Gluten-Free Oat Scones, Which Your Children Will Eat For a Change

I am writing this down now before I forget.  Because you know that tomorrow morning I will be running around and yelling about how I lose everything, and can find absolutely nothing, and how it is terribly inconvenient when all you want to do is make breakfast in the morning and be done with it, for crying out loud.

And so, here it is -- gluten-free oat scones/biscuits.  The five year old loved them (because her mama made something not involving a chia seed, for a change), and the two year old even ate his -- and only screamed mildly, then nearly fell out his high chair a mere three times.  Not a bad breakfast, really.

1 cup brown rice flour
1 cup tapioca flour
3/4 cup oat flour
1/4 cup sugar, plus more for sprinkling
1 1/2 teaspoons xanthan gum
1 tablespoon, plus 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups heavy cream

Preheat oven to 350F, and line a baking sheet with parchment.

In a mixing bowl, combine all dry ingredients and mix to blend.  Then pour in the heavy cream.  (I only had 1 1/2 cups, so I added 1/2 cup plain kefir yogurt drink, or whatever it is called.)  Mix to combine.

Flour a work surface with rice flour, turn the dough out, and form into a rectangely-thing of sorts, about 1"- 1 1/2" high.  Either cut out biscuit shapes, or use a scone cutter, and place on the baking sheet, roughly 2" apart.  Sprinkle the tops with a little sugar, if you wish -- which I did wish.

Bake for 25-30 minutes and then let cool for 10 or 15 minutes.  

Macrina scoops a bit of the biscuit out of the top once baked and fills them with blackberry jam.  However, I much prefer splitting them down the middle and slathering with butter and jam.

(Recipe based on: More from Macrina by Leslie Mackie, Sasquatch Books, 2012.)

A Gracious Plenty

'Sometimes something comes along and tears your roots right out of the ground, and that's when you know you been planted too long,' he says.

I agree.

'Sometimes you been growing one thing in your garden for too many years, and then everything dies. You gotta give the soil time to replenish itself.'

'You talking to me in code?' I ask him.

'Shit no,' he says. 'I'm just talking to pass the time.' And he laughs.

-- A Gracious Plenty, by Sheri Reynolds

Jumping, An Artistic Rendering

I Love My Sister. I Do! I Do!

Grandpa and Emilia

Poppy

It was the love that disquieted her, for it was the kind of love that doesn't know when to leave itself to memory.
-- Rita Leganski, The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow

Blue Nude II, Matisse

Today has been light.  No, really -- light.  And I mean that in every sense, too.  The sun was shining, and everywhere you looked, it was beautiful.  In fact, I actually paused this morning as I was pulling out of the driveway to take Emilia to school, because usually what I do is this: I push the button for the garage door opener and then immediately the button for my blue light, which I've got propped on the passenger seat next to me.  But this morning, I put on my sunglasses.  And then I stopped to think,  does one turn on a blue light if sunglasses are being worn?  Seems a bit odd and/or futile, you know?  But there we go: two kids in the back, one in jammas and one not; one screaming for more toast and the other one not; both yelling because I've had the audacity to turn off Johnny Cash and turn on NPR; me yelling because some grampa just pulled out in front of us, and I've spilled my coffee; but the little girl is sleepily smiling, all the while, because she gets to go to school.

And so, the sun is out, and it really feels like spring is actually (albeit temporarily) here -- and this is a good thing. (I've only recently begun to admit how much the grey, dreary, dismal weather here sometimes gets to me. It does though.  How can it not? Day in, day out?)  It seems to have made us all feel a bit lighter.

Crise

My shopping cart as of late:

Brown rice flour
Teff flour
Buckwheat
Amaranth seeds
Quinoa flour
Sorghum flour
Tapioca flour
Garbanzo bean flour
Millet flour
Arrowroot
Almond meal
Flax seed meal
Xanthan gum
Chia seeds
Yeast
Agave

A Fiver for Five!

My girl is five. Did you hear that?! FIVE.

And grandma and grandpa gave her five smackers for it, too.  This means that for the past handful of days, the girl has been wandering around and asking me what one buys with five dollars.  ('Oooh, what can I buy mama?')  We finally narrowed it down to one of three things:

1. Put the cold hard cash in Matilda (her piggy bank) where she is assured to maintain the title of richest person in the house.

2.  Two Trophy Cupcakes, or nearly two, which is practically the same thing.

3.  Five trips on the carousel.

And so, this morning as I was rushing around trying to get myself out of the house in order to run a pile of errands -- completely and utterly and gleefully sans children -- she says, 'Maybe I should go with you, mama.'  'Er, yes! Maybe you should.  But I must warn you, it will be no fun.  At all.  Not even a little.  In the least.  Bear that in mind, alright?  Unless you want to go to get cupcakes... Or something... Oh, go put your shoes on, sweet girl that I love.'

And there we are -- she chose a Neapolitan cupcake for there and a salted caramel cupcake for the road.

'How was your cupcake, little miss?'  ' Good.  But mama?  I really went with you because I just didn't want you to be sad going by yourself.'  My goodness, I am grateful, and I am not sad.