Gluten Free Gnocchi; A Total Success! (Friday, December 23rd, 2016)

Our youngest daughter and her boyfriend love to experiment with recipes and try to re-create things they have had somewhere else. They recently came up with a recipe for pink sauce that they knew we would love, so they wanted to make us dinner.  The only problem was that we can't find a gluten free pasta that we really like, and we wanted her to be able to enjoy dinner as much as the rest of us.

So our daughter and I decided to try our hand at making gluten free gnocchi.  Since it is made mostly with potato, we thought that it might turn out better than regular pasta.  So this afternoon, we found a recipe (on the internet of course-glutenfreebaking.com), and got all of the ingredients.  Like with everything gluten free, the fear is that it will not hang together. 

We ended up making a few changes, which is common for us, and when we got to the section where it told us to roll the dough into logs and then cut the logs into bite sized pieces, we realized that was a pipe dream, and decided to roll the dough out about 1/3 of an inch think and then cut it into bite sized pieces.  This may not be conventional for gnocchi, bu neither is gluten free, so we're going with it.

Here is how our recipe ended up:

2 lbs Russet potatoes, washed (they are a high starch potato)
1 cup white rice flour
1/2 cup sweet rice flour 
2 large eggs
at least 2 tsp salt
1/2 cup parmesan cheese

Bake the potatoes until tender, then cool (overnight works well)
Grate the cooled potatoes using the small grater, into a large bowl.
Whisk together rice flour and sweet rice flour, set aside.
Whisk together eggs and 1 tsp salt, pour over the potatoes.
Work the egg mixture into the potatoes with forks until it begins to hold together.  Mixture will be sticky.
Begin working the flour mixture into the potatoes a little at a time.
Use some of the flour mixture to flour the counter.
Once the potatoes begin to form a dough, turn it out onto the counter and begin to knead by hand.  
Continue to add flour mixture until the mixture is firm and not sticky.
Divide the dough into eighths, and work with one piece at a time, covering the remaining dough with a wet cloth.
Roll the piece of dough out to about 1/3 inch thick, then cut into bite size pieces (about 1/2 in by 3/4 in), and roll each piece over a fork or gnocchi board.
Transfer the gnocchi onto a lightly floured (using gluten free flour) cookie sheet.
Formed gnocchi can be either frozen or cooked right away.
To cook, boil a large pot of salted water.  Divide the gnocchi in half, cooking each half until they float.  Transfer cooked gnocchi to a bowl for serving.

We then put the cut pieces on a cookie sheet dusted with rice flour. We were experimenting with the sizes of the pieces as well, and decided that the size didn't matter for cooking them, but the smaller pieces were nicer to eat.

We boiled them in small batches, fearing that a large batch of them would fall apart more easily, but I think we would have been OK in larger batches.

When we took them out, they were still intact!  Yay!  Another gluten free success story!

So we enjoyed a fabulous dinner of gluten free gnocchi with pink sauce!  

I think this should become a tradition before Christmas every year. It was a fabulous night spending time with these two great kids. Love them!  And the gnocchi turned out great.  It is so nice to have a pasta that tastes like the real thing!

Homeward Bound (January 16th, 2016)

Yesterday was our last day at sea, so we slept in, with no intention of setting an alarm. When we finally woke up, the seas were calm. It was definitely getting cooler, as we headed back north, and back into winter. So we enjoyed our final day at sea, and our final cruising companion.

Today we will end of our Caribbean Cruise with our daughter in the port of Galveston, where we started. We woke up this morning to foggy skies again as we made our way back into the port. The temperatures are probably in the 50's and it's cloudy.

Last night they gave us two options for disembarking. The first is called self assist, which is definitely the easiest option if you drove to the cruise terminal and aren't waiting on any particular transportation. It requires you to carry all of your bags off the ship yourself. The only problem with this option is that the elevators are usually pretty busy on the last day of the cruise and it's hard to handle luggage on the stairs. Self assist passengers are usually the first to leave the ship. 

The other option is to leave your bags outside your door the night before, and they will move them to the cruise terminal for you. With this option, they prioritize passengers by when their flights leave, to ensure that everyone gets to the airport in plenty of time. They give you a group number, and when your group is called, you can disembark. Since we were using Carnivals transportation to get to and from the airport, we chose to leave our bags out the night before, and have them transported to the terminal for us.

We got up at about 7:30, in order to be out of our room by 8:30, which is what they require in order to get the rooms ready for the next guests that will be coming in later in the day. We left our carry-on bags in our room and headed to breakfast. They had all of the usual breakfast options available, so we sat out on the back pool deck and enjoyed a nice quiet breakfast. 

The dining room on the Lido deck was really busy, but the back pool deck was nice and quiet. When we finished breakfast, we went back to the room and gathered up our carry-on bags, then returned to our table to wait for our group to be called. They called most of the self assist groups, and then our group was one of the first "assisted" groups to be called to disembark, so we made our way to the front of the ship. We scanned our Sail-n-Sign cards for the final time and headed off the ship and into the cruise terminal. Once in the terminal, we located our bags, which are sorted by debarkation group number, and got into the long line to go through customs.

They were forming two customs lines, so as we got in line, I looked at the other line to see who we were next to, and when we got to the front of the line, we were still next to the same people. The lines moved very evenly. 

We got through customs very quickly, but some of the people had to do finger prints, thumb prints and a lot of other stuff that we didn't have to do. The only thing I could think of is that they weren't U.S. citizens. I don't really know fully! It took about an hour to get through customs, then we were free to head out of the cruise terminal to our transportation. We were using the Carnival provided buses, so we picked up our bus tickets and crawled on our bus. We had to wait for about half an hour for the bus to fill up before we headed to the airport. 

We had a nice long wait at the airport since our flight didn't leave until 2:55, but everything went as planned, and before we knew it, we were on our way home. As we descended into Denver, there was still a lot of snow on the ground. Apparently it has been cold while we were away.

I want to take a minute to recap the gluten free dining on the ship, because it was such a positive experience.  Our daughter was never limited on her selections.  She was offered the same menu each night as we were, the only difference was that she reviewed the menu the night before so they would have time to specially prepare her appetizers, entrees and desserts. 

Houston always handed her the menu with a smile on his face, and never made her feel uncomfortable for needing special food.  And, I have to say, it was fun to see what the chef would do to make her request gluten free.  She said that it wasn't always what she expected, but it was always very tasty, and very much appreciated by all of us.

Leaving for Galveston (Saturday, January 9th, 2016)

We got about four inches of snow again yesterday. They say that’s what we should expect in an El Nino year, but not necessarily what we want. If we still enjoyed skiing, snow would be a great thing, but right now it just means shoveling, slow traffic and very dirty cars.

We made another phone change before we left on this trip. We paid an extra $40 to Verizon this month to have cell phone coverage from the ship and at each of our ports. If you have Verizon, you can call 611 from your cell phone and it will put you in touch with the international representative who will give you pricing for international travel phone coverage. We decided that the extra $40 would be worth it to be able to talk to our older daughter while we were away.

We left the house at 4:45 this morning for a 7:25 flight to Houston Hobby Airport. We will be boarding the Carnival Freedom later today for a seven-day cruise in the northern Caribbean. As we drove to Denver International Airport it was 21 degrees outside and some of the roads were still icy from yesterday's snow.  Security lines were longer than we expected, probably still the end of the holiday travelers.  

Our flight to Houston was completely full, and in fact, it was over sold, so they were asking for people to take a bump. Unfortunately that wouldn't work for us this time, but maybe another time.  The flight on Southwest Airlines was very good, and got into Houston about 15 minutes early. We landed at about 11:00 a.m. It was 55 degrees when we landed, so the temperatures are definitely moving in the right direction.

We are taking this trip with just our youngest daughter. Our oldest daughter started her “big girl job” on January 4th, and is getting her career off to a good start, and our son (in-law) is back in training in Georgia.

When we booked our Carnival Cruise, we purchased the airport to ship transportation option that they provide for $37 per person each way for about an hour ride.They had a check-in desk right in the baggage claim area at the Houston Hobby airport, which made it really easy. We checked in after picking up our bags, and then waited about 30 minutes for the rest of the bus passengers to arrive.

We talked to the Carnival representative at the airport and she said that a lot of people flew in yesterday and stayed at a local hotel, then caught the hotel shuttle back to the airport this morning in time to catch the first bus to the ship. We hadn’t thought of that, but might have to try it next time. They run three buses a day on arrival days to get people from the airport to the ship.

Once everyone had arrived, they walked us all out to the bus, which was a nice big coach bus. 

We told them that we wanted to carry our luggage on when we got to the ship, so they put it in a separate bay from the other luggage so it wouldn’t automatically be taken by the porters when we got to the ship. We appreciated that very much!  

The cruise lines typically handle your luggage when you arrive, and as quickly as they can, they deliver it to your room. Since there are thousands of passengers on the ship, this can take quite a bit of time, and until your luggage arrives, you don’t have access to it. So we prefer to just carry our luggage on ourselves and put it in our room. That way we have everything we need, and don’t have to wait on the luggage delivery people. 

We always enjoy seeing how different life is in different places. As we came over the bridge into Galveston, there were beautiful neighborhoods (on stilts of course) built right on the water, and in Galveston, it's all about oil. Everywhere you look has something to do with oil.  

Since we came straight from the airport and used the Carnival transportation, we got to skip the long lines and go straight through priority security and check-in at the ship. It was very nice because the main lines looked really long. 

 Carnival cruises are all inclusive except for alcohol, and alcohol can be quite expensive. We don’t drink a lot, but we do enjoy a drink here and there, so we always take advantage of the carry on wine policy that Carnival has. Each person over 21 can carry on one bottle of wine. If you choose to drink it with dinner, there is a $15 uncorking fee, but if you just drink it in your room, or around the ship, it is free to enjoy anywhere else on the ship. Just don’t forget to bring a corkscrew, although our housekeeping staff has helped us with in the past. 

The other thing we also always pack for a cruise ship (and hotels too) is extra hangars. We keep lots of metal hangars from the dry cleaners around just for this purpose. There is plenty of closet space on cruise ships, but never enough hangars.

When we got to our room, it was just as we expected it to be.

Plenty of room for the three of us for a week

Looking back toward the window

Cozy, but efficient!

After we got our bags to our room, we headed out to explore the ship a little it. All of the Carnival ships have basically the same layout, but are decorated differently. The buffet style restaurants are always open when you get on board to provide food to hungry travelers. This was a good thing for us today since we got up at 4:00 a.m., had a small breakfast, and really hadn’t eaten anything else since. We all found a little something for lunch at the Italian buffet.  We walked around the ship some more, but it was really cold and windy on the outside decks so we didn’t spend much time out there. 

The ships always do a safety briefing before they set sail, which varies by ship, but requires the passengers to report to their “muster” station. This is an area out of the side decks of the ship where the lifeboats are stored. They explain what to do in an emergency while you are standing out there. Since it’s quite cold outside today, we went back to the cabin and grabbed our coats before reporting to our station. This turned out to be a really good idea. There were a lot of really cold people huddled around trying to get through the safety talk. 

We each only brought one or two pairs of pants, so were hoping that as the ship makes it way south that it starts warming up or we’re going to be doing a lot of re-wearing.

After the safety briefing we found ourselves a nice, warm inside table from which to watch the sail away. 

Our daughter and I went out to the pizza bar to see if they had gluten free crust, and to our surprise they do. They made her, her very own, hot out of the oven gluten free pizza with any toppings she wanted. It took about 4 minutes to get her pizza. What a nice surprise! 

As we sat at our table, eating pizza and waiting for the sail away, we noticed a school of dolphins right outside our window. They swam around the side of the ship for about an hour. What a treat! I tried to get a few pictures, but only had a little point and shoot camera, so not much luck, but it was really fun to see them.

If you look closely, you can see a mama and baby jumping side by side

Galveston sunset

We prefer to have the late dinner slot, so that we are never rushed to get back on the ship after our excursion days. Our dinner time this trip is 8:15. We had time to go to the welcome aboard show before going down to dinner.  In the main restaurant there is assigned seating. We have been seated with another family of three. A mom, with her daughter and son from Freemont, Nebraska. They are really nice and about our age, so they will be fun to eat with each night. 

Steve had the vegetarian option, which is always Indian. Carnival usually has Indian chef’s, so the Indian food is always really good. I had grilled mahi mahi and creamed spinach and our daughter had grilled chicken and a baked potato. We all also had an appetizer and chocolate melting cake for dessert. Our daughter had ice cream since she can’t have gluten. 

From now on, our daughter will order a day ahead, and all of her meals will be prepared gluten free for her.  As we finished our dessert, they brought tomorrow-nights menu to our table, and she picked out all of her selections for tomorrow night, including gluten free chocolate melting cake. We are very pleased with how Carnival is handling her meals, and they do it all with a huge smile on their faces.

After dinner we went to the comedy club where we watched two really good comedians, Thomas Brown and Sheila Kay. They usually have good comedians on Carnival cruises, but we thought these two were exceptional. After the comedy club we all headed back to our room for some much needed sleep.

Graduation Parties Galore (May 23rd, 2015)

Yesterday, in addition our daughter's wedding, it was also graduation day for most of the high schools in the Denver area. Today is graduation party day for two of our nieces and the daughter of our friend Tim. We are going to do our best to get to all of them.

We woke up this morning at the hotel in Broomfield from our daughter's wedding the night before, and met Andra’s parents and Steve’s aunt, uncle and niece for breakfast.  It was such a treat to have so many people stay at the hotel, so we could spend extra time with all of them last night and this morning.

We had a lot of stuff to take home from the wedding, so it took a while to load the truck before we could leave the hotel. When we got home, we got everything unloaded, showered, and got ready for the start of the graduation parties.

Our twin nieces graduated yesterday from Skyview Academy, a small charter school in Highlands Ranch, CO. They are the first graduating class from their school. Their graduation party was at their dad’s house, where they now live with their dad and his new wife. Their graduation party was very nice, with lots of gluten free options because one of our nieces also has to eat gluten free. How convenient!! They had a beautiful deck set up out back, but because the weather just won’t cooperate, the party had to be held inside. We had a lot of fun hearing about the girl’s plans for the future. One will be attending Hastings College in Hastings, NE and the other will be attending Emporia State University in Emporia, KS. We are so proud of both of them.

Next, we were off to part two of their graduation party at their grandma and grandpas house, where all of their mom’s side of the family (that includes us) could spend more time together. Their mom now lives in Kansas City, MO., so we don’t get to see much of her or her new husband. By the time we got to the second party, the weather had cleared a bit, and we were able to be out on their beautiful and spacious back porch. They had lots more wonderful food, and most of the family was there. It is so hard to get all of us together, so this was a very special day. 

Unfortunately, Steve and I both started fading quickly at this point, so we decided to call it a day, and we weren’t able to make it to our last party.

To Eat, or Not to Eat (April 26, 2015)

It is now 12 weeks until retirement, and a very cold, rainy day. It would be so easy to just sit at home with a movie and a blanket, but it is also the kind of day that makes us really wish that retirement was here, and we could head to warmer weather and at least a small adventure. 

We decided to head out into the rain with two goals in mind, find a store that sells gluten free flour in bulk, and find something fun and yummy for dinner so we could just cook at home and enjoy an evening in. Most of the grocery stores near our house sell only the pre-packaged gluten free flour, at what I think is a painful price. And since I have decided to make my own gluten free sourdough, I am going to need to find something a little cheaper. Our first try was a very large Whole Foods store in an area called Belmar, in Lakewood, CO. They have a very nice parking garage that connects directly to the store, so we didn’t even have to get wet to get into the store. And to our surprise, they had brown rice flour in bulk, for the amazing price of $1.99/lb! 

If you are one of the unfortunate people who have celiac, this would not work for you since there are glutinous flours in the same area, but for our youngest daughter who has just developed an intolerance to gluten, we are okay to use this bulk flour. So we loaded up on five pounds of the bulk flour, and a cute sun hat (which I will hopefully need somewhere soon), and headed back out into the rain. Goal number one accomplished easily. 

The question now was what sounds good for dinner. We decided to go for some seafood, and what better place to find fresh seafood in Colorado but the local Asian market. Hopefully some day soon we will be able to spend some time a bit closer to the ocean, where fresh seafood will be more plentiful, but for now, the Asian market will have to do. We headed to Westminster, CO where there is a relatively new H-Mart store, which is a pretty big Asian market. I have to confess that I am kind of a closet Asian Market junkie. I could spend hours looking at their produce, meats and seafood, and wondering what one might do with that. And usually, I have to buy several of those items, and then Youtube them to see what they are. Of course, today was no exception. 

We ended up with sea scallops for dinner, and along with that we picked up some mysterious fruits, root vegetables, some fun new mushrooms, and a type of fish called escolar which we had never heard of before. It is a very white steak that we assumed would be good grilled. Goal number two also easily accomplished! 

Now home, to Youtube escolar. It is supposedly a very tasty fish that is sometimes called white tuna, although it is really not related to tuna at all, but with all of the recipes for this fish comes a big warning: Do not consume more than 6 ounces of this fish at a time. It can cause intestinal distress in some people. Yikes, that doesn’t sound pleasant. So To eat, or not to eat, that is the question. I guess we’ll stick with scallops for tonight and save that big decision for another day.  

We did end of eating our escolar, and I will post the results in a later blog.