Women

It is awesome being a woman! I just spent a good hour and a half with 3 of the most precious and lovely woman sharing breakfast and talking and I am struck by how good it is to be a woman, but also how good it is to be loved and known by other women. I feel overwhelmed by the amount of deep friends I have, women I trust and love and whom I can share anything with. It's special and not everyone has it and so I want to say thank you - thank you to the women who walk with me, who talk with me, who pray with and for me, who dance with me, who cry with me, who encourage me to be the woman I was created to be, who understand me, who are honest with me and who love me even knowing the depths of my insecurities and failings - I am a better person because of you!

Croissants, glorious croissants - Part 1

So, I'm going to be a snob for a moment...baking from French recipes and by that I mean recipes written in French is so much more awesome than the plain english ones, especially when baking things like croissants. I bought a fantastic patisserie book when I was in Belgium at the beginning of the year and this is my first dip into it.

Let me tell you my story with croissants. I've never thought about making croissants until a couple of weeks ago. I just didn't think it was possible to be honest. I've always imagined it to be one of those gourmet patisserie things that only bakers with millions of years of experience and a degree in culinary arts should attempt, definitely not to be attempted at home, and then...

[I have to backtrack a little bit here quickly - my delightful boyfriend is gluten intolerant and so I've been experimenting with leaving the realms of gluten and well known cake flours for a variety of little known flours (well, little known to me at least) such as: potato flour, rice flour, tapioca flour, corn flour, soy flour, quinoa etc.]

It's quite daunting, but I'm always up for a challenge and so am slowly embracing them. So, as I was baking the other night, I started wondering about puff pastry, because there is no such gluten free substance to be found, so I started pondering how hard it would be to make and so I started research.
It turns out firstly, that it does not look so hard to make, once you've gotten the hang of the techniques and the folding and making layers with the butter and pastry, and to my delight as I was investigating this, I stumbled across a recipe for croissants and to my disbelief it looked feasible!

So, here I am, about to start my first batch of croissants! I decided to start with gluten-filled croissants, so as to get the hang of the techniques and a feel for consistencies and then I'll move on to the gluten-free croissants, something that my delightful boyfriend (db) will be particularly excited about. :)

I'm BLOGGGGING again

So, I have now created a second blog, a Master's blog, a blog on the work and research that I'm doing, Gaby's thoughts on RE and Rural Electrification but since starting writing that blog I have this insatiable desire to write and write and write and some of the things that I want to write are not really going to fit into that blog, so I'm going to resurrect this blog for those purposes, which I'm quite excited about. So, if any of you haven't given up on this blog as a has been, you are about to be in for a treat :)
I'm thinking that this blog is now going to consist of things that I'm doing and interested in - envisaging sections on baking, gluten-free baking, crafty things like knitting and sewing and photos, my heart things - thoughts and ponderings on life, love, community and God.
I'm excited, I hope you are too!