Rice flour simply must fall by the wayside. You know, my bag of rice flour made dreadful cherry cupcakes, which I've since been choking down in dump cake form. You know, I am not one to throw out perfectly good organic ingredients, so what if they turned into something perfectly horrid. I dump it down my throat, not the garbage disposal.

So, when I bought rice flour, I also bought Gluten Free! Waffle & Pancake Mix (makes TWO Batches!, lucky me). Free of not only gluten, but also wheat, soy, corn, potato, peanuts, tree nuts, dairy, casein. So what on God's green earth does this leave? RICE. Oh yes, here we come again with rice flour and also tapioca flour, arrowroot flour, rice milk powder, etc. Really, talk about overkill, blindly buying TWO rice flour products, I should have read the label before I got home and decided to make pancakes for lunch today. Well, I got the batter ready and then Mike told me his son was coming over to smooth out the mulch dumped in the driveway (dump is such a great word) and of course he would like pancakes. So, of course I didn't tell Mike we had a brand new rice pancake mix. He took one bite and made a baby temper face, WHAT IS THIS? COME AND TASTE IT, he demanded. So, I tasted it, and truly, it was a far cry from my usual WHEAT pancakes. But he ate them and then his son ate them, after I made him taste them first to check his tolerance. Then they had seconds, meaning they were either starving or the things grew on them. Well, by all that time, I used up the batter and had to make more batter. But trust me, I don't have brains for nothing. I made my pancakes from my old faithful wheat mix. Batch Numbero Dos of rice pancakes is just going to have to wait for a better day. Mike thought that was a dirty trick, but I didn't want to hear about it, since I ate last.

The conclusion of this is that I have a new and great sympathy for people who have to X wheat from their diet -- which is a lot of people these days, judging by the faux products on the shelves, all these stand-ins for normal, regular, good old wheat, the staple of the earth, unless you live in China, I suppose. Maybe Chinese can't stand wheat the way I am beginning to underappreciate rice.

The chorus Mike sings in gave a Christmas concert tonight. It was VERY good, they sang some really doctored up versions -- Jingle Bells and Angels We Have Heard on High, to name two. We ate out afterwards and they sang 'em again -- right in the restaurant. It was fun. We weren't arrested because all the other customers had cleared out. I wouldn't be arrested anyway, because I am not IN the group by virtue of the fact that I cannot sing. I was WITH the group, so I hope I wouldn't be arrested by mere association.

The dinner was very good, ravioli. I needed it, something with some oomph, because up to that point today I had consumed only wheat pancakes, Mississippi Mud (after the choir concert they serve refreshments) and lots of garlic bread waiting for the raviolis (sp). They did not give us salad, which I thought was a crying shame. But they gave us free Santy drinks. Well, I don't drink. Santy ate up the candy cane decoration hooked on the outside of the glass, because I hooked my candy cane on the inside of the glass, in the drink, which I assumed you were supposed to do. It was exceptionally tasty and packed a powerful punch. I think I drank an eighth of a teaspoon.

Here I am blogging instead of vacuuming the guest bedroom and moving a chest of drawers in there and cleaning those drawers so I can start vacuuming music and dumping it in the drawers. I really am going to have to curtail my ambitious cleaning plans for Christmas and just close some doors. We are having three guests for Christmas dinner. At least last night I employed some resolve and started throwing out my old newspapers, with nary a glance . . . well, maybe a teensy glance. But nothing like ordinarily I would do. The sad part, there are millions more papers, it's shocking. But I took that first step and now I must persevere. I hope this leads to shocking changes of lifestyle for me in 2010.

Okay, I must go. I washed my dusty old ironing board cover and I also washed the felt pad underneath, which I knew I shouldn't have done, it didn't seem like a smart idea at the time, as if that ever stopped me. It is now looking like Swiss cheese.

All this food talk is making me hungry. Maybe a dish of apple sauce . . .

KEM