Super excited to make another appearance on Yahoo! with this family favorite recipe.  

As you'll see, some of my family is #GF, others are not, and this is one of those equalizing recipes where it doesn't matter, everyone enjoys it. We usually eat our French Toast Christmas morning in our jammies with many, many Mimosas, but I happened to think, what a great way to feed everyone breakfast on Thanksgiving, without adding to the rush and madness.  And if you're not opposed to disposable, no extra dishes need be dirtied!

Get the recipe over on Yahoo!, and be sure to visit GANE Possible next door for more recent blog posts. Even if you're not local to southwest Michigan, be sure to subscribe to my newsletter which launches in January, along with my website overhaul, Quick Minute to GANE Empowered Wellness.  

Don't forget to go get the recipe over on Yahoo! because it works perfectly for Christmas morning, too:

"Gluten-Free Crock Pot French Toast Rescues Your Busy Thanksgiving Morning!"

My house is NOT empty this week; it is FULL, FULL, FULL!  Both of my daughters are visiting from New York and New Mexico, and thus my heart is full, too.  That means my post for the Midlife Boulevard Blog Hop will be uncharacteristically short.  Lucky you, my lovely readers!

A fall recipe Blog Hop is irresistible and appropriate for me to take a moment to participate in, however, because our favorite thing to do together is eat and talk around the family table.  While my daughters aren’t gluten free and dairy free, my husband, son and I are.  Finding recipes everyone enjoys can be a challenge, which often means my kitchen does double, sometimes triple duty. 

A short-order cook this momma is not, but something I always enjoy doing for my daughters when they’re around is making their favorite soups.  Soup is one of the easiest things to prepare to meet everyone’s needs. 

My oldest daughter and I are the only ones who enjoy squash in the family, so an excuse is welcome to prepare and post for the Blog Hop today, my original recipe for Thai Butternut Bisque.

For my step-daughter and for my son (who is beyond thrilled to have this precious time with both of his sisters—and he doesn’t even have to share them with their husbands!) this week, my Feel Better Soup will be in order.

My wish for each of you is time with your loved-ones around a table laden with your favorite fall soup.  

Allow squash to cool enough to handle, scrape out flesh with large spoon and reserve.  Discard skin.  

In large sauce pan or dutch oven over medium heat, saute' shallots and onions two minutes in a drizzle of olive oil, then add the minced ginger. Continue to saute' until softened and translucent. Do not allow to dry out, adding a good tablespoon butter or vegan alternative to keep the mixture moist and to keep it from browning. Add your squash, 4 cups of the chicken stock, lime juice, cumin, and cayenne pepper. Bring to a light boil, stirring and breaking up the squash with a wooden spoon. Turn down heat and allow to simmer lightly, 10-15 minutes. With an immersion blender (or in small batches using your regular blender), puree until smooth. Return to pan, stir in the can of coconut milk and as much of the 5th cup of chicken stock as you need to achieve the desired consistency. Continue to cook for a few minutes more, or until the coconut milk is well incorporated. Add salt and white pepper to taste.  

Serve as a first course, topped with fresh chopped cilantro and the toasted squash seeds, if desired.  Also nice with a dollop of sour cream, Crème fraîche or greek or strained goat yogurt.  Thin it down slightly, and you may enjoy it as an alternative pasta sauce over penne or ravioli, as well.

He won't be nine much longer, this boy of mine who almost wasn't.  And nine is pretty terrific, and tough, all at the same time.

The past couple weeks have brought us to a crossroads with school work, in this, his first year of real grades.  This semester isn't going to look good.  But today?  Today was great! 

He burst into my arms the moment he reached the car.  I knew it was an exceptionally good day, because I'd received an email from his teacher.  "Mom!  I got to get off addition for Math Center and do multiplication and I PASSED!"  Yes, my fourth grader was stuck on the same (still) addition sheet for WEEKS, unable to finish the last three problems in the arbitrary two minutes.  My boy who has a little hitch in his brain body connection and who lets stuff get to him, like timed tests, like boys who are bullies, like girls who are "over" him because sometimes he gets stuck and he just "can't" get it. 

This is the same boy who is teaching others in his class to do long division, because that he gets.  Long division, he loves.  Multiplication, today, he loves.  Addition, not so much.  Ever. 

This is the same boy I reminded today how his teacher last year believed in him, and genuinely liked him, and who thought he was an amazing kid.  His teacher this year believes in him, genuinely likes him, and thinks he is an amazing kid.  I reminded my boy today that he has an amazing brain that is going to do amazing things someday; a brain that is already doing amazing things like long division.

He looked away, and swiped at his eyes.  He swiped at his eyes again, and then rubbed them vigorously. 

"Buddy?  What's the matter?"

"Sometimes I'm just so happy I have tears."

I swiped at my own eyes, so I could see the road before us, "You make me so happy that I have tears, too."

I'd have to say that 2012 has been one of my best years, and I know without a doubt that it's due to something that changed within me. 

You've heard it before, and I'm going to say it again:  ATTITUDE.  Yes, it turns out, Attitude is Everything, and we ALL have the power to get there.  Now don’t stop reading because you think you’ve heard it before…give me a chance to explain:

When life gave me lemons (ie: living so far away from the place and the people I love), I Made Lemonade.  I Decided.  I Took Control.  I Took Action.  I Took Risks.  I DID SOMETHING.  I started to blog and I took creative writing classes, and I started my website, West Coast Posse, and I submitted an essay that was accepted and will be included in a BOOK this year!  Not only that, I'm writing my own book, and if I must, I will self-publish it this year.  I started this book YEARS ago.  It sat on my computer, it moved from computer to computer, but suddenly something switched inside of me, and I began actively pursuing ways to make it happen.  And.  It.  Will.  I will complete and publish, Bluebirds, the novel I know I was always meant to write, in 2013.

Now I'm a pretty determined chick, and I've done this before.  When I couldn't get pregnant, I Took Control.  I Took Action.  I DID SOMETHING.  When modern medicine failed me, I doggedly pursued and researched ways of improving my chances.  I questioned.  I changed.  I adapted.  I kept my goals of having a baby in my mind every waking moment, and I doggedly pursued my chosen path.  The path that spoke to me in whispers.  I was quiet, and I listened.  I didn't allow anything to shake me.  I kept at it, and kept at it, until I met success.  After six long years and one miscarriage, GlutenNaziMom was born, and so was GlutenNaziKid.  He'll turn ten years old in 2013. And in 2013, GlutenNaziMom, the website that I started four years ago, will actually become something.

I wanted to be a stay at home mom.  It felt like the right thing to do, and I have loved it.  Not every moment.  But overall, there’s nothing better I could have possibly done with the last 9.75 years than to see two daughters through adolescence and to see each of them, in her own way, get married (both in the last quarter of) this past year, and to see one spectacular little boy successfully navigate fourth grade. 

Being a SAHM has put a lot of pressure on my husband.  It’s cost us financially, but so did me working and being unhappy in one unfulfilling job after another.  I couldn’t see how to do both, but I’ve felt this niggling at the back of my mind that I was the key.  I was the key to my family’s financial freedom; to my own sense of purpose and fulfillment.  I’ve written my entire life, and it’s something I’ve gone back to again and again.  But I lacked the confidence to test the waters before.  They remain largely untested, but instead of ignoring the niggling, I’m listening.  I’m listening to that little voice inside of me, who’s been telling me for years that this was something I needed to do.  I’m not standing outside the fence, watching the merry-go-round of life happen to everyone else.  I’m not being a victim of circumstances that brought us back home and unemployed, I’m USING everything that’s happened before, everything that I know, every person I’ve met along the way, and I’m putting all the pieces together to make something happen in 2013. 

And I couldn’t have done it without each one of you.  Without every positive comment that gave me wings, and every negative comment that made me try harder, I could never have kept striving, kept believing, kept writing.  DOING SOMETHING, whether it elicits positive response or negative, is so very much better than living in a void, than doing absolutely nothing but waking up every morning and taking up space—than sucking the Light out of the Universe.

So I’m giving back.  You bet your sweet bippy, I’m USING what I know and who I know, but at the same time, I’m promoting others.  I’m sharing the love and the knowledge and the insight and the LIGHT and the belief that what I’ve learned in my forty-six years on this earth, and what you’ve learned in yours, can help others; can make life better and the future brighter for those who choose to Listen and to Take Action and to Start Something in their own little corner of the globe.  What’s Your Calling?

I now know that for each of us, We Are the Key.  Inside every one of us lies the power to stop complaining and stop sniveling and stop spreading doom and destruction and misery; to stop passing blame, but rather, to use everything we know to share and to inspire and to make THIS the year everything turns around.  Fiscal Cliff, be damned!  I’m not holding my breath and waiting for the government to fix my existence.  I’m going out there and making it happen for myself, for my family, and for anyone who wants to Decide—who wants to Choose—who wants to Take Action and come along.  If we each look inside and make it Our Responsibility and Our Purpose, and spread that Attitude and Intention to our neighbors and around our blocks and around our towns and around Our Nation and maybe even the WORLD—we Each Have the Power to Make 2013 The Best Year We’ve Ever Known!

The funny thing about our world these days is that Social Media vehicles like Twitter and Facebook have made it much smaller than it once was.  Due to the recent events in Newtown, Connecticut and the immediacy of shared information, other countries are suddenly offering their input and participating in a dialog that was once uniquely American.  I’m new to Twitter, but I’m becoming more and more aware that I could be talking to someone across oceans, and certainly across thousands of miles of tundra.  I could be talking to someone who isn’t American, about a topic that concerns Americans, because suddenly it weighs heavily on the hearts and in the minds of the world.

Such was the case last evening when a dialog began about gun control and mental health between two mothers in two different countries.  In the shorthand that is unique to Twitter, we only whispered at the surface, but I am building a great deal of respect for her views on success and failure, and we and the brilliant minds at Leadership Voices agree on the need for an urgent global discussion on mental wellness.  Irene Becker is a business coach and consultant with Just Coach It in Canada, and I am actually working with a business coach, Nancy Kaye, of Define Your Destiny in San Diego, California.  These women and others like them share a vision of the potential that can be reached by many who may have previously seen themselves as failures.  And it’s quite possible these two fine, smart, beautiful spirits who are trying to heal the hearts and the minds of the clients they work with, one at a time, may share some other similarities in their views on gun control.

I have a unique perspective on the issue of gun control, in that my husband is an ex-police officer/ firefighter/ paramedic and is a nationally recognized security expert who specializes in Business Continuity Planning that encompasses active shooter and violence in the workplace programs. 

We’re from Michigan, and we tend to be prepared sorts.  That being said, neither of us is against federal mandates for stricter gun control policies as they pertain to the consistent vetting (across the country) for past criminal and mental health issues, right to privacy be damned—I would not be opposed to such background checks on all members of legal age in a prospective household, a waiting period not to exceed a week, for example, safety checks and required safety courses.  With his background, my husband was part-owner of a gun store in our town for a time and served as gunsmith and armor to many of the local law enforcement agencies.  On occasion I worked in that gun store, and thus had to go through the extensive training and testing and obtain a Concealed Pistol License (CPL) myself.  I understand there are those who have very differing views on and feelings about guns than many of the rest of us in the US, as I’m sure we do on other issues.  Much like the taboo of mental illness, this wasn’t something I often felt I could talk about in California, as I imagine it wouldn’t be in many circles in Canada and other countries.  I must tell you, however, as a 5’0” woman who has been the victim of date-rape and who spent years as a single mom, I rather enjoy feeling competent and prepared; less scared and less like a potential victim all the time.

I suspect the incidence of all crimes is lower in Canada than in the US.  But here we are, and suddenly taking guns away from law-abiding citizens while leaving them in the hands of criminals and psychos who don’t abide by the laws of the land, amounts to piss poor planning.  However, Leadership Voices, Irene and Nancy are definitely onto something when they speak about the amount of stress under which our society lives and functions on a daily basis.  I’ve seen it first hand, having lived in Chicago for a time when our daughters were young, and more recently having lived in San Diego for two years.  We have chosen to return to our small, Midwestern town, where the pace and the demand and the traffic and the competition and the stress is far lower than what we experienced in either of those two bustling metropolitan areas, and frankly where I’m less afraid (and better prepared) to walk the streets.  There was a school shooting at Kelly Elementary School in Carlsbad, California, not fifteen minutes north of our house when we first arrived there.  There were two incidences of highway snipers that occurred in the short time we lived there, the 2nd one ending with an incident AT our freeway exit.  There were robberies in malls, there were home invasions, there occurred two murders of cab drivers two exits to the south of ours in an area we frequented with out of town guests; all and much more in the short time we lived in California.

In our experience and in fact, the problems don’t stem from those of us who legally and responsibly own guns for the protection of our homes.  The problems tend more to come from those for whom guns have been purchased by others, or from those who illegally possess guns.  My hometown in Michigan sits on a stretch of highway that runs between Detroit and Chicago.  There is a great deal of drug running that occurs, and there is plenty of gun violence that occurs in the socioeconomically depressed and welfare dependent town that sits right across the river from ours.  We cross the river to go to the movies, and we cross the river to do our Christmas shopping.  Thus, we are occasionally the victims of muggings and other crimes, particularly this time of year, and shoplifting and petty larceny is rampant. 

Among the difficulties of the recent events in Newtown, CT, for me, is the fact that it has taken away an insular sense of security I once treasured here in my hometown.  Mine is very like the town of Newtown: lakeside, quaint, picturesque, we parent and love one another’s children without restraint; we look out for our neighbors.  Sandy Hook Elementary is a school very similar to my son’s.  The staff and the children who lost their lives, and ALL of the town’s and the nation’s and the world’s parents and citizens who grieve them, look and sound very similar to those in our town.  And even while I grieve my own and my children’s loss of innocence in such times, I have a strong sense that the past several years of economic destruction in many American families has left us heartbroken and emotionally, mentally, and financially battered.  Those with the capacity for hope and the mental stability to do as Irene so aptly describes in her essay, Winning the New War, to use our Constructive Discontent to Fail Forward, will survive and with the help of people like Irene and Nancy use our skills to grow and perhaps even to excel in these times.  It is the perpetually poverty-stricken, the sick and the tortured, the ones who suffer from undiagnosed and untreated mental illness, PTSD, and even chemical imbalances that can sometimes be attributed to something as simple as food sensitivities, who are clearly more susceptible to urges that lead them to take their pain and their anger out on innocent victims.

But patting them on their heads and holding their hands and telling them that it will be OK and being afraid to discuss mental illness or to reach out for help that isn’t there; caring more for their civil rights than for their mental health and the safety of others, clearly isn’t doing enough to ensure the health and safety of the public at large, and it must be immediately addressed. 

Americans will always feel differently about guns than Canadians and those in other countries do, because Americans have had to fight hard for our freedoms, and Americans have had to fight for the weak and for those who have been inhumanely treated by their own governments.  But what of our own?  We are the self-appointed and globally-appointed protectors of freedom and justice in this world, and that ideology isn’t likely to change any time soon.  Now we just need to find a way to heal our own troubled nation and protect the children in our own backyards and schoolyards, classrooms and hallways.

Taking the right to bare arms away from law-abiding Americans is akin to “changing the minds” (a la Paul Ryan in the vice presidential debate) of Middle Eastern nations or changing women’s minds about the right to choose—from either perspective.  That’s a war nobody wants to take on.  Perhaps we can, however, come to a reasonable compromise about important things like background checks for all persons of age in a prospective household, waiting periods, trigger locks, safety checks and safety courses.

I wouldn’t be GlutenNaziMom if I didn’t relay the fact that much of the anger and the malcontent that exists in our country can be attributed both to what is lacking (vital nutrients/ variety) and to what is present (GMOs, sugar, chemicals and additives) in our Standard American Diet—S.A.D.  And there’s a reason the acronym is so very, very SAD.

We must realize that all of the pieces and the parts are connected.  I am a sometimes reasonably liberal and sometimes reasonably conservative chick—founding member of the Enlightened Middle Majority—who occasionally likes to very safely shoot guns, who has chosen both life and otherwise, and thus could never presume to “choose” for another woman, and who has pulled herself out of the depths of poverty as a single parent and for a season contemplated suicide, and who believes that Health Care Reform as it sits is faulty, at best.  How can it support itself if NO ONE is paying a copay?  The math simply doesn’t work.  And what earthly good can it do if we don’t address mental health in the process?  If we continue to fail to address or even discuss Welfare Reform?  Mind, Body, Spirit; it’s all interconnected, from an individual standpoint, and from our nation’s. 

Guns and the right to bare arms, religious freedom as well as the freedom not to worship are organic and fundamental pieces of the ideology on which this country was built.  Mr. President, you may have won the election because for just enough the alternative was unpalatable, but you have a long way to go before you win over and heal the hearts and the minds and the pocketbooks of the Greatest Nation and of the world.  And until we as a nation come together, support one another, and collectively do so, unthinkable and unacceptable horrors such as the one in Sandy Hook Elementary school last Friday, such as the one in the mall in Newport Beach, California, three days before, and the one in the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, before that, will only continue to happen and likely continue to escalate.  I think we can all agree that nobody wants to see that happen in their corner of small town America, or anywhere.