Gluten-Free Gingerbread

Butter a Pyrex 6-Cup Rectangular Dish (6x8 inches). Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Mix 1¼ cups of Pamela's baking mix and 2 tablespoons of Sucanat with ½ cup molasses, ⅓ cup hot water, ¼ cup butter (at room temperature), 1 egg, and ½ teaspoon ground ginger. Beat with a wire whisk or electric mixer until smooth.

Bake for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Serve at room temperature, sprinkled with chopped walnuts.

I'm so relieved to be able to substitute Pamela's mix for the flour, leavening, and salt in old favorite recipes. Sometimes the richness of the almond meal and powdered buttermilk in Pamela's mix makes the new version taste better than the old wheat flour one. This is especially true in the Cinnamon Pecan Coffee Cake recipe.

Happy Songs for Your Inner Child

I love Sandra Boynton's songs!

She has produced several book-and-CD albums that are a delight to the ears, the heart, and the mind. Her winsome animal illustrations add to the fun.

First came Grunt: Pigorian Chant from Snouto Domoinko de Silo which is an exquisite a cappella rendering of a day in the life of a farm. I used to listen to it while I was getting ready for work, to laugh my way into morning alertness.

Philadelphia Chickens is a variety show with folk-style songs. Sandra Boynton invited friends like Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline to join in on the fun, and the result is clever, tender-hearted, and singable. Every family with young children needs this book and CD set.

Dog Train: A Wild Ride on the Rock-and-Roll Sidedoesn't grab my heart quite as much as the others, but if you like rock music you'll be impressed with the lineup of famous artists, and several of the songs are memorably funny.

The latest treat is Blue Moo: 17 Jukebox Hits From Way Back Neverwhich sang its way right into my raised-in-the-fifties soul. I especially enjoy the numbers by the Uninvited Loud Precision Band.

You can hear previews of the songs on Sandra Boynton's website. Click on the "Nifty Music" link to the left.

(And if you decide to buy some of these recordings, please come back to this blog & click through to amazon.com via the links here so I get the sales credit, OK? Thanks.)

Collect 'em all--they'll lift your heart and charm you into singing along.

Marinated Mushroom Salad

This is one of my mom's recipes. I used to ask for it to be included in my welcome dinner when I came home on breaks from college.

Mom often made this with just the mushrooms and onions. You can do your own experimenting with vegetable combinations.

Bring to a boil in a saucepan: 1/2 cup olive oil, 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar, 1/4 cup water, 2 cloves sliced or minced garlic, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1 tablespoon dried basil (or a handful of fresh basil leaves, sliced).

Add 2 cups green beans, cut into bite-size pieces. Cover and simmer for 5 minutes.

Add 2 cups sliced carrots, and simmer for 10 more minutes.

Slice and add 1 onion and 1/2 pound mushrooms. Simmer for 10 more minutes.

If you want to use canned green beans, add them at the end, after you take the pot off the stove.

Cool and move to a glass dish or casserole. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

Transfer to a serving dish with a slotted spoon.

I usually save the marinade in the refrigerator and use it as a salad dressing or cook another batch of vegetables in it.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Everyday life in suburbia can be short on miracles. Perhaps that's why I've re-read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Lifeseveral times.

Her miracles are the natural graces that turn seeds, earth, water, and sunshine into edible plants, and chicken and turkey eggs into omelets and Thanksgiving feasts.

Barbara Kingsolver is a good storyteller. When an award-winning novelist sets out to tell the story of a year in the life of her family, that story is in the hands of a superior wordcrafter. Her anecdotes are winsome and funny.

Her co-authors are her husband, who adds background notes, and her daughter, who contributes recipes to use with seasonal garden produce.

Their website has photos of their garden and animals plus other resources.

Thank you, Barbara, for an entertaining, comforting, and delicious book.

Beautiful Bountiful Basil

This is the season for basil in our balcony pots.

We julienne it and put it on top of almost any lunch or supper dish: grains, beans, soup. Its big whole leaves are a luxurious substitute for lettuce in sandwiches. It tastes richly green and a bit peppery.

Basil takes a long time to grow from seed. The plants last a couple of months once they're full grown. I start some indoors in March, move them to planters outside in May, and plant extra seeds in the dirt around the edges of the planters for the second shift, which is what we have now.

I make pesto once in a while, but that takes a lot of basil leaves. I'd need to plant a couple more big pots to have enough to make pesto regularly.

I'll start some autumn basil in small pots outside at the end of August to bring inside before the first frost. That will produce until Thanksgiving or so.

This plant seems to need some outside sun; starting it inside in the winter and waiting for a crop in February gives us small plants--though by then, even a couple of fresh basil leaves on top of a rice dish seem totally exciting.

Basil has anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties, and is a good source of vitamins A and C.

Lift your cuisine to healthy gourmet levels with these leaves!

Lots of Laughter

The birds in this picture are called Royal Terns. They live on the beach near my sister-in-law's house in Cape Canaveral. They remind me of Groucho Marx and they make me laugh, so they're perfect to illustrate this post.

I enjoyed the Laughter Leader workshop very much, and am now a Certified Laughter Leader, with a diploma testifying thereunto. Ten of us spent two intense days with a very good instructor going through the World Laughter Tour curriculum. I'm impressed with the amount of material we covered and with how much fun we had.

Now I'll be spending time every day practicing what we learned, getting ready to lead Laughter Clubs at the library where I work.

What I love the most about the program is the promotion of Good-Hearted Living: Monday is for compliments, Tuesday is for flexibility, Wednesday is for gratitude, Thursday is for kindness, Friday is for forgiveness, and weekends are for chocolate (and R&R), because you need to be good to yourself, too.

These Good-Hearted Living principles are discussed at the end of every Laughter Club program. Participants make them a part of their everyday lives.

World Laughter Tour's motto is "together we can lead the world to health, happiness, and peace through laughter."

I want to help that happen.

Learning to Be a Laughter Leader

Thursday and Friday I'm scheduled to attend a two-day World Laughter Tour workshop to become a Certified Laughter Leader.

What is a Certified Laughter Leader? Someone who leads Laughter Clubs.

What is a Laughter Club? A Laughter Club combines yoga and laughter in short activities that are fun for a group to do together. For example, stretching and shaking hands and saying hahaha, heeheehee, hohoho! Slightly dignified silliness turns into genuine laughs. It's refreshing, and good gentle exercise.

I learned about this program at a library conference in Minneapolis last year. I came back to the hotel and told our library director (who was, conveniently, my roommate for the week) that I'd found something I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

It's taken a year to get scheduled for a workshop nearby, and I'm really looking forward to it. I plan to spend the fall practicing and promoting the concept in our community, and beginning in January will be leading monthly Laughter Clubs at the library.

Hahaha!

The Power of Two

The Power of Two: Surviving Serious Illness with an Attitude and an Advocateby Brian and Gerri Monaghan is a valuable resource for someone who is responsible for organizing ongoing medical care for a relative or friend.

In 1998 Brian, a well-regarded trial lawyer, was diagnosed with Stage IV melanoma. He and his wife Gerri decided to fight for his life with all their skill, and with love and laughter.

The main part of the book, which tells the story of Brian's treatment, is presented in the framework of fifty tips for patient advocates. These include gathering your courage, keeping good records, getting support from others, taking care of yourself, maintaining the patient's dignity, and celebrating milestones.

These fifty tips are summarized in a short section, "The Monaghan Manual," at the back of the book, with page references to the longer explanations of each tip.

After that section are useful checklists for gathering the patient's medical history, living through the hospital experience, writing a battle plan, and keeping an advocate's notebook.

Family, physicians, and friends share their own insights on working with this couple as they faced their many challenges. The piece that moved me most is by one of Brian's law partners. She says he taught her, when preparing for a case, to "write the ending first" by imagining the closing statement to the jury. Then you work through the details that get you to that closing statement.

Brian and Gerri dealt with cancer in this same way, writing the ending first, deciding that they would aim for healing and do what was necessary to achieve it. Gerri's work was important to Brian's survival. The book documents the system she developed to keep this lifesaving work on track.

You can use the same system to help a loved one through an illness. You can use it to help a friend through a family crisis. You can ask someone else to use it on your behalf when you are facing a big trouble.

Take advantage of the power of two.