Olive-Rosemary Bread

Bonjour bonjour!
Good Friday to you all.
I have a recipe to pass on to you this afternoon, it’s delectable.  This bread will make your socks fly off your feet and your eyelashes curl into perfect ringlets.

To boot, it’s gluten-free, though the glutivores (not a real word) out there will also enjoy it very much.  Just ask the guests I had at my dinner party last night.  They couldn’t believe this bread was gluten-free when I served it alongside a hearty elk stew and a heart warming malbec wine.
They’ll testify.

I should add that I found this recipe in THIS cookbook which contains a fantastic selection of recipes that feature almond flour, agave nectar and grapeseed oil instead of regular wheat flours, sugar and vegetable oils.  Baking and cooking with almond flour is the most scrumptious way to eat gluten free, in my opinion, and probably the most expensive (GROANnNNnnn).  If you haven’t come in contact with this cook book yet and you are living gluten-free, I’d highly suggest picking up a copy.  Tout de suite!
 Ingredients:  
3/4 cup creamy almond butter at room temperature
2 tbsp olive oil
3 large eggs (Winona and Rhonda supplied mine…)
1 tbsp agave nectar
1/4 blanched almond flour
1/4 cup arrowroot powder
1/2 tsp sea salt (I use Celtic sea salt, because it’s the best…)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 cup kalamata olives, pitted and finely chopped
1 tbsp finely chopped fresh rosemary
 Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350F, Grease a 7×3 inch loaf pan with grapeseed oil (or olive oil…I’m aware that not everyone uses grapeseed oil) and dust with almond flour.

In a large bowl, mix together almond butter and olive oil until smooth.  Then blend in the eggs and agave nectar.  In another bowl, combine your dry ingredients and then blend these with the wet ingredients until thoroughly combined.  Fold in the olives and rosemary and pour the batter into your loaf pan.

Bake for 45-55 minutes, on the bottom rack of the oven, until a knife inserted in the center of the loaf comes out clean.  Let the bread cool in the pan for one full hour and then serve.
I could obviously eat an entire loaf myself except RW has demanded that I share with him.  Since he has built me a brand new bathroom I suppose I shall acquiesce to his demands.

This bread really saved me this week.  I’ve been spending my afternoons stomping around the house complaining bitterly about how my body is craving grains and I just wish I could sink the hearts of my teeth into a beautiful slice of wheat bread, freshly baked, slathered in the magenta delicatessa that is plum jam.  Sometimes we gluten-free folks experience times like this, times when nothing fills the void.

I hope your weekends are full of delicious foods, long walks, organic carrots and good books. If you can manage glutens, please raise a gloriously golden croissant in my name before you let its buttery fibers dissolve on your tongue tip.

Happy baking my friends!
Happy weekending my friends.
Be well.
xx
Plume

Post Scriptus:
Plum says, “Hi!  Gimmie all your biscuits or I’ll twang your heartstrings!

…she’s been helping RW paint our new bathroom doors.  As you can see.

A Plum a day…

…keeps the _____________________ away.

You fill in the blank!!!


If you don’t,

Plum will give you the stink eye.

Monday Brings the Glorious Puppy Bum

A couple of hours ago the mailman was knocking on my door to deliver one magazine, one Anthropologie catalogue (not my favorite to date…), four unexpected packages and two letters.
This might be the best mail day I’ve had in months.
Some of those packages were early birthday presents (thank you, wonderful ladies)!  I feel so spoilt!  I’m turning 29 in exactly two weeks, RW has been planning something secret and special that involves a back country yurt (or so I’ve most expertly guessed).  I can’t wait.  He has a knack for giving the very best gifts in the form of experiences.
 The manly mountain man (that’s MMM, for short) has been bonding with his Baby Beast all day long.  He was away over the weekend hunting the Big Beast on chukar, West of Pocatello.  Bird season is officially over in Idaho, Farley will rest until next autumn when RW can take him out again.  It’s nice to have RW home again and working on our un-bathroom.  I think that yesterday night was the first night in two months that I have actually complained about not having a bathroom — I’m pretty proud of that track record.  Being bathroom-less in our house for this long has made me feel like a pioneer woman, even though I have a KitchenAid mixer…and an automatic garage door…and some other stuff…that is modern and convenient.

And yes, that is a Molson Canadian Hat RW is wearing.  My Grandma Thoen mailed it our way.  It has hockey sticks on the other side.  RW loves it.
 Plumbelina’s bottom gets darling-er by the day.
Seriously.  I wish you could see it in action.
She has successfully chewed half the cover off one of my art books in the living room, eaten countless chicken droppings, mauled my fox hat (I put a stop to that, rather quickly) as well as two of my houseplants.  Additionally, she tried to eat Mister Pinkerton’s tail last night (he put a stop to that, rather quickly).  

Oh, as I type this, Plum just brought me a set of my underpants that she pulled out of the laundry hamper.
Lovely.  Thanks for that, little baby dog of the glorious bum.
 I have started another avocado pit hoping and praying that I might grow an avocado tree!  I have tried countless times to start a pit in a bowl of water like everyone else does but I have never succeeded.  While at my myofascial massage on Saturday, my masseuse, Pippi (not a joke, I actually know a wonderful lady named Pippi), informed me that she has had success with this type of avocado start.  Keep your fingers crossed for the pit.
 A scant week ago, I found my amaryllis in the laundry room cupboards where I had placed it to spend summer, last spring.  I watered it and put it on the kitchen table and it has already thrust a green spike up into the air.  What a keener.
On Sunday, I bought myself a bouquet of tulips.  For no good reason at all, except I deserved it.
Since quitting Facebook, I have walked my dogs five times (a mile at a time for the baby dog), written seven letters, journaled seven FULL pages in my sketchbook and finished three loads of laundry — among other things.  I feel reinvented.   

How on earth did you little magpies spend your weekends?

I imagine there was delicious wine and fine fodder.
Perhaps hot springs?
A clever book.
Math homework.
The cleaning of a kitty litter box.
Some sewing.
The turning of a sock on a pair of knitting needles.
Thai food!
A long ride on horseback through shallow snow drifts.
A raccoon in the dumpster out behind the garage.
The click and whir of a camera shutter.
A warm kiss.
Or fifty.

I love kissing.

Happy Monday to you all!
xx
The Plume

Post Scriptus:  
I read this last night (more on IT later) and I watched this on Saturday night (featuring the scrumptious Matthew Goode)as well as this (LOVED). and have been listening to her nonstop.


Post Scriptus Scriptus:
Last week was, really, just such a great week.

Big Beast & Baby Beast

I already have this image up on Flickr and Facebook and many of you have already commented on it! I love it so much that I want it here on my blog as well.  Farley and Plumbelina’s expressions are utterly hilarious to me.  He looks so wise and mature in this shot and she looks so bewildered and about to go berserkers — I love the contrast!
Now back to the studio!  
I’m finishing up some earrings for you.
xx

An Introduction




Well, we looked and looked for her, for a couple of years.
When we finally found her mum and dad, we paid for her six months in advance, before she was even a gleam in her daddy’s eye.
This weekend we brought her, all her freckles, her chocolate wings and her half milk moustache home to Plume Gables.
She is:
Montana’s Tart and Tiny Plumbelina*

Her friends and family call her Plumbelina, Plum or Tart.
You can too.
Welcome to The Gables, Baby Plum.
You’re the sweetest and tartest little thing Idaho has ever seen!

* Name Entomology
Montana’s – The name of the kennel she hails from up in Kalispell, Montana.
Tart:  As in a tad bit sour and sassy on the palate! Also!  A reference to one of my favorite sorts of pastries AND a reference to our hopes that someday she’ll be Farley’s unruly little wife.
Tiny:  Well, tiny might be an overstatement but she is small (and mighty).
Plumbelina:  We wanted an ultra-feminine name for this little girl.  We know she’s going to hunt hard and since hunting is considered a man’s world, we like the ladies who participate in bird hunting to have ridiculously girly call names.  While we were driving Plum home across the mountains of Idaho, I looked down at her on the truck seat beside me and thought to myself, “She’s such a darling little plum!”  And I realized that Plum would be a sweet name for her.  RW was desperate to call her Thumbelina.  So we spliced the names and wound up with a silly and wonderful compromise.
Plus, you all know how I love my wee plum orchard…the name Plum just seemed like a wonderful way to carry a bit of Idaho with us everywhere we go.

She’s plump.  She’s juicy. She’s sweet.  She’s sun kissed.  She’s winged like a singing sparrow.
There you have it.
She’s a very plum Plum.