Thursday, December 8, 2011

Gluten free family time with a bit of Hakuna Matata


Have I ever told you that my house is called Camp Chaos?


 It's because of this guy. Chaotic isn't he? It's what we dubbed ourselves shortly after bringing home our first puppy, Chaos Monster in Febuary, 2005. The name's stuck and it's followed us from  Maine to Colorado and back to Maine. It's a great ode to our beloved golden retriever, Chaos who's about to celebrate his 7th birthday. Chaos was the first dog I ever had the pleasure of living with. He's taught me a lot since I brought him home as a young puppy in early 2005.  His soft golden mane is often a source of comfort and reminds me of my favorite Disney movie, The Lion King. I was in high school when the Lion King first came out and it earned it's place as my favorite all time Disney flick. I think that's why I love my golden puppies so much as Chaos often resembles a regal Mufasa and crazy little Mayhem is a young Simba. When the movie came back out on DVD this year I quickly snatched up a copy and enjoyed the movie along my memories of being a favorite babysitter to my young cousins.


This week my sister, Kim came for a visit with her husband and two kiddos- Moyer's who's almost 5 and Keturah who's 3 going on 7. Kim and Keturah are in the midst of a gluten free trial and Kim did a guest post a few weeks back about their Mighty Fine dining experience in Austin, TX. So far with this trial  they've discovered that Keturah doesn't do well with corn as well as gluten. As most of us glutards know a lot of gluten free items contain corn in one form or another so we stuck to a lot of naturally gluten free, corn free foods during their visit to camp chaos. Like Annie's Gluten Free Mac N Cheese with some hamburger and peas added in for fun.
The kids and I watched The Lion King the first morning here at Camp Chaos and the rest of the visit featured small voices singing lines of Hakuna Matata.

Hakuna Matata! It means no worries for the rest of your days

We even tried to make some corn free powdered sugar for our Chex Muddy Buddies...

Played Legos (because every good aunt and uncle should have a house with legos...)
Walked the dogs which was even better with shoulder rides from Patrick
But he wouldn't give the dogs shoulder rides- they had to walk
as did Moyer but he liked to run, jump and hop more then walk. He is a good runner.

We took time to make the donuts...gluten and corn free.
And of course I whipped up some knitted projects for the kids. You can see those over at Asiaramblin 



I've been really impressed with my dining experiences at the Rack since we've moved back to Sugarloaf and even more so after our trip with my gluten free, corn free niece. Our waitress (who's also gluten free) double checked the gluten free options for us for traces of corn and Keturah enjoyed a great safe bowl of gf, corn free noodles and marinaira.

 Don't you wish every gluten free meal could have a bit of Hakuna Matata?




7 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks Marlow ;o)

p&k said...

Just seeing this! (Been away from google reader much of the week . . .) It's like we're famous!

Anonymous said...

Hi - did you have any luck with the corn free powdered sugar? I made a cake last week and stupidly didn't read the ingredients on the sugar. Duh. Corn. Why am I even surprised? My son's eczema broke out. Now, I'm wondering how I'll have be able to give him frosting again. Any tips?

Unknown said...

Hi Jennifer,
We did OK with the corn free powdered sugar. We used it to coat our Chex Muddy Buddies. I should have linked in the post but we consulted Adventures of A Gluten Free Mom for instructions. Here's the link to the directions.
http://www.adventuresofaglutenfreemom.com/2010/12/cut-out-sugar-cookies-corn-free-powdered-sugar-sugar-cookie-icing/

p&k said...

Moyer said, "I was tryin' to keep up with the dogs!" when we got to the part about him being a good runner! :)

p&k said...

I don't know if you'll see this or not, but we make our own corn-free powdered sugar in the grinder attachment to our blender ALL of the time now! We sub a tad of whatever corn-starch-like thing we've got handy: sometimes potato starch, sometimes sweet rice flour. :) It all seems to work just fine!

-Kim

Unknown said...

Those dogs are tough to keep up with!