Miracles Don't Seem So Far-Fetched Anymore

Two years ago I had just dropped out of Vanderbilt. Technically I had taken a medical leave of absence, but I knew I wasn't going back. I'd moved my stuff into my parents' house (mostly their garage), and I think by April I was already talking to Rutgers about transferring there.

Two years ago, I could barely walk to the end of the block and back again; I could barely stand at the stove long enough to make a simple meal. I was in too much pain.

Two days ago, I walked about two miles, grocery shopped for forty-five minutes, lifted weights at the gym, and then came home and spent two hours in the kitchen washing, chopping, cooking, assembling.

I don't really celebrate Easter anymore, but this weekend I was definitely celebrating the possibility of miracles.

La la land, part two

Well, I thought I was beginning to recover but then I must've caught the cold my mother is just getting over. So much for my plan of writing the trip up once I felt better. But here it is - the riveting conclusion of my 48-hours-in-Los-Angeles saga!

Saturday morning found me a mighty unhappy camper, partly from time zone-induced confusion but mostly from being some unidentified variety of ill and the lack of sleep resulting therefrom. There, alas, went my glorious plan of stopping on the way to the reading to get a *gluten free dairy free* breakfast burrito. (Yes, Virginia, there is a GFDF breakfast burrito, but apparently only in L.A., and apparently not for me. *sigh*) Instead I stopped at a Trader Joe's that I happened to drive past on Santa Monica Boulevard and that turned out to be perhaps the only TJ's in existence with neither gluten free pretzels nor gluten free bread. Alas again! Rice cakes for me.

I managed to find my way to Beverly Hills High School - oh yes, 90210 - and bumbled my way to the auditorium. People began to convene, chairs and music stands were arranged, a group of 60th-reunion BHHS alums stopped by to say hello... we were definitely underway.

Here's the important bit: Everyone was super nice, everyone worked really hard, and all in all the day was great. It was so exciting to hear the music played by fantastic musicians and sung by a bunch of talented singers! I managed to not cry the first time the chorus came out with "It's fooouuur A.M. agaaaaiiiinnnn" in harmony, but it was close. I've always been that way when I first hear something I wrote realized by people aside from myself. It's like "ohmygod, that sounds so good!" and "wait, I had something to do with making that happen?" and "YES! THAT'S IT!" all wrapped up together with a load of je ne sais quois. In rehearsals, in the studio... I will never cease to love that moment.

As if that wasn't awesome enough, everyone said really nice things about the songs. I write songs that I want to hear, but my hope and my goal is that other people will want to hear them too. And if my songs excite them or move them or make them feel anything at all - JACKPOT! The feedback from both the singers and our small audience made me feel great about the songs I've written. Of course I've got my work cut out for me going forward. There will be lots of rewriting and new writing to do. I'm excited to do it. ...once I get over this cold.

The rest of the trip involved Vietnamese food at a restaurant called - wait for it - 9021Pho, another quiet evening at my friend's apartment, and a lot of flying eastward. I was in L.A. for almost exactly 48 hours - just enough time to feel the heat, see the palm trees, take hardly any photos, not sightsee at all, and read through one (1) brand new musical. I wonder when I'll get back there. I wonder what I'll do when I do. I don't think I've really formed an opinion of L.A. yet, though I can see why people feel so strongly about it in either direction.

Now, I was going to post photos here but apparently my camera doesn't want to play nice with Ubuntu, so it'll be another day or two while I get that figured out. Sorry. Since my father is a master of all things computer, it shouldn't take too long to sort it out.

History in the making

A momentous day in the history of our nation: someone finally recognized - legally, officially - that someone's right to marry cannot be taken away just because that person happens to be gay. Proposition 8 has been overturned! I often feel like I was born into a terrible era, but today I'm awfully glad to be alive for this moment.

Now to see what the appeals process will look like, and how long it'll take for this fight to truly be won...

To sleep, perchance to not dream at all.

I don't remember the last time that I slept through the night without waking up. I also don't remember the last time I slept without dreaming. I am the queen of dreams: vivid, often violent, frequently lucid. I run for my life, I drive cars over cliffs, I battle boogeymen of all varieties. I wake up exhausted.

Until now. The last few nights I have been dreaming less and less, forgetting my dreams upon waking, sleeping for longer stretches at a time. And I cannot begin to tell you how absolutely glorious it is. My ultimate fantasy is to sleep for eight hours uninterrupted and to dream not at all. Someday.... someday...

IT'S ABOUT DAMN TIME!

It's been a long time since I tuned in to an awards show, and much longer since I watched one all the way through, but man am I glad I did tonight. It took 82 years, but a woman has finally won an Academy Award for Best Director. YES!!!!! She has made history... and made every step for us that follow her just a little bit easier. That was so worth watching.

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...

Gummmmmy

I've been getting braver with my gluten free baking experiments. I tried making the Joy of Cooking's banana bread recipe with GF flours instead of regular flour, just off the cuff as it were, and it wasn't a total failure! Just a semi-failure.

I've also been making pancakes with various GF flours to get a feel for them. Turns out that buckwheat is quite tasty and sorghum is possibly magical. I made entirely successful - delicious, even! - pancakes both with a buckwheat/millet/potato flour mix, and with straight sorghum flour. Sorghum might be my new favorite thing. (Of course some good, grade B maple syrup doesn't hurt either.)

But there's one thing I've been dreading, been avoiding like the plague, been doing research to see if I can do without. Xantham gum. (insert scary music)

Xantham gum and guar gum are the two things generally used to give GF baked goods a gluten-like texture. They are also, as I understand it, to blame for the gross, gummy texture of many GF goods. In fact, at a GF bakery in NJ the owner let me sample some bread made wtih the xanthan gum she normally uses and then a loaf made with a different brand of it: the second loaf was gummy and not so good. BECAUSE OF A DIFFERENT BRAND. This is why this stuff scares me. Guar gum, for no reason whatsoever, scares me less and is supposedly much cheaper to buy... but I haven't yet found it in a store. Xantham gum, on the other hand, sits right in the baking aisle in Whole Foods... and costs $12 for a bag that I think weighs a pound. Granted, a recipe generally uses only a teaspoon or so, but still. $12! For a little bitty bag of powder! I'm not generally in the habit of buying the kinds of things that carry that sort of cost-to-weight ratio. However, the majority of GF recipes I've been finding include the damn stuff, and the blogger/cooks I've started following (who seem quite knowledgable, based on lots and lots of experience) all include it in their recipes.

Dammit!

So this weekend I bit the bullet and bought some. ($12!!) Then I had to convince myself to use it.

Well, since store-bought GF baked products are hit-or-miss, I haven't bothered buying any pre-made cookies, cakes, or similar. It just didn't seem worth it. But for most of the last week I've been craving something starchy and sweet, warm from the oven. So I picked out two possible recipes to bake - both including xanthan gum. The one I really wanted to try was for GF monkey bread - a sweet, yeasted bread - but between getting home from the gym and leaving for work today I wasn't going to have enough time for the rising and baking, and I sure wasn't going to wait until next weekend when I'd have time to bake again. Instead I made a berry coffee cake kind of thing. (It's billed as a blueberry crumb cake, but I used the frozen mixed berries I had on hand, and was too lazy to make a proper crumb mixture so I just sprinkled brown sugar on top.)

It started smelling delicious about a half hour into the baking, and - miracle of miracles! - it tastes delicious, too!

I'm now at work with a piece of it in a plastic container and as it finishes cooling I keep taking little tastes, hunting for any hint of gummy, gluey grossness. None dectectable so far. This is good news, people. There may be some delicious baking in my future.

The best thing about being gluten free? All the amazing food I get to eat!

For someone who historically has staunchly claimed "I don't cook," I seem to be doing a lot of cooking lately.

Last night I made a Thai-style curry with broccoli and baked tofu over brown rice. As you may recall I don't usually do so well with the stove top. I knew the rice would be fine, because I bake it in the oven. (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/baked-brown-rice-recipe/index.html - it comes out perfect every time.) I also had faith in the tofu, for the first time ever, because I've finally given up on frying it and just bake it in pieces on a cookie sheet instead. But putting it all together, and getting the curry sauce to taste good... I wasn't sure how that would go.

I oversteamed the broccoli slightly, so that wasn't a great way to start. And the sweet potato that I'd been planning to include got so soft when I cooked it in the microwave that it was hopeless. Awesome. But then some sort of minor culinary miracle occurred, and when I cooked and onion with some ginger, poured in coconut milk from a can, added some fish sauce and tamari based on a recipe I was too lazy to follow, and assembled the whole megillah in a bowl... it was delicious! Success!

After that came the recipe I knew would be problematic only in my desire to eat its entire product in one sitting: flourless chocolate chip peanut butter cookies. http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/cooking/msg0407471826546.html - about halfway down the page is the version I made, using agave nectar. And adding chocolate chips, of course. Spectacular. I will have to make rules about how often I'm allowed to bake these.

That was where I stopped last night, but this afternoon there's gonna be more fun. I'm making crustless quiche cups and stir fried cabbage with carrots and bean sprouts.

As soon as my brand new immersion blender arrives (I had too much to carry on the plane back from NJ), I'll be starting on my list of soup recipes, and I've got a stack of other rice and/or potato based recipes to try. Plus I have to investigate the whole quinoa situation...

I foresee one major problem in the near future: running out of freezer space.

This Is Me Doing a Small Victory Dance around My Oven

I have made a great discovery: stove tops and I are arch nemeses, while ovens and I are totally BFF.

I've always enjoyed baking, and been relatively good at it. I attribute this in part to my love of eating baked goods, in part to my mother's and grandmother's skill in baking (and letting me watch or help), and in part to the use of strict recipes in baking (because that's how baking works).

I've never considered myself a cook. In fact, I've had some rather heated conversations involving me proclaiming vehemently that I am NOT A COOK and the other party swearing that I COULD BE A COOK if I tried.

For a long time I had very little motivation to learn to cook, as my family full of awesome cooks and they're usually willing to share (as most good cooks seem to be). Then I started living places other than home and I had somewhat more motivation to learn to cook, as I was suddenly responsible for feeding myself and cold Pop Tarts are really only appealing for so long. I never got very far, though, because most of my culinary experiments were disasters and of course I couldn't afford to throw that much food away, so I'd spend ten days eating something that really might have been better off in the trough for the livestock. I managed to conquer a few basic things, namely scrambled eggs, grilled cheese, and pasta with sauce out of a jar. Aside from that I assembled (sandwiches, salads) and defrosted (they make amazing frozen meals these days).

But as my cooking ability persisted in sucking, my baking flourished. I spent hours and hours baking endless varieties of cookies for anyone willing to eat them. I made quick breads, and eventually triumphed over yeast breads as well. (Turns out trying to raise dough in a 60 degree apartment - because no one wants to pay for heat - doesn't work very well.)

I kept vowing to learn to cook, "someday." It kept not happening. Then I moved to Nashville and had no friends and nothing to do, so I figured I'd have another go at the whole cooking thing. The lack of income might be a slight damper on the lavishness of the recipes, but I'm not looking for filet mignon here, just a nice stir fry.

And stir fry is exactly what I attempted, my second go - but first I should mention the vegetable lasagna, which was my first experiment and a wild success. Oh yes, ladies and gentlemen, I apparently make a mean veggie lasagna. Yes, I intend to tweak it a little the next time I make it, and I do want to graduate from jarred tomato sauce to homemade, but I actually made an entire dish that tasted really quite good, and which I enjoyed eating. This is monumental, people.

Confidence high, I decided to get really crazy and try a stir fry. I've been gradually learning how to cook tofu so it tastes like something other than library paste, and I have a no-fail recipe for brown rice, so it shouldn't be all that hard, right? Wrong. (Obviously.) It became two hours of low-level disaster, with too-small pans overflowing and general unhappiness. The end result was edible, but not what you might call inspiring. Meaning I ate it because it was too expensive to throw away and because it wasn't actively gross.

In my frustration, I began to consider what could possibly be the common thread between my culinary failures as opposed to my successes, and I realized that all the "cooking" I do that comes out well comes out of the oven. Cookies: oven. Lasagna: oven. Brown rice: I bake it. The stove top hates me, clearly. I don't know if we'll ever get along. But! This means that I can assure myself a greater degree of success if I just stick to the oven!

So tonight was Nashville Culinary Experiment Number Three: pizza. I have never made a pizza before (unless you count helping put the toppings on, back when I was under the age of twelve). I attempted a whole-wheat crust pie with cheddar cheese, broccoli, and fake Italian sausage... and homemade tomato sauce! The result? Well, I need to use more spices next time, because it's a little bland. But it's really not bad at all. I'm excited to try again. By halfway through the stir fry I was vowing "never again."

Thesis proved: me + stove = 'where's the trash can?' me + oven = yum.

And luckily, for those days when it's just too hot to turn the oven on, I can pour a mean bowl of cereal.