I have posted another general update at Blogspot: TheMomentsBetween.blogspot.com
My current gluten-free bread recipe
Gluten-Free Bread Made with Montina
I finally have a gluten-free bread recipe that turns out right every time! I have a bread machine and follow the instructions that came with it. Setting: White, rapid cycle (2 hrs 20 min), dark crust. (I’m going to have to take a photo of last night’s loaf for this page. It’s missing several slices.)
Ingredients at room temperature:
Wet
- 1-2/3 cups milk (I use whole milk)
- 3 jumbo eggs (1/4 cup each, make up any shortfall with water)
- 3 tablespoons rich & fruity virgin olive oil
- 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
Dry
- 2 teaspoons (or 1 packet) yeast
- Either 1 cup Bob’s Red Mill gluten-free All Purpose Flour (not the bread flour) OR 1 cup Montina™ All-Purpose Baking Flour Blend
- 2 cups organic brown rice flour
- 1/4 cup Montina™ Pure Baking Supplement
- 1-1/2 teaspoons salt
- 3 tablespoons sugar
- 2-1/2 teaspoons xanthan gum
Montina™ baking supplement is 100% Indian ricegrass. There is good background and nutritional information on the product at The Gluten Free Lifestyle Web site, along with contact information for Montina, and an easy banana bread recipe that I haven’t tried, yet. Montina’s URL is http://www.amazinggrains.com/ (which I cannot get to work using Chrome, although the site comes up just fine using Firefox).
Note: Water can be used in place of milk, and there is on the Internet somewhere a formula for substituting flax seed for egg. These will undoubtedly change the texture, and I have not tried the flax for egg substitute, but the water for milk worked okay.
Bearded Iris
Bearded Iris
Adding Art, Again
I am making use again of my photo blog at Postcard Art to display postcard/note card photo art. I’m adding links, also, to photo art for sale on my Red Bubble gallery.
Posted in art, for sale, photography, Uncategorized
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After a Long Absence
:blows off the dust and peers suspiciously into the corners:
My goodness, it’s been a long time since I last posted here. A lot has been happening…and then again, maybe not so much.
For a while, this afternoon, the sun was out, and the temperature then was up to 48.5 degrees F in the gazebo. Since then, the clouds have covered the sky, just thick enough for overcast, and the temperature has fallen a whole degree. The dogs are asleep on the quilt that also covers my feet. They’ve given up on my going back inside any time soon, I guess. The snow that we tracked in among us has begun to melt on the decking. I’m not such a glutton for discomfort, though, and we will return inside soon.
There is a silence out here in winter that is conducive to much thought. Winter’s silence generally results in much thought. I think that may be an impetus behind the New Year’s Resolutions. An acute awareness of all that went awry and a desperate need to “settle” everything. Resolutions bring closure. And later, when the resolutions flounder and fail, one can gripe about one’s inability to keep resolutions rather than focus on the faults and failings the resolutions were meant to address.
My major irritant–for which I have resolved no resolutions–is the spiritual isolation that I have experienced these past fourteen and more months since I last was able to attend meeting for worship (at least, one for which other friends gathered with me). In years past, there would have been the Artist’s Way group and the women’s groups at Ecunet to fall back on. Still possibilities, but ones that would need rebuilding. At the moment I feel too distracted to contemplate those options.
I don’t feel that I would do well at them. The inevitable chemical exposures of the holidays, although brief, this year, have taken their toll, as did the flu, which absorbed my mid-winter vacation time. Just the sprained ankle left to confine me to my own yard and limited activities, now, but by this point feeling thwarted is on the brink of becoming a voluntary state of mind.
Best take the dogs back indoors before they take a chill. Glad that I got out on my own, though, for a little bit. Guess even a little sunlight helps on a cold winter’s day.
:wakes dogs and folds up the quilts, again:
Later!
Vacation Week
Chance Encounter, by Liz Bennefeld
This week’s vacation has been good for getting back on track. The weather has been cool, I haven’t gotten up in the morning to make breakfasts, and my energy level is back to the point where I’ve gotten on the exercise bike, these past two days, for a total of seven and a half miles. I have made an appointment for my next whole blood donation. If I time this right, I will be able to make six donations in 2010.
Today’s happiness is that I have my laundry folding table back up, again. At last I can put all these stacks of laundry in one place and get it all sorted, folded, and put away. And the room that looked so cluttered that we couldn’t get into it? It’s remarkable, how much it’s improved. Actually walking room!
Posted in Contemplation, life happens
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Definitely Quiet Spaces
I found my quiet spaces, these past few weeks. At last the pace has slowed to practically nothing, and I have no firm commitments to move a muscle before Sunday evening, when I am net control for our weekly 2-meter amateur radio net, and a week from Friday, when my next face-to-face appointment is to occur. Al is on vacation, this week, and puttering with all sorts of good stuff. It looks like we’re actually going to do the indoor firing range memberships. That will be nice. It’s much closer than the outdoor ranges, which will help.
One complication has arisen…this morning, I turned the wrong way and my back and chest muscles spasmed. A couple hours more of sleep plus 3 aspirin have almost knocked it out. I’m once more propped up in bed, more aspirin taken, and hope to be able at least to wash the dishes, this afternoon.
Posted in life happens
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Labor Day
I don’t know why I keep thinking that today must be Memorial Day, rather than Labor Day, the other holiday that brackets the too hot weather around here. It’s actually chilly in the gazebo, but I am enjoying the sound of heavy rain on the roof. Looking at the windows, I realize that I have serious cleaning ahead of me, so that I will get nice frost patterns, once it’s cold.
This started out as time out from social media…from visibility, really. No, rather from interactions. Too tired, right now, to face anything that I must do. It’s not as though I am not accomplishing anything, here. I am doing things at times and in amounts that are doable for me. That is enough.
The book What Color Is Your Parachute? has served well as an series of The Artist’s Way discussions. I am nearing the end of my sixty-fourth year, and this is an appropriate time to think seriously about who I want to be, what I want to accomplish, over the next thirty or more years. Or less. I seem to be using my father as the longevity indicator, even though women tend to live longer than men.
What do I want to be doing with my days? Besides reading books and writing down my thoughts, I mean. I enjoy my work, certainly, but even that will come to an end as the world of job seekers and employers turns to video, making it easy to discriminate on the basis of culture, nationality/community of origin, skin color, and age, shouldn’t it?)
What options are there for someone who cannot wander alone too far from home or be in a room with too many people? The Internet is fantastic when it comes to accommodating my limitations, but how can it foster my talents and strengths? I really don’t know.
Thistles
Click on image for larger image or to purchase.
Thistle flowers are very pretty, their light purple flowers contrasting with the bold, textured green of the leaves and branches of the plant. Unfortunately, the garden beds on the south side of the house, thick clay no matter how much I have mulched and dug in composted material, are rife with thistle plants, soon after the tulips have died back at the end of spring. I let the thistles grow for long enough that I can take photographs, and long enough that the bees can enjoy them while they wait for the hollyhocks to bloom.
My thistles don’t look like the thistles of Scotland that I see in photographs on the Internet. Mine are much more tame, less threatening.
I don’t recall from where in Scotland my ancestors immigrated to the United States, or when. I don’t think that’s a major part of my heritage, unless we’re thinking Celt, in which case the Irish and Welsh, as well as the Scottish ancestries are grouped together. I’ve Irish ancestry on both sides of the family. Berry, my mother’s side of the family, is Scottish and northern Irish, but it’s also a French name, and I do have people from France in my family tree. On my father’s side? His mother was Mary Elizabeth Murphy. Can’t get much more Irish than that!
My father and mother used to sing, we children joining in as soon as we were able, popular songs when we went on car trips, including “Who Threw the Overalls in Mistress Murphy’s Chowder”, “Danny Boy”, “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling”, and others. One of my favorites is Wearin’ of the Green (MP3 and lyrics). Another, a popular round, was “White Coral Bells.” I very much enjoyed singing…listening to our singing. The way the various voices wove together, the complexity of the intertwining melody and words layering over the phrase before and under the one that followed. The beauty was arresting.
Posted in art, nostalgia, photography
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