My First GFCF Bundt Cake

I am trying a GFCF recipe from a new cookbook I received to review.

Celebrate the Season

I love this song, especially at CHRISTmastime...

Mary, Did You Know?

Roasted Berkshire Pork Tenderloin with Caramelized Salsify, Apple, Brussels Sprouts, & Apple Cider Jus

I learned something new this week. Wiley will send me a recipe and photo (and permission to post it) from a review cookbook for my readers to enjoy. Here's a mouth-watering recipe from the Winter section of "Fresh From the Market". The recipe is gluten, casein (dairy), soy, nut, and egg free.

Roasted Berkshire Pork Tenderloin with Caramelized Salsify, Apple, Brussels Sprouts, & Apple Cider Jus
(Recipe photo by Quentin Bacon)

Berkshire pigs are renowned for their tender, flavorful, and juicy meat.

The name is derived from Berkshire County in the United Kingdom, where this breed dates back nearly four hundred years. They have been carefully cultivated in America since the late 1800s.

SERVES 6

Caramelized Vegetables and Apples
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 pound salsify, peeled and cut into 11/2-inch pieces
1 pound Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and each cut into 6 wedges
1 teaspoon sugar
1 cup pearl onions, peeled and halved
3 garlic cloves, smashed
3 fresh thyme sprigs
2 cups apple cider
1 tablespoon cider vinegar

Pork
2 tablespoons fennel seeds
2 tablespoons juniper berries
2 tablespoons whole black peppercorns
1 teaspoon whole allspice
1 tablespoon mustard seeds
3 pork tenderloins, 1 pound each, cut in half crosswise
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons grapeseed oil

Prepare the vegetables

Bring a medium saucepan of salted water to a boil and add the lemon juice. Add the salsify and cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Immediately transfer the salsify to a bowl of ice water. Once cool, drain and pat dry.

Bring another saucepan of salted water to a boil and cook the Brussels sprouts until tender, about 3 minutes. Immediately transfer the Brussels sprouts to a bowl of ice water. Once cool, drain and pat dry.

Prepare the pork

Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Place the fennel seeds, juniper berries, black peppercorns, allspice,
and mustard seeds in a small sauté pan over medium heat and toast until fragrant, about 1 minute. Once toasted, transfer the spices to a spice grinder and coarsely grind. Season the pork with salt and the spice mixture. Heat the oil in a large cast-iron pan over high heat. Sear the tenderloins on all sides, about 1 minute on each side. Transfer the tenderloins to a plate.

Caramelize the vegetables and apples

Melt 2 tablespoons of the butter in the cast-iron pan over high heat. Add the apples and sugar and cook until the apples begin to caramelize, about 2 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the apples to a plate. Melt the remaining 1 tablespoon of butter in the same pan and add the pearl onions, garlic, and thyme and sauté for 1 minute. Add the blanched salsify and Brussels sprouts and cook until lightly browned, about 3 minutes. Deglaze with the apple cider and vinegar, scraping up any brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Return the apples to the pan.

Finish cooking the pork

Arrange the pork on top of the vegetables and apples. Roast until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the pork registers 160˚F, about 8 minutes. Allow the pork to rest for 3 to 4 minutes before slicing. To serve Divide the vegetables and apples among 6 plates. Slice the tenderloins and arrange them on top. Spoon the pan juices around the pork and serve.

Wine suggestion

Serve this dish with a rich and creamy Chardonnay that offers flavors of golden apples, pain grille, and mouth-watering acidity, such as Chardonnay, Patz and Hall, 2006, Russian River Valley, California.

Unusual recipe has me wondering...

I am going through some cookbooks in a search for something new. We're still tired of the same old recipes. I want something we all can eat. The something new must be GFCFSF+++. I'm not in the mood to convert a recipe. I found one, but I can't begin to imagine how it will taste, and half of me wants to try it, and the other half is afraid to try it because it may taste horrible.

What do you think?

The title: Dill Pickle-Marinated Chicken Tenders With Dilly Dipping Sauce. I found the recipe in the 2007 Southern Living Annual Recipes Cookbook.

The chicken is marinated in pickle juice with some other ingredients prior to grilling. I found a similar recipe here.

What do your tastebuds say as you think about the recipe title?

FYI: Sale alert

FYI: From today through Dec. 12th, customers will receive 35% off plus free ground shipping on http://www.ChronicleBooks.com/ with promo code FRIENDS.

Chronicle Publishing has the new "Cake Pops" cookbook and a brand new gluten free cookbook among the offerings.

Guest Post: How To Stop a "Runner" by JillY

If you're seeing this twice, I hit "publish" too soon, and deleted the first post. Here's the ready-for-print version.

I follow a yahoo group of parents and professionals who discuss the methods of "Dr. Jim", aka Dr. James D. MacDonald, who teaches us his "Play to Talk" and "Communicating Partners".

We've been discussing the topic of children who are "runners", on the yahoo list and one mom's reply really spotlights the way we parents must hold responsibility for the child's side of the interaction, and gently hand over that responsibility to the child, how we must control boundaries and set limits in the process, and how we parents must be consistent.

Here is one mother's experience in stopping a runner:

We recently adopted a 4.5 year old son with DS. He'd been with birth mom until he came to us. She's been locking the doors so that he didn't take off, and he would every opportunity. About a week after he came to us, he left our home and took off. My husband secretly followed him to see what he'd do. He walked about a block away very near a highway before my husband revealed his presence. Since we have many other children with two being younger than him, we decided that we needed to work on this immediately as it was a serious safety issue. In addition, his birth mom felt that she couldn't take him anywhere as he'd take off from her. So we treated it as a behavior issue and, in about a month, we had a changed boy.

This is what we did. We'd leave our doors unlocked when we were able to provide consistent close supervision, then when he'd go out we'd give him a holding uh-oh ( as we learned from Dr. Jim). Sometimes it would be 5-10 of them in a row, but we never stopped doing it until he stopped going outside by himself.

We also worked on him staying near us in public. First, we didn't give him any freedom till he had learned to follow our simple directions, come, stop, etc. So we used a stroller or hiking back pack everywhere we went during the first 4-6 weeks. As he learned to follow directions, then we'd give him more freedom as long as he'd listen and stay by us. If he'd repeatedly wander away and not stop after a couple of holding uh-ohs, we'd put him back in the stroller/backpack to stay until we went home.

We saw his birth mom for the first time today since three months ago when he came to us. She was shocked at the change in this area. We met at a McDonald's play land and he never once tried to leave until it was time for everyone to go. When we first met him four months ago, we couldn't relax- three adults and some of our older kids- vigilantly watching him at a McDonald's play land to make sure that he didn't bolt.

Now at home, he has the job of letting the dog in and out when she needs to go in or out and he doesn't go outside without us (very rarely he'll go outside without an adult to play when the other kids are outside, but he doesn't bolt anymore).

It was very labor intensive, but very well worth it for the long term results. He's not a small kid, so my muscles were sore every morning when I woke as we'd have to give so many uh-ohs in the course of a day, but I can't imagine living like they had before with our big family. No one would have been able to go outside to play. It was so worth the investment. His therapists have seen how well the holding uh-ohs work and they now use them when his behavior is inappropriate. Someone at a special needs gym class recently was shocked that he listened so well to directions especially being newly adopted (behavioral issues being the main reason for the adoption placement, but she didn't know this) since her daughter with DS was off every which way. I told her our secret and she was very impressed. Dr. Jim gets a lot of word of mouth referral from our family!

We also used this same approach (removing freedom) for wandering the house at night. At first we’d doing the holding when we found him wandering, then when he continued to get out of bed, we decided that we needed to take more action as reasonable sleep is a necessary thing and I can’t function being up for hours in the middle of the night regularly and worrying about his safety. So, the loss of freedom was changed to buckling him into his five point car seat that if he wanders at night( There are seats that go to at least 65 pounds that are five point). Then we tip it back part way (leaning it on a small toddler couch so that it was safe, comfortable and secure). It’s amazing to see him stay in bed at night when he wakes and now he’s not getting up at crazy early times anymore ( 5 am) either as he’d gotten used to being released if he were buckled in at 7am.)

We came to this group for our newest son who came to us with one word three months ago, but we've learned so much that has helped us to parent our other children more effectively.

Thank you, Dr. Jim!

As always, JillY and I are not professionals; this is not meant to be professional advice; it is one mom's experience. Please have a professional guide you with appropriate techniques and strategies as you intervene with your child.

Thank you, JillY, for giving me permission to share your story here.

Knot So Fast

When Timberdoodle contacted me about reviewing Knot So Fast, I was intrigued. A game of knot making??? The autism-therapy-mom in me became excited with the possibiities.

A game like this one could be the background activity for a list of developmental and relationship objectives, for speech and communication, for fine motor work, for motor planning, for plain 'ol fun.

Priced at $17.25 (retail $20.00) on the Timberdoodle web site, Knot So Fast is a game for one to four players ages eight and up. It's meant to be a family game, a race, with the objective to see who can tie knots in the soft game ropes faster than the other players by following steps on one of the 40 challenges pictured on cards that are a part of the game.

Like many families with a child on the autism spectrum, and like many homeschoolers, we tend to change the rules and make games our own, and this is no exception. We have used it a little bit outside of the rules and I have plans to continue to use it in more ways outside of the game rules.
When the game arrived, I was experiencing a horrible upper respiratory virus that sent me into coughing fits when I exerted myself. Talking, walking across the room, being upright prompted choking coughs, and I watched the kids play with the game from a prone position on the couch.

My eldest was really intrigued by the game, and her interest showed me more uses for the game. Eldest played alone, competing with herself, challenging herself to study the cards and create the knots.

By comparison, my homeschooler, my learner with special needs, resisted the whole thing, choosing to turn several ropes into one big mess. (FYI: The mess she made was easy to untangle. I like the texture of the ropes. They shape easily and unknot just as easily.) I know where she is, developmentally, and I am able to choose some simple knots to show her as a confidence builder. It was interesting to me to compare the two reactions; one child dove into the challenge head first; one resisted.

I can work with resistance, and Knot So Fast will give the two of us some opportunities to conquer some of it with the game as background activity.

One of our developmental objectives has been to give our girl opportunities to copy our meaningful actions, where she is responsible for focusing her attention on the right things to create a positive outcome - showing her how to tie a knot is one way to do that. She gets developmental practice and learns to tie different knots at the same time.

Eventually, I will have HER show ME, tell me how to tie a knot, and we'll write the steps down together. We'll get some speech practice with the game. She's not ready for that, yet, but she will be one of these days.

One of the other things that my eldest brought to my attention was the educational value of the game. She kept asking, "Why would anyone need to learn to make this kind of knot?" Each challenge card offers a brief explanation about what that particular knot is used for, and I can imagine our making a little unit study about knots using this game in our homeschool.

I wonder if one person could direct another person, blindfolded, to tie a knot, using nothing but spoken directions? Hmmmm.

In addition to being a family game, I think that Knot So Fast would be a workbox activity (one new knot with one rope in a box); a great travel game (I'd leave the little hourglass timer at home). Speech therapists, occupational therapists, professionals who work with students on the autism spectrum would have fun with clients while working on therapy goals within the context of a game. Knot So Fast could be a neat gift for your favorite OT or autism therapist.

We enjoy looking through the catalog that came in the mail; there are lots of unique toys at Timberdoodle.

Visit Timberdoodle for your homeschooling needs, for single player games (great for workboxes); and for family and educational games. Free catalogs for homeschoolers are available here. Timberdoodle has a facebook page, too.

Legal Disclosure:

As a member of Timberdoodle's Blogger Review Team I received a free copy of Knot So Fast in exchange for a frank and unbiased review.

GFCFSF Edible Cookie Ornaments

Edible Cookie Ornaments

4 cups powdered sugar

half stick margarine or butter

1/3 cup corn syrup...

1 tsp vanilla flavoring

Sparkle Gel Icing

Mix ingredients (except Sparkle Gel Icing) together into a dough, adding a few drops of water if the dough is too dry and crumbly or adding more powdered sugar if the dough is too moist. Form dough into a ball, then roll dough out flat between two sheets of parchment paper or wax paper; cut out shapes w/ cookie cutter (smaller is better), be sure to do what we forgot in this picture, use a straw to poke a hole in your edible cookie ornament before you decorate. Decorate. We used tubes of sparkle gel icing. Allow to dry. String a ribbon through the hole, hang on your tree! ;)

Recipe adapted from one I found in a Southern Living annual cookbook.

There are more gluten free cookie recipes here:
http://www.sheletthemeatcake.com/?p=3809

Holidays and Homeschooling

The Tennessean featured a short article a few days ago: Home-school notes: Learning moments mix into holiday festivities. In the article, author Kristen Kindoll describes how she shifts learning opportunities during the holidays.

"I began to incorporate themed projects", she writes.

Some of us homeschool using themed projects as our core method, because that is the way our students best learn. When auditory processing challenges combined with reading and math delays make reading and worksheets torture, themed projects aka project based learning is an effective (and fun) alternative. Education Nation devotes quite a few pages to the "why bother" and "how to" of project based learning. There is information on project based learning, the importance, and some of the challenges, at edutopia.org.

Back to the newspaper article. Kindoll continues, "Planning the Thanksgiving meal together, I could correlate the importance of incorporating the food pyramid principles. As my children played with new gifts, I found a great backdrop to the occasion with listening to Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol."

I love those ideas! I'm always looking for ways to incorporate information and academics, in context, into what we already do. Moms sharing ideas, sharing how they incorporated content delivery outside of the book and worksheet, is so very helpful for me as we help a child on the autism spectrum make an important discovery that she is, indeed, a learner.

Episodic Memory

Autism Spectrum Quarterly features an article about eposidic memory.

RDIConnect dot com makes it available for all of us to read, HERE.