Thursday, January 7, 2010

Garlic. Winter. And Gifts.

The first time it froze hard I dutifully covered up my little garden in an effort to keep the poor garlic babies from freezing. Bah, they didn't even wilt.

Next time I decided to let them live or die without a cover. Well, they did not die. In fact, they are quite happy and thriving. If I have to pluck scapes (the flower tops) off of the tops before we even hit February I will be really confused. As it is I am hoping that the bottoms are happily growing away since the tops have stopped getting any bigger, just staying green.

Also got two new cookbooks for Christmas:
Gluten-Free Baking with The Culinary Institute of America: 150 Flavorful Recipes from the World's Premier Culinary College by Richard J. Coppedge Jr. 
 And:
More from the Gluten-Free Gourmet: Delicious Dining Without Wheat by Bette Hagman




I have had a chance to look through both of the books and so far I like both of them. The Culinary Institute of America book is nice and well tested BUT there are five different flour mixes and a few of them use soy flour which I abhor. On the other hand, substituting the soy for sorghum so far has worked wonderfully so I hope to continue to have promising results! There is even a recipe for GF puff pastry!



The Bette Hagman sequel is also great (just like her first book which I also like) and has many more involved recipes that I would love to try.  In this version there are lots of dinner recipes as well which have promise. I plan to try the recipe for cream of X soup in some of my more traditional casseroles (like tuna noodle!) which always have the cream of mushroom-chicken-tomato-etc condensed soup which are full of wheat.


Another gift from the holidays was Ree the Pioneer Woman's Cookbook (just like most of the bloggers that I know) which I have been drooling over and awaiting the day it would come to me! "The Pioneer Woman Cooks" is a beautiful book.
It is so pretty... and even signed just for me (arranged for me by dear friend)... I almost hate to bring it near my kitchen to start de-glutenizing the recipes and getting chocolate smudges and flours all over it... almost. But not enough to ignore the fact that I love that woman's cookin' and want to dig in as soon as possible to work on them.



And now I need to further delve into my new gifts and find out what is going to be in my kitchen later today, tomorrow, or as soon as I can find some spare sanity!