Crackers & Monsters

I've had a sick little girl this weekend, and again today. Not exactly sure what is wrong with her since her symptoms are all over the board and there isn't one clear thing. All I know is she's got a low-grade fever, doesn't feel well, hasn't been sleeping at night and is home from school today. We thought she was feeling better yesterday and took her to church. But when I went to get her out of kids class, she was glassy eyed, flushed and shivering despite the 80 degree temperatures outside. So, we rushed home and she went right to bed where she slept for 2 hours. Then she woke up at bedtime and had a tough time falling back to sleep and slept fitfully through the night, complaining of her feet itching, of all things. Its frustrating to me that I don't know whats wrong, all I can do is treat her symptoms and wait and see. I had my mom (the nurse practitioner, almost) check her out yesterday and she doesn't have anything acute enough to warrant a trip to the doctors office, so at least I have that reassurance. Having sick kids is one of the toughest things as a mom, in my opinion.

I think its just as hard on the sibling(s) that aren't sick as it is on the sick kid. Poor Lindsay has been dealing with a moody and finicky little sister and just can't seem to handle the fact that sick kids do get a bit more attention from Mom than well kids. So, on Saturday, since we were stuck home anyway, I asked if she'd want to bake with me. (Yeah, I'm still baking). It's so cool that she can actually help more now that she's older. We decided to make graham crackers in preparation of camping season.

I got the recipe from Cindy's blog, Gluten Free in Montana. The only change I made was to increase the teff flour to 1 cup as I  have yet to find any sorghum flour here. As most of her recipes, I liked how easy it was to whip up.  Click on the link to her blog to see her original post with recipe.

Lindsay loved the part where we rolled it out and cut it into shapes. We figured we'd try regular graham cracker shaped rectangles and shapes. How fun will it be to make s'mores with heart shaped graham crackers!

I thought it was so cute how hard she was concentrating to use every last bit of dough...

She's a great little baker.

Here's the first batch cooling. I was amazed at how tasty these were. I had to put them away, freezing most of them, in order to stop eating them. I could have seriously eaten the whole entire batch in one sitting. Erik and both girls liked them, even Kera who was not only sick but who has been the biggest critic of all things gluten-free lately. I cannot wait to try them with marshmallows and chocolate! :-)

After a little break, we also made monster cookies, which I don't think I've ever made before in my life. I was floored with how easy they were and how yummy! The cool thing is that they don't even use flour, its just oats, so its just as good made gluten-free as it would be normally. I got the recipe at another great GF blog, The Baking Beauties. Once again, click the blog link to see their original post and recipe. The only thing I did differently was use butter instead of margarine, and my cookies were a little flat, but still tasted great. The recipe made a ton, so we froze a couple quart sized bags plus had plenty to keep out to munch on throughout the weekend.

I think Lindsay enjoyed baking with me, and it was nice to be able to spend some one-on-one time with her while her sister napped. It can be really hard to do that sometimes! We've got just a couple weeks left of school, and they are pretty busy. This week is Lindsay's spring music program at school, for which we had to make a fish costume (pictures to come soon), then its her birthday on Thursday with all the trimmings (cupcakes to school, party after, have to buy gifts at some point! Cannot believe she's gonna be 8!) and then this weekend is the girls' ballet dress rehearsal and recital, one each day. Talk about eating up a whole weekend for one thing. (insert eye roll). No wonder I feel like I've not been very productive lately, I'm just trying to make it through all the extra stuff. It will be a welcome break once summer vacation is here.