Ugly Lumps of Tasty Happiness

Just a warning before you go any further,
I am feeling VERY SHOUTY TODAY.

Almost every afternoon between 2 and 4 pm I need some strong tea to keep me going and push the anxiety and despair that have become such a vibrant part of living in 2018 back into the little lock box in my brain where they live (the little buggers then jimmy the lock and we have a grand old time at approximately 2:30 EVERY FUCKING MORNING.)

Here's the tea I currently drink which I buy on Amazon because they don't sell it in the US and most US tea is as weak as dirty dishwater:

I know it is possible to just have a cup or two of tea and not eat anything. But I'm usually also feeling a bit of blood sugar dip about then and quite frankly just want some goddamn baked thing to have with it. But, as mentioned in my last post, all those things I used to make like heavenly lemon scones and supernatural brownies now hit my aging metabolism like a brick and I spike then I crash and OH BOY IS LIFE WITH KATE EVER FUN THEN.

So I started trying to put together a scone recipe that I can eat without metabolic whiplash. I came up with something that works for me and I think it is pretty tasty: it is totally whole grain with whole wheat pastry flour and buckwheat flour. It uses coconut sugar which has a lower glycemic index than regular sugar. And it has walnuts in it to give it some protein and metabolism stabilization. To keep these from tasting like baked cardboard I add the zest of a whole orange, about a 1/4 of a freshly grated nutmeg and some vanilla extract; those three ingredients are basically food perfume. The dry stuff has a decent amount of butter cut into it and then buttermilk is added to make it doughy.

The first time I made these, I tried to pat them into a circle and then cut triangular scone-shaped wedges.

They looked scone-like, but were still too crumbly to cut in half and it was a royal pain in the ass. The dough is wet. It stuck to my hands and spatula and the parchment paper and I probably lost at least a half a scone's worth of dough which made me grumpy.

Then it occurred to me that the recipe is a lot more like a drop biscuit (flour, butter, buttermilk) than a scone (flour, butter, heavy cream or mix of milk and egg) so the next time I saved myself some grief and just used a spoon to blop it on the baking sheet. BONUS: I got 8 reasonably sized scones out of it rather than 6 in the wedge formation AND my hands weren't covered in gunk. 

After baking they looked like this:

THIS ISN'T A SCONE BEAUTY CONTEST, PEOPLE.
THESE ARE UGLY LUMPS OF TASTY HAPPINESS.
THIS IS A WAY TO HAVE SOMETHING COMFORTING WITH YOUR TEA WITHOUT DOING A NUMBER ON YOUR INCREASINGLY PISSY METABOLISM.
(goddamnit)

It was a rough day when I baked the last batch so I made a pot of tea and ate two of them:

First one, with a thick layer of lemon curd spread on top. (I am aware that lemon curd has a shit-ton of refined sugar and I am undoing the stabilizing benefits of said scone. Bite me.)

Second one, a layer of Irish butter and crumbles of excellent sharp English cheddar pressed into the butter.  (The book in the background is The Taste of Empire by Lizzie Collingham which is the perfect book to read while drinking tea.)

They also freeze pretty well. If you take one (or two) out a few hours before you intend to eat it, the texture should be ok. If you have a toaster oven and can pop it in for about 5 minutes at 300 degrees then it'll be almost as good as when they first came out of the oven. 

Ugly Lumps of Tasty Happiness AKA Buckwheat Walnut Drop Scones

1 1/3 C whole wheat pastry flour

1/2 C buckwheat flour

1/3 C coconut sugar

1/2 t baking soda

2 t baking powder

1/2 t salt

1/4 of a freshly ground nutmeg (probably about 1/2 t if you are using the pre-ground stuff)

fine zest of one orange

6 T cold butter cut into cubes

1/3 C walnuts 

3/4 C buttermilk

1 t vanilla

Heat your oven to 400 degrees F. Put parchment paper or a silpat liner on a baking sheet.

In a food processor combine flours, sugar, baking soda and powder, salt, nutmeg and orange zest. Pulse a few times to mix it up. Scatter butter cubes over dry stuff and pulse a few times to pea-sized pieces. If you are using whole walnuts chuck them in and pulse a few times to chop them (do not grind them into dust). If your walnuts are already chopped or you prefer to do it by hand, then just mix them in with the dry stuff in the next step.

Dump everything from the food processor in a mixing bowl. In a measuring cup, mix together buttermilk and vanilla. Pour it over the dry stuff and use a silicon spatula to mix it in gently. You just want the dough to come together and eliminate dry spots. Get out a spoon and blop 8 scone-sized blops on the baking sheet. Bake for 18 minutes until lightly browned. 

Let cool slightly then serve with butter, jam, cheese or whatever floats your boat.

Aging and Whinging

Hey look it's been over a year since I wrote anything here.
In that time I:
got mad
got mad again
got mad again
(you get the trend)

2017 was a year of rage and action and more rage and action and 2018 looks like it's going to be more of it; meanwhile the two charming poppets who used to live here have been replaced by teenagers with massive doses of snark (Internal monologue: "Who on earth did they learn that from?" Look in mirror. "Oh yeah...")

I also got old. My freaking body no longer responds to what I put in it with the same ease as when I was a bright young thing of 40 so as I look at the recipes posed on the side bar of this blog I think nope, really tasty but nope, nope, that one's OK, nope, nope. I'm turning 49 in June. It is humbling.

In particular, I've found that me+refined carbs is really not a great combo. Refined carbs are now a treat, not a regular thing so no more weekly homemade pizza nights or regular batches of those fucking amazing lemon scones because at the end of the night I feel like shit and continue feeling like shit for a few days: lethargy, joint pain, fatigue, sluggish thoughts. You know, fun stuff!

Luckily moderation, whole grains and a lot more protein tempers the effect. But you know all this stuff, you've read all the damn studies about what refined carbs do to your entire system and how we all should be eating massive quantities of vegetables (I'm happy to, always have, but I also like to eat other stuff). I have not been transformed into a paragon of virtue. I still eat mac and cheese made with regular pasta and chocolate chip cookies, especially the really good ones made with browned butter. The thing is, I can't do it all the time and I have to be prepared for the blowback.

The more important question which I know you are dying to hear is:

What do you cook now that tastes good and doesn't make you feel like shit afterwards?

So let's start with the smoothie. Most smoothies are evil in a glass because they are composed of fruit and fruit juice which makes my blood sugar spike and then crash and leave me very, very cranky. But smoothies are convenient, especially when you are so wiped out that chewing seems like too much effort and maybe you will just go lie down and rage in a horizontal position until someone notices and feeds you. (Tried that. They just walked by my prone form.) So it was time to come up with a smoothie that wasn't evil.

I get hangry more often now than I used to. No, strike that. I've always been someone who gets hangry. After all, I own this shirt:

Maybe now I'm getting better at preventing the hunger/anger outbursts? (I ask my kids. They give me the gimlet eye. Guess not.)

But hey, no one notices when you prevent bad behavior, especially when you aren't a toddler. My kids have no idea how often they would be exposed to my outbursts if I wasn't drinking this regularly:

It tastes better when served in a Guinness pint glass.

I call it: 

Hangry Prevention in a Glass

It has a shit ton of protein, fiber and hydration (as someone with low blood pressure and a tendency towards dehydration, anything that ups my liquid intake is also a plus)

Here is what goes into the blender:

• about 1/3 C of frozen organic blueberries
• about 1/3 C of toasted, unsalted cashew nuts
• a spoonful of salted almond butter
• a lot of glugs of unsweetened vanilla almond milk
• and sometimes a little piece of frozen banana (about 2" long) if I have any on hand

WHIRRR that baby up, drink it down, feel the stability descending upon you. Be warned, it will make your teeth, tongue and lips turn blue so maybe don't drink it on the run unless you want to creep out anyone who looks at you. One of the liberating things about being older is that I now really don't give a shit what people think about how I look. Coke bottle glasses for my myopia? CHECK! A desire to wear floppy comfy clothes all the time? CHECK! Super short hair because caring for anything over an inch requires too much effort? CHECK! So adding blue lips to my daily presentation to the world is just fine by me. I did have someone ask about my circulation once though which means that despite my efforts, I have not become totally invisible. (Which leads me to reconsider that old super-power question: which would you prefer as a super power, to be able to fly or to be invisible? I always went for the former because I assumed that people who chose invisibility were probably creeps who wanted to sneak around and spy on people in their private moments. Now I think they are probably just wise super introverts who want the world to leave them the fuck alone. If that is your rationale for choosing invisibility over flying then I think you are awesome.)