Easter Weekend and the Attack of the Horrible GF Bread

Tonight for dinner, I rotisseried (is that even a word?) a chicken in my rotisserie oven from Heather and Matt, and made a delicious asparagus-spinach risotto. It was divine, but I dirtied half the dishes in my kitchen and all of the available countertops, so I am putting off cleaning my kitchen, hence the new blog post.

We had all of my in-laws in town for Easter, which included T's parents, his only sister, her husband and their three boys. We had a great, mostly stress free weekend, and just truly enjoyed each others' company.

I was coming down off the high of a couple of successful GF baking attempts, and with a traditional ham dinner for Easter Sunday on the docket, I decided to make GF "dinner rolls."

Quotation marks are because they looked like biscuits and tasted like something I would feed the dogs. Oh, wow, they were horrible.

They didn't taste like anything I had ever had before. I can't even truly describe how bad they were, my sister in law said they tasted like a tennis shoe.

My brother in law walked into the kitchen to snag one as they were cooling and was trying really hard not to show his disgust, the nice man that he is. But even though we warned him, T put on his game face and ate one on Sunday because he is my wonderful husband. 95% of the meals I put in front of him are delicious, so he remained loyal even during this experimental GF stage.

I didn't take any of this personally because even though I was honestly slaving in the kitchen over them, I thought they were pretty bad, too.

I also made GF "cinnamon rolls," which I am putting in quotation marks because they had more of a cinnamon roll inspired brioche-thing going on. Jill and I made these on Saturday night for Easter morning, because cinnamon rolls used to be our Sunday morning staple prior to Kate's CD diagnosis. Kate, one nephew and the adults all liked it, Brookie and the two older boys did not. 2 out of 3 ain't bad! I will probably try a different recipe next time though, because for the amount of work I put in, they weren't amazing.

The oatmeal cookies were a hit and amazingly there were a few left on Sunday, so T got to have one after his Lenten fast from sweets was broken. Such dedication to his personal sacrifice! I tempted him a lot with desserts over the last 40 plus days, just call me Eve.

I also made Brazilian Cheese Rolls, or pao de queijo, which are traditionally made with tapioca flour and are gluten free. The texture reminds me of the sausage balls you make with Bisquick, cheese and Jimmy Dean sausage, crunchy on the outside, and soft and springy on the inside. The recipe is one that you can play around with, using different herbs and cheeses and they are really easy to make. I will definitely be making those again. The first time I made them, I shaped them to be about the size of my palm, this time they were much smaller, about the size of a plum. I think somewhere in between will be perfect.

On Saturday, we took family pictures with Jill and her family, me, T and the girls, and my in-laws. We hired the photographer who took our Christmas pictures, my friend and hairstylist Amy came over and did our hair and makeup, (ooh la la!) and we all did the white shirts and blue jeans thing. I was really worried that it would look boring, but it didn't at all! The girls wore white sundresses and looked adorable, I will share the link to Deanna's blog when she posts them.

That's really all, it was a low drama weekend, which I am very grateful for. So today I am thankful for:

- Living in a country where I am free to worship God and celebrate the resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ.
- Family and friends
- On the Border corn tortilla chips being sold in a huge bag at Sam's and being gluten free!

Okay, here I go into domestic bliss!