Annie's Test Kitchen - Part 1

Inspirational song: Cook's County (The Who)

Last week, before I left Tulsa, we stopped in for cheesecake and coffee at the Gypsy Coffeehouse downtown. In conversation with the owner, as my mother and I ate the topping off our cheesecakes, and scraped all traces of graham cracker crust off of every bite, the owner told us he wished he had a good gluten free alternative for the crusts. I told him I had an almond-flour based shortbread cookie recipe I'd been meaning to try, and I promised I would test it and let him know whether it might work for cheesecake. So far everything he tried was too crumbly. Hopefully this one will hold together better. Tonight's post will be dedicated to the first round of recipe testing.

First, credit where credit is due. I don't remember where I found this link (most likely on Facebook), but the recipe was posted in Real Food Kosher online. It's titled "Vanilla Shortbread (Grain-Free and Egg-Free)," and it was posted by an individual named Lisa Rose. Since I'm currently living alone, I decided to make a half-batch, and as it has no eggs, dividing it was very easy. The full recipe is as follows:

1 1/2 cups almond flour
1/2 cup tapioca starch
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of sea salt
1/3 cup melted butter, ghee, or palm shortening
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 tablespoon vanilla powder or vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Whisk dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Whisk wet ingredients together and mix together with dry ingredients. Scoop out dough, 1 tablespoon at a time, and place on baking sheet. Flatten dough balls gently with your fingers. Bake for 15-18 minutes until edges begin to golden. Let cool on a rack.

My experience so far:

It was a little difficult to find tapioca starch at my regular grocery store, but I eventually found it at Whole Foods. I probably could have ordered it at Publix, if I had wanted to go through the effort. The almond meal is fairly coarse. I need to investigate ways to grind it more finely, without turning it into almond butter. The chunky texture was noticeable in the final product.

Yes, the recipe calls for separate bowls for wet and dry ingredients, but I'm a "throw it all in one bowl" kind of gal.

The dough is fairly wet, and I wondered whether I needed to add more of one of the flours, but I stuck with it, in the proportions called for. It turned out that it wasn't very sticky, so the wetness didn't seem to be a problem.

No amount of digging in the lower cabinets, on my knees, produced my silpat for cookies. I have no idea where it is. And I learned many moons ago that wax paper (which I have) and parchment paper (which I do not) are NOT the same thing. So to avoid cookies stuck to the sheet, I sprinkled a little of the tapioca starch, and slid the dough around a little bit, to make sure they were not going to stick. Also, I used a couple spoons to scoop the dough, and I appear to have made them almost twice as big as they were supposed to be.

After 16 minutes at 350.

They needed to cool completely on the rack. I broke open the first one while they were still warm, and it was a bit cakey. The cooler ones were crisper.

It's possible a little less baking soda would have made them harder, like traditional shortbread. But these were very good, once cool.

I could really taste the almonds in the final product, but I like almonds, so that was a positive. Tapioca starch is a fairly sweet flour, so the tiny bit of maple syrup was plenty to make them sweet. I could have even handled using a tiny bit more salt, to intensify the flavors.

My big kitty boy says he approves of them as well. He helped me finish the third one I ate.

I stopped at Publix today for cream cheese and raspberries. Tomorrow, I try to make cheesecake with this recipe. After round one, I'm expecting good results. I will let you know.

The Nice Guys

Inspirational song: Dogs of War (Pink Floyd)

I've invited myself along to my girlfriends' regular mani-pedi dates recently, and so far, they haven't seemed to mind much. It has been much more fun going with a group than going alone, as I had been doing. One of them almost always gets black polish on her nails, and she made a "black like my soul" joke about it. I gave myself the opposite of that today, painting several coats of silvery white glitter over a pure titanium white base. I'm staring at it, watching it reflect, and all I can think is "light and sparkly, like my soul." At some point in my younger years, maybe I could have carried off the dark, brooding persona, but now, it's possible that I'm just here to offer comic relief. Oddly, I'm totally okay with that. In our twenties, a friend and I embraced the concept of "bimbo," turning it from an epithet to an empowerment. It was liberating, being able to throw off the stodgy limitations of needing to be dignified in order to be taken seriously. I decided that if people weren't willing to take enough time to talk to me and find out that I actually do have a brain, then I wasn't going to waste time convincing them otherwise. I enjoy living in the silly bimbo world when it suits me, laughing at inappropriate times, making tasteless or self-effacing jokes, admitting freely when I really don't know something (rather than stoically pretending I know everything), and generally living in the moment. I've used it to diffuse tensions at the office, to get assistance from otherwise grumpy and unhelpful people, and as a protective shield when I needed to do things that normally would have intimidated me into silence. It's great for shaking off the fear of public speaking, for example.

If living such an open and vulnerable life leaves me susceptible to sudden emotional shifts, then I'm willing to take that risk. It usually gets me when I feel like an interloper, when I am someplace I don't think I am wanted. Like a vampire, I require a clear-cut invitation before I attend most gatherings. But if the alternative is shutting down my emotions, not being sensitive to those around me, not being warm and giving to people I encounter, then bring on the pain. I do much better when I am the unserious nice guy.

I always said that the guy I married was a big softie like I am. He's a road angel, a rescuer of damsels in distress, and the best friend of small, helpless animals. You don't end up with a house overflowing with cats and dogs, and a wild animal-friendly Park like this without a partner in crime. Between us, we've done a lot for birds, squirrels, turtles, bees, snakes, and lizards. We experience pain keenly when we aren't able to save animals who have been hit by cars, attacked by larger predators, or abandoned from their nests. For every success, like the fledgling blue jay we fostered for weeks in our house until he was big enough to fly away outside, there is a failure, like the rabbit who died on my deck yesterday. Until I moved here, I had never really handled dead animals in their original packaging (cooking with meat doesn't count). Since I got the Park, I've had to carry off a dead squirrel, bird, kitten, rabbit, and multiple lizards. And at his far distant job location, my man has had to deal with the sudden loss of two litters of kittens. It really was no surprise when he wrote to me, telling me that he had rescued a dog. The extent he is going through to help this particular dog, now that is a new one (but still no surprise). He and some colleagues were doing a little sight-seeing, when my man noticed what he thought was a marmot disappearing behind some rocks on the side of the road. It was rainy, so he couldn't get a clear view of it. One of his passengers realized it was a dog, and they pulled over to get a better look at it. It was dragging its back end, so my man took it to a vet, and discovered it had three slipped vertebrae, leaving it unable to use its hind legs. Softie that he is, rather than euthanizing the dog (as you know many people would have done), this man purchased a doggie-wheelchair for him, and is now in the process of finding someone to adopt him. The wheels arrived yesterday, and the confused pup is not sure about the whole process. Apparently he took off "running" with them, tripped, had a little face-plant, and is now a lot more cautious with his new wheels. Now, I want you to let this sink in a little bit. My man is such a friend to animals that he bought a wheelchair for a dog he is giving away. And I didn't ask how much, or try to talk him out of it. If that doesn't make us nice guys, it makes us suckers. Either way, I don't care. I like it this way.

Good Trade

Inspirational song: Cowboy Take Me Away (Dixie Chicks)

I consider myself reasonably independent. I am game to try lots of things myself, to feel useful and strong enough to stand on my own. I'm willing to attempt minor repairs to plumbing, take on carpentry projects, and even set aside a lifetime fear of electricity to reinstall the cooktop after my kitchen counters were upgraded a few years ago. The biggest task I took on was to agree to manage everything that comes along here in the Park by myself, for what I thought would be just over one year. That turned out to be far more than I signed up for, when I found myself struggling just to keep up with the yardwork, a few months in. I also didn't anticipate having to do so much damage control with the flooded condos, which are still an ongoing nightmare. Over the last year, I've learned a lot about what I'm capable of, and where I still need propping up.

Enter my friends. I found myself needing assistance this week, for something that was more of an emotional block than a missing skill set. I had to overcome a logistical hurdle, that was easily handled by having a second driver, but more, I had to psych myself up for a potential confrontation. I really didn't know what to expect, even though I had tried to set up the smoothest transition possible for weeks. Still, last night, I had myself tied in knots, worrying that I would have to defend my reasons for making the change I was proposing. This morning, when the moment came, it was almost too easy. My cowboy friend came through, and completed the task effortlessly, without me needing to do a thing. For all my claims of independence, this time, all I needed was one calm friend, who could be in the right place at the right time. I'm so glad I wasn't in this alone.

Last night, I was awake late, as I always am, and something hit my living room window, directly behind my head. I had a momentary panic that the Legend of Boggy Creek was about to come to real life in my living room. Then, when I realized nothing was going to break the window and grab me through the blinds, I stood up, grabbed my phone for a tiny sense of security, and made eye contact with my little red-headed dog. I nodded at the back door, and he joined me for our investigation. When I flipped on the back porch light, there wasn't a giant Sasquatch waiting to grab us, so I proceeded to pick up a tiny flashlight and go outside. Other than more bugs and spiderwebs than I wanted to see, there was nothing amiss on the deck. Then the owls started making a ruckus and the dog was off like a shot. He ran all over the Park and barked, looking up in the trees. At least two, possibly three different owl voices chastised me for letting him loose. I shone my little flashlight up in all directions, until I finally saw one large owl take off from a sycamore tree, and fly toward the thicket. It took a minute to convince my barking guardian to follow me inside, but we gave up and assumed the noise was caused by the owls. After missing so much sleep last night, in my anxiety, this morning I let the dogs out, and then went back to sleep for an hour. By the time I came back to look outside, I saw a small brown bunny, lying near my Boston fern, dead or dying. I may have imagined that I saw her take her last few breaths. No dogs were in sight. I don't know whether they were responsible for the giant hole in her chest, or that was the work of the owls last night. Either way, I feel like I let her down for not keeping her safe. I suspect it was she who ran into my window last night, either running, or hurled there by an owl. Poor baby. Even if she's the one who has been stealing the tiny watermelons off my deck plants, I wouldn't have wanted to see it come to this.

My Bonfire friend collects animal bones. She has skulls of several species, from tiny squirrels to horses. She was here today, to take our cowboy friend to work after he helped me out, delivering what I asked him to help me acquire. I wrapped up the bunny and gave it to her. I made good trade, I think.

Riding on Carl's Pale Blue Dot

Inspirational song: The Galaxy Song (Monty Python)

From the time I was very young, I was intimidated by the concept of infinity. It particularly bothered me when applied to space and time. I could never accept that the universe went on forever, without ending. There must be something beyond the edge of space. And how could my young mind wrap around the idea that time simply began, and that there was no clock ticking before everything officially started? Anytime I tried to imagine that there was nothing before time, or nothing beyond the edge of space, my head would buzz and feel heavy. I couldn't stand it. I was very linear, very literal, and I wanted a clear, math- and science-based answer to what was beyond infinity. I didn't want to take anything on faith.

Somewhere in high school, my math classes became more complex than my attention span warranted. I was more interested in picking apart the human experience, searching for the meaning in everything, and less in finding proficiency in calculus. Thus I never went on to statistics or physics, or anything beyond that, even though I probably would have enjoyed it. Every once in a while I think about going back, and starting over with math, probably with that physics I never had. For now, I will listen to those who have done all the math, when they present me with the explanations I craved so much when I was a child. I still don't have a solid, easily-repeated answer to what existed before time, but oddly, I worry about it less now. The more I listen to my heroes, Neil, Carl, Michio, Brian, and the rest, the more peace I find when I think about the vastness of time and space. I unwind. I stop worrying about whether I am making the most of my life, according to a bank balance or to the judgement of others. I remember how incredibly short and small my life is, and how the best thing I can do is to use all the energy I consume and produce for growth.

During my teenage rebellion, I used to think that the smallness of human life compared to the vast cosmos was a viable excuse to do whatever I wanted. What did it matter who I associated with, or whether I was a little young for the alcohol in my possession, when the universe went on forever, and in 500 years, no one would ever remember me or what I did. I don't know how the change occurred, but now, that vastness is my reason not to need any negativity in my life. Life is too short to hate people, to cheat people, to be less than who I really am with people. I am still learning how to do it right, how to live this way all the time, but now I have goals that mean something to me. I feel it every time I give in to the impulse to create something, with the hope that it gives a little of the positive energy I'm feeling back out to the universe--an infinite feedback loop.

Most Civilized

Inspirational song: 5:15 (The Who)

I have a very clever and insightful friend who offered me this theory many years ago: if someone were to shove a red hot poker ten inches up your backside, and then pulled it back out three inches, you would thank them for relieving thirty percent of your pain.

On every leg of my trip this week, I was randomly selected to go through the pre-check security lines. (I did this three times, for reasons I explained yesterday.) It felt so grown up and civilized, being trusted to leave my shoes on and my ipad in my x-rayable travel bag. But for every entry to the good old-fashioned metal detector, I had my palms swiped with a pad that was run through the mass spectrometer (or whatever) to make sure I remember to wash my glycerin-based moisturizer off my hands after I put on my makeup. Long ago I tired of getting the pat-down because I wore jeans that had shiny stitching or plastic rhinestones on the pockets, so I switched to wearing only outfits based on yoga pants or stretchy dresses and sports bras with no underwires. And yet, it still isn't enough. At the Atlanta airport, I set off the detectors, and they sent me through the newer scanner, which apparently thought I had too much ink on the label stamp on the back side of my underwear, so the girl had to pat me on the bottom. I'm not sure whether that's worse than having my right shoulderblade set it off, like it did eight times in a row, when I had on nothing more than cotton and lycra, on any one of those days. It was nice going through a line where it didn't smell of feet, but is that really just the poker coming out three measly inches?

My flight was oversold today, and I volunteered to sit at the electronics charger for an hour to wait for the next one, but there were just enough no-shows that I got on the plane. I missed my one shot at a voucher that would have paid for this fall's football trip. I was so excited that I finally could take that gamble, and have a nice little payout of $300 off my next ticket, and I was very disappointed to be told I could just go home. The up side to all my shuffling and rebooking over the last two days was the only seat left was in the economy comfort section, at no additional charge. I have to decide how I felt about it, whether it's worth paying the upcharge in the future. Lots of legroom, but sitting directly behind the first class cabin, the tray tables were tucked under the arms on either side of my seat. Not a lot of room for me to spread out, as it were. Maybe if I hold off on dessert a few times, it would be a perfect fit.

All the kids were glad to have me home. I have had plenty of attention since the moment I brought the dogs to the car from camp. My plants, on the other hand, show signs of an odd mix of neglect and trespass. It was very hot today, and no rain in my tiny tract of land, so my plants were a little droopy, and several of them look like they were slept in by rabbit-sized creatures. No sign of nibbling or theft of fruits and vegetables, but a lot of broken stems. Someone's been sleeping in my bed... of ferns...

The Motherpark

Inspirational song: Foxey Lady (Jimi Hendrix)

I consider myself a seasoned traveler, but this has been a test of my adaptive skills, this last week. I've been changing plans on the fly, pun intended, and customizing the world to fit my needs. Case in point, when I got notification after notification that my flight out of Oklahoma was delayed (four times), to the point where we touched our wheels down at the hub in Atlanta a full half hour after my connection was to have left, I made alternate arrangements. If the airline was going to throw a monkey wrench in my plans, I was going to use that tool to my advantage. I rebooked my connection for tomorrow instead, and rented a car. I showed up at my other parents' house, for a quickie visit. How many holidays did I miss while my own car wasn't highway safe? I wasn't coming this close and not taking this chance to see them in person. I didn't have to pick my dogs up until tomorrow anyway, so it really didn't alter much at all on the home end. I was rather proud of my rapid adaptation.

My mother and I took time to bond over our shared love of gardening before I left today. Her property is probably four times as large as mine, and it's like a garden within a garden. She has a large tamed area, with outbuildings like a studio and a potting shed, surrounded by a stockade fence, right next to the house, where they can have a neatly trimmed lawn and flowers in pots. All around that, she has the wilder area, the only part she actually calls her Park, where there are big trees and a few gardens where she has relinquished control to the little green spirits. As we toured the greater Park, that she has been tending many years longer than I've been at work in mine, she pointed out all the volunteers, including ash and oak that she is letting go, and a lot of poison ivy, which she would rather not encourage to stay. Where some gardeners grow dinner plate dahlias, she says she has dinner plate poison ivy. Her bullies kept us company on the tour of the larger park, as she left me jealous of her snake willows and dynamite crape myrtles (the only true red ones we've ever found). I guess my bald cypress is doing better than hers, which appears to be reviving from the ground up. She's got a lot of giant piles of tree limbs, left from storm damage. I wished I could have taken a truckload of it back for my cowboy friend to burn up at bonfire.

I got to meet a lot of animals for the first time this week. My mother had a new dog and a new cat who were quite interested in getting to know me, and for the first time in years my father has a cat again, one who was thrilled to learn she had a sister. While most canines seem to lose all good sense when unfamiliar people are around them, my mother's pappillon-sheltie mix was willing to listen and learn when I told her I didn't want her paws all over me. I had less success convincing the giant black youngling (who may well be the younger brother of my professional eater dog--and we think he is) that it really wasn't cool of him to shred my arms with his roughhousing. Good thing I'm not an arm and hand model.

For years, I have flown back to Oklahoma to the same hair stylist, when I wanted a guaranteed good cut and color. I haven't been able to do that since I moved to the Low Country, but I got to do the next best thing. My stylist owns a coffee house on the first floor of his building, so we stopped in for a snack and a chat. He was displaying the work of a wire artist, all around the shop. Great. Now I have a new medium I want to try my hand at. Is there any kind of art at all that doesn't sound like fun to try? 

Cousins and Aunties and Friends, Oh My

Inspirational song: Friend Like Me (Alladin)

There are very few perfect days in anyone's life, but we each get a few dozen that are close enough to count. Today the good parts were so good, anything that was less than perfect (traffic, having my good clothes scratched up by an exuberant young dog) is completely overshadowed by a day surrounded by friends and family and art lovers I never met before. The turnout to the artists' reception was excellent. Over the course of the afternoon, we guessed fifty or sixty people came down to the East Gallery, and most stayed long enough to talk to my stepfather. Old friends of my parents were there, and although I only spoke with a few of them, I recognized most from a distance. Several of my family members were there, from several very different branches of my family tree. In fact, I got a chance to introduce two of my aunts who had never met each other, after all of these years. That was fun. It was even better since one of those aunts kept it a secret that she was coming, all the way up to the moment we saw her in the gallery. I had a little mini-reunion of the flute section of my high school band, when four of us spent most of the reception getting caught back up. I could not have asked for a better day than to spend it with so many people I loved and missed, all to celebrate the career of my favorite artist.

The exhibition looked great in the gallery. The paintings were grouped, lit, and labeled well. If I were to have a single criticism, I would say that it was almost entirely abstracts, instead of an equal mix of abstract and photorealism. I hope that this gets people interested in his art, and sends them searching for his website. His body of work is extensive, and worth the time to study it all.

I have struggled with writing fiction for most of my life, because I always felt like I had a story to tell, but I could never get a whole book out. I've had so much more success here in short essay form, and finally it occurred to me, if I want to write an actual book, which I do, there is no better story for me to tell than my own. As we sat at the restaurant after the reception, me and a dozen or so of my charming and exciting family members, I sorely wished I had a pen and notepad to make a list of all the wilder than fiction experiences I was reminded of during the course of the conversation (especially with my cousin who was my co-conspirator through most of my epic tales). I tried making a few notes on my phone, but doing that just tends to look anti-social, so I stopped. I'm going to have to hope that once I sit down to write, I can remember the best stuff. As I've sat and turned this idea over in my head all day, I have asked a few people whether they will mind when I share the less savory parts of my history. So far, I have been told that nothing is off limits. I hope that's still the case once I get going on it. 

This day was too good. I'm so overwhelmed by it, I'm ready to turn in and start to dream about it, so I can relive all the best parts. To all my friends and family who came, if I didn't say it enough already, I really love you all for being there. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.