Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Yesterday's Smoothie

This fine sunny afternoon, I had this thought:

"Yesterday's smoothie is today's road trip treat!"

Yep, smoothie season is here.  Time to stock up on frozen fruits, flaxseed meal and frozen spinach!  Don't forget the cranberry, pomegranate and acai juice.

While I love to share all the foods I make, (while living alone) I still wind up making much more than I can consume at one time.  So a side benefit of this is enjoying the food again, later.  For example, right now I've got a freezer full of beans and rice, vegetable stew with dumplings, etc. MMM.  Lots of healthy lunches for the office.

Whenever I make a blender-full of fruit smoothie, I get another one and a half frozen in my fridge.  I enjoyed a very nice mango, peach, cherry smoothie for about 37 miles on I-40 this afternoon.  A great treat for myself.  Love it!

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Scones

This morning, I tried the recipe for scones on the Gluten Free Gourmand's blog.  I haven't ever made scones before, and rarely eat them.  But life is about learning and trying new things, so I thought I'd try these out.

I made them with my favorite flour blend, which is 2 parts rice four, 1 part potato starch, and 1 part tapioca flour/starch (so, 1 cup rice, 1/2 cup potato, 1/2 cup tapioca).  With a little xantham gum.  I used 1/4 tsp. as she indicated in the recipe.


I used half and half instead of real cream.  I can't believe how fattening cream is (or half and half).  I will definitely look into using an alternative in the future, like perhaps the coconut cream?  Or maybe almond milk or something?

As for the added ingredients, I used what I had around, dried cranberries and chocolate chips.  If I make them again, I will use cranberries, but not the chocolate chips.  I think the chocolate made the scones too sweet.  So they are scones, trying to be a cookie, it seems.  They should make up their mind, these scones, to either be a cookie or a scone.  By taking out the chocolate, I believe I will help them secure a true identity of being a scone.

Anyway, my batch of these came out a little stickier than probably the recipe author's.  The idea of cutting the dough apart and separate them on the baking sheet did not work well.  Check it out:


But they baked up nicely, and I drizzled a little icing on them.  They're a good dessert scone, and I'll enjoy passing them out to friends and coworkers.  They are a good consistency.  It's a good recipe.