The Small Step

Running on caffiene...

I wanted to get my thoughts down before the few precious minutes of morning quiet are gone.


Last night I had a horrible dream. It involved family being in danger, crazy people being mad at me, and stealing potatoes out of someone's yard.

I know, ridiculous.




Needless to say, I got little restful sleep.  My back is killing me too! Probably from all that "running" I did in my dream... I did NOT want to wake up this morning. So I slept in. From there it felt like rush, rush, rush. You know the mornings. ;)



In the past this would have curdled the milk for my entire day, poisoned any positivity.

But not today.





Today I decide that God is still in control. That even though I'm running on caffeine and ibuprofen, my day is not ruined. I still have a job I adore, a precious family of whom I could not ask for more, a fridge full of healthful food, a cup of hot coffee, and my Lord who is always on my side.

For most, this is probably a normal step of any day that starts with a sour morning. Accepting the sour and moving past it, but this has been a difficult task since battling severe anxiety for over a year. I have come leaps and bounds in the last fourteen months, and progress is sometimes slow, but today is another small step. A tiny, small step I felt worth documenting. Maybe someone else out there needs this encouragement too. It will get better. You can learn to get past the sour mornings!


Praise the Lord.

Reblog: Gluten Free Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Granola Bars

After almost two years, I decided to reinvent one of my old and more popular recipes: Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Granola Bars.

Granola bars are seriously my weakness in life. First as a para-educator, then a full-time teacher by trade, I lived off of easy, ready-to-eat snacks, and packaged granola bars were my favorite. Stuff granola bar in tote, eat half on way to school, eat the rest during math and reading, crave another one. Sadly, this became a daily habit. For years, my health was not high enough on my priority list. Eventually, my body became extremely sensitive to gluten, almost certainly due to my lack of concern on how much of it I consumed!

I have posted before on my struggle with gluten sensitivity, but the gist of it is this: don't be discouraged. There are SO many easy and surprisingly cheap ways to enjoy cooking, baking and eating what your body loves!

This recipe has been on hiatus for far too long, so I am excited to re-introduce my gluten free peanut butter chocolate chip granola bars!

**Please do not equate my posts with medical advice from doctors! This is my humble experience with gluten sensitivity. If you suspect you are allergic to wheat or sensitive or intolerant to gluten or have Celiac's disease, please do not hesitate to talk with a medical professional. They can help you immensely. **

Gluten Free Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Granola Bars

Ingredients:

1/2 stick of butter or margarine (for a healthier alternative, try 1/2 c. of unsweetened applesauce!)
1/4 c. packed light brown sugar
1/4 c. honey
2 c. certified gluten-free quick oats
1 c. certified gluten-free cereal (My favorites are Rice Krispies and Kix!)
1/2 c. creamy peanut butter
1/4 c. chocolate chips

Instructions:

Use your butter wrapper or cooking spray to lightly grease a 9 x 13 in. baking pan.

Heat the honey, brown sugar and butter in a large saucepan on the stovetop's medium setting. Stir until margarine is just melted.

Butter, Margarine and Brown Sugar

Rolling Boil

 Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium-low. Stir until the sugar is dissolved (about 2 minutes). Remove from heat and slowly fold in the peanut butter. 



When peanut butter is just barely melted into the mixture, add the cereal and oats 1/4 cup at a time, coating oats and cereal at a constant rate until all of it is mixed in and evenly coated. {I folded into some of the chocolate chips immediately, but you could wait until the end to sprinkle them on top.}

Peanut Butter Added

Adding liquid mixture to cereal and oats

Finished mixture! It smells like heaven.

Spoon the entire mixture into the 9 x 13 in. pan. Press mixture firmly into the pan with a spatula. 

These chocolate chips melted FAST! You can always press yours in on top after the mixture has cooled.

For quick cooling, place the pan in the fridge for an hour or so. {I honestly love the granola bars cold!} 

Cut into squares or rectangles. I love to keep my bars in the pan and pop them into Ziplocks as I need them. You could also individually wrap them in tin foil and store in a cool area (like a pantry) for quick retrieval when you need an on-the-go snack.

As aforementioned, please be careful with gluten-free baking.  Make sure all your ingredients (the oats and cereal in this recipe) have a gluten free label. Some regular quick oats are safe for those who are gluten-intolerant or sensitive, but will have been packaged in a factory that also packages other food items with gluten. If you have Celiac's Disease, my advice is to carefully watch your labels and buy items not made with other foods containing gluten. 

With gluten-free life-style or not, enjoy. 

<3

Updates: Finally!

I am so excited to get this blog going again. My goal is to get it in full swing this summer! My toddler is finally at that I-can-entertain-myself-with-a-snack-cup-for-thirty-minutes stage, which is awesome. Hello, update time!

We recently moved into our "new" house. After a long wait of six months after a devastating fire, renovations are finally complete. What  novelty to have a kitchen table to type eat at and a kitchen to cook in! Perhaps kitchen photos shall come soon.

For now a pic of a previous spring project will have to do!

Lemon Blueberry Bundt Cake (yes, it was delicious.)


More recipes and life to come....


<3

Hope, Eternal.

Hope springs eternal, right? I've been thinking a lot lately about that phrase. Until recently though, it seems that the only way I can wrap my mind around it is if I say it backwards: Spring hopes eternal. From the stresses of everyday life and the frozen mornings of winter, the possibility of hope springing eternal seemed ridiculous.

Finally, I have fresh flowers from my own yard adorning the kitchen and a couple windows cracked open. Things that a few months ago seemed impossible. Would never, ever happen. Even now, it is hard to believe that someday we'll be home. And that someday later, we will truly be Home.

This has been, by far, the worst winter of my life. Winter and coldness in every manner. In human terms, the coming of spring indeed signifies hope. Spring hopes eternal. But today, through springtime, God gently reminded me that with Him, hope does spring eternal. Even in our deepest winters.

So on any particularly wintry-feeling day, may I look back on this post and remember that with Christ, hope springs eternal. Glory to Him from whom True Hope springs eternally, in every single season.



Amen.

Something Old, Something New, Something Inspired, Something True

I cannot even imagine how God decided to put the thought of making banana bread in my head tonight...but I am glad he did. It has been many months since I've whipped up the tested and tried recipe for walnut banana bread that I love. Especially just for my own family. It's been not so many months, though, since my cookbooks, along with most of my belongings and my home were destroyed in a raging house fire.

The fire brought many unwelcome realities into our lives. Homelessness, fear, illness, frustration,
depression.  Some of these we are still working through. Despite hard times though, God is good. How humbling it has been to have had to accept groceries, clothing, basic toiletries, furniture, even housing and means to have Christmas gifts for our child.

We have seen kindness without limits, love without condition. It is overwhelming. So much has happened since I have last posted on this blog. Even since I have last made that banana bread. But by the grace of God, here I type.

A few weeks ago, another kind soul from my workplace had an abundance of bananas, brown and overripe. She asked if I could use any of them. I gratefully snagged six, with every intent to bake up several loaves of bread. But in the midst of insurance calls, restoration orders, and sorting through the mess of our destroyed home, the bananas remained freezer-bound.

Finally, this evening, I felt compelled with hunger a sudden motivation to make that banana bread. I still don't know if the recipe was in my recipe box, which we think survived the fire and is with the restoration company, or if it is a pile of ash in a dumpster. Thankfully, the internet exists and thankfully, I started this random blog three years ago to record my favorite recipes. I stumbled back upon this website, and found an unexpected joy in creating something beautiful. As weird as it
may sound, God knew that banana bread recipe was just the thing I needed to put life and joy back into my day.

The recipe is my Mom's; we call it the A-Z Loaf. You can find it here. I love it because you can substitute the bananas and walnuts for just about anything (from Apples to Zucchini) that strikes your fancy. And I love it because it is my Mom's. It's funny that in the midst of chaos, a simple recipe and a silly blog site helped restore order.

Thank you, Mom. Thank you, Lord.

Back to Blogging

Oh. My. Goodness.  !  It has been a while, blogging world!

Between school ending, summer starting, camp counseling, and moving, our lives have been, well, just a little insane. I have dearly missed my baking/blogging adventures, though.

I recently learned that I am gluten intolerant. I won't lie, when I first found out, disappointment was an understatement. Images of pancakes, cookies, French toast, and pasta pranced around my mind, taunting me. After some serious research, though, I realized that there really is way more I CAN eat than what I can't.

I found a great website with ideas for naturally gluten-free eating:

http://www.glutenista.com/gluten-free-snack-ideas.html

Seriously, it's a great resource if you're new at this like me!


My awesome brother came to visit us last weekend, and brought me some gluten free pizza/bread dough. I made one pizza and one loaf of bread with it, and I am still finishing what's left of the bread. After three rain-soaked days at our church's VBS camp, I was really feeling comfort food today. One of my top favorites is French Toast. Easy, delicious, put whatever you want on top, perfect. The bread I made last weekend was ideal. In fact, I'm eating it as we speak I type!

Another naturally gluten-free snack idea I tried last week (admittedly from Pinterest) topping banana slices in peanut butter, coating them in chocolate, and freezing them. Amazing! Here's where I found the recipe.

Anyway, not much of a baking-related post today, but maybe once I get some specialty flours, I'll get that going again!


Enjoy life this fabulous Saturday.

Amish Baked Oatmeal

Most of the time, I try really hard to cook healthy meals and snacks for my family. But after a long month and a half of eating not-so-healthy foods though, it's difficult to get back into the swing of things. Tonight we had chicken lettuce wraps with jasmine rice. It tasted fantastic, especially knowing that I was putting something nutritious in my body!

After dinner, though, always come the cravings. I have such a sweet-tooth! I guess some might consider this a post of shame, a total cuisine cave.

This is a recipe for delicious, comforting Amish Baked Oatmeal from Taste of Home's Contest Winning Annual Recipes (2005). Does it have sugar? Yes. Margarine? You bet. Did I cave? Absolutely. Honestly, the sugar and margarine are the only "bad" ingredients, and there isn't an obscene amount of either. Topping this dish with fresh fruit would be a great choice. I'm thinking I'll go with sliced apples.

So maybe I caved a little in the snack department tonight, but you gotta fight one battle at a time, right?

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups quick-cooking oats
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup butter or margarine, melted
1 egg
1 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Instructions:

Combine all dry ingredients in medium bowl.

Add milk, melted margarine and egg. Mix with a large spoon until all ingredients are well-combined. I actually stirred in a few dashes of cinnamon for extra flavor.

Grease four ramekins (or one large 9x13 in. pan). Pour batter evenly into each ramekin (or into the pan).

Bake at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes.

Top with whatever you like! As aforementioned, apples are my top choice tonight. They pair so well with cinnamon. Try strawberries, blueberries, warm milk, or brown sugar.

Enjoy with all situations of life--even the setbacks.