Once again sleep proves elusive...

[osodecanela]

I have only myself to blame. Did I ask if the coffee served at dessert at my sister's was decaf? No, I assumed so.

Duh.

Mom does decaf. The older of my sisters only drinks tea. The younger decaf. I figured it had to be decaf in that urn. Nope.

AND I had two cups.

So here it is 2:40AM and I am wide awake. Just f@ck me.

Ironically, I awoke this morning with a caffeine withdrawal headache, a pain that disappeared midway through my first cuppa joe. So much for skipping caffein for the day as I'd done the day prior .

After nearly 3 hours in bed, I got up. I'm now in mom's loft, sipping a glass of fumé blanc, hoping that does the trick.

My husband is blissfully out cold. My sister from Maryland (the tea drinker) and her husband are fast asleep in the downstairs guest bedroom. Mom is asleep.

Silently, I made my way to the kitchen downstairs fetched a glass of the fumé from the open bottle in the fridge and parked myself on the loft couch, with LJ for company.

Thanksgiving was delightful. My sister from Maryland, who I rarely see, I've now seen twice in less than a week. Joan's family from LA are almost all here as were all three two of her three children, plus a significant contingent of the bride's family.

The food was excellent and plentiful and the company grand. Further my sister also having the same gluten spectrum disorder that I have, I had no fear of what would I have to eat.

Joan tasked me with making a dessert, specifically a pear/cranberry slab pie. I went one better and made two, the second gluten free. This was my first try at making pie dough from scratch of any kind since coming off gluten. Joan provided a GF baking mix for me to try from Jennifer Esposito's GF bakery business in the city. She likes the stuff and the side panel said it was a 1:1 substitute of the GF mix for flour.

I made the GF dough first as the equipment would need to be used for both doughs. I followed the recipe verbatim but the dough was wet, wet wet. I then did the regular and it appeared exactly the consistency I expected. In order not to be tough the dough has to not be overworked. I looked at the very wet GF mess and decided to work in more baking mix until I got the dough to the right place, keeping my fingers crossed it wouldn't get tough. I won that gamble! The outcome was tender and flaky, despite all my extra manipulation of the dough,

Alright, now to try sleeping again. I think I'll have success.

Comments

[danthered.livejournal.com]

[a bunch of stuff]Just f@ck me[a bunch of stuff]

Sorry, I have attention deficit disorder so I often "get" only parts of what was said. ;-)

[kybearfuzz.livejournal.com]

Sorry you had the caffeine mishap. I am fortunate enough to have an amazing tolerance to caffeine.

And your desert sounds tasty!

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

Dear fellow... regular dough gets tough because the manipulation enhances the action of ... gluten! For a gluten-free baking mix, I sincerely doubt you'd get the same reaction.

[osodecanela.livejournal.com]

Furr, I'm still a novice at GF baking. The bulk of GF mixes have gums such as guar and xanthan which serve as subs for the gluten and this particular mix had both. I was unsure how they would behave in this situation. The back panel on the bag said it was a 1:1 substitution for regular flour which was clearly not the case here as the dough was SO bloody wet. I just kept adding more of the flour and kneading it in by hand until the dough felt right and it was a lot of the GF mix. In the end it did work. It was actually decent, more crumbly than flaky but still I think successful. I would not have gotten away with that with regular flour.