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Mom Lecture: Make Sure You’re Getting Enough Calcium!

Amber on May 16, 2012 1 Comment

Calcium. It’s one of those things we know we need for healthy bones and teeth. But how much do we need, exactly? And how much is in your food? Like most people, I don’t know the answers to these questions. But as I’ve shared in the past I’m a Swiss Natural Ambassador, so I’m going to try to get to the bottom of this mineral.

First things first. When I was researching vitamin and mineral supplements for children I learned that, according to the Canadian Foundation for Dietetic Research, more than 10% of Canadians don’t get enough calcium or vitamin D. That’s a significant minority of us. You’re more likely to experience calcium deficiency if you’re lactose intolerant or have a dairy allergy, if you’re a post-menopausal woman, if you’re a vegetarian, or if you’re a woman who exercises heavily. As well, certain foods and beverages can interfere with calcium absorption including tea, red wine, coffee and chocolate.

All right, we all need more calcium. But how much, exactly? According to the National Institutes for Health kids aged four to eight and adults aged 19 to 50 need 1000mg every day. Kids aged 9-18 need more – 1300mg each day – because they’re growing. And women aged 51 and over need 1200mg each day, because of that whole post-menopausal thing. Basically, when you’re not producing as much estrogen, you don’t absorb calcium as efficiently. To give you an idea of how much you’re getting through your food one serving of milk, cheese or yogurt contains about 300-400mg of calcium, one serving of canned salmon contains 150-200mg of calcium, and one serving of kale contains about 90mg.

When you consider the amount of calcium in the food you eat, it’s no surprise that many of us don’t get enough. This is why taking a calcium supplement may make sense. Recently I’ve tried the Chocolate Fudge Brownie Chewable from (… wait for it) Swiss Natural. Each soft chew contains 600mg of calcium and 400 I.U. of vitamin D. Plus they’re delicious. They’re recommended for adults and children age six and up, and I can tell you that you will not have to fight with your kids to take these. In fact, it may be exactly the opposite – ours are under lock and key to keep the kids out of them.

As I said, we all know how important calcium is, for us and our children. No one wants to develop osteoporosis, or suffer from stress fractures, because they’re not getting enough. If you’re eating lots of calcium-rich foods, that’s great. If you’re not – or you’re not sure – a supplement may make sense. If you find yourself in that boat, you may want to check out what Swiss Natural has to offer by following them on Facebook.

Now, I want to hear from you. How do make sure you’re getting enough calcium? And do you think you could consume 11 servings of kale every day to get the recommended 1000mg? If so, I’m super-impressed!

Disclosure: As a Swiss Natural Ambassador, I was paid to write this post.

Tagged With: Bloggy McBloggerson, Food

Babies, Growing and Two Wheelers

Amber on May 15, 2012 Leave a Comment

You have a baby. That baby is small. The littlest things that baby does are noteworthy. Like, say, lying on the floor with her eyes open. You think she may even be looking at you. Exciting times!

It happens slowly, almost without your notice, but that baby grows. And grows and grows and grows. After a few months of growing, she develops enough hand-eye coordination to reach out and grab a toy. You are a first time parent, so you pull out your video camera and capture the moment.

And then, that baby grows even more. She starts doing things like rolling over and crawling and pulling herself up to standing. At some point, she’s even big enough that she can walk holding on to a push toy. Once again, you pull out the video camera. You take the job of documenting a childhood seriously, yo.

Does that baby stop growing? No, she does not. In fact, soon she’s grown so much that she’s now a toddler. She takes her first steps, and her second steps, and her third steps. But for a while, she mostly prefers to crawl. After all, she’s gotten pretty good at that. But that doesn’t last long, and one day she puts her mind to it and just starts walking. What do you do? That’s right, you pull out the video camera.

From here on in, the growing just picks up steam. Your child sails through toddlerhood and preschoolerdom. Along the way she learns important life skills like using the potty and sharing and (dare to dream!) sleeping for more than three hours at a stretch. Eventually she’s grown so much that she starts school, and the learning just explodes. She picks up letters and numbers. She learns to swim and pump on the swing. She starts to read simple books. And then, one day, she ups the ante. Walking isn’t good enough for her anymore – she’s ready to ride.

How did we get from that teeny-tiny baby to here? I had a front row seat for the whole thing, and I’m still not entirely sure. All I know is that I hope she doesn’t ride away too quickly.

Tagged With: Kids, Memories, Navel Gazing, Parenting

Giveaway: Sharing the Mother’s Day Love

Amber on May 12, 2012 22 Comments

Mother’s Day is this weekend, and while it’s not exactly my favourite holiday, it does have its charms. The handmade gifts the kids bring home from school. The inedible breakfast you choke down with a smile. The excuse to do absolutely no cleaning for 24 hours – all great things.

It’s been a while since I’ve done any sort of giveaway on Strocel.com, and Mother’s Day seemed like the perfect time to throw one together. I have some books and a DVD I received as promotional items and I’m using them to help share the love with my fellow moms. Or dads. Or interested readers. I actually don’t discriminate, when it comes to giveaway winners. If you are a childless bachelor, you too could win some books written with moms in mind. I bet you can’t wait! Here’s what’s up for grabs:
Strocel.com Mother's Day Giveaway

For my Children: A Mother’s Journal of Memories, Wishes and Wisdom by Dionna Ford
The Happiest Mom by Meagan Francis
Bad Mommy by Willow Yamauchi (I’ll be sharing an interview with Willow in an upcoming podcast)
Everybody Loves Babies DVD, which came in the same prize pack as the dreaded stretch mark cream
A gift pack from Rogers Chocolates in Victoria, BC

Fun, right?

I’m going to make this giveaway easy on everyone, including myself. Because, really, who wants a whole bunch of extra work on Mother’s Day? To win, just leave me a comment on this post before Monday, May 14, 2012 at 9:00pm Pacific time. I’ll draw one winner at random for the whole enchilada. Easy-peasy, right?

Also, whether you win this giveaway or not, you may want to head over to Crafting my Life. Today I’m launching my new, totally free, download on that site. It’s called “Four Ways to Kick-Start a Life of Intention”. This Mother’s Day, do something for yourself by taking some steps to create positive change in your life. Or lounge around on the couch all day, and get up on Monday and start taking steps towards positive change. After all, you’ve probably earned a little bit of couch time.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Tagged With: Books, Giveaways, Mother's Day

Seizing an Opportunity and Meeting the Premier

Amber on May 9, 2012 7 Comments

There are certain opportunities in life that you just can’t pass up. For example, if someone’s giving out free cake, you should totally take the free cake. That’s just common sense. And when someone gets in touch with you and asks if you’d like to meet the Honourable Christy Clark, Premier of British Columbia, you ask, “Where and when?”

For me, meeting the Premier is not about politics. My own politics are always ambiguous at best, and I don’t really support any particular party. For me, meeting the Premier is about having the chance to share my concerns and questions with a decision-maker, regardless of what party that person belongs to. It’s also about being able to snap photos like these:

Cori Howard speaks up for mom entrepreneurs

And most especially this one, of the Premier catching a whiff of that sweet baby smell courtesy of Josie, daughter of Andrea:

Everyone loves that sweet baby smell, even the Premier

Pamela Martin, iconic-Vancouver-journalist-turned-director-of-outreach, reached out to Christine Pilkington, my boss at VancouverMom.ca about setting up a roundtable with Vancouver-area mom bloggers. Christine included me on the list. I knew the invitation was coming, and when I received it, I jumped on it. I talked my mom into picking my daughter Hannah up from school so that I could attend, and I made the trip into the big city.

For just over an hour, the moms in the room voiced their concerns to the Premier. She listened and took notes. A number of issues were raised, including housing affordability (Vancouver is expensive, yo), transportation, health care for new parents, and funding and access to services for kids with special needs. Overall, I think two main themes emerged:

We need better programs to support moms who are advancing their education and / or starting a business. Grants, tax credits and the like could go a long way towards helping moms support their families and employ others – and at a fraction of the cost of most business development grants.
We need quality, accessible, affordable childcare. Full stop.

Will anything come out of the conversation we had with the Premier? I don’t know. I do know that not many other political figures have reached out to the mom blogging community. In an of itself, that felt pretty cool. Most of the time I sit by myself in my family room, sending words out into the void. Having the ear of the Premier definitely upped the ante in terms of sharing my story. It also gave me a great chance to talk about government and citizenship with my kids. Whether we swayed Premier Clark to re-vamp BC’s childcare system or not, I know that my kids are watching me, and I want them to learn to say yes to opportunities that come their way, too.

If you had two minutes with the Premier (or Governor, President or Prime Minister), what issues would you raise? And what opportunities are just too good for you to pass up? I’d love to hear!

Tagged With: Beautiful BC, Bloggy McBloggerson, Politics

Selflessness, Motherhood and Meeting Your Own Needs

Amber on May 8, 2012 18 Comments

I recently got a Mother’s Day-related PR pitch, promoting a charitable gift option. It was one of those things where instead of giving someone a physical present, you donate to a good cause on their behalf. I think the idea has merit. I’ve done that myself. I have no doubt that it was promoting a great cause. All the same, the email lost me. It lost me because it contained the phrase selflessness and motherhood go hand-in-hand.

That phrase, casually planted at the beginning of a paragraph to justify the idea that your mom would want you to make a charitable donation in her name, stuck out for me. It was the way it was thrown in there without any supporting evidence. It was meant to be a statement of fact, which we would all understand. It reminded me of a quotation that also gets my goat, which is thrown about a lot as Mother’s Day nears. It’s this one:

A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.

- Tenneva Jordan

I have two children. I understand that a certain amount of self-sacrifice is called for in parenting. The younger your children are, the more immediate their needs are, and the more you’re going to play second fiddle. There’s no way you can tell a newborn baby that she’s going to need to wait until you finish your lunch to eat. And when she wakes up in the middle of the night, you’re going to wake up with her, whether you want to or not. That’s just the deal, and there’s no use fighting it.

All the same, those quotes irk me for two main reasons:

The quotes are all about moms, and not at all about dads. Would anyone dream of sending out a Father’s Day gift suggestion containing the phrase fatherhood and selflessness go hand-in-hand? I highly doubt it. This double-standard is unfair to both genders.
The quotes perpetuate the idea that as mothers, our own needs don’t matter. Our needs do matter. What’s more, when we’re meeting our own needs (at least most of the time), we’re better parents. Martyring yourself on the altar of motherhood isn’t good for you, and it doesn’t set a good example for your kids.

The stereotype of the self-sacrificing mother pairs with the stereotype of the nagging mother. She’s the woman who says things like, “I was in labour with you for three days. I thought I was going to die. And now you say this to me?!?” The selflessness in this scenario becomes transactional. I do nice things for you in order to have power over you. I give up my own needs so that you will do what I want you to do. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be that mother. I want to meet my own needs, so that I’m not relying on my kids to meet them in a tangled web of guilt.

As I said, it’s true that there’s a certain amount of self-sacrifice in parenthood, especially early on. But the wonderful thing about children is that they get bigger. As they do, you’re able to re-assert your needs. This doesn’t mean that you won’t sometimes choose to be selfless. We can choose to be selfless with many people. We can choose to be selfless in our relationships with our partners, our friends, and our co-workers if we want to. There’s a big difference here, though, and it boils down to choice.

When you’re doing something of your own free will, because you enjoy it, because it feeds your soul, or because you believe it’s the right thing to do, it builds you up. On the other hand when you ignore your own needs and desires because you believe that you must, or you believe that you don’t matter, it tears you down. I would argue the notion that a “good mother” denies herself pie, or must necessarily be selfless, falls into the second category. They’re arbitrary ways that we’re led to believes mothers (and not fathers) must deny themselves.

My own mother sacrificed a lot for her children. She was a single mom, and she worked hard to ensure that my sister and I were able to do things like participate in extra-curricular activities, go on trips, and have some nice things. But when I was 16 I had an exchange with her that stuck with me. I didn’t understand it at the time, but now I do. But before I share my mother’s lesson on motherhood and meeting your own needs, I need to talk about black jellybeans.

Black jellybeans are a polarizing force. You’re either the sort of person who loves them or hates them, I think. Growing up, my mother, my sister and I were all black jellybean lovers. When we had jellybeans, there was always a battle for the coveted black ones. On that day when I was 16, we had jellybeans, and I had eaten all of mine. My mother, however, had a couple left and one of them was black. I tried to convince her to give it to me. This is when she said something that stuck with me to this day. I’d like to share her quote with you as an alternative to the quote about pie and self-sacrifice:

I am your mother. I love you dearly. I would lay down my life for you in a heartbeat. But this is my black jellybean, and you can’t have it.

- Laura Gannon

Selflessness, when freely chosen, can be a great thing. But it shouldn’t come at the cost of meeting your own needs, and it shouldn’t be an expectation that comes with any particular role. So I say cut those four slices of pie in half, or give the little kids smaller servings. Find ways to creatively meet everyone’s needs. And keep your black jellybeans (and your good chocolate) for yourself.

What do you think? How do you feel about the idea that motherhood and selflessness must always go together? And how do you meet your own needs while caring for others? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Tagged With: Feminism, Navel Gazing, Parenting

Taking Dinner Orders from Buzz Lightyear

Amber on May 1, 2012 2 Comments

When my daughter Hannah was a preschooler, she had her Finger Friends. When she needed a scapegoat, she was quick to pass the blame their way. She wasn’t the one who’d taken a cookie without asking, it was those darned Finger Friends. The fact that Finger Friends were just her fingers, attached directly to her body and controlled by her brain, was inconsequential. She gave them a name and a persona, and when she did they became separate entities, and she was no longer responsible for what they did.

My son Jacob is a preschooler now in his own right, and he doesn’t have Finger Friends. Instead, he has Buzz Lightyear. When Jacob wants something, and he suspects I’ll say no, he picks up his Buzz Lightyear toy and drops his voice an octave. Then he says, “Amber, this is Buzz Lightyear. I am an astronaut. You must give Jacob a marshmallow.” I may be able to argue with my son, but who could argue with Buzz Lightyear?

(Actually, it turns out that the answer is I can argue with Buzz Lightyear. But I admit it’s kind of hard when my kid is being both adorable and sort of ingenious.)

Buzz Lightyear isn’t only a mouthpiece for requests that Jacob suspects may be unpopular. Buzz Lightyear is also a convenient scapegoat. Jacob just had to throw the books on the floor, because Buzz wanted to read them all. And Jacob didn’t get water all over the bathroom, Buzz Lightyear did. He was on some sort of mission, and all of that splashing simply could not be avoided.

Buzz Lightyear is a slightly less convenient scapegoat than Finger Friends. He’s not always on hand to deflect the blame in the way that your fingers are. But he also has some things going for him that Finger Friends don’t. For one thing, he’s not physically attached to my child, so it’s easier to claim that he’s acting independently. For another, his persona is well-established in the Toy Story movies as being a little bit clueless, so I suppose it’s quite plausible that he would make some less-than stellar choices. But most of all, he provides far more opportunity for my preschooler to use his own voice effects, which is really very winning in its way.

I’m not sure if Buzz Lightyear will continue to be Jacob’s go-to scapegoat, but for now I’m rather enjoying his interactions when he’s pretending to be the erstwhile space ranger. If he’s going to make a mess, at least he can be endearing when we discuss it after the fact, right?

Did your kids ever create a scapegoat to accept the blame they didn’t want to take on? I’d love to hear about it!

Barn Fires, Wakeful Children and Sleep

Amber on April 30, 2012 4 Comments

It’s 2:00am. Or maybe 1:15. Or 3:45. I don’t really want to know, to be honest. What I do know for sure is that somewhere in my house someone made a noise, and now I’m awake. It probably wasn’t even a big noise, but it was enough to jerk my mama-mind to alertness, ready to intervene on behalf of one of my children. Sometimes I stay in bed, listening to the coughing or the tossing and turning, willing the child to be still. Sometimes I leap up and act. And sometimes I discover that what I thought was my child was actually the cat, who is simply thrilled to discover that I am now awake and ready to play.

Since having children I have become a light sleeper. But things weren’t always this way. Take, for example, the story of the night the barn burned down.

As a teenager, my mother, my sister and I lived in an old farmhouse, surrounded by unused fields and two old, out-of-use, not-so-structurally-sound barns. The largest one was readily visible from one side of our house, fronted by a chicken coop that was also old and out-of-use. I went into each of the barns once or twice, but quite honestly, I was worried they would collapse on me, so I mostly stayed out. Inside, there was graffiti on some of the interior walls, and a picked-over feel. The idea that I could happen upon someone else inside also kept me out. I was a very well-behaved teenager, and I thought it best to avoid old, decrepit barns.

You can see the barn in this photo, behind teenaged Jon:

One night in 1993 or so (it’s difficult to remember exactly when, now, and since this was pre-internet you can’t find the info online) I went to sleep as usual and woke up in the morning. When my mom saw me she said, “Did you really sleep through that last night?” Having no idea what she was talking about, I said something like (wait for it …), “What are you talking about?” She pointed out the window, and I saw it. Or, more accurately, didn’t see it. The barn had burned clear to the ground. Luckily nothing else was touched. The chicken coop remained. The trees remained. The grass remained. But all that was left where the barn had stood was a black patch of grass and some pieces of charred wood.

The story of what happened the night before starts with my sister’s friend, Heidi, who was working the late shift at a local McDonald’s. When her father was driving her home that night, she noticed a light on the hill, in the direction of our house. They rushed over, arriving at around the same time as the firetrucks. The trucks and the arrival of our visitors woke my mother and my sister, as well as much of the neighbourhood. At some point in the evening, the police arrived, and questioned my younger sister. It was all quite the brouhaha … or so I hear. Because unlike everyone else, I slept soundly through the whole thing.

A string of arsons in local abandoned buildings, including a dairy, followed. Eventually, the culprit was apprehended. Our barn was identified as his first target. And I missed it all.

Tonight, the crisis is much smaller. Still, there is no sound sleep for me. Because tonight, and every night, there is a part of me that is ever vigilant. So I am awake at an hour that I would rather be sleeping, my brain forever altered by the alchemy of motherhood. Walking the halls, wishing for rest, hoping that nothing decides to catch fire tonight.

How has your sleep changed since having children? I’m sure I’m not the only mom who wakes up far more easily than she used to!

Tagged With: Memories, Navel Gazing, Parenting

Blinking Lights and Beeping Reminders

Amber on April 25, 2012 3 Comments

Blink, blink, blink.

The light on my phone is blinking, letting me know that I have a voice mail waiting. My call display tells me who it’s from, but I’m feeling a little bit overloaded at the moment, and I’m not ready to have another conversation that may bring me more work, so I ignore it.

Blink, blink, blink.

There is so much psychic weight in all the little electronic notifications I receive on a daily basis. Numbers telling me how many unread emails I have, how many unread items in my feed reader, how many unseen Facebook replies, how many messages I haven’t heard or replied to. Sometimes, I’m tempted to just wipe the entire slate clean. Delete all the emails, and the voice mails, and the messages. I want to just declare email bankruptcy, mark all as read, and be done with it.

Blink, blink, blink.

The problem, of course, is that resetting the current counter wouldn’t close the floodgates. The electronic communications would keep flying at me. Soon enough, I will have fallen behind again, and be right back where I started, staring at the blinking light, not ready to add yet another message to the pile of messages I need to respond to.

Blink, blink, blink.

These blinking lights, email counts and beeping reminders are nagging me, demanding response. They distract me with their seeming urgency, demanding an immediate reply even though I honestly have other things that are really far more important that I could be doing. But those things don’t come with blinking lights and beeping reminders. If I don’t set aside time to handle the things that truly matter, turning off the reminders and ignoring the blinking lights, my own needs and desires and dreams and mental well-being will get lost, left behind somewhere in a dusty corner of the world wide web.

Cherry blossoms help me forget the blinking lights for just a moment

I have a debate with myself. It’s true that sometimes I need to turn off all the reminders and focus on the task at hand. I can set aside time to handle those blinking lights later. However, it’s also true that just dealing with that voice mail would probably take less mental energy for me than stewing about the blinking light. Which is better – setting clear boundaries around my time, or just dealing with the little things as they arise so that I don’t feel as distracted? Where does that perfect balance lie?

Blink, blink, blink.

I could turn the reminders off altogether, but then I fear I would miss things. We all know people who don’t reply to us, no matter how we try to reach them. It can feel pretty frustrating to be the one trying to make contact, only to be met with constant silence. I don’t want to be unreachable. I just want it all to stop for a little while. Call it a little vacation from all forms of communication.

Blink, blink, blink.

I have this fantasy. In it, I’m living in a small cabin on a remote beach somewhere, by myself. I spend my days writing with a pen and paper, walking on the beach and preparing food, which just sort of magically appears. I know that whenever I need to I can return to my life – my children, my husband, the little reminders of everything I’m supposed to do. And then when I need to, I can return to the cabin, for a few hours or a few days or a few weeks. It’s my retreat, a place to step outside of my life and outside of time. A place where the blinking lights cannot reach me, and everyone who’s trying to reach me will understand why I’m not replying.

Blink, blink, blink.

For now, I have no cabin on a remote beach. I have only my life, just as it is. Connected. Interconnected. Full of beeping reminders and blinking lights. Always moving, always full. I navigate it as best I can, forging a path that honours my own need for stillness and quiet in the midst of the din, and my need to be a part of something bigger than myself. Something that brings emails and voice mails and text messages and appointments on my calendar – and fantasies about a solitary cabin where none of it can find me. Always, it brings more questions than answers, and lots and lots of little blinking lights.

Blink, blink, blink.

Tagged With: Navel Gazing

Memories of my Babies

Amber on April 24, 2012 3 Comments

When my daughter Hannah was a tiny baby, I insisted on dressing her in what I called “people clothes”. Think little-bitty-baby-jeans and T-shirts and dresses and overalls. She wore sleepers at night, but the rest of the time she wore outfits. While many of my mom friends declared baby clothes a total waste, I couldn’t get enough.

I dressed my tiny baby in real clothes to make a statement, both to the world and to myself. She spent the first week of her life in the NICU, where I constantly heard about how very small she was, and how even though things seemed to be going well, they could change suddenly. From the moment my water broke unexpectedly at 34 weeks pregnant, my baby was labelled as at-risk and both of us found ourselves on a crash course with high-tech medical care. And I understand why, I really do.

One-month old Hannah, wearing an outfit

All the same, once I had Hannah at home, I felt the need to get rid of all of those medical trappings that surrounded her birth and first days. I needed to remind myself, and everyone around me, that my baby was okay. She was fine. She wasn’t sick. She didn’t need to be wearing pajamas in the middle of the day. She could wear people clothes, because she was a person – a much-valued member of our family – and she was going to be all right.

I like to think that I’ve gotten over that early trauma. Seven years later, I no longer feel the need to obsessively check her breathing while she sleeps. I no longer track her weight for signs that she’s growing. And I no longer cry on her birthday, because I’m sad about what happened. I say that I’ve made my peace, and for the most part, I have. But parenting wounds leave lasting scars, and we can never really erase them from our psyches.

Jacob’s less than 24 hours old, and he’s wearing shorts and a T-shirt

Yesterday, Hannah was feeling tired and cranky and feverish when a cold developed into sinusitis. Not a big deal, and I knew it. Most infections heal on their own, and if they persist, they can be treated. And yet, as I held my sad, sick girl in my arms, and she laid her head on my shoulder, I felt silent tears come to my eyes as my body was filled with a memory. It recalled a much smaller girl nestled against me. Back then, I wasn’t so confident about her well-being. I needed to dress her in blue jeans and do everything I could to remind myself that she was real. She was mine. And she would be okay.

These memories of my babies are always there, somewhere, in the back of my mind. That time my son Jacob fell from a tall play structure. The surgery my daughter had at four and a half to correct an umbilical hernia. The sad face my son wore when he got locked in his room during his big sister’s birthday party and nobody found him for 10 (very, very long, for him) minutes because we couldn’t hear him over the gaggle of shrieking little girls. That image of my children, small and vulnerable, never really goes away.

One day, these babies of mine will grow up and leave home. They will be able to take care of themselves. But I doubt that I will ever be able to look at them without remembering how they were when they were small, and hurt, and scared. When I was their sun, moon and stars, and they needed my strength and protection. I will always remember how I dressed them in people clothes in a statement to the world. These are my babies. They will be okay. I refuse to even consider the alternative.

Tagged With: Memories, Navel Gazing, Parenting

The Simplicity of Flour

Amber on April 23, 2012 4 Comments

Once upon a time, flour was easy for me. I bought it at the grocery store, and the only choice I had to make was unbleached or whole wheat, or maybe if I was feeling really fancy pastry flour. I used it liberally, and didn’t think too much about it, or where it came from.

After I became interested in local eating, my approach to flour changed. I started looking for flour made from grain that was grown here in the Vancouver area. Eventually, I found it. Once I did, flour was once again simple. I just had to make an annual trip to pick up my share, and I was set.

My 2010 Flour

Things became increasingly complicated for me, flour-wise, when I decided to go gluten-free. Flour is generally considered to be synonymous with wheat flour. When a recipe calls for two cups of flour, for example, you can pretty much assume they’re not talking about sorghum or quinoa flour.

It’s possible to mix up gluten-free flour blends that approximate wheat flour. With the addition of xantham or guar gum you can more or less substitute them directly for wheat flour, for pretty much anything except bread. Gluten-free bread is a different animal, and you can’t make it the same way you can make wheat bread. But cakes, cookies, pie crust, muffins and a whole lot of other things are, thankfully, much easier.

Jacob loves flour!

My first gluten-free flour was a pre-mixed all-purpose blend from Bob’s Red Mill. It had a lot of chickpea flour in it, which made it taste sort of like beans. I wasn’t a huge fan. I decided that I could make a blend myself, after finding a recipe online. I stocked up on a bunch of very expensive gluten-free flours, and got creative. I mixed many, many different kinds of flours and starches together to make my all-purpose flour blend. Quinoa flour. Corn flour. Potato starch. Corn starch. Sorghum flour. Buckwheat flour. Brown rice flour. Sweet white rice flour. Tapioca starch. So many kinds. The results were underwhelming.

Finally, it occurred to me that maybe the best thing was to stop trying to be so fancy. So I did. Now I use a light buckwheat flour to make pancakes or waffles, but for everything else I use this basic flour blend:

Amber’s Gluten-Free Flour Blend

1 part millet flour
1 part brown rice flour
1 part potato starch

See? Simple.

Mixing up a flour blend adds an extra step that I didn’t have to deal with when I ate wheat flour. But once it’s mixed up in a big jar in my kitchen, this flour blend makes baking easy again. Flour is, once again, just flour. No overthinking. No fancy-pants, complicated blends. Just flour.

Sometimes, I guess, it’s best not to make things too hard for yourself. I suppose that’s true whether you’re baking or doing most anything else. Don’t you think so?