Homemade Gluten Free Chex Mix

A recipe for Homemade Gluten Free Chex Mix? I just happen to have one right here.

It's tasty, I'm eating some right now for breakfast with a hot cup of coffee, a perfect winter morning breakfast.

Snow Run

It continued snowing off and on most of Thursday, nothing significant, just light snow showers to snow flurries all day. But I had a bit of a problem, an overactive dog named Shaak Ti who isn't concerned by things like snow and cold. In our walks the last few days she keeps bounding through the snow like it's not there leading me to believe that her attitude about snow is somewhere between oblivious and indifferent. Yesterday she needed some good exercise and didn't make any qualms about letting me know.

My options were either to hop in the car and take her to the dog park or go on a run. Even though there were a few inches of snow on the ground I felt determined to get a run in, and it was loads of fun. I strapped on my new waterproof Kamik boots (they're awesome and very lightweight) and went for a very low speed jog along our usual Greenway route over to Minnesota and back.

Since I didn't have my usual running sneakers on and wasn't going to be timing my run or distance, we stopped to take pictures a couple of times.
This is the bridge over the Red River, pointing south, taken from the Minnesota side.
The Greenway path on the Minnesota side. There hadn't been too many visitors/pedestrians over the past few days. With the exception of one older guy walking his black lab off leash (who luckily paid no attention to Shaak Ti) I didn't see or hear a soul, it was very peaceful and serene. That one guy we did encounter looked at me like I was nuts, running through the snow, though I was very polite and bade him good day, he gave me the "Are you friggin' crazy?" glance, which I loved of course.
"Uhhhh, can we please start running again?"

Just after these pictures on the way back to the house, it clouded over again and flakes continued to fly.

Snow Pictures

We got our first snow of the year, not a whole lot, maybe two inches, but it was enough to make some pretty pictures. It's still coming down this morning too and there are forecast to be snow showers/flurries today and tomorrow.
Here's the view towards the Northeast from the front door of our house.
This is the view towards the Northwest, the intersection of First Avenue and Fenton Avenue, our street corner.
The path leading up to our front door. You may not be able to see the detail, but the only footsteps on the path are that of the mailman and paper deliverer. As you can see, I've got a bit of shoveling to do. We're off to the garage to see if we can engineer some type of snow plow apparatus to attach to Shaak Ti that will allow her to pull me on her leash while also plowing the sidewalk. You never know, it might work.

Wallyball Results

It took a few weeks, but our wallyball results finally got listed in the Grand Forks Herald. Our team name is "Strangers In the Night" (we didn't all know each other and I thought it would be funny) and currently in second place. The one loss occurred while i was back in San Diego for work, so I'd like to think with all our regular players, we'd be undefeated.
We won again last night to finish the regular season at 6-1 (the paper seems to lag a week behind, though I can't tell why, this is breaking news) and are primed for a deep post season run at the title. The title and free t-shirts. The post season tournament is next week, so stay tuned for the results from our wallyball happenings.

Snow on the Way

Snow is on the way, how much is yet to be determined. A big "Alberta Clipper" system is moving down out of Canada, but it expected to stay mostly to the North. Alycia's parents in Cavalier should see 6 inches or so, but we'll be lucky to get half that down here in Grand Forks. It's always pretty amazing what a difference a hundred miles makes. The forecast is still changing, but snow should start late morning/early afternoon and continue with snow showers through tomorrow.

You can see the local forecast and accompanying Winter Weather Advisories here.

I've also finally tracked down the charger for the digital camera (it was misplaced in the move) and am charging the battery. The battery had run out and that's what has been preventing me from posting any pictures. But now with the battery fully charged and raring to go, I'll post any and all applicable winter wonderland scenes as well as any "apprehensive about all the snow on the ground" puppy pictures.

We probably won't get enough snow to warrant using the snowblower, which is a good thing since we can't get it started. Alycia's Dad was tinkering with it for over an hour on Saturday and other than two brief startups, we couldn't make it run. I could tell that this vexed him greatly as he called both Sunday and Monday with additional ideas on how to get it going. It's a fairly new machine (pictures to follow in a subsequent posting) but I don't know how long it has sat idle in the garage, it could be a number of years, so it's possible that gaskets, seals, or even the carburetor need to be replaced. There was recently a coupon in the newspaper for a snowblower tuneup (with pick up and drop off service) for pretty cheap. I think I'll be giving them a call.

Thanksgiving Recap - Part 2

...and so the tale of Thanksgiving continues.

Once Alycia's Dad and I had returned from our lumberjack escapades, the family wanted to venture out to the local Cavalier, ND Christmas tree farm and select a tree for us. So we packed up the entire family unit into our version of a sleigh (the Cummings family red Pontiac Aztec), plus Alycia's folks and their two pooches and drove west of town to the little Christmas tree farm.

The Christmas tree farm was a half mile off the road and consisted of trees of varying ages and heights, all growing lined up four to six trees wide on each side of a rutted grass road, stretching for a few hundred yards. In between all the trees was essentially meadow grass that would have been nearly waist high in summertime, but had now died back and was knee deep and very fun to wade through.

Shaak Ti was on doggy cloud nine, bounding through the brown grass as fast as I could keep up, pulling at her leash with every ounce of her being, and sniffing intently every few feet, at times burying her entire head under the dead grass to get a better whiff of the aromatic goodness below. The grass was surely home (at one time or another) to some manner of bunny, pheasant, or other tasty smelling creature and I thought Shaak Ti might stroke out from the sensory overload, but lo, she did not. When we finally returned home that night though, she did walk straight past her dinner into her bed and promptly fell asleep, too tired even to eat.

After much debating over what defines perfect arboreal artistic form, we selected our tree and Alycia's Dad brandished a hacksaw for us to cut down yet another tree. We secured it to Alycia's parents car and headed back to Cavalier. Alycia's parents were planning a trip to Grand forks the very next day, and along with the Christmas tree, they also had the trunk full of the wood we had spent chopping earlier that day. We were thankful for the door to door delivery service.

And that's the Thanksgiving story. OK, really the day after Thanksgiving story, but a story none the less. Alycia and I were both thankful to have a full weekend to recover from all the festivities.

Thanksgiving Recap - Part 1

Lot's of stories to tell, let's get going. And unfortunately I had to make this a two parter - too much information for one sitting.

We headed up to Cavalier on Thursday morning, dogs in tow, to spend Thanksgiving with Alycia's family. Thanksgiving dinner was a long affair and filled with delicious food for everyone. Alycia's Mom and Dad enjoy trying out new recipes and they had a couple of vegetarian, gluten free dishes for Alycia. One was a wild/brown rice casserole with mushrooms and water chestnuts, another was roasted butternut squash with cauliflower, garlic and pine nuts. Both were very different and quite tasty.

We have leftovers of both those dishes, and we'll spend the next several days consuming them. Since I'm busy eating the turkey, gravy and other meaty gluten filled items, I always feel a bit bad for Alycia, but this year, she had quite lot to choose from, the two aforementioned dishes, plus mashed taters, gluten free stuffing, and a gluten free apple pie, so nobody left hungry, Celiac or not.

Friday, the day after Thanksgiving though, was where the real fun started. Alycia's parents sit on the Holy Church Council for a church in the nearby hamlet of Hamilton, ND population 73 (here's the Wikipedia entry on Hamilton, ND for those who would accuse me of hyperbole for storytelling purposes). Her Dad had volunteered to remove a dead tree from the church parking lot the previous Sunday, and I as his helper monkey, was gonna help him do it.

First we had to mosey from Cavalier, ND, south on Highway 18 to the farm of a family friend (Farmer Lee) who lives outside Hoople, ND, population 292 (again here's the Wikipedia entry for you non believers) to pick up his two chain saws. Chain saws in tow, we headed up to Hamilton only to find that the tree had already been removed!!!! Alycia's Dad attributed this shocking discovery to the likelihood that another parishioner had overheard the tree removal plan and had simply jumped the gun and come over and removed the tree himself.

We were now all dressed up, chain saws in hand, with nothing to chain saw. This simply would not do, so we conjured up a backup plan. Tom called Farmer Lee and asked if we could take some of the trees that he had thinned from the tree breaks/shelterbelt around his fields, chop it up, cart it away and use it for firewood at our homestead in Grand Forks. For those of you city slickers who don't know, North Dakota is a very windy place, and tree breaks or shelterbelts are used around both houses/farmsteads and around crop fields to keep wind, snow drifts, weeds, and soil erosion at bay.

The tree breaks can be narrow (one tree wide) or deep (a hundred feet wide or more) and very long, usually the length of the field, hundreds of yards long. Essentially they're long, narrow forests, and every few years farmers go in and thin dead trees, cut down problem trees, and generally keep the forest healthy.

Alycia's Dad and I set to work, each with a chain saw and a huge tangle of large trees that had been removed by heavy equipment and piled up at one end of the tree break. After about an hour of frenzied mechanized fury, we had enough wood to fill up the vehicle (a lovely red Pontiac Aztec) and decided to call it a day. We drove the chain saws back to Farmer Lee's compound, returned to load up the wood in the Aztec, and proceed back home in time for Thanksgiving leftover lunch.

And after lunch we had yet another family adventure. To be continued.....

Another Poll

There's another poll up for all of you, my treasured readers. You can't really answer it until after tomorrow - Thanksgiving, but maybe this will get your taste buds prepared for all the deliciousness that is to come...