The process is rather abstract. My mind constructs recipes by pulling from the vision of an end result, piecing together elements to bring something conceptual into existence. I imagine it and then I make it. And I tweak it if necessary from there. Ingredients come together in my head and kitchen the way my mind best relates to them: in measurements of volume (the familiar American measurements of cups and tablespoons). I enjoy the experience of scooping and leveling, practicing that deftness of hand that neither packs the cup nor leaves it loose with holes. This approach to baking produces wonderful, consistent results in my kitchen. It just works for me.
But not everybody’s brain “sees” baking this way. For people who want to create recipes of their own (and don’t have bizarre imaginations like mine) baking can be daunting. And if regular baking wasn’t intimidating enough, when a person has to eliminate gluten, baking at all can seem impossible. But it’s not. In fact, the act of creation that I experience as largely conceptual can also be experienced in very simple, numeric terms—thanks to ratios.
Before I actually announce the winner, I just want to say how much I thoroughly enjoyed reading your comments. It was so much fun to read about all the different things that people love to make—from homemade gluten-free breads to big, hearty pots of soup—and also great to hear from many of you that cooking is bigger than just putting food on the table. It’s about spending time with significant others, teaching and having fun with your children, and sharing with friends.
Cooking and baking for me is all about these kinds of connections. As much pleasure as I get from the act of creating, it’s the sharing that ultimately makes it worthwhile. When I put out the prompt, I never expected that I’d see so much of this in your responses. It’s inspiring. The love and enthusiasm in your comments was immense and I can’t thank you each enough for sharing so openly.
All that having been said—though you really all deserve an apron—there can only be one winner. And that winner is:
I have something pretty special to share with you today. I’m very excited about this, and I think you will be too.
My friend Anna recently started her own small business. I know Anna from high school. We never hung out on the weekends or anything, but we had friends in common and shared the stage in our school’s production of Into the Woods. She played Cinderella—a role that, if you met her, you’d realize was sort of perfect. She’s a beautiful blond with classic sensibilities, but she brings a sort of fun, spunky, Anna-ness to everything she does. She has a smile that crinkles her nose and an infectious laugh that, even though I haven’t seen her in almost a decade, I still distinctly know.
Through the magic of the internet, I’ve seen Anna raise an adorable little girl (who is a mini version of her in the best of ways), get engaged, radiate at her beautiful autumn wedding, and welcome daughter number two to the world. I also read along as she started a blog about her life, her girls, and her passion for Target DIY projects. Through this blog I watched her newly discovered love of sewing ruffled throw pillows for her home grow into something bigger and lead to the opening of her Etsy shop.
Anna makes and sells everything from headbands to coffee sleeves to some of the cutest scarves I’ve ever seen. Oh, and aprons. Flirty, ruffled, and totally adorable aprons. Recently, she was sweet enough to make one just for me. She knows how much time I spend in the kitchen and thought it might make my time there just a little more fun. And you know what? It has.
I mean, how cute is this? The patterns work so well together and I love the quality of the fabric. I’m also quite proud to say that, though I’ve only had mine a couple days, it already has muffin batter on it.
And here’s the part where it gets exciting for you. Anna’s gift has inspired me to give something back. Once I received the apron and saw how lovely it was in person, I knew that there was no way I could keep all this joy to myself. So, I will be giving away an original Ruffle Couture apron to one very lucky reader. But it gets even better….
Eating gluten-free and ordering takeout aren’t always the easiest of things to accomplish simultaneously. It’s becoming more convenient in our neighborhood, with a couple restaurants making significant efforts to cater to their GF customers, but sometimes one is simply not in the mood for Latin fusion or a burger and fries. Sometimes a person just wants to open the door and be presented with a smiley-face bag full of sodium-laden Chinese chow.
Unfortunately, Chinese is one of the most difficult of all takeout options. It seems as though it should be rather innocuous. Beef and broccoli and rice. Chicken and snow peas and rice. All obviously gluten-free—if you’re ordering them steamed, that is. Otherwise, nearly all Chinese sauces have some sort of wheat component. It’s been two years, but the fact that soy sauce contains wheat still makes me twitch with annoyance.
So, any time we’ve ordered Chinese over the past couple years, I’ve gotten plain old steamed something. My saucy solution has been to drown it in wheat-free tamari. Not bad, but it’s not always fulfilling when Chris is sitting next to me with his sesame chicken and eggplant with garlic sauce.
For the past few weeks, though, I’ve been on a pseudo-Asian lunch kick. I’ll cook up some quinoa and stir fry some tempeh and mushrooms and whatever else I have on hand, finishing it in my own concoction of a sauce. It’s been great and I’ve slowly figured out a recipe that I love.
It has become an annual tradition that, in late January/early February, we invite Chris’ parents over for a weekend of celebration. Their birthdays fall in these two months, so we pick a date between them and go out to dinner and a Broadway show. An indulgent breakfast is enjoyed the following morning. This tradition has become known as the Birthday Weekend Extravaganza, and it’s something that we all look forward to every year.
Since birthday celebrations aren’t quite complete without cake, I also make sure there is one waiting and ready when we arrive home from the show. This year’s cake was a repeat of last year’s, at the request of my mother-in-law—a request that I must say that I was more than happy to honor. This Cardamom Coconut Cake is one of my favorites.
The quantity of zucchini and crooknecks and patty pans that I’ve consumed over the past couple months alone makes that seem impossible, but it’s true. I tried it, and tried it again, and found it bland and wet and useless. A total waste of my attention.
Well, it turns out, and I’m finding this is true in the case of many people who dislike certain vegetables, that I’d just never had it prepared well. I’d only ever eaten it at the hands of moms who were putting it on the table solely to fill the requisite veggie slot. Thinking back, I can’t even fathom what they must have done to it to make it so awfully unpalatable. It’s such a pure, basic, softly sweet type of vegetable—no harsh edges, fresh and crisp when raw, meltingly tender when cooked, and stunningly versatile.
A couple weekends ago, I attended my very first baby shower. Not my first baby shower—no that one’s still a couple years away—but my first shower for a friend who is soon to be a mother.
It’s not that I haven’t yet had friends who’ve become mothers. In fact, many of the girls who I grew up with are married and mothers and have even recently been blessed with baby number two. It’s just that I’m very far away from Wisconsin here in New York, and have unfortunately had to share in these joys via instant message or Facebook.
I’m also admittedly not the most socially active individual and only recently settled into a network of friends here that makes me excited to put things on the calendar. Many of these friends are couples whose individual parts are as joyful to be around as their sum. I feel like this is rare and feel lucky to have these people in my life—especially now. We’re all young and building our lives and families and it’s amazing to be able to share this time of moving in together and getting engaged and planning weddings and having babies. It’s particularly amazing to be able to share it in person, and my heart feels so full with all the happiness I have for those around me.
And when my heart takes a shine to you, you will very likely be receiving some goodness from my kitchen. What can I say? My heart’s a baker.
When I first went gluten-free, I was all too happy to renounce bread in all its forms. I felt so amazing that it never fazed me to pass up the bread basket, say no to those croutons, or order my burger on a bed of lettuce instead of a bun. As time went on, however, the bunless burger became less and less appealing. The initial joy of warm, well-seasoned beef contrasting with crisp, cool lettuce slowly turned to thoughts of a greasy mass weighting down a pile of wilting leaves. It almost made me not want the burger altogether.
So we started eating our burgers on a bed of quinoa. This was a tasty, protein-packed combo. The quinoa provided that sort of carby complement to the hamburger, something to offset the beefiness and absorb the juices. This was particularly good when I had made some sort of sauce or condiment to slather on top (feta-stuffed turkey burgers with homemade tzatziki was a favorite) as it could drip down and mix with the quinoa.
But even these burgers still required a fork and knife.
There’s something almost fundamental about the burger/bun combo. The bun not only helps to absorb the flavorful burger runoff, but it is essential to making the burger into casual, handheld fare. I’m all for fork and knife burgers, but when you’re at a party or a barbeque, eating off of paper plates, standing or, at best, using your lap as a table, a burger on any sort of “bed” becomes a real challenge. And I’m sure we’ve all had our fair share of experiences with those store-bought buns—you know, the kind that look awfully pretty in the freezer case but fall to dry crumbles the second you take a bite?
Well, my gluten-free friends, prepare to go bunless no more!
I mentioned a while back that we joined our local CSA this year. We're coming up on our third week and it's already been a joy.
Our first distribution consisted of spinach, arugula, turnips, broccoli rabe, salad greens, and bok choy. My dad and his girlfriend were in town that week (thus my absence here) and I was able to introduce them both to arugula for the first time. Now, I don't think of arugula as being anything out of the ordinary. I've known the spicy, peppery leaves for such a long time that I was slightly surprised when I needed to remind my dad of the name on more than a handful of occasions. It was interesting, though, to watch someone experience something completely unfamiliar, with no preconceptions. As I was washing it up to prepare a salad, I handed my dad a leaf. "What does it taste like to you?" I asked him.
"Like peanuts," he said.
I slipped one between my teeth. He was right. Peanuts. I'd likely have never noticed, but there was a definite peanutty note in there. He'd never heard any of the classic adjectives associated with this "rocket" green, and it was fascinating to me that this was the very first thing that came to his mind. I tossed the arugula together with a homemade sweet balsamic vinaigrette and some sliced strawberries--more unfamiliar ground for my dad. He couldn't stop talking about that salad for the rest of their stay. It's so much fun to introduce people to new things, things that they'd have likely passed over in the grocery store or on a menu at a restaurant.
It's fun to be the one trying new things too. This is one of the things that I love most about being part of a CSA and I know this will only continue to build as the season progresses.
Another thing I love about being part of a CSA is that I don't have to make any decisions. You get what's fresh and ripe, and that's that. As much as I love the greenmarket, sometimes it can be a tad overwhelming for me. I find myself lost among the dozens of seasonal gems, all of them looking inviting, all of them seeming delicious. I want to grab some of each, but too often find myself stumped in the moment as to what I'll do with them. I try to take mental inventory of what we have in the pantry at home, try to write recipes in my head as I simultaneously dodge the other, more purposeful shoppers. I'm a kid in a candy store when I go, and disorganized to boot. Sure, the greenmarket still finds me arriving home with staples like kale and impulse purchases like rhubarb, but I'm mentally exhausted by the time they reach the crisper. So it works much better for me that, once a week, someone decides for me which ripe and wonderful goodies will fill my bag. That way, I can giddily unload them into my refrigerator and think quietly, in the comfort of my home, of what I should do with them.
This past week's CSA delivery included more turnips, salad greens, snap peas, collard greens, scallions, and garlic scapes. I was particularly--and I'm sure, understandably--excited about the garlic scapes. They're one of those fleeting, coveted greenmarket grabs that I know I'd wind up missing or staring at longingly before deciding to be reasonable and grab the spinach instead. What to do with them, though? Pesto seemed the most obvious choice.
