The Kid eats a strawberry

Tags

celiac, Coeliac disease, Food, French toast, Gluten-free diet, parental win, Parenting, picky eater, Selective eating disorder, she ate something new, strawberry, the kid, Trader Joe's, wegmans

This ranks as big news around these parts. My three-year-old has long made picky eating her thing. First, it was formula. Then it was single-grain cereal. Then it was baby food. Then it was regular food. With the Celiac disease diagnosis in hand, her world shrank. We’ve been able to replace things like French toast sticks and crackers, but getting her to try new foods is…difficult.

Like parallel parking difficult.

Like threading a needle difficult.

Like there’s a better chance of me joining a gym than there is of her eating meat.

So, Saturday’s triumph was monumental.

This is the second surprise food experiment. The kid loves edamame. She eats them like they were coated in chocolate (we haven’t told her that Trader Joe’s sells chocolate-covered edamame yet). Even better, she refuses to eat them warm. I buy them fresh in the produce section or off the sushi bar at Wegmans and she eats them from the package. When we use the frozen, we have to defrost them then toss them in the fridge.

It’s the strangest thing (her reluctance to eat food, not her). She insists that she doesn’t like things, even though she has not tried much of what we offer. Yet, every so often we get a strawberry for the win, or a chance encounter with a soybean pod, or her diving at the bowl of pineapple-flavored (and gluten free) Dole Whip wanting more.

And that…that’s what we call a parental win.

One plus two plus two plus one

Tags

math, moron

The auto-publish feature on WordPress’ interface is pretty nifty. It allows me to setup posts in advance and publish content through the day, just like real blogs.

Of course, it’s only good as the moron publishing the content. Yesterday was June 16. Today is June 17. For some reason, I set my Monday content to publish on June 18.

Math. Failing me since 1981.

Grocery list: June 16, 2013 (The Father’s Day edition)

Tags

beautiful thing, bisquick, celiac disease, Coeliac disease, conventional food, disease diagnosis, Fathers Day, Food, grocery list, grocery shopping, holiday, Home, meal planning, pancakes, restaurants, Shopping, sleeping in, Wife

All praise be to The Wife, who for Father’s Day allowed me to sleep from the point The Kid awoke at 6:10 until 8:10. I’ll take that as half of my gift for Father’s Day, as the other half would be the grill sitting in my garage.

Truth be told, I was not aware that Father’s Day was this weekend until sometime Wednesday or Thursday when The Wife asked me what I wanted to get my own father. She was surprised, but not very, when I asked what she was talking about.

Apparently, I was going to get pancakes for breakfast this morning, but we were out of Bisquick. My best guess is that we ran out in and around the time of The Kid’s Celiac disease diagnosis and never replenished. This didn’t occur to The Wife — until she tried making said breakfast — or me — until she mentioned it later in this morning.

Speaking of Bisquick, here’s the issue that arises with gluten free food: it’s expensive. Very expensive. In most cases, we’re talking about $1 per package for something that is replacing a conventional food item. In the case of Bisquick, it’s a little more. The 40 oz. box of regular Bisquick is 8.2 cents an ounce. The gluten free version, sold in 16 oz. boxes, tips in at 31.2 cents an ounce, or nearly quadruple the cost.

No big plans for Father’s Day, which is the best gift of them all. I think I’m going to squeak in an afternoon nap, maybe eek in some father-daughter dollhouse time or some laundry. It’s really not much different than any other Sunday around here.

Except that I got to sleep in. For Father’s Day. And all of that adds up to a beautiful thing.

Gluten Schmuten: Wegmans Gluten Free Honey Cornbread Mix

Tags

Baking Powder, celiac disease, Coeliac disease, cornbread, cornbread mix, Cornstarch, gluten free, gluten free cornbread, Gluten-free diet, Monocalcium Phosphate, wegmans, Wegmans Food Markets, Xanthan gum

Gluten-free foods are expensive and their flavor profile, in many cases, is suspect. The Al Dente blog is going to work through the good and the bad from the perspective of a toddler who known for her picky eating and her parents. We’ll collect these, as well as the rest of our journey with The Kid’s Celiac disease diagnosis, under the Gluten Schmuten category tag.

We promised a gluten-free birthday spread to our guests on Saturday. And we delivered…basically. The pulled pork was gluten free, but the accompanying rolls were not. My father made his trademark tortellini salad and, of course, there was beer. Plenty of beer. But, the rest of the buffet was free of wheat and the pesky gluten it creates.

Not that it matters. The Kid feasted on Van’s french toast sticks while the other youngins dined on pork. What they all agreed on, however, was the cornbread. The geniuses at Wegmans Food Markets make their own private label honey cornbread.

THE SELL: Wheat-free, Sweet and Moist. Chosen with Care! Our Food You Feel Good About yellow banner is your shortcut to great-tasting products with no artificial colors, flavors or preservatives.

THE PACKAGE: Each package makes 16 two-inch squares.

THE INGREDIENTS: Yellow Cornmeal, Sugar, Rice Flour, Potato Starch, Honey Granules (Refinery Syrup and Honey), Cornstarch, Baking Powder (Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Baking Soda, Cornstarch, Monocalcium Phosphate), Salt, Xanthan Gum, Soy Flour.

THE STATS ON A SERVING: One serving has 200 calories, 32g carbohydrates and 12g sugar. 

THE COST: $3.49 at Syracuse Wegmans stores.

THE REPLACEMENT: The comprable Betty Crocker mix is…holy sh*t. 69 cents a box.

THE ADULT TASTE TEST: I never really had a good taste of it. I ate my cornbread the same way I always do: under a healthy glop of pulled pork.

THE KID TEST: She liked it, but I noticed that crumbled with greater ease than the non-GF variety. It was reminiscent of dry cornbread. I know this because my stepmother spent quite a few minutes by the kid’s table with a Dustbuster.

THE VERDICT: Thumbs up.

Al Dente on the side: Roasted sugar snap peas with fleur de sel

Tags

Black pepper, broiler, dinner, Farmer, Fleur de sel, Olive oil, organic, organic food, oven roast, Pea, side dish, Snap pea, sugar, Tablespoon, vegetable

Picked up what looked like the first-of-the-season sugar snap peas from this weekend’s CNY Regional Market trip.

Sugar snaps are the only way I can get The Wife to eat peas. She is absolutely dismissive of peas in general, but I can occasionally I can get her to take these on. I typically flash fry them for a couple of minutes, but thought I would give them a quick oven roasting this time. All in all, they came out quite nicely. The chive is a negligible ingredient and did not really add anything noticeable to the dish. Good salt, though, is as important as the peas in this case.

The Kid

Turns three today.

Sunday dinner: Grilled pizza II (pulled pork edition)

Tags

Cheese, colby jack, Cook, Cooking, Dough, Food, Grilled pizza, grilling, Home, Olive oil, Pizza, provolone cheese, Pulled pork, recipe, Serious Eats, sunday dinner, weekend dinner, wegmans, Wegmans Food Markets

The first grilled pizza had a problem. It was too thin and ended up with a char covering about 70 percent of the bottom. It stands to reason that more dough would provide a thicker base and absorb the heat better. Right? Right?

Well, sort of.

The first pizza was made on dough from Columbus Bakery and weighed in at 16 oz. Today, I went for the Wegmans dough that tips the scale at 28 oz. I thought about peeling some off and going for a 20 to 22 oz. pizza, but laziness and exhaustion from the chest cold combined with the unanswered question of what to do with the leftover dough got in my way.

Grocery list: June 9, 2013

Tags

birthday parties, celiac disease, Coeliac disease, dairy department, families are annoying, Food, gluten free, grocery list, grocery shopping, grocery store, Homestead, long island, meal planning, MLB Network, Pulled pork, restaurants, Shopping list, stunning array, Sunday shopping, the kid, too much food, tortellini salad, Wegman, Wegmans Food Market, when will they go home, Wife, zero patience

Everyone has left.

That’s the best part of a family gathering. This weekend was the celebration of The Kid’s third birthday (it’s officially on Tuesday) and we partied yesterday here at The Homestead. The crowd filtered out around 8 last night. The Sister returned to Long Island at 11 a.m., right around the same time that my father and stepmother bid adieu on the way back to their house on the St. Lawrence Seaway.

The house is now blisteringly quiet. The Kid is napping. The Wife is off for a run. All that can be heard is the clicking of the keyboard and the faint muttering of the announcer on the MLB Network.

The second best part of a family gathering? The stunning array of leftovers. We anticipated 18, but ordered food for 15-16. We had 15, but the six pounds of pulled pork and various salads that accompanied was apparently overkill. Today’s grocery trip reminded me that we need a bigger refrigerator in the next house. I gave up on putting things away with a sense of order and just started shoving things where there was room.

Everything but my father’s tortellini salad, the rolls for the pork and the beer was gluten-free. Not that it mattered, as The Kid ate a piece of corn bread and some Van’s french toast.

Today’s trip to Wegmans was solo and horrendous, though mutually exclusive of one another. Solo, because The Kid really wasn’t up for the trip, nor was The Wife. Horrendous because I have a raging chest cold and zero patience. I don’t know why, but the dairy department at Wegmans insists on restocking the shelves by putting the very large pushcarts full of yogurt so they block the shelf and aisle at the same time. After I got hit by someone else’s cart the third time, I decided that I no longer cared about others and was going to use my cart as a weapon. Naturally, my blood lust was for naught as the store seemed to empty, leaving me with clear aisles but a lingering case of cart rage.