Shortcuts to Amazingness!

When you are allergic to as many things as I am you learn how to make things from scratch. Most days this is not a big deal. But when your daughter is a Girl Scout a d you see the left over thin mints and Samoas in the fridge. So the other day I went to our local vegetarian store and bought these crunchy chocolate cookies from Enjoylife. I ate one and thought thin mints! So I did a quick grab in the cupboard and fridge for the enjoy life chocolate chips and peppermint oil. I melted the chocolate chips with a few drops of peppermint oil in the chocolate until it tasted just right. Then I spread it on the top of the cookies. Let it cool in the fridge.

Perfection! It was soo simple too, no fighting with the cookie batter.

No dealing with baking in the hot summer weather just allergy free cookie goodness.

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Location:Palai St,Village Park,United States

Cinnamon braided Bread

Anybody keeping track would notice that I am a carboholic. Most days it's safer and keeps the hunger at bay. So here is yet another recipe where you begin with my basic bread recipe.

Once the dough has risen remove it from the bowl and cut off about 1/3 of the dough. On a well floured surface roll out a long rectangle approximately 1/4 inch thick. Then place the rectangle on a sheet of parchment paper on a cookie sheet.

Using a pizza cutter cut strips down each long side of the rectangle. Make sure each one has a buddy on the other side. Then cut the corner strips off.

Liberally sprinkle the center with cinnamon sugar. 1 Tbsp to 1 cup. For more cinnamon flavor lightly sprinkle the strips. If you are not allergic to butter and you want even more flavor thickly butter the center before sprinkling with cinnamon sugar.

Fold over one end.

Flip in one side strip at about a 45 degree angle.

Repeat with opposite side.

Repeat alternating sides until you reach the other end.

When you get to the other end and before you do the last 2 strips fold up the end, then do the last two strips and tuck under the end. Allow to rise for 20 minutes.
Place in oven at 400 until golden brown.

While your bread is baking its time to make some frosting. I make this by taste so I'm only guessing at measurements. Use about 2 cups powdered sugar add 4 tbsp canola oil, add 1/4 tsp butter flavoring

Then about 1/2 tsp vanilla. Then slowly add water until it is thick but drizzle able.

Ignore the yellow color, we made duckie sugar cookies the day before. Lol.

Drizzle over the fresh warm bread, let cool a few minutes cut and serve. Amazing breakfast treat.
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Pretzel Dogs

So I said we would do more variations to our amazing bread as I take the photos. Today I made pretzel dogs for my daughters kindergarten graduation party. As I made them I took the few moments to take photos soooo here we go, how to make pretzel dogs.
Use the basic bread recipe, but as you are letting the yeast proof, or foam early on. Put in one teaspoon full of onion powder. Follow the rest of the steps until you turn it out on the counter after rising.


Roll out the dough on a well floured surface until it is about an 1/8 of an inch thick.


Using a pizza cutter cut squares about 3x3.


Cut the package of hot dogs in half. one batch of dough should cover about 5 packages of hot dogs.


Now you are going to wrap up you hot dog.


Tuck all 4 corners around the hot dog.


Once you fill a pan prepare your baking soda and water mixture.


Let your dogs go for a swim.then sprinkle them with salt. Put in the oven to bake. I bake them in large batches until they look about like this then I freeze them nd take them out and put them in the oven to crisp back up.


Otherwise bake them until they are a little darker and share for a party or fun event.
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Demystifying Kindergarten

Information = the best antistresstimine there is. 

When I enrolled my daughter I felt there were details I was missing in the Kindergarten process, and then proceeded to find out slowly that there were a lot of details that many of the parents who also enrolled their kids didn't know about it too. It seems that we all had snippets of the information but enough to actually know what was going to happen.  So I thought posting this online would be a great way to pass it on to people like me who googled the Hawaii Kindergarten process. Naturally my experience comes from Kaleiopu'u Elementary in Village Park on O'ahu, so other schools will have a variation on these processes.

Evaluation Day

You and your child’s first day of Kindergarten is your child’s evaluation day. This day was shrouded in mystery for me so let me demystify it for you. On that first day of school the teachers ask you to drop your child at the door and not come in to the classroom with them. Not an easy thing to do for some of us, but honestly as the days and weeks go on it is a good line to have drawn in the sand. Mommy and Daddy, Uncles and Aunties are not allowed in the classroom. This becomes a hard and fast rule and is easy for a young child to understand. Then those keiki who struggle with separation will know that the rule is the same EVERY day.

On evaluation day there will be multiple teachers in the classroom your child is assigned to, as well as the counselors and others helping to see where each child falls on a social level. This is meant to help the teachers divide kids who are really open and friendly and mix them in with kids who are more shy, thus giving each teacher a balanced classroom. The kids will also be taken either alone or in small groups to be asked to identify letters, numbers, colors and shapes.  This will again allow the teachers to evenly dispurse the kids and give each classroom a few who will be helpers of those who may be a bit behind the others. They call this Heterogeniously grouping them. Meaning to make each classroom function well and progress at roughly the same pace. 

My daughter had never been in a school situation prior to Kindergarten and I was soo nervous she would be so far behind, but as it turns out every kid is unique and my daughter learned soo fast. Her evaluation paper was given to us later in the year and she actually knew quite a bit more than I gave her credit for. Plus I was amazed how well the teachers understood her.

Orientation Day

Orientation day  is refered to as a parent only day. This is important because your  child will find it quite boring yet they will be giving you information you will need. Your child’s class list will be posted and you will finally have a name and get to meet the teacher. After an all Kindergarten parent assembly you will get to go to your child’s new classroom and meet the teacher. He/She will ask you to put away the kids’ school supplies, and make sure everything is labeled and ready to go.  If there was anything on that Massive school supply list you couldn’t find, this is a time when the other parents will tell you where to find it. (HINT:  The glue pen can be found at Don Quijote in Waipahu in the pen and marker section, I looked for that thing everywhere and never thought to check there until I called the school about it.) This is the time you have to ask questions and really get to know what is coming. I went totally blank and couldn’t think of a single question that day. Don’t worry you will also get email addresses and phone numbers to reach the teacher.  In my experience the teacher was really good about reading emails around lunch time and getting back to me. 

If your child is registered at Kaleiopu'u and you want more information about the school and the kindergarten process and experience email us and I'll forward you a special parent to parent "handbook" I wrote, I've submitted it to the school to be given to you, but as usually happens they may not hand it out until that parent day. Not much help on the early days. LOL.

Pretzels!

Okay so back when I posted the bread recipe I said I would post some of the variations I make. Today as we near the end of school my daughter's school year her school planned staff appreciation days by color. So one one day we were to bring something blue, then purple, then green, then yellow, And brown. On yellow and brown day we had a cold, so I was unable to bring in the pretzels I had planned to bring for the staff. So instead on this. Last Monday of the school year I brought pretzels. Anyway long intro but here it is my pretzel recipe.

Make my basic bread recipe.


Once you take it out of the bowl following the in a bag rise, you should have a ball of dough. Turn it out onto a floured surface and knead until it is no longer sticking to your hands.


Prepare a pan with a piece of parchment paper. I use Reynolds parchment paper. Trust me you do not want to try and do this without the parchment paper.


I use a pizza cutter to cut off a portion of dough from the large ball. Then I use my hands to make a "snake", although this is also very fun to make with toddlers all the way through grown ups and let them. Playdoh their own shapes. We've done snow men, turtles, Honu or sea turtles, bunnies, or just rolled it out flat and used flower Cookie cutters. For these I made traditional pretzels. Once you have your pretzel shaped place it on your parchment paper covered cookie sheet.


Once all of your pretzels are shaped it's time to do the special step that makes them pretzels. Take a large bowl big enough for your pretzels to float in. Add water to it. Then add about a 1/4 cup of baking soda to the water.


Then take your pretzels and let them go swimming.


Be sure to flip it over so both sides get wet, then place them back on the parchment paper. Repeat this step with all of your pretzels.


Then sprinkle your pretzels with coarse salt. I like the flavor of sea salt so that is what I use, but you could use kosher salt as well. Once that is done place them in the oven at 400 degrees until they are golden brown.


Yummy! Place them on a cooling rack and. Enjoy once you can hold them. I like mine hot, but I've always been told not bread is bad for you. One of those old wives tales I'm sure. Hehe. LOVE these. Pretty sure I'm not going to make lunch now cause I'm so full. Enjoy.
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Upcycling

What exactly is upcycling? Upcycling is the process of taking something old and making it new again. Not refurbishing, but rather changing it into something better or different. I have this Holoku Mu'u Mu'u, for those of you on the mainland it is similar to a mermaid dress fitted and then flaring out around the knees.

I loved it pre baby. Post baby, I still love it but it does not love me or the 30 lbs I can't seem to get rid of. May Day is coming up and my daughter needed new aloha wear for her class performance. I picked out some adorable fabric and had grand plans to make a Matilda Jane-esk dress using all aloha print. I choose lots of fun shades of pink and purple. Then I learned that the class color would be blue. Oops. Then I thought of this dress and how I still loved the fabric. So what is a girl to do? Upcycle of course!

I think it turned out amazing!

I'm soo darn excited for May Day now!
Happy Earth Day bloggy world! What can you upcycle today?
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Location:Palai St,Village Park,United States

The Family Minivan

We live in Hawaii, on O'ahu specifically. We have some unique issues especially with parking. When you have a baby in a infant carrier and you drive a regular 4 door vehicle sedan style you have to be able to open the car door all the way open to get that carrier out of the car. In a Hawaiian parking lot that is virtually impossible. Most spots are soo narrow that you have a hard time getting out yourself let alone getting the baby seat out. Now that I have a 5 year old, who has accidentally put door marks in many cars getting herself out of the car, and another infant our old Ford Focus wagon just wasn't cutting it anymore. The upgrade time had come. It's only new to me, and doesn't have all the bells and whistles but its an amazing antistresstimine in my life. I can now haul around the extra kids I need to regularly, and get the baby out without turning into a pretzel. The gas expense I'm not so fond of, but the positives far outweigh that negative.



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Basic bread recipe

L's bread recipe is the first recipe we are going to share because bread is soo important to moms. Toast, sandwiches, and just generally best for filling little bellies.
1and 1/2cup water
1/2 cup coconut milk
3 Tblsp sugar
4 tsp yeast
Sprinkle of salt
5 cups flour
Step 1:
Measure the water in a microwave safe cup or bowl. Heat for 1 minute.
Add coconut milk.

My darling hubby bought me a kitchen-aid mixer and so I use that, however you could do this all by hand, although you should know its a lot of work.
Step 2:
Put the. Sugar, yeast and salt in the mixing bowl, pour milk and water mixture over the dry ingredients.

Let the yeast activate for a couple of minutes till a froth begins to form.
Step 3:
Measure in all 5 cups of flour. Using the Dough hook....

Turn on mixer first to level 1 until you can hear the strain, then move it up to level 2.

Allow it to mix for roughly 8-10 minutes.

I've made so much bread that my mixer bounces around a little so I usually hold it down. If the dough seems to be sticking too much add. Flour 1/4 cup at a time.
Step 4:
take the dough hook out of the dough and remove the bowl from the mixer.


Place the bowl inside a plastic shopping bag and tie closed. Allow to rise for approximately 1/2 hour.


Step 5:
Once dough has doubled in size.


Turn dough out onto a generously floured surface.

Knead dough adding flour as necessary until dough is no longer sticky. Cut dough into 2 equal balls. I use a pizza cutter.
Step 6:
roll out dough to a thickness of about a 1/4 inch in a rectangleoid shape. To make sure it is not too sticky i usually roll a little lift the dough, add flour underneath and flip several times. once you have gotten it thin enough roll the dough into a log shape the length of your loaf pan. I use parchment paper to line the pan. Place dough log in the pan to rise. Allow to rise for about 1 hour.
(Photo was taken after baking it)

Step 7:
carefully place pan in oven at 400 degrees for about 15-20 minutes or until crust is golden brown.

The amazing thing about this recipe is that with a few tweaks you can use it for lots of different things. This recipe is going in first because you will need it for many of our other favorites like pretzels, doughnuts, pizza, garlic balls, etc, just wait and see.

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What do we mean by Allergic to Motherhood?

Okay so years of living with food allergies has taught me a few things. First and for most is that quite often motherhood and allergies produce the same reactions. For example your toddler sees your fairly new smart phone sitting on the coffee table, she picks it up and notices that it feels hot. Well what do you do with hot things, you put them in water to cool off. So into your nice cold glass of water goes your cell phone. Then knowing that might not be right they pull it out of the water and immediately go find something to play with. Coming out of the bathroom you notice how well she is playing and congratulate her on playing so well. Patting yourself on the back for having such a calm and independent child and happy that you could use the bathroom alone for a change. Then all at once you notice the puddle around your phone.... it becomes difficult to breathe, then your breathing all but stops as you pick it up and water streams from it. Knowing full well why your daughter was playing so well you suddenly get your breath back only to yell and turn several shades of red. When you get that out of the way and you are a little calmer you try to explain to your toddler why it was wrong only to have them use such perfectly clear logic as to why it was right.

Yep just like allergies, breathing is difficult and a physical reaction is all but guaranteed. Motherhood can really send you into shock. SO how can we cope? Well with antistresstimines of course.
According to Wiki "A histamine antagonist (commonly called an antihistamine) is a pharmaceutical drug that inhibits the action of histamine by blocking it from attaching to histamine receptors; or it may inhibit the enzymatic activity of histidine decarboxylase, catalyzing the transformation of histidine into histamine (atypical antihistaminics)."Antihistamines are commonly used for the relief of allergies caused by intolerance of proteins." 

So an AntiSTRESStimine is a Stress Antagonist which can be just about anything that inhibits stress by blocking it from taking hold of our life and making it spin out of control. Antistresstimines are commonly used for the relief of stress caused by the state of being a mother.

For now we will share some of our favorite antistresstimines. Recipes, products, and destinations that make our lives better. be prepared for some rants along the way. This is just one way that we can cope with our lives. Between us we have 6 adorable stress initiators and when they get together they are an adorable tornado, lets just say there is a lot of chances to use antistresstimines in our lives.