The Magnelephant Review: Now With More Pancakes. Also, Coffee.

Hello, readers.

It is the weekend. This means I made pancakes. Also, today I used, for the first time, my very own hand-grinder to hand-grind coffee beans. I don't know if a hyphen is really necessary in the word hand-grind, but it appears my fingers think so, and I've learned not to argue with body parts. It leads to such silly horror movies.

The other thing I did today was work on a review for Strange Horizons and attend a celebration of fermentation. This latter thing was an even in Itaewon where many makers of moldy good things--such as beer, cheese, kombucha, pickles, etc.--gathered to display their wares.

I sampled some kombucha and coconut peanut butter and much conversation. With fellow gluten-free person and fellow lovers of Radiolab. I also got to share some gluten-free beer with the brewers in attendance, as well as a friend, who is also a brewer and has promised to attempt, in his mad ways, the making of gluten-free beer.

I also met Mipa of Alien's Day Out, whose link you can find over there to the right. This marks the first time I've ever met someone who writes a blog that I follow who is not already a friend--in the let's grab a coffee sense of friendship, as opposed to the goodreads friendship, for example, which I share with Neil Gaiman.

It is always nice to meet so may people in one place who are passionate about things. You learn so much and, in this case, you get to eat some really good pickles.

Remember to check out the Gluten-free Ratio Rally, readers, if you're in need of it, or just interested in baking something up in a mad baker sort of way.

Enjoy.

The recipe for pancakes today came, mostly, from GF in the City. That flour there is teff and brown rice flour. There's salt, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger, too. And baking powder + baking soda. And I forgot about the potato starch, but they turned out alright. You'll see.

The thing you can do with soy milk (milk of any kind, really), is put a tablespoon of some kind of vinegar in it, and wait a bit. What happens is you get something like buttermilk. And, if you use apple cider vinegar, as I did this morning, you get something like amazing. What you do after that is mix the amazing, along with egg or an egg-replacement, into the above flour. Your goop will look like the above. The baking soda, plus the acid from the vinegar, is what makes the bubbling.