Yum yum!  More cookies.  I'm cooking these for myself and my boyfriend tonight, along with yet another batch of bread.  The coconut flour is really helping my digestive health, so I keep trying to do more things with it.

Last week I intended to make cheesy buscuits, but alas, I grated all the cheese, even added garlic, but then... well, it just sat in the fridge, because I was so busy with Pittsburgh getting cold so early in October.  I was winterizing my house and harvesting the last of the peppers and tomatoes all at once, in a panic.  I ended up adding the garlic cheese to a stir fry, instead.  It was also very yummy atop my split pea soup.

I will attempt the cheesy biscuit endeavor again in the near future.  I promise.

Okay, so now for some slightly different cookies, instead.

(makes approx 25-30 cookies)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

Cream together the following ingredients:
1 stick soft butter (1/2 cup any butter substitute, soft)
1/2 cup splenda or sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
(1 full cup splenda is also ok, if you can't have sugar)

Add:
3 eggs
1/8 teaspoon Guar or Xanthan Gum
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup milk
1/4 tsp cinnamon powder

Mix together well.

SIFT in coconut flour, use 1/4 cup flour, stirring as you add

Add 1 full bag of chocolate chips, blend together.

Spoon onto greased or parchment covered cookie sheet.

Bake for 8-10 minutes, let cool for 5 minutes.
To store: let cool at least 1 hour, place in sealed plastic bags, and keep in refrigerator.

I would really like to get some cleaning done first today, but I have in my head what ought to turn out as some very nice cheese drop biscuits.

More to follow, be healthy and eat safe.

No, no recipes or garden notes today, I simply would like to write down all the events from yesterday while they are still fresh in my mind.

I work in the Pittsburgh area, in Oakland, right where the most damage to windows occurred on the night of Thursday, September 24th 2009.  Thursday I took a vacation day, on Friday I worked.  This is because I have was on the skeleton crew that day.  Thursday I spent the day scoping out where I would park, and also saw the riot police setup for the Lawrenceville riots - no,  mind you, not on purpose.

I'm the kind of person who does not care to see, I only care to ensure that I am as safe as I possibly can be.  Never the less, due to my location yesterday, I still saw what seems like a lot to me.

I caught the bus from about 10 miles outside of the city, parking in a public park that was far enough away that it was not going to be a staging ground for any protestors.  While waiting for the bus I could hear a police radio, which was very close by, but I could not see anyone.  That was a bit eerie, especially since everything else was so amazingly quiet.  My bus came and I was the only one on the bus for the first 20 minutes.  My bus driver was talking to me about his experiences he'd had already that morning.  At 7am that morning he had already needed to have the secret service come collect a person who was handing out fliers for a protest that had no permit.  This is illegal because the bus is government property, apparently.  Nine secret service agents arrived, he told me, within moments of his radioing in to traffic command reporting the problem.  The man was arrested.  My bus driver was a bit shaken up, I could tell, and I was just talking to him about staying safe.  He told me also that he had to go through two military check points every time he ran his round that day.

Then we got to 5th and Craig, we all noticed a riot police formation organizing at the corner.  Our bus driver stopped, got out, crossed the street in the middle of the block through traffic, and talked to an officer on the other side.  After about 3-5 minutes he got back on the bus and kind of murmured "I just got commandeered for police transport."  He sat back in his seat and began to drive again.  I asked him quietly whether he needed us to get off.  It would not have been very inconvenient, since this bus comes past very frequently and was running ahead of schedule.  He explained that he would take each of us to our destinations and comes straight back after that.  As I exited the bus I felt a bit badly for him, so I pointed out to him that he would be much safer today with a bus full of police officers than possible protesters.  He agreed, and maybe looked a little less stunned in response to that.  As I walked from the bus stop, I was noticing the official vehicles.  Remembering the look of the FBI vehicles that arrived in response to a bank robbery that I was working at the bank at the time, I noticed more of them, I think.  Black Cadillac sedans and SUVs were everywhere.  As I walked down the street that had all the broken windows, it was not the boarded windows I noticed, but the Australian secret service sedan that pulled up next to me to park.  They are marked with a sticker in the windshield with the  national flag.  They were all in black suits with the ear-bud feed, I was actually surprised the windows weren't darker, but if they were darker the car would not blend in as well, I guess.  Will all these things just on the way in, I was glad to see that my main lobby doors still had glass, and that the doors were locked so I had to use my key card.  When I arrived upstairs, I arranged to have all but the door by me (I'm receptionist) remain locked, by placing scotch tape over the key holes.  Only two coworkers even bothered asking why, each of whom readily accepted my answer that it was so I could keep a better eye on the security of our suite and quickly secure our floor if needed.  The lobby doors automatically unlock for access to our building in the morning, then lock again at night.

Most of the morning was very quiet, though the nervousness of my coworkers was evident from how much everyone was gravitating toward telling stories of what they'd seen or experienced related to the G-20.  Things were no longer quiet shortly before 11:30, the scheduled start time of the protest.  Outside our building I heard the barking of many many dogs.  We looked out the windows to see that the K-9 squads had just arrived, well over 30 k-9 units of Shepherd and Malinios breeds were barking quite angrily on the street below, just outside our front door.  Then three public transit buses arrived and around 150 riot gear police piled out and went into formation.  Just across the street a small group of protesters were dancing, and then some of them threw poo-burgers (human fecal matter carried in a hamburger bun) at a store front.  The police group just got out the bullhorn and announced "Clear the sidewalk now or you will be arrested."  The group dispersed immediately into all directions, and the sidewalk was cleaned and hosed off, literally within 3 minutes, I've never seen a sight get cleaned up so quickly.  It was like it never happened.  The k-9 and riot police units then deployed to their stations where the protesters march was to take place one block up from my building.  I felt bad that the k-9s were mostly really going nuts.  I imagine that the dogs could smell drugs and were doing exactly as they were trained to do when they smell illegal substances, which is pull against their leash and bark a lot.  A very intimidating sight.  Once again, this whole group came and went so quickly it was as though they had never been there. 

Several officers were stationed on our corner for the rest of the day, and soon we could see the marchers going by on the street they had a permit for, just a half block up from us.  Several of my coworkers left to go take a look then after a while came back reporting that they had stopped the march just before the birmingham bridge and they felt concerned that there may be stand-off.  Turns out the stop was only temporary, seems something had to be cleared from the scheduled parade route.  Soon after I got a notification from our public transit that they were halting all bus service into downtown outside of city limits on federal orders.  That was repealed around 4:30pm.  Between about 2 and 5pm everything was pretty quiet. 

I left work at 5, and proceeded to head toward my bus stop, which I had double checked on our public transit's twitter feed to make sure my bus would not be re-routed in any way.  At that time, every bus stop on 5th and Forbes, going in both directions, from Craft to Craig, all had 2-5 riot gear police stationed within 10 feet of the stop sign.  One young girl at my bus stop was trying to engage an officer in a conversation about some cause she supported, and he was just laughing quietly about it and letting her talk from about 7 feet away from him.  The other two officers there were looking quite purposed.

As we drove out of oakland I saw many people who had obviously been demonstrating earlier just hanging around.  Some had their banners still, some had their faces painted up, some just otherwise looked the part.  I was glad I was leaving, because while it was generally an atmosphere of celebrating a sucessful day, and there were joyful lawn games and people playing music, I also felt there was some lingering tension that was probably going to build into another potential problem once the evening carried on a bit longer.

I got a call and a text message from my employer's emergency notification system later that night stating that conditions may be deteriorating in the Oakland area.  At around midnight I was still at an all-night diner in a town near my house, the diner is about 4 miles outside the city, and 6 miles from Oakland.  My friend and I left around then because a group of young people arrived who were acting very strangely, some still wearing face paint, they started practicing gulf putting, clapping, cheering a bit, and otherwise loitering in the parking lot.

I believe this covers everything I witnessed yesterday.  I just wanted to write it down while I still remember it all pretty clearly.

In parting, a picture my co-worker took while going to check out what was going on outside:

I wonder if that was my commandeered bus from the morning?  ^_^

It is my feeling that if I am going to heat up my kitchen and do baking, I want to have cookies when I'm done, too.

I love chocolate chip cookies.  That are so delicious, and chocolaty.  They were the first thing I tried to make, and I'll just say that the outcome has improved significantly since that first attempt.

Want to make cookies?  Conveniently, the heat level is the same as the bread, so you can just make them in the same bowl you mixed the bread in, and you'll only have to do those dishes once!  (For the asterisk marks, scroll to the bottom for my tips.)

GF Chocolate Chip Cookies (makes approx 10-15 cookies)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

Cream** together the following ingredients:
1 stick soft butter* (1/2 cup any butter substitute, soft)
1/2 cup splenda or sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
(1 full cup splenda is also ok, if you can't have sugar)

Add:
3 eggs
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon Guar or Xanthan Gum

Mix together well.

Sift in coconut flour in the following quantities.
For thin, soft cookies, use 1/4 cup flour
For thick, chewy cookies, use 1/2 cup flour

Add 1/2 bag of chocolate chips, blend together.

I recommend using parchment paper on your cookie sheet, which is available right next to the wax paper and foil at any store. If you don't use parchment paper , make sure you grease your cookie sheet.
Spoon onto cookie sheet, and press flat with spoon.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, let cool for 5-10 minutes.
To store: let cool at least 1 hour, place in sealed plastic bags, and keep in refrigerator.

NOTES:
Since some may be relatively new to baking, here is some tips, tricks and explanations.

* To soften butter that you just took out of the fridge, just put the stick in a bowl, and microwave for 20-25 seconds on high.  It comes out perfectly soft.

** Definition and instruction for creaming butter and sugar together:
Put the softened (not melted) butter into the bottom of the bowl and put the sugar on top of it.  Using either a pastry blender or a potato masher blend them together until the color of the two combined turns almost white, and it has a creamy texture.  Do this before you add any other ingredients.

Many of you know that I've recently been diagnosed with Celiac Disease(October 2008) which is a digestive disorder that makes it impossible for me to digest wheat products.  My quality of life has improved dramatically as I no longer feel ill, however my hassle factor when it comes to eating is also significantly up.

I discovered coconut flour!  I LOVE coconut flour so much.

Why is it so great?  Well, it's easy - that's the best part.  It's cheeper than a lot of methods, too.  Not because the bag of flour is less expensive but because you USE so much less.  That's the great part.  Each recipe requires approximately 3x more eggs than with normal flour, and approximately 1/4 as much flour.  This is great because eggs are cheep.  The flour apparently has such an open fibrous structure that it just sops up all the extra moisture.  Do expect your flour to be a little looser, but the moisture cooks off and the end product is exactly the way you want it.

Getting coconut flour is easy, just click here.   I even did the shopping around for you.
You'll also need some gum.  Yes, that's what helps you avoid crumbly useless bread.  Also easy, just go here.  Yes, that's a little pricer, but you get three for that price.  You might be better off at first to look for Guar or Xanthan Gum at your grocer, or a health food store, since it's available only in bulk online.  You CAN skip the gum in the recipes, but your bread will be crumblier.
You WILL need a flour sifter. (One of these.)  Otherwise your dough with be impossibly lumpy and your bread will have crusty lumps in it.

Nothing else in the recipe is unusual, you can find it at any grocer.

The first think everyone on a gluten-free diet misses is bread.  Bread that can be used for sandwiches is a particularly coveted item in my life, so so many of these breads just crumble when put to that test. 

So here is my sandwich bread recipe for you.

Preheat oven to 350
In a large bowl, mix together:  (If you don't have a blender, us a potato ricer, it's better)
12 grade A large eggs (see above or explanation)
1/2 cup half and half creamer
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup sugar or splenda
1 tsp guar or xanthan gum
pinch salt
optional: 2 tbs milled flax seed
Mix until relatively smooth.

Put 1 and 1/4 cup flour in your flour sifter.  Gradually sift it in, stirring as you go.  Use your fingers to smash lumps, if that's a problem.

The resulting dough should be approximately the consistency of soft playdough.

Oil a bread pan sized 9x3x5 inches or smaller with olive oil.  I use pyrex.  If you have rice flour, you can dust the bottom of the pan with that.  Otherwise, skip it, don't dust with coconut flour.
Press the dough into the pan (it will be sticky) and cut a 1/4 inch deep slice down the center, long ways (a split top loaf keeps its shape better).

Bake at 350 for 55-60 minutes, until toothpick comes out clean.
Let cool, store in gallon size zip lock bag in the fridge, and it will keep well all week, or longer.

Oh, I made cookies while I was at it, and I'll have the recipe for you pretty soon, also.

I'll also put together a "kitchen guide" for you to reference.  This is how I keep my kitchen, the products I use a lot, and how to order, keep fresh, and maintain these products.

To accomplish your own effective organization system, any gardener may find a need for the following five things.

The first requirement to being an "organized gardener" is that you are in possession of a noticeable level of squalor in your home during three seasons of the year. Yes, squalor: disorganization, mess, clutter and the like.  Squalor.

Without the squalor, you can either assume that I have promoted you to a homesteader, or demoted you to hobbyist.  In which case you should continue reading the following directions for being an "organized homesteader" or an "organized hobbyist."

Of course this is all a bit of humor and a grand play with words.  On with the real thing, already!

OK, so really there are just four things you need, and lets get started.

Please pardon the hideous linoleum of my kitchen floor!


First, the fun part.  This is where good habits began for me.  It's like scrap booking without the work. 
What to get and how to make it:
Go get a great big empty photo album with those pages they call "magnetic" which are just sticky paper with plastic over.  Get one that has a sort of three ring binder set up inside so you can shuffle the pages when needed.
While your at the store, pick up some stick-on tabs.  These are going to be section labels.  You can see them in various colors in the picture on the right and left so you see what they are.  "Adhesive index tabs" is what they are called at office supplies company.  You just need a few, one package will be enough.
Write yourself a spine and cover label and tape it on with packaging tape or something similar. 
Stick the tabs on some pages in the book - I put them on seven pages and staggered them so I can see them all.
Put a few un-tabbed pages between each of the tabbed pages.
Here are some label ideas for your tabs:
Designs (garden layouts and building instructions)
Perennials (the ones I have or had and notes on how they did)
Veggies (same as the perennials)
Annuals (same again)
Wishes (where I track what I want to order some time in the future)
Notes (this has my soil test results, botanical information on various plants, etc)
Articles (clipped from magazines, newspapers and the internet)
How to use it:
Get yourself into a good habit!  Here's how - start putting all sorts of fun stuff in between the gardening stuff you stick in here.  Insert stuff you'll want to look at often.  Pictures of your kids, doodles and funny song lyrics, your astrological chart (a focal point of mine) and all kinds of stuff like that.  Don't worry, you can peel anything back out later when your book starts to get crowded and you'd like to get that cute picture into a frame, or something.  It will be there.  The point is to get you into this book, enjoying it and looking at it.  This book will be your answer lifeline this time next year, so just use it.  I show a good example of pages above.  My "veggie" section has the plant tags from the first year I ever bought veggies from the action warehouse.  Next to each plant tag is a little cut out paper note about what I like about the plant, what went wrong, how I fixed anything that went wrong, and whether I wanted to get it again.  The next year I used this page to go buy what I really wanted.  And my process improved.  On the page on the right hand side there are some doodles.  Can you see them?  It's kind of embarrassing to say that I ever thought a system like that would actually work for supporting tomatoes.  But there you have the proof.  I thought that once.  Any ideas on how to do things can be drawn, cut out and stuck into this book.  I suggest dating things.  It's amazing how useful that is later.

OK, so do this one thing first.  Do that and forget I said anything about number 2 through 4.  Develop that habit of record keeping.  Don't jump in so suddenly that you overwhelm yourself and don't accomplish anything.  Just do step one.  That's all.  It's fun, it's cheep, and it's more useful than you yet know!!!


Wait, you're still here?  I guess you really want to know about step two then!  I hope you already did step one, I hope you have a great habit and are reaping the benefits of garden tracking.

Step two is to get a garden journal together. 

What to get:
I'm not thrilled with the layout and design of the one I have, but it was given to me and it was my grandfather's and has his handwriting in it still and notes from the garden he kept.  It feels like I'm living his garden through me, sometimes, like he's still here a little bit. And besides that it works and has made a HUGE difference.  It really doesn't matter what you get, so long as the pages are sturdy and it has sections for months broken down in some way.  The most common break down is this: early month gets one page, mid month gets two pages and late month gets one page, repeat for each month, chronologically.  This is usually surrounded and interspersed by little bits about projects, tasks, grids for garden planning, and other such truck.  I don't use the peripheral goop, but that "peripheral goop" was the most used part by my grandfather.  I guess it depends on how you like to organize.

What you'll want to record:
The biggest deal in your life is the weather!  You know it, and so do I.  So write it down!  Just write the date, include the year, and then describe anything notable about the weather.  Here's an example of how helpful this is: this February we had an ice storm right after a long week of 60 degree weather.  Everyone at work was saying about how this is so unusual and how they never saw anything like it.  Do NOT rely on your memory!!!  Here's why - I went home that night and went to write the odd weather pattern in my garden journal and discovered something incredible: this had happened every single year for the past three years during the same week of February.  No one believed me.

The other thing you'll want to record is planting dates, blooming times, harvest times, etc.  And if you wish to do something earlier or later next year, put in a note about what you'd rather do in the appropriate month's section.  You don't need to put anything else in here if you don't want to.  I don't!

But however are you going to find time to actually write down first and last bloom dates, or harvest times or seeding dates?  I mean, you're too busy out there in the garden, right?  If there's a freak snow, you're way too busy running around covering up your tender plants, right?  Yes, you are right.  So here's my suggestion.  In the winter - do you have a winter?  Or a scorching hot season?  Or any sort of lull in the gardening seasons?  I do.  So during this lull, go through your digital photographs.  There is a new feature on digital pictures.  They are digitally stamped with at "taken date" you can see this by hovering over the thumbnail with your mouse, or you can view it in the details section on the left bar of your explorer folder.  Look for pictures of new blooms, of harvested food, of seedlings, of snow, or of plants that have died (yes you should take pictures of your failures too).  You'll be able to figure out the date from this.  Just make sure your camera knows what today's date really is!  Ask a teenager to check it for you if you don't know how.  It is amazing how technology can help you, isn't it!  Write these dates down sometime when you do have time.  You'll see when you planted those carrot seeds, you know - the ones that weren't ripe until December and you were harvesting them in the middle of the snow.  Who?  Oh, that wasn't you, that was me.  So this year I know to plant my second round of seeds earlier. 

Again I say - now just go do it!  Go try this!  Get into a good habit, and next year you'll be so amazingly happy you did!!!  Doing this will get so much easier after you see the benefits.  Stop here, ignore the rest of my banter.  It's just too much to start all at once.


Yes, there is a thing-three.  Thing-three is a simple three ring binder with sheet protectors in it. 

So easy to make.  So simple to explain.  Just make it a good label so you can find it on the shelf.

How to use it:
This is for copies of good ideas out of library books, articles ripped out of magazines, or the entire magazine if it was that good of an issue. 

Featured in the photo is:
On the left an article from Psychology magazine about the health benefits of the microbes in soil (they reduce inflammation in the lining of the brain which studies are showing this prevents anxiety and depression disorder). 
On the right is a stapled packet of pages copied out of a library book (the best ideas from the book of basically how to recycle stuff for your garden). 
Make sure you copy the cover of any book, too, so you can take that book out again some time if you'd like to read it again. 

These are just a couple examples of what can be kept in here.  It's a bulk pages version of the sticky pages binder from #1.  Not useful as often, but a great reference, and so much better than having a bunch of loose paper.



And the fourth - last and probably also the least.  Go ahead and get the month-by-month edition for you state, amend it with a heavy book mark for the vegetable section - which makes it easy to flip to the current month any time you need to pull it off the shelf.  Highlight it to oblivion and scribble in notes until you can barely see the page behind your penciled marks!  Not everything in this book is correct for your micro-climate, so write in what was correct.  Some things, like chemical fertilizer suggestions, only apply to other gardeners, not you or me.  Sometimes you need a phone number the same time every year.  Put it in the margin.  Some things are good to have as handy information, so highlight those.  Very useful.  Enjoy!

It is mornings like this that make me want to put in a blog about how I've been keeping my gardening information organized.

Amaranth seeds overwinter, which is kind of ironic because I decided I didn't want to grow them again this year.  Since they are supposed to be native to Mexico I didn't think they would come back up.  Oh well, they're pretty, anyways.


Asparagus is so cute!  And I put another 2 inches of soil down over these. 


I no longer remember which are the June bearing and which are ever bearing.  I guess I'll find out.

Ok, so I'm back after a long winter off.  I can't remember what caused me to stop blogging my garden, but I'm quite certain it had a lot to do with my getting a job.  I was on unemployment when I discovered all this blogging stuff.  So I'm very excited to be back in someone's employ, with health benefits and all that wonderful stuff!

And in October of 2008 I discovered that I'm Celiac.  That means I can't have Wheat, Barley, or Rye, and Oats are questionable.  This is a major change to the diet, but it's a good thing because now I'm no longer swollen and severely distended in my abdominal region.  I'm likely to occasionally blog about food I can eat, and also likely to start experimenting with growing non-traditional grains.

So, let the growing season begin!!!

I planted peas and spinach on St. Patty's, on the cool plot behind the porch.  The spinach came up, but the peas not yet.  Currently I have peas soaking and I'm waiting for them to sprout this time then I'm going to plant them in the sun-drenched spot by the stairs into the neighbor's yard.  Oh, yeah, I did finish those stairs I mentioned way back in June.  I also planted some brassicas in that fenced area.  Brussel sprouts (managed to over-winter one brussel) kholrabhi, and brocoli.  Plus some turnips in there for good measure.  I need to plant carrots again, too.  But I lost my light before I got to those yesterday.

I really wanted to order an apple tree this year, I want a "little big" in the variety Goldrush.  It's a promising variety, supposed to be the longest keeper of all.  But I missed the window of opportunity on the half off deals, so I'm gona have to wait.  Bummer.  But I'm such a sucker for those 25 off a purchase of 50 coupons that come in the mail!

The hardy issai kiwi - which is self pollinating - acutally it's seedless polythenocarpic, and thus it doesn't do pollination - it survived the winter!  Hooray.  It was just a spindly stick in the windy cold.  I took the bags from my cat's food and put them over tomato stands to protect it, but with the tops open to avoid over heating.  It worked for the kiwi, but not for the Rosemary.  I'm thinking to try rosemary in the cold frame this year.  But I still need to finish the cover on the cold frame.  Otherwise it's a completed structure.

I'm also really wanting rubarb this year, and I'm thinking to try some french sorrel.

And I'm still pondering away at my options for what would basically amount to a large scale cold frame, with a door and tall enough to stand up in, and with cloth walls.  Just something to extend the seasons around here.  I'm still pondering designs.

And I'm also still pondering chickens for farther down the road.  I love the idea.

My best friend bought me a canary for Yule.  So I'm getting used to the needs of birds, thier temperments and other necessary elements of care, by looking after this adorable little singing canary.  I'm pretty well set in my mind that I'm not getting chickens while I still have cats.  It's just too much to keep after.  Especially with the prospect of returning to school in the near future.  I'm thinking to go back to school for statistics.  Because my job will cover it!

I also discovered that the conservatory offers a master gardener course every year for $200.  That's a very viable option for me.  I'd really like to have a cerficiation behind my name for the gardens.