A few days ago, I suddenly realized I could make sweet roll dough in the bread machine. Friday, the bee and I put the ingredients in the machine. When it was done, we prepared the pan, rolled out the dough and rolled up the buns then cut them apart. I covered up the pan and let it rise overnight in the refrigerator. In the morning, I let them sit for 20 minutes then preheated the oven and baked them.

We don’t usually eat such rich breakfasts here but I have been looking for ways to convert foods with corn in them into foods that Fiona can eat since she is sensitive to corn. She does love spirals, though for her spirals are really cinnamon rolls. I have been working on coming up with a substitute for powdered sugar but in the mean time, I have some rice syrup–to use in place of corn syrup–in the pantry. So I decided to make the sticky buns and they were very successful. So successful I can only make them once in a while in good conscience.

In the mean time, I’ve searched online and found that powdered sugar can be made from granulated sugar by grinding it (by itself or with a bit of potato starch) in a blender. A coffee grinder (one devoted to sugar) supposedly works even better. Commercial powdered sugar is cut with corn starch to keep it from clumping. Another commercial product cut with corn starch is baking powder. According to several websites, baking powder is easy to make at home by mixing 1 part baking soda to 1 or 2 parts cream of tartar and, optionally, 1 part tapioca starch or arrowroot. It struck me as so odd to find that commercial baking powder has corn starch in it but commercial baking soda does not. I am still not quite convinced! As I sort through the pantry and muddle through the grocery store, trying to eliminate more corn ingredients from our diet, I have found the cornallergens.com website to be very helpful. The list of ingredients that potentially contain corn is certainly daunting, though.

Every day I think about getting most of our food from a CSA and a meat share and give up on processed foods entirely. What an exhausting prospect, though. Reading Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters is certainly encouraging the idea. Last night Fiona was acting kind of crazy. We finally figured out that she was having a reaction and, from all the signs, it looks a lot like she was reacting to almonds. Eating fresh, simple food made from unprocessed or nearly unprocessed ingredients wouldn’t solve our problems or cure our food sensitivities but I have a feeling it would bring a greater clarity to managing them.