My deepest, darkest secret...

Everybody has secrets. Mine are just of a more petty nature than most people's.

For instance: did you know that I have secret hiding places all over the house? And that these hiding places contain...no, not skeletons. Something even more shocking. Gluten.


Yep, that's right. Robert and I are closet gluten eaters. (Literally. As in, we have to hide it in the closet. And eat it there. So the kids don't find out.) See, we tried the whole gluten free thing. We put a good face on it in front of the kids, and we still eat gluten free in all our meals as a family. But Robert and I were dreaming about gluten o'nights, our mouths watering in our sleep. After being "on the sauce" (as Robert jokingly refers to it when James gets hopped up on gluten) our whole lives, we just can't give up "real" bread entirely. So, after the kids go to bed at night, we bring out our secret stash.

The trouble is, the kids are getting better at finding our hiding places. Once they've discovered one and we've suffered through a couple unhappy days of hyperactivity and runny diapers, I have to come up with a better hiding place. (Or we could buy a safe, and put it all in there. Along with the apples because the kids eat about 6 of those per day. But I have a feeling the kids would take up safe-cracking just to get at it.)


So yesterday, I had a bunch of egg whites I needed to use up before they spoiled, and the best thing to make with egg whites is a home made angel food cake. It's (pardon my terrible pun) heavenly.

I learned how to make it when Joseph was about 6 months old, because babies aren't supposed to have egg whites until they are at least a year old, since that is the part of the egg that most people are allergic to. Baby Joseph would eat 3-4 egg yolks at a time, so we kept accumulating the whites, and I discovered that once I had saved up a jar of them, I could make an angel food cake. It was our tradition for the first three kids but then the whole gluten free-thing threw a wrench in the plans, so I haven't made any for quite a while.

Anyway...I had a jar saved from Elora's egg yolks, and I had to use them, and I just didn't have the guts to try a gluten free angel food cake and possibly waste all those eggs. So I made it the regular way, and it turned out {heavenly} but then I had a dilemma on my hands. Where to hide this glorious confectionery danger so the kids wouldn't get into it? I had tried closets, the laundry room, locked cabinets, inside pots and pans...all had eventually been discovered. Then it hit me...the perfect place...the place they would never look.

Yes, that is an empty filing cabinet drawer. Feel free to applaud my genius. It takes a special kind to be a mama.


P.S. I realize one could get the impression from reading my blog that the only thing I ever do it bake cakes. (or cookies, or brownies...) However, that is not the case! (Although I probably do bake more often than is good for me...) It's just that baked goods are one of my few domestic accomplishments, so I blog about them more often than, say, my stamp collection (nonexistant) or my hand-embroidered throw pillows (ha!). There was this post about a baby headband. Or this one about Halloween costumes. But be honest - the cakes really do look the best, right? ;-)