On the lino: dairy-free ice cream, blood and tears, deck stain

Every once in a while you have those days, as a parent, in which you do, or don't do, something you regret. Today is one of those days.

My mother was taking care of my children today and though I was home most of the day, I did have to run out to a doctor's appointment. When I came home I went out to the back yard where my mother was pushing my son in the swing and my daughter was watching, eagerly awaiting her turn. When she heard my voice, she turned towards me and ran/toddled over. I saw red on her nose and her lip and at first assumed it was raspberry. As I got closer to her I realized it was a cut down her little nose and on to her upper lip. "What happened!?" I asked my mother. Apparently the framed art we had taken down in order to patch a hole in the wall, and then left leaning against the couch in the play area, had somehow hit my daughter in the nose. My mom didn't see it happen, so we don't know how it hit her, but thank God it hit her nose and not her eyes. It was a surface scratch, some blood, many tears, but it will heal.

Why was the painting there? I saw it leaning up against the couch and thought "I should move that." But I didn't. If it was worse, I would have felt extremely guilty for not moving it when I should have. Just another wake up reminder that we have a toddler in the house and we can't just leave things around like we have become used to.

This morning I stained the deck. I spent the last 2 days scrubbing the deck on hands and knees (burned, blistered knees), and got around to staining it at 7 am. I ran out of stain pretty quickly and went back to the store early to get more. I literally painted myself into a corner because the deck is 10 feet off the yard and the only place I had to go was back into the house. I had to walk on the wet (hot!) deck in order to finish the last boards. Damn. Now I have stained feet. And I have to walk into the kitchen. Not that I care about the linoleum, but I still didn't want deck stain on it. I did my best to wipe my feet on our terrible door mat, but still managed to track stain into the kitchen. Ugh. It wiped up pretty easily (so did the wall where I accidentally bumped into it with the stain-filled paint brush). If any is left, well, you can't tell, it all just sort of blends in with the other stains.

More ice cream!

I have been looking for a good vegan ice cream recipe and then realized…I don't have to make the ice cream vegan, I just have to make it dairy-free. My son eats eggs. I looked around for a recipe, but I couldn't find any I liked, so, I made up my own based on a regular milk recipe.

When I asked my son what flavour of ice cream he wanted, he said "green". Well, after going through all things green...spinach, broccoli, kiwi, grass…we finally settled on mint with green food colour.

Mint-chocolate chip dairy-free ice cream

5 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup almond milk
2 T dairy free margarine
1 1/2 cup coconut milk (separated into 1/2 cup and 1 cup)
1/2 tsp mint extract
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 drop green food gel
as many chocolate chips as you want (dairy free)

Beat egg yolks and sugar. Place egg mixture over a double boiler and add almond and 1/2 cup coconut milk. Heat until thick (custardy). Remove from heat and stir in margarine. Cool to room temperature before adding the remaining 1 cup of coconut milk, the extracts and food colouring (if desired).

Churn according to your ice cream makers directions and add chocolate chips just before you are done churning. It will be soft serve consistency. Put into an airtight container in the freezer for a couple of hours before serving.

The consistency is really smooth, just like you would expect from ice cream. I don't think anyone will know it is dairy free. Plus, I don't like coconut and I liked this ice cream. The mint kills the coconut flavour. My son was over the moon! Finally, he gets to eat ice cream!

On the lino: ice cream, strawberries and a mop

Happy Canada Day!

Today we celebrated by going to Granville Island. We hit the water park and the kids loved it. Afterwards, we sought out some food and found a shawarma truck. I checked that the chicken shawarma was dairy free and then gave it to my son, who can't have dairy.

Two hours later my son was a crazy person. He was hyper, disobedient, contrary…all the signs that he had dairy. I think the chicken may have been marinated in yoghurt and maybe the person serving us didn't know, or forgot. It definitely makes eating out less fun when you have to check every ingredient and also place your son's well being in the hands of others.

Today is also my daughter's first birthday, so we celebrated at home with family and close friends. I envisioned a lovely garden tea party and dressed my little one in a new yellow dress from her grandmother. She had other plans. After about 3 minutes, the dress was off and she was in the kiddie pool. My hyper son (3), stripped naked and ran around the yard. We managed to get a bathing suit on him and he pooped in it (he's been potty trained since he was 2, why is he doing this!?). So much for relaxing garden party. I don't know how I have these expectations. It's like I forget I'm a mother of two little sticky people and no, life is not going to go as planned or hoped.

Fun was had anyway, and I served fresh fruit and homemade ice cream. I adapted Alton Brown's Serious Vanilla Ice Cream and it melted about as quickly as I could dish it out. It was good, but too sweet for me. Plus, I overdosed on the vanilla.

Here's my version of the recipe…

2 cups half and half
1 cup cream
pinch of salt
about a cup of sugar
1/2 a fresh peach, chopped
2 T of vanilla extract

Bring liquids and salt to 175 F in a medium pot. Put in the sugar, peach and vanilla and let cool. Put in fridge overnight. Use ice cream maker.

Two tablespoons of vanilla was too much. I would probably use 1 tablespoon next time. I fished out the peach before churning, but I guess you could leave it in. It adds pectin, not flavour. I don't know if reducing the sugar will affect the consistency. I'll try it and see.

I really wanted to use a recipe that had egg in it, but I kind of messed up by starting this recipe and then realizing it didn't have eggs, and then I couldn't go back from there.

Strawberries did make it taste better and, I don't know how, but in the 3 min. my daughter was wearing her dress, she managed to sit (?) on a strawberry. I think. I didn't see it happen, I just saw the aftermath. Thank goodness for Shout.

A mop actually did hit the floor today, pushed by my husband. He made bread and flour got everywhere and I couldn't handle the feel of it on my feet, plus I was tracking it into other rooms. And, I think the heat it getting to me here so I had a small freak out and the floor got mopped. But oh, the things that will be smeared on it tomorrow.

I'm going to deviate from theme here and comment on the Bachelorette, which I am almost embarrassed to say I watch, but I find it oddly fascinating. Who are these people who put themselves out there on national television in order to find a mate? Some are likely there for their 15 min. of fame, but it seems even they get sucked into the strangeness of it and think they are falling in love with someone after a combined total of 20 min. with that person. Anyway, it continues to fascinate me.

I'm not sure where this season is going though, and I'm not really impressed by anyone on the show. I was supporting Kaitlyn as she is a fellow Vancouverite (via Alberta), but the process seems to be getting to her. It's also getting to the guys, who seem to forget which show they are on. They are losing it because other guys are dating her, but um, this IS a show about multiple men dating one woman. Did they not watch at least one season before signing up? I don't think Kaitlyn has a good group of guys, as she keeps saying (I don't know if she even believes that), and I think she has some tough choices to make. She'd be better off just dating in Vancouver, off camera. Well, wait, no, there are no men in Vancouver apparently, according to single female friends. I just think she has slim pickings. If it were me, I would choose Jared, he seems like a nice, funny, honest guy. But, she'll probably choose Shawn because he seems flawed. I don't find him attractive or stable. Which means she'll choose him. And, in 6 months we'll hear about the break up.

Next, I'm going to try vegan ice cream, so my son can have something for dessert. He calmed down by bed time…a small blessing.

On the lino: cocoa, shallots, sorbet

You would think with my new found time during the day I would actually accomplish more than when the kids were here. No. I think I need entropy in order to achieve anything.

By the time I got home from daycare drop off, which seems to take FOREVER, it was time to make cupcakes. A friend needed 25 mini cupcakes for her son's birthday celebration at his preschool and, though I sometimes find this shocking, she didn't know how to make cupcakes. Yes, I live in this strange mindset that everyone bakes and why do we need stores that sell cupcakes?, because, geez, they are just so easy to make. I seem to be in a tiny minority here…most people do not seem to love to bake as much as I do. Weird.

Anyway…as I watched her agonize on Facebook about borrowing mini cupcake tins, recipes, etc. I just volunteered to make them. End of agony for her, start of baking therapy for me. The best baking is the kind you can give away at the end so that you aren't staring at cupcakes at midnight without a shred of willpower left in your exhausted body.

My son has a dairy allergy…not a lactose intolerance as most people assume. Me: "my son is allergic to dairy". Other person: "Oh, so he's lactose intolerant." No. He's allergic to the protein in the milk, and boy do you know it when everything that went in starts coming back out! His symptoms have lessened since we figured it out at 4 months, but he still completely wigs out when he has dairy. So, I am always looking for alternatives for him. Enter the vegan cupcake. I love the word 'vegan' on food because it means I'm not scouring the ingredients list, hoping dairy isn't hidden in some strange sounding additive that I don't recognize. Vegan just plain says "there ain't no dairy in this!"Fabulous.

I usually don't tell people these are vegan cupcakes because people get really weird about it. Like I'm trying to give them cardboard or something. They also assume they are gluten free for some reason. Nope, all the gluten, none of the animal bits. They are rich and fluffy and all around yummy. No one knows they are vegan.

I use Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero to make fabulous cupcakes (vegancupcakes.wordpress.com).

I am a messy baker though, and for some reason cannot contain the cocoa. It always gets everywhere, and especially the floor where it inevitably finds some of the water my daughter has spat and I've missed wiping up and then I get a chocolatey soup on the lino. Thank God I don't care about this floor! Bring it!

Shallots. Yes, those not quite onion things that sure pack an eye watering punch! Husband wanted quiche for dinner and pointed me to the recipe. I shopped and prepped. In pouring the shallots from the food processor (yes, I cheated) into a prep bowl, some of the little slimy pieces made their way to the floor. I think they are still there. Damn. The quiche was nothing special. Crust was good, filling just didn't have any flavour and of course we can't put cheese in. Which is why it didn't have flavour. Also, husband made it and almost never remembers to put salt into anything. Sometimes you have to just let some things go, right? Plus, I didn't have to make it.

On to the sorbet. Ahhh, summer and berries. I actually made the sorbet yesterday, but can't stop sneaking spoonfuls from the freezer. Last weekend we picked local strawberries (and by we I mean I, kids just don't pull their weight in berry picking). I washed them, hulled them and then pulverized 6 cups of them with a simple syrup (3/4 cup sugar, 6 T water, heated on stove until dissolved, then cooled).

I usually make ice cream without an ice cream maker, and it works fairly well. Sorbet is a little more difficult without the maker because it's hard to stir once it freezes as the low fat content allows it to freeze more solidly than ice cream. I called my mom. Yes, she still had the ice cream maker from the 80s and yes, she was looking right at it. She had in fact been thinking of using it. Shocking. I quickly convinced her that she should just give it to me and I would give her a portion of whatever I made. Deal.

In 15 min (and a trip to my mom's) I had lovely, smooth, vibrantly red, strawberry sorbet. I also beat an egg white and folded that in just before I had finished churning. No, it doesn't get cooked, yes, I'm ok with that. It allows the sorbet to keep a smooth texture and you can keep it in the freezer longer.

Do you think my kids can eat sorbet without it getting all over their faces, in their hair, and yes, on the lino? Is that a rhetorical question?

I worked out today. I think I deserve a bowl of yum. And, since my husband went out with a buddy tonight, I think I will ignore the floor as I head for the freezer. It can wait until tomorrow, right?

Come here sorbet, get in my belly!

What's on the lino today?

Today is my first day with both kids in daycare. I'm getting ready to go back to work but needed a couple of weeks to myself before adding another layer of chaos to our lives. As I drove to a coffee date with a friend, I suddenly felt liberated knowing that I didn't have any children with me, then immediately felt guilty for having that thought. I felt deserving of a little time off before going back to work and guilty that I wasn't home scrubbing the kitchen floor like I said I was going to do. Why do women do this to themselves?

On the lino today: wet cereal, water, dry bread.

My son asks for O shaped cereal and then doesn't eat it. He doesn't like going to daycare and stalls at the breakfast table every morning. I beg him, coerce him, cajole him to eat but inevitably he abandons the cereal leaving it to bloat with rice milk. I then put the bowl on the floor so my daughter (thought I was going to say dog?) can eat it. She's one. She has her own special way of eating and sitting on the floor with a spoon and a bowl of hand me down cereal is just one of those ways. She's not so good with the spoon, hence the cereal on the floor.

She's also terrible at drinking water from any vessel. She refuses to drink from a bottle, can drink from a cup, but gets over zealous and most of it ends up on her, and, when drinking from a straw cup, projectile spits water further than a fountain on the Los Vegas strip. What I love is when the water meets the O cereal and just makes a smear on the bottom of my foot when I, yet again, step on one of those mushy rings. Mmm.

At some point as I was making lunches, I handed my daughter some bread. I guess she didn't eat it as it too lay on the floor, desiccated now after a few hours unnoticed. The bread is really good though, we use Michael Smith's Heritage Bread recipe from his cookbook Back to Basics. My husband makes the bread by hand every few days. If you just read that and rolled your eyes or thought "who has time?"…you do. Really. This bread is so good and so easy to make, you'll think driving to the store to get bread is more difficult. Plus, you know what's in it! As I say to my kids…don't doubt it until you try it.

Oh, what will be on the floor tomorrow…only time will tell.