Ah...Cool morning after the rain

I'm actually baking a loaf of gluten-free bread for hubby, since it is cool and breezy today. Yes, I know I can crank the AC up & bake any time, but somehow when we had Mod-U-Kraf put this house together for us, we didn't put a ceiling fan in the dining area or kitchen. We DO have cross-ventilation when we open the window or the big glass door out onto the sunporch, but maybe someday hubby will install a screened door on the front door. (Which will ruin the look of the frosted glass window, but hey! we're down in the woods, so this is not a problem).

Gosh, if it stays cool as predicted, I'll even fix a nice big pot of soup. I'll clean out the crisper (AKA the slime-er) & fix a nice veggie/bean soup. Hubby has already voted for corn pancakes tonight, as he knows I put together a GF pancake mix. When the doctors tell you all the things you cannot eat, like pizza & pancakes & bread & rolls & cakes & cookies...when you have Celiac, it creates a craving for just those foods. He forever wants to stop at IHOP on the way home from Roanoke, then he can only eat something like the meatcraver's breakfast. Did you know IHOP even puts flour into their omeletts?

Guess this is a food blog today...last Thursday, the Roanoke Times ran a big piece on Captain Tim's Galley, a seafood restaurant in Buena Vista about an hour and ahalf from us here in Rocky Mount. That's exactly what Westlake needs; an actual real seafood restaurant. The fellow who started it is a former tugboat captain, so he comes by the Captain Tim title legitimately. Now I just have to talk Hubby into driving an hour and ahalf for a meal; he is the original "let's not leave town" restaurant person, which gives us very few choices.

Has he forgotten that I reviewed restaurants when he met me in Calif0rnia? That I took him with me to some very high-quality places where the managers/owners were delighted to see us come in the door? (These were not surrepticious reviews; the restaurants had contracted with a magazine I wrote for, and a year's advertising contract entitled them to a big spread in the mag once a year. So I tried to find something on the menu that I could genuinely recommend. The magazine was distributed to motels & hotels, coffeeshops and cafe's in the Sacramento area. Since they also carried a weekly TV guide section, they got into each room at a motel for instance.)

So BF, then fiance', then hubby loved all the attention and even learned to enjoy escargot...in the shell, in garlic butter please.

Have to admit, much of the enjoyment of visiting new restaurants disappears when you have to determine whether there is wheat in anything...sauces, gravies, breading, even corn taco shells sometimes have wheat.

Forget crab cakes (except those I make at home). Also any cream soups.

Well, just took that beautiful loaf of bread out of the oven. For anyone needing to know this: after three years of searching for a decent GF bread, I discovered "Gluten-Free Pantry" from Canada, distributed through Connecticut to health food stores. Their White Sandwich Loaf mix, which I bake in a regular bread pan, is excellent. It's about $4.50 a package, but cooking and baking for a Celiac-diagnosed person IS expensive.