200!

It's my 200th post! And appropriately enough, this one will be about...absolutely nothing!

I'm pleased to announce that the cat is still alive. Mostly because we put a baby gate over the laundry room and when we want to have a dog/cat get-together, we make them sniff each other through the gate. The snapping is decreasing gradually, but it's clear that both dogs are still a little stressed about the whole situation, so we're taking things slowly. I am, however, secretly hoping that by October, I'll be able to dress all the animals up like little Victorian carolers and have one of those creepy pet portraits done for the Christmas cards.

In other news...SUCCESS! Rosemary's Baby has, for some time now, been on a gluten-free, dairy-free (flavour-free, convenience free...) diet. It's a horrible pain in the butt, but it has improved his behaviour so dramatically, that I could never go back to filling him full of processed chicken nuggets and cheeseburgers. Once I got used to dealing with this nightmare of a diet, I was able to make "safe" substitutes. So, instead of wheat crackers, I started giving him rice ones. Instead of cow's milk on his corn flakes, he gets rice milk. Stuff like that. But the one enormous difficulty I've encountered is with regular old bread.

If you have an intolerance to gluten, you probably know that a store-bought loaf of gluten-free bread, made with a rice or tapioca flour, is half the size of a normal loaf of bread, and costs three times the price. For the last 10 months, I have been regularly paying close to $7 for a piddly little loaf of bread so my kid can eat toast. And about half of the time, he decides he's just going to lick the peanut butter off and feed the rest to the dogs anyway. It's incredibly frustrating, and every gluten-free yeast bread recipe I've tried to make myself has turned out to be a better doorstop than food product.

But today, I made a quick bread that was received with such enthusiasm that not a crumb was left behind! So, in case maybe one of you out there is in need of a gluten-free, dairy-free bread, here's a recipe to try:

Mix well:

2 cups gluten-free flour (I like tapioca)

2 tsp xanthan gum

1 tbsp baking powder

1/4 cup sugar

Add:

3 eggs

1/4 cup water

1/2 cup rice or soy milk

1/4 cup oil or shortening

1/2 cup raisins

Mix until well blended and pour batter into a greased loaf pan. Bake at 400F for 45 minutes. On cooling, the loaf will sink a little (a common problem with all gluten-free baking, as far as I can tell), but this bread is actually edible! Makes good toast too! Let's hope the next loaf I make is as good, and this wasn't just some horrible cosmic practical joke.

And lastly, at dinner tonight, Firstborn was in quite a mood. It was one of those situations where he talked non-stop but made no sense whatsoever. And then suddenly he started singing at the top of his lungs.

"You say you wanna re-vo-lu-tio-o-on..."

The Captain rolled his eyes and said "Alright, John, George, Paul and Ringo."

Firstborn stopped singing abruptly.

"Who's THAT?!"

Thanks for joining me on my ride to nowhere, guys! Here's to the next 200!