The front walkway is lined with candles. The window boxes are aglow with lights and freshly fallen snow. The air is crisp and clear. Stars twinkle in the bitter cold and yet in the restless wind there is the promise of more snow. Inside the tree is lit, the table is set and dinner, nearly ready. There is one excited little girl who cannot stop dancing to each and every Christmas song playing on the radio. And checking on the status of all the presents beneath the tree.

The evening is perfect. 

All is calm (well, except for the dancing) and all is bright.

And then, from the church down the street, the sound of bells. Christmas bells. So sharp and sweet in the frigid silence. We opened the windows and listened.

"Then pealed the bells more loud and deep, God is not dead nor doth he sleep. 

The Wrong shall fail, the Right prevail

with peace on earth good will to men..."

And suddenly, just like that, we were all reminded once again of the real reason for the lights and the presents and the excitement. The real reason for Christmas.

Merry Christmas!!

Walking in a winter wonderland…

I made my own Egg Nog this year. I know. I am either extremely festive or extremely obsessive. I can't decide... But the thing is E loves Egg Nog. With a passion. And the regular full dairy variety wrecks havoc on her tummy. Last year we were able to find Coconut Milk Egg Nog. But this year all the stores have been completely sold out. So. I made us our own. Or more, I made E her own.

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/11/28/homemade-paleo-eggnog-rich-creamy-and-dairy-free-152477

My Great Grandma Anna was, by all accounts, one fierce woman. And I mean that in the most complimentary sense. She had to be, if she was going to raise my Grandfather. 

Every year at Christmas she made Molasses cookies. The kind of Molasses cookies that three and now four generations later are still the stuff of legend. If ever Christmas acquired a taste, warm and sweet and full of aromatic spice and then somehow further managed to wrap that taste into a moist, chewy, sugar glittered package, well it would be something, wouldn't it? Your knees would go weak and your heart would melt just a little bit. And you'd want it to be Christmas all year long.

Well, such is the response after eating one of Grandma Anna's Molasses cookies. Christmas and all it's wonder comes to live in your mouth for just one short little moment. Or many short little moments if you proceed to keep shoveling them in. And one of the best things about them is whether fresh out of the oven and soft or a few weeks old and hard enough they need a good dunk in coffee or tea the taste is still the same. Yummy.

My cousin has become quite proficient at making them. My mom, too. As they were always a Holiday staple when I was growing up. Before going gluten free I made them regularly. And even after I gave up gluten I still made them for my Husband and E. They are quite possibly one of the best cookies to make with a small child. Because you are never too young (or old for that matter) to grab handfuls of chilled dough and roll them into a shape somewhat resembling a ball and coat the whole thing in white sugar. Oh the deliciously darkly sticky and crunchy fingers that result. 

But now that E is gluten free it would be just plain mean to whip up a batch she couldn't eat. Or lick off her fingers. Plus the recipe, dog-eared and stained and liberally colored with red crayon so you know it's a favorite, contains 3/4 of a cup of Crisco shortening. I know, I know, they're meant to be Holiday treats, not an everyday staple. But with all that we now know about Trans fats, I really can't bring myself to buy a canister let alone bake with it. 

Believe me when I say I have tried just about every substitution. And forget the gluten, I'm talking about the shortening. Coconut oil, Butter, Palm shortening. And the results are never the same. Actually, in the case of the coconut oil, the results were epically disastrous. Like so epically disastrous they are now a phrase of description. "As bad as the time I made the Molasses cookies with coconut oil."

If fundamentally speaking there remains no good substitute for the fat content of the cookie, the other experimenting I did, while interesting, remains in the end inconsequential. Pre-made Gluten free flour mix, my own mix, Unsulphured Molasses, Blackstrap Molasses, Sorghum, it makes little difference. Without the shortening we are nowhere. (Though, my mom and uncle have mentioned that using Sorghum makes a cookie that tastes a lot like the kind Grandma Anna made. Not the kind her recipe makes. But she, herself. Back in the day when though they used shortening and thought nothing of it, their Molasses wasn't so highly refined and tampered with and therefore had a lot more flavor.)

This year I just Googled a new gluten free Molasses cookie recipe and made that. It was not the same, of course. I didn't expect it to be. But it wasn't any less pain free than my mad experimenting either. The cookies spread everywhere. The dough stuck to everything. My wonderfully quirky gas oven kept jacking the temp up by 150 degrees. Randomly and for fun, it seems. So using a timer was pointless. Finally, remembering that Grandma Anna's recipe called for chilled dough I stuck the whole bowl in the freezer and believe it or not that made a huge difference. That and adding more Tapioca starch and making the cookiedough balls the size of marbles. So they were small enough to puff up and be cooked through at the same time and yet not burned on the bottom. Good grief! Shortening might kill you and gluten, make you sick, but they sure allow for a more pleasant baking experience.

There is a message of hope and a silver lining of the end of this whole thing, though. I found a Paleo cookie recipe that is remarkably similar to what Grandma Anna used to make. At least I think so. And it doesn't contain gluten or butter or coconut oil or shortening. And it wasn't too complicated to make. No disasters. Plain or epic. I did modify it, of course. I had long since hit the wall of Christmas cookie overload. That happened somewhere around my 15th batch of the gluten free Molasses cookies. When I tried to put an unbaked tray into the dishwasher.  I had to make the cookies so small the whole process took FOREVER. And I was so over it as to think "why not bake something else...?" Yeah. Delusional, in other words.

So I did. I made more cookies. I didn't use Molasses. (As it is usually sugar cane based and anything sugar cane based gives me migraines. And unlike the other cookies I made, I wanted to eat these.) I used Maple syrup instead. I also just added additional ground ginger in place of the fresh (a taste test told me when I had the right amount) and I used my standard flax eggs in place of the regular eggs. Other than that though, I kept it the same. And by that I mean simple. Refreshingly simple. I'd like to think that Grandma Anna, fierce, no nonsense, mother and grandmother that she was wouldn't balk the least bit at my Paleo take on the tradition she started. And she'd be happy the legend lives on. 

http://gourmandeinthekitchen.com/2013/chewy-ginger-molasses-cookie-recipe/

I think after my solo shoveling efforts last night I am perfectly justified in having Almond cake with raw Honey-Cacao frosting for breakfast, don't you?

This week was…  

  …catching up with friends and quiet snowy days, bundles of Holly and coffee dates, finishing up the Christmas cards and the Christmas shopping, Almond gingerbread cookies and Honey coconut bread, the hunt for Dairy free Egg Nog and Christmas stories by the light of the Christmas tree, Black and white Holiday movies and counting down the days…

 This week was…

…Advent candles and evergreen boughs, Green apples studded with cloves and homemade Christmas gifts, hot chocolate and tiny candy canes, tangled strings of lights and fresh cut Ivy, totes full of decorations and stockings hung by the fire, art projects and boisterous retirement parties, long drives in the bitter cold and the comforting embrace of family…

  

"The mountains are calling and I must go."

- John Muir

The First Thanksgiving was...

...nearly 90 unexpected guests and so much more than we realize to be thankful for, a meal that bridged a culture gap and several days worth of feasting, maybe no pumpkin pies but perhaps popcorn, a celebration that started a Holiday firmly set in Nation-wide observance by president Lincoln and an occasion in and of itself which we aught to be Thankful for.

This week...

or should I say “these past few weeks”... (because, phew, it’s been awhile...I KNOW!)

...have been oh so much soccer and Saturday night dance classes, two fall family vacations and going crazy with the spring-bulb planting, grapevine wreaths and bittersweet trailing across my mantle, giant carved pumpkins and Halloween fun, Planetarium field trips and the bright light of the waxing moon, cold, frosty mornings and dark nights brightened with candles, the start of Pot Roast season and weekly crossword puzzles, the first snow fall and plans for Thanksgiving...

"You can't measure manhood with a tape line around his biceps."

- Billy Sunday

So...what can you do instead?

Well...

You can measure it by the man who will take dance classes with you for your birthday. And surprise you by being better at it than you ever imagined. You can measure it by the man who will put everything on hold, including his own exhaustion and his own inner demons, to take care of you when you are sick. You can measure it by the man who will change a flat tire, on the side of the interstate, without drama or cursing or even one impatient facial expression. You can measure it by the man who will buy you the ridiculously inappropriate black satin high heel shoes just because you like them. You can measure it by the man who grows a mustache merely because you've always wanted to see how he looks with one. You can measure it by the man who knows where to find the video of your daughter's first steps and how to restore it to your computer. You can measure it by the man, who for the above reasons and countless, countless others makes you thankful each and every day that you were blessed enough to be asked to be his. And that you said yes. Without even knowing all that you know. Without even knowing, to be honest, very much at all. Except that he was a man faithful of the trust you were placing in him. And that as a result you would never be the same person again.

“And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.”

― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and the leaves and the trees stand. I think I, too, have known Autumn too long...

 ...the trees stand. The trees, suddenly wait against the moon's face. 

e.e. cummings

Do you Boo?

We do!

It was a Fabulous Halloween. Despite the rain. Actually, if anything the rain and wind, swirling leaves and restlessly swaying, clattering tree branches added a sort of appropriately spooky and ominous atmosphere to the whole experience.

Everyone was dressed up and bundled up and our front sidewalk was a literal parade of damp and rather bedraggled ghosts and fairies and vampires. 

And umbrellas! 

Never before have I seen so many umbrellas. 

The gutters were running rivers of water and yellow leaves. The candles inside our HUGE pumpkins (generously on loan from our out of town friends...) hissed and sizzled. 

And...drum roll please...we ran out of candy! 

That’s right. Stocked, as we were with nearly 500 pieces of candy this year, and still we ran out. Impressive and yet somewhat embarrassing.

What could we do but turn off the porch lights, go inside and warm up with hot cider and popcorn while watching It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. During which E sorted through her loot, of course. 

A very fine end to a very memorable day.

Happy Halloween!

SpOOn & LeVeL

The allergen free cinnamon roll. A thing of wonder. 

Is there anything better than the smell of something cinnamon-y baking in the oven? I ask you, is there??

 Especially on these cool, overcast, Autumn days when the whole house is in need of both some warmth and some cheer.

The recipe link is, as usual, below.

I didn't change too much. Just used flax eggs* in place of the two regular ones, used my cornstarch free baking powder and made my icing out of coconut butter, vanilla and honey. I don't really have any exact measurements for my version of the icing. I just mixed enough of each thing together until it looked right and more importantly tasted right.

If, as has happened to me once or twice, you end up with a cinnamon roll dough that looks a little runny when it's all mixed together (sometimes I think maybe when using a newly opened bag of Almond flour the stuff on top is a larger grind than the stuff on the bottom and therefore not quite fine enough to bind everything together tightly...) simply mix in Arrowroot powder or Tapioca starch, bit by bit, until it all comes together and holds a ball shape. That way it will roll out for you and not crumble or stick so much when you attempt to cut it. 

However, do be forewarned, you are dealing with nut flour. And honey. And applesauce. There will be a sticky factor. No way around it. There will also be a rustic factor. These cinnamon rolls won't look like any other cinnamon rolls. But that's ok. They still taste amazing and are so much better for you.

*Flax egg recipe... for each egg needed mix 1 Tbs ground flax with 3 Tbs water and refrigerate overnight.

http://undressedskeleton.tumblr.com/post/57820632507

Thyme; harvested from my garden before the frost.