•2012•

July in Norway.

November in Pittsburgh.

Wherever you are, enjoy the closing of this year! xox

•gratuitous jammies post•

With bonus golden-hour shot of family on the UFO at Arroyo Park. Happy Holidays, everyone!

xox

•turkey•

Happy Columbus Day! I mean... well, our Thanksgiving always involves Pittsburgh and Columbus, and lots of beloved people. It is always a true reason to give thanks. May your holiday be full of family, blood and otherwise!
xox

p.s. That gorgeous hand-knit in the picture is my friend Laura's doing.

p.p.s. Below, a video of some turkey-roasting hijinks from last year's holiday. I couldn't resist posting this, mainly because I still don't know quite what to make of it. I give you... Turkey Cord 2011! Any ideas?

•it's beginning to look a lot like giftwrap•

Winter is coming, the goose is getting fat. Rather than put my penny in the man's hat, let me introduce you to No New Christmas. Particularly, the rules.

No New Christmas was an effort by my family, put forth a few years back, to gift things of a recycled, made, or otherwise stridently not-purchased variety. When I say family, I mean Troy and myself. It was easy when we began, to include Penn in the fold. At two, he didn't have much of an opinion about NITB vs. No New. That's all different this year, as Lego has tightened its grip. Troy and I have been avoiding the topic. To No New, or not to No New? That is a different blog post.

I've never actually set about creating guidelines for NNX (sounds like a boy band), but I'm inspired by the recent ferver (my own) for advent calendars. You've seen these things–they number one through twenty-five, they help you while away the days until Christmas, they usually involve the popping out of wax figurines that taste sort of like chocolate. I started making a tiny-art shadow-box version last year, then abandoned it for baby socks. Until I get pictures, don't ask. (Ask Pinterest.) Lego has an advent calendar. There is now a Whisky advent calendar, recently admired by Huffington Post. Which brings me back to NNX (No New Christmas): could you D-I-Y a booze advent calendar? Could you keep it NNX? Perhaps. It all depends on the rules I am about. to. set. forth. Right here:

How To Achieve No New Christmas 

(or #howialienatedeveryone)

1) Use these guidelines to help shape your gift-giving season, not everyone else's. Be a good sport, and always be gracious when receiving any gift. From anyone. See Rules #7-8.

2) Gifts must be recycled, reused, repurposed or hand-made.

3) Consumerism is not the enemy–waste is. Feel free to buy something recycled, reused, or repurposed. Feel free to buy something hand-made by someone else. But before you wander into the gray with a plastic-wrapped bar of soap from some small company in Vermont, ask yourself. Is it really No New? (See Rule #8 for wiggle room.) A human hand may have, at some point, touched a set of Legos. Doesn't count. (She said to no one's husband in particular.)

4) Hand-made gifts can incorporate new purchases of ingredients. We need food to live. Seems like it should get a pass. Also, I don't want to be the one to begrudge you your peppermint bark. (She said, hoping her friend would read this post and made that flipping peppermint bark again.) Finally, it's unwise to recycle chocolate.

5) Gift Wrap must conform to Rule #2. But see Secret Rule #10.

6) Stockings must conform to Rule #2.

7) Service Gifts must... these are tricky. Are massages new or made? How about that wine-and-cheese-of-the-month-club? This is a wild card rule. Totally your call, whether or not that heifer is new. (Spoiler alert: you actually get to decide on all of these. It's Choose-Your-Own-Advent, and you're winning!)

8) Bonus Rule: when one of your gifts is made entirely of repurposed/recycled/reimagined items that you did not have to go out and purchase, you gain a little wiggle room. For other items, like the Death Star 10188.

9) Since there is no zero-waste alternative, I hereby sanction use of the USPS.

Secret Rule #10) Gift wrap you purchased at 90% off last year totally counts as NNX. xox

November 19, 2012 update! I finished my sock advent calendar. It was actually as much fun, start to finish, and it looked and sounded. I did manage to get some no-new Legos in there, as well. (Thank goodness for teen-aged neighbors!)

I've always loved Boxing Day. And the absence of the need to do anything on the day after Giftmas. The day deserves its own compartment and surprise.

One Snowy Day gave its life for this advent calendar. All beat-up, beyond-repair books should go to such fine resting places! xox

•food boast•

In case I get whine-y and complain, let it be known that today was a good food day. Pumpkin bread was baked with coconut oil & delivered to friends. A persimmon was et. After a run, two soft eggs went down with water. "Soft egg" is what Penn calls a soft-boiled egg, and I like the convention. Okra was breaded with korma spices (and whole coriander!) and fried in olive oil whilst I endured the final presidential debate on the radio, and warmed up Christmas soup. Note: actual soup frozen in December is especially delightful to discover in October. Ten months, well-spent! A pumpkin beer from Uinta Brewing Company helped a great deal. Dessert was a pomegranate.

Today, the forecast was tornadoes. Nicely averted.  xox

Gluten-Free Challah

L'shanah tovah! I really should have posted this earlier, but whatever--challah is necessary year-round, right? I also wish I had a picture of this bread for you. Perhaps I'll bake some again soon and take a pretty picture to place riiiiiiiight...

here.

While I don't usually blog about food, it's a pretty big part of my life. I teach cooking classes and have been creating recipes for those classes for over a decade. And this recipe is certainly seasonally appropriate.

I created this challah for one of my gluten-free bread classes. If you're a regular baker of gluten-free bread, do try this trick of adding protein powder to your recipes--about the ratio I use here should do the trick. I happen to use rice protein of this brand, and they happen not to be paying me to say so. You want the plain stuff--not chocolate or vanilla or whatever. You will not believe the difference it makes in your bread recipes. All the structural benefit of the bean flours, without the awful taste! Yay! Softer, lighter, moister, breadier bread.

This particular recipe does rely heavily on starches, and I get questions about that all the time. But my general theory on gluten-free baking is this: Baked goods are a treat. They are not meant to be all-the-time food--not even if you can eat glutenous baked goods. Is it possible to make healthier versions of baked goods? Absolutely, and I do have a lovely seeded teff-buckwheat bread that contains less starch and more whole grain goodness. I'll post that at some point.

But while I don't follow a gluten-free diet myself, I believe it's sometimes important to have a slice of bread/a cookie/a cake that tastes precisely like what you remember from before you went gluten free (and I think that's especially important with a food such as challah, which is so rich in ritual, spiritual, and cultural associations). And so that's what I aim for in my recipes--I want people who don't follow a gluten-free diet to want to eat my food. And they do! But often, in the baking style I generally use, that means adding some starches to get the right texture. This challah is very close to my favorite all-purpose (wheat) flour based challah recipe in both flavor and texture.

You could definitely modify this recipe to include more whole grain flours, or some flax meal, or almond meal, etc. Please feel free to do so! Just understand that your results will be quite different from what this recipe will yield as written.

(And incidentally, if you'd like to be able to take challah and make the blessing when making this bread, or to say hamotzi over it before a meal, technically you'll need to incorporate [certified gluten-free] oat flour into the recipe. My advice would be to substitute the oat flour for both the millet and sorghum, though you'll need to decide for yourself/with your rabbi if that's enough quantity for this recipe to meet the requirement. That one substitution shouldn't change the bread drastically. Again, you can increase the amount of oat flour, but that will change the bread drastically. It's a trade-off. And not to get too halachically specific, but because the texture of this bread "dough" is really much more like a cake or quick bread batter, that may affect your decision on whether or not challah should even be taken. And if I'm forgetting any other critical information people might want to know, do feel free to chime in in the comments.)

Now, if you'd like a great source for entirely wholesome, entirely starch and grain free, and very well-done gluten-free recipes--baked goods and much more--check out Elana's Pantry. Elana's recipes are fantastic, and she has several delicious looking cookbooks out now. (And if you're in need of more holiday recipes, Elana also happens to be Jewish, and she often puts together mouthwatering recipe lists for the holidays. I love to look at her blog for festive inspiration.)

I generally bake this recipe in circular cake pans, though you can, of course, use a loaf pan. Better still, check out this braided loaf pan! And this circular braided pan, perfect for Rosh Hashanah! (Once again, these people don't know me from Eve, and they couldn't care less that I think their loaf pans are adorable.) I haven't got one, but it really is the perfect solution, since it's absolutely impossible to braid this bread for real.

(That, by the way, makes me sad. I get a tremendous amount of pleasure and spiritual sustenance from the kneading and forming of regular challah, and I wish that were an option in the gluten-free world. Alas, it's either edible gluten-free challah, or braidable gluten-free challah, but I'm afraid the two seem to be mutually exclusive.)

If you have questions, do feel free to ask them in the comments. You can certainly also use the blog email there off to the left-hand side, but you're much more likely to get a timely response from the comment section, as I don't check that email every day.

Gluten-Free Challah

1 cup water

a pinch of sugar

2 1/4 teaspoons yeast

1/4 cup sorghum flour

1/4 cup millet flour

1/2 cup plain, unflavored rice (or other) protein powder

2 cups cornstarch

1 cup tapioca starch

1 1/4 teaspoons salt

4 teaspoons xanthan gum

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/4 cup brown sugar

4 eggs (plus an extra to be used as an egg wash)

2 egg yolks

1/4 cup melted butter or Earth Balance Buttery Sticks (for a meat meal, or in case of dairy sensitivity)

5 tablespoons honey

3 tablespoons vinegar

Optional: 2 teaspoons lecithin granules

Optional: a healthy pinch of saffron, crumbled in with wet ingredients

Optional: Raisins, chocolate chips, etc. as you prefer.

Grease and flour two medium-small loaf or cake pans.You can also line the pans with parchment paper cut to fit them--this will guarantee that the bread won't stick, though it's not generally a problem if you've greased and floured them thoroughly.

Stir the pinch of sugar into the water and sprinkle the yeast on top. Set aside to proof for about five to ten minutes. Proofing--or giving the yeast a chance to prove that it's still alive--is important! Make certain that your yeast is bubbly/foamy and alive, or your bread will not rise. I'd encourage you to incorporate this step into all your yeast recipes--some recipes will tell you to stir the dry yeast granules directly into the dry ingredients, but I don't recommend that, since you won't be able to tell if your yeast is dead.

Meanwhile, mix all the dry ingredients together in a small bowl.

Mix the wet ingredients in the bowl of a heavy-duty mixer (including lecithin and saffron if using). Add the yeast water, and stir everything together.

Using the paddle attachment, and with the mixer on a LOW speed, begin to add the dry ingredients a little at a time. When you’ve added all the dry ingredients, mix at high speed for two to three minutes. (Add a little more water or flour at this point if you think the bread needs it.) If you’d like to add raisins or other add-ins, now is the time to stir them in.

Spoon the batter into the greased pans and gently smooth the top of the loaf with wet fingers. Brush the top of the loaf with an egg wash—one egg beaten together with a few teaspoons water. (You can also sprinkle the top with sesame seeds if you like.) Cover the bread with well oiled plastic wrap, and allow it to rise until it has almost doubled in bulk—about an hour, but if your house is on the cooler side, it may take longer.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees about five minutes before the bread is ready to go in. Bake the loaf for about 15 minutes, then turn the oven down to 375 degrees. Bake the loaf until the crust is nicely browned and the loaf sounds kind of hollow when you tap it on the bottom. If the loaf seems to be browning too much, you can cover it with a piece of aluminum foil. (This loaf may fall slightly in the middle as it cools, but it will still be delicious.)

Happy Chanukah!

Thanksgiving

It's supposed to go down to 29 degrees Fahrenheit here tonight. We had to cover baby plants in our yard to protect them from frost--not a common occurrence here, even this time of year.

There's a little corner of my East Coast heart that wants to wait up, then take the dogs out for a middle-of-the-night walk in that cold, all bundled in heavy woolen things. Real winter clothing faded from my wardrobe a long time ago--parkas and boots--but I can still rustle up a hefty sweater or two. I have this one sweater that was made for me by Betsy, the woman I think of as my other mom, though we've been out of touch for a few years. She's the mother of my best friend from college, Kate, and she comes from a long line of New Englanders, so you can imagine she knows her way around a wool sweater. The sweater she made for me is glorious--all fall leaf colors and that bouncy quality that really great wool has. Knitters know what I'm talking about. I would wear it way more often than I do, but it's absurdly warm for this part of the world most of the time.

Every once in a while though, I like to take the sweater out of storage in my cedar chest and just smell it. It still smells like wood smoke, and the particular laundry detergent Betsy always used. I suppose Kate must always have used the same brand, because it smells like her too, and like her rooms in our college dorms. It's the scent of blissful weeks I got to spend with their family in Connecticut, often over Thanksgiving break, when I would take the train up from Philadelphia after spending the holiday with my own family. One year, Kate's family held Thanksgiving until I could get there on Friday--all of them, Kate; her brother; her mom and dad; Great Uncle M., who came down from Maine every winter to live with them; Betsy's sister, in from Illinois. They waited for me, and I got to have Thanksgiving again with my second family.

I remember taking a walk that Thanksgiving, and it was absolutely freezing--literally freezing, and brightly sunny, with that watery but somehow brittle looking, low sun you get on a winter day. It's always funny to me to look outside on a bright winter day in California--the sun is right, the low angle, the watery look, and I always expect a certain kind of frigid temperature to go along with it, and of course it never happens. Most years around these parts, you could reasonably hold a picnic in the park on Thanksgiving. It used to depress me, but I've come to appreciate the cold where I can get it--tonight, for example.

Kate's mom and great uncle were also the ones who taught me to knit for real. My mom taught me basics when I was seven or eight, and I created one orange acrylic scarf with green fringe for my Paddington Bear, but that was it until my Connecticut family got hold of me in college. Everyone in the family knit except for Kate's dad, and in the winter, there were frequently little unplanned knitting circles going on around the wood stove. After I'd learned to knit, every time he saw me, Great Uncle M. invariably asked me how my knitting was coming along. And I invariably had to admit that it was extremely, very, really, really slow. Oh, the guilt!

Tomorrow, my own real mom is coming over to help cook for Thanksgiving, and I'm trying to give up this idea I've been clinging to of getting anything non-Thanksgiving related done. Honestly, this is one of my favorite holidays, and I'll have my mom in the kitchen with me, making it extra holiday-like. And it's going to be colder than normal--too cold for a picnic! So maybe I'll break out my other mom's gorgeous sweater, and then take a break from the cooking to go for a walk in that bright winter sunshine with my first mom. And maybe I'll sit down and write a long letter to my Connecticut family, to wish them a happy Thanksgiving, and to tell them just how incredibly much I love them all, and just how much the smell of their house on my sweater makes me homesick.

•the problem with christmas•

Christmas is imminent, and whether or not you "celebrate," you have an opinion. What, pray tell, is it? Share. Please. Your story will help us all feel a little less crazy next month.



No problem.



Nope, not a problem.



Cousins rough-housing? Still not the problem with Christmas.



OK, here we go: what is this tiny, tiny beer doing at Christmas dinner?



All things made better with cake.



Wait. No, no, no... Does that cake say Happy Birthday? SIGH.
The problem with Christmas: it's not just Jesus's birthday.

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