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.