photos of gluten free foods

Saturday, October 11, 2008

I added a new mix to my website today, Cinnamon Chippies cookie mix. Sorta like a chocolate chip cookie, only made with cinnamon chips instead. Super scrumptious!

Because I needed photos, I made a batch of those and a loaf of pumpkin bread and spent a pleasant hour or so taking photos.

I really like shooting photos of food products. There is something calming and fulfilling about setting up a shoot and seeing how great something can look on the screen. Sure beats shooting white packaged items on a white background! I won't even shoot my own b&b items as it's far too frustrating. I send those off to my professional photographer.

But today was all about food. The pumpkin bread was a glorious orange color and with the harvest setup, looked divine. And the cookies stacked so beautifully. All in all it was a productive shoot.







I thought my photo-shoot was over, but then I made dinner. I've been working on a gluten-free pizza crust mix so we've been eating a bit of pizza lately. Tonight's efforts turned out so well, I decided to quickly turn on the lights and set up the camera for an impromptu pizza shoot.

So here is my latest attempt... it's nearly perfect. I'll be adding it to Glutenada soon.

I be dumb

Friday, October 10, 2008

I just a dumb hick. I ain't had no skooling. I kan't speel worth a darnn. I'm just an ijit, plane and simpuhl.

I must be since I'm a conservative Republican. I would right more but my poor, dumm, underedjukated brain just can't come up with a retort. Man, I'm just dumm.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/10/10/notes101008.DTL
copy and paste the link - I don't want to actually link to this muck from my blog...

I was completely unaware that conservatives are backwoods morons while the entire liberal party are the only folks who can speak coherently or possess any form of education. And here I was thinking that having successfully run one business for 8 years and another for 2 1/2 and starting a third, that I was actually somewhat intelligent.

"Because the truth is, the notion of an Obama presidency yields many gifts. Foremost: a refreshed intellectual climate, a far higher quality of basic discourse."

That is an incredibly rude and condescending comment. The liberals in their self-satisfied superiority think that they alone hold the keys to intellectual conversation?

I could dissect this dribble sentence by sentence but my blood pressure would likely go through the proverbial roof if I were to spend any more time thinking about this liberal wingnut and his smugness.

Gag.

Mr Mark Morford is a prime example of why I will never leave my conservative leanings. I might be just some backwoods hick without an intelligent thought, but at least I have the capacity for kindness and respect for others. I've run across far too many of these pompous, "I'm so much better than you" liberals, the party is rife with them. Apparently being a liberal means that respect and acceptance goes out the window.

So much for their tolerance for everything and everyone.

Mr Morford, you are a pompous idiot. If only I could take back the 3 minutes it took to read your dribble.

Whaddya know, Joe?

Thursday, October 09, 2008

I just love my hubby. He's ever so funny. Case in point.





Is it wrong that I got a little bit weak in the knees when I saw him in this? Kinda like a bit of a crush. The photo was dreadful so I had to fiddle with it in Photoshop so it would look even partially presentable - thus the weird effect.

While I love me a bald man and a goatee, I think that a 'fro is not a bad thing. Honey, get on the phone to Hair Club for Men, pronto!

amazing youtube video

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Freedom is always worth the price.

Life in a rental house

Sunday, October 05, 2008

When we moved to Port Angeles earlier this year, we found our rental house via a property management company. Foolish me thought that this would be a better idea than renting from a private party. Um, no.

The day we moved in, we had to call them to come visit the basement window in our son's room (bedrooms are all in the basement - keeps them nice and cool) as it was pushed in and basically out of the frame. That was the beginning of one issue after another.

2 weeks after moving in our new washer/dryer arrived so we set them up and went to do our first load of laundry. (no more laundromat - YAY!) Joe hooked the hoses to the washer and turned them on and water proceeded to shoot out everywhere. Ok, so the faucet handles have some issues. After a bit of tweaking, we found the sweet spot between not enough water pressure and a full-time sprinkler and started the first load.

I walked back into the laundry room a few minutes later and noticed that a lake had formed underneath the washer and utility sink. The water draining from the washer was coming back up out of the drain. Terrific. We quickly yanked it out and stuck it to drain down the sink and called the property mgrs. They sent someone out the next day and we were informed that the drain was old and couldn't handle the water pressure from today's modern machines. Ok. Whatever. So now the washer has to drain into the utility sink, making that virtually unusable for any other purpose.

Then in mid-August, a leak formed in the ceiling of the basement bathroom. That leak quickly became a steady stream so the property mgr was called. They sent a plumber in and lo and behold, the bathroom shower upstairs had sprung a leak. He fixed it and we were left with a gaping, moldy hole in the ceiling. The next day, someone showered upstairs and there was another stream of water leaking. Plumber was called back and this time it was fixed. Leaving the hole and mold still, however.

It took nearly 4 weeks and multiple phone calls before someone was finally dispatched to fix this. We expected them to cut out the moldy drywall and make sure that a new access panel was built as the current one was mold infested. Instead, they sent some handyman who obviously has had zero experience with mold and his brilliant solution was to take Tilex, spray what mold he could see, and then wipe it down. I'm not kidding. He just wiped off the black mold and put that nasty access panel right back into place. Hello! WE could have done that. We wanted the mold removed - not just wiped off. You cannot tell me that the mold is gone - after being wet and sitting in damp for who knows how long, that mold is inside the drywall and areas you cannot see w/out ripping it out to check.

But, as we're dealing with a spider infestation problem, we decided that this was not the battle to die over. We'd rather get them to pay for pest control - so we sent that handyman on his way and I spent the remainder of the day fuming about imbeciles and people who apply bandaids rather than doing an actual fix.

Friday, I went into the basement bathroom and stepped in a puddle of water. There was water everywhere. Wha?! Joe looked and couldn't see where it had come from so we figured the toilet maybe overflowed or something.

Yesterday, after we'd all showered and the dishwasher had been run, I went into the bathroom and saw a huge lake. I called for Joe and then happened to go into the laundry room (on other side of bathroom wall) and well, what have we here! A new lake. Filthy one at that. The drain in the laundry room was regurgitating and spewing nasty water all over the place. This had gone under/through the wall and flooded the bathroom. Great. Of course this would happen on a Saturday. Can't get a hold of anyone at property mgmt so we left a voicemail and are waiting for them to get back to us Monday.

I'm not a happy camper at this point. I have no idea what is in that water that is backing up but obviously there is a drainage issue here if the washer drain doesn't work. They'd better come in here and fix this properly - I cannot live somewhere that has drainage running through my living area.

This is what happens when problems arise and you don't fix them correctly. I am pretty nervous now about what is going to happen once it starts to really rain this fall. So far it's been pretty dry this summer/early fall so it's entirely possible that we could be living in a swamp down there once the rains hit.

I really REALLY don't want to move again, but if they cannot get their act together and get things done properly, I see no other alternative. I have no desire to live in a moldy, wet, leaking swamp.