A Smile in Bloom

Would you like to make a difference in your neighborhood?  Do you have overcrowded daffodils?  Let's combine the two.  When you divide your daffodils, plant every last one of them!

Daffodils are so cheery in the spring!  I smile every time I see one growing wild in a wooded spot or an uncared for garden.


I plant them on every line in my garden to share spring cheer.  As these begin to divide, I do not plan to keep them to myself or let them over run my vegetable garden space.  It's not enough to just share the color with my neighbors.  As they produce I plan to plant them in Oakland wherever I see fit!  And I will plant them for anyone who'd like one.  


If only all bulbs reproduced as quickly as daffodils and snow drops do.  


Hope you've been enjoying the early spring color!

Flapjacks a-la glutenless

So this is kind of a food blog, right?  Well not yet, and I have to fix that!  So today we have corn pancakes!

I've scrubbed the dirt off my hands, left the daffodils and tulips to the rain, decided not to check on my new sump pump trench, or the clay pack, not participating in any of this scrambling up a ladder hogwash today, no floor sanding tonight, and I've postponed all existential pondering of soil ph, compost, forecast calculations, or alminac reviews.... because.....

IT'S TIME TO COOK!

I bring you the tried and true corn pancake.  MY tried and true corn pancake, to be exact.  My corn recipes are made only from those things you can get easily at the regular old neighborhood grocer-mart store.  They're cheap and they're easy.  Cheap glutenlessness is really my biggest goal in all this.

Yay corn!  I made these tonight and took lots of pictures so I can set this up like a tutorial.  Later I'll explain my "corn base" method, but for now we'll just plow right through.  Remember, I'm lucky.  If you have allergies to my other ingredients, these recipes are really forgiving.  Go ahead and try any of your usual substitutes.

Flapjacks a-la glutenless

EASY peasy lemon squeasy, nothing special needed.  One optional 'unusual' ingredient.  That's it!

  

No special tools necessary.  If you have a hand blender, great!  If not, the spoon is plenty effective.  Ugly counter top is also optional.

1/2 tsp Xanthan Gum powder helps a lot.  It costs about $10 for a little bag that will last you forever, keep in freezer.  If you don't have it, there's just one small adjustment below.

 

Make 1 serving grits to instructions on packaging, plus 4tsp butter.  Heat in large microwavable bowl.

If you have it - Add 1/2 teaspoon Xanthan Gum powder while this is hot, and stir well.  (The heat helps reconstitute the powder).

Add two eggs, and 1/4cup sugar and stir.  (Here I used brown sugar in the 1/4c size terracotta I keep in the sugar bowl to help prevent hardening and clumps).

 

Add 1cup corn flour (WATCH your ingredients and allergen statement!!  Many innocent looking corn flours are really a 50/50 wheat/corn mix!  Hodgson is readily available at stores and has been safe for me.  Many others are safe, too.  Use logic, if it's right next to a spilled bag of white or wheat flour, it's probably cross contaminated with wheat.  Just be careful, ok?)

Add approximately 1 to 1.5 cup milk.

You're looking to get this to a smooth thick liquidy consistency.  Corn flours have some variance in absorbency and porousness, so the amount of milk needed does change a bit.  This should end up looking just like regular batter from a box of pancake mix does.  If you don't have a mixer it can be a bit lumpy and that's nothing to worry about, it won't affect the taste or texture of the end product.

Heat skillet on low, add oil or butter.  Here I used oil, butter tastes much better, though.  A mix is also great.

Here's the batter poured into the pan, it shows the consistency a bit.  This was done with no mixer, so you can see the lumps a bit.  

If you used the Xanthan Gum, you can make nice big pancakes. The pan shown is huge, by the way.

If you did not use Xanthan Gum, keep your pancakes to 1/4cup portions or less (otherwise they are way too hard to flip.  Xanthan holds the whole deal together, gives it that elastic quality.  It's also a good source of fiber, it's a dried tree sap just like Maple syrup candies!)

This pancake is ready to flip - the other was just flipped, they looked the same on the bottom.

You're looking for the edges of the pancake to get firm, and the top of the cake to start to look firm.  Bubbles will stay open instead of closing back over.

The best thing to do is some DISHES, that way you're there in the kitchen and can smell them as they get ready and you won't forget them and burn them! 

Flip with a metal spatula.  The first batch is really hard to scrape free from the pan.  Don't be discouraged.  To avoid the sticky flip, let the oil heat very thoroughly before putting the batter on.

 

The other side cooks up about like this, and this recipe makes 9 cakes this size.

Oh, yum!  Nice bread texture.

 And remember I said to do dishes while you make the cakes?  Well, here's my accomplishment for the evening.

Happy easy pancakes everybody!!!!!

Daffodil Insecurities

My glutenless garden is getting rained on today.  And my immediate next door neighbor just put of their for sale sign, so all of my home exterior insecurities are screaming at me.  And I'm thanking the heavens I have about 300 daffodils in the back yard.  I don't want the odd appearance of my house to chase away good buyers for my darling neighbors who have been so supportive to me and I'm going to miss them so much.

I took the picture just below of the yard just a few days ago.  It's raining too much to take a current one at the moment.  I've taken down the compost pile, moved the tire rings out of sight (I use them like mulch, and to hold down newspaper mulch around the plants.  There's recycled jeans hanging on a fence in far back left that I took down, I used those for mulch on my tomato plants and will again, but they look bad just hanging.  The black covering on the paths is also new.  I changed my espalier supports over to green wire fencing (I have a surplus of the stuff from grandpas).  I've been busy.

I don't have the resources to finish the structure in the back right now.  That will be an unheated greenhouse.

300 Daffodils indeed.  What they do for me is show that this plot of brown is purposefully created.  The garden looks on purpose so much earlier in the year.

I have a strong distaste for modern landscaping.  It's so sterile and mechanical.  But when you bite off more than you can chew (and I OFTEN do that) then non-sterile can start to look unkempt, it's a line that's hard to keep track of.  And I have lost all bearing on what looks normal.  I keep asking my neighbors, but they seem to be too nervous to mess with my electric green thumb.  I guess at one suggestion per person, that's gonna be pretty good, it just requires a lot more effort going around and asking a lot of people.

Yes, I have insecurities that are mitigated by daffodils.

Rain let up, here's the updated pic.

Berry Patch

I'm a big fan of strawberries!  I never have enough to put up for winter because I eat them all right away.  Last year I had a very nice, but small berry patch in front of the house.  I had to have a french drain put in on an emergency basis last year because my house started to subside and things were breaking.  


The gruff and grumbly dirt haulers that came and dug trenches around my house for this project dug up a lot of plants in the process, and spread clay over a lot of otherwise wonderful garden soil.  This spring is getting me very frustrated in undoing what they did, and in finding new evidence of destruction.  So, yeah, that berry patch is gone.

So getting back to the energy of creation, I've planted 25 Ft. Larimer ever bearing strawberry plants in the plot by my shed.  This plot also has my currants growing there, which means I'll have a lovely berry patch by the end of this year.


The nice thing about strawberries is that they are so low growing and undemanding.  If I choose to add more berry bushes in time, I can certainly insert one amongst them all.  


I also planted a dwarf "carmine jewel" cherry tree at the back path on the edge of my neighbor's lawn.  It marks the new grave of my sweety kitty little-one who shared life with me for 12 years.  This little tree is actually only about 5 inches tall right now, and the leaves are so shiny!  I'm so excited for the fruit, but it will be a year or two.


My apple and pear tree have done nicely through their first winter, the apple is so strong it found it's way out of the training ropes!  I'm training these trees to a trellis to make them espaliered.  The pear is doing quite well with it, and I imagine the apple will too, once I can contain it.  I chose the varieties for how well they keep in storage, and I plan to store those in the basement hatch stairwell in the winters as that temperature is perfect for apples and pears.


If I don't have a fruit surplus this year, certainly I will next year.  I'm so excited for it!

Introduction

Well hello, I'm here mostly because myspace at msn finally shut down and this blog server looks like a better option.  I may eventually upload my old posts, but for now, the fresh start is feeling great!

Cooking: I specialize in cheep gluten free.  

Gardening: I specialize in green growing and often edible stuff of all kinds.

First and foremost I am a gardener!  (Except in the winter, when I am first and foremost a cross country skier!)  I live in Pittsburgh, I have a half lot, and I have no grass, all I have is garden.  Most years I grow nearly all my own vegetables.  I love to cook and bake, and I have celiac disease.

What is Celiac Disease?

A genetically linked inability to digest wheat protein, aka gluten, also found in Barley and Rye. It's poorly labeled in foods, and can be found under such dubious titles as modified food starch, malt, or caramel color. Eating it when you're celiac causes upper intestine damage, and usually leads to malnutrition because you can't absorb certain nutrients. Swelling, pain and loose bowels are also common. Only solution is to remove all gluten products from the diet, in fact food can not even touch or be cut on the same cutting board as something containing gluten. 

I found out I had celiac disease in October 2008, and I LOVE how healthy I feel now!  I would never go back.  Also, I'm lucky.  While I have a severe reaction to any trace of wheat or gluten, I have no difficulty with milk or corn, and those two sensitivities are also common for people with celiac.  I do have difficulties when my diet contains too much starch or soy, so I limit those.

Most people say eating gluten free is expensive, but it doesn't have to be that way!  I have actually been able to reduce my food expense while maintaining a well balanced diet.  I attribute this to making so many things myself and using low cost ingredients.  

This blog will have some strange food sometimes, because I come up with some bizarre stuff sometimes!  I can't help it, I'm just silly!  But then again - you'd be surprised what tastes fantastic.  I love my crockpot, and I love to experiment.  If anyone gives me a good recipe, you can bet I will make modifications on the first try.  Sometimes I have humorously epic failures.  Usually nothing some chili powder can't fix, though.  

In addition to the cooking, I will include little bits about what's growing in the garden.  I'm not terribly frequent with posting, because I'm a busy lady.

So.... welcome to the Glutenless Garden!!