Breakfast

gluten-free buckwheat crepes

Sometimes, when life feels complicated, it helps to go back to the simple things.   Sunlight on a wooden floor. Dancing to Aretha Franklin, then stopping to belt it out with her. Talking late into the night, vulnerable, saying exactly what is. Sleeping in. Lunch with Lucy, the three of us sitting at the little [...]

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a big pot of beans

The wind is shimmying through the trees outside, green waving against grey. Danny insists we turn on the heater in the mornings, then Lu takes off her socks to put her feet near the fire. When she moves to her kitchen to play, our daughter is making soups, stews, and pies. Definitely fall. Time for [...]

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gluten-free breakfast

“What you making, Mama?” she asked me as she stood next to me at the counter. “Scrambled eggs, love. And mushrooms.” “Mmmm. That’s delicious!” she said. Add some warm quinoa, a touch of goat cheese, and some of the salmon Danny cured a couple of days before? The three of us at the table? That [...]

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Thumbnail image for gluten-free scones

gluten-free scones

I’ve eaten a lot of bad scones. And I don’t mean gluten-free scones, although I haven’t had much success with them before this week. I mean regular gluten scones, the ones I ate before six years ago. You know the ones, right? The big-chain coffee shop scones. The ones that crumble like cheap grocery-store cake [...]

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homemade walnut butter

I made walnut butter for the first time. It won’t be the last. Growing up, the only nut butter I ever ate was peanut butter. In fact, I didn’t know there was such a thing as nut butter. Peanut butter was its own entity, a world unto itself. I didn’t know that it was something [...]

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gluten-free crepes

A couple of weeks ago, we had our friends Tita and John over for breakfast. This isn’t an uncommon occurrence. These are two of our favorite people in the world. However, it was Tita’s birthday recently, so this was a special occasion. We wanted to fix her whatever she wanted to eat. She thought when [...]

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gluten-free pancakes for the ratio rally

Our daughter loves books. She reads them in the car, on the couch, in bed at night before she falls asleep. She hands us books that she wants us to read to her, again and again. She has so many favorites that I won’t even start to list them here. However, only one book makes [...]

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gluten-free whole grain muffins

Behold our favorite muffins. You want to know why? They are are almost entirely whole grain — with good fiber and protein from flours such as quinoa, corn, sorghum, and brown rice — and therefore packed with a punch of nutrition for the morning. They are slightly sweet, not the blaring sugar fix of the [...]

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making homemade yogurt

Most of my life, I have thought, “I’m just not crafty.” I watch other women knit sweaters while talking with friends, or see the dramatic swirls of art projects other moms have done with their kids, or look at the clothes that dear Amanda Soule makes for her kids, and I think, “Well. That’s just [...]

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Thumbnail image for sweet potato latkes, gluten-free

sweet potato latkes, gluten-free

We have fallen in love with sweet potatoes lately. Look at them, so humble and lovely, nestled against each other. Sweet potatoes don’t call attention to themselves, the way the blowzy red tomatoes of August demand our noticing them. Zucchini are vivid green, with stripes sometimes. The peppers blare so bright they can can hurt [...]

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gluten-free doughnuts

Doughnuts. You know you want some. When I lived in New York, my friend Gabe and I often met on the corner of 86th and Lexington, late at night. Neither of us lived in that neighborhood. But when we got the jones for perfect doughnuts, he got on the subway from Brooklyn, and I took [...]

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Thumbnail image for gluten-free zucchini bread

gluten-free zucchini bread

We love potlucks in this house. There’s something humble and lovely about a potluck. Sure, dinner parties are great: the day of prepping and anticipation, the smells coming from the kitchen, the moment of lowering the main course onto the table and listening to everyone’s happy sighs. But the only problem with dinner parties? You [...]

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Thumbnail image for homemade granola, gluten-free

homemade granola, gluten-free

This is Sharon. Sharon makes me laugh. Sharon has a kind heart and an absurd sense of the world and a flirty style that leaves its impression on everyone who meets her. In the past few days, Lu has been starting to laugh. Really laugh. She has been giggling most of her life. However, now [...]

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breakfasts around here

Late morning, Sesame Street over, the deadlines looming but it’s not time to work yet. Breakfast time. We’ve been eating our breakfasts just after 9 around here. Lu points to the clock on the wall at 8 and says, “Street!” We cuddle on the couch together — the couch of cracker crumbs and pens between [...]

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gluten-free rhubarb muffins

Warm muffins just out of the oven. The sour-sweet kick-in-the-mouth taste of rhubarb this time of year, sliding through each tender bite. Soft as sighs. I’ve been thinking about making these muffins since I saw the rhubarb plants in our backyard nudge themselves above the dirt. A few weeks ago, those plants exploded with growth. [...]

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Thumbnail image for gluten-free English scones

gluten-free English scones

This is pretty much my favorite spot in our house. Oh, I love the feeling of our bed when Danny and I can finally fall into it together, dead tired from working and running after Lu all day. I love the sound of Lu’s giggles bouncing off the walls of the bathtub. I love the [...]

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Thumbnail image for gluten-free cinnamon rolls

gluten-free cinnamon rolls

My friend John is a painter, an incredible painter who is not recognized in the established art world the way he should be. Whatever. That’s not why he paints. (However, I hope the museums and art critics flock to his door when he is 94, the way they have with Carmen Herrera.) He paints because [...]

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Thumbnail image for gluten-free cinnamon rolls, an update

gluten-free cinnamon rolls, an update

I may be getting sick of cinnamon rolls. For the past week, I have made at least seven batches of gluten-free cinnamon rolls. Sometimes I have made them with Little Bean standing on a chair at my side, and I have talked with her as I combined flours and tossed in softened butter. Other times, [...]

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Thumbnail image for gluten-free cinnamon rolls, a work in progress

gluten-free cinnamon rolls, a work in progress

Almost every afternoon these days, I look down at Little Bean amidst her pile of books. Without her noticing, I have shoved all the sharp knives and breakable dishes to the side of the kitchen where the appliances congregate. The chair sits against the counter. I have her apron in my hand. “Do you want [...]

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Thumbnail image for gluten-free English muffins

gluten-free English muffins

Whenever I have felt just a mite constricted about being known as a “gluten-free blogger,” instead of someone who loves food and the chance to write about it, I have tended to say, Yeah, like all people want is a gluten-free English muffin recipe. The rest doesn’t matter. I don’t know why I always chose [...]

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late morning, windows open

Sometimes, writing a food blog feels like inviting everyone into our kitchen. We do love our kitchen, and it’s much more spacious than our old one was. In the late morning, if the sun is shining, we crank open the windows next to the stove and let the warm air rush in. (Even if a [...]

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French toast for 2009

Dear 2009, My goodness, you years do seem to leap along, don’t you? A decade ago, I read this book by Paul Monette, one of my favorite writers, and something he wrote has always stayed with me. Melancholy about the passage of time, he asked one of his older friends if every year went faster. [...]

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winning him over to oatmeal

The Chef and I don’t always agree. If you’ve been reading this site for awhile, you know how the Chef and I feel about each other. From the time I announced his existence on this site in June of 2006, it was quite clear I was moony and madly in love. If he had his [...]

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Monday mornings are for waffles

Mondays are Sundays around here. I don’t mean that to sound as Alice-in-Wonderland-down-the-rabbit-hole as it does. (I can’t wait to read that book to Little Bean, but I’m counting on it being perplexing the first dozen times.) We just don’t live days like most people do. Most people think of Friday night as the great [...]

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astonishment, Portland, and pancakes

“I’m Shauna,” I say, as I extend my hand to shake someone else’s. And every time, I remember what I had forgotten, and I laugh. “Oh, I suppose you already know that.” Weird and wonderful, this world of mine right now. My days are imbued with the joy of meeting people, people who read this [...]

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gluten-free comfort food

I love the way I eat after I started eating gluten-free: fresh, in season, and always something new. If I had not been diagnosed with celiac, I never would have discovered fresh ramps, sunchokes, and pea vines. I would never be so happy. We’re on our way to the farmers’ market soon, the first official [...]

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an ineffably good egg

There’s something about food that brings me back, immediately, to the necessary sensualities of life. The smell of fresh fennel as I slice it for a salad? It releases me from thinking about those bills I should pay or the emails I want to answer. The crunch of the crust of the brownies I just [...]

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the gifts we give each other.

Every day, I feel blessed. I have my health (thanks to discovering that I have celiac disease), I have work I love to do (you are reading it here), and I have the love of my life, the most adorable, gentle man I have ever met. How I found the Chef and a book deal [...]

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ten months

Breakfast, at one pm. “Love is reaching, reaching love…. Love is living, living love.” — John Lennon, “Love”

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daily food photo: teff porridge

maple syrup, sliced almonds, sour cherries. sunlight.

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Thumbnail image for gluten-free blueberry muffins

gluten-free blueberry muffins

I am becoming so domestic. This morning, I woke up before the Chef. Sentences were singing in my mind, with a high-pitched insistence. Reluctantly, I left the bed to write some more, quelling the choir into quietness. After awhile, I was fully awake. After I set a pot of coffee going, I checked in on [...]

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oh my god, granola

granola, originally uploaded by shaunaforce. Okay, this is going to set some people talking. When I first found out I could no longer eat gluten, I felt no real mourning at giving up bread or hamburger buns or doughnuts. Whatever. Clearly, they made me ill, and so I waved goodbye to them with both hands. [...]

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Potato Pancakes, Please!

potato pancake, originally uploaded by shaunaforce. “Hey honey, do we have any green onions?” the Chef calls out from the kitchen, as I am sitting at the computer, writing. “I don’t think so, sweetie. Why?” Why do I even bother asking any more? I know that he has something extraordinary forming in his mind, something [...]

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long loving mornings, sunny side up

risotto and eggs, originally uploaded by shaunaforce. The Chef and I like eggs. Let me rephrase that, to approximate the force of our feelings: the Chef and I really, really like eggs. We must, because we eat them nearly every morning these days. Scrambled, poached, sunny side up, and sometimes even fried — eggs appear [...]

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heading north

shauna on top of the #C8BBF, originally uploaded by shaunaforce. Here I am, triumphant, on the top of Mount Verstovia, in Sitka, Alaska. Four hours of hiking behind me, the sweat on my back starting to dry in the cool air, mountains, vast bodies of water, and eagles with six-foot wingspans surrounding me — I [...]

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an old tradition made new

bagel with lox II, originally uploaded by shaunaforce. Every Sunday morning, the last two years that I lived in New York, my friend Sharon and I had a definite Sunday tradition. We always rose late and sleepy on a Sunday, me in my bedroom close to Broadway, the street noise so familiar it had the [...]

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slow and easy, Sunday morning

poached egg on spinach, originally uploaded by shaunaforce. Sunday mornings are supposed to be slow. The past four days, I’ve been away — in my own city — on a food-filled, fantastic adventure. I’ll tell you all about it soon, but today is not the day. Today, I need to move, sloth-like, through the afternoon, [...]

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Thumbnail image for everyone’s writing about figs!

everyone’s writing about figs!

figs and yogurt, originally uploaded by shaunaforce. I’ve been living with food all weekend. Slowly shopping on a Saturday afternoon, waltzing through the farmers’ market for flowers and fresh fruit. Riding my bike to five different markets in my neighborhood, each one of them holding the secret to today’s feast. A & J Meats for [...]

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look what I had for breakfast

broiled figs, originally uploaded by shaunaforce. The more I cook, the more I want to cook. It’s a self-regenerating process, deeply creative, and also fairly addictive. Thank goodness I’m addicted to figs, slow-roasted tomatoes, and fresh goat cheese instead of some other substance. And as I keep noticing, and remarking on in here, I’m paradoxically [...]

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oh, how I miss it

cream of rice in the morning, originally uploaded by shaunaforce. It’s the mornings when I miss it most. I stumble into the kitchen, rubbing my eyes of sleep and heading for the coffee pot. It’s my most unguarded moment, when I don’t focus first on how much better I feel, how thrilled I am to [...]

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"They say it’s your birthday…"

chocolate ganache cupcakes, originally uploaded by shaunaforce. “…it’s my birthday too, yeah.I’m glad it’s your birthday.We’re going to have a good time.” Every morning of August 6th, I wake up, feel a jolt of recognition at the sun coming through the window, stumble out of bed, and put on track one of disc two of [...]

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