Bye-bye cheese

The week before last, Jamie was having a very rough week. Acting difficult, communicating poorly or not at all, lots of stimming, and lots of awful diapers. Speech therapy with Kathy last week was pretty bad - mostly did some PT for him and discussed prospects for him needing continued help after age 3. Sigh.

I kept looking at these awful diapers and thinking I *KNOW* I'm not letting him get anything with eggs in it, what is the problem? It occurred to me maybe it was something else in his diet. Started thinking about taking dairy out, as the first step of seeing if he needs GFCF like Brendan does. Oh, I hope he doesn't, that was such a pain. Started thinking how can I do that, he eats SO much cheese - then realized oh no, it's exactly the mental train of thought that most parents use to explain why their kid can't go on GFCF, but generally means they really need it. Well, not as bad as some of them are, but still.

So for a week Jamie has been very low dairy. I'm not scrutinizing labels on everything the way I did for Brendan, but no cheese, nothing with cheese in it, avoiding anything with obvious milk.

His diapers are significantly improved. His speech is improved. I think his behavior is improved - he'll take the thumb out of his mouth more often, I'm getting kisses again - whole clusters of them. He's easier to be around. He's taking more interest in early potty training.

I'm having very mixed feelings. Glad of the improvement, annoyed to think I'm going to have to keep ANOTHER major ingredient out of his diet. Although really it's too early to be sure - it *might* just be he had a bad week, and is having a good week, and it's not connected. Need to keep him off it for a while longer, then maybe test it. Gah.

We're out of bread, and between needing it for more nondairy food options (please please don't let him need to go wheat free...) and wanting to avoid the usual buttermilk bread we buy, I'm baking today. It's a dairy-free three-rising batter rising bread, a lot of work but it's supposed to produce a very fine loaf. We'll see how it does.

I'm tired - in addition to being halfway through bread baking, today I made hot breakfasts for Karl and the kids, took out trash, am doing laundry, did dishes, cleaned and vacuumed the living room, bathed and dressed the kids, swept the kitchen, and got Jamie through speech. Which went pretty well, LOTS better than last week. Now I'm making their lunches.

Measurement problems

Oh damn damn damn.

I was poking through my various bread books on the shelf, looking for a basic bread recipe that did not use milk. Saw one. Oh yes, this is the book that I haven't used because it's British, so it's all in pints of water and pounds of flour.

So got selenite to pull up conversions for me. Oh, the liquid measuring cup has pints on it anyway, so that's easy. And he gave me lbs to cups of flour.

Well, now that it's in the second rise (of 3), I am poking about and reading through more of the book - and I find a British-American conversion chart.

British pints are not the same as American pints. British tsp and tbsp are not the same as American tsp and tbsp.

So the bread will probably be awful.

DAMN.

I am considering hurling the book into the trash.

Now I need to start over finding a different milk-free recipe. Darn it, this one was appealing - it's a three-rise batter-rising recipe, a lot of work but it sounded like it would be really nice.

determined optimism

After a 2nd kneading and shaping the loaves to go into the breadpans, I'm going to be cautiously optimistic. After all, as I remind myself, I don't ever exactly follow flour measurements on bread - you just put in enough to get the dough workable, and then work in as much flour as it takes to get to the right feeling. So if my water, oil, and salt amounts were a bit low, probably I kneaded in less flour.

The texture of the dough I just worked with felt right, anyway.

I'm still trying to figure out what to glaze the crust with - egg white or yolk is traditional - and out. Milk is supposed to produce a nice soft crust - and is out. Butter too. Water gets a crisp crust - I really didn't want that effect. I wonder what I'd get just from oil.

bread report

Oh, it's good, it's good, it's good.

The kids have had two heels with margarine already. [1]

I had a turkey sandwich, and then two pieces with margarine and strawberry jam.

I need more strawberry jam. Sadly I'm fussy, and don't like the stuff with high fructose corn syrup, which means buying the Simply Fruit stuff. Which is in small jars and expensive. I wonder if the farmer's market place in Fort Worth has jam like that. I don't think I'm quite ready to learn how to put up my own, although I suppose it might come to that someday.

[1] Two heels, because the loaves only fit in my largest storage bag once you've taken off the heel and about 2 slices.)