One More Month

One more month until Gianna starts kindergarten. One more month of summer. It has been a cooker of a summer here in Portland and I am ready for it to be winding down. Once all of my tomatoes ripen, I'll be completely ready for autumn with it's crisp leaves, winter squash, apples and rain. Until then I'll try my best to enjoy these last few weeks of summer. I've already grated and frozen two gallon bags of zucchini, with much more to come I'm sure. My pickling cucumber is producing cucumbers, but I haven't gotten around to pickling any of them yet. The bean teepee is covered in flowers, so in a week or two I'll be knee-deep in beans. Now, those I really will pickle. They're my favorite. The sunflowers have gotten so heavy that a few have bent over to the ground, where the squirrels deftly chew the flowers off and abscond with them. They've also eaten pretty much all of the hazelnuts on our tree.

My studio/family craft room has gotten a bit more organized, which is wonderful. I'm working on quilts for the kids while listening to audiobooks. The last two I listened to were Between the World and Me which is amazing, and Crazy Rich Asians which is enjoyable and on the other side of the spectrum from the first book. My fantasy of sewing while the kids draw at the table next to me hasn't come true, but maybe someday it will?

I've been preparing for a food change in our house. We are getting ready to do an elimination diet for six weeks that will hopefully clear up some health issues for Dean. His blood test recommended eliminating gluten, eggs, pineapple, peanuts, and chili. Once I stopped celebrating the fact that I don't have to give up dairy, I realized I'll be giving up eggs, my other favorite food group. You know how you start obsessing over something as soon as you know you won't get it anymore? That's me right now. At first I tried taking it all in stride, thinking that we were all going to come out healthier as a family. Our naturopath recommended looking into eating paleo style instead of just replacing gluten with starchy gluten free products. I checked out a bunch of paleo books from the library and was feeling inspired. Then I made paleo pancakes. Setting aside the fact that they have about a million eggs in them (which won't work during the elimination) they were almost impossible to flip and were rejected by half of the family members. I poured the rest of the batter into a muffin tin and baked it. It was slightly better that way, but still roundly rejected.

As if this wasn't bad enough, two nights ago I decided to watch the The Mind of a Chef. The first season follows David Chang who started Momofuku Noodle Bar in NYC. The first episode is all about ramen. I love ramen. Ramen is made out of wheat. More me feeling sad about what I won't be able to eat. The next day, through the magic of technology, I checked out his book, Momofuku, and the book for the companion dessert shop, Milk Bar, on my iPad and have been drooling over the recipes and wonderful writing since. Not only is there a recipe for his ramen broth and his ramen noodles, but also a recipe for eggs poached inside their shells! I love a soft boiled egg in my ramen bowl. So now I'm mourning the loss of ramen and a perfect egg on top of it. And don't even get me started on the recipes in Milk Bar. They're crazy. Check some of them out here. Look for Cereal Milk, Cornflake-Marshmallow-Chocolate-Chip-Cookie, and the Crack Pie. It's just a really different way of thinking about food, at least for me it is. I love it. They use gelatin instead of eggs in their ice cream, so I'll be able to make some ice cream at least, perhaps even Cereal Milk Ice Cream. There's an eggy version of the recipe here. I haven't tried any of the recipes yet, but I intend to.

Ultimately six weeks isn't that long to give up eggs and wheat, especially if it helps my little guy feel better. I am, though, going to try to eat a few bowls of ramen with eggs on them before I have to give them up!