ready for a meeting.

Who needs gluten when there are fresh, ripe organic strawberries?!

an utter failure.

I can’t complain too much about this utter failure. The dough was sweet. And the resulting cookies were decidedly edible. And had coconut in them.

But my vision for a tender-crumbed brown sugar cookie that spread like a chocolate chip cookie with bits of unsweetened coconut floating around for texture and surprise was ultimately unrealized. Instead I got a creamy ecru-colored cookie that spread too much and snapped with every bite (that’s from the sugar melting then hardening…as IF I were making candy!). I used a mixture of almond meal, brown rice flour and amaranth powder, and then the usual suspects: unsalted butter, egg, vanilla, coconut, sugar. Next time I think I’ll add some baking powder and also a pinch of xanthan gum to see if I can help the cookies retain some density rather than spreading themselves so thin, the poor dolls.

Just more evidence that I’ve never met a cookie I didn’t like: all 18 cookies have been happily consumed!

-aa

popcorn love

They say it’s popcorn love
But it’s more than that to me
Popcorn love
Just wait, they will see
It’s popcorn love
Every morning, noon and night
Popcorn love

…

(click here for this post’s soundtrack.)

I am the nonglutenfree gal in the crew. despite this, i have undying love for the popcorn, most especially at the rialto cinema in santa rosa where they use real butter. real butter. a few years ago i learned that i am allowed to have my own popcorn and not share it. hold it the whole time and self-administer — one piece at a time or fistsful at my discretion. It was a very freeing discovery for a missy such as me — always worrying about everyone else. but tonight i learned to share again. with Aly, the lab’s ally, at Harold & Maude.

so what i have to say about being gluten free is that i’m glad i don’t have that particular constraint (lord knows i have plenty others at my advanced age), but if i had to pick a disease, celiac seems pretty manageable, especially if you are lucky enough to find our book (when it’s published), which will have scads of delish recipes, even for pizza and donuts. didn’t mean to go all marketing on you, but that’s the deal, yo.

xo molly

(p.s. props to new edition — but why are they bitin’ on michael so hard?)