Wednesday - Thursday

I seem to fall off the grid mid-week, making my posts less frequent during these days. Wednesday nights I have class, making my day 7:00 a.m. - 8:30 p.m. and by the time I arrive home, I want to eat and plop on the couch. Next Wednesday is my final presentation for the semester!

This week has seemed incredibly long with TAKS testing three days this week. I'm happy to be actually teaching tomorrow! It is hard to believe there is only about a month of school left. As a result of the mid-week slump, this post will be concise.

A while back we were at World Market buying a new rug. In order to use a coupon, I needed to spend about one dollar more. So of course being me I chose candy!

(Iivana instantly had decided the rug was hers.)

As I searched the candy at the store, I was concerned to find one that was gluten free.

Small victory for me, taffy that is GF!

How did I miss the "State Fair" flavors of butter popcorn, cotton candy, and bubble gum?

I love candy and I love taffy. But I do not love buttered popcorn or bubble gum flavored taffy. The cotton candy flavor was tolerable and I picked them all out of the box. The rest were pawned off to my niece, nephew, and father-in-law.

Déjà vu

Shortly after I posted last night, Justin went to clean Iivana's wound. After complaining about the small gauze I picked up at Target, the following words were not what I expected. "It opened back up!" he uttered in a shocked voice. At that moment so many thoughts went through my mind, with the main one being what do we do? Do we take her to the Emergency Clinic again? Do we take her first thing in the morning to her normal vet? I can't miss the TAKS test and Justin can't miss ALS! I put my head in my hands and cried.

Thankfully my husband can remain calm in these situations. He researched stitched wounds opening back up on the Internet. He concluded we could super glue the wound. Haha...just kidding, but he did see that and a co-worker told me her husband did that to their dog! We decided to wait until the next day. She wasn't bleeding and was not in pain. She just had the huge opening!

I could not sleep and was exhausted this morning with a massive headache. Luckily, Justin was able to drop her off at the vet during his lunch time. After I received his voicemail at lunch, I was finally able to relax, knowing my baby girl was safe at the vet.

So the déjà vu comes in now. The vet decided she needed to restitch the wound.  Apparently the Emergency Pet Center did not stitch it properly. So that meant Iivana had to receive anesthesia again! We couldn't pick her up until 6:30 tonight because it had to wear off first.

My poor drugged up puppy on the drive home.

She even has a new bandage on her leg where they shaved more hair to put in the port for the anesthesia.

We feel like we are back to square one. The crappy part is that neither of us can really afford to take any more time off to stay with her. I might be able to take a day next week, but this week is TAKS, TAKS, TAKS! This time the doctor wants the stitches to stay in for 14 days to ensure this does not happen again.

After work, we were both able to work out and then went straight to pick her up from there. With hungry tummies, we ordered to go from our favorite Thai restaurant, Asia Kitchen. Except this time I did not get the Pad Thai. I ordered the chicken Gaeng Ped which is red curry coconut milk, bamboo, basil, carrots, and bell peppers served over white rice.

No More Stitches!

Ten days later...Iivana's stitches are out! While there are still some juices seeping, we need to continue to clean the area with gauze and peroxide. The vet also prescribed more antibiotics to make sure the area properly heals. She is slowly recovering, but still has to wear her smelly e-collar.

Her paws are so dainty, her e-collar makes her body look not proportional. 

Last night's dinner was chicken cordon bleu, the first meal I made for Justin when we were dating. (And supposedly, the meal that won him over.) Except this version was of course GF.

Step 1: My least favorite part is cleaning the chicken breasts and pounding them. I pound them in saran wrap, so chicken doesn't fly everywhere. I hate dealing with raw chicken, I get so worried about contaminating other areas. I guess it's just like having celiac disease, no cross contamination allowed!

Step 2: I set up my work area. Pre-celiac diagnosis I would buy italian flavored bread crumbs. The GF bread crumbs don't have flavor. So I add italian spices, garlic salt, garlic powder, and seasoning salt. I don't really measure it out, but dump about a teaspoon of each in a bowl & mix it up. I had been using corn crumbs, but I found these brown rice bread crumbs to try. They were very powdery and fine.

I also melted half a stick of butter, set out some swiss cheese and ham, and had my pan ready. 

Step 3: It's easiest to form an assembly line, so you can grab the chicken, put a piece of ham and cheese on, squeeze and roll the chicken. Then I dip in the butter, followed by the crumbs. Lastly I put the rolled chicken in the sprayed Pyrex. 

Step 4: Bake at 350 for about an hour. 

I also serve my chicken cordon bleu with redskin garlic mashed potatoes and fresh green beans.

Everything tasted like an original good old homestyle meal. My only critique was that the rice bread crumbs were a little soggy. They weren't a crisp outer crunch that I would expect. Maybe next time, I'll try less butter.

Now I'm off to read my TAKS instruction manual for tomorrow. My students take their math and reading Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) this week. Standardized testing is so fun...

Happy Easter!

This Easter was very different for several reasons.

1. Breakfast

Last Year: Monkey Bread full of gluten!

This Year: A Sugar Dumplin' sans gluten!

These were fairly simple, and included one of my favorite GF products, Bisquick. The dough was a little crumbly so I rolled them in balls. In hind sight, I should have just scooped the dough into the pan tins because I think I compacted it too much.

The original recipe calls for pecans, which I decided not to use because well...I'm not a huge fan of nuts in my food. Justin said he thought they would be delicious with the pecans. Next time, I'll make some that way for him. I will definitely make these again, thanks Marlow!

2. Easter Baskets

Last Year: We did Easter baskets and Justin hid eggs for me around the house.

This year: I'm going to get a new pair of Tom's instead of a candy basket!

 (We are each getting a new pair, but we still need to order them. As you can see, I love Tom's!) You'll have to wait to see which pair I'm getting. Here are some I already own.

I got red ones for Xmas.

Remember how dirty my navy Tom's got?

And of course, when I rocked the MJ look!

3. Church

This year we were unable to go to church. We stayed home with our sleeping beauty!

Tomorrow I'll post about dinner.

Get Me Out of This House!

I finally decided to get my hair cut, which was something I've been putting off for months especially after the "hang straight" discovery. All I got was a trim, nothing crazy. I want to grow my hair out and I feel like it takes FOR-EV-ER to grow. I've been wearing my hair curly month after month. Wearing curly hid the bad ends rather well, but I lost an inch of hair today to clean up my split ends. I went to my usual Aveda salon, Avant Garde. I came prepared with what research I had done on the Internet prior to my appointment about wheat containing products. I used this forum discussion, looking at the most recent post. I also checked the products there myself, knowing the ingredients can change at any time. My stylist was really understanding and took time to discuss different options. We decided to shampoo and condition with the "damage remedy" which uses soy and quinoa as the protein. I was going to buy some, but decided to wait to see if I noticed any reactions.

After my appointment I stopped at Whole Foods, since it was across the street. I picked up a few essentials: San-J peanut sauce and Udi's bread. I also looked at the shampoo and conditioners at Whole Foods. After examining the 365 brand, I thought it seemed safe. I asked a worker if she knew if the shampoo/conditioner was GF. She said it's not labeled GF, but she's seen people identify GF on the internet. Two workers and I read the labels and all agreed we didn't see any gluten containing ingredients. I have not tried it yet, but I'll let y'all know what I think about it.

It was so amazing to get out of the house today. I can only image how Iivana feels. You go almost stir crazy and become completely unmotivated. I've been able to successfully avoid my homework. Yay, only one class and the final left of the semester.

This is my crazy dog hiding behind the curtain to entertain herself.

For dinner I used the peanut sauce to make lettuce wraps, but wanted to add a twist from the last time. I diced some water chestnuts to cook with the chicken, used romaine lettuce, and cut up some green onions to garnish with.

I chopped the chicken this time instead of shredding it with a fork, because I was lazy. So the chicken wasn't as small this time, which I think I prefer it shredded. For some reason the chicken mixture was rather watery today. I eventually added a little corn starch to thicken it up before serving it.

The final product consisted of romaine lettuce topped with brown rice, the chicken mixture, and green onions.

To top off the meal, we drank some Texas Hill Country wine that we bought when Julie was visiting.

One last bit of information to share with you all tonight. While looking at the website for Whole Foods I came across this page on Understanding Celiac Disease. It gives a great overview of Celiac Disease, so you should all check it out to become more informed!

Hanging Out

I took today off and a half day yesterday to stay home with Iivana. (Click here if you're wondering why.) She's getting better, but still needs to rest and be watched. As you can see we often have to keep her leash on so she doesn't start to run around the house. In this photo, I snuck up on her while she was napping and she opened her eyes thinking, "Mom, why are you taking pictures of me again?" Right now her life consists of eating numerous treats and rawhides, sleeping, and potty. Good news though, her drain/stint came out on Tuesday.

Our food supply seems to be rather diminished at home, and neither Justin or I have any desire to go grocery shopping. For lunch, I knew I would have to be creative. Last night at class, a girl in my class was eating a Subway sandwich. I hadn't had a thought like this in a long time, but I looked over at her and just wished I could go to Subway to get a sub sandwich as well. It must have been the crunch of veggies I heard from across the room, or the oniony smell. Whatever it was, I was totally jealous!

So as I rummaged through the pantry I found another Chebe mix from my rare find.

I decided to make the bread mix into sandwich buns.

Justin came home and thought they were giant cookies.

I nearly cut my hand while trying to slice the "bun" in half.

I constructed my own turkey sandwich with the few items left in the house.

The sandwich turned out decent, especially since it was made from a limited supply of items. I was hoping for more fluffy bread, but it was pretty similar to the focaccia mix.

Sweet Tooth

We've been trying to not buy as much junk food, but after dinner I always have a sweet tooth. Last time we were at the commissary, I noticed some GF Lucy's cookies.

There were three different varieties at the store, but I chose the sugar cookie to try first. Initially, I wasn't going to get them, because like I said we've been trying to eat better. (Being bums with Iivana this weekend has totally killed the lack of sweets in the house.) But when I looked at the nutrition facts, I decided to add them to the cart. Three cookies for 4.5 grams of fat and only 130 calories. To me, that's a decent snack of sweetness.

The cookies had a pretty good sugar cookie taste. I prefer soft, chewy cookies and these were all crunch! I'd buy them again though since they seemed to satisfy my sweet tooth and didn't pack on too many calories. Justin wasn't much of a fan and thought they had an aftertaste.

Lazy Weekend

As I posted yesterday, Iivana was attacked at the dog park on Friday night. The turn of events happened rapidly and we're still in shock. I don't really want to go into the details but long story short...a pit bull bit Iivana in a couple different places. We took her to the Emergency Pet Center to receive care late Friday night. She went under anesthesia to get examined more closely where they stitched up two of the bites and inserted a drain. Amazingly, the bite only went into the muscle so she was lucky it didn't get the lung.

Iivana is trying to rest. If anyone knows our pup she is very active, and well for Iivana it is torture to take it easy. She wants to play and run, but we are keeping an incredibly close eye on her. In fact, we have to alternate taking days off this week to stay home with her. We have to make sure she does not try to get her collar off and then irritate her stitches.

We think she looks like the dinosaur from Jurassic Park with her Elizabethan collar.

While Friday into Saturday was not lazy like the title of my post would imply, the rest of the day yesterday and today we've been lazy with our Vana.

I made stuffed peppers for dinner yesterday from a recipe I found on another GF blog. I halved the recipe since I was just making one for each of us. The recipe was really easy and didn't require much work. Here are the peppers before they were cooked.

The roasted peppers look so good right out of the oven.

They were served over brown rice. The flavor was juicy and had a good spice.

Viva Fiesta

One thing I love about San Antonio is having a holiday for Fiesta! I had no school on Friday and Justin took the day off. The day started off great, we both worked out then made our way to the Battle of Flowers Fiesta Parade. There were marching bands, floats with queens, and giant sized balloons.

Once again, the hot Texas sun beamed down to make for one hot afternoon. The parade provided 3 plus hours of entertainment.

Yes, we even had Fiesta shirts!

After the parade, we decided to walk to pick up our packet for the Walk for Autism since we were already downtown. Our stomaches were grumbling, so we proceeded a little further to The Cove.

The Cove is a car wash/laundromat/garden

/play place

/bar

and of course a restaurant with GF food!

I ordered the 09er burger with roasted red pepper, goat cheese and pesto aioli. The buns are from where else, but The Little Aussie Bakery. I don't know if I was overly hungry but literally every time I took a bit I mumbled, "Mmm..."

Justin ordered from the gluten free menu as well. This is the Seafood Sampler composed of one shrimp and fish taco with a spinach salad.

In addition, he ordered Joe's taco: grilled mushrooms, sauteed spinach, grilled red onion, cilantro coleslaw, and spicy poblano sauce on a corn tortilla. The fish tacos are amazing as well. They are full of so much fresh flavor.

After spending the afternoon out, we decided to take Iivana to the dog park. This is where our day took a turn for unplanned excitement. My poor baby was attacked by another dog. She's recovering now at home trying to rest. I'll try to write more about tomorrow, but it still makes me really sad to think about it.