Our Lady of Guadalupe Breakfast Muffins - Egg free, Dairy Free, Wheat Free

We were looking for a special recipe for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Dec. 12.  The kids love starting out our day with a recipe for the Catholic Saint 'o the day.  Since we are back to no wheat, these looked like a recipe I could easily modify.  What a hit!   They loved them so we had them, again, today.

Egg-free, Dairy-free and Wheat-free Mexican Chocolate Muffins
Prep: 15m 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Grease muffin tins or line with paper liners.
3/4 cup canned lentils or garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
2 Tbsp. chia seed meal mixed with 1/2 hot water (or equiv. egg replacer for 2 eggs)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup cooking oil
1 tsp. vanilla extract
3 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa

I combined the beans and chia seed/water mixture in the blender until it was smooth.  I added the rest of the above ingredients and blended until well combined.

In a separate bowl I combined:

1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup brown rice flour
1/4 cup oat flour
1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 cup chocolate chips
3 Tbsp. hemp seed (or you can add 1/4-1/2 c. nuts here...we're allergic)
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. xanthan gum

Add the wet ingredients from the blender to the dry ingredients and blend until combined.  Pour into prepared muffin tins.  Bake at 350 degrees F for 20-25 minutes.  Let cool 10-15 minutes for easy turn out.

Dust tops with confectioners sugar, if desired.

So much for good news...

I'm sorry to say that I no longer trust the medical professionals.  My last post was to announce that the allergist cleared my 5 year old of his wheat, egg and possibly even dairy allergies.  She prescribed slowly introducing wheat into his diet, followed two weeks later by egg, then dairy at the beginning of the year.

Fortunately, I trusted my instincts and went slowly.  One month after slowly introducing wheat back into his diet, he erupted in a serious case of eczema all over his body.  Nothing else has changed.  The poor kid is miserable.

That is because an allergic reaction, an IgE response, is different from an IgG response.  He may not be allergic (no IgE response) but he is definitely still IgG sensitive.  And that stinks.  So, we're back to no wheat, still no eggs and definitely no dairy.

The worst part is that I feel like I wasted my money.  I feel let down by the medical professionals, again.  I wish I had unlimited funds to have him tested for more foods than the five or so we had him tested for two years ago.  I would have a full panel done so that I can see what else might be causing his growth issues and his skin problems.

Back to the drawing board...

We interrupt this blog vacation for a major announcement!

This is good news for me, bad news for those with wheat allergies!  My little man has grown out of his wheat allergy!  Praise the Lord!  So, we're still re-introducing wheat slowly so his intestines don't freak out. 

We found this out on November 9th.  So, over the last three weeks, we have been slowly adding wheat, a few crackers and macaronis at a time and voila!  no reaction.

However, he still is positive for dairy (high on skin test, low on RAST).  The other interesting news is that he did not test positive in the RAST test for egg, but the skin test was mildly positive.  That's the next thing to try.  Dairy won't be tried until the new year.  So, after a month of introducing wheat back in, we can try egg.  Then after a month, we MIGHT try dairy.  He had dairy accidentally last week and had hives around his mouth, so I'm dubious that he's safe, but we'll see.

So, that's my good news.  Here's one way we celebrated yesterday.  At Thanksgiving, my 13 year old daughter made pumpkin pie tarts.  To humor me, she made them without eggs.  We made a double batch of egg-free pumpkin pie filling because she was going to make a pumpkin pie for another Thanksgiving celebration, but ended up not, so we had extra.  I ended up using the extras with a 5 star Paula Deen Pumpkin Bar recipe to make these:

Egg free Dairy Free Pumpkin Bars
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
First - combine in a medium sauce pan: (This can be used as an egg-free dairy-free pumpkin pie filling.)
 1 15oz can pumpkin
3/4  cup  brown sugar, firmly packed
1 1/2  cup  water
6 1/2  Tbsp  cornstarch
1  tsp  allspice
1/2  tsp  salt
1/4  tsp  ground cloves
1/2  tsp  ginger
Cook over medium heat until mixture begins to thicken, stirring constantly.
Remove from heat.  Mine was cool.  Allow to cool a little.  Put in mixing bowl and  add:
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
Mix at low speed until thoroughly combined and the batter is smooth. Spread the batter into a greased 13 by 10-inch baking pan. Bake for 30 minutes. Cut into bars.

These bars received HIGH marks all around from my kids who don't normally like pumpkin bar.  They were almost a little gooey and oh-so-yummy.

Now, back to my blog vacation.

Unexcused Absence

Renamed - Unexcused Absence.
I apologize for my absence.  Life has, I'm afraid, caught up with me.  After my surgery in August, complications that followed, school starting and me, not feeling better, blogging has fallen to the back burner.  I must admit that I really haven't had the gumption.  Want to know something?  I'm behind on everything:  school, reading, writing, teaching.  Everything including email.  Before surgery, I had a few unread emails in my inbox.  Right now there are 789. Yup.  789.  And, since I'm not still not feeling quite up to par, consider this my notice that I will be only blogging over at my other blog only for a while.  I'll try to shoot back here around Advent.

Take care!

Wheat Free, Dairy Free, Egg Free Chocolate Chip Bars

This are called "Breakfast Bars" or "Friday Bars" at our house because they are the breakfast the kids get on Friday.  I don't eat them because of the rice flour, which I use to prevent me from eating them (I'm allergic to rice...weird, I know.)  These are YUMMY, so say my kids and others who have tried them.

Wheat Free, Dairy Free, Egg Free Chocolate Chip Bars
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Spray or grease a 9x13" pan.
Mix:
2 Tbsp Chia Seed meal with 6 Tbsp hot water

Cream together:
1 stick Earth Balance or 1/2 Dairy Free Butter Substitute
1/2 c. granulated sugar
1/2 c. brown sugar

Add:
Chia seed mixture
2 tsp. vanilla
1/4 c. vegetable oil

Mix until emulsified.

In a separate bowl, combine the following then add to wet ingredients:
2 c. oat flour (I use rolled oats processed in the blender)
1 c. rice flour
1 tsp. xanthan gum
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 cup dairy free chocolate chips

Spread batter in pan.  Bake 22-27 minutes.  Cool and serve.

Tears That Make a Mom Happy

Today we made a long overdue trip to the library.  We got there late due to several extenuating circumstances such that we only had 30 minutes to pick out books and check out before the library closed.

Now, I had told all six children we were going to the library this morning.  We had planned for other errands we were running today before the library, but no one remembered their library cards.  So, with 3 minutes left before the library was going to close, six children lined up behind me to check out their items on my card.  By the time we got to the sixth, we had reached the 30 item limit.  My twelve year old daughter only got one book.  She went and put her other books back and met me in the parking lot, eyes full of tears.

She said she felt so ridiculous for crying.  But, I hugged her and told her I was happy that she was crying over not being able to check out books.  That not being able to get new books makes her cry makes me happy because this is a girl that thirsts for knowledge.  Our home library is large, but never large enough for my darling daughter and I'm happy about that.   I'm happy the library is one of the most sought after destinations on our days out.

TV Viewing

I post this risking that I will be viewed as Puritanical.  So be it! But we are not.  We have two TV's.  But we make very specific choices about how we use them.

Parental choice is just that, choice.  We made a choice over 12 years ago to not let our kids watch live TV.  Even way back then, in 2000, we were seeing things on TV that made us, the parents of a toddler and an infant, cringe.  Now sometimes, yes, we do watch live TV, like when there are weather events that require our attention. 

Then comes this report:
New Study Nudity on Prime Time TV Up 6,300% Over Last Year

Nope, that is not a typo.  6,300%.

My daughters recently attended Schoenstatt Camp, a Catholic Camp for girls run by a beautiful order of secular Catholic Nuns called the Schoenstatt Sisters.  One topic they cover is "Media Choices."  One thing they provide to the girls is a nice little tent to put next to the TV that says, "What Would Jesus and Mary Watch?"  There were some camp missionaries there that reminded the girls that watching things that might be "just a little" offensive desensitizes our brains such that eventually, the kids can't remember what was offensive in the first place.  A lot of things work that way.

Pornography also works that way with boys.  They become desensitized to girls in bikinis.  Then, that's not offensive anymore and they move on.  And on.  At our last local homeschool conference, the keynote speaker also talked about this.  I was pleased to see that psychologists, two of them, who commented on the results of the research in this article agreed and even commented how pixelating body parts and bleeping swear words was just not enough.

She stressed that the pixilated or blurred nudity does not give the networks a free pass.
“The impact is virtually the same as actually showing it. Just as ‘bleeping’ an ‘f-word’ or ‘s-word’ is virtually the same as airing the actual word,” Henson continued. “It just calls attention to the thing that has been edited out.”
L.A.-based therapist Dr. Nancy Irwin agrees.
"Simulated or blurred nudity can be just as titillating as real nudity in the human brain. Upon any stimulus, the brain searches for anything remotely similar or familiar, and reacts in a similar manner," she said. "If something is missing -- as in pixelization -- the brain will fill in the blanks from the existing storehouse of knowledge. Indeed, it will work harder to do so than if the real image were there. This explains why fantasy is many times better than reality. It triggers our imagination, which is endless."

Isn't a girl wearing a bikini, in essence, just pixilating out certain portions of her body?  But I digress...

The truth is, there isn't much left Mary and Jesus could watch.  What we, as parents, consider worse are the commercials.  Live sports are wrought with commercials geared at young hormonal men.  It's not just the shows.  The commercials are just as bad or worse. So we hold fast to using the TiVo and prerecorded content to control our kids viewing because our choice is not to expose them to that.  Again, there are exceptions, but they are very few.

The sad part is, that when innocence of any kind is lost, it is lost forever.  You can not replace it, correct it, restore it.  It is replaced by experience.  Not all of those experiences are good or appropriate.

One of the great things about reading great literature and Great Books is that their meaning is timeless.  William Blake, a poet and artist from early 19th century England wrote a beautiful poem.  I hope you can appreciate it's beauty and truth.

From Songs of Experience

By William Blake

A Little Girl Lost

Children of the future age,
Reading this indignant page,
Know that in a former time
Love, sweet love, was thought a crime.

In the age of gold,
Free from winter's cold,
Youth and maiden bright,
To the holy light,
Naked in the sunny beams delight.

Once a youthful pair,
Filled with softest care,
Met in garden bright
Where the holy light
Had just removed the curtains of the night.

Then, in rising day,
On the grass they play;
Parents were afar,
Strangers came not near,
And the maiden soon forgot her fear.

Tired with kisses sweet,
They agree to meet
When the silent sleep
Waves o'er heaven's deep,
And the weary tired wanderers weep.

To her father white
Came the maiden bright;
But his loving look,
Like the holy book
All her tender limbs with terror shook.

'Ona, pale and weak,
To thy father speak!
Oh the trembling fear!
Oh the dismal care
That shakes the blossoms of my hoary hair!'