Snackmaster Multi-Grain Crackers

Crackers are More Than Snacks

When I am at work, I like to have salads for lunch. But I also like to have some sort of carbohydrate to round out the salad. If I don't have some sort of carbs, I find that I'm hungry an hour or two later.

Crackers are the perfect solution for me. I like the crunchiness and I can usually find some that are baked. Fried chips have more fat than I need.

So, I'm always looking for a good gluten-free cracker option. Some gluten-free crackers are awful. Some are fantastic. Trial and error is the only way to find out which are which.

Multi-Grain Crackers

Gluten-Free Lemon Bars

Citrus in the Winter

My husband loves citrus. I was going to invent some oatmeal cranberry orange bars.

I was thinking of how I could use our leftover, homemade cranberry sauce. We wanted to make some oatmeal bars or cookies. We found a recipe for oatmeal and raisin bars. We could skip the raisins and use the cranberry sauce somehow instead.

But that didn't seem like enough. Cranberries and oranges go well together. Maybe that was the solution.

And it just so happened that my husband brought some canned mandarins home. Great! How about Oatmeal Cranberry Orange Bars?

Sounded great.

But we didn't make them.

Somehow, we got side tracked and we ended up making Gluten-Free Lemon Bars instead.

I'll have to create some gluten-free oatmeal and cranberry and orange bars some other time. But not now.

Gluten-Free Lemon Bars

Gluten-Free Toffee Bars

New Traditions

Traditions are great, to a point. Sometimes, I feel the need to try something new.

A couple of years ago, I was trying to decide what cookies to make for giving (and eating) at Christmastime.

I was looking for something that would be tasty and easy to bake. A full sheet of cookies was even better.

Then I found some very cute white chocolate chips that were striped, some with red and some with green. I loved them and I needed to find a good use for them. I decided on these Gluten-Free Toffee Bars, which would be a perfect way to showcase those colorful, striped chips.

Everybody loved them!

That was the last time I ever saw those cute, striped chips. Bummer. I have kept looking for them every year since. I haven't seen them.

But in the process, I ended up liking the toffee bars so much, I have made them every year since then. These Gluten-Free Toffee Bars are great, even with just plain white chocolate chips!

Time to get baking....

Gluten-Free Toffee Bars

Gluten-Free Peppermint Kiss Cookies

Festive Cookies

A couple of years ago, I was gearing up to make Christmas cookies. I went to the store looking for the particular baking goods I needed.

While looking for cookie sprinkles, I came across the most adorable, striped, white chocolate chips! They were white chocolate and striped with either red or green. Both the red-striped and green-striped white chips were mixed together in the same bag.

They were oh so cute and I used them my Gluten-Free Toffee Bars that year. They were a big hit and the colors looked great!

But since then, I have never seen those striped chips again. Not red and green on white chocolate chips.

But this year, when I went to the store, I found white chocolate and peppermint Hershey's Kisses. Striped. Red and white. They were so cute!

Please note:  Hershey's makes no guarantees about their products ever being gluten-free, since they share their equipment among ingredients.  I've often wondered about kisses, but I've never had a problem with them.  Please be careful and only consume those foods that are safe for you.

But stripes and kisses in the same package? I was dying to try them and I just knew I had to find a way to use those cute, striped kisses!

Gluten-Free Peppermint Kiss Cookies

Eating Gluten-Free at Uno's Chicago Grill

Dinner and a Movie

Actually, in this case, it was a movie and dinner. In that order.

We decided we wanted to go see the new Hugo movie. Given all the constraints we had that day and for the rest of that weekend, we struggled to find a movie time that didn't impact other things.

Finally, we settled on a time that ran into dinner time. That would really squeeze us trying to fix a dinner and force us to eat late. Not desirable.

The solution: go out to dinner.

Ah, here we go again. Where can we go that everyone else likes and I can find something safe for me to eat?

This time it was easy. Both options on the table have gluten-free menus! Hurray! And we had just eaten at one of these a few weeks before, so the choice was really made for us.

After the movie, we were going to eat at Uno's Chicago Grill.

Uno's Chicago Grill

The Moor

Book Review

The Moor by Laurie R. King

I recently reviewed The Hound of the Baskervilles. And I did so because of this book: The Moor.

The Moor is the fourth book in the King series, and seeing how I have already read the first three, picking up The Moor seemed like a natural thing to do.

Which I did. And I started reading it. And it is full of references to The Hound of the Baskervilles. About a third of the way in, I decided that I had to stop reading The Moor, and go off and read The Hound.

Which I did.

Then I returned to The Moor.

The Moor