Weekend blog link love

It's Friday, or as I first spelled it after too much caffeine and before a spell-check: "Firday".

Sending you some linky-love (linky, people, not kinky) for the weekend ahead.

For gluten-free yumminess:

• Check out Iris's waffle recipes (pic below) over at The Daily Dietribe

• And Naomi's baking up a brownie storm (pic below) over at Straight Into Bed Cakefree and Dried

If all you need is love:

• Shauna James Ahern is sharing some with a beautiful post over at Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef

If you're short on cute, small & human or cute, small & furry:

• Head on over to *e* to fill-up on the gorgeousness.
  

Have a great weekend peeps!

A "Jane" by (m)any other name(s)...

My top ten list-a-Janes...

1. Admiral Kathryn Janeway (former Captain of the Starfleet starship, USS Voyager);
2. Patrick Jane (consultant to the CBI in The Mentalist);
3. Fun with Dick and Jane (movie with Jim Carrey and Tea Leoni);
   
4. Jane Austen (English novelist);
5. Jane Eyre (novel by Charlotte Bronte which took me WAY too long to read in first year varsity English lit);
6. Jane Goodall (chimpanzee researcher);
7. Sweet Jane (my fave cover by the Cowboy Junkies);
8. Jane Lynch (wicked funny comedian currently on show in Glee);
9. Jane Fonda (Barbarella 4-eva-eva);
10. Jane Seymour (the oh so chaste Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, who has apparently found her wilder movie side as she's aging).
    

Break on through to the other side

Gotta love The Doors, right?

It's weird being on the other side of an experience you never knew how you'd get through.

Since caring for someone with a terminal illness can be all-consuming, it's taken me a while to even know what I just liked to do in spare time anymore.

Gardening till I got blisters was immensely helpful in externalising painful emotions. As was sitting for mind-numbing hours in front of the TV watching nothing in particular. Eventually, hints of what I felt like doing trickled through.

Learning how to mosaic has become a favourite. There is something immensely gratifying about creating a work of art from hundreds of shards of porcelain. You're putting together the pieces, in a manner of speaking.

Baking for tastebud-pleasure also re-emerged once my appetite did.

Not avoiding crowds anymore (as an ode to sucking the proverbial marrow out of life) has also led to some cool new experiences - expo's and markets visited, concerts watched and even braving a world cup soccer match!

Mourning is a bit like having a veil drawn over your life. Once it's lifted, the clarity with which you see things has changed. And since there are so many doors you can choose to walk through, you've kinda got to just keep on keepin' on.

Find peace, our little man.

Schatzi Miteff
15 March 2004 - 17 May 2010

You've taught us to face life with fierce intensity,
and to make moments matter.

You were so loved.

You'll be missed.

Our Schatzi

Six years ago, a few weeks after our wedding (and after a few episodes of the 70s show), we purchased a tiny dachshund puppy and called him Schatzi. He is the furry light of our lives, a surrogate quadruped only-child with an eccentric personality brought on by being raised by two highly eccentric human parents.

He is a true delight to be around, fiercely protective of those he loves, and owner of the cutest over-sized, wrinkled front paws; velvety snout and soft ears. After he takes naps in the sun, the top of his furry head smells like sunshine.

To our great and unmeasurable grief, he has just been diagnosed with lymphoma. So, dear readers, I'm going to be taking a blogging/internet break to live in the moment, cherishing every precious moment with our little boy that I can.

We have him on the best raw diet, supplements, homeopathy and cortisone treatment available, but have decided not to subject him to the endless vet visits, needles and pain that chemotherapy would entail. As a very humane vet we know told us:
"Dogs live in the moment. They can't understand why they are in pain."
So we've decided to focus on keeping him as healthy as possible for as long as possible, and to just make whatever doggily days he has here on earth as fantastic as possible!

We don't know what the future holds - we're hoping beyond all hopes that he will be one of those cases that confounds medical knowledge by living way beyond his prognosis. And we're praying that if there's a sausage-shaped miracle to be handed out by God, that it'll be Schatzi's for the taking.

Join us in that fervent prayer for him, please.

My Butternut-Chickpea Hummus Recipe

My fave post-work snack!

Ingredients:

• 1 small baked butternut
• 1 tin chickpeas
• 1 tblsp olive oil
• 1 tblsp water
  
• salt
• cumin

Method:

1. Zhoesh ingredients together in a food processor.
2. Serve on brown rice cakes with butter lettuce.
   

Aubergine Flower

1 - Slice.

2 - Fry in a little olive oil till soft (about 5 mins each side)
and sprinkle with salt.

3 - Serve as a flower with a centre of pesto
and a pollen dusting of Danish feta.

Weekend Treat: Chickpea Brownies

Sounds gross right? WRONG! This is awesomeness on a plate. Don't ask me how this turns out so yummy - it just does!

Discovery? Browsing for recipes with garbanzo beans, I found this base recipe at Group Recipes and then set out to make it decadent without being loaded with fat.

The result? Adjectives uttered that you want any good brownie description to include: moist, rich, chocolatey... See below and surprise your taste buds by making it!

My Garbanzo Bean Brownie Recipe

Brownie Ingredients:

• 3 eggs
• 1 tin chickpeas
• 4 tbsp cocoa
• 4 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 1/2 tsp bicarb + 1/2 tsp creme of tartar

Method:

• Zhoesh all ingredients in a blender/small food processor.
• Bake at 175 degrees Celsius for 20 mins in a buttered square baking dish.

Icing:

• Melt two tablespoons each of butter + milk + sugar on low heat till sugar is dissolved. Then stir in two tablespoons of cocoa powder.
• Pour icing over brownies and sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Born-up-a-gluten-free and have a grand weekend!

Basiliciousness part two!

This recipe isn't really much of a recipe at all. It's just an amalgamation of two intense flavours tempered with little "toasties" :-)

To make:

• Zoesh about 8 tomatoes in a food processor and then simmer them on the stove for ten minutes with some salt.
• Garnish with fresh basil (in fact, just after this photo was taken, I threw in a whole handful of basil leaves and it was sublime!)
• Top with a mini gluten-free "toastie" (recipe below), which are just slices of day-old homemade potato flour scones drizzled with olive oil and grilled till crispy in the oven. (Crumbled cream crackers, croutons or melba toast would make a great substitution if you're blessed enough to be able to eat gluten).
  

Scones
(gluten-free)

Makes 12

This recipe comes from a TV show which used to air on South African TV when I was little called "Kideo", presented by the lovely Natasha Sutherland (the ex-wife of that philandering, ridiculously corny singer, Steve Hofmeyr) and a talking donkey puppet called Mr Chinwag!

You cannot ask for a simpler, more reliable recipe, which makes soft, delicious scones when baked with cake flour. Obviously, having to de-glutenise the recipe changes things a little.

Yes, the recipe is still reliable. Yes, the scones are still mouthwateringly soft WHEN EATEN STRAIGHT OUT THE OVEN AND STILL WARM! As soon as these reach room temp and you've only used potato flour, they get rigid. BUT that's what makes them perfect for slicing and grilling into "toasties", so it's a win-win situation :-)

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• (if you're using normal cake flour made from wheat OR a gluten-free cake flour mix which you can substitute cup-for-cup, follow recipe as is. However, if you are using only potato flour, you will need to allow for about 1 cup of milk or just over).
  
• 1/2 tsp bicarb + 1 tsp creme of tartar
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1/2 cup oil
• 1 egg
• 1/4 tsp salt

Method:

1. Beat egg & mix all ingredients together with a spoon.
2. Bake in a buttered cup-cake pan for 12 - 15 minutes (or till golden) at 175 to 180 degrees Celsius.
   

Basilicious!

My twenties have brought with them a taste for fresh basil that my teens did not harbour. I am an avid balcony gardener, and proudly nursed a fledgling basil plant to glorious and riotous bloom right through the highveld Winter of 2009 (a miracle in itself, apparently, when even Keith Kirsten says to rip 'em out and start fresh in Summer), only to have a garden critter who likes the taste almost as much as hubs and I decimate it a month before Spring. The joys of pesticide-free gardening, right?

So the fresh basil for today and tomorrow's recipes comes courtesy of a friend and colleague of mine, Carolina, who gifted me with a large ziploc bag full of beautiful basil before Winter gets its claws in.

Cheesy Sweet Potato with Leafy Greens

1. Scrub sweet potatoes and bake, wrapped in tinfoil, in an oven at 180 degrees Celsius for about 60 minutes.
2. Once soft, slice open about three-quarters of the way through, sprinkle with a pinch of salt and insert a slice of Gouda cheese. Pop the potato back in the still-warm oven for about 5 minutes till the cheese is melted.
   
3. Serve on a bed of salad greens (I used sweet iceberg lettuce, fresh basil and cucumber slices).
4. Born-up-a-gluten-free-tree!