Dress Up!

The kids got into Devon's old skating dresses the other day.

The girls even got Owen in on the action.

He wasn't quite as excited as they were though.

Chef Devon

Devon starts her actual program classes tomorrow (last quarter was pre-requisites). From now on, she will be wearing her official uniform to school everyday. Today, she picked up all of the required books, supplies and uniform pieces, except for the official uniform pants which had to be special ordered in her size. She had to scour the mall for a similar pair of pants to wear until the official ones come in.

Devon told me that the jacket is cool enough to make up for the rest of the uniform. Except for the shoes.

Nothing is quite cool enough to make up for the shoes, apparently.

Rod, Devon, and I have all been drooling over the kit items.  Although not nearly as much as Brenna, who is quite convinced that the kit belongs to her. She pouted, cried, and eventually screamed when Devon took the kit away from her. Maybe we'll have another chef in the family in a few more years.

We love to cook here, and good quality kitchen items are VERY appreciated. Two of her three textbooks are great too. The $125 food safety textbook is the only one we really aren't excited about, but at least we understand why it's needed (I'll never understand why it cost $125, but that's a whole different subject). This quarter Devon will be taking Pastry and Baking Orientation, Introduction to Commercial Baking, Basic Cuisine Foundations, and Food Sanitation and Safety. I think she'll have a little more fun than last quarter.

Ketogenic Cheese Sandwich

Owen's staple lunch right now is cheese sandwich. Bread is a pretty tough thing to make on the Ketogenic Diet since carbs are so restricted. I tried several recipes using things like flax seed meal, and coconut flour and came up with a few acceptable breads. The problem was that adding anything other than fat (butter, mayonnaise) to the bread made the ratio unacceptable. Owen was very specific about his cheese sandwich. A cheese sandwich according to Owen must consist of bread on the bottom, cheese in the middle, and bread on top. A piece of bread with a tiny bit of cheese melted on top did NOT qualify as a sandwich. Ketocuisine to the rescue. Ketocuisine is a powdered fat baking mix designed especially for the Ketogenic diet. Owen was also quite insistent that his bread be bread shaped. I spent months trying to pour out the bread dough and shape it into a rectangle I could cut in half to make bread until my In-laws gave us this wonderful rectangle silicone mold. Now, I just make the recipe a little thinner and pour it into the mold.

Disclaimer: Do not use this recipe as is unless your calorie and ratio requirements are exactly the same as Owen's. Click HERE to see how I rework recipes to suit Owen.

Keto Cheese Sandwich
3.06:1 ratio, 265 calories

8g  Egg (raw, mixed well) 
17g  Cheese, Tillamook Cheddar 
6g  Mayonnaise, Hellman's/Best Foods
20g Ketocuisine 5:1 ratio baking mix

I also add a pinch of Morton's lite salt as a potassium supplement, a pinch of baking soda to combat acidosis, and a crushed K Phos neutral tablet (all prescribed by our keto team)

First I weigh out the egg since it is the most difficult to get to the nearest gram, then weigh out and add the other ingredients except for the cheese. Mix well adding water to get to the right consistency(doughy if you are spreading it or just pourable if using molds).  Sorry, but I've never measured out the water. It's so nice to have something that doesn't have to be weighed that I've never done it. Then spread out the dough into two pieces or pour into molds (the molds I use make 4 pieces of bread) and bake at 350F for about 15 min. Watch it closely since fatty keto foods tend to cook quickly ( I ruined 2 batches of spinach bites this weekend, not watching them closely enough). Once they have cooled enough to handle put the cheese between two pieces of bread and serve or wrap up and store in the fridge for another day.

Note to those not on the Ketogenic diet, It is very important to use only the brands listed in the recipe. If I use a different mayonnaise, I have to redo the whole recipe. I also did not receive any compensation from Solace Nutrition for naming their product although if they wanted to send me some I'd gladly take it. It is just a product we use that makes our lives much easier!

Homemade Potato Chips

We had some friends over around the holidays and someone asked for potato chips. The problem was that I didn't have any potato chips and I didn't feel like going to the store (with several extra children just before Christmas) to get any. I did have potatoes though. So we made homemade chips. These are so incredibly easy and so good, I can't figure out why I don't make them more often.

How do you make them? First start heating oil to about 180F. Then, use a potato peeler to slice thin pieces of potato. Drop them into a big bowl of salted water (No, I don't know how much salt I used). I only used two potatoes for a whole crowd of kids (making store bought chips feel like even more of a rip off). When the oil is heated up, drain the potatoes and start dropping them into the hot oil. Leave enough room to stir them well so they don't stick to the sides of the pot. Cook until they are as done as you like and start another batch. Drain on paper towels and salt if you choose.

See, easy!

Favorite Christmas Present

I  just realized that I didn't post pictures of our favorite Christmas present. Now, we like all of our Christmas presents and we certainly appreciate everything we got, but I think you can see why this one is our absolute favorite.

My stepdaughter Cassi and her husband Tim live in Kentucky. They're the ones who sent us this! See why it's our favorite.

Updates! {Ketogenic Diet and Other}

The biggest news is that Owen has been seizure free for 67 days! This is our longest stretch with no seizures at all (well, he might still be having the sub-clinicals, but we won't know without an EEG). We've had one longer stretch without any big seizures, but he was still having some of the small ones then. We see the Neurologist again on our Anniversary in February and might be talking about reducing meds. Usually they like to have 6 months seizure free, but we're pretty sure his last two seizures were due to diet mess ups, so we'll see.

Brenna decided to bite a tube of Super Glue the other day. Usually, I use nail polish remover to get rid of Super Glue, but NOT when it's in the baby's mouth. I tried olive oil with some success, but I think we'll just have to wait for it to wear off. She ended up with it in her hair, on her hands, and around and in her mouth. It just seems like with as many kids as I have, they shouldn't be able to come up with anything new. Brenna definitely keeps us on our toes though.

I have been on my traditional "after Christmas clean and reorganize" spree lately. New Year's day, I decided to attack the Tupperware cabinet. Yes, there are other things in the cabinet besides Tupperware, but you couldn't actually see those things until I tamed the plastic storage containers. I got rid of all the cheap "throw away" ones and anything that didn't have matching lids. Now everything fits. I took pictures to show how it should look for future reference since I am not the only one who puts away dishes around here. I told everyone it had better look this good for at least a whole month. Hopefully, that's not overreaching by too long.
 We've also cleaned most of the boys' room, almost all of the sewing room, the living room, and part of the computer room. I'm still avoiding the playroom, as I don't think I'm up to that yet. I'll get to that when everything else is in order and most of the kids are gone for a day or two. Or maybe just after everyone moves out!

Silk Sofa

I guess Duncan really likes the play silks!

He wants me to make a whole house out of them.