with a little luck

weekly photo challenge: hope

ellen — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:56:23 +0000

When I think about hope, I think of a bright shiny new day dawning. As Anne Shirley pointed out, “isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”

I know I post a lot of sunrise photos, but if you lived where I live (and your partner was usually awake at sunrise), you might have a large collection of sunrise photos, too! This one is a little blurry, but I kind of like that – it makes it feel more like a painting.

babycakes cornbread

ellen — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Mmmm, cornbread…

So far, cornbread (including pumpkin cornbread) is the only vegan and gluten-free bread that I’ve successfully made. I made this yummy loaf of cornbread using a recipe from the first BabyCakes cookbook. For those of you who don’t own this fantastic cookbook, the recipe is also available online here. The only small deviation I made from the recipe is that I substituted corn flour with corn starch, but the bread still turned out so well that the two of us scarfed down most of the loaf with some leftover miser wat (recipe for that, and other delicious vegetarian Ethiopian dishes, is here).

there’s a cake in my mug!

ellen — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:00:22 +0000

This single-serving mocha cake only took about 5 minutes to make, from getting out the ingredients to taking the first bite of my cute little cake!

I followed Chocolate-Covered Katie’s recipe, except to make it gluten-free I used 2 tablespoons of gluten-free all purpose flour and 1 tablespoon of brown rice flour. I had to microwave mine for 90 seconds, while Katie only needed 40-50 seconds, so the time can vary a bit depending on your microwave (and the lack of gluten may have affected the “baking” time as well). These single-serving cakes are great for single ladies and for married ladies whose husbands don’t share their chocolate cake cravings!

nerdy new year’s eve

ellen — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:03:00 +0000

This photo isn’t so timely, but I haven’t unloaded photos from my camera in a while. Anyway, this is how we spent New Year’s Eve (and part of New Year’s Day as well)!

south street parking lot

ellen — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 15:00:12 +0000

Check out the beautiful scene painted on this utility box that is tucked away in a parking lot on South Street.

weekly photo challenge: peaceful

ellen — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 22:54:22 +0000

A peaceful fall day in Portuguese Cove

adventures of ganley the hedgehog: boston, MA

ellen — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:00:15 +0000

Ganley recently spent a few days in Boston. He enjoyed a wander through the Fens on a sunny morning.

He also took advantage of the fantastic restaurants in Boston, starting out with a delicious take-out dinner from El Pelon, which recently re-opened its Peterborough Street location. He highly recommends the veggie plato (a great pile of mexican rice, black beans, and veggies, with corn tortillas on the side). Lunch at Pho and I was also excellent. The Pho Chay was such a large bowl of soup that Ganley could have swam laps in it, if it hadn’t been so delicious. The soup had a variety of vegetables and lots of yummy tofu. And most impressive of all was dinner at the Red Lentil in Watertown. The Red Lentil is all vegetarian, and has many gluten-free vegan options, as well as gluten-free cake! The food was really tasty, and beautifully presented.

As I mentioned before, Ganley loves good public transit, so of course he liked riding the T. Here he is admiring the T map while waiting for a train at the Symphony T stop.

2011 annual report

ellen — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 13:35:25 +0000

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,200 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

weekly photo challenge: winter

ellen — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 15:00:41 +0000

I took this photo in late December a few years ago – we were driving from Northampton to Westfield and this late afternoon scene was so lovely and magical that we pulled over to enjoy it and take a few photos.

Snow and fog cover a field in western Massachusetts

kickass cupcakes

ellen — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 15:00:28 +0000

While we were in Boston, I was keen to try one of the gluten-free cupcakes from Kickass Cupcakes, a small cupcakery on Highland Avenue in Davis Square. The variety of gluten-free cupcake flavors surpassed my expectations – they had chocolate, vanilla, mojito, and choco-mint gluten-free cupcakes, as well as many flavors of regular cupcakes, a few flavors of vegan cupcakes, and even cupcakes for pets! There was no indoor seating, so I took my choco-mint cupcake to go in a compostable take-out box. The $3 cupcake was about the same size as the ones I make at home, rather than one of those jumbo cupcakes that some bakeries sell. But the cupcake was tasty and moist and not too crumbly. I would love to try out their other flavors the next time I am in town!