Yummy Yummy SCD legal Clementine cake

This is a yummy recipe from one of my favourite websites, the smitten kitchen (smittenkitchen.com). When i read the ingredences i thought, wow, this is SCD legal. And it sounds very moist and easy. So here it goes, just use honey instead of sugar! The original recipe is from Nigella, my favourite cook in the US.

Clementine Cake

Adapted from Nigella Lawson
… Oh right, I forgot to mention that this cake was darn good. I am not going to tell you that it is my favorite cake ever. It wasn’t. But all of the things I was worried would go wrong — it would be too bitter, it would be too tough, nobody would eat it — I couldn’t have been further off about. It is ridiculously moist, not bitter and surprisingly popular at a dinner party. You know, until you tell people they’re eating a cake of boiled rinds.
4 to 5 clementines (about 375grams/slightly less than 1 pound total weight)

6 eggs

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (225 grams) sugar

2 1/3 cups (250 grams) ground almonds

1 heaping teaspoon baking powder
Optional: Powdered sugar for dusting, or for making a glaze

Put the clementines in a pot with cold water to cover, bring to the boil, and cook for 2 hours. Drain and, when cool, cut each clementine in half and remove the seeds. Then finely chop the skins, pith, and fruit in the processor (or by hand, of course).
Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C).
Butter and line an 8-inch (21 centimeter) springform pan with parchment paper. (I used a 9-inch, it worked fine.)
Beat the eggs. Add the sugar, almonds, and baking powder. Mix well, adding the chopped clementines.
Pour the cake mixture into the prepared pan and bake for 30 to 50 minutes*, when a skewer will come out clean; you might have to cover the cake with foil after about 20 to 30 minutes to stop the top from over-browning.
Remove from the oven and leave to cool, in the pan on a rack. When the cake is cold, you can take it out of the pan and dust it with powdered sugar. I made a glaze of powdered sugar and a tablespoon of clementine juice because I was convinced the cake would be too bitter. It was not necessary. Nigella says the cake is best on the second day, but ours never made it that long.
Variations: Nigella says she’s also made this with an equal weight of oranges and lemons, in which case the sugar is increased to 1 1/4 cups.
* I am very unclear on the correct baking time, as you can see. Nigella’s recipe says it will 60 minutes. When I checked on it at 40 minutes (because I think you should start checking on any baked good at the 2/3 mark) it was done. Very done. Dark-brown edge-level done. And my oven runs cool. But I had made the cake in a one-inch larger pan, which made it slightly thinner. Which is all to say: Start checking at 30 minutes. Better to check too often than char your cake.

Nicky loooved the cake, and he is always sceptical when mom is baking :o). Enjoy!

A b@$ch called constipation

So here we are again, fighting constipation. Once a month she finds us and there is no escape. You see her crawling into your sons body, she makes herself comfortable and then she hits him. Usually on day three. This is after you have tried everything to make him go. Walks, swimming, Oxypowder, even in double doses. Nothing helps, because by now its in our sons head. He knows, she is there, waiting to hit him hard and painful. so he is trying to avoid pooping at all, because its painful. Of course he doesn't understand that it doesn't help, that he has to do it. Otherwise it's getting really though on him.
This for us most ugly condition named constipation came to us when our son still was a baby, just 10 months old. I remember going to our pediatrician after Nicky didn't go for a week. They kept telling me, this is OK, "Just give him prune juice" (he hated it by the way!) and he will go tomorrow. So here i where with a baby cramping, crying so hard, he was purple. I screamed with the fre@$ing doctor, that i will NOT leave this office before he hasn't helped us. So guess what, he got some gloves and took care of it. My poor baby, i spear you details. But this was the beginning of a long and endless road of constipation. I think, me and Nicky spend at least 6 weeks of our lifetime on the potty, just fighting and pushing. I tried everything, GI docs, enemas and of course medication like Mirolax. And guess what, Mirolax helped, but was that the way i wanted to treat my son. What was causing the constipation? Why was nobody asking the same questions. Till i met Pam Ferro, she was great, told me about SCD. And she said no more Mirolax. I was nervous, but after a week on the diet i felt we don't need Mirolax any longer. And she was right, Nicky went twice a day and we didn't had any more problems with constipation. Till we decided to give "only" GF/CF another try. Since then our problems started again, and i just knew we gotta stick to SCD. Even we didn't get rid of the yeast with it, the constipation part is the biggest thing, its the most important thing to take car. We know now how and we learned our lesson.
Let's go fight that yeast, it's a b&$ch herself, but we will win this fight also.
Sorry for strong words here today, this is not usally me, but sometimes (and moms of kids with autism know that) you get really angry with the world.

An Au Pair called Jurie

After it turned out i am getting a job (which endet up that i didn't because of the financial crisis the company had a hiring stop!) we decided to go with an au pair. We already had one over in the US, but it was different. She was more like a nanny, because she was from the US, talked our language and knew her way around (in the US).
This time we found a male au pair from Moldavia(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldavia). We where actually not searching for a male. But it turns out with a special need child you are not as popular for young chicks from the UK or the US. Nice, huh? Everybody just wants to have fun while babysitting a bunch of kids. That's how most of the girls see it.
So i guess we had a good pick. Even i was very nervous....and just think about my husband, hehe. Having a male as an au pair also makes sense for us too. He is strong, that's a very positive aspect. Nicky tends to go the other way when you want to go this way. Within the last year it got harder and harder for me to pick him up, get him out of bed or the bathtub and so on.
Also i have to say about Moldavia, this is a very poor country in the south of the Ukraine. People go to Western Europe to find a job, get some money and some way to stay here for longer. So we thought it's good to have somebody who is more motivated to work with us.
So here he is, he arrived today after a 2 1/2 day ride (yeah roadtrip) in a minibus with 8 other people who want to try there luck here in germany. Seems like we are the golden country. He is shy, but i guess he loved the ride through munich, the german autobahns (highways). And the best: Philip loves him. He thinks it's the coolest thing to have a big playbuddy he can comand around. At least for know we let him think that.
And for Nicky, we let the two connect within the next days. I know it's always strange for everybody to meet Nicky the first time. But then they just figure, he is cute, all smiles and not so strange at all.
And for me, i have to find a job, this drives me crazy :o)

Happy 7th birthday to my sweet Nick

Tomorrow will be the day, 7 years ago, you came along. The day i was waiting for my whole life. It was hard work, the day you where born. You decided to pull the plug at 7am. After we arrived at the hospital we went from labour to active labour to almost having a C-section. It was all very tough on us. And then at 9.09 pm, you finally arrived, after 12 hours of labour. You where perfect, so little. You cried, quietly, not like your brother two years later. He was loud :o). When i was holding you the first time, you looked up to me with your big eyes. Your papa said "Hey, he looks like E.T.", because your eyes where filled with some drops they put in newborn eyes.
Here you where and i just held you and couldn't believe the luck we have. After everybody was gone i pulled your little bed right next to mine. And i just looked at you the whole night. When i fell asleep for a little while i woke up ad checked on you. I still couldn't believe you are mine. So beautiful, so perfect.

Since we brought you home you light my days. It's been a blessing that you are with us. Even in dark times when we went from doctor to doctor and finally got the diagnosis PDD-NOS, i always felt you are a special assigned task for us. Something that always waited for us. To fight for you. It's you that keeps me going every day. I can not wait till you come home every day from school. A smile by you makes my heart melt.
I hear very often what burden we got in life. NO! That is not what you are, you are special, you are the biggest cuddle-buggler ever. You love to spend the day with us, you grab our hand when you feel unsafe. You cry at night, because you would rather be with us then alone in bed :o)
You give kisses. I love you little Nicky-Noodle, Happy Birthday my sunshine!

Autism and a cold - a "not so good" combination

So it goes around, the flu in Germany. I heard every 10th has some kind of the flu or a cold right now. You just can not escape it. And so our family got it too. First me, then Wolfgang, then me again, now the kids.
And you know when kids are sick, it is always heartbreaking. They have a high fever and still want to go out in the snow to play. you give them a fever reducer and hope the temp. will not come back so high again. With Nicky it usually helps, back stays the cough though. Philip has fever very often and it makes me wonder if he has some kind of an infection in him or sensitivity for something (like food).
For the last two days we are sitting inside, both children are having fevers, cough and no appetite. With Nicky being so thin anyway (42 pds by age 7) it is always double as hard for me, when he refuses to eat. This morning i had success feeding him pancakes with applesauce on the couch, he ate four, hurray!
The other bad side is that because he is not moving for days, he tends to be constipated. So even he feels better after a few days, you have to get a grip on that problem too.
Keep your fingers crossed, that by Monday next week everybody is back to normal and we can send them both back to school and Kindergarten.