My apple pies are done and one of them is gluten free, so I’m re-posting the recipe and how-to video.
Unlike regular dough which comes together in a food processor, Michael McCamley’s recipe for gluten free dough in Gluten Free Baking is worked by hand. The dough is sticky and a bit messy, but the end result is delicious. I used Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free Flour for the pie, and have used rice flour for gluten free cookies and gluten free pancakes.
Guess what I did? I labeled the pie using my ceramics letters. Fun!
Happy Thanksgiving,Hon!
Gluten free apple pie before being baked and after!
Gluten Free Pastry Dough
Ingredients:
3 2/3 cups gluten free flour, plus extra for dusting
1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
1/3 cup confectioners’ sugar
1 stick butter (1/2 cup) plus extra for greasing (I used Crisco vegetable shortening.)
1 egg, plus extra for glazing
1/2 cup milk (I used almond milk)
Directions:
To make pastry dough, combine the flour, xanthan gum, and confectioner’s sugar in a large bowl. Rub in butter (or vegetable shortening) with your fingertips until mixture resembles fine bread crumbs. Add the egg and milk (or almond milk) and combine to make dough. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill in refrigerator for 20 minutes.
After dough has chilled, preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
On a gluten free-floured surface, divide dough in two. Roll each piece out to form a large circle*–one to line pie plate and one to become top of pie.
Line pie plate with one of the pasty circles and spoon in the apple filling. (See Apple Pie filling below.)
Mix together a little milk (or almond milk) and egg and brush rim of pastry with this. Add second pastry circle as a lid and, using a fork, crimp edges of dough all the way around. Pierce pie in the middle a couple of times to let out steam during baking. If you make a basket weave top, no need to pierce dough.
Brush top of the pie with beaten egg and sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 35-40 minutes, until golden.
Serves 8
Apple Pie Filling
Ingredients:
6 cups apple slices (I use a combination of Granny Smith and other varieties)
3/4 cup sugar (I cut the sugar to about 1/2 cup)
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
approximately 1 Tablespoon gluten free flour
dash salt
1 egg, beaten (used to brush on top of crust before baking)
Directions:
Combine apples, sugar, lemon juice, spices and salt. This mixture will give off a lot of liquid so use a slotted spoon when spooning into pie crust, allowing you to spoon the apple mixture without the excess liquid.
Tips:
*I rolled out the dough by a)pressing dough ball down to flatten it, b)sandwiching dough between two pieces of wax paper, then c)rolling the rolling pin on top of the wax paper. (Demo can be seen in the video.) If the dough sticks to the wax paper, you can spray the wax paper with non-stick spray.
**You can make this pie ahead and freeze it. Let pie cool completely before wrapping in saran wrap and aluminum foil. A couple of days before serving, defrost at room temperature.
Serving options:
Serve warm–after removing from oven, let cool about 20 minutes.
Serve room temperature–cool completely.
Rewarm defrosted pie– warm in a preheated 250- 275 degrees F oven, uncovered, until desired temperature.
Hon, you know I like to post happy things with occasional contemplations. But.
But my heart is heavy after yet another school shooting amidst a spate of violence in a disease that has infected the United States. Thoughts of horror in classrooms invades my mind and I tell myself to think of the ocean, the forest, the mountains and sky.
Throughout the year at the preschool, we drill for emergencies: fire, shelter-in-place, and active shooter. The morning after the tragedy in Uvalde, Texas we drilled.
My co-teacher had taken three children to the bathroom, so I was alone in the classroom with six two year-olds when we were heard “Active shooter in the building!” Should we stay in the classroom or run?
I blacked out the window on our door, bolted the door, and told my kids to get down and stay quiet. It was hard for them. Was Miss Naomi serious? She never speaks in that tone. My tone said Now! I mean it! Shhh!
As soon it seemed safer to run, we did. My toddlers are little and their wobbly legs can’t run fast without tripping and falling. I scooped up one, held hands with three, and teachers who were running with their students through my classroom scooped up the others and ran holding them.
We gathered outside. One teacher didn’t know it was a drill.
The critique from our security guard? Run much, much farther.
I posted the video of the New York City Children’s Choir singing Holy Night December 15, 2012, the day after the horrific Sandy Hook School tragedy. At the time, my youngest wanted to know if December 14 would become a national day of mourning. We’d have to add February 14 for Parkland and many more.
I can’t stop thinking about the precious children whose eyes tear up when they look at their teachers for reassurance. Is this a drill or real?
The first time I posted about Lapland was when my daughter Morgan contributed animation to a very cool six-and-a-half-minute video. Available on Vimeo, “Santa is a Psychedelic Mushroom” explores Laplandic folklore surrounding the origin of Santa.
Another daughter, who is currently studying abroad, spent the weekend in Lapland. She flew from Madrid to Helsinki and from Helsinki to Rovaniemi, the capital of Lapland, with the goal of seeing the Northern Lights. She and her friends crossed into the Arctic Circle by riding on a giant sled pulled by a snowmobile! Fun!
Cool Lapland Facts:
Arctic Circle “The Arctic Circle is a circle of latitude that runs 66°33′45.9″ north of the Equator. It marks the southernmost latitude where the sun can stay continuously below or above the horizon for 24 hours–these phenomena are known as the Midnight Sun in the summer and the Polar Night (“Kaamos”) in the winter.” https://www.visitrovaniemi.fi/love/arctic-circle/
Midnight Sun “Because almost all of Lapland lies above the Arctic Circle, summer means that the sun (or more accurately daylight) doesn’t go away for between two and four months, depending on how north you venture. In northernmost Finland, the sun just circles in the sky all day and all night. Farther south, the sun may dip behind the fells or trees, but the sky remains bright.” https://www.lapland.fi/visit/only-in-lapland/land-of-the-midnight-sun/
Polar Night “Polar night happens only in the far north and south, and only during the magnificent Arctic winter. Sometime around late November, the northernmost reaches of Lapland get their first taste of polar night when the sun struggles more and more every day to rise. Until one day it doesn’t. Instead, the horizon simply glows for a few hours at midday. Virtually all of Lapland sees polar night by the solstice, December 21. As the snow piles up, January and February offer stunning polar night and polar twilight vistas, as the blank white landscape reflects the deep warm colors of midday. In late January, the sun finally returns for a few minutes above the northern border, marking the end of true polar night in Lapland.” https://www.lapland.fi/visit/only-in-lapland/polar-night-colors-magical-time/
Northern Lights“Lapland’s northern latitude means that it lies within the “northern lights belt” or “aurora zone”, a band encircling the earth at latitudes of 65-72°N. In this region the aurora borealis can be seen with the greatest intensity and frequency.” https://www.nordicvisitor.com/blog/best-time-place-see-northern-lights-finland/
Unfortunately, there was too much cloud cover so my daughter didn’t see the Northern Lights. Maybe another time. And maybe I can come!
Hon, have you seen the Northern Lights? Where did you travel?
Traveling to see the Northern Lights on a giant sled pulled by a snowmobile.
In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Kindness is the theme at preschool. Kindness is taught all year, but this week it’s emphasized with child-led acts of kindness. What can young children do?
They can string Cheerios on pipe cleaners to make “bird feeders” and hang them on branches. My students made some to take home and some to hang outside of our classroom.
This poem by Edgar Albert Guest is thought-provoking and meaningful. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech is timeless and needs to be read, repeated, studied and proclaimed now more than ever.
Transcript of speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. August 28, 1963. Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beckoning light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.
One hundred years later the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.
One hundred years later the Negro is still languishing in the comers of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land.
We all have come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to change racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice ring out for all of God’s children.
There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted citizenship rights.
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
And the marvelous new militarism which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers have evidenced by their presence here today that they have come to realize that their destiny is part of our destiny.
So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its Governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places plains, and the crooked places will be made straight, and before the Lord will be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the mount with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the genuine discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, pray together; to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom forever, )mowing that we will be free one day.
And I say to you today my friends, let freedom ring. From the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire, let freedom ring. From the mighty mountains of New York, let freedom ring. From the mighty Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snow capped Rockies of Colorado!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!
But not only there; let freedom ring from the Stone Mountain of Georgia!
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain in Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill in Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we’re free at last!”
I wish you good health, happiness, and a way to mend deep divisions.
Growing up in Baltimore, a day cheering at an Orioles’ baseball game was always a blast. We ate popcorn, peanuts and Cracker Jacks, rooted for our home team, and always belted John Denver’s “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” during the seventh inning stretch. I found out something interesting about Denver’s patriotic song “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
Chris Kaltenbach, writing for The Baltimore Sun, wrote “Mountain mama! John Denver’s ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ was inspired by Maryland, not West Virginia. Hon, did you know that? Me either!
His article, published 4/17/19 is excerpted below.
Next time you hear John Denver warbling “Take Me Home, Country Roads”…keep in mind that it wasn’t anywhere in West Virginia that inspired the massive hit, but rather a road in Montgomery County.
Songwriter Bill Danoff, in a 1997 article he wrote for The Washington Post (in tribute to Denver, who’d just died), said he had begun writing the song while driving to a family reunion along Clopper Road, near Gaithersburg. He and his future wife, Taffy Nivert, completed the song in December 1970 with Denver’s help. “Back then,” Danoff wrote, Clopper Road “was still a country road.” (It isn’t anymore, apparently, thanks to development over the past 49 years.)
The three premiered the song the following night at Washington, D.C.’s The Cellar Door, where Denver was headlining (Danoff and Nivert, performing under the name Fat City, were his opening act). “When we first sang the song together,” Danoff wrote, “it seemed as though the audience would never stop applauding. Next show, same thing. We knew we had a hit.”
Wrote Denver, in “Take Me Home,” his 1994 autobiography, “In the wee hours of the morning, sometime between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, in their basement apartment in Washington, D.C., we wrote ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads.’ It became my first Number One record.”
No word on why Maryland lost out to West Virginia in the lyrics. Perhaps “Maryland” just doesn’t sound as pastoral as its western neighbor. More likely, the three syllables that combine for our state’s name just don’t fit the meter the songwriters had worked out.
“Take Me Home, Country Roads”
Almost heaven, West Virginia, Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River Life is old there, older than the trees, younger than the mountains, blowing like a breeze
Country roads, take me home to the place I belong West Virginia, mountain mamma, take me home, country roads
All my memories gather round her, miner’s lady, stranger to blue water Dark and dusty, painted on the sky, misty taste of moonshine, teardrop in my eye
Country roads, take me home to the place I belong West Virginia, mountain mamma, take me home, country roads
I hear her voice in the morning hour, she calls me, the radio reminds me of my home far away And driving down the road I get a feeling that I should have been home yesterday, yesterday
Country roads, take me home to the place I belong West Virginia, mountain mamma, take me home, country roads
Country roads, take me home to the place I belong West Virginia, mountain mamma, take me home, country roads
Take me home, down country roads Take me home, down country roads
“I can’t wait to see them,” replied a daughter. “There’s been so much hype.”
She doesn’t remember when they emerged in 2013, but will our dog Lucy? Her eyes–ummm–bugged out when she sniffed and inspected Little Miss Cicada (the one I bonded with–lol). Hubby mentioned (at dinner!) that a friend in VA shared what happened when her dog ingested a bunch of the bugs. Let’s say the digestion process did not go smoothly! Yuck! Today, I’m re-posting “Cicada City Part II,” my impressions–or should I say Lucy’s impressions?– when the cicadas were everywhere.
2013 might be the Chinese Year of the Snake, but at Bmore Energy it’s the Week of the Puppy.
Lucy “guest blogged” “Fluffy Father’s Day” and, in honor of her turning two, I’m featuring my furry sweetheart again.
In my recent post, Cicada City Part I, you met Little Miss Cicada. What I didn’t say was how Lucy reacted to her first encounter with the large buzzing bug. Before Lucy met Little Miss Cicada, several dog owners told me that their dogs were feasting on the cicadas. One told me she didn’t even need to give her dog kibble because he was eating so much.
Teenage Daughter #2 babysat for a family who warned her to keep their dog, Molly, inside because Molly was eating the cicadas then throwing them up. But when Teenage Daughter #2 opened the door to let the kids in, Molly ran out and, you guessed it, ate a cicada. Teenage Daughter #2 reported, “Molly started acting really weird. She was twitching and gagging. I think the cicada was still alive in her stomach! I was just praying she wasn’t going to throw up!”
Teenage Daughter #1, who babysat for the same family, replied, “I’m afraid of throw up! Literally, afraid. And I couldn’t even walk on their grass because of the cicadas. It was like step, cicada, step, cicada! They’re disgusting!”
Cicada shells clustered in the grass.
Back to Lucy.Hon, the photos and 45 second video say it all!
Whenever it snows, I tell Lucy, “You should live in Alaska!” Though ice crystals form on the tips of her fur, she self-insulates. Her puffed up fur keeps her body warm and making her paws look three times their normal size. She hops in the snow, herds anyone who sleds, and “helps” us shovel.
Want to see pure joy? Click “Snow Puppy” or hit the play button below.
Bmore Energy is a place to share ideas, inspiration, creativity, and moments of beauty and levity in everyday life. Call it positive energy with time for contemplation.
Rarely do I share my political views, but in light of the palpable tension apparent in every single person I know, if you’re uncertain why our nation is on the precipice, read Isabel Wilkerson’s researched, insightful, and devastating book, an accounting of race in America, Caste, The Origins of Our Discontents.
Still don’t know why an angry, violent, weapons-laden mob stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021? Or why a police officer was killed when he was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher? A woman trampled to death? A gallows set up to lynch the Vice President? Or why, if the color of the people’s skin in the crowd was different, the outcome of the day would have been vastly different? Consider who supports Auschwitz sweatshirts, Nazi insignia, Confederate flags, and gallows. And why. Do I need to spell it out?
On Wednesday, January 20, 2021, the world will be watching the transition of power. Even if that transition is peaceful, this country is home to over 70 million people who voted for a person and his political henchmen who promote racial, religious, and ethnic superiority, polarization, divisiveness and violence. What’s become of basic human rights, natural resources, the environment, foreign relations, trust, healthcare, education, decorum and civility, not to mention the ability to discuss and debate opposing political views? And, how will we look back at the response to a global pandemic that’s, so far, killed over 397,000 people in the U.S.? How many citizens are willing and ready to let the U.S. devolve into a racist regime? I feel ill thinking about it.
This year, MLK Day falls during an historic Inauguration Week. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech is as powerful and important today as it was in 1963.
Peace to you, hon, wherever you’re from, whatever religion you practice, and whatever ethnicity you are, and hoping and praying the same humanity is extended to you that you extend to others.
Transcript of speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. August 28, 1963. Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beckoning light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.
One hundred years later the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.
One hundred years later the Negro is still languishing in the comers of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land.
We all have come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to change racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice ring out for all of God’s children.
There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted citizenship rights.
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
And the marvelous new militarism which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers have evidenced by their presence here today that they have come to realize that their destiny is part of our destiny.
So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its Governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places plains, and the crooked places will be made straight, and before the Lord will be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the mount with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the genuine discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, pray together; to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom forever, )mowing that we will be free one day.
And I say to you today my friends, let freedom ring. From the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire, let freedom ring. From the mighty mountains of New York, let freedom ring. From the mighty Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snow capped Rockies of Colorado!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!
But not only there; let freedom ring from the Stone Mountain of Georgia!
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain in Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill in Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we’re free at last!”
“I have this theory that people make an implicit decision as to whether they’re going to stay young and curious and interesting and interested, or whether they’re just going to let themselves age.”*
Living on a hill has its advantages and disadvantages. Disadvantages? Balls roll away, mud and ice makes it especially slippery, the garden’s on a slope, and climbing back up the hill in snow is a workout. Advantage? Being “the sledding house!”
I created this video after a blizzard in 2015, and it always make me smile.
Naomi M. Gruer 