What's (Gluten Free) Baking Today?

I'm doing a little gluten free baking today - and trying a new bread recipe.

If you've never tried gluten free bread before - I suggest keeping  it that way.  Typically it isn't very good but I'm on a mission to find a good recipe for myself that can be made relatively quickly.

At the moment the dough is rising by the Aga (my cooker).....

and I'll bake it in a couple of hours or so....... Fingers crossed it'll turn out better than most GF loaves.

I made a couple of gluten free tarts recently that turned out well.  Here is the slow roasted tomato and gruyere tart:

And the even yummier souffled crab and asparagus tart:

If you have any wonderful gluten free baking recipes - especially bread that is tasty - I'd love you to share them with me.....

I'll let you know how this bread recipe turns out.... Enjoy your day and eat some yummy food!

Lavender all around

It's getting hot here and the forecast is for it to be even hotter over the next few days. Sadly that means that we'll have to switch off our aga cooker. I love it but as it's warm all the time - it's too much on 90 degree days. And it was always the plan to not use it in the summer when we cook everything on the grill anyhow...

But before it is switched off, I thought I'd try drying some of our lavender. We have many many lavender bushes - and different types of lavender - some good for cooking with, some a little earlier than others...


Anyhow, I thought I'd try drying a bunch in the simmering oven and see how it turned out. The simmering oven is just a gentle temperature so I picked some of the brighter lavender and just put it in on the bottom grid....


Thirty minutes later and not only is the lavender perfectly dried but the whole house smells of lavender! I've now decided that if we ever have a bad smell in the house or it smells of cooking, all we need to do is put some lavender in the simmering oven and the house is transformed! What a great bonus.

Maybe I need to get some more quickly...... Gotta run now but will be back later with my usual Wednesday "business matters" blog post.

New Kitchen!

Well, apologies for no posts over the last couple of days. I haven't finished any new jewelry items this week ( although I have started a couple....) as I have been busy mainly on the finishing up of our kitchen remodel. In fact, if we had liked it all, the kitchen would have been finished this Thursday - but we didn't like the tiles we had chosen for the back-splash so took them off again and now just need the wall repainted - due Tuesday.

So the last couple of days have been spent moving back in! Yippee!!!! It's great to be back. Harold our parrot moved back in yesterday. He'd been kept well away as he doesn't like surprises and loud noises - but he has been making plenty of his own loud noises since he moved back! Lots of singing and squalking! A happy-to-be-home parrot!!!

And I am happy to be home too. We lost half the house during the remodel - and it just feels so big now!

When the painting is finished I'll post some photos. You might not be interesting - but I like it!

Jewelry will come back next week but right now I'm enjoying cooking in my new aga oven/range:

and finding my way around all the drawers and cupboards! Happy eating!