Category: gluten free

Of Love, Grief, And Nanaimo Bars

Kevin Allen in his natural habitat.
Kevin Allen in his natural habitat.

I am familiar with loss.

Loss is wordless and powerful, difficult to describe, hard to imagine until it happens to you, and even then each loss is different.

Today, three years ago, my friend Kerry lost her older brother, Kevin. It was an accident, like these things usually are when someone dies young, and the shock of it is still often very present. Kevin was full of life, kind, loved his dog and his friends. He and Kerry were friends, maybe not always on the same plane at times, but their bond was deep.

The entire Allen family – Kerry, Kevin, and their parents, Jim and Nancy – were close. They were my second family, even if they didn’t really know it. I have known them for my entire life, practically, 35+ years, across the continent, through the birth of babies, marriages, and now, through loss.

It seems fitting today to post an offering, a tiny little absurd remembrance to Kevin that doesn’t encompass at all the love that the Allens have for each other and the hole of grief that they are still knitting together. Other than Jim smoking cigars in the garage, banished by Nancy, and Kevin’s somewhat mysterious older brother mystique (to me, anyway, who was pretty hapless around the opposite gender anyway), one of the things I remember most is Nancy’s Nanaimo (nahnny moe) bars.

Nanaimo bars are a wonderful combination of chocolate and nuts and coconut and cream cheese that melts in the mouth. I have thought about them often across the years but have never had them anywhere but in Nancy Allen’s kitchen. I am privileged to have received the recipe from her in April (via Kerry) for inclusion in the cookbook.

With loving remembrance of Kevin and forever gratitude for the shelter (mental, physical, emotional, and otherwise) that the Allens offered me over the years, I have made these today. Kerry gets a bunch on her counter, and the rest I will spread around like love.

Nancy Allen’s Nanaimo Bars

Note: You may be tempted to change some of these amounts. Resist the urge. Yes, two tablespoons of pudding mix is inconvenient, but so what? It’s worth it.

Ingredients

Crumb crust

¼ cup sugar

¼ cup unsweetened cocoa

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg

1 ½ cups (6 oz) graham cracker cookie crumbs (I use Schar gluten free graham crackers to make crumbs, the best I have ever had, among their other products)

¾ cups (2 oz) flaked coconut

½ cup chopped pecans

Cream filling

½ cup butter, softened

3 oz. cream cheese, softened

2 T instant vanilla pudding

1 cup confectioner’s sugar

2 T milk

Chocolate glaze

4 squares (1 ounce each) semisweet chocolate

1 T butter

Method

Grease 9” square pan and set aside.

In a saucepan, combine the first four ingredients for the crumb crust and cook over low heat, stirring constantly until mixture coats the spoon. Stir in graham cracker crumbs, coconut, and pecans. Spoon into prepared pan and press into an even layer.

For the filling, beat together butter, cream cheese, and pudding mix. Beat in confectioner’s sugar and milk. Spread over graham cracker crust. Refrigerate 30 minutes or until firm.

For the glaze, melt chocolate and butter together. Spread over pudding layer. Refrigerate again until chocolate is firm.

Taking The Day Off…With Cake

Cake
#Proper. Cake is the only remedy for busy.

What’s that you say? How could I possibly be taking the day off when I have not published a recipe since April 1st?

Well, friends, there is a reason for that.

I wrote a book. A whole book, with 80+ recipes and essays, in 30 days.

I write a lot in general about motivation and procrastination. This is very real to me, as the keeper of my own schedule and boss of me. So when I need to get something done, I set myself a close deadline and make the task huge.

This is often why I throw a party at least once or twice a year. It makes me clean the house at least once or twice a year. Sort of like going to the dentist every six months. When my dentist asks me how often I floss, I tell him, “At least twice a year.”

But I digress.

This book writing in 30 days is a spin-off on National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, to use the vernacular), which occurs every November, the other 30-day month. As I write execrable fiction, I decided that April would become NaNoFiWriMo: National Non-Fiction Writing Month. This is how I wrote my first book, and since it worked out so well, I thought I’d try it again.

Plus, last year I published a list of writing goals and didn’t meet them. This was a little bit of a punishment for myself.

So I told my kid, my therapist, and another freelancing friend, and off I went.

40,028 words later, I am done. It’s rough as hell, and I don’t know exactly what I am going to do with it.

But the food is fucking incredible, if I do say so myself. Some recipes from this blog, some new stuff, some family recipes or recipes from friends (I’m looking at you, Nancy Allen and Bonnie King!!). I am pleased that it’s done and ready to cook. I took a week off from thinking about it, sending it off to a writing friend to look through it before I make any substantial edits.

But I cannot seem to stay away from it.

I find myself clicking on a recipe here or there, tweaking formats and finding typos.

I have started homemade kimchi for kimchi fries, and as I write this a cake from the book (sort of) is cooling on the counter, waiting for chocolate mousse filling and marshmallow frosting.

If you have nothing to do this rainy, rainy weekend, and the world of bullshit politics is making you want to poke your eye out with a spoon, take a step back and make this cake first. You may be able to face the world again.

Best White Cake With Chocolate Mousse Filling And Marshmallow Frosting

Ingredients

350 grams (about 2 1/2 c.) gluten-free all-purpose flour mix (or cake flour if gluten isn’t an issue)

1 T. baking powder

1/4 t. salt

1/2 c. butter (one stick), softened

1 t. vanilla extract

330 grams (about 1 1/2 c.) sugar

2 eggs

1 c. milk

Chocolate mousse filling (recipe below)

Marshmallow frosting (recipe below)

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare pan: butter bottom of  two 9-inch cake pans, line with parchment circle, butter the entire pan and dust with flour. If you skimp on this step, your cake will stick and all your hard work will be for naught.

In a small bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, and salt.

In the bowl of a stand mixer (or a large bowl with hand mixer), cream butter with sugar and vanilla extract. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until smooth. Add dry ingredients and milk, starting and ending with dry (flour, milk, flour, milk, flour).

Pour approximately 1/2″ of batter into each pan. Bake until a toothpick comes out clean (test on the sides and in the middle until it hits the cheesecake crust), between 30 and 40 minutes. While the cake is baking, make your chocolate mousse filling (recipe below).

Cool in the pan for ten minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely. You can cool on the rack in the ‘fridge. While it’s cooling, start on the marshmallow frosting.

Chocolate Mousse Filling

Ingredients

8 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted

2 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream

2 T sugar

Method

Melt chocolate over a double boiler or in the microwave (careful not to burn). Cool.

In a large, clean bowl with chilled beaters, whip the cream until it stands in soft peaks. Add sugar and continue to whip until it stands in firm peaks.

Add 1/4 of the whipped cream to the melted chocolate and whisk to combine. Add the chocolate mixture to the remaining whipped cream and fold with a spatula until fully combine. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Marshmallow Frosting

Ingredients

250 grams (approximately 2 c) powdered sugar

1/4 t. cream of tartar

2 t. light corn syrup

2 egg whites

1/4 c. water

1 t. vanilla extract

Method

Combine ingredients in a metal bowl and whisk to combine. Place metal bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and beat with a hand mixer on medium until the mixture begins to thicken (like marshmallow Fluff). Continue to beat on high until mixture stiffens (stiff peaks). This whole process takes 10-15 minutes.

Remove from heat and continue to beat the frosting until it is completely cool.

Assembly

A cake stand (thanks, Kerry!!!) and an offset spatula make life a lot easier here. Fill cake with a generous amount of mousse, then frosting with marshmallow frosting. Then eat A TON while you take a break from whatever big project has been making you busier than you perhaps ought to be.

Sophie’s Choice: Strawberry Bread Pudding

Really, the only decision you need to make today.
Really, the only decision you need to make today.

The start of things is always challenging.

Especially when the thing you are starting is somewhat of a secret, kept that way so it can be a big surprise when it’s all done.

But it starts today, no foolin’, and already I am stuck.

Anyone who reads even a blog or two of mine knows that motivation and I have not always walked well together.

This reminds me of the story about Jesus walking with someone on the beach (two sets of footprints) and when times got tough there was only one set of footprints because Jesus was carrying the person. This story makes me a little nauseous (and only a little nauseous because I would like to have a long conversation with Jesus, for real, not praying, like hang out with the man and say what the fuck, Jesus.), but it would be super awesome if motivation would just swoop down and cradle me in loving arms.

Motivation for me is more like a sharp, pointy stick. Or a cattle prod. And that’s no day at the beach.

Especially perceptive people who have read even a blog or two of mine might even recognize that this here blog post itself is really just a clever avoidance tactic. Or maybe not so clever.

Regardless. Here we are. At an impasse.

Sometimes, as right now with The Secret Thing, the issue is just too many choices.

I could literally go in 100 different directions with This Secret Thing, but if I commit to one, 99 of them fall away and become impossible.

And I am on a deadline, so I have basically this weekend to commit.

And anyone who knows me well knows that commitment and I are also not always walking together on the beach either. And commitment is too fucking lazy to pick me up. And super heavy for me, even with all of the yoga.

The answer to this is very, very simple: off to market.

Not only does this allow me to procrastinate, but it also gives me a great excuse to check out the new MOM’s that opened up this very morning in The Rotunda in Hampden. It was, as expected, a madhouse, so much so that any designs of leisurely strolling the aisles looking for inspiration fell away when the doors opened.

The samples. And the fresh mozzarella. And Greek yogurt. And bulk section. And the sheer number of people who really should all be at work and not shopping right now so that I can have the store to myself. #OtherPeopleRuinEverything

But THE STRAWBERRIES.

If we were still in Georgia, I would have already been harvesting the first tender shoots of asparagus and small, juicy strawberries, but here in Maryland not much is coming out of the ground beyond greens and brassicas, and even then only for really good garden planners.

These strawberries weren’t local, but they were organic and sweet and deep, ruby red and sexy as hell.

And on sale.

I bought two clamshells, planning something with the aforementioned Greek yogurt (so thick like vanilla-scented crème fraiche) but then came home to other choices.

Quickly staled gluten-free bread, optimistically baked a couple days ago and not consumed. Four egg yolks leftover from the bread’s mother, also still quietly growing delicious in the ‘fridge. Vanilla beans to spare. Almond milk, bought for another purpose and then forgotten, but still good and unopened.

Sophie’s choice: strawberry bread pudding. Christ on a bike, this was good. The perfect bridge between the sunny, spring-like weather of this morning and the 30-degree temps and flurries forecast for Sunday night. Dollop of the Greek yogurt on top.

Perfect for ignoring the other choices I am avoiding. You’re welcome.

Strawberry Bread Pudding

Hey, man. This is totally unfussy. I am putting amounts here, but really, go with what you have. Leave the strawberries out, or add chocolate chips and a touch of cinnamon. Or maybe dried fruit. Or no fruit. Or whatever. Regular milk. Less sugar. Two eggs instead of just yolks. Whatever. No real choices need to be made until you are damn good and ready.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups milk (cow, almond, soy. Whatever. Whole milk is the more reliable choice, to be sure, but don’t let dairy hold you back.)

1/3 cup sugar (or more. Or less.)

1 vanilla bean, scraped (or 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract)

pinch of salt (or 1 teaspoon if you like to measure)

2 T. butter

2 eggs (or 4 egg yolks if that’s what you have in the ‘fridge)

one leftover loaf of gluten-free bread, cubed into maybe 3 cups (or stale, gluten-filled french bread, brioche, challah, or….)

1 cup chopped strawberries (or a handful of chips, or nothing)

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and butter a ceramic baking dish big enough for your bread and berries. Set aside.

Heat milk, sugar, vanilla bean scraping, salt, and butter until the butter is just melted. Cool if you have that kind of patience, or, if not, slowly, slowly, slowly – whisking constantly – drizzle the hot milk into the eggs in a large bowl. If you do it too fast, you will have vanilla-flavored scrambled eggs. Drizzle slowly, slower than you think, while whisking frantically.

Place bread and strawberries in the buttered dish (I used a high-sided white ceramic baking dish). Pour milk-egg mixture over the bread, soaking thoroughly.

Allow the bread to sit in this mixture for 30 minutes in the ‘fridge. Longer, if you like. This is to soak up some of the liquid so the custard does not “break” (scramble the eggs) in the heat of the oven.

Bake for 30-45 minutes (seriously. Big range), until the custard is just a little tiny bit wobbly (but not raw. GROSS). For more gentle cooking, cook the pudding in a bain marie.

Again, cool slightly if you can, or grab a spoon and eat IMMEDIATELY with unsweetened whipped cream, crème fraiche, or super thick Greek yogurt.

 

 

 

 

Spring Greening

The key to a clean house. #ForReal
The key to a clean house. #ForReal

My kitchen is filthy.

As I emerge, blinking, into the March sun from the deepest recesses of the hell that is February and look around, I realize that my house is decidedly not in order.

It happens this way, sometimes.

When the earth begins its long march away from the sun, starting in June but accelerating in earnest as we move through November, I can feel myself retreating, hibernating. I may join humanity for a holiday party or three, but fuck it.

Bears don’t clean.

So the house gets a basic wipedown to prevent it from looking like a truckstop and to keep us in clean clothes and toilets – a whore’s bath of housecleaning, if you will – but other than that the baseboards grow furry, as do the underneath parts of nearly every surface in the house.

I was gifted a year’s worth of cleaning lady for Mother’s Day one year, and after the lady’s first visit she remarked, “It looked good until I started cleaning.”

This is nearly every winter of my life.

But the other side of this is that I cannot function well in a house that is filled with dirt. Metaphorical or otherwise.

Everywhere I look there is grime.

#BadFengShui

I feel like Punxatawney Phil (the only groundhog. #FuckOffGeneralLee). Of course he is going to see his shadow. They wake him up at the crack of dawn and shine lights on him, and all he can think about is whether or not he has crumbs on his chest from lying on his ass all winter, binge-watching Nurse Jackie while eating dry chocolate Chex because milk is superfluous and they are GLUTEN FREE now. He just wants to waddle back to his hole and go back to bed for six more weeks until someone comes in and cleans his house for him.

Or maybe it’s just me.

So here we are, early March.

It’s time to clean up our act. My act.

Whatever.

I feel a massive wave of cleaning energy coming on. It’s slow, to be sure, but I have finally thrown out the Galentine’s Day flowers and the Christmas tree is near the back fence, ready for a kindly neighbor who may or may not be heading to the dump sometime soon (#TrueStory).

I have ordered new side towels from Amazon.

I have changed my sheets and located new ones so they can be changed more frequently.

I bought glass shower cleaner and two rolls of paper towels.

I am getting ready to take various books to the Little Free Libraries located around Hampden, and I am ready to give away and reorganize many of the various things we have accumulated over the less-than-one-year we have been in this house.

It’s time to go top-to-bottom, left-to-right on this bitch.

Usually when I clean like this, I leave directly afterwards so I have the wonderful experience of walking into a house that looks and smells good.

But sometimes people suck and I just don’t feel like venturing out into the world beyond a long walk in the woods, where food is to be found but not easily and not in quantity.

I can’t order pizza in, and although my gluten-free variety is easy, still too much effort after a day collecting ALL THE DOG HAIR IN THE WORLD.

Enter salad.

What the fuck, you say. Or WTF if you are a millennial and #JustCantEven.

Not just any salad.

This time of year the farmer’s marker basket is overrrun with hearty greens: arugula, kale, spinach et al. You can’t juice them fast enough. You can’t put them in soups fast enough. Your kids hate them sauteed, no matter how much you talk about Popeye who’s strong to the finish ’cause he eats his spinach.

Side note: My brother and I used to stuff wads of spinach in our cheeks, call them chew, and spit the juice out on the patio for hours after dinner was over, finally divesting out distended cheeks of the desiccated spinach remains when the novelty wore off. Maybe my mom thought we were absorbing nutrients through our cheeks, or maybe she was overrun with greens herself and didn’t give a rat’s ass at that point.

But back to salad.

This salad is delicious, easy, filling, and versatile as hell. The basics are there, waiting to be supplemented by what you have. Chickpeas leftover? Toss them in. Grilled chicken or steak? Yup. Other types of fruit? Have at it.

After hours of scrubbing walls, baseboards, and stainless steel, this salad makes very few dishes; I tend to eat it with my fingers out of the bowl I made it in.

Kale/Arugula Salad With Apple Cider Vinaigrette

Ingredients

Kale or arugula or whateverthefuck greens you have (but no iceberg. #KeepinItReal)

One small bulb of fennel, sliced (optional)

One crisp apple, sliced thin (optional)

One handful of blueberries (optional)

One handful of strawberries, sliced (optional. Are you sensing a trend? Do what you like)

Squeeze of lemon, if using apples

1/2 cup toasted pecans (or any other nut you like, or no nuts if they make you swell up)

1/2 cup apple cider

2 T apple cider vinegar

4 T olive oil (or other oil, whatever you have)

1 tsp. honey

grind of black pepper

squeeze of Dijon mustard (optional, but it helps the other ingredients emulsify and gives the dressing some heft)

pinch of salt

Method

Place greens and other additions (apple, fennel, nuts, etc) in a large stainless steel bowl.

In a Mason jar, combine cider, vinegar, oil, mustard, salt, and pepper.

Shake like hell.

Wait until you are ready to eat, then shake the dressing and pour it on the salad. Eat it all up.

And hey…don’t wait all winter to clean your house.

 

At Home In The Muddy Water…With Muffins

The present moment.
The present moment.

The Universe, she is a fickle bitch.

I suppose the same could be said for many of us. One moment we are sunshine, light, and warmth…the next we are woe-is-meing and at the bottom of the very darkest well.

And by “we” I mean “me,” and sometimes just that quickly.

Not five hours after the last blog post in which I expounded on deep places of stillness and grace, I discovered I actually owe the IRS about five grand, received a $52 parking ticket when I went to go pick up a useless, destroyed purse of mine that was stolen six weeks ago, and found out that there is a distinct possibility that my mobile phone company (who shall hereafter be referred to as “Fucking T-Mobile”) will not cover the cost of a new phone, even though A) I have insurance, and B) the old phone is well and truly broken through no fault of my own.

Well played, Universe.

It’s like a test.

I am pretty sure I failed it just a little bit when I stormed into the house, railing against bills and screaming at The Teenager to clean up her mess and you left a towel in my bathroom and for chrissakes I am sick of cleaning up dog shit so clean up the backyard.

It’s a bit much to take, all at once.

And then, in a brief moment of clarity, I remembered this:

May we exist like a lotus,

At home in the muddy water.

Thus we bow to life as it is.

I found this little verse in the book At Home in the Muddy Water: A Guide to Finding Peace Within Everyday Chaos by Ezra Bayda. In it, he talks about how we constantly accept life’s blessings as our birthright, then suddenly turn to the universe and moan, “Why me?” when things don’t go our way.

To this, Bayda replies, “Why not you?”

Why not, indeed.

Should someone else owe taxes instead of me? Get a ticket? Have a 15-year-old?

It’s not a test. It’s just life. One day after another, one trauma and triumph and minor insult and lovely moment at a time.

The test is not in the events. The test is in what you do with them. Much of this is mindset, meeting what happens as it happens.

I have not been good at this in the past, this being in the moment, calm acceptance type of person. I think if maybe these woe-ful events were carefully spaced, then perhaps I might be better at it, but turns out the universe and its attendant whims is not necessarily a Day-Timer kind of entity.

In these times, and in all times, actually, because once a quote speaks to me and I interact with it in my brain it is forever burned there, and I will use it over and over, the Department of Redundancy Department, I am reminded of the distinction between anxiety and depression:

Anxiety looks to the future.

Depression looks to the past.

Present is always exceptionally hard for me because in addition to death and taxes and dogs and teenagers there are a myriad other things to worry about and reflect upon. Things that pull me out of what is now.

Things that may happen soon or have already happened but are not the reality of this moment.

Present, for me, requires a nudge. Something to tether me to what is in currently in my face. Something that will help me turn my phone face down, leave the ringer off, or just “forget” that I left it on the counter at home.

Present today? Well, present at my house today makes muffins. Gluten-free, sweet, barely-considered-breakfast muffins with fat blueberries taking up most of the cake.

Present at my house wants these muffins right now, dammit, so this recipe takes 30 minutes, from the first scoop of flour to taking fresh, hot muffins out of the oven and shoving them in your face.

I’d say that’s a pretty good way to live in the moment.

Blueberry Muffins

Double-plus bonus: These are so simple that you could actually make them while your first cup of coffee is brewing. Seriously. Regular AP flour works here, too. #InstantLove

Ingredients

Dry:

1 3/4 cups gluten-free all-purpose flour
2 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup sugar

Wet:

2 large eggs
1/2 cup canola oil
3/4 cup whole milk
1 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups blueberries

Crumb topping:

1 cup gluten-free all-purpose flour
3 T light brown sugar
2 T sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
Pinch of salt
6 T melted butter

Method

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and grease a muffin tin (butter, oil, or cooking spray. #ItsNotRocketScience #PlusYouAreSleepy)

In a large-ish bowl whisk together dry ingredients.

In a smaller bowl, whisk together wet ingredients (I used a 2-cup measuring cup, adding the eggs last and beating them in).

In an even smaller bowl, whisk together crumb topping ingredients while you melt the butter.

Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. Add blueberries and stir to combine.

Fill muffin cups about 3/4 of the way full.

Use a fork to add crumble ingredients to melted butter and mix to combine. It should be somewhat clumpy, which is what you want. Spoon/pour/use your hands to distribute crumble on top of your muffins.

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until the tops are golden brown and a toothpick comes out fairly clean or with maybe a crumb or two clinging to it.

Eat many of the muffins and go about your day.

Voila. The present moment, only with fresh, hot muffins. #Om