Category Archives: Breakfast

In Just Spring – Broiled Grapefruit (SCD & GFCF)

In just spring, when the world is mud-licious and the world is puddle-wonderful, the crocuses push out of the earth and the tender firm buds open their petals, the crisp mornings cool, slightly warm; frost steaming off the fence by the thawing sun.

Yes, I just riffed off e.e. cummings. The very first sign of spring for me is when I see crocuses; I look forward to these little flowers every year. A broiled grapefruit with its warm, crusty surface giving way to the cool interior is like those early spring mornings, as the earth warms up yet still cool enough, for a while, that we can still snuggle up in our favourite house sweater and cradle a warm cup of tea or coffee before we must get on with our day or finding comfort in a warm bowl of soup.

I can only imagine that if Dudley Dursley had his grapefruit broiled, he may have liked the fruit much better.

If you haven’t had broiled grapefruit before, it’s a lovely way to eat grapefruit if you’re tired of just eating it raw or drinking the juice. Even grapefruit haters have been won over by this presentation.

Grapefruit is also my cure-all for a sore throat from a time when, years ago, I was down with a cold. After eating a grapefruit my sore throat went away and it didn’t come back.

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Rice Pudding (GFCF)

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When I announced that I’m hosting Sugar High Friday this month, I made a secret promise to myself that I would also make January 2011 a grain-free month: that all the recipes I would publish this month would be void of any grains, true grains. In effect, kind of participating along with you all who are joining in on the SHF grain-free challenge. As well, I also appreciate the simplicity of grain-free baking, which is something I like to fall back on now and then as gluten-free grain-based baking is still sometimes of a learning curve for me as far as how different grains behave and interact with each other, though I’ve learned quickly – and continue to learn.

That said and that personal promise being not so secret anymore, this promise has cracked slightly to allow this rice pudding, which leads me to return to that challenge of food photography I so love. Perhaps it’s because rice is in a clump, virtually shapeless without help and that’s what makes it so danged elusive to take decent pictures of. To make it more visually interesting, I use the sharpen tool on Picnik to make the grains of rice pop a little more. I use a point and shoot – there’s only so much I can do with the camera before I must resort to photo editing, minimal at best.

Anyway, I don’t come on here to stand on a soapbox and rant about my photography shortcomings: this was never the intent of creating this blog nor is it one I intend to embark upon, especially as I’m not yet confident enough or know how to answer questions regarding food photography. If I must rant, I must also give a solution. (Something I’m trying to learn and apply in other areas of my life as well.)

I doubt very few remember but I once posted rice pudding – twice, actually – in my early days of blogging. I’m posting it again not so much out of hope that this time it will be seen but that I think this version is way better. What’s funnier is that I looked at that recipe only once and went from there, just going by feel, and it was while I was adding a little bit of this, a bit of that, I thought to myself that rice pudding really is easy. It’s practically a no-brainer and, unless there’s something really specific about it, you don’t really need a recipe. At it’s most basic it’s just rice, milk, some sort of sweetener, and spices.

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Almond Milk Banana Silver Dollar Pancakes (SCD & GFCF)

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I had lofty aspirations with these pancakes, nearly all of which fell flat on their faces. First, I’d wanted to make it egg-free: not using any egg substitutes as I have practically nil right now but quickly found that these pancakes do need that structure so these pancakes are no longer egg-free. Other than that, my only other thing was that I’d imagined the pancakes differently somehow but these ones turn out almost like the flourless banana pancakes. They taste like them, too, but with the addition of coconut flour and some other ingredients.

What I did like having the opportunity of though was that I could make itty bitty pancakes and put them here. I don’t know about you, but it almost seems that smaller pancakes are more filling or perhaps that’s just due to the perception that there’s more. Sort of like sweet petites: they’re small but just big enough to satisfy. The recipe that these pancakes are based off is from Cooking with Coconut Flour: a book that explains how to use coconut flour and is filled with a large number of recipes that use coconut flour almost exclusively and most are SCD friendly or are easily adaptable.