Paleo cookies, few ingredients

So I needed a little something to go with afternoon tea, and decided to go with Elizabeth Barbone's paleo cookies.  Not sure why they're called this, since I doubt if the ingredients were available to paleo people, but never mind.

If you want to try them, go here 

Of  course, I didn't follow the directions, largely because I didn't have a couple of the four (!) ingredients in the house. And since it's sleeting, and icing and snowing and inventiveness is better than getting frozen and wet, I looked around.

Not enough almonds available to make 1.5 cups of ground almonds, so I used part almonds and the rest walnuts. Ground them in the coffee mill. I never buy the ready ground flour, astronomically expensive.  I don't grind them all the way to flour, since there's a hairsbreadth between getting flour and getting nut butter, so I leave it a bit coarse, fine for cookies.

And I didn't have maple syrup, so I used jaggery, the Western version, which is molasses half and half with honey.  Lovely organic molasses and excellent pure wildflower honey.

And here they are. This is one of those recipes where they say you can get more cookies than I actually did out of the ingredients. But they look okay to me, and they're ready to show up with their pot of tea in due course.

Mayday, Mayday!

Today, I put my vague plan about painting the tiny downstairs bathroom into action, which first entailed removing a ton of small art from the parts I needed to paint.  Then remembering what tools I needed. A roller is too awkward for this small space, so I use those big square pads you sort of brush down the wall, and can cut in pretty well.  Touch up with a sponge brush, done. And finally I was wondering where my painting clothes are.

So I did get this show going, and painted the lower half of the wall in the same color as the staircase. It looks almost white in the can, but lovely caramel on the wall.  And finally the place where the grab bar was installed just looks like part of the wall instead of a replacement.  Note the towels on the grab bar.

The paint job spiffs up the room quite a bit, since it's always the lower half that gets the traffic and thumps.  The contrast with the pink is very happy, a bit like a strawberry/ French vanilla icecream.

And the white rabbit for May 1 had to wait to make his entrance until Kate H reminded me it was indeed May 1 and not April 31, as I had sort of been thinking.  So here he is, midst greenery, wishing you a good May Day.

But I celebrated the Workers' Day by working, so that was okay.  And mayday mayday did come to mind a time or two in the painting process.

Next the loose moraine of artworks on the dining table need to make their way back to the walls of the bathroom, those that are going back, that is.  

I may change my mind about some of them, always a possibility.

I will recoup my failing energy with a couple of paleo cookies, recipe suggested by Carol H and tried out yesterday, and a pot of tea.  They're Elizabeth Barbone's paleo cookies. 

 I guess paleo doesn't actually mean cavemen ate them, though they were missing a good thing, but the ingredients have no gluten, maybe that's it.

Four ingredients: almond flour, a no brainer around here, vanilla essence, baking powder, dark maple syrup.  I had no maple syrup so I subbed jaggery.  In fact I subbed half and half honey and molasses which itself is a sub for jaggery.  

Anyway, it made fewer cookies than the recipe said, probably because of this change, but they went down dramatically well with Handsome Son who stopped over to do a thing or two for me yesterday and get a cup of tea while he was here.  Hot biscuits with either mango or blueberry jam, plate of paleo cookies.  Not bad.  He wants me to make them again.  So this is good. 

And my house wall painting is under way for another season.  In fact this is thrilling, that I can do it with no ill effects other than feeling a bit tired.  Shoulder totally well now, yay.  So other walls now call.

I have enough of the staircase color to paint the inner wall of the stairwell, the one you don't see unless you live here, so maybe that will be next.  It always looks better when the stair tread sides, there's a name for them which escapes me, please supply if you know it, are newly painted. Not treads, not risers, the zigzag bit that goes up the side and is the devil to paint without getting the rug involved. Stringer?  when I built miniatures I used to know all these technical terms, muntins, fascia boards, soffits, all that, but this one has left me. 

So that's where May Day finds us!  St Joseph the Worker, whose feast we celebrated it as kids, would be proud.