Thankful for an EASY recipe for gluten-free pumpkin pancakes

Lots of gluten free recipes are complicated and putzy, and also full of rice flour, of which I am not a fan.

In the world of gluten free eating, I aim to eat as cheaply, normally and simply as possible.  Thus, I was thrilled when my experiment with gluten free pumpkin pancakes turned out to be surprisingly successful.

Gluten Free Pumpkin Pancakes

For one serving (multiply as desired):

2 eggs
1/3 cup canned pumpkin
1/4 cup quick-cooking rolled oats (GF)
salt (in a salt shaker)
ground cloves (in a shaker bottle)
cinnamon (in a shaker bottle)

Crack the eggs into your blender.  Add the pumpkin, oats, two shakes of salt, one shake of clove and three shakes of cinnamon.  Canned pumpkin varies, so if yours is particularly thick, you may need to add a tablespoon or so of milk, almond milk, or water.  Blend until smooth.

[If you aren't desirous of being particularly healthy, you could also add some sugar to this recipe, but I find that the syrup I pour over my pancakes gives more than enough sweetness for me.]

Cook in frying pan over medium heat for three minutes on the first side.  Flip, reduce heat, and cook for three more minutes.  Your cooking time is where you can customize these to your personal taste.  If you like them moist and almost custardy in the middle, like pumpkin pie filling, cook a bit less.  If you like them fluffy, cook a bit longer.  Stoves vary, so watch closely and don't burn them!!

Serve with real butter and real maple syrup!

I am thankful for quick, easy gluten free recipes made with things I already have in my pantry!

Thankful for a Very Big Deal

Once I had a friend who told me her mother measured circumstances by this litmus: "Is it a life?"  If the answer was no, her mother would declare, "It isn't a life."  And that was that.  No big deal.

In the scheme of things, there are big deals and not-so-big deals.  We are often tempted to measure the magnitude of something by its dollar value.  For instance, it seems like a bigger deal if you get sick and have to miss a vacation in the Caribbean, than if you get sick and miss having coffee with a friend.  Likewise, it seems like a bigger deal if you win a new car, than if you win a free Coke.

When our heads are screwed on properly, we understand that money is not the biggest deal.  Life trumps money, and the biggest deals of all involve life and death.  Life is priceless.

This is why today's thankful post is a Very Big Deal.

I am thankful that we have a little grandbaby who is expected be born right around Christmastime this year.

My mind is boggled at the thought of this new life, who even now pokes funny shapes in his mama's stretched belly, and visibly cavorts in all the space available, ever striving to push for more.

Amazingly, through the wonders of modern technology, we have already seen this baby's tiny face, and it looks remarkably like his mama's tiny face, when she was newly born.

Grandbaby's face

Grandbaby's mama's face

as a newborn

God is the Giver of Life.  I am thankful for this new life, and joy, and hope for the future, and precious memories of the past.  I am thankful for the linked chain of family and love.

I am thankful.

Thankful for walks

I am thankful that I can walk, and that I have beautiful places to walk.

Walking is exercise.  How amazing and wonderful is that?

I love to walk outside, and see the beauty of the trees and the great wide sky.

Looking up, I see blue space, flickering leaves, bare twigs, sailing clouds.  Looking down, I see crunchy fallen leaves, green grasses, stones, gravel, dirt, and various plants, pods and puddles.  Ahead lies a path, beside me a thicket.

I love to walk, moving my legs, rolling my feet, swinging my arms, squinting into the sun and breathing.

I am thankful for walks.

Thankful that it isn't winter yet

There is nothing so gorgeous as the last days of autumn, when afternoon sun comes slanting through turned leaves, gold and orange and red.  The leaves catch dollops of light, juggling bright spots gently in a chill breeze under cold, clear, blue sky.

I want to walk and walk, before the snow falls, soaking in each moment before it is gone.  The days go fast now, especially since we turned our clocks back.  It's dark by 5 p.m.  Another day gone, another day closer to winter.

And yet, it is not winter.  Not yet.

For that I am thankful.  Seize the day!

Thankful for Duffy

I'm just going to go ahead and burn the Duffy card at the outset, because I need to explain why I may be missing some thankful posts this year.

This little dog-baby.

When you are used to old, settled dogs, it is quite a flurry of newness to bring a young pup into the household.  And when you no longer have any children at home to play with the young pup, well.  It all depends on you, yourself . . . and you may be past your prime, a tad tired.

But a cute puppy is one of God's most aesthetically amazing creations, in my opinion.  It is a great blessing to have a puppy, to play with him, feed him, and laugh at his wild tricks.  An uninhibited, carefree, energetic puppy brings a person right up out of the doldrums.

Today Duffy and I were taking a walk, and we noticed a neighbor who used to have a golden retriever, playing in his yard with a small black puppy.  His old dog must have died about the same time ours did.  He and I both got a bit misty-eyed, swapping stories.  Duffy, at four months, is about the same size as this other puppy, who is nine weeks right now.  She is a golden-doodle, and she is very playful, which is exactly what Duffy has been hoping for.  They romped and rolled and wrestled with no signs of slowing, until the school bus dropped off a gaggle of kids and I was able to tear Duffy away amidst the distraction.

I am thankful for Duffy, but right now he is creeping exploratorily around my study, making chewing noises near electrical cords, and I need to go. I've already had to pause once, to rescue some delicate hand-washables that he stole off the drying rack, and ease them from his piranha-like teeth.

So, if I'm scarcer here than I have been in Novembers past, please realize that it is only on account of one of the things for which I am thankful.

Oooops... there goes the wastebasket.  No lie.

And the entire drying rack just crashed.  Signing out.

Thankful for lots of things

I missed a bunch of days of thankfulness,
but not because I wasn't thankful.

I wrote once before that I was thankful for roads,
and I am,
even though I wish I didn't need to be.
Recently, I was feeling
decidedly unthankful
for Wisconsin,
which lies between
my current home and my natal home.

The last few times we have driven through Wisconsin,
blizzards have raged,

and this last time, once again,
Wisconsin sleet and snow assailed us.

But,
I am very thankful for a safe drive.

I'm thankful for my mother,
who turned 86 on Saturday.

My phone camera foreshortens and distorts in the oddest ways.
My mother is a tiny person,
and these golden roses were very large,
but the camera makes the proportions look ridiculous.

Still,
I cannot quite image how I came into the world
through such a tiny person.
A mother is a precious and mysterious thing,
the one who cradled me in her body before I was born.

I am thankful for a mother who
gave me life,
raised me to know Jesus,
and is still here to be visited!

Thankful (it's November)

I finally realized that today is November 1.  Happy November 1!

The tradition of writing daily thankful posts in November has been a huge blessing to me.  I should have been planning a bang-up premiere post, but I've been caught off-guard instead.

There are so many things to be thankful for . . . big things, small things, serious things, lighthearted things.

Right now, at this moment, at 4:17 p.m. in the afternoon, when I haven't started dinner, this is what I am thankful for:

A package of unfrozen ground beef in my refrigerator, which will make dinner much easier than it otherwise might be.  I am thankful for this simple and adaptable ingredient.  I think I will make chili.  A steaming pot of chili would be lovely on this cold, dark, rainy day.