Rocking Gluten-Free-School-Holiday Flapjacks

School is out and I felt the need to celebrate the afternoon in style by making gluten-free flapjacks!

This was my first attempt at gf flapjacks, and boy did I strike it lucky the first time round.

I adapted a recipe by Chef Jackie Cameron of Hartford House in the Kwazulu Natal Midlands (original recipe found here).

Here is my version:

Potato Flour Flapjacks

Ingredients:

2 Eggs (jumbo)
50ml Butter (melted)
200ml Milk
2 cups (500ml) Potato flour
3/4tsp Bicarbonate of soda
3/4tsp Creme of tartar

Quick and Unfussy Method:

• Chuck the potato flour, bicarb and creme of tartar into a bowl.
• Make a hole in the middle of the ingredients.
• Toss the butter, milk and eggs into the hole (in that order in case your butter is a bit hot, then the cold milk buffers the eggs from cooking)
• Mix it together (I used a fork - ironically, despite being an ex-chef I have never owned an electric mixer or even a whisk for home use...I prefer robust home cooking which is no mess, no fuss).
• Use a pan with some form of non-stick 'itemage' coating the bottom (I used butter for richness, but you could use oil or Spray 'n Cook or whatever blows your hair back)

The consistency of this batter was SO perfect that the batter forms its own perfect circle when ladelled into the pan (well, that's what mine did...you might need to tweak your batter with a little more milk or a little more flour).


The recipe made 6 of these big beauties in total...


...which I serve with this sucrose-free treat...


...which looks like this when dolloped with decadently thick cream.


Mamasita blessed the cooking process with her voluptuous clay presence ;-D


I now consider my holiday officially started in sweet style - a flapjack, a fresh mug of rooibos chai, a Summer breeze and the following playlist:
Chris Cornell - Black Hole Sun (acoustic);
The Dirty Skirts - Daddy Don't Disco;
Incubus - Wish You Were Here; and
Chris Cornell - Long Gone.

Happy holidays!

Quote: The Big Bang Theory

Season 2, Episode 2, The Codpiece Topology:

Howard Wolowitz: 'Renaissance faires aren't about historical accuracy. They're about taking chubby girls who work at Kinko's and lacing them up in corsets so tight their bosoms jump out and say: "Howdy!"'

Sheldon Cooper: 'Bosoms would not have said: "Howdy!" in the fifteenth century. If anything, they would have said: "Hazaa!"'

Moonish Superstitionliness :-)

While visiting my parents this evening, my grandfather (who is convalescing at their home after his stroke) mentioned that we should turn over some money in our pockets because it is a new moon. My husband has a special penchant for idioms so I thought I'd look it up for him.

As it turns out, it isn't an idiom but rather a superstition. As quoted in an article called Superstitions and the Moon - Myths and Superstitions Linked with the Moon by Carole Anne Somerville:

"Anyone seeking good fortune should bow to the new moon and turn over any silver coins in his pocket. The silver colour of the Moon is rumoured to have a direct affinity with the silver from which the coins were made. So if a person holds up a coin to a new moon and wishes for money, over the days ahead as the moon 'increases' in size, so too will their bank balance!

Being without money when seeing a new moon is thought to be unlucky but if a person has some coins and turns them over without taking them out of their pocket, they will have plenty money over the month ahead and the wish that's made while turning the coins will be fulfilled."

Cheers to that :-)

For you, for me, for us

"In the heart of every man,
wherever he is born,
whatever his education and tastes,
there is one small corner which is Italian,
the part which finds regimentation irksome,
the dangers of war frightening,
strict morality stifling,
that part which loves frivolous and entertaining art,
admires larger than life solitary heroes,
and dreams of impossible liberation
from the strictures of tidy existence."
~Luigi Barzini~

So here's to grabbing life by the kahunas, embodying la dolce vita, and tripping the light fantastic.
I love you (you know who you are).
xxx

I wantses it....my precious :-)

The Shire, New Zealand
http://www.hobbitontours.com/

"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
~ J.R.R. Tolkien ~

Oh, I would that we could all reside happily
in our own little piece of the shire!

Musings on a past life

'A visual feast of food and words' is how I would describe Shauna James Ahern's tantalising blog Gluten-Free Girl.

Her post titled pickled figs posed the questions:
what has made you a better cook, and what do you like to eat with figs?

My answers tumbled forth as:

The Prue Leith College of Food and Wine (now the Prue Leith Chef's Academy) in Pretoria, South Africa made me a better cook...a trained chef in fact. It also made me agressive due to the time constraints inherent in food preparation, impatient due to the perfectionism demanded of the job and, eventually, loathsome of the thing that I had once loved the most to do. The celiac sealed the deal...get out unscathed before the profession took me down.

These days it is patience that has made me a much better cook. A willingness to see that there are many roads that lead to Rome, that all willing participants in the kitchen (mostly my precious husband) have their own style which can be best harnessed, and an inherent sense of adventure in trying out old favourites with new gluten-free ingredients.

With figs? Goat's chevin and free-range ostrich biltong, eaten with oven-roasted red peppers.

It's strange when a random question can evoke such strong memories and feelings of what now feels like a long-past chapter of my life. The way I see it?
A recipe is only as good as the quality of its ingredients. Same goes for a life.

Summer days are here again!

I love me some flowey, flowery, coolishly-cotton summer dresses! There's nothing like grabbing a dress out the cupboard that just "works", thereby avoiding having to co-ordinate outfits in any great detail.

I'm blessed to find myself working in a school with a casual-smart approach to dress code (rather than smart-casual or even, horrors, formal). Thanks, boss! :-)

Fresh Produce, Pick 'n Pay's clothing label, have a nifty range of summer dresses in-store at the moment. Pretty and reasonably priced, they're worth a gander if you have a well-stocked PnP in your area.

Summery dresses, plush new swimming towels, hibiscus in bloom, the smell of jasmine in the air and a warm breeze blowing inviting you to come outside and play - reminds me of the excitement of beach holidays along the South Coast as a child...and so does this poem. :-)

maggie and milly and molly and may

by e. e. cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

I spy with my little eye...

...something beginning with an, "Oops!" :-)


Teaching has its moments that bring a smile to your face. Today held just such a moment.

In preparation for their upcoming Cambridge exams, my AS-Biology students have been recapping their microscope skills (how to use eyepiece graticules and stage micrometers, etc.). Having just enough apparatus for each current student, I was suitably unimpressed when one of them shouted out:
"Ma'am, I can't see through the x40 objective".

As my stomach dropped, I walked over to assess the situation. Indeed, x4 and x10 were perfect, but x40 was entirely obscured. Hypothesis: probable cracked objective that could only be repaired next year.

In my second lab today, the same thing happened with a different student and a different microscope. Wondering just exactly when my students had become microscope cracking marauders, I strolled over to the offending object. It was then that something caught my eye.

The ceiling light glinted off the top of the eyepiece making a rather strange pattern. I removed the eyepiece and stared up at it. Lo and behold, the "crack" cascading across the view at x40 (thus, magnified to x400) was nothing more than eyelash streaks on the ocular lens, caused by anxious students pushing their eyes against the microscope. I rubbed it off quickly and quietly using the hem of my shirt and pronounced it to be "fixed".

I was let off the hook easy on that one :-)

Driving home, I realised that I often put my eye to every single microscope many times during one lab session to help out the students when they need it. Being a little bit obsessive when it comes to hygiene, I let out an internal, "Ewww", at the thought of all the skin grease my ocular orbits had come into contact with.

First stop on arriving home: basin full of water and good old Sunlight soap!

On faith and politics...

"The faith of a church or of a nation is an adequate faith only when it inspires and enables people to give of their time and energy to shape the various institutions -- social, economic, and political -- of the common life."

James Luther Adams

I encourage you to read a post by South African political scientist, Laurence Caromba, called "Is 'racial violence' worse than 'violence'?"

What does South Africa's current leadership and general status quo inspire in you?

Happy Birthday, Donna!

"Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time"

Jean Paul Richter

Donna is a lady of many talents. Aspiring writer, hobby-artist, small-business owner, wife, Womble-master, dear friend and general blessing - she is a charming person to know.

Many happy returns of your special day. I'm so glad you were born and that I have the pleasure of knowing you.