Simplicity

Bread and water never tasted so good.

Dairy-Free Pizza

First of all, I would just like to say THANK YOU to everyone who offered advice to me regarding my allergy, whether in the comments section, via facebook, email, or in person. I really, really appreciate it so much. I had no idea there were so many people that I knew who deal with the same thing! It's encouraging to see so much feedback.

For all of you who warned me against soy, thank you, I promptly did a little research and came to the same conclusion as most of you had about its ill effects. Soy milk is kind of the devil. My mother suggested I look into making either almond or rice milk. So I turned to google and found some great tutorials on how to do both. Since we don't yet have a blender or a food processor, I opted to try making rice milk first, as it doesn't require either of those appliances. It was super easy and it works great in all the recipes I've tried it in.

What I'm going to share with you is a recipe I created to fix my pizza craving. Next to ice cream, pizza is the food I am most loathe for forsake. So I began scheming as to how I could consume said food without becoming violently ill. What you'll need is:

1 recipe of Elisabeth's favorite bread dough

2 cups of chopped cooked chicken

3/4 cup chopped onion

5-6 cloves of garlic

1 tsp. salt

2 Tbls. flour

 2 Tbls. olive oil

1 3/4 c. rice milk

Any pizza toppings you like; peppers, mushrooms, sausage etc...

Ok, so first you're going to take your bread dough after it's risen once, shape half of it into a bread loaf and press the other half into a cookie sheet to make a pizza crust. Let it it rise for an hour. Then take the crust and poke holes everywhere except the edges where you want the crust to be puffy. Brush it with olive oil and sprinkle with basil and oregano. Bake for at 400 degrees for ten minutes.

While the crust is baking saute 1/4 cup of onion, 2 cloves of garlic with the olive oil. After a few minutes add the flour and saute a further minute or two. Then add the rice milk. Whisk constantly till thickened.

When the crust comes out of the oven, cover it with the white sauce, the chicken, the remaining onion, remaining garlic, and whatever other dairy-free toppings you desire.
 Bake until the sauce is bubbly, roughly ten minutes. It should look and smell amazing.

(And don't forget to then bake the bread when the pizza is done! You might have to make your husband a chicken sandwich if he, horrors, doesn't care for it.)

I found that this pizza is surprisingly satisfying despite the lack of cheese. The white sauce makes of for it, to some extent, with its creamy consistency. It might need extra salt also, again, to compensate for the saltiness of the cheese.

Sadly, Silas felt the lack of cheese pretty keenly. And while he thought it was ok, but remarked after two pieces "Not my favorite thing you've ever made." So I guess next time I make this I will make half of it normally for Silas. Poor guy.

My husband is not often wrong. But honestly, this is incredible. You should try it, even if you don't have problems with dairy.

Wedding Photobooth

When I think about our wedding, one of the things I look back on with the most satisfaction is the photobooth. I saw an idea for this on several wedding blogs and I wondered how I could implement this splendid idea in Silas and I's wedding. I talked to the lovely Miss Jessica and she consented to set up the booth and take pictures for us.

And we got marvelous results. Silas and I looked at the pictures together about two weeks after the wedding. We weren't sure what to expect at first but by the time we finished looking all we had to say was "We have the most awesome friends and family ever."

My brother, Rainor.

Mr. and Mrs. S.

Our DJ, Ryan.

Lynae, Hanna, and one of our photographers, Natalie.

Katie with an inside joke.

Andre. Or Louis. Or Gabe. It's really hard to tell with the wig/feather boa/bird's nest. (EDIT: It appears this is actually my brother-in-law, Abraham. Bad sister-in-law!)

Andy being deep.

Katie and my sister Christa... not being deep.

Andy and Amy.

Peter being silly. And mathematical.

Ellie being glamorous.

Ian being Ian.

Janice being sweet.

My brother, Daniel. And no, I don't understand either.

Mr. and Mrs. P. I laughed out loud when I saw this one.

Louis and Natalie. An Oregon Gothic?

The Pittsburghers who flew out for our wedding!

Back row: Jesse, Christi, Mike,  and Emily F.

Front row: Britt, Emily R. and Elizabeth

It's the Silas tummy!

Back row: Jesse, Christi, Elizabeth and Mike

Front row: Emily F., Emily R., and Britt

Thanks everyone for being so awesome!

All photos in this post courtesy of Jessica Swan.

Things I'm giving thanks for in 2009

This is, by no means, a complete list.

1. I am thankful for my husband, Silas, and for all the things I've learned from him since we've been married.
   
2. I am thankful for all the support that Silas and I had from friends and family to make our wedding happen.
   
3. I am thankful for the way in which God has provided for us since our marriage and that  He continues to do so even now.
4. I am thankful for an easy transition into the city of Pittsburgh, especially the bus system.
   
5. I am thankful for City Reformed, the church family I have recently become a member of.
6. I am thankful for my Mother and for Silas's Mother, both of whom are always ready to share their wisdom and experience.
7. I am thankful for the life of my cousin, Jason, and for the opportunity I had to spend time with him earlier this year.
8. I am thankful for my Macbook - a present from my aunt. Eternally grateful.
9. I am thankful for the complete stranger that helped me get a piece of furniture home the other day.
10. I am thankful for God's continuing grace in my life.
    

To that angel, Margaret.

In the spirit of thanksgiving, I would just like to say that I am ridiculously grateful for a package I received on Friday. It looked like this:

I was curious. Very curious. I opened it up and found this card.

I became MORE than curious. I pulled away the paper and found this:

It cannot be. It simply CANNOT be an entire box of...

NALLEY'S CHILI!

AHHHHHH!!! SERIOUSLY!?!

Turns out, our very dear friend, Margaret, heard about the horrible lack of decently gross canned chili in the state of Pennsylvania and rectified the situation. To convey the deep seated joy and gratefulness which Silas and I feel towards said angelic being, I would like to share with you a poem I composed.

To That Angel, Margaret

No more shall I call you Marge,

Or Maggot, or Mags or Mark.

Nor shall I compare thee to a slug

Or a woman with no heart.

For by a gift of love and friendship

Your reputation has been cleared

Your name has become hallowed

And your person is endeared.

For ever after upon consumption

Of chili mac, that most glorious food

Your name shall be blessed repeatedly

With every mouthful chewed.

My Husband Has Pretty Eyes

He's clearly exasperated with me in this picture. He's so cute when he's exasperated.

Allergies suck. Please help me!

As a child I was allergic to milk. Anytime I drank it I was afflicted with horrible ear infections.  My Mom eventually figured out what was going on and strictly forbid the consumption of said product, but by this time I had scarring in my ears and suffered hearing loss. Thankfully, I outgrew both the hearing damage and the milk allergy by the time I reached my teen years. As long as I didn't over do the dairy intake, I could consume small quantities of milk and anything I desired that contained milk products. I was so thankful and I pitied those with any kind of food allergies.

Recently, however, my allergy has re-manifested itself and as a far more sensitive mutation. As of last month my body has simply decided that it does not wish to digest a variety of milk products. At first I denied it. I claimed it was a virus. I claimed it was hormonal. Anything but an allergy! Maybe, I thought, maybe there was a build up of yeast in my body that was causing it to react strongly to dairy and I wasn't actually allergic to anything!

So last week I went completely off of refined sugar so that the yeast would have nothing to feed on. Additionally, I took all dairy out of my diet to make the reactions stop while I sorted out this sugar thing. I hoped that after a week I'd be fine and could return to my normal eating habits, which really are pretty healthy. I felt great all week. There wasn't a single sign of my reactions I'd been having. "Great!" I thought, "logic wins again!"

But no, when I resumed my usual eating over the weekend so did the pain I'd been suffering the previous weeks. Bang goes that theory. I feel betrayed by my body, like it's attacking me. But I am finally ready to start thinking about what my future without milk, cheese, ice cream, and perhaps even butter, will look like in the future.

Today I bought soy milk so I can experience cooking with it. I'm also already back to a dairy free diet in the hopes that I will be able to slowly introduce things to see what my body can handle. Example: Will my body accept butter? What about yogurt? Ice cream? (The latter is, no doubt, ridiculously hopeful.)

So my question to you, my faithful readers, is this; do any of you have milk/lactose allergies? How do you deal with that? Do you find that your allergy makes it difficult for you to live like a normal person?

Meanwhile, I'll be checking out the soy ice cream section of Trader Joe's. Mournfully.

You Can't Stop the Beat!

Tonight Silas and I are going to see Toby Mac and Relient K in concert at Mellon Arena! Britt is going with us and we're all pretty sure we're gonna have an amazing time. I'm especially excited about Relient K since they have been one of my favorite bands since my early teenage years.

In case you have no idea who either of these people are, Toby Mac was a former member of the Christian group, DC Talk, and Relient K is a five member crossover band that has been popular since the late ninties. They are musicians that sing both "Christian" and "secular" music. I happen to really like that because I feel like most musicians who just write about their lives write that way.

I'm not much into the Christian music genre because I can't stand artists who write theologically light Christian music or worse, theologically incorrect music. But Relient K and Toby Mac both tend to be pretty solid when they write Christian music and entertaining when they write otherwise. So 'nyways...

The Relient K song, Forgiven:


The Toby Mac, featuring Kirk Franklin and Mandisa, song, Lose My Soul (Listen to the whole thing):

On the Absence of Photos

More than two thirds into NaBloPoMo I paused to look back on all the things I've blogged this month. I've found that I've relied very heavily on pictures to get my point across in my posts this month. I was kind of surprised, because when I first started blogging it was a rare post that had even one picture in it, let alone a post made up almost entirely of pictures.

What is wrong with me?

If you take a look at this post, this post, or this post, all from my early blogging days. You'll see that these posts need no pictures. The humor stands on its own. Why now do I lean on pictures like a crutch? Have I gotten old and boring? (INCONCEIVABLE!) Have I lost the ability to be funny? (Horrors!) Or have I gotten lazy (Also horrors! But hopefully more likely.)

I don't know. I just don't know. I sigh. And I just don't know.

It's ok, though, because it's my blog and I'll do what I like with it. Because I'm a grown-up now and I can do things like that. And stuff.

But really. Please share your opinion on the subject of the use of pictures in blogging. Are they helpful, distracting, something else? Share your wisdom with me! (I wouldn't have you violate "buy wisdom and sell it not".  Sharing is not selling.)

Trader Joe's Continued

As I said in my last post, I've been feeling a wee bit homesick the past week or so. Yesterday was, what A.A. Milne would call a blustery day. Just the kind of day I love. An Oregon day. Perfect for a trip to Trader Joe's.

First things first. I ate a piece of bread (Which was still amazing after two days.) to make sure I didn't go shopping hungry.

I made a shopping list. Because I'm just a lists kind of person.

I then proceeded to my bus stop. This is my least favorite bus stop, mostly because I always miss my bus when I go this way. Also because it's the farthest away from my house of the bus stops I frequent.

I'd never been to the Trader Joe's here in Pittsburgh before, but I had looked it up on google maps and I didn't get lost once.

Once inside I proceed to take pictures of everything. Cliff bars are, despite the fact I don't really care for them, one of those things that remind me of Oregon, organic food, and home in general, so they were the first thing I photographed. The poor lady working in the aisle looked at me with confusion. "I'm blogging." I said. "Oh," she said "I wondered why on earth anyone would take pictures of cliff bars!"

I love the design of Trader Joe's. The colors and fonts are so pleasing.

 And everything about the store is so friendly!

This was in the freezer section. I did not buy it. But I think I'm going to try to make this sometime soon.

This package of lady fingers caught my eye because of the beautiful victorian packaging. I didn't buy these either - I'm saving up my daily sugar allowance for Dark Chocolate Mint UFOs.

Oh, joy! Oh, happiness! I first discovered these little delights when my sister-in-law gave them to me as a birthday gift. I was hooked. I can't eat them at present because I cut sugar out of my diet - but they are sitting in the drawer of my refrigerator, waiting for my body to right itself so I can partake in their heavenly goodness. (I don't understand the apostrophe on the sign.)

 LOOK AT ALL THE CHEESE! Too bad I'm also cutting dairy products out of my diet at present.

But the reason I decided to start making weekly trips to Trader Joe's is not the cheese. Or the desserts. Or the flawlessly attractive packaging. Or even because it reminds me of home.

It's because of the remarkably fresh and tasty produce.

If I can help it, I only buy Fuji apples. They are the best variety, hands down. Ever. And the ones I bought yesterday were a perfect example of the reason for my opinion.

Aren't these pearl onions cute

And just look at this bar of marijuana soap I bought!

I was, however, reminded that despite the marijuana soap this is not Oregon, when I realized there was no beer section on this Trader Joe's. The reason being that Pennsylvania law prohibits the sale of beer anywhere but at stores that are devoted to ONLY selling beer. Wanna know what I think about that? BOLLOCKS!

'Nyways, I hope you enjoyed looking at Trader Joe's as much I enjoyed visiting there. (Improbable, but possible.) Peace out!

TRADER JOE'S

So, to cure the slight tinge of homesickness I've been feeling I decided to go to the most Eugene like place in Pittsburgh.

I made a list. (You can see what things are really important to me...)

And off I went!

I'll tell you about it tomorrow :)

Wordless Wednesday; From the Bridal Shoot

 

(All photos in this post courtesy of the amazing duo behind Blue Castle Photography.  I <3 Carrie and Jonathan. You can see a few more pictures from that shoot here.)

(Pretend these aren't words.)