BACK

Yes, we made it 38 hours in the car and nobody died or peed on himself(he knows I'm talking about him). We surprised my parents for Thanksgiving, it was a great fun family filled week! A few weeks ago we also went to Vegas for a quick vacation with some friends and Dustin's mom and sister stayed here with Damen. We have been BUSY and I'll post all kinds of pictures and stories and stuff like that at a later time and date. Right now I've got to unwind from the endless hours in the car by watching everything we've DVR'd for the past week. Don't worry we'll be back again!

Recipes

I've been Gluten free for over three months now and it's hard to find things that are edible, experimenting isn't always successful, but these two worked great and since this stuff is SO fantastic I figured I should share it with the rest of the blogging world! For starters, where it says "flour" I used my all purpose flour mix of:
3 parts white rice flour
3 parts corn starch
2 parts soy flour
1 part masa harina(yellow corn flour boiled w/lime)in the mexican food isle.

Corn Bread (compliments of my friend Melissa)

1 c. Cornmeal
1 c. flour
1/4 c.sugar
1 Tlb baking powder
1 tsp salt

mix dry ing. together then add:

1 c. milk
1/3 c. oil
1 egg slightly beaten

Bake in an 8x8 pan at 400 for 20-25 min. Serve with yummy soup or chili or whatever, it's delicious!!

Ok, so this next one I made up the other night out of a creative need to have battered anything and coconut. ALL batters contain flour and that means everything deliciously fried too, I've missed it. Sorry the measurements are mostly aproximations.

Bread and Coconut battered chicken fingers:

2 thawed chicken breasts cut into strips.

2 Tbl mayonnaise
2 Tbl or more/ honey
2 Tbl vegetable oil
Mix these and place in shallow dish.

2 pieces of Tapioca( or regular) bread toasted.
1 c. coconut

Put the toast in the blender/chopper with or without the coconut and blend until fine crumbs form. Put the crumbs and coconut in a shallow dish. Dip the chicken strips in the mayonnaise mix then into the crumb mix, covering it well. Place on well oiled baking sheet and bake at 375 for 30 min.

I also made a garnish dip with crushed pineapple and Wingers freaking amazing sauce and more coconut. Served with rice.

YUM!

Halloween of course!

Damen did a lot of dressing up this year. On Wednesday we went to a party where he dressed in his bat costume, it is cute and very cozy. That same night we went "trunk or treating" at the church and it was a good thing he had that cozy costume, the rest of us were freezing! On Halloween Lori and I took Damen to the Living Desert for the morning. They had all this carnival stuff going on, plus the regular zoo stuff we got to do. His favorite place was the massive train exhibit, of which I have no pictures, but he ran up and down the side of it following those trains for a good half hour! Since it was supposed to be close to 90 in the desert I made Damen a pirate costume out of some stuff we already had. We had a really good time, best $10.00 I've spent lately! That night it was back into the bat costume and away to the neighborhood we went! Dustin was really sick so he stayed home to man the front door until we got back. Damen got a bucketload of candy and had fun too. Don't worry we confiscated and ate all of the peanut filled candies on Saturday night, it's the kind of sacrifice we have to make for our son:) Happy Haunting!

Riding a warthog

Banging the African drums

Feeding the giraffe.

What a cute bat! He told everyone he was Batman.

All the loot!

Pumpkins!

We went to the pumpkin patch, twice! We went Monday night for family night, then had so much fun I went back with my friend Bonnie and her kids during the day. There was a corn maze, train/tractor pull, pig races, petting zoo, and lots of pumpkins! We really had a good time. The next Monday night we carved our pumpkins. Damen wanted nothing to do with it. Ok, that's not entirely true, he did want to hold the knife and occasionally poke his pumpkin, but I ended up carving, scraping, and cleaning the whole thing. I suppose that's what I should have expected. Dustin carved the big one and did a great scary face. It only took him twice as long as it took me, not because the pumpkin was bigger, but because he's a crazy perfectionist that has to get it JUST right. It's a genetic thing. Here are the pictures to prove that the above paragraph is true and accurate:)


Lori and Damen making cute pumpkin faces!


Damen, Chelsea and Abbey, these are the best pictures I could get, really!



See the knife in his hands? Spooky!



Ahhh, the finished product. They lasted about two days on our front porch, between the heat during the day and the close to freezing temps at night they didn't stand a chance. It was great fun though!