastry and pizza crust.  Her blog is amazing and I urge you to go check it out! 

It's time to recognize that many talented bloggers have joined the ranks of Little Chef who inspires me to strive for greatness each time I set foot in my kitchen.  If they can make magic in their GF kitchens, I can certainly make magic in mine.  Remember, anyone can cook.  And anyone means you too.

What's better than making inspiring food?  How about making it for someone who inspires you?  Like on Mother's Day.  This would be the perfect, bright addition to any Mother's Day feast.

Double-Berry, Double-Crust Pie

No nuts, soy, gluten, eggs, or dairy-

can you believe it?

Crust Ingredients:
Pie Crust as prepared using Four Chickens blog (note: I used my own allergen free flour mix instead)

Filling Ingredients:
2 pints of blackberries, washed and drained well
1 pint of strawberries, washed, drained well and quartered
1/2 cup of fair trade sugar
2 tbs tapioca starch

Directions:
Click on the link above and follow Jeanne's directions. 
When it's time to make the filling, combine all filling ingredients and set aside while making crust.

Complete pie crust according to directions.  *Make sure when rolling it out use lots of tapioca starch so the dough does not stick to the rolling board, rolling pin, or you!
Before pouring the filling in the bottom crust, drain the extra liquid from the filling thats formed so your pie is not soupy.
Bake for about 35 minutes and let cool.
Refridgerate for a 30 minutes to set the fruit juices in the pie.
Remove and set to room temperature to serve.
Cut and serve, maybe even a la mode :)

Some notes about the above recipe:

• It doesn't contain eggs unless you make an egg wash, and you can use a non-dairy shortening to make it egg and dairy free!
• The pie crust had to be rolled very thin in order to cover my Emile Henry 9" pie plate.  There was no leftover crust; it had to be used to cover everything.
• The crust will be very sticky while you're rolling it out.  I put the note above about using tapioca starch in order to reduce this.  I covered my hands with the starch and the ball of crust that I was rolling out.  I also rolled it out in between two pieces of parchment paper; this helped a lot.
• The flour I used to make the crust was a combination of white rice, tapioca and arrowroot.  This mix held up and I'm guessing any all purpose GF flour would too.
• I sprinkled some extra sugar on top of the crust before I put the pie in the oven.  The crust isn't really sweet or flavorful by itself, so make sure your filling is robust!
• If you cut into a berry pie and see a soupy mess, cheat!  Take a ladle and try to dry it up a bit.  But I highly recommend drinking the soupy mess.  It's usually delicious.

Soy Vey!

How can I be getting sick from eating plain chicken and rice pasta?  This question riddled me for the past 2 months.  I paired down all of my eating and creative recipes (to the detriment of my blog, sorry followers) to lots of plain chicken, rice pasta, Food for Life english muffins (yum!), cheese, and turkey bacon.  I did this to figure out how the heck I was still getting so ill.  I kept thinking I was under-cooking the chicken, giving myself continuous food poisoning.  Then I over-cooked the chicken on purpose and still got super sick.  Then after one particularly awful night, I stopped cooking chicken completely.  Had I become allergic to chicken all of a sudden?  Oh no, please don't take away my chicken, body!  But I wasn't always getting sick when I ordered chicken at a restaurant.  What gives?  So I checked with the butcher at my market.  What are they feeding the chickens?  Now they feed them soy, exclusively.

Oh.

Apparently I'm so allergic to soy these days that now I have to switch chicken providers somehow.  While I search for a new way to find safe poultry that I can cook, I'll be trying to manage the fact that chicken's always been my safe and healthy choice.  I have to except that if I choose to eat chicken out, that I'm rolling the dice depending on where the chicken is from.

Though this presents an obviously annoying challenge, new opportunity comes with it.  Opportunities to try new things, things I might not have tried before.  And after a lovely discussion with a very friendly butcher, I will be making my first buffalo burger tonight.  I've never eaten, let alone cooked buffalo, though it can't be difficult as you cook it as you would beef, just subtract some time for the leanness.

I'm excited to try a new meat, but I know that its still red meat.  And yes, its lower in cholesterol and naturally a better choice, but I still shouldn't eat red meat every day.  In the meantime, the poultry products from Applegate Farms have not started bothering me yet, so I'll supplement some meals with turkey hot dogs and turkey bacon from them.  Of course, I will be eating more dairy to keep my protein as high up there as I can.  I'm not sure what will happen to my cholesterol in the long run.  I can't imagine this will be very good for it, but I have to consciously and unfortunately make that choice now.  I choose to make my calories so I can keep my energy up and hopefully my cholesterol won't get much higher in the process.

In the meantime, soy-free feed for chickens any one?

I don't know why this never occured to me before, reader.  I'm so careful with my choice of foods.  I know that not all feed translates into the meat that hits the table, so they must be feeding these chickens a crazy amount of soy.  I guess this just teaches me that you have to think of everything.  I must admit, since I cut out that chicken, I've been feeling 50% better.  That's a big deal for someone like me who hasn't reached 100% in a few years.  If you've been having mystery problems too, maybe you're just like me and this will help you too.

It makes me sad of course that this company is now pumping their chickens full of one of the top 8 allergens in the US.  I'm not for canabalistic feeding, but there's probably other answers out there.  I gather those answers aren't as cheap as soy nor as beneficial to American farmers.  It's not that I don't see how great soy can be for non-allergics, but how can non-allergics not see what soy does to a big chunk of the population?

Soy vey indeed.

Suz's Guide to Sick Food

While children believe in the Easter Bunny, Santa and the Tooth Fairy, I'd like to think there's a special imaginary being out there for those of us who suffer from digestive issues.  I like to call this being, the Tummy Ache Fairy.  Since getting back from London (which was both fantastic and uncomfortably cold), I have had another visit from the Tummy Ache Fairy.  My fairy, like myself, is strong and forceful and so, my aches are of the aggressive nature.

You may be thinking, "Has our dear blogger Suz finally lost her mind?  Has all this health hockey finally tossed her over the deep end, now that she's seeing imaginary creatures?"

I would answer to that, "I never said I saw them, silly!"

But it dawned on me that those who are plagued with their own Tummy Ache Fairies and Digestive Elves of all kinds might also have the common problems that come with feeling sick in that area:  What do you eat?  How do you eat?  If you're constantly feeling this way, you can't avoid eating forever, can you?  How can you get calories in you?  

Now I'm not a nutritionist or a doctor or a nurse.  I'm just a woman recommending 5 of my favorite calm, easy, and sensitive products that have helped me in times of sickness.  After all whether your body wants to admit it or not, it needs food and the calories it provides to function.

1) Imagine Broth

What's the one thing you can always have when you're feeling crappy?  That's right folks, soup.  And even more simply, broth.  Sometimes you need to start small and sip your way back into eating.  And broth is also a clear liquid, for those of you having digestive related procedures that require you to ditch solid foods for a day.  

Imagine, which makes soups and broths of all kinds, could possibly be one of those companies I couldn't live without.  A wide variety (if not all) of their soups and broths are gluten-free.  They also have several flavors that are vegetarian, Kosher, and even low sodium if you have multiple diet restrictions.  I use their organic broths which have minimal, relevant ingredients, in several of my recipes to aid in the cooking of meat without adding unnecessary fats or marinades.  Broth adds flavor to otherwise bland dishes.  You can cook plain rice or quinoa in it instead of using water, and I sometimes use it as a substitute for tea (which I've been told to stay off of) when its cold outside and plain hot water won't cut it.

2)Tinkyada Pasta

I am very sad for you if your grocery store does not carry Tinkyada pasta, because it is the best substitution for glutenous pasta I've found.  When you need to eat something plain and easy to digest, pasta or rice is definitely a good option.  But when it's combined into rice pasta, you've got a winner!  In addition to all the awesome qualities and abilities of Tinkyada pasta, it's super easy to cook.

If you're sick, the last thing you want to do is slave over a stove.  With this pasta, all you have to do is boil water, then boil the pasta for 1-2 minutes and shut off the stove, keeping it covered for 20 mins.  Nothing is easier than that!  Result:  you have a perfectly good option to feed yourself without your stomach revolting against you.  

3)Lundberg Brown Rice Couscous

Those of you who knew me in college, know that for about 2 years of my life I ate nothing but couscous and cheese, beans or meat.  I loved couscous.  Aside from the fun of saying it, what isn't to love?  It is a delicious little grain that is delicious plain or doctored.  Plus it is cheap.  Plus it takes no time to make.  But alas, gluten lives in couscous, and so I said goodbye to it years ago.  

Lundberg is another one of those companies that continuously impresses me with their GF, rice products.  They make an excellent quick-fix boxed risotto, rice cakes, and a line of brown rice couscous!  The brown rice couscous is as easy to prepare as regular couscous, and has the wonderful fluffy texture that I missed from eating regular couscous, but without that pesky gluten getting in the way.  When the idea of eating is not making you happy, boil up some of this mild and easy to digest heaven.  It's a food that's sure to bind some of your troubles away and settle your tummy.

4) Hansen's Naturals Soda

Now I'm not one for sodas usually.  I've never loved carbonation, considering I'm usually already a little bloated myself.  But there are times, especially when I'm feeling sick, that I really, really crave that can of ginger ale or sprite.  Since I ditched corn for the most part a few months back, I haven't been partaking in soda, even when I've wanted it.  That is, until I saw Hansen's hanging out on the store shelf.  And then I instantly remembered- when I was a teenager, we bought Hansen's canned juice blends all the time (I think these blends have been discontinued but man they were good!).  Recognizing the brand, I then saw something else.  They use natural cane sugar instead of corn syrup to sweeten their sodas.  Now, I know that sugar is sugar folks, and you can argue for the pros and cons of it all you want.  But here's what I know.  I know when I read the ingredients on a can of Hansen's sodas I'm going to find ingredients I recognize, can pronounce, and regularly occur in nature.  I can't say the same for when I read any other soda label out there which is usually rife with corn syrup, 20 chemicals I don't recognize plus food coloring.

Hansen's doesn't have any preservatives, caffeine, or artificial elements to it.  And so I trust when I'm sick, it will make me feel better instead of worse.  Plus, the sugar really helps replace what you may be putting out, and helps with energy levels.

5)Applegate Farms Hot Dogs

Alright, up until now you probably thought I was giving really good suggestions for foods to eat when you don't feel well.  But hot dogs?  I may have lost you at hot dogs.  For some reason, don't ask me why, I often feel I can handle hot dogs when I'm having tummy aches or sick issues.  To me, there's something comforting about them.  Maybe they take me back to my childhood.  Whatever the reason, hot dogs are a good choice because they are a source of protein and fat which is good to get into your body when you're not eating a whole lot.  Another plus, is that although not super salty, they do have a salty flair to them which is very good for the sick.  Can't have saltines?  Who cares!  I'm having hot dogs.

Applegate Farms makes great organic beef, chicken and turkey dogs that are nitrate, casein, and gluten free.  The taste, however, is fully there, and they're a fantastic meal solution for someone who can't cook because they don't feel well.  Microwaves are not hard to operate even when you're not 100% folks.

I hope the above suggestions are helpful to any of my fellow frequently sickies and that you find they're also good suggestions for when you're well too.  Just as all of these foods are good plain, they're also great doctored up for when you're not needing to see a doctor.  And no, no one sent me free samples or paid me to tell you about how much I love these products and how much they help me when my diet is under construction.  I did that all on my own.

Eat More Food

"Eat more food?" I asked with my heart sinking into my poor, distended gut. "Eat more food," said the nutritionist who sat across from me.

Eat more food.  Isn't that the kind of advice that everyone wants to hear? Eat more food.  That sounds easy.  Hell, I bet you most of America would agree it even sounds fun!  But I almost cried.

I've been overweight for as long as I can remember.  I was teased constantly growing up, and I had always thought that with proper diet and exercise, one day I could control my weight.  What I didn't know is that my body wasn't, isn't, and may never be normal, so the normal principles of weight loss don't necessarily apply to me.  As many of you know, I've been getting into fights with my body.  I was hoping that it would cooperate after all the allergies, the gluten, and the vices were cut out of my lifestyle.  My body decided it had other plans.  Different plans.  What I suspected to be thyroid related plans.  And after several doctors over several years told me its not your thyroid, I tested positive for thyroid antibodies, which assures me that I'm not crazy after all.  The presence of these antibody suckers does indicate that I am in fact experiencing some sort of autoimmune disfunction. Perhaps signs of early hypothyroid.  The first thing I thought of, admittedly selfish mind you, was maybe my metabolism will finally kick into gear.

Because of me having been overweight for most of my life, I always thought my metabolism was extremely slow.  I had one pediatrician tell me I had no metabolism, and that was that.  Through sources such as articles, journals, and medical professionals, metabolism is another one of those things medical science doesn't know enough about.  Which is why I was shocked to find out there was a metabolism test that I was going to take with a nutritionist, in order to see how many calories I was burning a day.

The metabolism test I took consisted of being at rest and breathing into a tube for 10 minutes.  The breath goes through the tube into a small machine that looks like it came from the late 1980s, which then estimates about how many calories you're burning in a day.  I expected a slow metabolism.  After all, I can't lose weight so it only seemed to make sense. Why haven't I learned that my body doesn't make sense?  My metabolism was a lot higher than I expected.  So high that the nutritionist said I need to eat 800 more calories a day, which brings me to the eat more food above.

Lately, eating has been more difficult than usual.  I think it's this weird new no appetite feeling my body's been showing up with.  I tried to eat enough, at the right times of day, despite the fact I haven't really been into it.  I guess I wasn't doing a very good job, because I wasn't eating enough according to the woman who was a size 0 telling me to eat more food.  And so now I'm here, the opposite place I'd ever imagined myself to be as a mysteriously overweight woman: eating more food.

It's not the fun foods that you would want to add to your diet like chocolate or butter, or more chocolate (hey I like chocolate!)  It's more like, eat more protein, more dairy, and more caloric vegetables and fruits without adding a lot more fat.  This is super hard with my food restrictions as everything I happen to eat is naturally low in calories.  I like chicken and turkey, peas, apples, bananas, and romaine lettuce.  I like baking with agave and applesauce, and eating pudding or yogurt for dessert.  So sue me!  But eating them in what I always thought were appropriate quantities is not helping my crazy-ass metabolism (aka C.A.M) so now I have to just eat more of them.

At this point, I'm willing to try just about anything to see if it works.  This is week 2 of my eating more food.  I'm not going to lie, I feel miserable about it.  It's not my favorite thing in the world to force myself to eat, especially when I'm not hungry.  But like everything else, this will take time to get used to.  I just hope it really works eventually, because I'm running out of other ideas.

I hope you don't mind me sharing these things with you reader.  To me, coping with these problems seems to go hand in hand with pre-Celiac, Celiac, or hyper-allergic individuals who still experience further symptoms despite altering their diets.  All of these things relate back to our autoimmune systems, an all encompassing storm of crazy that seems to rain down if one tiny thing gets of kilter.

I also hope this will explain why I may not post recipes for a few weeks, as I'm eating a lot of baked chicken, chicken/turkey/beef burgers, fruits, veggies, tinkyada pasta, and yogurt.  I'll find other upbeat things to write about though, don't you fear!  I'm actually going back to the UK for a couple weeks of work and hope to try out some awesome gluten-free foods while I'm in town.  I promise to tell you all about it!

Math+Science+Crying=Experimental Baking

So as you can imagine, when I first faced my one serving of sugary or medium-oxalate carb a day, I didn't quite follow all the rules.  I would sometimes conveniently forget that a cookie was made with rice flour, or think it's only a small amount compared to eating a cup of rice.  I justify sometimes.  Don't we all?

But I'm a determined person.  I'm a willful, ambitious woman and I apply that directly to any challenge that faces me (as long as you give me from 1 hour-1 day to be frustrated with said challenge, wherein I may possibly cry.) After justifying, the determined person in me woke up and thought, I don't have to bake with rice flour just because it works.  I can bake with other mixes of flour too.  And thus began my journey into a haze of alternative flours, poofing up before my very eyes.

When I'm experimenting with Gluten-Free baking, I find I get a lot of fails before I hit my successes.  I've seen train wrecks, rocks, and mush come out of my oven time and time again.  And I've learned the age-old, visual disclaimer the hard way:  just because it looks good, does NOT mean it tastes good.  I've thrown away some really valiant tries, and I've frozen some interesting products to be eaten with courage at a later date.  For the better part of 2-3 months, I've been divining what will be my new flour mix: a rice free, corn free, soy free, nut free, bean free mixture that will work well with regular recipes, with substitutions, and with different types of baked goods.  Seems like a lot to ask for, doesn't it?

Now let me take you back to school with me for a moment.  Remember when you sat in class and muttered those famous groans, When am I EVER going to use this stuff?!  Oh, I remember very clearly because I was always very vocal regarding school lessons and practical life applications. The only hope I had for my future, grown self was that I would in fact never use mathematical sciences daily as a part of my career.  To say I never excelled at mathematical science would be the understatement of the century.  I'll be the first to stand up and tell you I was all for biology and anatomy, but was destroyed by chemistry and physics.  Ironically so, experimental baking is ALL chemistry and physics.  Oh, cruel fates!

Since my brain doesn't function with numbers (I was so much more of an English kid), I'd rather think of baking experiments as logic puzzles which haven't been solved yet.  For all you middle-school science fair attendees, I approach the trials with informal if/then statements (hypotheses) and solve them through trial and error.  Of course numbers are involved with baking no matter what because you find you need more of this or less of that, but if you only look at measurements and do equations on recipes first, you'll end up with a mess on your hands.  My first flour mix used 6 different flours; I ended up with a mix that uses just 3 flours (nice and economical.) I could take you through all the tedious reasons why mixes 1-5 didn't work, but I'd rather not "show my work" and dwell on past failures.  Instead, I'd like to celebrate mix 6, which did work.  I've used mix 6 on three separate weekends now, altering the same recipe (my control) checking to make sure that the substitutions didn't disturb the ability of the mix to absorb or not absorb what I was doing to it.  This weekend I'm running trials on how the mix functions in an originally gluttened recipe and how it functions as a vegan mix, but I'm confident that both trials will hold up nicely.  I'm not quite ready to share mix 6 with you yet, but it's not far off in the distance.

So class, what have we learned?

• 1) Don't quit if your experiment backfires, literally or figuratively.
• 2) You may occasionally cry during this process.  Have tissues handy.  Wash hands.  Try again.
• 3) Don't be afraid of experimenting with baking because it's just like a middle school science fair project, and we've all been forced to do one of those.
• 4) If a dunce like me can apply the principles of school to life and make delicious baked goods, I guess mathematical science isn't 100% evil (maybe just 98.5% evil.)

Class dismissed.  Go make a mess in your kitchen :)

Tip:  When testing baked goods, make smaller batches of smaller goods.  I tested wholesome cakes with muffins.  Check out the blueberry!

If anyone would like to buy me a new camera, 

well please do...