April is Poetry Month, so I thought to share a thoughtful poem with you all before we run out of April.  Enjoy, and be kind.

The Mower

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found

A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,

Killed.  It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.

Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world

Unmendably.  Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.

The first day after a death, the new absence

Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind

While there is still time.

by Philip Larkin, from the book Because a Fire was in My Head, edited by Michael Morpurgo

What kind of circus do YOU have in mind?

An estimated twenty million Americans are staying in jobs they hate in order to keep their health insurance -- when research indicates that career dissatisfaction is more likely than anything else to make them need to use it.  

  -- Barbara Bailey Reinhold, quoted from the book Is it Too Late to Run Away and Join the Circus? by Marti Smye


And I don't even HAVE health insurance!!!!!

Coconut!

Today I experimented with gluten-free baking, using coconut flour.  I'm not having trouble with gluten but I'd like to be able to share my baking with all my friends and using different flours adds nutritional value.

  Both recipes were a success, the coconut flour baking a golden brown and, while the texture certainly is different from wheat flour (more dense), the taste was excellent!  Here are the Coconut Pecan Yum-Yums and the Blueberry Almond Muffins.  If you want the recipes, e-mail me; both are from the book "The Coconut Flour Gourmet" by Bruce and Leslie Fife.