Holiday Recipes, Gluten Free

All right, if there's snow on the ground (and there is snow on the ground! Snow! Still freaking out....) then it's time to start holiday baking (if only because the oven is a major source of heat in this house!).

You may not know that I'm on a fairly strict medical diet, called the Modified Atkins (for seizures) that limits my carbs hard, and for similar reasons have had to cut out gluten entirely. No treats then, you think? Not a bit of it! Check out:

Christmas Color Cookies

3 large egg whites
2-3 tbsp sugar-free Jell---oh, I mean, flavored gelatin dessert;P of your favorite flavor

Hardware:
Parchment Paper (NOT waxed paper! Oh for the love of all things edible, NOT WAXED PAPER!)
shiny cookie sheet
Electric Egg Beater (although, if you just hate yourself, you can do this by hand...I guess...)

Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. If you don't know what that is, it's when you pull the beaters out, and the whites stay sticking straight up.:)

Pour on the Jell--uh, gelatin dessert powder. Beat into the egg whites until fully added (some worry about overbeating the egg whites. I have never ever ever seen this happen, in over a decade of making meringues of all sorts).

With a spoon or piping bag, drop spoon sized dollops of meringue (any size from teaspoon to tablespoon, really-small ones will be more like candy, large ones more chewy) on the parchement paper (doesn't have to be on the cookie sheet- one of the reasons parchement and meringue are such good chums is that you can totally get a sheet of paper loaded and waiting for limited cookie sheets!). But put the paper on a cookie sheet before putting the whole thing in the oven at 225 for an hour or so, depending on your dollop sizes.:)

These cookies will be the color and flavor of the gelat-oh, we all know I mean Jello. But you can add extracts of almond or vanilla or even chocolate to change the taste up-- almond-cherry or chocolate-orange are great! But I like lime and raspberry. What's your favorite?

Snow? Snow?!? SNOW!

Holy CATS. I was up early, decorating the tree. And then this weird sound came from the outside, and if you're from colder places, you probably know what I'm talking about. But I'm from Central Texas, so I have a thousand words that fail to describe it utterly. And lo, I opened the door, and there it was, like a really gentle hailstorm.

SNOW!

So, like anyone who's lived in Southern Central Texas their whole life long, I lost all my sense and ran out in my total lack of proper clothing to take pictures. I got bunches, actually, but I don't think anything says "We did not expect this" on an environmental level like snow in blooming sunflowers.

So. Uh. Wow. Happy Holidays, with a vengeance!

Featured Etsy Blogger: The Fab Miss B!

Well, heck, in the midst of my not being well, I nearly missed noting our Etsy Blogger of the month! And that would be a shame, because not only does the Fab Miss B host giveaways, she stocks aprons in her store! Giveaways are of course a nigh-surefire sign of a good blogger; anyone giving away Loot is invested in their project, after all.

As for aprons-- well, they make everyone, of either gender, instantly cuter AND classier. And they're terribly useful. They protect more extensive clothing, and yet often outshine the very items they're sacrificing themselves for. In short, aprons are one of the truest signs of Civilization, and any shop stocking them should be encouraged as being a standard bearer for our times.

So, you know. Go visit Miss B!

Carapace Versus the Orange Gourds of Doooom

Time to bust out my ethnocentrism and wish everybody a Happy Thanksgiving! Even if you don't live in the US. Happy..um..late November? Or you could join us in eating ourselves sick on big plates of food; it's really one of the easiest holidays to play along with. I'll join in yours!

I mean it. I love the holidays. Any holidays. All Arbor's Day of the Chrimukwanukah Solstivus Eve, whatever you got, I'll take it. Every Thanksgiving I can lay my hands on (did you know the first American Thanksgiving was actually in Texas? No? It's true!), Halloween and Day of the Dead, I don't care. Any excuse for strange foods and rituals is a good one!

But there is an element of the latter-month holidays that fills me with dread, one nasty nigh-inescapable blight on this shiniest of seasons. One nasty ORANGE blight.

See, I'm allergic to orange foods. It's not that I dislike them. I *dislike* canned peas. Canned peas do not make me throw the heck up, or break out in hives, or have trouble breathing. But pumpkin, sweet potatoes, even humble carrots, when cooked...they bring the doom upon me. And most of the year, they are easy to avoid. But today, on this festive holiday occasion, they are everywhere. And so I have learned earlier than most to cook my own holiday dinner, and hold Thanksgiving only with those close companions who have shown an understanding of concepts like "anaphylactic shock" and "next time the mess goes in YOUR shoes".

So today, armed with turkey and pecan pie, I go once more to brave the trials of Family Fun. I'm grateful to be able to go to a fairly safe place; and I'll be even more grateful to return home, if I can sneak by the well meaning relatives and stealth pies once again.

May your Thanksgivings be fun, and less full of danger!

Thank You

Time for another Etsy Texas Challenge! This month's theme was Gratitude, which is noble as heck, but awfully abstract and hard to portray.

I think the team may actually have gone too abstract, and I'm not sure there's going to be enough entries here to run the challenge. But for you, my bloggy faithful, a picture:



There is nothing more hideously critical to the learning process than an audience. So thank you, mysterious people of the internet, for hanging around this rather infrequent blog. Your comments and encouragement are more appreciated than you know.

Look! A Distraction!

Though I do the wonderful Folk of Etsy a great disservice to call her such....

I'm trying very hard to have a fun post for ya'll tonight, but for now, why not check out my interview with Folk over here:

http://folkcraft.blogspot.com/2009/11/in-craftlight-carapace.html


She asks a lot of fun questions, and I took my own verbose time answering them, so that should keep everyone busy for quite a while. Look over there, while I remember how to type!

Fair Notice With a Turtle

I am not well.
There's no punchline here; it's not a joke about me being crazy. I have some serious health issues, and they're rearing up to bite me lately. So I may be a bit quieter than usual. A whole big bit. I'll try to keep the blog lively though, and when I post I'm liable to not be in my right mind, so stick around! And if it's ever quiet for two weeks at a go, you can call the Marines. Or the Coast Guard. Or the Glee Club. You know, whatever.
I don't like to talk about it, because it is complicated and boring. But I felt my hypothetical blog readers, needed some explanation for my occasional long quietus. So, there it is.

Hey! Check it out, I'm drawing a turtle!: