Recipes

Hello, friends!  A lot’s been going on over here.

Firstly, I got contacts.  For my eyes.  I’d been avoiding it for awhile, but the necessity of fixing my terrible vision made itself clear last week when, during a game of pick up field hockey on some multi-purpose turf fields, I yelled over to a guy on the sidelines, ostensibly waiting his turn to join the game — “Oh, hey, do you want to sub in?”

Which really would have been fine and rather accommodating, except for the fact that, upon closer inspection, the guy turned out to be a 14-year-old boy in a baseball uniform waiting for his mother to come pick him up, looking at me like I’d just sprouted another head.  Oops.

Contacts!  Fine.

The second thing that happened this week was the official one-year anniversary of my cross-country move to SF.  One whole year!  A year ago, I was packing up all of my things and eating oreo cake and taking a nervous flight, and then unpacking all of my things in a new and small and lovely apartment.  With a boy!  I mean, whoa.  The whole living-with-a-boy reality was hard to grasp at first, but it set in firmly that first morning in our new place, when I abruptly discovered that we were out of toilet paper.  Who doesn’t buy extra rolls of toilet paper?!?

Boys, that’s who.

I learned that lesson quickly, and Ben and I haven’t had any (fine, many) issues (toilet paper-related or otherwise) since.  It turns out that this boy is an expert pasta maker, a skilled note-leaver/cartoon draw-er, the dapperest of dance partners, and an enthusiastic helper in the effort to ration our newly acquired boxes of Girl Scout cookies.  A good man, clearly.

Thirdly, this week was K.Gro’s birthday!  For those that don’t know her, K.Gro is special. She is a bff/cousin extraordinaire and a recent inductee into the ranks of the gluten-intolerant. Happy gluten-free birthday, K.Gro!  Naturally, I thought some cookies were in order.  They’re my first foray into gluten-free baking and I have to say, all gluten aside, these are good.  Their texture is perfection: crispy-shelled and soft-and-chewy-crumbed.  Flavor-wise, these are deep and full of chocolate – not quite as peanut buttery as I’d prefer, but I’m the kind of person who’d prefer everything to taste more like peanut butter, so that should come with a grain of (sea) salt.  Which is also essential to the recipe.

So tell me — have you tried gluten-free baking yet?  What are the tricks of the gluten-free trade?  Leave word in the comments — inquiring (and cookie/cake/bread-loving) minds want to know!

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