Baking in the BBQ

Posted on August 21, 2013 by Mama Cormier

…..and wheat free doesn’t mean carb free

After reading Wheat Belly by William Davis, MD, one quickly realizes that eating gluten and wheat free foods doesn’t guarantee weight loss. There are more and more gluten free products on the market than ever, especially in the snacking and bakery sections of the grocery store. If you were to read the ingredient lists you would discover that many of these products are high in sugars, fats and alternative starches and the calorie count is high for what you’re getting.

I was feeling somewhat liberated when I found gluten free flour at Costco and I was somewhat disappointed when I couldn’t find a gluten free banana bread recipe in Dr. Davis’ book. After using a regular recipe and substituting the gluten free flour for regular flour it started to dawn on me that I don’t normally eat bananas, let alone banana bread, even though I love both. I’ve always known that bananas are high in carbs and the bread goes without saying. It was when I added the 2 cups of sugar, the 1 1/2 cups of butter and 6 cups of flour that I started to question what I was doing.

So why was I baking banana bread when I’m still trying to lose weight? It just so happened that we were going to celebrate my friend D’s birthday on Sunday and she suggested that we bake something special. Besides she had some sour milk that needed to be used and I had some very ripe bananas. I went through my cottage cookbooks and lo and behold I found a recipe that used both those ingredients.

As you know from previous posts I don’t have electricity and I do the bulk of my cooking on the BBQ, including any baking that I might do. Over the years D and I have developed a knack for baking muffins, cakes and breads in the great outdoors. One of the tricks is to use smaller pans so that dough cooks through to the middle in a shorter length of time. The bread in the bundt pan was finished first, or so we thought. If you look closely at the cut slices you can see that the middle is a little too soft.

The two breads in the loaf pan took a little longer but were a better texture. One of the differences with using gluten free flour is that the bread was much denser than a normal banana bread and for some reason tasted much sweeter. If I were to do this again (for my friends who are truly gluten intolerant) I would definitely add less sugar and maybe even experiment with some kind of substitute that isn’t aspartame or saccharin. I’ve heard that applesauce is a good replacement for sugar in some baking recipes.

I had one and a half slices of the bread on D’s birthday and I ate one slice for breakfast the next morning. I’ve always found that if I’m going to eat carbs it’s best in the morning and then avoid them for the rest of the day. Maybe I should clarify that when I say carbs I mean breads, pasta and primarily flour products. I still eat lots of healthy carbs in the way of vegetables, some fruit and dairy products along with lean protein and healthy fats.

I’m going to have to read the Wheat Belly book a little closer and try to figure out how to fit it into my daily diet without increasing my carb intake. Maybe some of you have a gluten free, wheat free recipe, low in carbs, fat and sugar that I could try. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

The following pictures are of D and D’s birthday/anniversary dinner that they kindly invited me to. Afterwards we relaxed around a beautiful bonfire as the sun set over Christian Island.

Delicious lamb, fresh tomatoes, green salad with avocados and Ontario corn on the cob. Yum!

Happy Birthday, D!

Getting Back to Normal

Posted on July 27, 2013 by Mama Cormier

….with fitness and eating

We did an incredible amount of walking when we were in Ireland but my eating patterns were out of whack for me. I rarely drink beer so when we went to pubs I would have a pint of cider. I would rarely drink more than one glass and half way into the trip I realized that I could order half pints. With most meals I ordered mineral water but occasionally I enjoyed a glass of wine and one evening my husband and I shared a bottle of wine that came with the meal.

We were hoping we would be able to have a few light meals in our hotel room and only eat out once a day. We quickly discovered, however, that our rooms did not come with bar fridges and we couldn’t keep anything cool. One evening in Westport we went into the local grocery store to buy some vegetables and fruit. We also bought a small bottle of salad dressing and some ham to put into our salad.

Earlier in the evening we stopped at a small cafe and enjoyed a platter of cheese and a few crackers and a glass of wine. After we brought our selection of veggies and fruit back to our room we discovered we weren’t as hungry as we thought we would be. We ate the raw vegetables and hummus.

What were we to do with the salad, ham and dressing that we purchased? I think I’ve mentioned this before but Ireland was going through a heat wave while we were there and the hotels don’t have air conditioning. Well it was a few degrees cooler outside the hotel than in the room so I opened the window on the second story and placed the perishable foods on the window ledge.

The next morning the ham was gone. When I looked down to the street I saw the ’empty’ ham container lying on the sidewalk. We’re not sure what got on the ledge but there were a lot of very large blackbirds in the area. Do they eat meat?

Today, before breakfast, my husband, Frances and I started up our usual 5 k walks again. Frances was in a bit of slump since coming home yesterday. I think she was missing her buddy, Lucy. Going for a walk to the lake was just what the doctor ordered. Frances was in a better mood after she had her swim and K and I were energized for the rest of the day.

The Best 10 Euros I’ve Ever Spent

Posted on July 17, 2013 by Mama Cormier

……having someone else do my laundry We knew when we were packing that at some point on our trip we would have to do some laundry. Little did we know how expensive the hotel laundry service would be. We’ve been away for almost a week and tomorrow we’re taking the train to Westport. It was time to do some washing but laundromats are not as common as they are in Canada. We knew that the hotel laundry was not an option. A single pair of under pants would have cost us € 4 to have washed. In the city centre, we saw a cleaners that advertised doing your wash for €10 for a 5kg bag with same day service. It looked like our best option so I separated our dark and light coloured clothes and stuffed them into one of our carry on bags. We had arranged to meet Brendan at 11:00 at Stephen’s Green today so we left a little bit earlier so that we could drop off our laundry at the cleaners. Everything fell into place like a well orchestrated symphony. The distance we had to walk with the bag of laundry was very short, arranging for the wash was painless, the shop owner was very friendly and we could pick it up at the end of the day when we were ready to go back to our hotel. We had a great day with our son and I figured out that we saved ourselves over €120 by not letting the hotel do our laundry. No convenience or service is worth that much money.

How Not to Treat Poison Ivy

Posted on July 9, 2013 by Mama Cormier

…..I’ve only had it 3 times in my life

In the 25 years that I’ve been coming up to the cottage I’ve become very familiar with what poison ivy looks, where it is, how to avoid it and how to treat it. I’ve only had 2 very minor rashes in all these years and I mean minor, 4 or 5 tiny blisters all in a row. In the past I’ve always left it alone, washed it with Sunlight soap and if the rash became too itchy I would apply calamine lotion.

My son and D’s son, on the other hand always managed to get some serious bouts of poison ivy when they were young boys. Somehow they managed to get it on their hands and where ever they touched themselves that’s where the rash would show up. They had poison ivy on their faces, legs and groin area.

The worst case of poison ivy, oak or sumac (we’re not sure which one she came in contact with) that I’ve ever seen happened to my cottage neighbour and friend, D. After a hike over on Hope Is. she broke out in a rash all over her body but the worst part of it was on her face. She looked like a boxer at the end of a fight. Her face puffed out and her eyes were swollen shut. Her case was so serious that it required a trip to the hospital where they prescribed a round of steroids to reduce the swelling and ease the pain.

One of the side effects of steroids is that it makes you quite aggressive and D found she had an over inflated sense of her actual strength. We had a delivery of building materials delivered to the cottage at the time and she was carrying twice as much drywall and in record speed than the rest of us. When she started to complain that her heart was racing we made her stop. This happened over 20 years ago and we still talk about it today.

This brings me to my third bout of poison ivy that I picked up two weeks ago at another friends cottage. I saw that the roadside was covered in the shiny three leafed plant and I thought I had stayed clear of it when we went for our walk; however, two days later (it takes a couple of days before the rash appears) I noticed a small patch on my right ankle. It was quite itchy and I tried not to touch it. I remembered a remedy that my friend L swears works every time so I thought I would give it a try.

The remedy involves rubbing salt into the blisters to break them open and then washing away the fluid that would normally cause the rash to spread. I recently received a wonderful salt scrub that I thought would do the job. It felt great when the blisters broke and they seemed to heal right away. The problem was that 2 days later another rash appeared somewhere else on my leg. I repeated the procedure and 2 days later another area broke out.

Now the thing with the scrub that I was using was that the salt was packed in an oil and after I rubbed it all over my legs it left the skin feeling soft and hydrated. What I didn’t realize at the time was that the oil was spreading the fluid in the blisters to other parts of my leg and because oil and water don’t mix the fluid wasn’t being washed away. Too bad it took me three treatments to realize what I was doing to myself. I’ve decided to leave this new batch of poison ivy to dry out on its own without any help from me.

Live and learn!

In Honour of Pride Week

Posted on June 28, 2013 by Mama Cormier

…..a great video that Dorothy from Scotland shared with me this week

Dorothy from Jings and Things sent me an email this week with the link to this video. It looks like Scotland, in the very near future, will be joining the ever growing number of countries in the world that recognizes same sex marriages. Earlier this week the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that legally married same-sex couples should get the same federal benefits as heterosexual couples and cleared the way for same-sex marriage in California. We can only hope that the remaining 37 states will give same sex couples the same rights.

A few months ago I shared with you the video of New Zealand’s parliament passing the bill that recognizes same sex marriages and how the visitor’s gallery erupted spontaneously into song.

We Lost in Overtime

Posted on June 7, 2013 by Mama Cormier

….heartbreaking

I knew the minute I saw the other team that this was going to be a close competition.

A few days ago I told you about my trials and tribulations when I took my girls’ soccer team to the West Conference finals. The team easily won their first game and then we had to wait an hour between games before we could play our final game. Little did we know at the time that the other team wasn’t going to show up because they had gone to the wrong location.

After waiting in the hot sun for an hour and a half I had to make a decision. Do we win by default or do we allow the missing team to make up the game in the next two days at our school? After speaking with the team we reluctantly decided to play later in the week.

Finding a time that would work for both teams proved to be difficult. I had the upper hand and basically gave them a time that worked for us. I knew that they must have been under a lot of pressure from their community because the time I gave them originally didn’t work for them and when I told them that we had run out of options (which we had) they found a solution to arrive at that time.

All of this happened late Wednesday afternoon and I then had to run around the school to inform the girls that we were playing at 9:00 in the morning the next day. Unfortunately one of our players couldn’t make it because of an appointment that couldn’t be changed on such short notice.

On the day, we had to scramble to find pinnies that were all the same colour because the boys took the jerseys to play in their West Conference game. They won, by the way, and are moving on to the City Finals. To make a long story short, we started out by scoring the first 2 goals and then they tied it up. We then scored 2 more goals and in the last minute of the game the other team tied it up again.

We had to go into overtime, two 5 minute halves and the first team to score would win the game. It was stressful and in the second half the other team put the ball into our net.

When we congratulated the other team I quietly said to the coach from the opposing team that in the future she should be careful not to miss a game again because I’m not so sure that I or any other team would be so generous, again and agree to play at a later date. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that but she became quite indignant and said that if the tables had been turned she would have definitely ‘invited’ the team to her school so that the girls could play. This is all fine and well to say when you’ve just won your game but she didn’t have to wait for an hour and a half on a shadeless field with 16 girls and a dozen parents who had made the long trip to watch their girls play and then have to inform everyone that we weren’t playing because the coach of the other team hadn’t read her emails. We had been informed about the change in venue a week before the game and there were several emails in between that went out informing all of us about the times and field locations.

In the end I explained to her how the girls had helped me make the decision to host another game so that her players had an opportunity to play. I graciously offered to make the presentation of the banner to her team because the convenors for the tournament couldn’t come to the school on such short notice. In turn she praised my girls for a game well played and thanked them for making the decision to give her team another opportunity to play.

Should I have kept my mouth closed and not said anything to this coach? I’m afraid I’m very much like my father and sometimes blurt out things before thinking it through. The only difference is that I know how to take back or apologize for my words where my father rarely does because he believes that you should be allowed to say what you want and not worry how it affects someone else. As he gets older it seems to get worse, as if age is an excuse for insensitivity.

I would welcome your thoughts on this predicament. Have you ever been put on the spot where you had to make a decision that was literally a game changer? I only wish that there was something in the regulations that deals with situations like this. We have rules for everything else, maybe we need a rule for no shows.

My Missing Husband

Posted on May 28, 2013 by Mama Cormier

….I imagined the worst

The school day had barely begun. I was in the library getting ready for my first class when AM paged me from the office. My neighbour was on the phone and had our dog, Frances, in her house. K was nowhere to be found. I had the call transferred to my office and spoke directly to N. Apparently she found Frances sitting on the front lawn and she was quite upset.

My neighbour on the north side of my house, L, got into her car and drove around the neighbourhood looking for my husband. While I was talking to N (my neighbour on the south side of my house) L returned and hadn’t found my husband. I described K’s normal walking/running route to N and how she could get Frances into our house. I got off the phone and waited for her to call me back. I waited and waited and waited.

It seemed like forever but in reality it was only 15 minutes. My colleagues encouraged me to drive home to find out what was happening. When I got in the car and started on the short trip home (15minutes) I started to think the worst. What if he’d fallen down the rocky edge by the lake? Maybe he’d suffered a heart attack and was lying on a path less travelled. I didn’t know what to expect when I got home.

Half way home my phone rang. It was my husband. He was fine, just a little shaken up for having lost Frances. He let her off the leash while he ran along the lake and normally she runs along side him and occasionally checks out a path here and there but always pops back up and joins him.

For some reason, today Frances lost track of K and when she didn’t see him she ran home. K thought that she had passed him at some point so he turned around and ran back to where the path ended. He found some other dog walkers and they tried to help him find Frances. When he couldn’t find her he was beside himself with worry. He finally decided to run home.

As he got closer to the house he could hear her barking. He found my two neighbours outside the house and Frances was already inside. Needless to say K was very relieved. The problem was that at this moment in time I didn’t know that he was okay.

Did he call me right away to let me know he was home? No! He went back to the park to let others know that the dog was safe and sound at home. When he got back home the second time he called the school but I had already left. He told me later, very apologetically, that it had never occurred to him that I would be worried about him. Hmmmm! What can I say? I love him and I’m relieved that he’s okay.

New Zealand, Bravo!

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Mama Cormier

…..13th country worldwide to legalize same-sex marriages

As a mother of a gay child and a friend to numerous gay couples, I am always saddened by individual people, organizations, political groups and religious orders that are threatened by the happiness of the LGBT community. So many of these homophobic groups feel that the institution of marriage will be threatened if same-sex marriage is legalized.

Same-sex marriage was legally recognized in Ontario in 2003 and the first same-sex marriage in the world took place in Toronto in January of 2001. Today New Zealand was the 13th country in the world and the first Asian-Pacific country to legally recognize same-sex marriage.

MP, Maurice Williamson presented an impassioned speech supporting the passage of the bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in New Zealand. In his words, “All we are doing with this bill is allowing two people who love each other to have that love recognized by way of marriage,” he said. “We are not declaring nuclear war on a foreign state; we are not bringing a virus in that could wipe out our agriculture sector forever.” Bravo! Well said, Mr. Williamson.

The bill was passed with a vote count of 77 in favour and 44 against. After the victory the spectators in the public gallery broke out in spontaneous song supporting the bill’s sponsor, MP Louisa Wall. The song was Pokarekare Ana, a love song in the country’s indigenous Maori language. Have a listen. It brought tears of joy to my eyes.

I am NOT interested in hearing from people who cannot rejoice in this victory. I will NOT use this post as a platform for groups who want to use passages from the Bible, Quran, or other religious or sacred documents to vilify any group of people that they choose to discriminate against. Peace be with you.

From Down to Better

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Mama Cormier

….funny how one person’s mood can affect your own

For the last few days my husband hasn’t been feeling well. I think he’s fighting the same cold that I’m just getting over but he doesn’t have the cough. It seemed like every day he had a new complication and I knew that all his aches and pains were getting him down. After what he’s been through I understand why he’s worried and depressed.

Today K’s worries and discomfort took a toll on my mood. When I got to school I was frustrated that I couldn’t do anything to help him. I had a heart to heart with a colleague at work who is experiencing similar worries about her husband and at the end of the day I poured out my frustrations to my friend L. I felt better just being able to talk about how I was feeling.

Later in the day when I called home I offered to come home early but my husband said it wasn’t necessary. I wanted to do something so I offered to make dinner. Normally K does 90% of the cooking. He took me up on my offer so I opted not to go to yoga class because I knew that I wouldn’t get home till 7:30 and dinner wouldn’t be on the table till well after 8:00.

I made nice lightly breaded pork medallions, baked spaghetti squash and stir fried mushrooms, spinach and kale. K enjoyed the meal and I could see his spirits were lifted. Amazingly, I started to feel better as well.

For my happiness file:

I’m happy about having good friends who are willing to listen and comfort me when I’m down.

I’m happy that my husband finally made an appointment with the doctor.

I’m happy that I was able to make a nice meal for my husband so that he had one less thing to worry about.

I know that all of this will eventually pass but what are we going to do about this weather? Temperatures are suppose to hover around freezing tomorrow and there is a possibility of 5 to 10 cm of snow, slush, sleet or hail. Double yuck!!!!!!!

A TV Star I’m Not

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Mama Cormier

….not even a quick cameo

Two weeks ago I went to see the Steven and Chris show with my friend D. We got quite the workout applauding, cheering and raising our True and False paddles on cue. The entire time cameras were scanning the audience. We never let the smiles leave our faces.

The audience prompter kept telling everyone what a great looking audience we were. Everyone wore their ‘jewel colours’ and were dressed to impressed. After two and half hours we were sent off with some weird telephone gizmo that I’m not sure will ever be used in my home and we were encouraged to watch the show on April 5th when the segment that we participated in would be aired.

Well I was working on the 5th but I was able to catch the show the next day. Did I see myself on TV? No! For that matter there were very few shots of the audience and when there were the cameras seemed to zoom in on the same 5 audience members. Of course they were all young and beautiful women. The overviews of the audience were far away, always on the side opposite to where I was sitting and they were over in a blink of an eye.

After viewing the show via my television I could see immediately that it was not one of the better shows. Maybe, we as an audience weren’t animated enough but the gadget section was a complete bust and the segment with the experts on parenting was pretty serious and somewhat depressing for anyone with adolescent children. Normally the show is very light hearted, informative and funny.

I won’t lie, I was disappointed not seeing D or myself on TV but in the big picture of life it’s pretty insignificant. What matters is that D and I had a good time, had a great lunch together afterwards and experienced something new and different that we can check off our bucket lists.

All the photos are courtesy of the Steven and Chris show.

Cheers!