Rox and Roll

A great day for the wheat-free!

No, your eyes aren't deceiving you -- Betty Crocker has gone Gluten Free!  You should have seen the dance of joy I did in Price Chopper!  Let's face it -- most of the gluten-free mixes out there taste like a sandy health product.  I've tried many of them, and have generally decided that it's better to never eat cake and cookies again than it is to eat that crap.  My wheat-allergic waistline has thanked me well for that.  But every so often, a girl just needs a cookie.  Betty to the rescue!  I have high hopes that this will taste as wonderful as the highly-processed, not-Michael-Pollan friendly, Betty Crocker total junk of my youth.  If I'm eating a cookie, it better be worth it.  Betty, I'm counting on you!

I will post again after baking this decadence.  If it works, up next are the three other mixes: Brownies, Yellow Cake and Chocolate Cake... one at a time, weeks apart, for the only up-side of pneumonia is my ten-pound weight loss.  And I just bought a killer new dress at my favorite shop ever, Revolution in White River Junction VT, to show off my svelteness.  So one cookie at a time, please...

Forget the Magic Kingdom; Florida has...

The kids and I leave this Friday for a week-long Floridian adventure with grandparents, great-grandparents, and lots of aunts, uncles and cousins involved.  This is the kind of vacation where I won't see my kids much because so many others will be there to play with them -- otherwise known as a dream vacation that money can't buy!  We are gathering to celebrate Great-Grandma Pearl's 80th birthday, and I'm most especially looking forward to seeing my kids enjoy their great-grandparents and vice versa.  I have my Flip at the ready!

Petunia is excited about this trip because she wakes up earlier than she's allowed to at home and heads to the beach with her grandpa ("Peepaw").  I love that they have that special time together and that she remembers that's what she "always" does when she goes there.

Dash was around 2.25 years old when we last ventured to Florida, so he doesn't remember much.  He has created some great mythology around what he thinks it's like, though (aided by sister's recollections).  He expects to see armadillos (in my parents' neighborhood, sometimes), alligators (we'll head to the Alligator Farm perhaps), rocketships (Cape Canaveral is on the itinerary) and a big, huge white sand beach that is not at all cold (at the end of the street).  

Then today, he started doing something I had never seen him do before.  He started thinking about food!  He wanted to make sure that his favorite stuff would be in Florida.  I assured him that I had already placed his soy milk order with Grandma and that she knew how much he loved goldfish.  I had to call her to make sure she had his "chocolate sandwich stuff" (Nutella) -- check.  

And then we drove in a car to McDonald's in search of Shamrock Shakes (they were already out for the season).  Exiting the parking lot, Dash told me, "They do have McDonald's in Florida, Mom."  I agreed.  Then his eyes got as wide as saucers as he said, "MOM!  I KNOW WHAT THEY HAVE IN FLORIDA!  I KNOW WHAT THEY HAVE THAT THEY DON'T HAVE HERE IN CALIFORNIA!"

"What's that, Dash?" I asked.

Nearly hyperventilating with excitement, Dash answered, "DUNKIN DONUTS!  THERE IS A DUNKIN DONUTS IN FLORIDA!!!"

Though I can't eat them, I share his excitement, for I craved Dunkin Decaf when I was pregnant with him.  Though it can't hold a candle to Blue Bottle coffee, I have to admit that I'm looking forward to my old-skool Boston coffee break, albeit in Florida.

Which got me to thinking... what else is in Florida that we don't have?  I do love the Columbia restaurant, I thought, as I made a note to take my sister there for lunch.  And then it hit me:

RITA'S WATER ICE!  I hope it is open for the season already, because there's a mango gelati with my name written on it.

Now I'm hungry, and I'm packing.  Flor-I-Da, here we come!

The weekend that'll make my week

Starting out the weekend, there was a chance it was going to be the weekend from hell.  I braced myself appropriately, apparently, since it turned out to be an absolutely fabulous few days.

Of course (WARNING: EAST COAST FRIENDS, AVERT YOUR EYES!) the weather being around 70 degrees and sunny might have had something to do with it.

Saturday morning dawned bright and beautiful as I gathered the kids for a neighbor's Laser Quest birthday party.  Truly, the place was insane.  There were four birthday parties going on at once, and the arcade was in the reception hall.  It would've been easy to lose Dash, who was attached to me while Petunia played laser tag, because of the sheer overcrowding, let alone the poor layout.  Suffice it to say, it wasn't my favorite party ever -- but the kids loved it, and that's what mattered.

The laser tag and arcade party was followed by pizza, etc., though, and imagine the surprise I enjoyed when the party hosts whipped out a gluten-free, soy-cheese pizza!  To some people, this would be far from thrilling, but put yourself in my shoes: I don't remember the last time I ate a slice of pizza.  It has been over a year, maybe two, ever since my wheat allergy became severe enough that I can't even cheat and sneak a bite.  To compound things, Dash's recent diagnosis with a mild dairy allergy has complicated things.  This family eats (ate) a lot of pizza.  So when my neighbor introduced me to Amici's (the one they ordered from is in Mountain View), she greatly improved the quality of my life.  We ordered from there tonight: a soy cheese pizza for Dash, a gluten-free Margherita pizza for me, and a half-cheese, half-pepperoni "normal" large pie for Petunia and the Guv.  The downside was the $53 bill (the GF pizza was $24 of that) -- but my first taste of pizza in over a year made that priceless!  (And it was really, really GOOD too!)

After Laser Tag on Saturday, we returned home to prepare for a visit from my college friend Seamus, his lovely wife, and their two year-old daughter.  Sometimes, these type of visits are more trouble than they're worth -- the work of cooking and cleaning up compounded by constant childcare ("refereeing") can be a real drag.  But not this time!  Our Petunia stepped up to the plate without even being asked, taking over the care of her brother and our young visitor.  Plus, the Guv and I made a very low-maintenace menu of chili, quesadillas, veggie and cheese trays -- that, some wine and beer, and it was a very easy, enjoyable evening.  I don't remember the last time I had meaningful adult conversation with kids in the house.  What a special night!

And then this morning, I slept in... which was actually a problem, since I woke up at 8:35 am and was supposed to be at Dash's preschool from 9-3 for a "maintenance day."  For the uninformed, "maintenance day" is code for "wiping boogers off of toys, tables, etc." and it was totally gross.  My son loves this preschool, but it is just not my bag... too much work, too much cleaning that I don't even want to do in my own house, too much dirt... All that said, the Guv recently figured out that to take my son to the drop-off preschool, I'd have to earn about $12g to pay for it... So we stay at the right school for Dash, the wrong school for me (though I have made some great friends there, so someday I'll stop saying that). 

While I attended Booger Day, the Guv took Petunia, her two friends N and Z, and Dash on a super-long bike ride to Stanford's campus, where they launched stomp rockets, dunked in a fountain (did I mention it was 72 today?) and slurped Jamba Juice.  The Guv is exhausted, and I am hugely impressed that he took that on himself.  When I commented to him that this weekend was like one long playdate for our friend Petunia, he chuckled, "yeah -- just like our life was growing up.  This is how it's supposed to be.  Like the good old days!" 

I'm not sure that I'm up for weekends jam-packed with mutiple others' kids yet -- though breaking it up with some friends and wine sure did help!  And the Guv is right about one thing: these are the good old days, made new again through our young 'uns.  What a fun weekend.  I hope that it's just the start of a magnificent new year in our new California home.