Angel food for an angel like me!

This week I received the new King Arthur Flour catalog in the mail and immediately checked out the gluten free section of the catalog for any new products I couldn't live without. Instead, what I found was a sidebar recipe for gluten free angel food cake using their gf all-purpose flour. Angel food cake turns out to be a pretty easy recipe, basically just sugar and egg whites with a little bit of flour. And since I had everything on hand I had to give it a try. I'm not one of those people who likes to experiment on guests before confirming the recipe's any good.

The base recipe was very easy - a bowl of sifted cornstarch, flour, and sugar slowly folded into a bowl of whipped egg whites, sugar, vanilla and almond extracts, and cream of tartar.

Then the whole mess is scooped into a angel food cake pan, or, if like me, you don't have one you just use your bundt cake pan (and a couple of baby bundts for the extra filling).

I baked the baby bundts for 25 minutes while the big boy stayed in for 45 minutes.

After their requisite two hour cooling time I turned out the big one and cut into it to survey the majesty.

Absolute perfection! It had the exact taste and texture of store bought angel food cake. We're eating the two baby bundts for our dessert tonight topped with heated, sweetened berries. Yum!

My favorite view

I love me some afternoon Dutch Bros. coffee. It keeps me awake until 5:00 pm.

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Doesn't get much easier than this

What better day than a cold, rainy Sunday to fire up the crock pot for a low and slow meal of Mexican pulled pork. With nothing more than a  pork tenderloin (mine was a Safeway pre-marinated mesquite bbq one), some tomato sauce and seasonings...

you end up with this about 8 hours later...

The intention was to make tacos with it.

But the Canadian despises corn tortillas and their 99% breakage rate so he chose to serve his pork over toasted bread kind of like Chicken a la King. Whatever makes his little heart happy.

We just finished watching the last movie on our latest Netflix 4-week free trial last night. "The Fighter" with Marky Mark and Christian Bale. Since it was based on a true story and about sports it violated two of my movie trifecta rules (I don't willingly watch movies about sports, true stories, and in or about Africa) so I paid very little attention to it, but the Canadian enjoyed it. I much preferred Bridesmaids. That's as close to real life as I want to watch!

Guess what I made...

Gluten free French bread! I used a recipe from the company that I special order my gluten free flour from that looked easy enough for even a yeasted bread novice such as myself. But first I needed to find a French bread pan so I headed straight for The Galley this morning and picked up a 3-loaf baguette pan.

The recipe was pretty easy - line, grease, and sprinkle cornmeal on the pan.

Mix the flour and salt in the KitchenAid while proofing the yeast in some hot water with sugar. After 5 minutes add the liquids to the flour and beat the heck out of it.

Then the wet dough is scooped into a Ziploc bag and squeezed out into the baguette pan.

After letting it rise for 20 minutes I slashed the tops and baked them for about 40 minutes in a 410 degree oven.

I know they look a little rough on the outside, but on the inside they look exactly like French bread. And taste like it! The outside is crunchy and the inside soft and chewy. Even the Canadian was a fan.

So good and so easy! I left one loaf out for our snacking enjoyment and sliced and froze the second loaf for later. And by later I mean by tomorrow afternoon at the rate we're gobbling it down!

Homemade Baileys

Chris was over at our neighbor's, Doug's, house doing a winter beer sampling this afternoon and brought me back some of Doug's homemade Baileys liqueur. OMG - delicious!

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Party like it's your birthday

Tonight was a get together up in P-town for a retired co-worker's 65th birthday. We all got together at the lounge of a local steakhouse for a light dinner and cake. It was hell getting there though through the torrential rain and windstorm. I think I would have made better time in a Sea-Doo.

It was a wonderful party full of great people. Since I just got over two days of a horrible tummy I didn't eat anything, but enjoyed a couple sips of champagne. Our party favors were large print word find puzzle books! By 7:30 pm we had to start packing it up since there was a karaoke contest starting at 8:00 pm. The karaoke crowd, and their 1980s fashions, frighten me so I took that as my cue to float myself back down the hill.

You can't win 'em all

Tonight was my last night of new recipes for this week, a Mexican rice casserole. Seasoned hamburger mixed with cooked rice, tomato sauce, black beans and cilantro then topped with sliced of tomatoes and cheese.

After baking for about 30 minutes I cut us each a slice to accompany our salad and green beans and had the following reaction - meh. Not bad, just not a panty dropping recipe. I should have topped it with guacamole and sour cream, but the Canadian thinks guacamole is the devil's food so it's never in the house. We'll eat the leftovers, but definitely don't need to spend my oh so precious time making it again.