Vegan Peach Ice Cream

Gluten-free dairy-free peach ice cream.

A small gift for you this weekend. Some cool, frosty, non-dairy peachy goodness. A vegan ice cream recipe for the sticky dog days of late summer. Wait. Is it August already? Good goddess, the summer is careening by. It's true what they say about the concept of time. It speeds up and gets fluid as you get, um, shall we say, older. Seasoned.

One might even venture, weathered.

During your ritual morning walk your husband turns to you and mentions a moment from yesterday and the dirt path beneath you starts to swim (not that swimming surfaces are all that unusual out here in the shimmering southwest sun).

You ask, Wait. Was that yesterday? 

And he thinks a minute. Wait, he says. Friday? 

You hear the brittle dryness of the desert wind. The roar of the loud cobalt sky. There are red and sienna stones beneath your feet. The same stones as yesterday, last week, last year.

That was last week, you offer gently, shaking your head in a spin cycle of empathy and disbelief and astonishment. 

Dude, he says. Recalculating.

Tell me about it, you sigh.

Weeks morph into days.

How about some peach ice cream for breakfast?

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Gluten-Free Goddess Zucchini Bread

Delicious gluten-free zucchini bread.

Today's post will be short and sweet. I have no proper words for the complicated stew of thoughts and feelings stirring inside me. My heart breaks for every living soul touched by Aurora, Colorado's horrific tragedy. As we collectively sift through the debris and damage, my hope is that insight, wisdom and peace will prevail.

I am reprising a favorite recipe here on Gluten-Free Goddess. A cinnamon laced tea bread made with garden fresh zucchini.

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Gluten-Free Blueberry Muffin Recipe with Coconut Flour

Tender gluten-free dairy-free blueberry muffins, warm from the oven.

Tenderness on the block ...

Baking a batch of fresh blueberry muffins is one of my favorite simple pleasures. I do it early, before the summer day turns sultry and my body slows to a liquid ballet of movement designed to conserve every last salty drop of intention and energy my creaky, vanilla lotioned body can muster. I rise and bake to the morning sun, stirring my batter half asleep, sipping hot coffee (my last remaining addiction). A local mockingbird sings his deceit outside the open apartment window. He is remarkable in his uncanny repertoire. A gifted mimic. Silhouetted high against the North Hollywood sky, perched on the tallest utility pole.

I've been thinking about all the thoughtful comments on my last post- my message in a bottle. Your words were a balm and a message tossed back. Received and pondered. Talked about and appreciated.

I've been reading this week (as I always do). Finding books a provocative companion. Words that illuminate and poke. Shared stories that send shivers of recognition, trigger anger, or tug one's soul (kicking and whining) into that impossible place- that place where you don't want to go. The stuff that scares you.

Because it might be true.

And it might be painful. And it just might ask you to consider something. Something hard. Something true.

I've been reading about this business of being a daughter. This isn't the first time I've looked at this subject. I am no stranger to the postmodern Jungian women's psychology section. But reading a book at twenty is one thing. You bring to its wisdom your newly hatched self-hood, your fresh experience, your familial-infused expectations (and prejudices). The expectations, assumptions and dreams of a young woman. You are the heroine, the daughter starting out on your journey, looking at a long and winding road ahead. So you read. And listen. And play with ideas. You see what fits. And what doesn't.

And then you stand, stirring blueberry muffin batter on a clear July morning, decades later. And here, now, the words ring deeper. And the truth stings darker. There is a lifetime of days spiraling out beneath you and above you (because by now you know that time is not linear, or finite, like some calendar). And the same words vibrate with a different meaning, engraved with experience and regret. The same words illuminate as if from a different light source. Not from the world.

From within you.

And so here I am. A daughter, still. Learning something old as if it is new. And discovering truths as if for the first time, arriving, as T. S. Elliot wrote, where we started.


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Gluten-Free Whole Grain Olive Bread

Crusty, fragrant gluten-free olive bread, warm from the oven.

Grainy, whole grain bliss.

Giving up bread is hard. Bread is basic. Almost a need. Like air. Like breathing. It is both routine and celebratory. Prosaic and divine. A simple, torn-off hunk of good bread embodies a deep sense of nourishment, for body and soul. The bewitching mix of a handful of flour, some yeast, some salt, some water.

Stir. Knead. Rest. Bake.

And as if by magic, this warm and fragrant alchemical creation called bread appears.

And all is right with the world.

When I think of our honeymoon in Italy (seventeen years ago, darling) I think of the color of the evening sky above the cypress. A shot of burnished gold that shimmered with the faintest veil of pink and lemon yellow. I think about the shopkeepers sweeping their doorsteps each morning, nodding their Buon giorno! as we walked to fetch a New York Times and a cappuccino not served in a paper cup. There was love, yes. And wine. And olives.

And there was bread.


The best bread I had ever devoured. 

My go-to breakfast was a plate sized flat-bread studded with olives, paper thin tomato slices, or chopped fresh garlic. Chewy, salty, sweet, and earthy. A bread worth the walk into town. I must have eaten dozens in our too-short two week stay.

Here in southern California, I have been living almost breadless. By choice. The hundreds of gluten-free breads I have baked in the past nine years have not tempted me into the kitchen. Not even the best gluten-free bread recipes. Starch, you see, is not agreeing with me lately. I think we may be breaking up. For good. My body hums happily without it. My waistline is trimmer without it (though not quite up to honeymoon standards, I am seeing the promise of a waistline appear). But this week I started remembering.

The bread.

In Italy.

And the craving began.

So I began bargaining with myself. The dialogue went something like this.

Okay. You want a piece of bread, darling? You're going to have to bake it without starch. Without sugar. You know that, right? And you are prepared to plunge into abject failure if this gluten-free whole grain concoction doesn't turn out? It is a risk, you know. Baking without gluten. Making bread without starches. It's tricky. It's fickle. So if this turns out badly, promise you won't despair.

I pulled out every non-starchy flour and ingredient from my snug little pantry and imagined my pre-celiac Italian memory. I stood and stared at the tumble of half-used bags and battered boxes on the counter for a good ten minutes. Steve walked by and glanced at his wife of seventeen years standing deer-in-the-headlights still.

He knew not to ask.

I grabbed brown rice flour. Almond meal. Millet flour. Quinoa flakes. Rice bran. Garlic. Sea salt. Olive oil. An impossible, motley crew of ingredients that would prompt any Italian baker to raise her eyebrows in a justified Che cosa succede?

And guess what, my Bella Bambina?

You know what.

Smooches. xox


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Gluten-Free Multigrain Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

Multigrain gluten-free lemon poppy seed muffins.

I usually don't bake in the summer. I mean. Do you? Who in their right mind likes to crank up the oven when it's hot and steamy outside? At my age darling, I'm sticky enough as it is. Hot flashing and fanning myself with the latest issue of AARP as I bounce and waggle on one of those bubblegum hued balance balls, lurching at my desk like a pear-bottomed yoga reject seeking not enlightenment, I am sorry to tell you, but the promise of burning three hundred extra calories as I sit and write. Apparently using one's sacred core (or is it sacroiliac?) to perch atop a ridiculously big ball with a penchant for rolling sideways requires fuel. More fuel than say, slumping.

Or lying on the sofa reading a book. With the oscillating fan on high.

Which is what I'd rather be doing.

Preferably with a bar of organic dark chocolate.

I would rather keep the kitchen cool. By not cooking (that's why The Goddess- in her infinite wisdom- invented tomato sandwiches).

But a certain husband had a craving.

For a lemon poppy seed muffin. Our son planted this idea in his head last week, during an impromptu visit. Said son was blithely munching on a lovely looking gluten-free lemon poppy seed muffin. Freshly baked. Adapted from one of my muffin recipes.

He mentioned, in passing, it was fabulous.

His secret?

I used a little cornmeal, he told us.

And thus the muffin craving was born.

And who am I to deny my husband.

He buys me dark chocolate after all.

And turns on the fan. So that I don't have to get up from the sofa.


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Gluten-Free Cherry Clafoutis

Gluten-free dessert is solved. A luscious cherry clafoutis, no sugar.

My cherry clafoutis has a little secret. Well. Two secrets. Wait. Actually, three. At least. It's a clafoutis bursting with secrets. But first, I must mention something.

Are you listening, darling?

Put down your iPhone for a moment, will you? You can text later. When you're not driving. Or brushing your teeth- hazardous especially if one attempts texting while scrubbing one's used-to-be-pearly-enough whites (before the advent of dental bleaching) with a vibrating rechargeable toothbrush. Vanilla mint toothpaste can spatter in shockingly wide and impressive arcs, inflicting remarkable damage upon various household goods and personal items including tidy, stacked baskets of freshly folded jeans and t-shirts still cozy-warm from the dryer in the basement, I am sorry to tell you.

But I digress. Back to dessert.


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Our New Apartment: Design By Color

Create a budget-friendly built-in look with IKEA bookcases.

My mind is a wee bit toasted this happy June Monday. No Darling, I haven't been indulging in any fragrant mind-altering substances. I've been unpacking. I've been organizing (like a sixties housewife popping mother's little helpers). I've been making hundreds thousands one million micro-decisions. Important, earthshaking decisions. Like, where should we stow tea boxes? Chocolate? Quinoa flakes? And what drawer would be most convenient for the ice cream scoops? (Yes, I have three.) Where should the recycled aluminum foil and rolls of toilet paper go- you know, in a feng shui sense?

Because above all else, I am seeking calm. I am cultivating peace. I am inviting inspiration. Preparing for my muse. Opening to a new chapter in this winding road journey of ours, hurtling as we are, ever faster to our mortality (yes, another June birthday looms).

We have landed in Studio City on a quiet leafy street, where pajama clad neighbors walk their dogs early, sipping soy lattes and yawning to birdsong.

These are my people.

I haven't been cooking much (though I did bake some chocolate mint cupcakes for a certain son's birthday this weekend), which means I don't have a new recipe to share- yet. So I thought I'd share a few iPhone shots of our new living space. A quick peep into our new apartment. And just so you know?

I shelve my books by color.

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