Turkey Tracks: November 8, 2010
October Book Club
It was my turn to host our book club.
We meet late afternoon for tea and discussion. This month the book was The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbary,which I want to discuss in a separate entry.
For some reason I was thinking about John’s mother. Norah gave me so many pretty things over the years. Among them this Royal Tara tea set:
The wool placemats and napkins were a wedding present 44 years ago.
Here’s what the table looked like. Not too fancy, but comfy feeling on a cool day.
I made two kinds of cookies. A buttery saffron one from the Pensey’s Spices catalog that had just arrived:
They were quite good, but are still hanging around since we really don’t each much white flour and sugar. Because of that I made macaroon cookies that are almost healthy. They do not have any white flour, have healthy coconut meat, limited sweetener, and some good nuts and dried fruit. It’s a recipe I’ve evolved from one in Sally Fallon Morell and Mary Enig’s book–a mainstay in my kitchen–Nourishing Traditions. OK, so the chocolate isn’t great, but, there you have it, I love chocolate in the winter. I don’t seem to have a thing for it in the summer.
Louisa’s Healthy Macaroons
Preheat the oven to 300 degrees and line two cookie sheets with either the new silicon sheets or parchment paper. (I’m afraid to ask if these silicon sheets are ok to use as they make baking cookies so easy.)
4 egg whites (I use the yolks in yogurt fruit smoothies)
pinch of sea salt (the wet grey kind with minerals intact, not the white dried kind in the grocery store)
2 Tablespoons arrowroot
1/2 cup maple syrup or honey–or less (the honey cooks faster than the maple syrup)
1 teaspoon vanilla (Fallon/Enig call for 1 tablespoon, but I find this too much since I have added more ingredients and since I was using Penseys’ double vanilla)
2 cups dried, unsweetened coconut meat (I order on-line from Coconut on-line and get a BIG jar which lasts about a year)
Add extras: nuts that have been soaked in salted water and dried in a dehydrator to remove the phytates, dried fruit, chocolate bits. Good combos are pecans and apricots, dried cherries and chocolate and nuts. I just chop a high-quality chocolate bar into chunks. I probably add a good 2 cups of extras.
So, whip your egg whites and pinch of salt until you have firm peaks. Add the arrowroot and sweetener and vanilla. Add the coconut and mix with a big spoon. Add the extras. Do not overmix and break down the egg white mixture.
Put big gobs of the macaroon mixture onto the sheets.
Like this:
Bake at 300 degrees for 30 minutes and then turn down the oven to 200 and let the cookies dry out a bit for…about 30-40 minutes. Taking them out early does not hurt them–they just get too sticky. You want them to be nicely brown and a bit dry. Here’s a picture of them done just right:
ENJOY!!! And put in an airtight container as they pick up humidity.
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