I was intrigued about making an Omlette for Jaden. I googled Vegan Soy-Free Omlette and found a recipe at:
http://triumphofthelentilblog.wordpress.com/2012/06/06/one-year-of-triumph-of-the-lentil-a-giveaway-and-soy-free-vegan-omelettes/

It was absolutely amazing. Everyone liked it a lot. The only change I did was I took about a teaspoon of flax seeds and put them in the coffee grinder and then added to the recipe. I think the first time I added some powdered Darifree also. Perhaps not. I will try it next time for sure.

Again, I say try it. It is really good. I think I can imagine some other recipes using scrambled eggs to use a variation of this recipe!

The day has come….
No not THAT day that is mentioned in the video, but the day that the video is released.

Here is the video for When I Could which has a dedicated page on this site.

Or you can watch it straight away right here.

This is a message for Christians, not Non-Christians.

Well, now that we have returned to the USA, I can definitively say that Orgran GF All-Purpose Flour works better in our Cake Recipe than Bob’s Red Mill.  Don’t get me wrong, Bob’s Red Mill GF All-Purpose Flour is nice, but Orgran is much better for this recipe. (Bob’s Red Mill flour makes or at least used to make better pancakes than the Orgran products.)

I made some cupcakes recently with the Orgran flour and took them to a party. There were 3 ladies there that all couldn’t eat gluten. They all loved the cupcakes and couldn’t believe how good they were. Even gluten eaters ate them and didn’t notice any difference between ours and a normal wheat containing cupcake. Anyway, if you have allergies and want a good cake recipe, I will stand by our cake recipe over any other GF box cake mix any day especially if you use Orgran GF All-Purpose flour.

I took a 5mi/8km walk through an 8700 acre / 3500 hectare park. (Being Florida and not Australia it was fairly flat.) I was wanting to pray and walk and listen for God on the trip. After about 2/3 of the walk, I really felt that God was saying some things to me. I had about three things just before this photo.

I took a 5mi/8km walk through an 8700 acre / 3500 hectare park. (Being Florida and not Australia it was fairly flat.) I was wanting to pray and walk and listen for God on the trip. The first half of the walk was fairly frustrating as I had many distracting thoughts about all kinds of things also wondering if the noises (mostly bird movements) I heard in the scrub beside me was perhaps one of the bobcats that live in the park. I stopped looking over the Econlockhatchee river. The water was black as could be from the tannins of the Cypress trees. Yet the water was nearly still, and as I looked across the water I could see the reflection of the trees and sky. At that point I prayed that even in my non perfect state that I would reflect God like the water reflected the sky and trees. I read my Bible on my phone and sat and prayed for awhile. Then resumed my walk. After about 2/3 of the walk, I really felt that God was saying some things to me. The first was the chorus “My hope is in you Lord, my strength is in you Lord, my life is in you Lord, in you, its in you…” Most of the situational lessons for me related to the map and the path and their analogies to the path of my life that God has me on.

I was 3/4 of the way through my walk, when I chose to move to the other side of the trail. As I took the first or second step toward the other side, I saw there exactly in the path that I had been walking, the pictured Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake about 2/3  of the length of the snake (give or take) in front of me directly facing me. So had I not made that change of direction, I likely would have been within easy striking distance of an uncoiled poisonous snake. (I walked around the back side of him before pulling out my phone for a picture as it just felt like the safer thing to do.) I instantly thought that God wanted me to know that although I think that I am making a choice or change of my own when it comes to my current ministry/life directional choices, it is really He who is guiding my way. That is a very comforting thing to know.

Anyway after snapping the picture and walking 20 meters or so further, I had the thought that if God is guiding my way, why not close my eyes and see where I end up. Well that was followed immediately by the thought that God is not a mystical “Force” guiding me and controlled by me [e.g. Star Wars], but He uses the things He gave me to help lead me and He gave me eyes so that I would use them. I am not to follow[put my trust in] my feelings [instincts] but to follow my God. If I choose sin, it would not be God guiding me into it. It is more of a partnership/relationship as opposed to me being a marionette. In other words He has given me a brain and the ability to think and make choices, but He is still guiding also. Such a wonderful paradox.

Anyway I felt cared for and loved because the God of the universe, who created more than the mortal humans can ever see, cared for me and has time for me. (He cares for you and has time for you too.)

Have you taken time to listen to Him? How have you listened to Him lately?

Well today marks another first for Jaden; a Grilled “Cheese” Sandwich. We are back in the USA now after living in Australia. In Australia there is not a dairy free and soy free cheese yet but here there is which led to this impromptu sandwich created by Crystal.
First we started with 2 slices of
dairy free, egg free, soy free and of course gluten free bread made by Ener-g with one side of each piece with some dairy free and soy free margarine. Then Crystal placed a slice of Rice Vegan brand of cheese on the bread and placed into a suitable pan on medium heat and grilled to a nice golden brown. Here are the photos.

Since Jaden has tested free of Pineapple allergy now and we have successfully introduced them to his diet. Well a Pineapple Upside Down Cake couldn’t be that far behind could it? It was delicious and eaten faster than we could photograph it.

Can of Sliced and cored unsweetened pineapple in juice

3 Tbsp Nuttelex
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
Handful of Maraschino / Glace Cherries (optional)
1 1/2 cups all-purpose gluten free flour (Orgran)
2 No Egg replacer Eggs (2 tsp / 4 Tbsp water) following directions
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Cream of Tartar
1/3 cup Lard and Nuttelex combo ( 1/2 and 1/2)
1 cup sugar
2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 180C.

Drain Pineapple and reserve the liquid. Melt Nuttelex in 8”-9” round pan by placing in the warming oven. Remove and stir in the packed brown sugar and the 1 Tbsp of the Pineapple juice. Arrange pineapple rings with cherries in the middle of the holes on the bottom of the Baking pan.
Add water to remaining pineapple juice to make 2/3 cup.

Combine GF flour, baking soda, tartar, and salt then set aside.

Combine and Beat lard and nuttelex 30 seconds. Add sugar. Beat till well combined. Add No Egg and Vanilla. Beat for 1 minute. Add dry ingredients and the 2/3 cup pineapple juice alternatingly. When completely combined, spread in pan on top of pineapple/cherry.

Bake for 40min

Cool 5 minutes run a plastic knife around the edge of the cake if it hasn’t pulled away from the sides of the pan then invert on a plate and serve while warm. Cut into 8 pieces.

While most things in Australia tend to have price tags of 2-3 times what we see in the USA, I have found 4 things that are definitely cheaper in Australia.

1. Ice Cream Cones at McDonald’s – Australia $0.50 USA $1.19 last I remember from 2007. Others note it too such as here.
2. Emergency Healthcare – 1 trip to the Emergency Department here is about $200 and in the USA to the ER about $500 minimum in my experience. My daughter went to the doctor $70  and then had x-rays for $40 for her broken finger. The doctor was more than in the USA but the x-ray seemed like a down right bargain.
3. Mobile / Cell phone plans. This is the one that is most amazing. For a plan that allows me to call for about 400 minutes on each of 2 used iPhones and 1.5GB of data that can be tethered on each costs me $40 per month. (via iinet which uses the optus network  http://www.iinet.net.au/mobile/ ) In the USA with AT&T for 1 phone that can tether and 1 with only 300MB per month and 500 minutes to share between the phones, comes to $150 per month and that is without the SMS included that we get now too, to add that would be something like $170 or more per month. OUCH!  Ok so comparing iinet to AT&T isn’t a fare comparison. So for Telstra to AT&T the equivalent Telstra plan to my iinet plan would be $140 per month. Still cheaper than AT&T and with more than enough data on either phone.
4. Basic Private Christian School. OK this varies widely as some private schools in Australia can be $40,000 per child per year, the basic Christian Private School here tends to be anywhere to the same or half of the price as in the USA. For my comparison I choose Maranatha Christian Schools and Eastland Christian school in Orlando. In this case for 1 child the school in Australia is a little more expensive, but for 2 children the school in Australia drops below the US price and for 4 kids the price is well below the US price. Primarily this is due to the fact that the government pays around $6500 per kid to the private school instead of the $14,000 per year to the public school for the same kid. This is similar to the voucher system that Florida had proposed and that some other states have adopted. It makes sense here and it working quite effectively. Also the government gives grants to ALL schools for construction as long as the construction is for the educational part of the campus. This would reduce the tuition fee to not have construction costs factored in as much. Again this makes sense the way they have done it here.

Check out these two stats:

Number of people who lack Flushing Toilets in the world indicated on this page: http://www.worldometers.info/view/toilets/ is 2.6 Billion. Therefore there is 4.4 Billion people with access to a flushing toilet.

Number of mobile/cell phones in use the world as of 2010 according to Wikipedia is over 5 Billion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_mobile_phones_in_use

Therefore there are more mobile phones in use in the world than the number of people that have access to flushing toilets.

This is one of the reasons that my team writes apps for smartphones that connect people to the gospel of Jesus Christ. http://www.ccca.org.au/kgp/

Well in my post about cornflakes I mentioned that I would make a post soon about what can be made with Cornflakes.  For starters we save the crumbs from the bottom of every bag of cornflakes in a container. They last a long time for our purposes. Why go buy GF crumbs when this is so economical? Here is the first recipe:

Oven Fried Chicken

1/2 cup cornflake crumbs
1-2 tsp of brown sugar
1 tsp of garlic
1 tsp of chilli powder
1/2 tsp of thyme
1/4 cup olive oil
8-12 chicken drumsticks

Preheat oven to 375F / 190F. Line some baking trays with aluminum foil and put a light coat of olive oil down on the foil.

Start by putting the dry ingredients without the drumsticks in a bowl and mix and crush with your hands. Place the 1/4 of olive oil in a bowl. Then wash and dry the chicken drumsticks with a towel. Holding the end of the drumstick place the drumstick in the oil bowl and roll around to coat with oil. Next roll the drumstick over the cornflake mixture. You likely will need to use your free hand to pick up the cornflake mixture to coat and press the cornflake mixture on the drumstick. Place the drumstick on the foil and repeat until all the drumsticks are used up. If you are lucky you will use up all of the cornflake mixture by your last drumstick. If you have extra then toss. If you don’t have enough well you get to wash your hands and mix up a little more.

Place the baking tray in the oven and bake for 45-50 minutes. Depending on your oven you may need to rotate the drumsticks about 30 minutes into the baking. Remove nice golden brown drumsticks and carry to the table to be rapidly consumed by your family.

Variations:
Change the spice mix to vary the taste:
Examples:
Use GF/Soy Free Chicken Salt
Use Celeryseed

Here are some photos of our latest backing of this recipe:

In general Corn Flakes have been the best mass market mainstream gluten-free, soy-free breakfast cereal that we could buy. Well not the leading brands. All of the name brand version of Corn Flakes contain Barley Malt. So no Kellogg’s or Sanitarium here. There are a few health food branded corn flakes but they are over $5 for a 300g box or so. But IGA has had two lines of their store brands that have been Barley free and since they are their normal store brands they are affordable. This makes Corn Flakes one of the products that we drive out of our way to go to the Ritchie’s IGA in Mount Waverley (http://www.ritchies.com.au/) to buy.

But when Coles (http://www.coles.com.au/) recently reformulated their store branded Corn Flake recipe to eliminate Barley Malt I just had to try it since it is so much closer to the house.  Basically eliminating the Barley makes them safe for Jaden though they still have a “may contains gluten” warning on the side of their box. Well I snapped up a box pretty quick as they were about $1.99 for a 500g box. This also makes them cheaper than the IGA Signature Corn Flakes we had been buying that were $2.49 for a 415g box or the IGA Black and Gold version which is $1.99 for 415gm.

Well my first impression was OK as I popped a few in my mouth, but then I put them in a bowl and added milk. At that point my opinion changed sharply. They go soggy extremely fast, much faster than the IGA Signature Corn Flakes or the IGA Black and Gold corn flakes. So based on their sogginess I am going to still go to IGA.

Now why IGA Signature over the cheaper IGA Black and Gold?  Well by inspecting the packages side by side they definitely show signs of being made in the same factory and likely on the same line. But I still prefer the IGA Signature. Not only is the recipe a tiny bit different, but it also seems that the Signature version also has larger flakes. So there you have it. My preference right now is for the IGA Signature Corn Flakes followed by the IGA Black and Gold variety.

My recommendation: Buy IGA Signature and avoid the new Coles branded version.

What can you do with corn flakes besides breakfast? Well that is for a future set of posts.