No, I did not fall off the earth, just super swamped with the holiday fares on the business and the home front.

Christmas is only 2 days away, I hope you all have your presents under the trees, holiday meals and parties all under wrap. I sort of do.

I did carve out some time and hosted a Christmas party for my kids and their friends. We had lots of kids over, all teens and tweens.

They are old enough to entertain themselves. I just had to prepare food and order pizza. The only activity I provided was a gingerbread house competition.

The night before the party, I put together 4 gingerbread houses, and loaded the table with all kinds of candies, sprinkles, and frosting in red, green, blue, and white.

In honor of my celiac child, these gingerbread houses are all gluten free!!

The kids broke into teams of 3 or 4, and set to design and decorate their gingerbread house. They were creative and competitive, and came up with 4 uniquely designed delicious homes.

As the parents came to pick up their children, they were invited into our home and got to judge these beautiful decorated edible houses.

Guess which of these is the winner?

Merry Christmas! Wish all of you a blessed 2016.

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I suffered an epic failure in a baking project recently and severely damaged my reputation in the kitchen.

See this puddle of sadness…

It was supposed to be a Nutella Tart! It’s main purpose wasn’t to be food, it was aiming to be my baby’s science project.

The science project was called “The Incredible Edible Cell,” where my 12 year-old was tasked to make a model of a cell using only things that can be eaten.

Since the baby has celiac disease, we decided that her edible cell must be gluten-free.

The Nutella Tart sounded like a winner, because it is the baby’s favorite food. But soon we discovered a flaw. This tart needed to be refrigerated. In just 90 minutes at room temperature, the tart turned into soup and allowed our cell particle representatives and toothpick labels to swim or drown in the liquid.

Last minute, we needed a plan B!!!

I found this in the pantry.

Hmmm…what if I could use the entire package and bake it into one giant round cookie??

Yippee!! It came out of the oven beautifully; completely intact with not even a crack.

I turned the big cookie over to the baby. It was her project, so she got to design and build the edible cell.

She took out the bag of gluten-free candies we bought earlier, along with colorful icings, and set to work.

The kid had a blast!!!

Who wouldn’t? This project was fun.

Best of all, when she brought the project to school, after presenting the project, she got to eat it with her classmates and friends.

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Arriving home yesterday, I had a good laugh when I found a brand new Yellow Page phone book sitting on our porch.

I contemplated taking it directly to our recycle bin… What a waste!

I decided to offer it as a history lesson to my kids, like I did a few months ago when we found a lonesome phone booth.

“Hey kids, check this out. Someone left it outside of our door for us.” I dropped the heavy book onto our kitchen island.

“What is it?” kids. The kids eyed the free book suspiciously.

“Open it and see for yourself.” me.

They opened the book and flipped to a few random sections of it. Clearly, pages after pages of perfectly serious lists of phone numbers had them puzzled.

“Look, it says plumbers here. It has all their names and phone numbers. What is it for?” 12 year-old.

“Wow, it’s just a list of people’s phone numbers. Is this a phone book?” teen.

“Right. This is the Yellow Pages, a phone book of local businesses. So if you ever need a plumber you can call one of them.” me.

“How do you know which one to call? And where is the review?” teen.

“No reviews! You just pick a name and a number to call when you need service or a product.” me.

“You had no idea and just had to make a call?” teen, frowning.

“The old days were tough on us.” me, sad faced. “Although, miraculously, when we needed a plumber and called someone off of that book, you could expect a plumber to show up and fix your pipe.”

That’s right, I used to get my plumbing fixed without learning how my plumber had previously replaced a family’s old water-heater with superhero speed, or how this same plumber had previously liberated a minor water leak into an all out flood.

I asked my children what we should do with our Yellow Pages. They told me to recycle it. We have Google and Yelp now.

I felt bad for the brand new book, and especially for the poor tree that had to be sacrificed for such a needless purpose. I guess it’s better to recycle it, so it can reincarnate quickly into a more useful existence.

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A Blast to the Past

We just sat down to a late dinner last Tuesday.

“You will not believe what happened to me today.” me.

“What happened?” 14 year-old looked up from across the dinner table.

“You know how I signed up to be Tasterbach’s assistant Volleyball coach?” me.

“Yeah.” 14 year-old.

“Well! Today at the opening, I saw on the roster that our team had no head coach listed!” me, wide eyed.

“So, who is the real coach?” 14 year-old.

“Exactly! I went and asked the site director, and do you know what she said?” me.

“What?” teen.

“She said that makes me the head coach!!” me, even more wide eyed.

“Ha, ha, ha..” teen.

I was not upset with the teen. That was my sentiment also. I only signed up to be the assistant coach, thinking I would be helping out with setting up the court, taking down the court, and running around to retrieve run-away balls for the team in between.

“EXACTLY! I told her that I can’t coach the team. I don’t actually know how to play volleyball, and I have never coached any sport before.” me.

“What did she say?” teen.

“She said sorry. There is no one else to coach this team.” me.

“I am totally stressed out. I don’t know how to coach, and I don’t know how to play volleyball. I am 100% under qualified for this job!” me, totally unhappy with my unexpected promotion.

“Don’t worry, Mom. You just Google how to coach volleyball. It will probably take you to wikiHow, and it will give you step by step instructions on how to teach volleyball to your kids.” teen.

Blank stare at the teen.

“Seriously! Try it. It will be easy.” teen, fully convinced with this advice.

How to Coach Volleyball on wikHow

I survived two practice sessions with my team of 7 kids already.

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A New Experience

Move over photography, we need to make room for the arrival of my newest obsession.

Meet our bread maker. It arrived just last week.

Now, why would a self respecting Chinese woman need a bread maker?! Rice is not filling enough these days?

Well, this bread maker’s key beneficiary is my baby’s American stomach.

This bundle of cuteness loves bread!!

My 11 year-old was diagnosed with Celiac Disease about a year ago, just 3 months after she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.

Celiac and Type 1 diabetes are both auto immune diseases. So Celiac disease is more prevalent among Type 1 diabetics than the general population, and this double whammy fell into our lot.

There is no cure for Celiac disease, and the only treatment is to follow a very strict gluten free diet. This is not easy. Gluten is EVERYWHERE!!

Gluten is a protein from wheat, barley, and rye. If my baby ingests even a trace amount of gluten, her over active immune system will attack the heck out of it, wreaking havoc on her small intestine, damage the villi on her small intestine, and render her unable to absorb nutrients into her body. This helped to explain why she didn’t grow even an inch in about a year.

So, we have been that “trendy” gluten free band wagon family the media has complained about so much recently. Except this band wagon is no joy ride in a shiny BMW, this band wagon is one endless bumpy ride, driven by an old donkey!

Foods we have taken for granted such as bread was a major challenge. We were able to quickly identify Udi’s Gluten Free bread as our favorite. However, it is almost always kept in the freezer section of the grocery stores, and the baby only liked two types of their GF bread. The only way to eat fresh baked bread was to drive over an hour away to a dedicated GF bakery, called Mariposa’s.

I have decided to liberate the baby from her frozen and boring breads misery. I am going to make her fresh GF bread myself!

“But you don’t know how to bake!!” my husband.

This is true. So I bought a bread maker with a gluten free setting on it.

I also decided to start with the simplest GF bread recipe.

I went out and bought a list of unfamiliar ingredients, and I met a couple of them for the first time.

I was determined to follow the recipe to the letter. Rather than simply measure each of the ingredients with the various cup sizes, I weighed each of the key ingredients down to the exact grams on my kitchen scale.

My 11 year-old got all excited and joined me in the kitchen. She happily poured 3 tablespoons of honey into the batter mixture, and felt certain that this bread was destined to be delicious.

I put the batter mixture into the bread maker, pushed a few buttons.

A little over two hours later….

Oh! Beautiful, further enhanced by the heavenly smell of the freshly baked bread filling the entire house.

Our first loaf of gluten free bread did not play victim to any of the typical gluten free pitfalls, such as too dense or too crumbly or too off tasting.

The four of us enjoyed our first loaf of gluten free bread for dinner. My baby was so grateful to finally be eating fresh, warm, fluffy, and delicious bread.

It was a huge success. I am in love with our bread maker.

I plan to bake a loaf of bread every week. My unhinged ambition and impatience will have me attemping a much more complicated bread recipe this coming Sunday. I can’t wait!

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