Disappointment

When you have a shitty day, with people cutting you off and spewing unrelated information at you instead of listening to and answering your question, and everything taking ten times as long as it needs to, and air conditioning so cold you leave the building with a sore throat, and through it all it's nearly a hundred degrees outside, and on the drive home behind the asshole who insists on going 10 mph below the speed limit you decide that even if you can't have a slice of pizza or a submarine sandwich or really anything that you'd like to have for dinner when you eventually get home, as long as you can have a little chocolate cake you'll be okay, and then you get home and mix up your Betty Crocker GF chocolate cake mix and wait for it to bake and wait longer for it to cool and it has exactly zero flavor - that's disappointment.

Monday, Monday

The beauty of being unable to get off the sofa and do anything is that you have the opportunity to do a lot of reading, watching, and listening. I'm currently taking this chance to listen to Neil Gaiman read his own story: The Graveyard Book. It's crazy. It's kind of brilliant. It's totally bizarre. It makes me remember why I love stories. Read it - or, if you can, get a recording of the author reading it to you.

In other news...

Perhaps the strangest-sounding recipe I've ever encountered, but definitely one I plan to make again. And probably again and again. Possibly with modifications, possibly without. Give up? A chickpea chocolate cake. Not chickpea flour, chickpeas. That's right. I found it here http://bakecookeatmove.blogspot.com/2009/09/nearly-guilt-free-kinda-healthy.html and I totally recommend it.

I had to process the chickpeas and eggs half at a time, because the only food processor I have access to is my parents' Presto Minnie Max pint-sized one. But the recipe still worked fine. In fact, it's quite delicious. I'm curious what would happen with a little flour of some kind - maybe sweet rice or tapioca. If I find out, I'll let you know.

Baking took it out of me. I'm going back to lying on the sofa and listening to Neil Gaiman. Enjoy your Monday afternoon!

Flour in jars shouldn't make me this happy.

Why didn't anyone tell me that "sweet" rice flour and "glutinous" rice flour are the same thing? Does everyone but me already know that?

Ohwell. At least my two identical flours are housed in totally awesome jars (http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/40065867)! I really wanted to buy about a dozen of each size, but settled for one small one and three of the next size up... to start with. As soon as I decide what else to actually keep in them, I'm going back to IKEA and buying as many as I can carry. I don't know why I love them so much, exactly. I think it's something about the realness of them, the old-fashionedness, the fact that glass has never had BPA (and we did away with the lead a long time ago), the fact that they look so clean and orderly and purposeful in the kitchen...

Be careful. Soon this may turn into a blog about real estate I'm drooling over and will never be able to afford, and kitchen makeovers that fill my nightly dreams.

Bread - failure and success.

Well, the holy grail is still out of reach. It was probably me, and not the recipe, but it didn't turn out as I'd hoped. The crust was pretty good, but the inside was a bit spongey. My parents actually liked it better than I did, believe it or not, but they weren't holding out hopes for a substitute for the gluey, stretchy, yeasty gloriousness of real bread. I still have the second half of the dough in the fridge, which I'll try baking as rolls and see how that goes.

Lessons learned? 1. In regular baking I could get away with all kinds of fudged measurements, but I'm going to have to be really exact (with everything) whenever xanthan gum gets involved. 2. I really should stop expecting anything to turn out quite like yeasted gluten bread, and then I'll stop being disappointed. 3. Stick to quick breads! (at least, for now.)

And on that last note... This morning I made a batch of pumpkin corn muffins (http://glutenfreegoddess.blogspot.com/2006/12/pumpkin-corn-muffins.html) and they're DELICIOUS. My new favorite thing. The slight crunch from the corn meal, the cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice... mmmmmmm. I suspect corn meal will in fact be one of my staples from now on, as it's such a normal ingredient and has so much character on its own. One of the next recipes I plan to try is these cornbread muffins: http://www.glutenfreeda.com/recipe-view.asp?cat=6&id=1527 (with fake milk, of course). I'll let you know how those go, too. But I should probably finish eating this batch of muffins before I make the next one...

Snowy Day Update

Since the snow has been falling for nearly 24 hours now, and that's always an invitation to bake, I decided to go for the holy grail: gluten free yeast bread. I got out the tapioca flour, the xanthan gum, and a recipe for which I have very high hopes (http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/?p=1396) and started mixing. The dough is resting now, so I'll have to give you an update on how it turns out.

In other news, the reason I vanished again after recently resurfacing is that I've been doing a lot of traveling and logistical business, the upshot being that I'm now back in scenic NJ and will be here for probably the next year or so.

It's a long story, and not particularly interesting, but the time has come to conclude The Nashville Experiment. The irony is that I've finally found some things in Nashville (namely a handful of people) that I'm reluctant to leave behind. But such is life, and in a couple of weeks I'll be making one brief trip back to pack up my apartment and drive the thousand miles home.

Which means... we begin the next chapter in the saga! Right now I'm hoping that this one will include things like a food processor and a large kitchen to house it. The main goal, though, is good health, and to that end I'm going to walk away from the computer, make a cup of tea, and watch the snow fall.