Sparking To Learn

One of the conveniences we’ve missed during our dive into gluten-free cooking and eating has been the ability to toss together a super fast sandwich lunch. We were lucky enough to receive a gift of samples from Rami at GFL when we returned home from our holiday ramblings.

Anna and I tested the pitas on a couple of different days, and we decided that they had both postive and negative qualities, but the postive qualities outweighed the negatives in many ways.

First off, fresh from the microwave, these pita pockets are undistinguishable from their gluteny counterparts. They’re delicious and soft and held up amazingly well to having ingredients added. Anna was actually a little worried that she would get sick, because she thought sure the GFL pita bread must have gluten.

After I convinced her to eat, she finished her plate in record time. The sandwich was excellently sized for someone small, but the pitas were a bit on the tiny side for a grown-up lunch.

Our biggest complaint, though, is that they do not hold well. After defrost and stuffing, there was about a 5 minute window in which the pita bread felt fresh and was easy to eat. When that window closed, the bread became hard and incredibly difficult to chew. It’s a downside to anything that has been frozen and must be defrosted in the microwave, I’m afraid. When Anna got distracted during her second lunch and left her plate at the table for a bit, she was upset to return to a sandwich that was just impossible to eat. She really just couldn’t bite and and eat the chewy/stiff bread. Reheating the sandwich gave her another small window of soft bread time, but the pita certainly wasn’t at it’s best after two trips through the microwave.

We did have a pita in our sample that arrived cracked, so that it was never really a “pocket”. That particular pita became strips to dunk in hummus. It was an excellent dip-scoop!

Our overall opinion of the GFL pita breads was that they’re very expensive for our personal budget. At $9 plus shipping per package, they can never be a regular part of our menu planning. They are the only commercially available gluten-free pitas that I’ve found, though, so they’ll probably be our fallback for special occasions and ethnic meals that really require pita to feel complete.

The quality of the bread itself, not inclusive of our pricing issues, was very good. I wish they held up longer in their delicious fresh-from-the-micro state, since we often have to hold over meals for small “emergencies” or want to take our meals along when we’re traveling. Would we recommend GFL pitas to other folks. Certainly! Will we buy them again ourselves? Probably! Are their things the company can continue to improve in the product. Definitely!

Thanks again to Rami and the gang at GFL for giving us the opportunity to try their product and spread the word to other families who eat gluten free.

It’s been super cold this week. The snow just keeps getting a little deeper each day, and the kids get more and more cabin fever symptoms hanging out in the house. I’ve been forcing them out for fresh air on any day in which they’re remotely perky.

Anna is not super excited at the prospect of getting “outside in the cold air”. She spends a lot of time tucked up under the eaves of the house in the only snow-free space.

The big kids love the snow. They have been trying to roll a record breaking snowball. Thus far, they’re making some decent sized attempts, but no real MASSIVE record breakers have been managed to date.

It’s very early in the winter season, and I’m already beyond tired of the cold. I’m not a lover of the long, cruel winter. I’d love suggestions from folks who have beaten their seasonal depression and developed a love of the cold.

I try to pay attention to the first bird or animal that I see at the start of a new year. I’m just superstitious enough to be interested in what information Nature may want to bring to my attention.

Most years, my first visitor is either a hawk or a squirrel. The last 3 years have been squirrel years, and I imagined that this one would be as well. Lucky me, I was wrong. This year, my first critter visitor was a woodpecker. To be more specific, my first visitors were a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers. The pair of noisy, rap-tapping birdies started up very early this morning.

I was busy making breakfast and tending children, so I had Dave grab the camera and snap a quick pick for blogging.

After breakfast, while the kids were doing some individual schoolwork, I dug into some research on traditional symbolic meanings behind woodpeckers and decided that this was a pretty good fit for the way I envision my next year unfolding.

Traditional wisdom says that a visit from a woodpecker means that we should:
* Nurture our ideas in the womb of our core passions.
* Use our heads (intellect) to think up innovative solutions to overcome barriers.
* Communicate our ideas in more creative or non-traditional ways.
* Stop and consider the opportunities available to us at this time.
* Look at projects in unique creative ways to bring new life to a project.
* Listen more clearly to subtle energies, there is a message that only our intuition can interpret.

((Thank you to many websites for the information about totem symbolisms))

I’m prepping myself for a year in which I think clearly in order to act creatively. What was your first animal or bird of the year and where do you see yourself going in 2010?

We were lucky enough to get to spend the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 in the company of friends and adopted family.

Our Goerlich friends came down from Rochester on Wednesday and spent two night with us, hanging out and playing games, before leaving on Friday afternoon. There was lots of Nerf battling, plenty of board game awesomeness, and some goofing off in the snow. We had a wonderful time playing with Steve, Heather, Tyler, and Emma. Poor Emma was out of her element, though, and spent a great deal of her sleepover refusing to sleep and voicing her displeasure.

Emma perked up on Friday and everybody got to play out in the snow for a while. I was so happy to get to shoot pictures of the Goerlichs out in the winter wonderland that is our yard.

Here’s Steve getting ready to launch a snowball:

Emma wasn’t sure whether or not she was having fun outside in the cold, but she looked incredibly cute toddling around in the snowy yard.

Tyler built an interesting snow wall with an old flower pot as his “bucket” for making blocks. He also got a couple turns on the sled, and threw a few snowballs. He did not, however, wish to have his picture taken.

It had been a long time (including the birth of two kids for the Goerlich family) since Steve and Heather had a chance to come visit at our house. We get to visit them every couple of months or so when we’re hanging at the GrandChen’s place, but it was fun having them in our space.

I’m hoping we will get to do it again in the spring when the weather is more cooperative.