Spring Tonic Present

My friend Mary is the type of gal who sends Christmas presents four months later — but they're always worth the wait. I feel more like getting presents in the Spring, anyway. This wonderful old book illustration is from a volume in my Christmas box, which arrived today: Willy Pogany's Mother Goose, ©1928 Thomas Nelson & Sons. (I think the vast age of this out of print book means I can show this image without going to jail, but if you don't hear me blathering oh I mean blogging anymore all of sudden, you'll know that's not true and I'm in the clink.) I keep meaning to bring my camera down to the barn to take pictures of my beautiful mare Cappi, who is white and follows me around. She suffers from that scourge of the Appaloosa breed, moonblindness, but is the sweetest horse in the world — when you're not on her back. She spooks super-easy, due to her eye problems, but I love just hanging out with her and watching her gambol in the new grass like a little lamb. Dutchman's Breeches are blooming in the woods, and the birds are singing like crazy. Spring is here, despite the forecast snow this weekend. Yeah!

Pizza Pie

Here's a list of food I miss most on my gluten-free diet: pizza, egg rolls, and White Castle cheeseburgers. Gluten is the 'glue" that holds breadstuffs together. 1% of the population, mostly those of Irish and Northern European stock (of which I'm both), can't handle the gluten glycoprotein gliadin in wheat, barley, or rye — it scars their innards and causes all sorts of problems. The only option is to not eat any gluten! I've been on a long quest to find a pizza crust that actually tastes like pizza crust. Whole Foods sells a brown rice crust that tastes like chewy Kleenex, and corn tortillas taste like corn tortillas. But I have found one I like a lot, and it's both quick and cheap to make. It's definitely a "thin crust" pizza crust, but since that's the St. Louis style I grew up on, more good!

1 cup whole grain gluten-free flour ( I combine 1/2 cup sorghum with 1/4 cup brown rice and 1/4 cup teff flours)
1 tablespoon freshly ground flaxmeal
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon Rumford baking powder
1 egg
1/3 cup water
2 tablespoons cornmeal
2 tablespoons olive oil

Preheat oven to 425°. Mix first four dry ingredients together. Separate egg, reserve yolk and add white to water. Whisk till frothy. (The egg white gives the crust pliability without making it "eggy.") Add to dry ingredients and mix till a ball of dough forms. (Add a dab more water if too crumbly.) Add 1 TBSP oil and 1 TBSP cornmeal to cookie sheet, spreading with hands into a circle shape. Put dough in oil circle and flatten, adding rest of oil and cornmeal to top as you smooth and flatten. Bake for 10 minutes before topping. Go wild with the topping! I mix the reserved yolk with the tomato sauce or pesto. Turn oven down to 400° and bake for 15 minutes more, until cheese is golden. There you go. I'd eat this even if I could tolerate gluten. It has a very nice crunchy nuttiness. Now for egg roll wrappers...

Spring Texture

Here are some springtime textures for your eyes to chew. Spring is in the air. I finished my Spring Shower Shawl just in time for the vernal equinox tomorrow. I love it, even though I should have ended it 32 rows sooner to make the edging sync better with the stitch pattern. Design and learn! The Elvincraft yarn used is perfect for shawls: light and fluffy yet full of body.

Garden Club Luncheons

Spring is on the wing, and this is the time of year when I make big plans for my garden. I am, however, one of the world's laziest gardeners. Somehow "gardening" gardening feels like outdoor housework. And my feelings about housework are decidedly negative. I keep my house livable, but am not at all an enthusiastic housekeeper. The only domestic arts I get really excited about are knitting, sewing, and decorating (with junk, of course.) For some reason, I'm a good cook, but that's just an inborn flair, certainly not a passion. Because cooking inevitably means cleaning up after myself. I must have been a scullery maid drudge in a former life, I hate to clean so much. Cleaning makes me feel so domesticated. The only thing that prevents us from living in squalor is that I hate having a dirty house even more than I hate cleaning. So there's a glimpse into my tortured mind. As Southern Belles are taught from birth: "Never learn to cook or clean, because then they'll expect you to!" But let us return to gardening. Just as I love a clean house, I love a pretty garden. But I'm a planter, not a weeder. Thank God for native prairie flowers and grasses: just char their plot every other spring or so and that's about all the maintenance they need. No weeding, watering, feeding, deadheading or mulching. (Wouldn't it be great if you could just char your house every two years to keep it spotless? Amen!) I want to start a Garden Club for people like me, who plant weeds not pansies. We could have delicate little luncheons of tuna aspic and melba toast, the table set with darling little place cards like the ones above, and boast about how little work we do in our gardens. What a bonus if these lackadaisical gardeners were energetic knitters as well!

Scorched Earth Policy

It's hard to believe this blackened, frosty patch of prairie will ever be full of flowers and grasses as beautiful as the ones shown here and here and here, but it will, and soon! (The last photo is blurry because I had just picked up my shivering chihuahua before snapping.) Hurry Spring! The kind folks at The Nature Institute, this side of the river's best kept beauty secret, fired up all my weeds yesterday. Fire is Nature's way of fertilizing and revitalizing prairie. Illinois used to be covered with prairie, and is in fact known as The Prairie State, although now those original ecosystems are mostly confined to pioneer graveyards and the sides of railroad tracks. That is sad, but I don't like being sad, so I planted a prairie of my own! Stay tuned for pictures of its fire-revitalized self.

Wee Little Lass

Bridget goes to the beauty parlor at least once a month to have her hair and nails done. The doggie spa shot was definitely her favorite scene in Beverly Hills Chihuahua. She likes to look good, and prefers having her shampoo done by professionals. We've tried it at home, but she just wasn't satisfied with my technique. No, they do it much better at the Jersey-Calhoun Veterinary hospital, and Bridget has bonded with a heavily pierced teenager there who knows how to give her a painless pedicure. Yesterday, in honor of St. Patrick's Day next week, they decorated Bridget with these little bows. She looked like a little step-dancer. The bows were held in place with tiny rubber bands, and didn't stay on longer than it took to snap these pix. Even our cat Brother thought she looked mighty cute! (And yes, Bridget is lounging on my Gothic Revival Shawl, which has turned into her favorite doggie blankie. Might as well give all that hard work to someone who really appreciates it!)

Comfort Junk

I'm just finishing up with a miserable cold, and today I have the time for full recuperation: lemony tea, soup, and browsing through comfort junk. The ultimate in comfort junk for me is The Workbasket, a magazine that was published during all the fun decades of yore. I have a huge stash of these, because people don't seem to value them as much as I do, and they rarely go for more than the original cover price shown here: 25¢. The magazine reminds me of my grandma's for some reason, probably because she was so crafty. When I flip through its pages, I can smell the percolator coffee and Raleigh ciggies of her pea-soup green carpeted house. My grandma would have abhorred the workmanship of that orange pantsuit, though. Tear your eyes away from the scary hairdo long enough to check out those puckery seams!

Pet Me!

My darling blue chihuahua Bridget is looking so forward to Tuesday, March 3, when she can finally watch Beverly Hills Chihuahua on DVD. She needs extra belly rubs to stay calm. The anticipation is palpable!