As excited as I’ve been about gluten free cooking and recreating favorite recipes, I am discovering that the kitchen is not my favorite place to be. Now don’t get me wrong. I enjoy cooking and I’m not half bad at it. The problem is that I enjoy a lot of things that are all vying for my attention. Summer has finally arrived in the NW, the days are deliciously long, and cooking just hasn’t been my highest priority. I think about menu planning but most days we winging it. (That isn’t to say we are not eating well. Last night we had a rich dinner of Southern goodness, tonight tacos with homemade corn tortillas, and Monday involved pasta, stuffed chicken and a marvelous red sauce).

All this to say, these days being outside as much as possible with my kids is winning…as well as those four papers I have left to write for my classes on Professional Ethics and Issues of Abuse. So I dream of creating amazing recipes that I photograph and post every week…but I have to admit that it isn’t happening. I like having flour on my fingers but I’d much, much rather have them covered in acrylic paint. This past week I just completed a large painting for a friend and found such, well, life in the free time (read: children’s nap time) that I spent creating, brush in hand. I must find more time for that. And so my creativity in the kitchen will be more of trying out the recipes of others. I’m really glad I named this site conviviality because I think it still encompasses the ideas of the things I am passionate about, mostly coming together with other people over good food or good conversation or good art or, best of all, all of the above.

I’ve not been blogging because I thought of this as a food blog and I have been writing and painting and playing and, sadly in many moments of these days, just getting by because of still being anemic. However, I find myself longing for a place to write the ice berg tip of the things I love, or to share the quotes that are swimming in my mind that day and need a little more air, or to speak out on something that struck me as beautiful and as deserving of a larger audience.

And I still want to post some recipes from time to time.

So here’s to this being a blog about food, and about painting, and about the things and people that move me and reveal beauty to me.

David Boyd Ramsdale 1947-2008

Last year around this time I took a wonderful trip with my in-laws to a beach just up from Myrtle Beach. The eight of us (my mom and dad-in-law, me and spouse, kids, and sis-in-law and spouse) stayed in a large airy cottage within easy walking distance from the waves and the sand. It was a comfortable, relaxing time and being with everyone felt like home. On one of our last evenings there, while we were sitting out on the back porch enjoying port and pipes and one another’s company my father-in-law expressed his gratitude for his grown children and for the life partners they had chosen. The genuine gratitude he felt for his family was so obvious, and I felt honored to be included.

This April my dad-in-law passed away suddenly from a bacterial infection. When he died, my husband and 2 year old were already at his side in North Carolina. Jeff had expected to help his mom through his dad’s recovery and his transition home from the hospital. Instead, I was suddenly flying across the country with our one year old to join Jeff and his family as they prepared for dad’s memorial.

The photo above is of Dad R. holding my daughter last summer. He was a great Pop-pop and loved his grandchildren well–my children. He loved me well. We didn’t see each other frequently since we lived on opposite sides of the country, and way too often my in-laws came to visit right after I’d come through something particularly stressful (new baby, just finishing up a load of papers, etc) yet he loved me and was grateful for me with all my flaws. And he wasn’t perfect either–he could rub me the wrong way–yet he was passionate. He loved the Frog and Toad stories and passed that love onto my son. He owned a couple of kayaks and it was great sharing that experience with him through waterways in South Carolina. He was in his element in the home he and my mom-in-law had created for themselves, a place with a pond and a wood you could wander in for hours gathering back the scattered thoughts that get lost in the race of daily life. Spending time together at their home in the days after his death was as refreshing as it was grief filled. There is such peace there.

And yet I know that home is such an empty place for Mom R. right now. Next week is their 40th wedding anniversary. Thankfully, Mom will be in Indiana on that day with my sister-in-law celebrating the birth of her lovely daughter. Life continues and is passed on. I know my sister-in-law will remember her father well to her daughter. My husband and I will remember him well to our children every time we read Frog and Toad to them, every time we sit down in the evening to have a cup of tea with candles and NPR’s Hearts of Space for ambiance, and every time we return to wander his North Carolina woods.

And in his honor and memory, thought it but one small gesture among many, this week I decided it was time to attempt the best darn lasagna I’ve ever made. If you wanted to make him happy, you couldn’t miss with a hot pan full of fat noodles and sauce. Dad, this is for you.

GF Lasagna

Prepare preferred spaghetti sauce. This is what I made:

1 lb ground beef

2 cloves crushed garlic

1 medium onion diced

One 28 oz can of diced tomatoes

One 14 oz can of tomato sauce

2 small cans of tomato paste

2 tsp dried basil

About 3 tsp dried parsley (tho I bet it would be better with a couple handfuls of fresh)

2 tsp oregano

1 tsp fennel

Dash of red pepper flakes

Salt and ground pepper to taste

2 zucchini cut into circles then quartered (optional)

Brown hamburger and saute with onion and garlic in a pot large enough to simmer a fair amount of sauce. Stir in other ingredients and simmer for at least half an hour. An hour or more is optimal. Close to the end of its simmering time, preheat the oven to 375. Mix together:

2/3 c grated parmesean

8 oz shredded mozzerella

15 oz ricotta

1 tsp dried oregeno

salt and pepper

Pull out a 9×13 pan. Pour some warm sauce in the bottom to keep the noodles from sticking, up to a cup. Put down a layer of GF lasagna noodles on the sauce then cover the noodles with half of the cheese mixture. Pour another layer of sauce (1 to 1 1/2 cups) on the cheese layer, top with more noodles, then spread on the rest of the cheese mixture. Top the cheese with sauce, add another layer of noodles. Top the noodles with just enough sauce to keep it moist and then use a mix of grated parmesean and shredded mozzerella to cover the sauce and create a top cheese layer.

This is a pretty saucy lasagna and the pan will be full. Cover with foil, spraying the foil with cooking spray before hand to prevent it from sticking to the cheese. Bake in preheated over for 25 to 35 minutes, removing the foil in the last few minutes to let the cheese brown on top.

Eat as much as you like and freeze the rest to enjoy on another day.

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This week’s menu is finally happening, but not until Tuesday. I’m looking through our cupboards and thinning them out. I think I am finally figuring out what the pantry staples of our gluten free life are. Initially I had to try everything. I’ve finally found my favorites as well as what I have time for on a regular basis. Maybe next week I’ll actually make a list of what is regular eating in our house, snacks and meals, as well as what I benefit from (almost) always having on hand. I’m enjoying other bloggers (such as Gluten Free Mommy, Gluten Free Cooking School and Book of Yum) posting on how they manage their food bills since this is something I’ve had little success at but am ready to begin to tackle.

I will put up a post later this week with a recipe for lasagna.

Short and sweet, the menu:

Monday we grilled out with friends and had chicken kebobs w/ peppers and onions and mushrooms, potato packets with rosemary and leeks, and this amazing salad that had all sorts of fresh herbs in it. Mmmm.

Tuesday: left over aloo gobi (potatoes and cauliflower), dal and rice.

Wednesday: GF lasagna

Thursday: community dinner with a friend whose house hosts these on a regular basis.

Friday: bean soup and cornbread

I hope to make white bean hummus today (TJs has an awesome white bean hummus but it has soy sauce in it). For the kids one of these days I’m going to make a pasta with homemade cheese sauce, broccoli, carrots and peas. It is a fun kid friendly recipe so I’ll try to get that one posted.

Cheers!

My two year old (very soon to be 3!) frequently gets the phrases “Thai food” and “tofu” mixed up. In fact tonight–just for the fun of it–I think he was saying “Thai-fu” at the dinner table. Thankfully, he loves both. Me too, and I’d love to have more success at Thai home cooking. So far it has been “good enough” but not the great stuff I can get at some Thai places around here. However I found a recipe tonight that I was pretty happy with and I wanted to put the link here so that I would know how to find it in the future. It was a recipe for Thai stir fry with peanut sauce and tofu. Mostly it was marvelous. It needed a little salt or extra soy sauce and probably a lot more heat. I also think it would have been better with chicken. And, I also tossed some Thai basil in just long enough to wilt it.

I keep hoping to put up a weekly menu and return from my hiatus. Soon.

Tomorrow I am leaving on a trip I did not expect to take to North Carolina. Thanks to a dear friend’s help I was able to bake a loaf of bread in the flurry of packing up myself and my baby daughter. It will be my first time traveling gluten-free. I admit I’m a bit nervous about it. I have a bag full of nutritious snacks for my day of air travel, but nothing I have is going to feel quite like a meal. I know I will have to keep it simple during the week I’m not at home.

Does anyone have a good tip or story that might help me stay well and well fed? I typically love to travel and I’d love to feel confident about traveling as the new GF me.

This spring I’ve had a fascinating class every Tuesday in which we are privileged to observe a counseling session via live video feed. I learn as much about myself as I do about therapy during these times. Since the class is in the middle of the afternoon every Tuesday I have to find someone to hang with the munchkins. My friend Lori has been kind enough to do this many many weeks this spring. This has included such feats as picking the kids up from my school, learning how to install my car seats in her car, somehow convincing the 2 year old to take a nap, and changing and extremely wiggly one year old (not without incident…there was the time that the diaper change was taking place on the master bed and the bed bouncing toddler managed to bounce right onto the poo diaper that has just been removed. Ew. Glad I missed that one…).

Today my spouse and son flew off to warmer southeastern side of the country. My father-in-law is ill and they went to provide help and company to my tired mom-in-law. So it is just me and the girl here at home. Lori watched the little bird this afternoon and then, to thank her for all of her many days of kindness to me and my kids, I took her out to dinner at a local vegetarian restaurant I’d been wanting to try. Not only because I’ve heard Cafe Flora has great food but also because I heard they had great gluten free selections. It was true on both counts. Their menu was lovely, listing things like an avocado and grapefruit salad that has wild greens and ginger-miso dressing. Yum. And quesadillas with yams and a pumpkin seed cilantro spread. Oh my. Plus they have this lovely room that has an earthy grey tiled floor, potted tropical plants tastefully places and outside plants filling the windows that line the walls, and a rocky, bubbling fountain the the center. It was an almost perfect girls’ night out. (Only marred by baby girl’s tendency to toss her food on the floor rather than eat it and her tears over not being allowed to climb the fountain.)

Cafe Flora has a cookbook that was published a few years ago. I’ve been trying to make more vegetarian dishes and after having dinner and flipping through the cookbook, I couldn’t help but buy it (and look! 5 stars on Amazon.) So, keep your eye out. Recipes from there will probably start showing up in my menu plans. Yes, I do hope to make menu plans again. If I can just get through these two last papers.

Today has been day one of a week with just me and my baby girl, no men in the house. I realized yesterday that I am getting to a point that I don’t know what my identity is away from my family. What will I talk about if I can’t talk about how funny and awesome my kids are? (Yes, I am biased. Big time. I’m so smitten.) What will I do in the evening with Jeff gone? Will I just pace the house and be unable to settle? However, day one has been great and I am finding I am really excited about the week to focus a little more on my counseling student and artist roles and a little less on my mom and spouse roles. I’m excited about getting together with girl friends and having the space to converse because I only have one toddler with me instead of two. I miss the boy and yet I am in awe of how much calmer today was when you subtract all the little conflicts we have all day as he tries to navigate his way from total dependence into a little more and a little more independence. He is a beautiful boy and he has so much spirit. Like a wild horse. And I, the trainer, am getting a little break this week. As I reconnect and reidentify with a bit of myself hopefully, prayerfully I will great the return of my men with a deeper capacity to be a mom and a spouse.

And who knows, maybe I’ll even have extra energy this week to try another new recipe or two.

The other day my friend brought us over a treat–little almond butter balls with puffed millet in them. She inspired me to try to recreate the Morning Peanut Butter bars that our local gluten free cafe The Flying Apron makes but as little balls rather than bars.

I’m trying to find more kid friendly things to eat as well as things that are better for me than chocolate or starchy snacks. This is a good sweet treat that is satisfying. I’m still tweaking the amounts, so feel free to play yourself. (Update, I went by Flying Apron later in the afternoon and bought a Morning Peanut Butter bar to compare. They have a lot more mix-ins. Not more ingredients just more densely packed peanut butter. My recipe is now updated to have more “stuff” because it helps with the stickiness and with the sense of too much peanut butter…although both ways are yummy).

Peanut Butter Sticky Balls

1 cup crunchy salted peanut butter (or unsalted. I am, sadly, a salt fiend but unsalted would probably taste a little healthier)

1 cup gluten free rolled oats

1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut

1/4 cup raw sunflower seeds

3/4 cup raisins or golden raisins

1/4 cup maple syrup

1 Tbsp brown rice syrup (or you can probably sub another liquid sweetner)

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

Put oatmeal and coconut in the blender to chop up a bit finer. You might want to chop the sunflower seeds a tad as well. Dump and scoop everything into a medium bowl, stir and mix, and then roll into little balls. Place in the fridge and let sit for half a day so the oatmeal absorbs some of the moisture of the peanut butter. You can eat them right away too. We did.

Also, you might prefer to store them in the fridge depending on the season and how warm it is where you are. This makes 18 or so little balls.

I’m still in the thick of applying and interviewing for a fall internship. Hopefully I’ll nail tomorrow’s interview and the search will be over. To be honest, I have only completely thrown myself into one application so far–my top choice–and hopefully i will get the position because just getting my resume, application, AIDS/HIV training required of all WA state health service peeps has taken up a lot of my free time. My reading for classes just hasn’t been happening the past couple of weeks. And my menu plan hasn’t really happened. I’m kinda tired of having to be gluten free these weeks. It is time consuming. My blood sugar keeps doing crazy things. I miss my old snacks. I got cross-contamination at a restaurant meeting friends from out of town. I’ve gained weight since going off gluten. (I needed some back but now I’m getting worried it’ll keep on coming on). And I’m busy. It is tough to keep up with all the things I need to keep up with and eat well. Tonight I opted for baking over studying so that as I hit another full week I’ll have some happy snacks. But then I worry that I’ll be eating too much starch, so I also made a big bowl of salad to have handy in the fridge. And apples. And peanut butter. Someday I’ll figure all of this out a little more.

Hopefully next week I’ll be back on track with menus and a new recipe. And if not, hopefully I’ll be okay with that.

Last week was a slow recovery from the good foods of Easter weekend. This weekend was spent writing a resume and filling out an application for a counseling internship. BUT we still need to eat, so here’s my best attempt at a menu for our week:

The Menu

Monday–quinoa, carrot and potato soup. Simple, warm and basic.

Tuesday–black bean and sweet potato tacos

Wednesday–slow cooked Rosemary lamb shanks with garlic potatoes, some other veggie and Kate’s millet quinoa bread, an adaptation of Natalie’s great oat millet bread. (I’m currently out of oats so I’m going into new territory with the quinoa flour)

Thursday–class. Maybe I’ll make a pizza ahead of time.

Friday–Sea’s spinach cottage pie. I’m a sucker for caramelized onions.

It just keeps raining and snowing and being generally nasty here in Seattle. The cherry trees are glorious but who wants to go sit under them when it is 40 degrees and raining? However, I just heard thunder for the second time this week and that almost makes it worthwhile. It almost never thunders here and it is surprising how much I miss it.

I look forward to getting past this season of applying for internships and writing papers. I don’t have much left over for cooking. Of course, then the weather will get nice and I’ll want to stay out on the playground with the kids until the sun goes down. I might just be in trouble until next October.

When Jeff and I were planning our honeymoon, we knew we wanted to go somewhere out of the country. Jeff had grown up in Peru but beyond that had only been to the States and Mexico. I myself am addicted to international travel and need very little excuse to experience another country. We only had a week to travel and we didn’t want to spend the whole time on planes. Initially we thought about British Columbia, but in the end we decided to go to Ireland. Sadly, I was wiped out from the wedding that continued to be exhausted most of the trip. But Ireland was beautiful. Seeing the countryside and eating the food at the beginning of our marriage has certainly added a certain flavor to our relationship. We added braised beef in guinness and Irish stew to our regular meal rotation. Jeff is makes a mean Irish soda bread. However, Guinness and true soda bread is off the menu now. We have some lamb in the freezer, though, so I should make some Irish stew here soon. And, Karina–bless her–posted a scrumptious sounding Irish potato and cabbage soup along with a GF soda bread recipe. Therefore, in honor of our marriage, memories and travel, good Irish food, and St. Patrick’s day I’m going to try my hand at making her recipe this week. However, I don’t have any Van Morrison to play, as she recommends. I think I’ll have to put on Once in the background. And after dinner we might just have to pull our slides of the Irish countryside.

Hopefully I can get the family fed despite my having 3 different night that events will keep me away during the dinner to bedtime hours. And we have a new goal of trying to think ahead on our weekend meals. Book of Yum is hosting this week and Sea’s chosen ingredient is coconut. I’ve been really enjoying using coconut flour in my baked goods. It brings in a little sweetness on its own and is actually quite good for you. I also use it when making homemade granola. (Side note–where do you get your certified GF oats? I’ve been using Bob’s Red Mill’s but they are having stabilization issues (something about how they aren’t staying fresh long enough). They hope to have the problem resolved soon but in the meantime I still want my granola).

Drum roll, please. Once again here is…

The Menu

Monday–Karina’s Irish cabbage and potato soup with soda bread.

Tuesday–Crockpot chili and cornbread (and, yes, I do make a lot of soup. Why do you ask?)

Wednesday–roasted chicken, spinach, and rosemary biscuits

Thursday–breakfast for dinner for dad and kids, leftovers of some kind for me

Friday–stuffed baked potatoes

Saturday–(lunch or dinner) tacos with the leftover shredded chicken; a simple dahl and rice for the other.

Sunday– brunch with friends; hopefully a good roast lamb and potatoes and asparagus with other friends later.

And breakfast this week will end up involving Cocoa Pebbles, a guilty pleasure my husband had the nerve to pick up at the grocery. I know, I know, they are terrible for me. But man they’re good. I just can’t resist. I hope y’all don’t all think I’m a low brow eater now.