This blog is a public service post. I don’t normally do a straight up recipe post because there are way too many of those in the world, but this is different. This recipe for all-purpose, gluten-free flour does not really need gussying up with stories about life or meditations on how things oughta be. This post is brought to you by the utilitarian Getting Things Done Department with some help from Life Hacks University.
It has been two years since I first published my recipe for a cup-for-cup, gluten-free, all-purpose flour mix. This type of mix was a unicorn when I started. The existing gluten-free, all-purpose flour mixes I tried were okay but often used garbanzo bean flour, which imparts a distinct bean-y taste. No thank you.
Other mixes don’t use gums, which is fine for some folks. Some gluten-free people are sensitive to gums, and they cannot use them in any form. But xanthan gum is one of the things that gives gluten-free, all-purpose flour a bit of stretch that gluten would otherwise provide (which is why it works so well for baked goods).
The other issue with gluten-free, all-purpose flour blends in the store is that you must be independently wealthy to buy them. While some brands have come down in price significantly, you are still looking at $3+ a pound for most gluten-free, cup-for-cup, all-purpose flours.
So I solved all of these problems.
This recipe has a good ratio of protein to starch, which lends stability and lift, without using bean flours. The taste is neutral and thus works well for delicate pastry (like pie crust, which does better gluten-free anyway).
Although I can tell the difference when it is missing, the xanthan gum is negligible and can be eliminated from the mix, especially if you are using a recipe that calls for psyllium husk (a non-gum substitute that brings a bit of moisture to baked goods).
And finally, the price. Brown rice flour has been a bit challenging to find decently priced these days, but in general, the amounts below make a five-pound batch of flour for right around $10. I shop at the local Asian and Latino markets for flours (white rice and sweet rice in particular) and utilize the bulk section of my grocery store for the xanthan gum). Granted, that’s not the 50 cents a pound price of regular flour, but $2 a pound is pretty good, especially if you are one of the people who gluten will send to the hospital.
If you don’t feel like making this yourself, get in touch. I can make you a batch or two and send it your way or drop it off if you’re local. Otherwise, hit up Amazon for the ingredients you cannot find in your own town.
Gluten-Free, All-Purpose, Cup-For-Cup Flour
Side note: I have used slightly more or slightly less of each flour (like, 20 ounces of tapioca flour) with only a small noticeable difference, and probably only noticeable to me. Best proportions are below.
Ingredients
24-oz. brown rice flour
24-oz. white rice flour
16-oz sweet rice flour (sold under the Japanese name “mochiko” but also available as “glutinous rice flour”)
15-oz bag of tapioca flour (also at Asian grocery stores, but sometimes in regular stores)
2 tablespoons xanthan gum
Method
Seriously couldn’t be easier. Dump everything in a big bowl, stir together thoroughly. Stir again before using.
Recipe Notes
While this gluten-free, all-purpose flour mix makes amazing cookies, cakes, muffins, and pancakes and also works miracles as a breading substitute for fried things, it is not quite enough to make bread. You need more protein-filled flours. HOWEVER. That should not hold you back. This will carry you through the entire holiday baking season, and I am working on the whole bread issue. #StayTuned
I have used this flour mix in the same amounts called for in every recipe that calls for regular all-purpose flour without any issues. Seriously. This stuff is amazing.
“See, Red? When life hands you lemons, you know what you gotta do?” “Wow,” Lauren said. “Yes, Mr. Cliché, I know what I have to do. I make lemonade.” “No,” he said. “You scream, ‘Fuck you, lemons!” “And then you throw those goddamn lemons into oncoming traffic, and you go do what you want to do.” ― Priscilla Glenn, Back to You
I cook when I am sad.
I cook when I am happy.
I cook to comfort people.
I have, at times, and much to my chagrin and embarrassment at my passive aggression, not cooked when someone made me angry.
I cook when I have no thoughts in my head.
I cook when there are so many thoughts in my head that my ears are ringing to the beat of my heart and my jaw is tense and I wake myself up in the night, grinding my teeth flat.
I cook when I don’t want to write and also when I do and also when I have things to write that I cannot put down on paper just in case I die and someone goes through my papers and it’s not something that anyone should be reading.
The only time I don’t cook is when I am can’t figure out who to cook for and making anything would waste food.
Except for the only other time that I don’t cook, which is when despair sets in.
Despair is a big word, like “disappointment.” I try to use my words carefully; I am critical in my head (and sometimes out of my mouth) when people toss words around in cavalier fashion. They matter, words do, even in this age of grunting and listicles and pictures.
So. Despair.
The dictionary defines it as “the complete loss or absence of hope.”
On all but my worst days, it’s possible for me to avoid this word. There is always something to reach for. Or even just to pin my mind to, just for a little while until the feeling passes.
My dad told me the story once of a guy who swam the English Channel. He (my dad) said the guy was interviewed, and one of the questions was, “How did you make it across?” Which is a really DUMB QUESTION, but many of my father’s stories and jokes featured dumb shit prominently.
The swimmer replied, “I just told myself to swim ten more strokes. And after I swam ten strokes, I thought, well, I can just swim ten more. So I swam across the Channel, ten strokes at a time.”
Frankly, this story is so neat and tidy and fits his long-forgotten point so well that I am pretty sure my dad made it up. Which was also part of his M.O.
But it works for many different aspects of my life.
On this day, I am trying to keep the English Channel in mind. There have been three deaths in and around my life in the past four weeks: two friends of my daughter’s and yesterday, my uncle. I don’t feel much like baking today, and despite the unutterably gorgeous weather of the past two days, I don’t feel much like going outside. But today I will force myself out of the bed. I will wash some laundry, and then some dogs, and maybe I will write for money and drag myself out for a little walk.
And I will definitely dig out my mother’s recipe for Truly Citrony Lemon Bars, which I will turn into a tart and bring to a friend who maybe might appreciate them. This uses plain, simple ingredients that you have lying around, which makes it easy because there is very little actual effort involved.
It’s the whole when life hands you lemons thing. Ten more strokes.
On Saturday, I had, as my particular friend called it, a visceral reaction to the suburbs.
We had dropped Khristian’s daughter off at the movies with a friend and planned a drink and some food at the least offensive of the chain restaurants in Hunt Valley (which turned out to be California Pizza Kitchen).
Things started out fine, as they usually do, and we ordered drinks and food at the bar.
After these diversions were settled I was able to look around.
The customers next to us were unhappy with something and a perfectly nice manager came over and soothed them.
The incoming male bartender, clearly an annoyance to our outgoing female bartender, overpoured for a lone male customer and mentioned that he (the bartender) would prefer some Rumplemintz. It was clear that the male customer was not really interested in the extra booze, but it was delivered in such a way that refusal would have seemed odd, so the male customer pretended it was fine.
It wasn’t really fine. I could feel it. The gesture of the extra booze came off as the “everybody’s doing it” kind of knuckle-dragging peer pressure one experiences around the beer funnel at a backwoods party.
Then we heard the same bartender mention Rumplemintz again at the other end of the bar. Soon after we watched him stick his finger in the neck of a bottle of some kind of juice mixer to unclog it before adding it to a waiting tray of drinks which was then, presumably, delivered to an unsuspecting patron.
Right around this time I started to feel…off.
I am not sure the last time I have been in a “fast-casual” dine-in chain restaurant, but I do remember saying that I didn’t want to do it again, and as I watched the people at the bar eating and listened to the modest din of their conversation or watched them staring into space or at the NCAA women’s basketball on the TVs over the bar I started to feel worse.
We finished our pizza and kale salad and paid. With time to kill, we boarded the escalator and descended into the belly of the beast: Wegman’s.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Wegman’s. And the Hunt Valley Wegman’s is legendary.
But the second I walked into the store I knew it was a mistake. It was hot, and it smelled strongly of food and people at the same time, in equal measure. Whole families were doing the weekly shopping, which translated into hordes of people, all with a determined look on their face and little regard for the people around them. We headed to the back of the store and perused the gluten-free section for a bit, and then I started to realize that the rest of our lovely day, the day that started with a walk to the Waverly farmer’s market for asparagus, a Blacksauce Kitchen biscuit, and a bag of Michele’s Granola, was not going to end well for me.
Anxiety is visceral. It may originate from a few random firing synapses in your brain, but the second those electrical impulses begin, the physical sensations are unmistakable with sensory detail that is clear, odd, and particular.
I could taste the last bite of kale salad in the back of my throat, where my breath lodged and came in short, shallow gasps. I was hot, and my clothes started to squeeze me. My mouth dried out. My heart beat in my chest, and I could feel the pulse in my belly, the one that connects to the vagus nerve, the transmitter of butterflies and anxiety and fear in a straight shot to the base of the skull.
Thinking to maybe head off the inevitable, I left my particular friend holding our few groceries and went to the restroom. Sometimes the quietness of the bathroom gives me space to collect myself. It may seem impossible that a public bathroom could become a refuge, but sometimes it’s the only quiet, peaceful space to go to when anxiety fires up.
The bathroom was rank-smelling and unclean. Loud music piped through the store, the kind of saccharine pop music that sounds like Christian rock but isn’t and involves no real instruments, reverberated against the oddly terracotta walls here. The bathroom was no help. I couldn’t breathe through my nose. My mouth was completely devoid of moisture, foul-tasting and pebbled with tastebuds that felt every particulate-filled, unrelenting morsel of inhaled air.
I will spare you the details of the next 45 minutes or so except to say that I visited that bathroom once more, plus a Peet’s coffee and tea bathroom and the movie theater bathroom (three times) before the girls finished their movie. I had taken an anxiety pill, then another half, and then another half. It’s hard to know if the medication sticks when you can’t keep it down. We made it home, where I took another pill, spent some more time in my (mercifully quiet and clean) bathroom, put on thick jammies (for the shivering when it came), and got into bed.
It’s not like I am unfamiliar with the trappings of the suburbs.
I spent 13 years in the suburbs of Atlanta. Without knowing it, in those 13 years, I lost bits of myself. It was subtle at first. Weekend shopping and meal planning on Sundays. Casual acquaintances who never really knew me (or cared to, really). Weekends consumed at the softball field, my child the center of the universe.
I kept the house, bossed my husband (Dane, for those who are just joining in) around, swore he couldn’t live without me (even went on strike once, like a total douche), and fully developed the raging anxiety that first surfaced when I was young. Every moment was gogogo, working for the weekend, taking care of business. The joy of teaching I experienced in Seattle evaporated in Georgia under a domineering boss who spent faculty meetings yelling at us.
We bought a farm. We lost a baby. I quit my job and started a school. Dane lost his job. We lost the farm. Dane died.
Sicily and I fled the suburbs for Baltimore.
Forgive me.
The vacuous homogeneity, the forced joie de vivre, the conspicuous consumption, and lack of individuality of the suburbs nearly killed me.
The low-key unhappiness that no one will admit to. The women complaining constantly about their husbands, who continue to ask forgiveness, not permission, of their wives.
The soul-killing lack of creativity, a hole that women attempted to fill chock-a-block full with Mason jar crafts, Pinterest boards, and wine painting party girls’ nights out. The insistence on calling each other “girls” in the first place.
The apathy towards politics, or the overwhelming conservative nature of the politics they did participate in.
The sheer size and number of SUVs and the callous, blatant disregard for fellow humans who are not in the inner circle, as evidenced by the lush green lawns and huge bags of garbage.
The subtle once-over every time you walk in someone’s door.
The endless evenings and weekends driving to activities or playdates or else keeping up the lawn, the house, the charade.
Forgive me.
It’s small wonder that in terms of volume and sheer violence, most heinous crimes are perpetrated not in rural areas or in the darkest parts of the urban jungle but just outside the beltway. School shootings happen in the suburbs, most often carried out by deeply unhappy people with startlingly easy access to guns.
But I digress.
I didn’t realize how miserable I was being the person I was never meant to be until I didn’t have to be that person anymore.
I shared these thoughts with Sicily the following day. We were walking across a parking lot, and when I told her my thoughts, her chin quivered and she lowered her sunglasses to cover her eyes.
“Do you regret it?” she asked me. “Being a softball mom?”
I stopped in the parking lot and looked her full in the face. I reassured her that she is the joy of my life. She made me understand the unfathomable depths of love and has given me the most blissful moments I have yet experienced in this incarnation. I am who I am today because she was born – she has made me a better person.
In truth, as much as my flight from the suburbs was about excavating the person I buried for so many years, it was also about being someone my kid could look up to. To show her that even from the shadow place of grief and through years of feeling unworthy, there is a way to come back. That it’s a sad and hard and joyous and exhausting and frustrating and hilarious and angry-making journey filled with ten tons of bullshit but also an equal measure of tears and laughter and the full range of emotion.
That feeling the full range of emotion – the crevasse of the depths and the universal height of joy – is the necessary thing. It’s the thing I couldn’t feel for 13 years. It’s the thing that came surging through me as we wandered the chaos of a strip mall in suburban Hunt Valley on a Saturday, only this time it came like a coiled snake, snapping out of a clay pot.
I want my beautiful daughter to know that it doesn’t have to be so for her. She can be who she is, just as she is. The Wiccans express it thus: “An it harm none, do as thou wilt.” And so I say now to both myself and my daughter.
As my anxiety receded, I felt like eating. Usually, I don’t eat for the rest of the day after an anxiety attack, and today was no different, but my cravings are always specific – sweet, comforting things, usually in the form of cake. I am possibly cake’s biggest fan.
In light of the burgeoning spring that has begun to sprung outside my bedroom window, and to honor my heart walking around outside of my body as we both continue to move towards who we are, I present to you this lovely, easy, unfussy carrot cake. I made carrot cake for Sicily’s first birthday. She ate it with a fork, no sticky fingers for her, and I knew, even in the middle of the suburbs, that she and I would somehow get to be just fine.
LouAnn’s Carrot Cake
Sicily, a.k.a Muffin Girl and Lovey LouAnn, maybe would have chosen a different cake for her first birthday, were she given a choice. I made this to try to reconcile her steady diet of organic, handmade meals and snacks with my deep love of sweet, sweet birthday cake. This recipe is a mash-up of several different recipes I have made over the years, with tweaked spices and a new technique that is shamelessly stolen from Cook’s Illustrated. After making cake in this way, I may never return to the round.
2 2/3 cups shredded carrot (about 3 large carrots – this measurement needn’t be exact)
Frosting and decoration
12 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 stick butter, softened
Optional: 1/4 cup buttermilk powder
2 teaspoons lemon
3 cups powdered sugar
Optional: milk, as needed
2 cups pecans, toasted, cooled, and chopped
Method
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 13″ x 18″ rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper (allow overhang at the ends) and set aside.
In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.
In a larger bowl, use the same whisk to combine eggs, oil, bananas, and vanilla. Whisk thoroughly until egg and oil are completely incorporated.
Add flour mixture to egg mixture and stir until combined (note: if you are using regular AP flour, do not overmix). The batter will seem fairly thick, closer to brownies than cake.
Fold carrots into the batter.
Pour batter into prepared pan. Use an offset spatula to even the surface and make sure it is level.
Bake for 15-20 minutes or until the top is dry. You can use a cake tester or toothpick to test also; no crumbs should stick to either.
Cool in pan for five minutes, then carefully life with the edges of the parchment paper and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before frosting.
To make the frosting, place cream cheese, butter, and buttermilk powder (if using) in a large bowl. Using a hand mixer, beat until smooth. Add lemon juice and powdered sugar (sift if you are particular; I am not), one cup at a time, beating well between additions. If your frosting is too thick, add a teaspoon of milk at a time, beating well, until it achieves a smooth, spreadable consistency.
To assemble, use a sharp knife to cut the cake into four pieces: one big cut across the longest part of the cake and one on the shorter side (you will end up with four rectangles that are about 6″ x 8″ each).
I use a rotating cake stand to frost, but since this is a round cake that is not entirely necessary. Frost and fill, allowing plenty for the top. If some crumbs show through on the sides, that’s okay.
When the cake is frosting, press handfuls of pecans into all four sides until covered. Pro tip: DO NOT DO THIS OVER THE SINK (don’t ask how I know). What happens is you waste a ton of pecans, which are very expensive. Complete this by holding the cake in one hand over the same rimmed baking sheet it was cooked in, using the other hand to press a handful of pecans into the sides at a time. Whatever is leftover can be used in another application.
Try not to eat it all, but remind yourself that since there are carrots in there it’s practically a vegetable.
Recipe Notes
You can substitute applesauce OR drained crushed pineapple for banana in the same amounts.
Buttermilk powder is not strictly necessary, but it’s nice to have around and lasts forever. Find it in the baking aisle near the canned and powdered milk.
You could also add currants to the batter…if you were a MONSTER.
The wild profiterole, captured in its natural habitat.
First, for you, a poem about love. Sort of. If you are not a lover of poetry, feel free to skip to the erudite synopsis – the TL:DR, if you will – below:
To His Coy Mistress
Had we but world enough and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime. We would sit down, and think which way To walk, and pass our long love’s day. Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the flood, And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews. My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; Two hundred to adore each breast, But thirty thousand to the rest; An age at least to every part, And the last age should show your heart. For, lady, you deserve this state, Nor would I love at lower rate. But at my back I always hear Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found; Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing song; then worms shall try That long-preserved virginity, And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust; The grave’s a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace. Now therefore, while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires, Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour Than languish in his slow-chapped power. Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Through the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.
~Andrew Marvell~
Essentially, Andrew Marvell is trying to convince his mistress to get freaky, and quick, before worms begin to eat them in the grave.
What this is really about is time (well, and if we are being honest, which we should always try to be, also sex), and how little we have in comparison to how much we tell ourselves we have (time and sex, both).
This winter break I wanted lots and lots of time. I wanted to have weeks of time to do as much or as little as I wanted, with no stress of deadlines. It may seem that as a freelance writer I have all of the time in the world, but in truth my days fly by in a haze of writing and basic life management. Most days I raise myself from a shitty night’s sleep and deliver The Child to school, and then, even with the day stretching out long before me, writing, house maintenance, family maintenance, yoga teaching/class planning, and yoga studio assistant managing fill up those minutes I thought I had plenty of when I first woke.
It astonishes me how I used to do all of the things I do these days with the added pressure of running a school and managing livestock. I cannot remember how it is that I got things done.
And that’s the haze aspect. I didn’t really spend too much time thinking about or noticing things that were happening. It’s the same as if your head is on fire – you don’t note the color of the flames, you just put the fire out. So many parts of my life have rushed by in a blur that I never fully experienced.
But the only way to really dive deep is to make time to do so. There are multiple studies on how we can’t actually “multi-task,” and that entering deeply into something is the only way to truly know that thing. If you quickly Google “how to learn something” you get 622 million results. The first few pages talk about learning something new every day and then quickly devolve into ways to learn new things in five minutes, or ten. It’s all about learning/doing the thing and less about experiencing the thing.
It’s hard to jump off the Must Get Things Done Treadmill.
But jump off I must. Not for any reason other than I want to continue to try to be present for everything. Possibly not things like cleaning the cat box or doing my taxes, but maybe even those things, too.
For months now I have wanted to give real pastry a try. I have been craving cream puffs and eclairs and cheese danish with an immeasurable ferocity for months now. The only reason I am not 1,000 pounds is because I am unwilling to pay eight bucks a pastry for substandard gluten-free bullshit. I may splurge for a $4 gluten-free cupcake on occasion, but I always regret it (I make them waaaaay tastier).
But real delicate pastry takes time and attention, both of which have been hard to come by in these past months.
Not anymore.
Here are profiteroles. Pâte à choux pastry, light and puffy, filled with sweet vanilla cream and striped with chocolate.
Authentic and delicious. Gluten-free (although you can make them with regular AP flour).
They take some time. I have modified the process a bit for less hands-on time, but still. You can’t just pop these in the oven and walk away.
Profiteroles
This recipe bows in gratitude to Michael Ruhlman and Ratio, but changes are made to accommodate the peculiar properties of gluten-free flour.
Ingredients
Pastry Creme (Creme Patisserie, or Creme Pat as they say on The Great British Baking Show)
1/2 cup chocolate, chopped (I used bittersweet chips because it’s what I had)
1/4 cup heavy cream
Method
Make the pastry creme first. In a large bowl, mix together flour and egg yolks until thoroughly incorporated and smooth. Set aside.
Heat milk, sugar, and salt to a simmer in a heavy saucepan over medium heat (look for small bubbles to appear around the edges of the pan). Remove from heat and grab a whisk.
Whisking constantly, slowly drizzle the hot milk mixture into the egg mixture. WHISK CONSTANTLY. Don’t skimp, and don’t add the hot milk too fast. If you do, you will end up with sweet scrambled egg which is gross and nobody wants that.
Once the milk is completely added, pour the mixture back into the milk pan and cook over low heat, whisking constantly, until the mixture begins to thicken (about five to ten minutes).
Pro-tip: use a whisk. I tried a spatula and that did not end well.
Remove from heat and add scraped vanilla bean (or extract). Place a fine mesh strainer over the bowl you will cool the pastry creme in. Pour pastry creme into the strainer to remove errant lumps (of egg or flour). Place plastic wrap directly on the surface of the creme and place in the ‘fridge to cool thoroughly while you make the pâte à choux.
To make your pastry, preheat oven to 425 degrees and line two baking sheets with parchment pastry. Set aside. Set up a stand mixer with a paddle attachment (or see Recipe Notes).
Heat water, butter, and salt in a high-sided saucepan over medium heat until butter is completely melted.
Add flour to water/butter mixture and stir with a wooden spoon, still over heat, until mixture pulls away from the sides of the pan and forms a ball. You will also notice a thin skim of pastry on the bottom of the pot.
Move pastry to the bowl of the stand mixer and let cool slightly. You want to be able to touch it, but you don’t want it cold.
Turn on stand mixer and begin to add beaten egg a little at a time. Smart people beat each egg separately and add them one at a time. You may not actually use all of the egg, which can be scary.
Don’t be scared.
Add a bit of beaten egg at a time and beat until it is incorporated. Ultimately you are looking for a dough that is somewhat stiff but still able to be piped. This is somewhere between cookie dough and a thick batter. It should not ooze at all or be sloshy. I know this to be true because that’s what my first attempts were like, and I ended up with egg-tasting pancakes. #Barf
The reason you may not use all of the eggs is because of the level of humidity in the air, the temperature of the flour/water/butter mix, alignment of the planets, the difficulty of the French: any number of reasons. It’s best to concentrate on the texture you are aiming for rather than the amount of each ingredient.
This is why people have dogs: to eat their extra eggs.
So beat your eggs as needed into the flour. When done, you can refrigerate your pastry dough for a day, or you can proceed.
Place dough into a pastry bag (see Recipe Notes) fitted with a round nozzle; I used a size 11, but you can eyeball it and go for 3/4 to 1″. Pipe 1″ rounds of dough onto parchment one inch away from each other. Each dough ball should have a little peak on top (if not, your dough is too runny. Sorry.).
Use a wet fingertip to smooth the top of each dough ball.
Place in oven at 425 for ten minutes, then reduce heat to 350 and cook for another 20 minutes.
Remove from oven and pierce sides with a toothpick to allow excess moisture to escape. Place back in turned-off oven and let them dry out for another 10 minutes.
Let cool completely.
Filling options:
Pipe cooled pastry cream with a skinny nozzle through the hole you made with the toothpick
Slice in half and use a spoon to dollop cream between both halves
For the optional drizzle, melt chocolate and cream over low heat, stirring constantly. If you are fancy as fuck, place that into a squeeze bottle and with a practiced air move it back and forth over your filled profiteroles until you achieve the chocolate coverage you desire.
If you have leftover drizzle, add some heavy cream, shake well, and pour over ice cream. Or add to milk and heat for hot chocolate.
Recipe Notes
You don’t need a stand mixer to make these, just lots of muscle. You can add your eggs and beat with a wooden spoon until you achieve the desired consistency. You can also use a food processor.
You also don’t need a pastry bag. Use a sealed freezer bag with the end snipped off and the pastry tip nestled into the snipped-off corner for the exact same result.
If you have read all the way through, finish this sentence in the comments: Had I but world enough and time, I would…”
I haven’t met a problem I can’t make exponentially worse by thinking too much, too hard about it.
As I start this blog, it’s November 7th, and given the way I work at my mercenary writing (how long it takes and how I budget my time), I could be done completely for the month by November 15th.
But I am WORRIED.
I worry it won’t be done, even though I have never missed a deadline.
I worry it won’t be any good, even though my clients are 100% satisfied and, at this point, obtained strictly from word of mouth for a steady income.
I worry I won’t make enough money every month, even though my total fixed expenses every month are less than some people’s car payments, and I was able to save enough money to send my child to France for a year (and pay off two credit cards) in six months last year. I can’t retire anytime soon, and I won’t be buying a Maserati, but since I don’t care about either of those things, it doesn’t really matter.
I worry.
It should be the first thing listed on the “About Me” section of this website, my skills on my CV, and my LinkedIn profile. I am, after all, a professional.
But what an incredible burden, the fact that I must, for everyone else’s sake, hold all of the worry and woe of the universe on my puny shoulders. That sounds histrionic, yes, but as Celie says in The Color Purple, sometimes it bees that way.
Sometimes I carry the burden of other people’s woe instead of tending to my own. It’s both a selfless act and a crutch. If I worry about other’s people shit, I won’t ever really have to address my own.
I won’t have to open up.
I won’t have to risk failure.
I won’t have to see the shadow.
The problem here is that eventually everything catches up with me, and I find myself in a situation that I have woven out of my own desire to not only care for other people but perhaps to not really care for myself.
It seems to me that female artists are destined to fail at either relationships or the pursuit of their art; they cannot have both (unless you are Frida Kahlo who was married to a serial cheater and a narcissistic fuck of a man who also happened to be grievously talented).
If you make art as a woman, must everything else fall by the wayside?
If you are in a happy relationship as a woman, must art then be put away as if a childish thing now that you are taking care of others?
I am not good at balance. I don’t know where the middle is.
I don’t know how to balance meeting my own needs with meeting the needs of others in my life.
I don’t know how to make mental and emotional space for the creative part of my life when I become engulfed by planning, scheduling, and otherwise coordinating the running of a household.
And then, of course, no one’s needs are met because who wants anything from a person who is visibly miserable, cranky, and generally hard to live with?
And that burden, too, becomes placed on my shoulders.
The challenges of a blended household are not to be trifled with, especially when there is so much history behind the two adults trying to do the blending. A dead spouse is no small matter, but a still-living spouse staring down the barrel of a dead 25-year relationship is no small potatoes either. What happens when children are added from both sides of that unlucky wooden nickel is nothing short of nuclear.
I often say that parenting is the worst best job, but really, if we are being honest with ourselves, which we should always try to be, parenting is pretty much just the worst job. The hours are long and arduous, the task itself thankless and neverending, and the end result completely up in the air – you can do the best you know how and it still not be enough.
Add to this, the age of 17.
I thought 15 was a bitch, but I had not yet met 17. In the rosy blush that comes with an ocean between us and a year abroad for The Child, I assumed she and I had moved past what 15 had wrought upon us (actually, 15 1/2 to around 16 1/2).
I assumed incorrectly. And that, too, feels like my fault. Heartbreak.
What wine pairs well with a dearth of creativity? The demons of relationships past? A child who is struggling?
Here is where I would segue into a recipe, but it’s hard to think of food in times like these, especially when the story that comes before the recipe isn’t lovely and filled with exclamation points.
I have said often (including here in this blog) that food is the way that I show my love for people, that if I am cooking for you, I must be caring for you. But food is also a comfort to me in a less usual way. It’s the place where I find solace, and the place where I have always been able to nurture some form of creative practice, even when the words dry up or are too painful to put on paper.
When I was in the first days of setting up my own household as an 18-year-old, I started the ritual of completely stocking my pantry and my bar on December 31st. I have been poor for most of my life, but when the last day of the year rolls around, I still take what I have and stock up to give myself the feeling of enough.
Because really what is lacking in this entire conversation about worry and balance and heartbreak is the feeling that I am, all on my own, enough.
I can fabricate that feeling in myself with a stocked freezer, pantry, and bar cart. It’s visible proof of enough. External proof, to be sure, but proof in its own way.
For this purpose, one of the things I like to make is crackers. I eat them warm straight from the oven.
They won’t make the road we are on smooth, with straight, even lines and clearly marked directions. They won’t make my relationship with my child go back to what it was before 15 1/2.
But they are easy to make and eat when the world inside and outside of the house is overwhelming and too much. And sometimes that is enough.
Method
Preheat oven to 400⁰. In the bowl of a food processor, combine dry ingredients (including add-ins). Pulse to mix. Add olive oil and butter, then pulse to mix (the mixture will resemble cornmeal). Add water and mix until dough comes together. The dough will be sticky.
Pick your cracker shape.
Shape 1 (huge time saver): Turn out half the dough onto a floured surface. Roll to approximately 1/16” thin. Cut into squares with a bench scraper or pizza cutter. Proceed as below.
Shape 2 (rustic crackers): Working the dough as little as possible, pinch a bit of dough out of the food processor (approximately 1/4” balls). Place on the cookie sheet. Pinches of dough should be an inch apart. When you have filled the cookie sheet, lightly flour the flat bottom of a glass (or a measuring cup, or anything flat), and press each pinch of dough to 1/16” thick. The thickness is not as important as evenly pressing the dough is; uneven crackers will brown on one edge and not the other.
Poke each crackers three times with a toothpick (this is important!).
Place cookie sheets in the oven and bake for a total of 12 minutes, rotating the sheets halfway through for even browning. Remove immediately from cookie sheets and cool on a wire rack. These crackers will stay fresh in an airtight container for three days, but you can pop them in a hot oven for a couple minutes to re-crisp if necessary.
Recipe notes
Oven temperatures vary and can greatly affect your outcome. Keep a close eye on your crackers, especially towards the end, to see if modifications to the bake need to be made.
These crackers can also be rolled out and cut into rectangles or squares with a pizza cutter. Toppings should be pressed into the rolled out dough so they don’t all end up on the counter (or the floor). Try to work quickly and not handle the dough too much.
Between batches, place the dough in the refrigerator.
Use all olive oil instead of butter to make these vegan. They may be slightly tougher.
Topping options are nearly unlimited, and you can also add fresh herbs into the dough when you add the water.
For a most delicious variation, add the zest of two lemons, ½ cup of dried blueberries (no sugar added), and 1 T of chopped thyme. Makes a beautiful, subtle, purple cracker. Serve with soft cheese.
These crackers can be made in a large bowl without a food processor. Work the dough as quickly as you can, and make sure all ingredients are incorporated.
For easier clean up, these can also be baked on parchment paper.
Store crackers in an airtight container. I have had them for as long as a week with no loss of texture, but I ate them all before I could experiment further.
