Ahhhh, Yessss.....A marriage made in heaven.....

Still looking at the Eating Well Magazine I got the other day and decide to try and make the chocolate pine-nut tart.

Oh, but yea, I forgot the pine-nuts.......hmmmmm..............what to do?

Just what do I have in the refrigerator, anyway?

Ahhhh, yes, there's the six pomegranates that I happened to get on sale for $2.00 each.

Gee, I wonder how they'd taste with chocolate?

Hmmmm, have I ever seen pomegranates mixed with chocolate? I feel like I must have, and since I love both those food choices, I decide to go for it. :)

Oh, my, as you can see; I had an awful time stopping at half the tart.........

...................and now look at me, it's well after 1:00 a.m., and I am still wide, wide, awake. Was it worth it? Ask me tomorrow but preemptively, I'd have to say................well........................ hell ya. :)

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity | Video on TED.com

This is much too important not to share. This man is a genius. Hands down.

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity | Video on TED.com

Tried my hand at GF Pumpernickel Bread last night.

Really, it's the darndest thing.

For years, I was quite unable to make bread, despite having made it over and over, when I was a young mother. I'd thought all this time that it was because I'd developed an allergy to yeast and the universe was trying to tell me something. I've been pretty obtuse to these things (messages from the universe) in my life, on many occasions. I'd therefore convinced myself that bread wasn't all that good for the human body anyhow, and I didn't sweat it. I mean, it's not like Vermont is not the artisan bread baker oasis of the entire US, which makes for plenty of reasonable opportunities to just buy really good varieties of the stuff.

So, yea. I didn't miss having the connection to fermentation that I had when I was young. Not too much, anyway.

I did sort of lament dumping expensive ingredients of my two winemaking and one mead attempts, since then. It's pretty disheartening when you don't know what you've done wrong, until 10 gallons of fermentation just don't, well........ work out. And of course, there's really no expert to be found to help, or show you how to fix your mistakes. I suppose there's a metaphor to life, in there, somewhere.

Anyway, I guess that's neither here nor there, and it's time to move on to the positive outcomes. For the pumpernickel bread, I'd actually sprouted some rye seed, which made it quite interestingly chewy. I also deviated from the recipe in The Gluten-Free Gourmet, and added some corn-meal that needed to get used up. Not having a really great bread pan, as I'd given away the aluminum ones I had, filled with treats, for Christmas, I ended up using smallish muffin/loaf type pans for some of it. These actually came out better then the dilapidated big loaf I had made. (I ended up piecing together two aluminum pans and lining them with foil, for the large loaf). In light of the fact that the little ones were so much better, I may just skip the big loaf altogether, in future, and make all little ones.

The little ones remind me of being a youngest child of six, in an extremely impoverished household, where scarcity was the order of the day. Every so often, however, my grandmother would come over on a Friday night, with little loaves of bread with our initials scratched in them. My grandmother probably wasn't the most grandmotherly woman, having serious and deep-seated psychological issues of her own, (my mother went to her deathbed resenting her for many of them), but in this one regard (of realizing that the only way the youngest child's needs would be attended); she rocked! It's one of my fondest memories, and more then likely one of the reasons I bake so much, today.

The life metaphor to be found in this is the thing I've always said:

"It's the little stuff that'll kill ya'. It's also the little mercies that will set you free and allow you to soar".

There weren't too many of these little mercies to be found in my childhood, but the ones that came right when they were most necessary, well, they were literally lifesavers. Some only metaphorically speaking, it's true, but the fact that they were there, cloaked in mystery sometimes, but present nonetheless, is probably also why I became mainly Buddhist, in my approach to life.

Well, yea, so, having made successful pumpernickel bread might not set anybody free, or send them soaring (except for maybe their taste buds), but I am encouraged enough to keep trying. Maybe I was STILL being obtuse and the message was not as complicated as a yeast allergy, but more subtle then that, and directing me towards a gluten one, instead.

Well, just goes to show, when someone has spent a great deal of their lives being mostly obtuse, subtleties are a bitch to learn about. :)

Signing off from Rara Avis Fine Foods @ The House of Found Goods.

Post Holiday Monday.

Random weather report:

Well, it snowed here, but this time, we didn't get nearly as much. I understand the rest of the east coast got hammered, but we're just too far inland to get much from coast-line storms. It's only fair, as last time, we got well over a foot. Granted, it was all lake-effect snow, so only those of us in the path of the wind, actually got any accumulation, but it was a doozy. So, yea, now the whole state has at least some snow, and we don't feel so chilled.........yup, misery loves company, don't ya' know?  :)

Random news from the kitchen:

Isn't it funny when you own something for a long time, in hopes that someday, you might actually use it? Well, a couple of years ago, I really, really wanted an expresso maker, so it was on one of my christmas lists, and actually did show up, only to sit on a side cabinet in my kitchen all this time. Usually, I guess I consider it a pain to set up, and go out for latte; I can't actually count the times I've done this, since owning the little beast. Because it was so cold today, and there was snow to shovel, I did the lazy thing and broke it out. I have to say that home-made latte's are just as good as the cafe' bought ones, really, and the price is right. :)

For some reason last night, I was in the mood for chocolate. I guess because I'd gotten a new Eating Right magazine in the mail, and it had some pretty good redux recipes that I thought might be easy to convert to Gluten Free. There were two recipes I could make with the stuff I had on hand, so I made the mistake of asking Rich which one he'd rather I conjure up; Chocolate Decadence Cake, or Rocky Road Brownies. He said he'd rather have the brownies and I got going on them, but when I got to the toppings, he asked me what the heck I was doing. That's when I realized he probably didn't actually know what a rocky road brownie might be, exactly. When I asked him if he'd ever had one, he said: "Well, no, it just sounded really good". Funny. But now I've got these exceedingly rich and chocolate brownies, with mounds of sugar on top, to get rid of. Perhaps I'll take them down to the dentist's office later, as they called with a cancellation opening. Since I usually try and gift everyone I have dealings with at this time of the year, and that's what I've got on hand, so be it. They all have pretty good senses of humor, so I'm sure they'll appreciate the irony. :)

Signing off from Rara Avis Fine Foods @ The House of Found Goods.

Re: All things luminary.

Well, because we live on a very dark street that gets a fair amount of traffic, we did luminaries last year for Christmas Eve. It didn't slow traffic down much ( a constant problem here, despite the town always changing signs), but hopefully, it gave drivers some pause for thought, as they were going wherever they were going in such a fever.

Here's some photo's of 09's luminary.

I wanted to take it one step further this year, so I did cutouts that spell out Merry Christmas. I ran out of time before the 7 o'clock hour approached, (when I had instructed invitees to arrive), so I had to shorten it to X-mas, but the result was still pretty good. It's one of the loveliest things I've done in awhile and helps me to deal with the fact that I am pretty much house-bound this year, due to surgical complications.

Here's a photo of that attempt.

I tried putting these out there, facing the highway, but they are too small (only 6 inches), so I turned them around so only people driving down our street (and us), could see them. Next year, we'll do really big letters on grocery bags, (if they still exist), so they can be seen from route 7.

That's it for today, since it's Christmas and I gotta go make some Posole' (with all our own vegetables), for dinner, later.

Signing off from Rara Avis Fine Foods at The House of Found Goods. Mona, Rich, Fritz, Clover, Atty, Sparky, & Floc. May you all have the best of Christmases and the Healthiest of New Years!

Gluten-Free Vegan Snickerdoodles....YES, IT CAN BE DONE!

It's been my intention for awhile to create baked goods that are not only gluten-free, but also vegan, and diabetic safe, for those of us who aren't 100% raw, would rather stay away from animal products as much as possible, are trying to watch sugar intake, and yet, still enjoy the occasional cookie or cake (fresh from the oven, mind you (vs. fresh from the dehydrator). :)

So..........I saw that The Gluten-Free Girl (one of the blogs I follow), had posted that she'd transformed a Snickerdoodle recipe to GF, and wanting to take it one step further, decided to try out my egg substitute and the agave inulin that I'd picked up for free.

Agave inulin is an amazing new product that has just hit the shelves, and is a very good sugar substitute, adding some sweetness and fiber, and taking up space in the recipe that used to belong to sugar. It's probably only half as sweet as sugar, however, so I ended up using some Sucanet (whole cane sugar) and agave syrup, as well. I would say, though, that cutting the sugar to a third, can only be a benefit to those of us who want to have our cake and eat it, too.

Here's what I did:

First, I went to the site that TGFG used......... (http://eatthelove.blogspot.com/2010/06/gluten-free-snickerdoodles-very-first.html)............ retrieved the recipe, and got to work.

I fished out my giant gallon jug of gluten-free flour (which I'd already had mixed up). The recipe can be found in any gluten-free cookbook, but I used the one from the Gluten-Free Gourmet. I subscribe to TGFG's notion that it's better to weigh this flour mix, rather then using cup measuring, so I used her amount of 465 grams and set it aside.

I measured out my Earth Balance and some Crisco, for the shortening and butter and fished out that Viv Agave inulin.

Next, I realized that I did not have any real substitution amounts for the inulin, so I went to the Viv Agave site and compared recipe amounts. http://www.vivagave.com/fayes-kitchen.php

After reviewing the various options there; I decided to just do a straight substitute. The original recipe (from the "eatthelove" site),  called for 1 1/2 cups of sugar, so that's what I used. After tasting it, I realized that it wasn't really sweet enough to be a cookie, so I added 1/2 cup of Sucanet. Well, it still wasn't sweet enough, so I added 1/4 cup of agave nectar, then another 1/4 cup. Finally! It started tasting like a cookie dough! I was happy because while at the Viv Agave site, I'd found an icing made with the inulin, that would work beautifully for my cookies, so I proceeded to start bakin em.'

I used one of those ounce size ice-cream scoops to load them on wax paper lined sheets, and put them in a 350 degree pre-heated oven, for 12 minutes. They weren't really done, so I baked them for another 12 minutes, and ended up baking them for a full 25 minutes actually, in order to get them to the perfect golden color, all around. (This could be because my oven is off. Or it could be because of their chemistry. I've found that Egg-Free baked goods have a very different composition which reacts to heat quite differently then the normal baked goods). They didn't spread as much as I thought they would, and were much more cake like in texture (rather then crispy). Cooling them off helped a lot.

They are still somewhat cake-like once cooled completely, and probably don't actually count, technically, as a true snicker-doodle, but oh, my, they are GOOD! They are crispy on the outside, tender and cake-like on the inside. Which, if you ask me, is my idea of the perfect cookie (Personally, I'm not that crazy about cookies that SNAP, when you eat them, unless you count ginger-snaps!). I guess I'd have to say they are a rousing success!

Here are my photos:

And that's another perfectly good afternoon slipped away in the kitchen, while I should have been doing other things..........Much love and many blessings from us at Rara Avis Fine Foods.

Special Note: 

I don't use Xantham Gum because it isn't derived from natural sources (it's produced by chemicals, artificially in a lab). I use Guar Gum because it's derived from natural sources (the guar nut). 

Also, I always use 2 tblsp of vinegar in my baked goods recipes, because it not only helps preserve them, and keeps them from drying out too fast, but because it causes a chemical reaction with the baking powder, helping it to work better. This is especially helpful when making gluten-free muffins. :)

Nutrition (per cookie). Calories: 100, Fat (gr): 7.5, Carbohydrate (gr): 18.2, Fiber: (Gr): 6.6. These are approximates, and do not include the glaze (which actually adds a bit more fiber), but as you can see, using the agave inulin makes them almost 1/3 fiber! Not a bad deal, by any stretch of the imagination. Are they diabetic safe? I have no idea, but I'm glad they are at least healthier then the average cookie :)

My new little home business.

Didn't get it launched in time for christmas, but there's always valentines day, hey?

I'm thinking $2.95 each, with a bakers dozen (3 different truffles, with the 13th, a surprise) for $36.00.............orders, anyone?

Yes, these are the ultimate in recycling............used greeting cards made into origami boxes. (Of course, the truffles are individually shrink-wrapped, inside. :)