January Delights

Reading Ross Gay's essays in The Book of Delights got me started on a practice in my journal of recording "today's delights." I kept it up for months, learning along the way that if I looked for delights I found them. In any day, no matter what else happened, I could pause and truly pay attention for a moment. When I did, there waited delight.

At some point for unknown reasons I fell out of the habit. I might occasionally note delights in a day but I stopped setting up my journal each morning with that heading that established up front the expectation that I'd find things to put on the list.

I'm now reading Gay's The Book of (More) Delights and restoring my habit of expecting each day to hold some delights. And sure enough, there they are, just waiting to be noticed. 

Sometimes I notice scents or flavors: A hot, good-bitter cup of coffee fresh from the French press. The aroma of bread I'm baking made with my sourdough starter and whole wheat flours grown in the Chimacum Valley on the Olympic Peninsula. Hot spiciness of tofu seasoned with gochujang, sesame oil, soy sauce, garlic and ginger and crisped up in the oven's air fryer setting. The apple ginger jelly I made last fall on a toasted English muffin.

Some of the delights are visual: One tiny white daisy, then another, then realizing the lawn ahead of me was filled with them and it was only January 11th. The very next day spotting a bush full of blush pink flowerheads starting to open. Occidental Square in Seattle full of trees covered with tiny white lights, glowing in the darkness. Sunlight reflecting like dancing mirrors on the waters of the bay when the surface ripples. Reflections of lights seeming to shoot up from the bottom of the bay in the dark like streaks of fireworks when the water is smooth. A stump in the nearby park absolutely covered with hen of the woods mushrooms and topped with a bright green moss toupee.

Other delights are tactile: A hot, hot shower. Stepping outside under blue skies in winter and actually feeling warmth from the sun overhead. The silky softness of our cat's fur when he's lying on my lap so I can pet him (rather than being a wildcat trying to stop me from typing on my laptop by swiping at my hands when I'm trying to work—oops, not a delight, more of an anti-delight).

The delight can be sounds: Deep, resonant tones as the windchimes outside my office tap each other. Birds twittering or calling. The knock-knock-knocking I heard on a walk in the rhododendron patch that turned out to be a big pileated woodpecker knocking loose chunks of bark, then cocking its head to one side and then the other to listen for its insect lunch.

Some are social: Riding the train to Seattle with a friend, both of us working away in the dining car and asking each other stray questions. Getting two compliments from strangers in the same day on my dark teal jacket worn over a teal dress, both of them saying how great the color was on me. Talking with people I haven't seen in a long time, in person and not on a screen. Going to a performance of "Ms. Holmes and Ms. Watson" with friends and realizing it's been far too long since I watched live theater. Laughing so hard I cried in improv class as two people brought characters to life and kept ramping up to another level of hilarity. Biking to the office and back with a friend, chatting along the way.

Many of them have to do with nature: The bright red flash of spotted towhees at the suet cage hanging in a tree right outside my office window, then the flutter of more wings as dark-eyed juncos and others come in to join the feast. Changes in the weather that give me the chance to take a walk during a break in the rain, or the wind sweeping everything clean. Signs that the world keeps turning and the seasons keep changing no matter what humans do.

Even on days that hold moments (or hours) of chaos, tension, or uncertainty, that day also holds delights. I'll offer up my January 31st list as an example:

• Rain break that let me take a 30-minute park walk
• Revisiting the stump covered in hen of the woods with its mossy toupee
• Yard bunny!
• Exploring an Asian market, finding spices and sauces
• Heat of Thai food that made me keep taking another bite

May you find delight in each day. It's there, if you look for it. 

Snicker Snicker Snickerdoodles, Made with Almond Flour

I've made snickerdoodles for years, usually using a Joy of Cooking recipe. I remembered making them with almond flour a while back and thinking they tasted really good but I couldn't remember which recipe I'd found online. Easy enough, I should be able to search and find it, right?

But wait, I'm finding multiple recipes and can't tell which one I made. And they all have different ratios for the ingredients. Really different in terms of almond flour, sugar, eggs, and butter, and those are pretty important to cookie quality. A few even commit the cardinal sin of leaving out the cream of tartar, which is precisely what gives them their specific tangy goodness. Those recipes were nonstarters for me. They're just sugar cookies dipped in cinnamon and sugar, not true snickerdoodles.

I settled in and did what I usually do when confronted with conflicting recipes: I drew up a matrix to compare quantities, then decided what I'd go with for my version. I checked a couple of recipes that used regular flour just to compare the overall wet/dry ratios, recognizing that almond flour is higher in fat so regular flour would call for more butter or shortening.

The only good snickerdoodle is a bendy snickerdoodle. I'm not the only one who thinks so. All the recipes I consulted in my hunt for a good recipe using almond flour specifically noted the importance of having cookies that end up a bit crisped at the edges but still flexible in the middle. At least we all agree on that. That makes the baking technique important here: Preheat the oven, take the cookies out before they brown on top, and let them sit on the sheet for a bit more carryover baking from the heat in the cookie sheet before you take them off.

I'm sharing my own recipe first, then linking to the ones I used to develop this. They turned out great!

Almond Flour Snickerdoodles

Yield: Approximately 6 dozen cookies

Oven temperature: 350 degrees

1/2 c. unsalted butter

1/4 c. coconut oil (could use shortening, or all unsalted butter if you don't have either of those)

1/2 c. white sugar

1/2 c. brown sugar

2  large eggs

2 t. vanilla

3 c. almond flour

2 T. tapioca starch, cornstarch, or potato starch (adds stretchiness to the dough consistency)

 2 t. cream of tartar

1 t. baking soda

1-1/2 t. cinnamon

1/2 t. fine sea salt

To roll the dough balls in:

1/3 c. white sugar

1-1/2-2 t. cinnamon

1/8 t. nutmeg

Dash or two of cardamom (optional)

Cream together the white sugar, brown sugar, unsalted butter, and coconut oil until it looks light and fluffy. 

Beat in the eggs one at a time, making sure each egg is fully beaten in before moving on.

If you're a sifter you can sift the dry ingredients together and then add them to the batter. If you're like me you'll sprinkle them over the surface of the batter, doing your best not to leave a big clump of the leavening agents.

Mix together until blended. Don't overbeat. You should have a nice fluffy batter.

Chill the dough in the fridge for 15-30 minutes if you have time to do so. It will make it a bit easier to work with.

While the dough chills, heat the oven to 350 degrees and prep your cookie sheets with silicone mats or parchment lining.

Mix together the white sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cardamom if you're using that in a small bowl.

Roll the dough into walnut-sized balls and roll these in the sugar/cinnamon mixture before placing them on the cookie sheet. They'll spread on their own into nice rounds.

Bake at 350 degrees for 9 minutes. Take them out of the oven and let them sit on the sheet for the carryover baking for another 5 minutes or so before moving them to a rack to finish cooling.

Enjoy!

Other Snickerdoodle Recipes

• Almond Flour Snickerdoodles (Grain-Free), Meaningful Eats: This recipe comes the closest to what I made but I couldn't just follow it. No cream of tartar! This omission is what sent me off in search of other sources.
• Almond Flour Snickerdoodles, Crumb Top Baking: Smaller amounts of everything; based on 2 cups of almond flour.
• Almond Flour Snickerdoodles, Gluten-Free, Vegan Richa: I'd try this one if I needed to make a vegan batch but I'd have to add cream of tartar. Even smaller quantities; based on 1 cup of almond flour.
• Keto Snickerdoodle Cookies, How to This and That: If you want to make a batch with an artificial sweetener this one might work for you.
• Soft & Thick Snickerdoodles, Sally's Baking Addiction: I turn to Sally pretty often. This is another 3-cup recipe, made with regular flour instead of almond flour.
• Snickerdoodle Cookie Recipe, Show Me the Farm: Made with 3 cups of regular flour.

Related Reading

• Seriously Good Oatmeal Cookie Recipe
• Classic All-Bran/Bran Buds Muffin Recipe: Best Bran Muffins Ever
• Keep that Streak Going: #30DaysOf Something that Matters to You (no recipes, but a peek at my snickerdoodle past)

Hey Honey: Poems about Bees

The delightful novel "The Bees" by Laline Paull features bees and the life of a hive, anthropomorphized enough that you relate to their anxiety when they can't find blooms and their concern for healthy hatchlings. It feels true, in a way, with real behaviors of bees turned into plot elements in the life of Flora 717, a worker bee of unusual size and strength.

Both before and after reading it I encountered a variety of poems about these industrious producers of sticky sweetness. Sometimes they appear in passing, bumbling from flower to flower. Sometimes their activities and their sweet product serve as the entire focus. Since every bite of food we eat relies on these and other pollinators, they deserve a hive full of poetry.

Lo and behold, that hive already exists! I discovered If Bees Are Few: A Hive of Bee Poems thanks to American Life in Poetry mentioning it in the intro to the Naomi Shihab Nye and Linda Pastan poems linked here. That collection goes back 2,500 years, whereas my tastes run to contemporary poetry. If these poems give you a taste and leave you wanting more, maybe you want to track down a copy in the used book market.

I grew up in a house that had a couple of giant honey locust trees in the far corner of the property, past the big garden. One of them held the "Freehouse Treehouse" my brothers built for my younger sister and me, and I remember climbing up through the scented sweetness with bees buzzing all around. That made the first poem by Mary Oliver a must-include for this list. 

At the end of the collection I list some actions you can take to help bees. We rely on them (and other pollinators) for our entire food supply so it's in our best interest to care about the bees.

"Honey Locust" by Mary Oliver

The bees circle the tree and dive into it. They are crazy
with gratitude. They are working like farmers. They are as
happy as saints. 

"Honey" by Robert Morgan

....If you go near bees
every day they will know you.
And never jerk or turn so quick
you excite them.

"Playing with Bees" by RK Fauth

all the strong words in poems,
they were once

smeared on the mandible of a bee

"Appetite" by Paulann Peterson

Between your teeth
is the blown flower and the flower's
seed. 

"Honey" by Connie Wanek

Luxury itself, thick as a Persian carpet,
honey fills the jar
with the concentrated sweetness
of countless thefts,
the blossoms bereft, the hive destitute.

"As You Fall Awake" by Laura Ann Reed

as bees
thrust their passion
deep into the promise
of tiny crimson-purple
blooms.

"Instructions to the Worker Bee" by Lucy Adkins

It's not just about pollen or nectar,
the honey that eventually comes,
but the tingle of leg hair
against petal, against pistil and stamen,

"Robbing the Bees" by Carrie Green

But today the scent of orange blossom
reaches our patch of sand, and the beeyard
teems with thieving wings.

"Bees Were Better" by Naomi Shihab Nye

Bees had radar in their wings and brains
that humans could barely understand.
I wrote a paper proclaiming
their brilliance and superiority

"The Death of the Bee" by Linda Pastan

Soon the buzzing
plainchant of summer
will be silenced
for good; 

the flowers, unkindled
will blaze
one last time
and go out.

"April in the Ruins" by H.R. Kent

something is happening up at the pueblo—
bees are pouring out of the cave-roof bedrock
a thick smoke of thousands, shooting
the queen and prince of drones
higher and higher in a ball.

"The Water Carriers" by Angelo Giambra

On hot days we would see them
leaving the hive in swarms. June and I
would watch them weave their way
through the sugarberry trees toward the pond
where they would stop to take a drink,
then buzz their way back, plump and full of water,
to drop it on the backs of the fanning bees.

Five things you can do to help save the bees

1. Create pollinator habitat. This can be as small as a pot of blooming flowers on an apartment balcony, as big as an entire yard turned over to naturescaping principles (landscaping for wildlife, birds, insects and water conservation). 
• Check in with the County Extension office in your county if you're in the United States and they'll be able to provide information. Extension offices are part of the land grant university mission and are an amazing resource for many topics from gardening to nutrition to forestry and much, much more. 
• Pollinator Partnership also has free ecoregion planting guides for habitat in the US and Canada. I'm in the Pacific Lowland Mixed Forest habitat.
2. Buy local honey. While honeybees are a non-native European import (400 years ago), if you're going to eat honey anyway then local honey doesn't have to travel as far to get to your morning biscuits. 
3. Eat organic food if you can afford to do so; pesticides and herbicides harm pollinators.
4. Donate to nonprofits and universities doing research and supporting pollinators.
5. Ask your city, county, and state departments of transportation, roads or public works to provide pollinator habitat when they choose plants. Public right-of-way makes up a big chunk of the town you live in. As they decide which trees to plant, where to put in shrubs and plants to help hold soil on a hillside, they can choose native plants and provide habitat. I work for a state DOT doing just that. Maybe your state already does this, maybe they need some encouragement.

Bee conservancy projects, nonprofits, and university research can all benefit from your donations. 

• Washington State University bee research: My alma mater is conducting valuable research and has a new facility in Othello, in the heart of central Washington's agriculture. Live in another state? Check out your state land grant university; they may have a similar program.
• Heifer International: Contribute to small-scale farming productivity in 19 countries around the world by helping someone become a beekeeper
• Nine Best Nonprofits that Help Save Bees: List compiled by Impactful Ninja