Another Muffin

A while back I posted the recipe for Cranberry Tangerine Muffins. Tonight I made a banana version of them. Here is the recipe, basically the same one from before, just changed up a little bit. If you are casiene and egg free, then leave out the egg and substitute soy, rice, or coconut milk for the regular milk.

Banana Muffins

¼ cup butter, melted (you can use olive oil)
1 cup buckwheat flour
½ cup brown rice flour
½ cup tapioca flour
½ cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2/3 cup milk
½ tsp vanilla
1 egg, beaten
3 bananas
1 of those individual serving cups of applesauce

Melt the butter and set aside. Mash the bananas and mix with the applesauce. In a separate bowl, mix all the dry ingredients. Mix the egg, milk and vanilla together. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients, and pour in all the liquid ingredients. Stir quickly to combine, but don’t worry about if there are lumps. Fold in the fruit mixture. Spoon into muffin pans that have been sprayed with Pam, or line with paper baking cups. Bake at 400 degrees for 28 minutes.

What An Exciting Thing!

This is Mama on the left, and Lilly on the right.

Back in December, I was the Guest Babe Of The Month over at 7 Babes A Blogging. As the guest blogger, I had to write at least one post per week. While I was trying to figure out what to write, I went to my mother's 80th birthday party. I came home from that party and wrote A Tribute To My Mother. (this site is now defunct, sorry) I didn't think much more about it, until this week.

On Sunday, Mama called me and told me that she got a phone call from her niece that she has not heard from in 44 years. Susan, my cousin, is the daughter of Mama's sister, Lilly, who died in 1963 from an aneurysm. Susan was 12 years old when her mother died, and went to live in Oklahoma with her paternal grandmother, and never saw her relatives in Michigan again after that. She said she has tried for years to find them, but did not ever know any last names except for Grandmother Brouch, Mama's mother.

Susan's husband has been searching the internet off and on for several years, and Saturday night he googled "brouch michigan" and one of the sites that came up was 7 Babes A Blogging, the site where I was the guest blogger for December. When he clicked on that link and found my post, he knew right away he had found the right family. When he showed it to my cousin and she saw the pictures of Mama on that post, she said they looked so much like her own mother that she knew it, too. So, they looked up phone numbers for Strouds in Douglasville, and the first one she called was Mama.

When Mama called me, she was THRILLED! She was so happy. She did not know I had written about her. Mama told me that she had often wondered over the years what had become of her sister's children. Then she asked me, Did you really write a tribute to me? and I said yes, and she said, "I never knew you felt that way about me." Well, gee, she IS my mother!

So, Susan called me last night and she thanked me over and over for writing that blog, because she has found her family after all this time. She also told me that she has been trying to duplicate her mother's stuffed cabbage all her life, and now she knows that she has found the right recipe.

This is not the first time our family has been reunited through the internet. Back in 1979, my youngest brother, Bobby, died in an accident. At the time of his death, he had a six month old daughter. After he died, his widow would not allow any of us to visit with her child, and we lost track of her. Earlier this year, my sister joined MySpace. She decided to do a search to see if maybe our niece was a member there. Sure enough, there she was. And since she had a very unusual first name, we knew it was her. She was in the Air Force, stationed in Arizona.

When my sister contacted her, she was delighted to find out she had such a large family, and when she came home to Georgia to visit in July, she was the guest of honor at a party to introduce her to the whole gang.

My sister also found our older brother's two children from his first marriage. They are both living in California. While they have not visited us, yet, we do keep in touch with them through MySpace. I think we have found everyone now. How Exciting!

Owen, The Rock Star Baby

Owen is our newest FabGrandson. We have three now, but since he is the newest one, he is the one we get the most pictures of at the moment. He has so much hair that even though he is only 15 weeks old, he has already had his first haircut! My son and his wife, the parents of this fabulous child, have taken to calling him "the rock star baby" because no matter what they do, his hair sticks straight up on top os his head. I think he looks sort of like a baby Einstein.

Here he is at 12 weeks, just discovering his feet. I LOVE this guy!

Another one at 13 weeks. He looks so serious here.

15 weeks. I'm still in love.

Gluten Free Cranberry Tangerine Muffins

One of the yahoo groups I am on is one where you can make a post telling what you have on hand, and other people can suggest recipes to make with it. One day last week someone posted that they had been given a bunch of oranges and wanted to know what she could do with them to use them up before they went bad. Someone then posted a recipe for a quick bread, where they put the whole orange, peel and all, into a food processor, chopped it up, and added it to the bread batter. MMMM, that sounded so good, except that 1. I can’t eat wheat flour, and 2. I am allergic to oranges. But, I CAN eat tangerines, and during the winter months I buy them by the bag.

So, this morning I decided to make an “Experimental Breakfast”. Here is the recipe for what I made:

¼ cup butter, melted

1 cup buckwheat flour

½ cup brown rice flour

½ cup tapioca flour

¼ cup confectioners sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon (more or less) Chinese Five Spice Powder (or cinnamon, if you prefer)

2/3 cup milk

½ tsp vanilla, orange, or lemon extract

1 egg, beaten

½ cup frozen cranberries

1 whole tangerine, peel and all

Melt the butter and set aside. Put the cranberries and the tangerine in a food processor and process until the tangerine peel is well chopped (I did cut out the stem end that was black). Mix all the dry ingredients into a large bowl. Make a well in the center, and pour in all the liquid ingredients. Stir quickly to combine, but don’t worry about if there are lumps. Fold in the fruit mixture. Spoon into muffin pans that have been sprayed with Pam, or line with paper baking cups. Bake at 400 degrees for 21 minutes.

This recipe made 12 muffins for me, this may vary depending on the size of your muffin tins.

I have to say, that I was a little leary of using the whole citrus peel, but by gosh these were delicious!

I have to give credit here to the cookbook that I used as a guide for making this, after getting the idea of it from the yahoo list. It is “Allergy-Free Cookbook” by Alice Sherwood.

I checked it out from the library and I am thinking about buying one. She has some really good recipes in there and shows adaptations for every one of them for nut free, dairy free, egg free, and gluten free versions. The pictures in it will make you drool!

What a Good Haircut Should Look Like

A few months ago, while we were still in Pennsylvania, I wrote about the horrible haircut I got at a little shop in Gettysburg. I showed you the pictures of that hack job. I couldn't go anywhere without a hat for about a month.

The first thing we did when we got to Georgia was make a beeline for our daughter's hair salon. Becky always makes me feel so special, and she always does a good job on my hair. So, just for the fun of being able to show you what a good haircut looks like, as soon as we got home from her shop last month I had Jim take a couple of pictures. What a wonderful difference!

This is the front:

And this is the back:Thanks, Becky!

I Am Famous

Yeah, so last week I was sitting in the lobby of Unicoi Lodge, where they have wireless internet service, doing some surfing on my laptop, when this lady walks up to me and says, "Excuse me, but are you FabGrandma?" Of course, I said I was, but I was shocked that someone would recognize me. It was a weird feeling, but weird in a good way. I felt flattered that someone would not only read my postings here, but actually remember what I look like from my picture.

So, yeah, you are reading THE Fabgrandma!

Unicoi

Just a couple of pics I wanted to share. The first one is a resting spot on the lake trail at Unicoi State Park. This was taken on January 6, 2008, in the north Georgia mountains. It was 70 degrees! What a beautiful day.


This was also on the lake trail at Unicoi. I was trying to a picture of our shadows on the water. What do you think?

I Have Been Tagged, So Here Ya Go...

Froggi Donna at From The Lily Pad, one of my rver friends from the Escapees forum, has tagged me for a blog tag. To play, you have to do this:

1. Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
2. Share 5 random and/or weird facts about yourself on your blog.
3. Share the 5 top places on your "want to see or want to see again" list.
4. Tag a minimum of 5 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
5. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Acck! Was my fist thought when I saw that I was tagged. I really don’t like to be tagged, because it makes me have to actually think. So, to satisfy this tag, here goes:

Five Random Weird Facts About Me: (Ha! Those who know me well probably are thinking anything I could say about myself is weird)

1. I like cheese and I like broccoli, but I hate cheese on broccoli. I also do not like broccoli casserole or green bean casserole.
2. I was once searched by the Secret Service while I was wearing a bathing suit.
3. I am afraid of spiders and once went to a laundromat to wash clothes because one was in front of my washing machine.
4. I have to make my own bread because I can not eat wheat. The gluten free bread available already cooked at stores tastes like cardboard.
5. My husband tells people I have such a heavy southern accent that I can make his name into three syllables, and his name is Jim.

The Top Five Places I Want To See:

1. The Grand Canyon (I did go there once about 10 years ago, but I really want to go again.
2. Yellowstone National Park
3. Alaska, but I probably won’t ever get there.
4. I want to go to Cabo San Lucas in my RV. I want to go next winter. I want to go with Charlie and Lynn and Russ and Liz and Gary and Faye, hint hint hint.
5. I want to go to Washington State and drive down the Pacific coast to San Diego.

And now, I am tagging:

1. That guy from The Camping Machine Blog

2. Marye at 7 Babes A Blogging

3. Playing With Soap, a lady who makes lovely soaps and blogs about it.

4. Michelle at One Day and One Coffee At A Time

5. And just for meanness, Ken, who has to post on his MySpace page

There you have it, my answers and the people I have tagged. I am done.