Hope for those without pierced ears!

 I have one of my grandmother's clip on ear rings in a box in the basement, she never would/could (not sure which) get her ears pierced and though a little clumsy looking, it reminds me of her, but I only have one and wouldn't ever wear something like that so it has never been worn since she died.  I've had my ears pierced since I was a teenager but can't wear anything, literally anything, gold, surgical steel, silver, nope, my ears blow up and it just isn't worth it and when I think of clip-ons I think of grandma and smile wistfully but don't think any more about wearing such things myself.  Then I got a text from a friend with some weird twisted wire contraption that looks really elegant and makes you look like you have elf ears to boot.  I don't want to wear something like that for everyday, but it would be fun for those rare occasions when you can actually dress up as an adult.  But it also got me curious as to other, similar options.  It is called an ear wrap or an ear cuff, basically its a piece of jewelry that can stay in/on your ears without piercings to hold them in place.  There are a variety of options available on etsy, eBay, and amazon, so have fun!  I ordered several and have found they both stay in and are not uncomfortable and look great!

Everything I learned about life I learned from a Disney movie?

 We went to Yellowstone a few years back and I was rather distressed at what people would do for a picture: jumping over guard rails to stand on the edge of a frosty gorge, sticking their camera in the face of a buffalo with a week old calf, bathing in a hot spring...no wonder people get killed out there!  I'm afraid the only thing most people know about the world in general and wildlife/places in particular comes from either the internet, the discovery channel, or a Disney movie.  Sorry to say that dancing/singing mice are kind of rare and won't help you out of your current predicament!  Cows kill people, and buffalo are their psycho jumpy unsocialized cousins!

This last week we spent in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming, and overall it was a wonderful experience, but I met someone who probably is the reason for warnings like 'do not iron clothes on body' or 'cattle chute is not for human use.'  I had a list of sights, drives, and hikes I wanted do, and on this particular day it was a hike out to a waterfall.  First the thing was very poorly marked and I was basically just guessing where the parking area was located based on several different internet maps and hiking apps, but we found what looked to be the right spot and set off.  The temp plunged from 60 to 45 and it started spitting rain, progressing to a steady drizzle at the falls.  The day before had been in the mid-nineties and we had endured a rather hot, thirsty hike so no one really thought to pack along their sweatshirt, assuming it would warm as the day progressed, gotta love mountain weather!  We huddled together under the trees until the worst of the rain abated and were moving enough that we didn't get too cold, but we came out on an area completely covered in rock, now extremely slick with the rain.  I was also half-dragging/half-pushing an unhappy four year old, who can trip in a grocery aisle, along with us.

We were on top of the falls, that plunged straight down a rocky face into the stream below, and it was super slippery, so much so that I didn't even let the little one anywhere near the most scenic spot.  Theoretically you can get down to the base of the falls but I didn't really want to die so we were about ready to turn around and head back to the car when I met the person of interest.  They too were packing younger kids along, not quite as young as mine, but not much older either.  I mentioned they might want to go up and around through the woods to get to the head of the falls as it was far less slippery than the bare rock, but the lady at the head of the party started demanding why I hadn't been to the base of the falls as the internet assured her it was possible, I tried to explain the slippery rocks and thought the angry toddler was rather obvious but all she could seem to understand was that the internet said it was possible and therefor she was going to do it.  I wished her well and portaged my whiny toddler back to the car, hoping for her kids' sake that she might actually believe her waking eyes rather than some review online!

What's Wrong with the World

 The title of this article is stolen from a collection of essays from G.K. Chesterton, which is quoted in this intriguing article which is what this writing is all about, and I highly recommend both, Chesterton's writings can be found for free on project Gutenberg, think of him as a comic, Catholic C.S. Lewis.  Now back to the topic at hand, assuming you have read your homework?  If you haven't, here's a recap: covid forced many women out of the workforce back into the role of primary care providers of their own children and then it jumps from there to discuss the barrenness of the modern home from society, productivity, and purpose: just a place to eat and sleep and no wonder stay at home moms are bored!  It's a phenomenon I've noticed personally and was delighted to find a thoughtful look at the problem with some potential solutions thereto.

I'm an expert in this topic by the way: professional woman forced out of the workforce by health issues and trying to make a new life without a full time career.  And strangely, that was the best day of my life when I lost my job, my apartment, and every measure of success in my former life (though I certainly didn't appreciate it at the time!).  I finally found what I had always been looking for: a life, a home, a family, peace and joy and hope.  Prior to that I grew up chasing success thinking it might induce my parents to love me (nope!) and then was left chasing it as a means to my own survival.  I got married at some point but had so much school debt to pay off that I had to work 60 hours weeks just to maintain our scant lifestyle.  We worked and slept in our apartment but that was about it.  When our son was one my health was at a crisis point, as was my job, thankfully the job gave out first and we moved in with the in-laws for a bit, moved to another state, and reversed roles: my husband was now the professional and I was the caregiver to our son.

But instead of a miserable little apartment with no natural light and no outdoor space (and very little indoor) that I only saw briefly for meals and sleep, I had a house, yard, and garden to care for and enjoy.  I also had a congregation and community to encourage and assist as needed (everything from toilet repair to emergency babysitting and organizing meals for 50+ to website maintenance).  I worked a few hours in my original profession and developed all sorts of interests and hobbies (particularly writing).  I finally had leisure to learn who I was and wasn't and start the healing process from past abuse and neglect.  We were actually making less money but as individuals and a family we are far more content.  During all this, many well meaning friend and relations and most strangers were appalled that I could be content at home while possessed of a doctorate.  I was confused, when I was a kid, it was considered a negative necessity to be stuck in daycare (like I was) but now your kids are deprived if they aren't?!  I'm supposed to work full time so I can afford to pay someone else to watch my kids?  I hated daycare.  I really like my kids.  Give up being the CEO of my own home and family to be a mere cog in someone else's wheel?

From my empty years as an unloved child and the blur that was my indentured servitude (working 7 years to pay off my school debt whilst living on next to nothing) I can understand many women's frustration or horror at being stuck at home.  There is literally nothing to do in an urban setting when the home has been emptied of all the people, productivities, purpose, fun, and meaning it once had as the center of industry and society.  You can only walk around Target so many hours a week before becoming suicidal!  And if your kids are more used to school and daycare where there can be little individual discipline, no wonder they are not companions one would like to spend an hour, let alone a week, with!  But if we can find a way to reinvest our homes with community and service and productivity and leisure and society and purpose, we would no longer dread spending the majority of our hours there.  Who can you invite over for a meal or a lifetime?  How can you help others?  How can you improve your leisure hours without the help of a screen?  What interests and activities can you do as a family?  How can you give your living space a heart transplant?

We spend our whole lives looking for it, it is called Home, the revolution must start in our hearts and work its way out into our wider lives.

Another consideration for gluten free bread

 I miss the simplicity of wheat bread, five common ingredients and you had fail proof bread!  I'm getting pretty good at making decent non-wheat bread but it sure is picky sometimes.  Lately I've been playing with mixing and its effect on the bread.  I found a bread machine at the local thrift store that I decided to devote to my vile machinations (hee hee!) and see what difference it makes to the final product.  I've been mixing by hand with a danish dough whisk and the results have been acceptable, but all the recipes I've surveyed want you to mix the sticky, stiff dough with a heavy duty mixer, which I sold about a week before I discovered I needed one!  So I compared a hand whisked loaf with a bread machine loaf to find that the most obvious difference was rise time.  The bread machine loaf rose much faster but otherwise taste, texture, airiness and final height really wasn't affected.  Then I mixed on loaf in the bread machine for five minutes and the other I let mix for about half an hour.  I then let them both rise and baked them side by side.  The over-mixed loaf actually collapsed and was a rather sorry sight, but I don't know if it was over-mixing or over-rising, maybe both, but the five minute loaf rose beautifully and was the closest thing to bread I've made yet.  So in general, you can get by with a hand mixed loaf (at least with a dough whisk!) but a mixer or bread machine makes things a little nicer, just don't over do it!

A novel ingredient for better gluten-free bread!

 My last post was about another novel ingredient, which made great fake cheese, but sadly after further sampling, it doesn't like me any better than the real thing.  But so far novel ingredient number two is proving to both revolutionary to my gluten free baking and agreeable to my digestive tract.  I finally broke down and bought some 'fun' stuff a while back to experiment in the kitchen with and see what would happen, I actually turned my kitchen into a high school science lab for a little bit, trying 10 mini batches of 'cheese' to see what effect changing the various ingredients had on the final project.  Kappa carrageenan works great but can be hard on a sensitive digestive system, but so far expandex (modified tapioca starch) is gut approved and really improves your gluten free bread results.  I've been using regular tapioca starch for over a year with no issues and had been reading about this product on various gluten free recipe sites but had never tried it, as it was usually paired with whey protein isolate (and I am as sensitive to whey (hence my sad dairy aversion) as I am to wheat) to get seemingly miraculous results.  I did buy some egg white protein powder to try instead but in my trial with that, I really wasn't impressed.  I divided my regular bread recipe into 4 batches, one normal, one with expandex, one with egg protein isolate, and one with both.  There really wasn't a difference between the expandex bread with or without the protein and the protein and normal loaf were indistinguishable, save perhaps slightly drier for the former.

But the expandex looked promising so I have played with the same basic recipe but for various purposes: dinner rolls, French bread, a regular loaf of toasting bread and all were amazing.  I have grown used to smaller, denser, uglier bread in the past year, quite edible and tasty, but still lackluster compared to regular bread.  I can't wait to try it for cinnamon rolls (my original gluten free project, and still only partially successful) and pizza crust (which isn't quite so exciting since I still can't eat cheese, real or otherwise!).  I made a pan of dinner rolls last night, real, soft, fluffy, buttery rolls!  The recipes I have tried previously are either too spongy (too much tapioca starch!) and look more like a popover than a dinner roll or too dense.  I ate half the pan already and besides for being a little ugly (the dough is still a batter) and the size (I know 12 came from 3 cups of flour but they might be from a wheat recipe that made twice the many) I would be hard pressed to tell that they weren't wheat.  I tried to find recipes with expandex in it but most contain dairy, so I pulled out my own favorite recipes and substituted 1/4 c of the modified starch for the same amount of regular.  My sulky loaf bread that would hardly rise above the rim of the pan jumped up like a regular wheat loaf and will require a slit down the middle hence forth lest it crack in an awkward spot!  Comparing slices of my last loaf to the expandex loaf, there is a 35% increase in rise, the air pockets are larger, and it browns much more charmingly.

I love having a 'basic bread' recipe again that I can make everything from a loaf to cinnamon rolls to pizza crust with.  I used to add 1/2 tsp baking powder but I've started leaving that out, not noticing any effect on rise and wondering what it did to taste/texture and now with the expandex I certainly don't need it!  I've also finally started using apple cider vinegar instead of white, only to find it much more mild in flavor which certainly isn't a bad thing!  Somehow I thought adding the expandex would transform my batter into a dough and make it behave more like real bread dough, but nothing has changed in that aspect, you'll still need wet hands to shape it and some sort of mold or container to give it shape and structure (some aluminum foil and a little creativity can go a long way!).  I guess I looked at the final results of the other recipes and thought it changed the entire process and not just the results!  So it is still a sticky, gummy mess but the results are as close to real bread as I may ever get, well worth it!  Here's my basic bread recipe as a starting point for your own kitchen experiments!

Basic Bread Recipe:

1 cup corn starch

3/4 cup tapioca starch

1/4 cup expandex modified tapioca starch

1/3 cup each oat flour, millet flour, and brown rice flour

2 tsp xanthin gum

3/4 tsp salt

1/4 cup sugar (if using honey or brown sugar, add to wet ingredients)

1 tsp instant yeast (combine all dry ingredients in one bowl, whisk together)

1/4 cup oil

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

3/4 cup warm water (or milk)

2 eggs or 3 egg whites (whip the whites until stiff peaks form in a separate container, add yolks to wet ingredients and mix well)

Using a high power mixer or a danish dough whisk, combine the egg whites, dry, and wet ingredients and mix until fairly smooth and well combined, will be a sticky batter.  Cover with plastic wrap and allow to sit in a warm moist place for 15-20 minutes.  Using a silicon spatula and moistened hands, shape/pour dough into desired container or shape.  Allow to rise until double (keep covered!) and then bake until golden brown and cooked through.  Allow to cool thoroughly on a wire rack, covered in a towel.  Freeze anything you won't use right away and either microwave or toast before serving leftovers.  Can be used for anything from sweet rolls to loaf bread to pizza crust.  Use egg yolks and milk for a richer bread, honey or brown sugar add a nice depth of flavor to sweet breads; add garlic, parmesan or nutritional yeast to savory breads.  Spray container thoroughly with cooking spray before adding batter!  Works well in silicon molds or you can fashion a makeshift shape out of aluminum foil.

Neither flesh nor fowl nor good red herring!

I had come to think finding a decent replacement for dairy cheese was like lassoing a unicorn, I need something that melts, shreds, stretches and browns but my homemade stuff and store bought stuff just isn't cheesish, it is more like sodden tapioca starch morosely littering the top of my would-be pizza and highly unappetizing.  Then I found the secret ingredient: kappa carrageenan, a seaweed derivative that stretches, melts, and shreds no matter what you do to it.  And yes, it will kill you, at least according to a few terrified commentators, but then so will everything else if you read enough food blogs, yet these same people then complain that everything tastes like rocks and it is nothing like a cookie, but a cookie needs fat and sugar and grain to be, well, a cookie.  But making fake cheese is much easier than turning a zucchini into a delectable baked good, come to think of it, catching a unicorn might be easier as well!  So read up on the dangers of this strange ingredient and decide for yourself, but as far as I can tell, everything else you might replace it with is a poor second, you may get a block of something, but it doesn't melt, stretch, or brown, and is in nowise 'cheesish.'  

I actually made 10 batches of 'cheese' yesterday, and you really can't screw it up.  I found recipes using cashews as a base, tofu, and one with straight almond milk.  I used cashews and oats and tried the straight almond milk one.  I varied lemon juice and white vinegar and no acid.  I used vegetable shortening instead of coconut oil and wonder if lard might be a good choice to get a firmer 'cheese?'  I used both water and almond milk.  I even fermented one batch of oats overnight (like a sourdough starter).  And the result?  They all taste about the same and melt and shred and stretch.  Most recipes out there have you pouring boiling water in your blender, which is about as much fun as it sounds, rather mix everything (room temp water!) in your high speed blender (a ninja or bullet work great for small batches like mine!) and then transfer to a sauce pan and heat at medium, stirring constantly until the thing rolls around in a squishy ball before pouring into a bowl to set.  I want it to brown a little more, and according to google, browning in cheese is a reaction between the protein and the sugar, I wonder if I added some protein powder and a little sugar if it would help?  I made cheese sticks with the stuff and a pizza, even my skeptical husband enjoyed the 'cheese' sticks.  I still have work to do to perfect the recipe but it is very versatile and very close to real cheese, at least the closest you can get without real milk!

These aren't the breads you're looking for...

 I found a new website to haunt for gluten free baking, I saw a picture on Pinterest that actually looked like an edible dinner roll and I followed the rabbit down the hole and ended up making four different gluten free recipes yesterday, most turned out rather well, the tortillas were a disaster, sort of.  The website is artofglutenfreebaking.com and a great resource for anyone who wants ideas, new recipes, or a place to start.  I really appreciate that the recommended flours are cheap and widely available, even if I'm not a huge rice flour fan personally, I substituted my own blend of oats, millet, corn, brown rice, and tapioca and it worked well for everything but the tortillas (the fault is mine, not the recipe).  The only time I have successfully made gluten free tortillas was with white rice flour and I didn't use that this time so it is not surprising it didn't turn out, but rather I ended up with something that looked a little like naan, that wonderful Indian flatbread which I gave up on making gluten free as all the recipes seem to call for yogurt and I can't find a good substitute.  They tasted like baking powder and were nowhere near a tortilla, but the kids liked them so they didn't go to waste, and I had an idea.

I tried it this morning with a little leftover flour blend (equal parts oat flour, tapioca starch, corn starch, millet and brown rice flour) from yesterday and for the first time in years, I got to experience the joy that is naan, or as close to it as someone can get who has never been to India or an Indian restaurant.  I adapted the tortilla recipe to my old wheat flour naan recipe and got something fairly close, and rather tasty too!  The following recipe is still in its primordial phase, feel free to try it, but it is still more an idea than a fact:

Gluten Free Naan:

2 cups flour

1 tsp xanthin gum

1 tsp salt

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp nutritional yeast

3/4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp instant yeast

1 tablespoon sugar

2 tablespoons butter flavored shortening (or real butter)

1 egg

warm water as needed (1/3-1/2 cup or so)

Whisk together dry ingredients, cut in shortening with a fork or pastry blender, then mix in the egg and enough water to make a thick, wet, sticky batter.  Cover and set in a warm moist place for at least 45 minutes and allow to rise.  Heat a cast iron skillet on the stove top over medium high heat until very hot.  With wet hands, separate the dough into 8 balls, keeping covered and moist until ready to cook.  One at a time, flatten each ball into a disk about 1/4 inch thick and transfer to the hot pan, flip after thirty seconds or so and cook on both sides, flipping again as needed to cook through.  Transfer to a towel set on a wire rack and cover.  To make the disks, I sprayed a plate with cooking spray, placed the dough on top and used wet hands to flatten it and then used my hands and a fork to transfer to the pan, respraying with oil after each disk.  Enjoy!