Long walk through the Forest today to the next town along, partly to try and buy gluten free flour from the supermarket there, partly as an excuse for a walk in the Forest as the weather was glorious after snow flurries first thing.
These beech trees have been pollarded to give them the multiple trunks. I did try various ways of processing this but preferred this version, with a slight crop to improve the framing and not a lot else.
Gluten free flour has been out of stock at the local supermarket since before Christmas but was due in yesterday. When we checked first thing this morning there was bread flour and self-raising flour, but no plain all purpose flour. The other thought has been to make up a GF flour, but the ingredient all the recipes require is tapioca flour, which is not for sale locally nor were any of the usual alternatives (arrowroot flour). And the ingredients are not cheap - rice flour at £2.55 for 500g when the GF plain flour costs £1.70 or £1.75 for the same quantity.
My daughter has run out of biscuits: she has one to eat with the midnight medications so they're not taken on an empty stomach. I had intended to make some instead of buying them, but without flour what to do? Well, I found a recipe that uses light buckwheat flour as the main ingredient. We have buckwheat flour and the rest of the ingredients, so I baked some very "interesting" chocolate chip cookies (using cacao nibs). They taste of buckwheat, which is lovely in savoury dishes, but my daughter rejected them as disgusting in sweet. Apparently light buckwheat flour has the husks removed to make a finer lighter flour. Who knew? It really doesn't seem to be available here.
Thank you for all your views and comments on the lost in a book picture from yesterday. You're all wonderful. I prefer to thank you in these comments and come and look at your pictures if you post here, rather than thank you individually.
Three good things:
1. I got out for a decent walk in the Forest (6 miles)
2. well, I like the mad biscuits
3. better day for my daughter, getting out twice and starting to make up her jeans
