Gluten-Free Blueberry Muffin Recipe with Coconut Flour

Tender gluten-free dairy-free blueberry muffins, warm from the oven.

Tenderness on the block ...

Baking a batch of fresh blueberry muffins is one of my favorite simple pleasures. I do it early, before the summer day turns sultry and my body slows to a liquid ballet of movement designed to conserve every last salty drop of intention and energy my creaky, vanilla lotioned body can muster. I rise and bake to the morning sun, stirring my batter half asleep, sipping hot coffee (my last remaining addiction). A local mockingbird sings his deceit outside the open apartment window. He is remarkable in his uncanny repertoire. A gifted mimic. Silhouetted high against the North Hollywood sky, perched on the tallest utility pole.

I've been thinking about all the thoughtful comments on my last post- my message in a bottle. Your words were a balm and a message tossed back. Received and pondered. Talked about and appreciated.

I've been reading this week (as I always do). Finding books a provocative companion. Words that illuminate and poke. Shared stories that send shivers of recognition, trigger anger, or tug one's soul (kicking and whining) into that impossible place- that place where you don't want to go. The stuff that scares you.

Because it might be true.

And it might be painful. And it just might ask you to consider something. Something hard. Something true.

I've been reading about this business of being a daughter. This isn't the first time I've looked at this subject. I am no stranger to the postmodern Jungian women's psychology section. But reading a book at twenty is one thing. You bring to its wisdom your newly hatched self-hood, your fresh experience, your familial-infused expectations (and prejudices). The expectations, assumptions and dreams of a young woman. You are the heroine, the daughter starting out on your journey, looking at a long and winding road ahead. So you read. And listen. And play with ideas. You see what fits. And what doesn't.

And then you stand, stirring blueberry muffin batter on a clear July morning, decades later. And here, now, the words ring deeper. And the truth stings darker. There is a lifetime of days spiraling out beneath you and above you (because by now you know that time is not linear, or finite, like some calendar). And the same words vibrate with a different meaning, engraved with experience and regret. The same words illuminate as if from a different light source. Not from the world.

From within you.

And so here I am. A daughter, still. Learning something old as if it is new. And discovering truths as if for the first time, arriving, as T. S. Elliot wrote, where we started.


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