Bette's Four Flour Bread Mix (Gluten Free)

This is a basic flour mix that you can keep a bag of ready to add to any number bread recipes that I'll be trying out and possibly putting up here in the future. The nice thing about this is that once you have the basic flour mix prepared, when you actually come to bake the bread, you don't have to mess around with a lot of dry ingredients. Basically you add the wet ingredients and go!

I'm going to list the amount to make 12 cups of the flour (which will make 6 loaves of bread); however, it's easy enough to double the recipe and have enough on hand to make 12 loaves.

Instructions: Throw all of the following ingredients in a bag together. Mix (I do this just by squishing the outside of the bag). Write which mix the flour is (as I'm going to be posting more than one type of flour mix like this!) on the front of the bag. Store for future use.

Garbanzo and Fava Bean flour - 3 cups
Sorghum Flour - 1 cup
Tapioca Flour - 4 cups
Cornstarch - 4 cups
Xanthan Gun - 3 tablespoons
Salt - 1 tablespoon
Egg Replacer - 1 tablespoon
Unflavored Gelatin (optional) - 3 (7 gram) envelopes
Sugar* - 3/4 cup

*I refuse to use sweet'n'low or any of the other fake sugars as I think they're about as bad for you as actually using regular cane sugar. However, I have been incorporating rice syrup into a lot of my recipes and plan to try applesauce, maybe fruit juice, or some other sugar replacement ideas I've run across. Haven't done so yet, but I will let you know how it turns out. But, if you do use a wet replacement, obviously, don't add it to the bag of flour otherwise you'll have to use all of the flour immediately! Just don't forget to add it into your list of ingredients for making the actual bread!

Gluten Free Eating

I wanted to put up some of the new GF recipes I've been making lately, so the next few posts are all GF related. I feel like I'm slowly getting into a better place as far as food goes. And I think I'm finally getting to a place where the idea of feeling sick and nasty is emotionally frustrating enough that foods that lead to that state of being are becoming more repulsive to me. Still have the occasional craving, but it's all coming together slowly.

Any ways, I'm going to make a recipes label that will become (theoretically) full of GF goodness (and possibly some not so GF goodness as well - thanks to the Domata flour, I can still make a lot of my old baking recipes with just a few adjustments here and there).

Memphis

A few weeks ago, darling Husband and I were discussing the start of his upcoming schooling and we realized that we really wanted to take a vacation prior to the craziness of the next two years starting. You might remember that we cancelled our vacation in July at the last minute because I was having a hard enough time finding food to eat ate home at the time never mind finding food while on the road! So, after some hemming and hawing, we finally decided to come and visit L & M - some friends of ours in Memphis, Tennessee. So, a few emails later, a bit of packing and arranging, and Friday we headed off.

It was a beautiful drive down and included the entertainment of choosing whether to go to the random towns of Egypt or Pocahontas.

Saturday we spent a lot of the day looking around Memphis - a town that mentally I have always associated with music and now emotionally associate with music!

We:

• went to St Jude (where M is going to be a doctor)



• traversed the Mississipi



• went to a baseball game (where I was entertained primarily by a baby, watched probably about two minutes of the actual game, learned that baseball is a very dangerous spectator sport as objects really do come flying at you, and watched my husband eat a disgusting Memphisian food combo of Nachos, cheese, chicken, and barbecue).
  
  


• walked down Beale street and got a feel for the night life of Memphis

Sunday was church and hanging out playing games.

Monday

I was entertained watching Apple, L & M's pug, wake Chris up in the morning.

Then we went back downtown and watched the ducks walk to their pond in the Peabody Hotel. This was definitely an entertaining show. Due to evacuees from Gustav, there was a ton of people at the hotel for the show. Basically what happens is that these ducks live in a suite in the hotel. Every day at 11am, they are taken down to the lobby of the hotel where they walk a red carpet to a pond in the middle of the hotel lobby and proceed to spend their day swimming around the pond. Then every day at 5pm, they are taken back up to their suite! Totally random? YES! The result of too much alcohol? I believe so! But still fun to see.

The other exciting part of Monday was going to the Gibson guitar factory in Memphis where we saw the factory where the guitars are put together. There were no works that day because it was Labor day; however, it was still pretty cool to go.

Monday night we hung out and played more games (Settlers of Catan - our new favorite addiction and a game L had recently received for her birthday, so we were helping her master strategy for the game). We also had a brief Readers Response session as both Chris and I read and then reviewed for L a story she had recently written (she's working on her masters in Creative Writing at the university in Memphis). Both of which activities Chris and I enjoy doing very much!

And then Tuesday morning it was up early and driving back to Springfield. Tired but happy for having had a brief break.