catching up!

it's been a while! time to get caught up... september and october are very busy for us. our anniversary is at the end of september and then my birthday is only another 2 weeks later. so i'm going to try to remember some of the fun we've been having!

for our anniversary this year (on september 24--and i have several friends with anniversaries around the same date! what an auspicious time of year. cheers also go out to sara and jessica s!), we kept it low-key. we went and had a lovely dinner at ole in inman square. i had the vegetarian chiles rellenos--mmm, mmm! we're still getting used to the new 'hood, but it is so nice to be able to go to such a great neighborhood and WALK!

then the next day was free smithsonian day. since i work at a museum, i get into a lot of places for free anyway, but it's usually just me and not lee as well. and we thought we would pick somewhere that we wouldn't normally go. we decided to go to fruitlands, which has transcendental ties, but also a little art museum and shaker house there. it was fun!

it was a beautiful day, and they have all these tree sculptures around. they are amazing.

the old alcott farmhouse and then under the arbor next to it.

it was fun. and finally, we went to see blue man group on that sunday. hilarious! a really neat show. i would recommend it to anyone looking for something interactive and funny. we really enjoyed it. over all, a nice anniversary weekend.

the best vegetarian loaf ever

i'm going to say it... i hate those nasty nut and lentil loaves that people think vegetarians like to eat. really? i mean, they're gross and they have strange textures. who wants to eat that? and when i was a kid, i hated meatloaf, too. my mom's was dry and bland. she just put plain tomato paste on top after she baked it! ew... but my mom is not a very good cook--she knows this.

i was flipping through my joy of cooking looking for some home-style dinner inspiration. it was a rough week last week, and i just wanted comfort food. i found it! it's phenomenal! and it's a loaf. i changed the recipe a bit, as usual. it called for store bought baked, smoked tofu and i could not find this. other options were not gluten free. so we made our own smoked tofu out on our grill with our grill smoker. it was great :) i wish i had a better picture. but this thing was so delicious we had eaten half of it before i remembered to take a picture!


smokey tofu vegetable loaf (inspired by the joy of cooking's smoked tofu burgers)

7 oz. smoked tofu
5 oz. sliced button mushrooms
1 c chopped broccoli
1/3 c chopped orange bell pepper
1/4 c sliced scallions
2 tsp peeled and minced ginger
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 c cooked rice (you can use any kind on hand. we happened to have leftover sushi rice, so that's what i used. i might use brown rice next time if i plan ahead.)
2/3 c bread crumbs (i made crumbs from 2 slices of pamela's bread mix bread)
2 eggs, whisked
1 tbsp soy sauce
plenty of the following spices: black pepper, salt, paprika
pinch of chipotle

1. we had to grill and smoke our tofu.
2. preheat oven to 375 and oil a loaf pan.
3. saute mushrooms in olive oil. when they start to release their liquid, add broccoli, bell pepper and scallions. cook until slightly soft, then add ginger, garlic and spices. add rice, stir around and remove from heat.
4. put veggies and rice into food processor. our food processor is small, so we had to do all this in a couple batches.
5. run smoked tofu through the food processor. mix together the rice/veggie mixture, tofu, breadcrumbs, eggs and soy sauce.
6. the mixture should be pretty uniform, but you should be able to see little veggie pieces and whatnot. it should not look like a "custard."
7. press into loaf pan and bake for about 30 minutes, until nice and browned on top.

we had this with dilled mashed potatoes and gravy and buttered carrots. it was comfort on a plate. and the loaf makes fantastic leftovers. i kept imagining tofu loaf sandwiches this winter. i can't wait to eat this again.

great september fun

we've had such a busy september already, and it's not even our anniversary yet! i just wanted to share the fun things we've been doing.

first, last saturday, september 11, we went up to hampton beach for the annual seafood festival. i had never been to hampton beach before, and neither had lee (because it's fun--for those of you who know lee, you know that his parents scorn absolutely anything that could be perceived as fun...). it was everything kitch-y and cheesy that i expect a trip to the shore should be. beth, you would love it! there was the seafood festival, which was full of all the people of all stripes that you expect would be there, there was an arcade, a shooting gallery, and we when we were done having fun at all those places, we went up to a 3rd floor roof bar and just watched the waves below. i loved it!

of course, i forgot my camera so i have no pictures of myself eating crab and watermelon gazpacho and freshly made fried potato chips. i have no pictures of me creaming lee at ms. pac man or galaga (and they were only a quarter in the arcade! just like 1989!). i know that some of you may not realize this about me, but i am PASSIONATE about atari and old school arcade games. i played pinball, skee-ball, centipede. i want to go back for the arcade alone...

on our way up to new hampshire, we stopped in reading at a market i had heard about called natural food exchange. they have thousands of gluten free products! i got baguettes, some hard-to-find flours, and this pancake mix from king arthur that made the best pancakes i have ever had :)

anyway, the next day we went out to the 'burbs to visit our dear friends mike & maria and their lovely baby. we went to new england's largest oktoberfest at a german-american club in walpole. there were men in lederhosen and saurkraut--which is one of my FAVORITE foods...

fun german music...

and of course our friends' cute son :)

then this weekend, we rented another car to go apple picking. we ended up getting another cheap car for the whole weekend (thank you, enterprise weekend rates! yes--you can get a car for $9.99/day!!! sadly, zipcar cannot beat that...). so we also had a date night at route 1 mini golf. says it right there on their web site: yup, it's the home of the big orange dinosaur. it was another great time with mini golf, where yet again i won. lee has a hard time accepting my supremacy in sports such as these, but i had 2, count them, 2 holes-in-one! then we went to the arcade and played a couple of rounds of ice-ball (just like skee-ball, with heavier balls that are white), and then went to the dairy castle for soft serve.

the dairy castle is behind me, here.

and here's the ice-ball and then lee posing with our great prizes: stickers and some temporary tattoos :)

on sunday, we went to honey pot hill orchards for apple picking with our friend, allison. honey pot hill was a new place for us. i don't think i'll go next year. they have tv commercials and we just wanted to see what all the hubbub was about. it was MADNESS! but we got a lot of apples and had a good time.

here i am on a ladder picking.

and here's just 1 of honey pot hill's 3 parking lots. crazy!

but it was fun and i'm glad we could go. and i've already made some apple goodies: apple muffins for breakfast and today i had a tuna melt and i made the tuna salad with a nice crunchy apple, olive oil, lemon juice and just a touch of mustard. topped with swiss and grilled to perfection :)

yay for september!

pineapple upside down cake

we had a bbq. i really wanted a tasty and easy dessert to make. then i craved it: pineapple upside down cake. this might be the best pineapple upside down cake i've ever had. there was none leftover from the bbq. i so wish i had taken a picture of them whole, beautiful, unmolded. but alas, they went that fast. i only have this picture of my wonderful slice of heaven.

thank you, the baking beauties, who i have on my list of favorite blogs. they are gluten free and gave me my base recipe here. i adapted a bit...sorry, i don't put mayonnaise in cake...

eat your hearts out, pineapple upside down cake lovers!

pineapple upside down cake
yield: 2 cakes

1 1/2 c white rice flour
3/4 c tapioca starch
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp xanthan gum
4 eggs
1 1/4 c sugar
2/3 c sour cream
scant 1 c pineapple juice (drained from the can of slices)
2 tsp pineapple liqueur

topping:
1/2 c butter
1 1/2 c brown sugar
1 can sliced pineapple rings
maraschino cherries

1. preheat oven to 350. grease and flour 2 8" cake pans.
2. melt butter. divide evenly between the 2 cake pans.
3. sprinkle the brown sugar evenly over the butter. divide between the 2 cakes.
4. top decoratively with pineapple rings and maraschino cherries. set aside.
5. mix together dry ingredients.
6. mix eggs, sugar and sour cream until fluffy. pour in dry ingredients, pineapple juice and pineapple liqueur. mix well.
7. pour evenly over the pineapple slices in the prepared cake pans.
8. bake for 25-30 minutes until done. cakes should be lightly golden and should spring back lightly to the touch.
9. remove from oven and cool for 5 minutes. remove from pans at this time or they will be stuck forever!

WARNING: you will eat all of this cake! :)

a pizza crust to keep!

one of the things i miss about being gluten free is pizza. most everything else i don't care about. it's funny--these days, the smell of some baking things just make me feel sick to my stomach, a true reminder of how bad i used to feel :( but not pizza... luckily, there is some great gluten free pizza out there. some of you might remember the wonderful gluten free pizza and jojos that i had in ohio upon a visit to my family. i will go to altieri's again! and there is a fantastic place here called zing in porter square. my favorite at zing is the blue october: a pizza with squash sauce, spinach, caramelized onions, and i substitute feta for the blue cheese. heaven!

in any case, i like to make pizza sometimes too, and i finally found a crust i can work with. don't let the long ingredient list scare you! this particular pizza that i made was spread with ricotta (and the tiniest amount of pizza sauce on top of this), sauteed apples, browned onions, cheddar and sage. YUM!


a good pizza crust (adapted from gluten free mommy)
yield: 1 crust

1/4 c millet flour
3/4 c white rice flour
1/4 c sweet rice flour (called mochiko in asian stores)
3/4 c tapioca starch
2 tsp xanthan gum
3/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp additional sugar (for proofing the yeast)
1 packet active dry yeast
3/4 c warm water (about 115 degrees)
2 tbsp ricotta cheese
2 eggs
2 1/2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp honey

1. place pizza stone or pan in the oven and heat to 170 degrees.
2. mix olive oil, ricotta cheese, vinegar and honey in a measuring cup and set aside. allow to come to room temperature. do not use cold ingredients!
3. combine all dry ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer. give a couple of whirls with the paddle attachment (NOT DOUGH HOOK) to aerate.
4. heat your water.
5. in a small separate bowl, add yeast stirred with the tsp of sugar and 1/4 c of the warmed water.
6. let it sit for a few minutes so that you can see it's active. it will get all foamy.
7. whirl your dry ingredients again and add your eggs and then the ricotta mixture.
8. add the yeast mixture and then gauge your liquids... the dough should look like a stiff cake batter. it should still hold the twirls from the mixer well and should be shiny. add additional heated water as necessary to achieve this. i only added an extra 1/4 c of water, coming to a total of 1/2 c of warm water. the original recipe writer used a total of 3/4 c. it depends on how dry your flours are--but you'll have to play with this one!
9. turn the oven off and remove your pizza stone/pan. cover with parchment paper. spread dough over the top. i used wet hands to spread over the stone. i might use a rolling pin and some wax paper on top the next time to make a thinner crust. but do whatever you feel comfortable with :)
10. put stone back in the OFF oven and let rise for 40 minutes. (full disclosure, i only let mine rise for 25 because i was hungry!)
11. once it has risen, turn oven to 375 and prebake for 10 minutes.
12. remove and add your toppings. bake for an additional 7-10 minutes.

vermont...finally!

i took lee to vermont for his birthday. it was a month ago today that we took this trip, but now i finally have a computer that works and is hooked up to everything!

i worked on the saturday before lee's birthday. so he had that day to spend on his own. his instructions were to pick me up at work, with a zipcar that i had rented, and he would drive where i told him to go. he did not know where i was going to take him. he eventually figured out that it was vermont--i mean, it's not too difficult to figure out, after all. we stayed in a cheap hotel in montpelier. nothing fancy, but inns in vermont are terrifically expensive! and what with a new condo, i wanted to have a good time without breaking the bank... so we checked in around 7pm and promptly started the festivities. first on the list was a stop on vermonts beer trail: the alchemist pub. Now, this may have been lee's birthday celebration, but i must say that i was ELATED to find out that the alchemist makes its very own gluten free beer! it's called celia pale ale and it was THE BEST gluten free beer i have ever had. possibly the best pale ale i've ever had... too bad they don't sell their beer anywhere but at the pub :( but lee sampled several delicious beers while there and then we had a great dinner. thanks, alchemist!

we then woke up the next morning and headed straight out for the ben & jerry's factory tour in waterbury. it was fun and smelled delicious. this is also where, though it was lee's birthday, they happened to be serving my favorite ice cream flavor as the free sample :) it was mint chocolate chunk. for those of you who know me, you know that i always go to ice cream shops with the intention of trying something new and fun, but each time, as soon as i get up to the counter, i just order the shop's mint chocolate ice cream, whatever it is. how predictable! lee was also able to nab us an additional sample to share :)

anyway, this was vermont, and i'm happy to report that by 1pm, lee and i had sampled the following:

• ice cream at ben & jerry's
• plenty of cheese at the cabot annex store
• chocolates from lake champlain's factory store
• apple cider
• wine and hard cider

nary a vegetable or healthy item to be found. so we drove into stowe and had a wonderful salad at the green goddess cafe :)

then we drove up to burlington. i know there are some die-hard burlington fans out there, but i have to say that i just don't really have to go again. lee and i used to live in boulder, co, and burlington and boulder are so much alike (but not in the ways that we liked boulder--in the ways that we disliked boulder...). in any case, we had a nice stroll around on some festival day. then we went to a creperie called the skinny pancake that makes gluten free buckwheat crepes! both of our dinners were delicious--lee did not have a gluten free or vegetarian/pescatarian variety, so i could not sample--and we were so full that we had no room for dessert. but lee's was a completely local crepe: local handmade sausage, cheese, maple syrup, and some veggies. it looked great.


we rolled ourselves back to our hotel, slept soundly, and drove back to boston the next morning. it was a great trip, though it sounded more like a trip for me than for lee! i had never been to vermont before, and i will go back. but lee thought it was a great trip and also agreed that we should go again sooner rather than later. maybe we'll get in some good snowshoeing this year?


lee's real birthday was the following tuesday, august 10. lee wanted a real new england meal, so i made lobster, steamed mussels, biscuits, maple glazed carrots, and boston cream pie. i am eating a lot more seafood these days (my choices are so limited, and i immensely enjoy what i've been having!), but i'm not a huge lobster fan. lee got most of the lobster to himself and then was able to gorge himself on plenty of mussels too.


all in all, i think he had a great birthday :)

i did it!

finally finished sherlock holmes! only 2000 pages and 7 months later... (and i didn't even read most of the annotations and notes!) i also enjoyed every minute of them. they are great reading and a lot of fun :)

also, sorry i have not posted any images or anything attractive recently. our new house is overwhelming us with too much to do--floodings, painting, etc. :( also, our computer at home has died, and while we did get a new netbook almost immediately, our front room/library has been in a shambles with bed-building and other activities so i cannot hook it up to our external hard-drive to remove pictures from our camera! so, hopefully soon i will have pictures from our trip to vermont for lee's birthday--which was almost a month ago!