Happy 4th of July!

Red, White and Blue! We have the most amazing local cherries and we've been eating pounds of them a week! I was in heaven yesterday at the 75% off sale at Sur La Table and I found my newest kitchen gadget.....A hand held cherry pitter!! How I ever got along without one is crazy! I thought a cherry tart would be a great end to our family BBQ. It's not too sweet or too heavy. I made a pastry crust of GF flour, salt, xanthan gum, shortening and ice water. I think I'll leave the xanthan gum out next time, as the crust was a little too firm for my taste. I used half the normal amount of sugar in the cherries and used a bit of cornstarch as a thickener. The vanilla cinnamon cream is a mixture of vegan vanilla yogurt (soy or coconut), vegan cream cheese and a bit of cinnamon. Topped off with some blueberries from our garden, it looks very patriotic!

Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Who doesn't like chocolate chip cookies?! Well, if you're gluten free and/or vegan, you may not like them so much. My daughter and I went downtown Portland yesterday on a gluten free/vegan bakery tour (self guided). I wanted to taste what my competition had to offer. The PSU Saturday Farmers Market boasts many of these bakeries all in one place, so we just moved from booth to booth eating way too much! The consensus at the end was conveyed my my daughter, "When are you going to start your own bakery? Your food tastes so much better!" Everything we sampled was heavy, choke-on-it dry, crumbly, or had a weird aftertaste. It made me want to come home and duplicate everything we tasted. I started with these scrumptious cookies. They are slightly crispy on the outside, gooey in the center, and the entire batch disappeared in a short afternoon! We had company for the 4th of July, and everyone loved them, not just the gluten free and vegan guests.

**Another bonus is that you can eat as much raw batter as you want....No eggs!!