Flashback Friday: Goodbye To Baking

So its official then. Yesterday we sold all of our gluten free baking supplies. The flours, the pastas, the mixes, the binders- all of it, gone. I'm going to strip all of the recipes from my cabinets, pull the notepads out of my drawers, and throw them all into a box out in the garage with the rest of our "don't need this stuff anymore" stuff.

This was a bold move for me. Its been months since we cut the grains and baked goods out of our day to day, and instantly I knew it felt right. Right away we felt better. Our digestive issues slowly started to resolve, and within a week or two, the healing process of mine and my sons stomachs had picked up speed, and we were (dare I say) cured.

I went through all of the cabinets and fished out all of our gluten free flours- the sorghum, the buckwheat, the brown rice, the white rice, the cornmeal, the cornstarch, the white corn, the course corn, the tapioca, the arrowroot, the millet, the xanthan gum, the baking powder- and I piled them up on the counter, telling myself that soon I'd go through the kitchen and pantry, grab the rest of the stuff, and I'd sell it.

How crazy is this?! What am I doing? We've been gluten free 5 years. Its taken me half a decade to get to this point of knowing what all of this stuff is, how it works, and how to make it work well. Am I really going to put all of that behind me and just walk away from it?

So another month passed. And then one day when I was needing more counter space for some hand washed dishes to dry on, I got sick of looking at the pile of instant pudding and oatmeal that I knew I'd never ever use again, no matter what, and I collected it all, and moved it to the dining room table.

It was time.

I went through and wrote down the prices of everything. I added up the cost of the things from the kitchen freezer, the deep freezer, the shelves in the laundry room (our back up stuff). I came up with a price, and put it up for sale. I got an email that night.

Yesterday Christopher took it down for me (because hes lost the keys to his scooter, which is about to get sold as well, because its always something with that dang thing), and made the exchange.

We're really doing this. We're really a raw vegan family.
We're coming out of the pantry. And It feels good.

So today I'm going to flashback upon some of my old gluten free favorites. Some recipes that I either posted or at least wrote about here on the blog. Soon my "gluten free recipes" section is going to be replaced with a "raw vegan" tab. They won't completely disappear, I'll keep a link to them somewhere in there, but- we're done with baking folks. This is it for us. Un-baking is the new baking, hah.

Expect ridiculously healthy things in our future.

Say yes to life.
(Yep, I said it.)

The very best sandwich bread of all time ever.


The cobbler that made this mess.


Thin mint style cookies.


Broccoli Baked Potato Soup.


Jumbo chocolate chip banana muffins.


6 layer chocolate peanut butter birthday cake.


Tia's allergic to everything lasagna.


My very favorite banana bread. (I never got around to posting my recipe- but email me if you want it?)

I'm not going to lie- I miss it. Sometimes I get a really strong craving for something that I know I can't have, just because I smell it and I haven't had enough calories yet that day (which is one of the hardest parts- eating enough). We cheat, from time to time, and steam things a little bit longer than they need to be steamed, or indulge in a high fat night, with a meal heavy in different kinds of nuts, prepared gourmet style (like sushi night).

We're still new to this. Its going to take awhile for this to become our new normal. We're getting there.

So. Goodbye muffin tins and timers. Goodbye gluten free baking. Hello cutting boards and spiral slicers. Hello life.





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So heres what we do. Every week we dig through our memories- old cell phone pictures, polaroids from 1986, something that you pulled out of a dirty shoe box- and we flashback to it. We show it off, and we write about it. We take ourselves back to that place, with as little or as much detail as our hearts are willing to share. Scan it, upload it, copy and paste it from your livejournal (remember those?)- display your memories in whatever way works for you. And then grab out button way down at the bottom of the page there (or link back old fashioned text style), add it to your flashback, add your link to our flashback, and if you've got an extra minute- maybe browse around and read some of the flashbacks left by others. Its just for fun. And really- memories are too precious to be left in an old dirty shoe box.









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