Changing The Recipe!

What does one do if you have multiple food allergies/intolerances? Add to that 2 kids who ALSO have food allergies? You learn to CHANGE THE RECIPES!! Myself, I have a wheat/gluten/dairy intolerance and a citrus/melon allergy. My daughter is allergic to dairy and my youngest son is allergic to peanuts and tree nuts.I have been dealing with my fruit allergy for 12 years. My daughter has had a dairy allergy her entire 5 1/2 year old life. The same with my youngest son's nut allergy, we've known since he was 1 year old (thanks to having a toddler who gave her baby some of her PB&J). So, cooking is NOT easy, but the challenge can be fun! One has to have a pretty humorous attitude when it comes to cooking with allergies or you can get upset, depressed & throw one giant pity party. No one likes that. So go at it POSITIVELY!!

Here's an example:

Golden Sweet Cornbread

This recipe calls for:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour

Well, I can't have wheat. So what to do? You can go online or to your local health food store and buy Wheat/Gluten-Free All Purpose Flour. Now, you have to be careful with this if you have someone with a NUT ALLERGY. Some are made in facilities that process peanuts or tree nuts. ALWAYS READ THE LABEL! If you can't find the label online, request your specific info! Ask them, "Is your (product) made with or could possibly contain (insert allergen here)?"

• 1 cup of yellow cornmeal
  

No problems for us here. No one has (knock on wood) a corn allergy!

• 2/3 cup white sugar

Well, sugar we don't have a problem with, but if you do then I am sure you can substitute Splenda for Baking or Agave Nectar. Here is the Conversion Chart for Agave .

• 1 egg

No egg problems here, BUT my nephew has an EGG ALLERGY. I do have an egg replacement called, ENER-G Egg Replacer Total awesomeness about this product is that it is free of gluten, wheat, casein, dairy, egg, yeast, soy & nuts!! YAY! I used just egg whites because I wanted to cut down the calories, but in hindsight, I could have used the Ener-G.

• 1 cup milk

Use rice, soy, almond (if you don't have a NUT ALLERGY). We used rice milk. I prefer it for baking certain things. It lends to a fluffier consistency. Soy milk tends to make foods a bit denser than we like and then they would be with regular milk.




This was quite an easy recipe to convert. I have had more challenging recipes. Later this week I will try to put up some of the cookbooks I have found and other converted recipes.

PhotoArt Show! Please Vote! (box on right)

HELP!

I have no idea which piece to submit to the Art Show and it has to go in on MONDAY!

My scanner is old and does not do such a wonderful job of scanning, but these are the best scans I could get of the pieces at home.

Looking Through the Tree 

Children in the Forest

Thank you!

Food Journey

I don't like this, but I am willing to change everything to feel better. Within 30 minutes I know if I have eaten something that I shouldn't have. This sucks. No more caffeine. No more dairy. No more red meat (an easy one to avoid). Low-fat everything.

My stomach hurts badly and then my head hurts, but it's not a normal headache. It's a head pain? I have a hard time describing it, but it's distinct to my food issue. So I own 2 books now, Eating for IBS and Breaking the Vicious Cycle . I am not sure if either are really going to work, but the last doctor I saw was a #$%@ing dipshit and diagnosed me with a stomach virus. Yeah, I have had a stomach virus for 3 months? Asshat. So until I can get my husband to give me a POA or get him to go into the Tricare office to change our doctor, I will try to treat my pain myself. I refuse to go back to that jerk. It's a long story and I just don't want to get into it now.

Basically it's almost a vegan diet, but I can still eat chicken & seafood. I am trying out new recipes. and trying to get my life without pain back. I am so sick & tired of the pain. Hopefully this works and I can be without pain again.

Adventures in Hypnotherapy

For 18 years I have been seen counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists and family therapists to "fix" me. Have any of them "fixed" me? Am I well-balanced? Do I have the self-confidence I desire? Well, it's in the eye of the beholder I suppose. My husband also can be the judge over the past 12 years and he can tell you that nothing has given me my self-confidence that I never have fully had. I have one thing left to try in my opinion (besides hiring a full entourage of people to follow me around praising my every move, but I am not a socialite) & that is hypnotherapy. I have used a form of hypnotherapy once before and that was for my pregnancy and birth of my daughter. It helped immensely and gave me the confidence that the labor & birth of that child would not be the nightmare my first child's was. I believe some of that carried on to my last pregnancy & labor also as it was fairly easy also.

So today was my first session with my hypnotherapist & boy, was it the perfect day to go! I was high-strung and stressed to the max when I arrived! My kids were being difficult this morning and so I was an hour later than I usually am to campus in the morning. Not a single photograph from this weekend's shoot turned out correct & I felt as though I wasted that 3 hour lab away. Then I went to another 3 hour digital lab and had to listen to what I considered was worse than nails on a chalkboard, chewing on tinfoil & the rubbing of styrofoam together at high pitched volumes all at once while trying to concentrate on a project. I got no work done. I also did not get a chance to eat until 4:30pm. Yeah. It was one of my more awful days.

The hypnotherapist & I spent some time talking (after I filled out a couple papers, I do live in California after all) and then he asked if he could place me under hypnosis, to which I agreed. I will admit that I was skeptical, but oh my! What a TRIP! At some points I started to drift away and I knew my subconscious was paying attention, not my conscious and then I would start to pull myself out of the hypnosis. I figured this would happen, but I am okay with this! During the hypnosis he did place it in my mind that it would become easier each time I am being hypnotized for me to become and to stay in a state of hypnosis.

I actually feel wonderful now. It's amazing. I don't feel weird or unusual. I don't feel drugged. I feel very relaxed and happy. It's not quite an overwhelming confidence, but I feel a little more confidence. :) Wow. I feel a little better. I have another session in a week. I'll let you know how I sleep tonight.

Milk

Stupid cows & your stupid milk. I am refusing to blame MY body anymore for YOUR faulty product. I'm not the only one either. Hundreds of thousands of people have milk product intolerance. Others have lactose intolerance. I think your product is faulty & needs to be recalled. My gastrointestional organs are demanding a full refund on the days spent in pain since January.

Also, your product has more than likely been the cause of my fkd up skin, weight gain & bloating. Since quitting your product & picking up the soy life is getting better. While off milk products I feel better. I am no longer in pain. Though there was that ONE night I craved Taco Hell... I am now feeling the Hell. I will be fully recovered from the episode of pain in a couple days, but the other damages will take much longer to go away.

The End... For now...
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Worked ALL DAY!

I didn't think it would take me all day, but it did! I had to sift through over 100 digital photos and enhance them for my friend. I took her homecoming photos on Monday. I am so glad I did. I got a good amount of final proofs for her. 22 total and I have to spend a while putting a collage together for her. I have a picture of that ship somewhere if she wants it in there. I'll ask later, right now I am burnt out from using CS4 all day long. I was supposed to study graphing and linear equations today, but then I remembered I had this to do. Oh well, I have a busy life!

They turned out beautiful at any rate and a few of them I want to redo because I figured out an easier and nicer way of enhancing the photo. Good thing I always keep the original file in place & make a separate file for the modified photograph. I have to ask her if I can put a few of them on here.

I took quite a few pictures of my own children at bedtime tonight. Just because. I need to start taking more pics of them and they love when I do.

My oldest. He makes "weird" faces and actions whenever I he sees me come near him with a camera!

 Here's my silly girl. She LOVES getting her picture taken. She'll act all proper and princess-like for the camera! 

My baby boy. I can never get him to sit still for film or to actually LOOK at the camera long enough for a proper portrait!

There is barely any editing or enhancing in these photos. I don't really feel the need to edit everyday photos unless someone gets some smudge on their face and I just didn't notice it (because it's so darn common!). 

Laughing My ARSE Off!

Oh man have I had a funny day! It starts with waking up K. Oh yeah.... THAT kid! He's really a sweetie and I wake his lil butt up with snuggles, hugs and tickles. Do you KNOW what that punkster did?! "MOMMY!" he says in his sweetest, loveliest voice. "(whispers) Chuga chuggggggga chuggggggaaaaa.....   (louder now) do you hear that? (even louder now) RUN!" Yeah, I laughed. He's my comedian with a dark sense of humor, but I suppose that makes him like his mommy and daddy. Better to have a dark sense of humor than a dry one!

Then laughed my ass off @ a friend's ranting on her Twitter account! Oh man, her freaking out because she couldn't see a response from anyone for almost 3 hours!! Talking to herself! Oh hell, I was DYING!! 3 hours of hilarity! It made searching for a new PCM (a tedious chore) completely bearable!

Then I was off to class this afternoon. There are a couple of guys in my class. We call them Super Nerd and Shifty Eyes. Well, Super Nerd was particularly amusing today. He stood up in front of the class to present his self-portrait and started talking about how he thinks about cats, like ALL THE TIME. Yes, I said CATS. I am not saying the polite word for another word. The boy said CATS. He said that he often thought of them when he was in Tahiti. At this point I lost it. I couldn't stop laughing. I had to put my head down (thank HEAVENS I sit in the back of this class!!!). Now I don't normally laugh @ other people, but OH LORDY! I couldn't help it! This dude has said some *really* off the wall shit before, but this took the cake!!

Later on he told a girl during her presentation that she, "really colored his soul." Yeah. I shit you not. I dissolved into yet another fit of giggles & the poor girl had a "WTF?" look on her face like you wouldn't believe!!

Oh man, what a DAY!

This is Driving Me Bonkers!

I am trying to make a Header that FITS into the top of the blog, but I can't seem to make the right sized one? I have the measurements, but I am just ..... Grrrrrrrrrr.....

It's been a long ass day. We had a "pick-up" dilemma due to the Base having a nice little security drill, in which my husband was not informed. I had a doctors appointment today in which I saw one Quack of a Duck who diagnosed my on-going stomach issues with as a new "designer virus" that's going around. Even went into a whole story about his kid having it, blah, blah, blah.... um. It's not a virus. I think I know a virus. THIS is not a virus. This is PAIN. I have PAIN in my GUTS that have been going on now for almost 2 months! HELP ME. Needless to say, I am changing my PCM on Friday. He didn't listen to a word I f'n said.

So here it is... 2306 and I have not gotten my math exam done. It's not due until Friday by midnight, but still! I wanted it done by today. Can I tell you why this is not my fault? Today just was a clusterfuck. Plain and simple. There is no easy way to say it. The yesterday and Monday, I had no phone or internet (see below posts! I was posting from my Blackberry!!), but the cable company here claims it wasn't "their fault." Must have been mine. Wait, maybe it was the Republicans. No, it was your service. It took 4 tech support agents on their end to fix it until about 5 seconds after I got off the line with them and then CAPUT! Gone.

Finally I just called my lovelies over at Apple. (Because the tech support guy, in his big boy voice, told me they were not going to help me try to fix it anymore, it was OBVIOUSLY my equipment from Apple!) Apple was AWESOME and we got it fixed before I had to leave for class yesterday! I even had time to shower and get pretty before I had to go!

And guess what?

It wasn't my Apple stuff.... it was my cable modem. Thanks asshats.

So now I am going to try tomorrow to take my exam! I refuse to take it last minute! I can't! Ugh, I don't even want to think about it!

Oh, and the stomach issue? I am about 99.99% sure it's IBS and it's being further aggravated by my stress. Stress doesn't cause it, but it worsens it. Where's a holistic doctor when you need one? Oh wait, I don't think my insurance covers HHC. Boooo!

The Horse, the Liger and Kiler's Revenge!

Kiler (my 3 1/2 yr old) tells the best stories..... sometimes.

This morning he told me this one.

K: "Mommy!"

Me: "Yes K?"

K: "I'm hiding a horse in the house to keep it safe from the liger!"

Me: "Ahhh. A horse?"

K: "Nnnnnneeeeeiiigh! Did you hear that Mommy?! RAWAAAWWWR!! OH NO! The LIGER!! RUN!!"

Then we got ready for school and went on with the rest of our day....By the way, I guess we figured out the mystery of who was leaving the huge poos in the toilet and not flushing. It was the horse.

Later tonight:

Me: "K! Look what Mommy found pictures of on her computer!" (it's a Liger he's not too thrilled)

We get ready for bed and he asks me to tell him a story. 3 lines into the story he interrupts with this....

"Chuga-chuga-chuga-chuga.... Once upon a time there was a little big train. It crushed your arms and head."

Me: "K!! That's an AWFUL story!"

K: "No, no... it gets better!"

Me: "Ok...."

K: "I'm in the train."

And then he continues it... "Chuga-chuga-chuga-chuga...... Mom? Did you hear that?! RUN!!!"

This is bad, but I was laughing after I left the room because he was *so* serious!

Anxiety

I am behind on a project. Far behind. More behind than I want to be. I wish I could be as relaxed as my one friend seems to be. She was told by her Professor to change her BFA project even further into the semester than I was! Then she had to locate the correct camera & lens for the project. Me, I have to study-up on Freud & write up my storyboards. Then I can finally take my pics. I can't just take my pics because I am doing film. This project would be so much easier if it was digital. Film has such a cool aestetic to it though & it is a film studio arts class.

So I won't be going to that class this week because it's pointless for me to sit in a classroom when I can be home in my own quietness & calm, plotting out my project. Then I'll be taking all my pics while on Spring Break next week.

I don't feel great about it, but I do feel a little bit better having a game plan.

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I Meant to Do This Last Month

Oooops! I erased my blog in a frenzy of electronic Spring Cleaning, but here it sat. Empty & unused. A waste of e-space. I have been incredibly busy though. My daughter got stitches again, my youngest son still has the same ole medical issues & my oldest is a typical older child. Meanwhile, I have a crazy life of fulltime school, fulltime mom & fulltime wife duties! I am finishing up my 2nd year of college. I have a love-hate relationship with college. I love my major, Art Photography, but I hate the ever-changing projects & deadlines. I swear I'm going to end up with an ulcer!

Speaking of that, I had to finally make a doctor's appt. for tomorrow. We won't get into that now. It's late & I just need sleep right now! Now that I have this linked to my Blackberry for mobile blogging, I may be able to blog more! Yay!

Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®