Tag Archives: buckwheat

Homey doings in early spring.

books, food and cooking, Lent, my garden, , , , ,

This month I had two occasions when friends visited me for one or two nights, two different friends each time. It was fun to have people to cook for. About an hour before the first pair of guests were to arrive I found out that one of them couldn’t eat the bread I had planned to serve with soup, because of gluten intolerance. I have just enough time to make muffins, I thought, using Bob’s Red Mill gluten-free flour again. I mixed up the wet ingredients, and then — could not find that flour anywhere.

Though I rarely bake anymore, I have a dozen sorts of flours in a refrigerator in the garage. I rummaged through those and decided to use one cup of cassava flour and one cup of buckwheat flour. The latter was the sort one would use for buckwheat pancakes, that is, from roasted groats. Some people don’t like that flavor, so I was taking a chance that my guests would.

The muffins turned out very nice, we all thought. But the cassava flour is a little heavy, and I think if I try this again, I’ll use more buckwheat and less cassava. That very evening I discovered the missing flour, in the wrong refrigerator.

The last time I made pancakes I did not use buckwheat flour, but I did use this beautiful batter bowl that I received as a Christmas gift. It holds an amount of batter that is just right for one person, and its presence on my kitchen counter has encouraged me to make pancakes for just myself, for the first time ever.

Another type of bread I helped to bake recently was the little prosphora that our parish uses as one type of altar bread at Divine Liturgy. That day we only made these small ones, and two people prepared dough. One of the dough makers used more flour than usual, and we ended up with a record number of prosphora — so while they were cooling I took their picture:

Lent is coming right up — for us Orthodox it begins on Monday. Many people I know like to choose some “spiritual reading” for Lent, and I have done that many times. Our women’s book group has often chosen a book to read together and discuss after Pascha. But this year we didn’t; we still haven’t discussed the last book we chose, to read during Advent.

At one point I thought I would read The Seer: The Life of the Prophet Samuel and its Relevance Today during this season. And then I looked around my house and noticed so many other worthy titles. Maybe I would cast lots among these below, and let God decide for me:

But the finality of that action frightened me. It’s not likely that I will finish any of these big books during Lent anyway, because I always seem to use any extra time to attend the lovely Lenten services at church. So in the end I decided to read (from) all of them, and I’ve stacked them up next to my reading chairs as my Lenten Library; my plan is to read at least a little from one or two of them every day. Being goal-oriented does not come naturally!

hairy bittercress

The last couple of days have been sunny at times, and the weeds in the garden are getting my attention, as they grow like weeds in springtime. So I got out there and pulled a bunch. I try to keep a thick layer of mulch on my garden to prevent weeds, but I guess I got behind in adding to that layer. I’m hoping to do that this week.

The anemones and crocuses that I planted at the end of November are starting to bloom, and the muscari and daffodils are showing leaves; obviously so late in the fall was not optimal for getting them in the ground. One reason I got busy weeding was to make sure they won’t be hindered from lifting their pretty faces to the sun. Of course, it’s good for me to do that with my own face when I get the chance, and I trust that will be the case more and more as springtime unfolds, in the earth and the air, and in these anemones.

What I was given on my Home Day.

home, other gardens, wildflowers, , , , , ,

Today was my Slow/Stay at Home/R&R/Catch up Day. That sounds like a lot to expect of one day, especially when you stay up writing until the hands of the clock are telling you it has already become that day, and therefore you will start out short on sleep.

But what a blessing it turned out to be! The first gift was a phone call from my grandson and his wife, the parents of my great-granddaughter, and that was heartwarming. I loved talking about maternity care — what she got as well as cultural trends — with Izzie, who is bouncing back with the resilience of youth and those hormones a woman gets a good dose of in childbirth. The whole family and her mom were walking at a park when Roger decided to phone me and we had our satisfying visit.

And then a spell of plant identification. 🙂 Yes, and I didn’t even have to go out and discover the plant myself. My farmer friend from whom I buy lamb every year had posted a picture of flowers on Instagram, glad to see them in the pasture before the sheep ate them. She didn’t say their name so I assumed she didn’t know, but they were so pretty, I wanted to find out.

I asked Pippin’s help, but she didn’t know them, either, so I looked in the Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest guide, even though the authors don’t try to include my area of California in their book; I might still find a clue. And I did see one very similar, which was enough to take to the Internet and search with. I’m pasting the Wikipedia photo here, almost identical to the farmer’s, of downingia concolor or calicoflower, which is in the Campanulaceae Family. Aren’t they darling? I wonder if the sheep have eaten them by now…

Kasha, or roasted buckwheat groats, is one of my favorite things to eat on fast days. I like to cook a potful so that I have several servings on hand, but I had run out of that a couple of weeks ago. This package that was given to me by a friend is nearly used up now; it cooks up the way I like it and has the best flavor, so I think I will try to get this type from now on. I got to eat kasha for lunch, and stashed three containers in the fridge and freezer.

I had told myself that I would not read or write blogs today, since I did just do that last night, and because I wanted to catch up on one or two of the many other things that I’m behind on. Lately it’s become R&R just to wash the dishes, and when I was washing up my kasha pot I just kept going, and ended up spending a couple of hours on the kitchen. What took the longest was giving my stove top and range hood a thorough cleaning of the sort is hasn’t had for ages. After that experience, my hands told me they needed a manicure.

The sun came out — but not until 6:00 p.m. But after bending over my housework all that time, and feeling not rushed, the sunshine was all the encouragement I needed to get outside. I would just take the easiest stroll, no hurry.

Once I was in the neighborhood where I took pictures for my “Roses on My Path” series a long time ago that doesn’t feel that long ago (before my husband was even sick), I remembered that I wanted to go back to the house I called the Rose House back then, to find whether anything had changed.

I found it, and the display was more opulent than ever. This is the house where the roses do not appear to be cared for, though I continue to think they must be getting water from somewhere to make it through our rainless summers. All the roses on this post are from that house, and a link to the previous post might show up as one of the “related” posts below.

They still have the mailbox with stylistic roses painted on it, but now it is hidden deep under a broad spray of blooms hanging down. I think maybe that bush seems twice as tall as before because it has climbed into a tree behind it.

The profusion of flowers is probably a result of the rain of the last two years. The species are very special. I can’t tell you much about them, except that I find them exquisite, but many of my readers will know things just by looking. This time I noticed an identifying tag at the base of one bush that has the trunk of a tree. It was grown from a cutting taken in 2001; how long, I wonder, was the rose bush cared for before it was allowed to grow wild?

I feasted my eyes and my nose for quite a while, walking and gawking up and down and wishing I were in an official rose garden with a proper bench. I wanted to sit for a while to gaze at their loveliness, bursting out through the tangled canes and deadwood. Eventually there was nothing to do but go home. I felt thoroughly loved through those roses.

But when I got here I had to write after all, while it is yet today.
It’s one way I have of thanking God for all His wonderful gifts
that pour down even on — or is it especially on? — a slow day.