Breakfast blog

This is not an advert for a load of bloggers to meet for croissants in some nice coffee bar with free WiFi – though that’s not a bad idea.

Lois, my wife, blogs about gluten free cooking - http://blissglutenfree.blogspot.com .

I appear on her blog as Mr Taster. This morning I had my breakfast photographed. Fortunately my actual plate came out blurred and I’d eaten it before she had a chance to take another picture. The items you see on the griddle are little gluten free pancakes. My dad used to call them drop-scones but looking at Google I see they are also known as Scotch pancakes - odd that, given that my dad was Welsh. They are a bit like blinis, except no yeast is involved.

For the pedants out there Blin is apparently the Russian word for pancake and therefore blini is already the plural – who would only eat one anyway – so blinis has a somewhat unnecessary ‘s’ on the end; unless you really want lots and lots of them – there again why not.

I digress; having your breakfast photographed is only one part of the action. I frequently have to fill out evaluation forms on new recipes, taste, crunchyness (not relevant for drop scones), after-taste; the list goes on.

As a writer is it an interesting challenge to find words to describe taste, a bit like all that stuff that wine buffs come out with. The big difference is to factor in texture and time because nothing tastes quite the same or feels the same after you’ve chewed it for a minute or two. Gluten, the stuff Lois is avoiding at all costs, is quite remarkable stuff. It sticks everything together, not like glue between two bits of wood, or the sticky stuff on magic tape, but by weaving itself among the molecules of whatever else is in the recipe. Take it out and food tends to fall apart.

Many gluten free cooks add Xanthan gum to try and achieve the same trick, but that’s also quite useful as a laxative, which is one good reason to try to avoid it.

Here’s another: Xanthan gum is a polysaccaride made by fermenting sugar with a bacteria called Xanthomonas campestris. Xanthomonas campestris is the same bacteria responsible for causing black rot to form on broccoli, cauliflower, and other leafy vegetables. The bacteria form a slimy substance that acts as a natural stabilizer or thickener. I’m partly quoting that from someone called Wisegeek http://www.wisegeek.com - it sounds really appetizing doesn’t it.

Lois experiments with a range of flours made from things like Lentils, tapioca, quinoa and no black rot or slimy substances. See her blog for more details.

City and country life

City Life

Dusty romanced dirty streets

Secret people indiscreet

Walking closely far apart

That’s the city centre art

Crowded busses flashy cars

Fog and fume block out the stars

Hurry slowly nowhere soon

Morning night and afternoon

Reading other people's blogs I realised I’d never put a poem here. OK so here is one that probably explains why I live in the country now.

OK so I know that afternoon comes between morning and night, but then it wouldn't rhyme with soon, and wouldn't sound right. I used to write lots of poems but now I find novels and blogs are more fun.

Which leads me to country life. We live in an old farmhouse and there is a smell of home baking all the time – well there would be wouldn’t there.

My wife Lois is somewhat obsessed with baking and for the last couple of years has been experimenting with Gluten Free baking – because Gluten makes her sick.

She has now reinvented the original concept of web logging - later called blogging. She invents new Gluten Free recipes and writes them up on her blog as she does them. [ http://blissglutenfree.blogspot.com ] This does two things, makes it easy to find the recipe and also tells us when certain things were made, so we can do tests on what their shelf life should be. How many home cooks give best before dates to their products? For those who read her blog I am Mr. Taster on there.

Gaugin

I was going to post something about visiting the Gaugin exhibition at Tate Modern, but Lois has beaten me to it.

http://apaininthebutt.blogspot.com/2010/10/tate-modern-gauguin.html

Lois is my wife, in case anyone who reads this stuff hasn't guessed it yet. Lois is very intolerant of Gluten and spends a lot of time experimenting with making, mostly baking, gluten free foods, which is why her review of the art seems to spend more time in the cafe than looking at the paintings. If anyone reads her blogs I feature as Mr Taster - maybe I'll use that as a nom-de-plume some day.

If you haven't visited the Gaugin yet then I'd say allow quite a lot of time. There is a lot of material about him that takes time to read, especially as you can expect to be buffeted by the crowd washing by. Like Lois I found the painting drab, I don't know why I was expecting more light, something about Tahiti, romance and all that, but it is just not there. I was also surprised to find that the paintings were almost all much smaller that I expected. OK so that in some ways is good, they'd fit in your living room, unlike some of the things I've seen in Tate Modern.

On the other hand none of it made me laugh, or cry, or say WOW! So why did I go? I'm a sucker for a good story I guess and there is something of that. Gaugin seemed to spend his life reinventing himself and almost living a fiction. He was obviously convinced from an early age that he was a genius. I can't think of any other reason why he would go on painting such dull paintings while he was having such an interesting life.