Gluten-Free Banana Muffins

Here's a wonderful link I've discovered over the past few months:

http://mennonitegirlscancook.blogspot.com/

The site features a blog every day posted by one of a group of seven or eight women from the Fraser Valley. They do an outstanding job of documenting their work, photographing it and sharing recipes plus other interesting tidbits from their lives. They are a highly gifted group of women.

Among their substantial repertoire of recipes, they also publish a Gluten- Free section. The following recipe which I'm sharing here is from one of their posts this week but I simply made it to suit a gluten-free diet. So if you want the original recipe you can find it at the above link. This is my adapted version. They turned out very well. Big Al gave me the thumbs up on this one and that's the litmus test.

Gluten-Free Banana Muffins:
. 1 1/2 cups gluten-free flour mix -I used 3/4 cups ground gluten free oats,
1/2 cups ground almonds, 1/4 cup rice flour
. 1 tsp. baking powder
. 1 tsp. baking soda
. 1/2 tsp. salt
. 1/2 cup sugar
. 1/3 cup oil
. 2 eggs
. 3 mashed bananas

Combine dry ingredients except sugar.
Combine sugar, oil, eggs and mashed bananas.
Stir in the dry ingredients.
Fill one lined muffin tin with mixture. Spray liners with vegetable oil spray.
Bake at 375o for 18-20 minutes or until golden brown.
Cool on wirerack.

Cool Freebies

Every year I'm amazed at how many "freebies" show up in the garden. I expect the perennials and the weeds to show up of course but tomatoes... melons... summer savoury? Yet there they were!
Many years ago, I planted a packet of seeds displaying stunning magenta-colored flowers. I thought they were an annual but every year they come up randomly throughout the garden. Sometimes I move some of the fledglings into a more desirable spot and sometimes I just pull them out like a weed. It is a member of the hibiscus family, I think. I like its height and the color it adds to the tool shed and lattice trellis:

But after a heavy rain I find the stalks bent over unable to bear the weight. My sunflowers did the same thing this year. Yes, yes I know I should have anchored them. They are very forgiving though, I find.

Quite cool to find this tomato plant thriving in rich soil next to my pink rose bush and hidden under another equally well-fed hibiscus-type freebie. It already had well-developed tomatoes on it by the time I spotted it and so I let it ripen but right after the taste-test I took this photo and then discarded the whole plant. To my dismay it lacked flavor and texture. While it had been robbing the rose bush of its nutrients it didn't get the necessary sun to warm and sweeten its fruit.

One of my biggest surprises was finding this hydrangea bloom all by itself next to a grassy plant and about five feet away from my largest hydrangea bush. After checking to see whether it wasn't simply a cluster off the large bush, I discovered that it was securely anchored in the soil. There were no green leaves, just this little cluster. Does it have an underground umbilical cord still attached to the mother plant? Hmmm...I might dig it up to see. Interesting.

Over the past five months I've fussed over the petunias...deadheading, feeding and watering. It's all totally worth it when I see the stunning results. So I must say I was dumbfounded to see this tenacious little floweret imbedded in this tiny crack on our driveway. It's been stepped on and parched...no TLC for this little thing and yet there it is bright-eyed and vigorous. The staying power of a seed is remarkable indeed. How did it get there? How does it survive? I don't have the heart to treat it like a weed.

Asters and Hydrangeas

Asters deep purple
A grasshopper's call-
Today it is summer
Tomorrow is fall!*

I love these deep purple asters-perennials-which add such a bright note to their fading counterparts at this time of the year. Of course they've only just begun...

Hydrangea-stalwart staple of a large garden:

Hydrangea -from a different bush. Many of the hydrangea clusters have faded and dried. However, with the cooler weather there are always enough beauties which come to the fore and make a spectacular bouquet around Thanksgiving. What a great giving plant this is, flowering by the end of June, developing throughout the summer then offering up gorgeous dried clusters of flowers for arrangements which can last forever it seems.

More September Garden...

This has been a terrific summer for petunias. Even after a rain they rebound lifting their cheerful faces into the warmth of the summer sun. They flourish in the heat of this beautiful season.

 

I tried a grass plant in this planter. Earlier it also housed some tiny pansies but now only this grass.

 

Tomatoes-just three tiny plants which I put out against the south-facing wall about mid-May. Taller trees in the area now filter out the light sooner than last year but still even with the towering sunflowers breathing down their necks, the tomatoes are delivering the sweetest tastiest mini tomatoes we've ever had. No better treat than to raid these vines every day and enjoy their sun-ripened and warmed fruit.

 

 

September Garden

Tomorrow marks the mid-point of the gorgeous month of September - my favorite month of the year! I think the flowers still look amazingly beautiful inspite of prolonged periods of heat, then a deluge of rain last week, and not as much TLC as earlier in the season:

Fuchsia-an early April basket still blooming-it flourishes on tons of water and some miracle grow:

The rose, the rose-the lovely rose:

Salmon-colored Geranium-I can't resist this gently-colored beauty when I first see it in the Garden Centres early spring. Later I regret this color choice since it doesn't blend in very well with the other pinks, magentas, purples, reds...but still I will always have one salmon colored geranium planter methinks:

Pacific National Exhibition

I've learned something new about importing pictures today. I always import from Picasa and it only allows me to publish four pics at a time. Jenn sent me several folders of pictures of our outing to the PNE late in August but somehow I couldn't figure out how to take single pics out of a folder containing many pictures. By now I'm bleary-eyed but ecstatic that I did it. Now I just have to find out how to redate my entry since I had started this post right after our outing. So till then just scroll down to the post following the next one to view the post to go with this title.

Children

Children's children are a crown to the aged
...Proverbs 17:6

We feel like we've been crowned abundantly... adorned by our grandchildren. We are grateful to God for our grandchildren, we are grateful to God for our children!

This past Monday, August 31, we were thrilled to welcome baby Joshua into the fold. (The "fold" now also conjures up beautiful imagery of a shepherd carefully tending his sheep and taking care that each one comes safely into the fold at night...ah, the Good Shepherd tends us so beautifully - see John 10:1-18; Luke 15:1-7). We are grateful.

Life is redolent with imagery and my focus here initially was to be the metamorphosis of a butterfly.


This beautiful monarch butterfly caught me by surprise when it landed on a planter-unfortunately it only came once this summer- taking long but nervous sips of nectar from a favourite flower. I was happy to get a shot at him, even though not perfect for sure. Click on the butterfly to enlarge and see the amazing symmetry, proportion and beauty of this flighty papillon*.

butterfly......papillon...Schmetterling...mariposa
Just as a butterfly emerges from its tightly-knit cocoon, so an infant comes into this world out of its watery, snugly fit - designed especially for this purpose-cocoon, but not as an adult. The infant is totally dependent on its mother, its parents for nurturing and training, growing and developing under their careful guidance and love.

We love to be involved with our grandchildren, in their little lives so full of wonder and awe. It is a pleasure and a privilege. At times when they are over and need a nap or come for a sleepover, they now have a choice of two beds, both in the same room.
The pink bed:

The cars bed:

Al and I, the "aged", are in the wintertime of our lives. Our grandchildren, full of hope and promise, are just beginning their springtime pilgrimage.

Springtime flowers in front of our house taken two years ago:

Further readings pertinent to the importance of children:
Nursing infants gurgle choruses about you;
toddlers shout the songs
That drown out enemy talk, and silence atheist babble.
Psalm 8:2 the Message

From the lips of children and infants
you have ordained praise because of your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.
Ps 8:2 NIV

Let the little children come to me,
and do not hinder them,
for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.
Matt 19: 14 NIV

Whoever welcomes
one of these little children
in my name welcomes me...
Mark 9:37

See that you do not look down on one of these little ones.
For I tell you that their angels in heaven
always see the face of my Father in heaven.
Matt 18:10 NIV or from the Message ...
You realize, don't you, that their personal angels are constantly in touch with my Father in heaven?