Daring to Thrive

False Facts - 100% gluten free!

2011-05-18T10:54:00.000-07:00

I'm breaking from topic (somewhat) here to let you know about a truly funny comic whose author and illustrator is going after his dream to turn it into a hard-bound, full-color, coffee table book.

The comic started as a response to the plethora of false information available on the internet; this is his way of mocking or poking fun at at those inaccuracies. His online forum has gained considerable attention (e.g., PC mag chose his comic as one of their 50 favorite blogs of 2009) He needs to raise print costs, and here's where you can help - simply by donating $15, you purchase your own signed copy of the book. Not a bad price for a 64-page, full color, hand illustrated book! If you're willing to support this project at a higher level, there is additional perks you get along with your signed copy of the book.

He is working with Kickstarter (a great program that helps folks dream their dream) to raise the funds, so head on over to his project to check it out. He has 28 days (and counting down) to raise the $2,000 necessary to print the book. To check out his online comic, go here.

Here's a brief overview, as he describes it - you'll notice it's gluten free! :)

Helpful summary of key book features:

64 pages
Full color from cover to cover
Made from 100% recycled papers and soy-based ink by 1984 Printing in Oakland, CA
Animal free binding that you can lick to get high
Has a retractable self sharpening survival blade
Is flame resistant
Can be used as a personal flotation device in case of a water landing
Has a LAFI rating (laughter from false information) of 1.9 LAFIs per page
Is Gluten-Free, but is manufactured in a facility that also processes tree nuts

So... where is the money going? 100% to print costs. The comics for the books are drawn, selected for inclusion, and all the False Facts are available for your viewing on the internet. I'm designing the book myself and prepping it for print now. Your money is used solely to cover the cost of printing and delivering the books.

Multigrain asparagus risotto

2011-04-04T05:43:00.000-07:00

I promise no ranting and raving today. Last week sent the celiac community reeling. I wrote my un-censored reaction to the Dr. Oz segment, but there were a couple of other highly publicized incidents, both seemingly stemming from a heavy dose of ignorance and a good swallow of intolerance. In reaction to these events, Karina, our very own gluten free goddess, invited all of us to strap on our helmets and move forward.

I am going to do just that. I think we all have a right to be baffled, frustrated, ticked, scared, or [fill in whatever you are feeling here]. I think we all have a right to work towards greater understanding, to correct people when they misspeak about what eating gluten free is all about. And, I think we certainly have our work cut out for us, as we are living in a country (and dare I say an industrialized world) obsessed with food and weight and fad diets. But, today I am simply grateful to be a part of this supportive community, looking out for one another; sharing information, stories, and words of support.

So, no flowery speeches from me today. Nope, today I offer you a simple recipe.

One that even Dr. Oz would have to admit is ‘healthy.’ (wink)

Multi-grain asparagus risotto

If you have never made risotto before, don’t be afraid of it. Once you try it, you will never look back; it is a forever modifiable dish. Risotto is traditionally made with a high-starch Italian rice, such as Arborio or Carnaroli, but adding quinoa to the dish adds additional flavor, texture, fiber, and protein. All good things in my book! The basic idea is to sauté the grains a little bit prior to adding the broth, to begin the cooking process. Once you add the broth (one ladle-full at a time) you never stop stirring until you run out of broth. It certainly requires some time attached to the stove, but it’s well worth it.

¾ cup Arborio rice

½ cup quinoa

1 bunch asparagus, washed and cut into bite-sized pieces, about 1 ½ inches

1 small onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 ½ cups sliced baby bella mushrooms

6 oz fresh baby spinach

4 cups chicken broth

¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese (plus more for garnish)

1 tsp dried thyme

Freshly grated pepper to taste

Olive oil

Kalamata olives (for garnish)

Pour chicken broth into a small saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium-low heat.

In a large dutch oven or stockpot over medium heat, heat enough olive oil to coat the bottom of your pan. Add onions and garlic, sauté until onions begin to soften. Add thyme and some grated pepper. Add asparagus and mushrooms and continue to stir. Once asparagus begin to turn bright green, add quinoa and Arborio rice, and sauté until rice looks translucent around the edges.

Add a ladle-full of broth to the asparagus mixture. Stir until all broth is absorbed. Add another ladle-full of broth. Continue to stir constantly and adding ladles of broth until almost all of the broth is used.

When add the last ladle-full of broth remaining in the saucepan, add the spinach to the risotto. When all of the broth is absorbed, remove from heat and stir in the cheese. Cover the stockpot and let rest for at least 15 minutes. Taste and add more pepper, if necessary.

Serve with additional Parmesan, a drizzle of olive oil, and a couple of kalamata olives.

Dear Dr. Oz, eating gluten free does not make me fat.

2011-04-01T18:00:00.000-07:00

Everybody. Watch. Out. The gluten free diet… Makes. You. Fat! (please read the sarcasm in my typing)

Recently, Dr. Oz did a segment on his show about ‘the gluten free diet,’ during which he wanted to 'bust the myth' that it would help people lose weight. During the entire segment, an image behind him declared the gluten-free diet was ‘making you fat!’

I was appalled. Dr. Oz appears to have been cut from the same cloth as Dr. Phil. Are either of them really trying to help the public lead healthier lives or are they just looking to sensationalize health topics as a means to increase their media ratings?

In his recent segment on the gluten free diet (it will make you fat!) he works so hard to stir the pot that the entire segment misses the punchline. It’s unorganized and schizophrenic to the point that I think it probably leaves the general public much more confused than when he began.

Those unfamiliar with the GF diet probably walked away from that segment shaking their heads thinking, “Those poor people who are gluten free! They are all going to be fat because they can’t eat wheat!” I will now have people eyeballing me in the grocery store with my gluten free rice pasta and they will want to spread the gospel Dr. Oz preaches about how fat those noodles will make me.

Dr. Hyman did a wonderful job trying to explain what it means to eat gluten free and why it’s medically necessary for some people. He also explained very clearly why people who are gluten intolerant might have a hard time keeping weight off when they are eating gluten.

However, Dr. Oz kept interjecting with illogical follow-up to Dr. Hyman’s statements in his attempt to bring the attention back to the ‘unhealthy gluten free diet, which is full of high calorie and low fiber foods.’

The punchline Dr. Oz never got to is that the high calorie gluten free food is just as bad for your waistline as the gluten-filled version it is working so hard to substitute. Just by virtue of the fact that the gluten free version doesn’t have gluten doesn’t make it ‘free’ when it comes to your waistline.

Put another way: gluten-free calories = gluteny calories.

Want to eat processed, frozen waffles for breakfast? Guess what – gluten free or gluten full, they are typically nothing but empty sugar and calories. Even for people with celiac, if we consume more calories than we burn, we will gain weight. I would have liked to see the nutritional comparison between Dr. Hyman’s meals shown at the end of the segment to the gluten-full alternatives shown alongside them! The gluten free lunch was probably a nutritional winner in comparison to that wrap sandwich.

Dr. Oz’s constant berating of the ‘gluten free diet’ as unhealthy was like nails on a chalkboard. The ‘diet’ (if we can call it that – it’s more of a way of life than any ‘diet’) is neither inherently healthy nor inherently unhealthy. There are people who eat healthily while eating gluten free and there are people who eat unhealthily while eating gluten free. The same can be said for vegans, vegetarians, those with egg allergies, etc. (I also have to mention here that many people DO gain weight when beginning a medically necessary diet because their bodies are finally able to absorb nutrients!)

I had previously heard some buzz about people in Hollywood using the ‘gluten free diet’ as the next big weight-loss fad, and had even heard that the proliferation of GF products on store shelves and general awareness could give partial thanks to this phenomenon.

However, I am fearful that this Dr. Oz segment, the tone of which seemed to almost dismiss the medically necessary aspect of gluten free food, is the beginning of black-listing the phrase ‘gluten free.’ Up until now, the gluten free community seems to have been pretty grateful for any publicity, but is all publicity good publicity when it comes to potentially perpetuating misinformation? If the general public develops a negative association with ‘gluten free’ because of difficult-to-understand media shows such as this, could life slowly become more difficult for those of us who have medically necessary gluten restrictions? Will non-gluten-free-ers take us less seriously with very real problems such as cross contamination?

Dr. Oz, please don’t use my autoimmune disease as fodder for your sensationalized programming. My health is at stake. Thank you.

Compassion

2011-03-28T21:44:00.000-07:00

“The reason you don’t let your children eat five big tubs of ice cream is because you care about them. With self-compassion, if you care about yourself, you do what’s healthy for you rather than what’s harmful to you.”

In her NY Times blog, Well, Tara Parker-Pope writes about a blossoming area of research, called “self-compassion.” Above is a quote she cites from Dr. Kristin Neff, who has published on the topic, explaining an aspect of self-compassion – being kind to yourself.

A psychologist myself, I won’t bore you with the academic argument about whether this ‘new’ field is really a study of self-esteem or self-worth, repackaged and relabeled. To be honest, I haven’t taken the time to investigate whether discriminant validity studies have been attempted or make any educated judgments about the quality of research completed on the subject. I really don’t care.

What I like about Tara Parker-Pope’s article on self-compassion (and Dr. Neff’s work) is simple:

If we expected of ourselves the same we expect of our closest loved ones, we would likely make healthier decisions for ourselves and not berate ourselves for minor transgressions. Unfortunately, we often don’t value our own health and our own needs as much as those of others.

The sentences I quote from Dr. Neff above illustrate this idea well. Many of us living with medically necessary dietary restrictions are trying to navigate social situations involving shared meals, trying to unlearn years of eating habits that center on convenience food, or struggling to fight the temptation to eat “just one bite” of our partner’s delicious-looking, gluten-containing food.

The idea that we should continue to ask ourselves, “What would I tell a dear friend to do in my situation?” has miles of latitude. For example, if your son or daughter was gluten free, wouldn’t you do everything you could to make sure he or she ate safely; would you tolerate even a crumb of gluten containing food on his or her plate? In another example, if your good friend was deathly allergic to nuts, would you let him or her eat a slice of banana bread that may or may not contain nuts and risk the consequences?

If you are living, breathing, compassionate people, then my guess is the answer is “no.” We want our loved ones to eat well, stay healthy, and live long.

If you are living, breathing, compassionate people, then the answer should be the same when you replace “your son” or “your good friend” with “you.”

Since this is a gluten-free food blog, many of you are gluten free or have a gluten-free loved one, so my examples here center around food; feeling ourselves worth standing up for, worth speaking up for, and worth making the effort for, when it comes to knowing what is good for our bodies and what is not.

However, try applying this simple question to other areas of your life and you might be surprised at how this act of self-compassion encourages you to forget a minor foot-in-mouth accident as just that, an accident, or that (darn it!) you are talented enough to try out for that juried art show.

You might be surprised at how many barriers cease to exist when you stop fighting what you know is good for you and take a chance on what you know you can do.

Browned butter brownies (gluten free, gum free)

2011-02-13T19:33:00.000-08:00

Browned butter seems to be cropping up in recipes everywhere these days – in both savory and sweet recipes, involving meats, breads, and vegetables. From breakfast to dessert. Nothing seems to be safe from browned butter!

Given the proliferation of browned butter, it wasn’t much a surprise to see it on the cover of this month’s Bon Appetit.

It seems this fat is our newest cover girl! (The irony!)

In all honesty, it wasn’t the butter itself on the cover, but brownies made with this butter. The tagline promised the, “Best-Ever Brownies,” along with the warning, “You will eat the entire tray.” And there they stood, stacked in all their glory, photographed up close, for all the world to see every crumb.

They looked as good as any brownie would that close, but oozed an alluring character and mystery, if only because they were made using the ever-famous browned butter.

Given my lack of experience with this fat fad, and my chocolate craving, I took on the challenge of turning Bon Appetit’s best-ever browned butter brownies gluten free and gum free. My challenge: to accomplish that crispy, flaky brownie top; keep the middle moist and fudgy; and keep them from falling apart when you grabbed for one (or two… or three).

In the process, I learned that making browned butter goes a little bit beyond melting and “cooking” the butter, to toast the fat solids (this is what imparts the nutty toasted flavor – and, it seems, everything tastes better toasted). The recipe describes cooking the butter in the saucepan until it stops foaming. The recipe writer wasn’t kidding! In fact, the butter began to foam and froth like no tomorrow. It resembled something of sea foam and started to get kind of creepy-looking. Then, suddenly, the foam dissolved away and the butter looked again like melted butter. And, oh! The aroma is amazing!

This was one mission completely accomplished. I tried to show you in the picture above, but in case you can't tell, that top is perfectly brownie-crisp and flaky, and that middle is the perfect amount of fudgey, with crumbs that stick to your fork - just like a good brownie should.

Browned butter brownies (gluten free, gum free)

Adapted from Bon Appetit Magazine

These are actually a snap to make, but you may want to bake a double batch, or bake two square pans at a time to freeze one for later. They are that good! Also, I don’t like nuts in my brownies, but I know many people do, so I kept that in the ingredient list.

10 Tablespoons salted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces

1 ¼ cups raw sugar

¾ cups natural unsweetened cocoa powder (non-alkalized)

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 teaspoons water

2 large eggs

2 Tablespoons tapioca flour

4 Tablespoons quinoa flour

1 cup walnut pieces (optional)

Position rack in bottom third of oven (mine was at the top of the bottom third) and preheat oven to 325F. Line a metal 8x8x2 inch baking pan with parchment paper and either spay with gluten free nonstick spray (olive oil) or butter the parchment.

In small saucepan, melt the 10 Tablespoons butter over medium heat, stirring frequently. Cook until butter stops foaming and brown bits form at bottom of pan (about 5 minutes). Remove from heat and add the sugar, cocoa, water, and vanilla. Stir well.

Let the mixture cool for 5 minutes. Get out a whisk and add each egg slowly, one at a time, whisking each one quickly to incorporate before it cooks. Add the second egg after the first one is completely incorporated. The mixture will become thick and shiny.

Add flour and stir until blended. Pour into the baking pan.

Bake about 30 minutes, until a few moist crumbs are still attached to a toothpick inserted in the center (but toothpick is mostly clean). Edges will start to look crunchy.

Cool in pan on a wire rack. It will take a lot of willpower, but do not remove the brownies from the pan/cut into the brownies until they are completely cooled. When they are completely cooled, lift the brownies out of the pan using the parchment paper and cut into pieces.

Whole grain muffins, gluten free and dairy free

2011-01-20T19:12:00.000-08:00

Maybe it’s the cold weather and carb-cravings, the need to feel warmth in the belly when warmth from the sun on the face has long been absent, but I found myself day-dreaming about muffins on the train home Tuesday night. I got lost in it, like one gets lost in a complex novel. Time ceased to exist.

By the time I arrived home, I had a recipe nearly worked out in my head.

The added challenge would be making these xanthan gum and guar gum free. But, as a second step from cookies, muffins are a taking it to that next level of difficulty, but still within a range of ease. To start, I began with something savory, something akin to corn muffins. Something that would go deliciously with the chicken and vegetable soup I had made the previous evening.

I started with amaranth flour and ended with a good helping of maple syrup.

Even as I spooned the batter into the muffin cups, I knew. The smell was sweet, familiar in a distant-memory sort of way. The texture and consistency was perfect. As they baked, the house filled with a warm golden aroma and the tops cracked beautifully, and I knew.

I am definitely on to something.

By the way, it seems I’m in good company in my gluten free muffin daydreams.

Whole grain muffins

These have a wonderful flavor and a nice medium-weight moist crumb. Although they are perfect as a dinner side, I can also imagine them split open and buttered with a drizzle of honey or a spoonful of jam alongside scrambled eggs at breakfast.

1 cup sorghum flour

¾ cup amaranth flour

¾ cup tapioca flour

½ tsp baking soda

1 tablespoon baking powder

2 eggs

1/3 cup oil

1/3 cup pure maple syrup

¾ tsp salt

½ cup water

Heat oven to 350F. Line a standard muffin pan (12 wells) with paper muffin liners.

In a large bowl, blend all dry ingredients to make one homogeneous flour mixture. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture.

In a medium bowl, whisk wet ingredients together. Pour the wet ingredients into the flour mixture and stir just until incorporated.

Spoon the batter into the muffin liners, each will be 2/3 to 3/4 full.

Bake on center rack for 20 to 25 minutes.

French cut green beans with prosciutto

2011-01-17T10:24:00.000-08:00

I have really been digging the simplicity of vegetables lately.

It feels good after the December days of indulgence, to eat very simply. A pile of green beans, some cooked brown rice, and pieces of cooked chicken breast, seasoned with only a little salt and pepper – this has been my lunch for the past two weeks.

Last weekend, I took those ingredients, threw them in a skillet together with a bit of butter, and sauted them until hot. I added a bit of thyme and it was perfect. It felt healthy, simple, and comforting.

Of course, I’m the kind of person who can eat a pile of vegetables, with a smattering of almonds or sunflower seeds for lunch and be quite content (for a couple of hours anyway!). I usually eat small meals like this throughout the day.

This weekend, I decided to jazz things up a bit. I wanted to create something that would stand well on its own as a complete meal, one whose main ingredient is a green vegetable, yet is full of a variety of tastes and textures.

Bonus points were awarded for how quickly it comes together – perfect for a week-night meal.

Green beans with prosciutto

I like using the French cut green beans because they are less woody, but you may use tiny or actual French green beans if you can find them (this is a much easier feat when they are in season). Serve as is, or over a cooked grain. I liked this served over California brown rice, but would go nicely over cooked quinoa as well.

3.5oz diced prosciutto

1 tablespoon salted butter

15oz can garbanzo beans (chickpeas), drained and rinsed

12oz bag frozen French cut green beans

1 ½ tsp dried thyme

Sliced toasted almonds

Mustard vinaigrette

Whisk together in a small bowl:

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon ground mustard

Melt butter over medium-high heat in a large skillet or dutch oven. Add diced prosciutto and sauté for a few minutes, until meat begins to darken in color. Then, add the garbanzo beans and sauté a few minutes more. You want the beans good and hot, beginning to soften and turn color. Add the green beans and thyme. Cook until green beans turn bright green, stirring frequently, and then drizzle 3-4 teaspoons of the mustard vinaigrette into the pan. Continue to stir about a minute or two more.

Remove the pan from heat and pour beans onto a serving plate, so they don’t cook much longer. Sprinkle toasted sliced almonds on top and serve with remaining vinaigrette on the side.

Gums be gone - gum free, gluten free chocolate chip cookies

2011-01-13T19:32:00.000-08:00

I began this gluten-free life very wary of any ingredients I didn’t recognize as food. This wasn’t anything particularly new for me, although playing investigator each time I picked up a product at the grocery store, looking for ‘hidden’ gluten, did make my disdain for unpronounceable ingredient lists even more pronounced.

My motto has always been something along the lines of “real is always better than manufactured, even if it is higher in fat, sugar, cholesterol, or whatever is the current media’s ‘evil’ food.”

Next time you are in the grocery store, flip over a container of low calorie, low fat ice cream. Then flip over a container of real ice cream, something like Haagen Dazs ‘five.' Compare the nutritional value and the ingredient list. Pound for pound, I’ll take the full-fat variety.

You can imagine my reluctance, then, when I began this gluten-free life and I discovered words like “xanthan gum” and “guar gum” were common in many gluten free recipes. Not only would I be eating these non-foods, I would have to stock them in my kitchen!

The horrors.

Eventually I gave in, thinking, not unlike a teenage girl, “Everybody else is using them, I guess they must be okay.” But, I've continued to somewhat cringe each time I use the xanthan gum, and I have always used less in my own baking than typical recipes. "Just enough to keep it all from crumbling," is how I think of it.

Then, Shauna (a.k.a., the Gluten Free Girl) brings up this topic on Facebook – do others suffer from stomach issues when eating xanthan or guar gums? The response was overwhelmingly, “yes!!” As I read through the responses, the light-bulb that turned on in my brain was so bright you could have seen it from space.

This might be why I can’t tolerate the majority of gluten-free prepackaged products and mixes. I could never figure out why I developed stomach upset from eating these products, when the ingredient lists contained all things I would use in my own kitchen. I had previously determined the company must use more sugar or yeast or something that I don’t do at home. Now I wonder if it is because the company uses more xanthan gum than I would at home.

Shauna claims we don’t need gums at all to hold our baked goods together and that the notion of using gums is antiquated, coming from a time when rice flour and potato starch were THE options for gluten free baking. Now that we have other wonderful flours, such as teff, millet, quinoa, and amaranth, we can better bind our batter without gums (say that three times fast!).

Do I feel some experimenting coming on?

I'm not sure if these gums are the real culprit, but I'm excited nonetheless to try to rid my kitchen of them. So, of course, I've started to test the idea that gluten free baked goods could be successful without them. I had been tweaking my chocolate chip cookie recipe and decided to add a xanthan gum bake-off. In one weekend, I created two exact batches of gluten free chocolate chip cookies, one with xanthan gum and one without.

They looked, felt, and tasted exactly the same! Even Ben couldn’t tell the difference (though he did want to try more cookies, just to make sure…).

Of course the real test will be breads and muffins, but I have already had some success with these in the past, sans gums, and I’m looking forward to some more experimenting! A big high-five to Shauna for bringing this to our attention!

Gluten free chocolate chip cookies

This recipe is the result of some variation testing on flours and baking agents. The resulting cookie is buttery, crunchy on the edges, and soft inside. I removed the xanthan gum completely with perfect success. As always with chocolate chip cookies, use butter that is just soft enough to cream with the sugar (not melted at all). Also, I use raw sugar in all of my baking and it gives the finished product a lot more flavor than refined sugar.

3/4 cup quinoa flour

1 cup tapioca flour

1/2 cup coconut flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup salted butter

1 cup raw sugar (turbinado)

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

8 oz chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350F.

Mix flours and baking soda in a medium bowl to create one homogeneous flour mixture.

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until well blended. Stir in eggs and vanilla. Add flour, about a third at a time, stirring until just incorporated. Add chocolate chips. The mixture will be quite tough at this point, and you might want to use your hands.

Roll dough into golf-ball sized balls and place on a plate so they are all ready to go.

Place the balls about an inch or so apart on a parchment-lined baking sheet and flatten with your hand or the back of a spatula to about 1/2-inch thick (see below). Bake at 350F for about 15 minutes.

Place remaining balls of dough in the refrigerator in between batches.

Allow to cool baked cookies on the cookie sheet for a couple of minutes before removing to cool completely on a wire rack.

The Internet versus face-to-face interactions - is the Internet enough?

2011-01-09T18:01:00.000-08:00

Possibly one of the most memorable pictures from my introduction to psychology course in college was this picture of one of Harlow’s monkeys.

The poor little baby monkey just looked so desperate, reaching for the bottle attached to one “mother” while clinging to the other “mother,” and it burned an image and an understanding about human nature in my brain: food may be a basic need for survival, but it doesn’t trump comfort from another being.

Let me explain. Harry Harlow conducted a series of experiments in the 1950s and 1960s with infant monkeys, who were taken from their mothers only weeks after birth. In the psychology world, people just refer to them as "Harlow's monkeys." In the picture you see here, these monkeys were provided two surrogate mothers: a soft, terry-cloth covered mother who did not supply food, and a hard, wire mother who did supply food (the bottle you see pictured). The infant monkeys clung to the terry cloth mother for comfort and wouldn’t leave, even for food. When the mothers were within reaching distance, the monkeys would remain holding onto their terry cloth mother and reach for the food on the other mother. They spent more time with the cuddly mother than with the food-providing mother.

Granted, neither of these mothers were the real thing, but the study suggests there is something about the touch and comfort-giving capability of the terry cloth mother that made her preferred over the purely instrumental need-providing mother.

Recently, a study reported in Social Indicators Research examined whether Internet communication with friends and family was just as effective as face-to-face interactions in predicting satisfaction with life (or quality of life).

This reminded me of old Harlow’s monkeys. Though his work was focused on parenting, it highlighted that there is something more important going on in our relationships than instrumental support; there’s something about interactions with family and friends that provides individuals with comfort. In fact, since his time, the relationship between social interactions and well-being has been well established and is often referred to as “social support” - is "social support" it still there when this interaction is mediated through the Internet?? Put another way, how important is the nearness to another human being? Or are the words enough?

If you are reading this blog, you don’t have to be hit over the head with the social expansion of the Internet over the last 5 years; email, instant chat, Facebook, twitter, blogs, and skype all make it seem as though we have never been so connected to family and friends (especially with those living far away) in all history of mankind. However, is this interaction able to take the place of, or even supplement, seeing loved ones in person, as it pertains to our well-being?

According to this recent study, it is not enough. The researchers guess this has something to do with the lack of non-verbal cues, lack of warmth, and the laziness of communication associated with Internet communication. The internet may make it easier to communicate a message, even tell people things that are close to our hearts, but this is apparently a lot like receiving food from our wire surrogate mothers – very utilitarian, not so comforting. We need that soft terry cloth of a touch to send our well-being soaring.

So what do we do in this online-obsessed, social-media crazed world? You don’t have to eschew those friend requests or instant message pop-up windows, but understand that these mediums perform a certain function for us, and are great at times, but email, chat, or Facebook updates cannot replace real interactions. Take care to meet face-to-face with those who live near enough to do so and supplement with the Internet as needed. Remember, the words exchange over the Internet may be important, but they don’t trump the physical comfort of another human being.

For more information:

Lee, P., Leung, L., Lo, V., Xiong, C., Wu, T. (2011). Internet communication versus face-to-face interaction in quality of Life. Social Indicators Research, 100; 375-389.

Dear Grandpa, you'd love this lentil soup

2011-01-08T15:48:00.000-08:00

This morning I received a letter from my grandfather, written on the back of a large white envelope in small, black cursive:

I thought about you yesterday as I excitedly checked on the dinner I had prepared and was about to serve, all hot and bubbly in the crock pot. It looked fantastic. Underutilized equipment, the crock pot, in my opinion. It would serve many single men well to learn how to use it. Your parents were here and I knew everyone would be in for a treat with the stew that I made…

Suddenly, Ben rustled to get out of bed and sleep vanished -- and, so did the letter. It was all a dream. It had been so pleasant and so vivid, and I tried desperately to fall back asleep, to re-conjure the image of the letter, to continue reading. I wanted to know what else my grandfather would have said, if he were alive now. In just this small snippet of writing, I felt his excitement over food and joy of feeding loved ones. I imagined what I might say in reply…

Dear Grandpa,

You are very right, the crockpot is sorely underutilized. Every time I use it I come home to a lovely fragrant house and a hot, perfect meal ready for me, and I wonder why I don’t use it every day. I think of you often and I wish you could know the life I am living out here in Portland. Ben and I planted a huge garden last summer, with great success. You should have seen how tall our cherry tomato plants grew! I had to trim them every few days to keep them from taking over the house. The tomatoes themselves were amazingly sweet and juicy. I’m sending you a picture of just some of our bumper crop (see below). At the end of the season, we tried your trick of ripening the green ones in a sunny window sill (it worked!) and Ben pickled a great number of the remaining green ones. By the way, I wish you could have met him; like you he gets acutely excited about certain things. These pickled tomatoes were one of those things. He was like a mad scientist figuring out how he would do it. Grandma has met him and thinks he even looks like you!

Sending you much love,

Lauren

I don’t know if my grandpa really ever used a crock pot, but he planted a big garden every year and certainly loved food. I remember several visits to my grandparents when it would be around noon and my grandfather would still be sipping his coffee and nibbling at his bacon, savoring the morning hours. He talked animatedly with us between (and sometimes during!) his bites.

Over the past couple of days, I had been mentally adapting a soup recipe from 101 cookbooks. I woke up knowing I would make that soup in the crock pot, maybe it would be something like the stew my grandfather had made in my dreams...

Pork and Lentil soup

I adapted this soup from Heidi’s Lively up yourself lentil soup. I wanted a different green vegetable and made it a bit heartier by adding pork. I also changed up the seasonings and garnish. It’s quick and easy to prepare, then simmers all day in the crock pot. A good test of any soup – Ben and I still liked it after eating it for three days straight!

1.5 lb piece of pork tenderloin

2 cups chicken or vegetable broth

2 cups water

1 cup dried lentils (I used brown), sorted and rinsed

1 14.5oz can of diced fire-roasted tomatoes (I used Muir Glen)

1 small onion, diced fine

1 tsp smoked paprika

2 garlic cloves, minced or diced fine

2 cups tiny green beans, cooked and chopped into bite-sized pieces

Garnish: soft goat cheese

Place the pork tenderloin in the bottom of your slow cooker. Add the remaining ingredients except for the green beans and goat cheese. Cook on low for 8 to 10 hours.

Shortly before serving, remove the pork with a large spoon/fork and place on a plate. Shred the pork with a fork and return to the slow cooker. Then add the green beans to the slow cooker (adding them at the end keeps them green and vibrant rather than over-cooked and brown).

Top each serving with a teaspoon or so of goat cheese.

On well-being and strong chair legs

2011-01-02T19:10:00.000-08:00

Let me tell you a story about a chair. The story is short and simple, but I think you will find it interesting.

This chair was no ordinary chair, yet not extraordinary either. Being small, made of wood, and of simple design, the chair had three legs and looked a little something like this:

Left untouched, this chair was fine to stand on its own and was quite content doing so. The chair’s three legs offered adequate support and stability. However, the chair was one day overcome with an unexpected burden, which broke one of the chair’s legs, and the chair quickly toppled over. Under the weight of this burden, the chair looked like this:

Now, let me ask you – what does your chair look like?

You see, this chair could represent any one of us, with each leg representing a part of our identity, or one aspect of our sense of ‘self.’ When things are going well in a particular realm of our lives, this leg is strong and supports us; the more aspects of our selves we develop and nurture, the better supported we feel. Then, if something goes wrong in one area, we remain supported by the others and are less likely to topple over like that poor chair pictured above.

One aspect of our lives could be social support from family and friends. Another could be our career or work life. Other parts of our identity are shaped by our hobbies or goals. For example, my sense of self is made up of my relationships with others, my day job, this blog, cooking, being physically active in various pursuits such as dance, and creative outlets such as sewing.

The goals we have that are associated with these various aspects of our selves could be in any number of stages at any given time, but the idea is to have multiple aspects of ourselves so that if one ‘leg’ is broken, we have something else to stand on. That is, if things aren’t going well in one area of our life (e.g., goals in that area are proving difficult to accomplish), chances are that we will have other aspects of our identity, from which we can draw self-worth or self-esteem. At work, maybe you just got a big promotion and that makes up for the fact that you have been struggling to make it to the gym during the holiday months.

Have you ever thought to yourself, during those times you’ve experienced a road-block, “Well, at least [fill in the blank here] was a success/was good last week/went well?” This kind of thinking keeps you from feeling knocked-out, toppled over, or down-in-the-dumps.

While it’s beneficial to have multiple aspects of ourselves for this reason, it can be counter-productive to have too many aspects. Spread too thin, we cannot focus our attention to any one part of our identity long enough to strengthen it. Many legs do a chair no good if all of them are wobbly.

I bring this up here because many of you, like me, are living with a chronic illness. Chronic illness can make strengthening the various aspects of our selves more difficult than usual.

Unfortunately, it can be very common for individuals with a chronic illness to experience a loss of self that arises from living a restricted life or feeling socially isolated. Given the extent to which food is such an integral part of social interaction, memories of family, and celebrations, it is easy to see how many of us might begin to feel restricted and socially isolated. For many, this might be the unexpected burden that crushes a chair leg. However, we can resist, or repair, this loss of self, by proactively restructuring our gluten-free lives as different from our gluten-filled lives, in a way that supports a positive identity. In some cases, this might be a simple as swapping one activity for another, but in other cases it requires a grand restructuring of thought processes and behaviors.

Most importantly, and perhaps most simply, maintaining our sense of self in the face of chronic illness requires us to not let the illness prevent us from engaging in the things that are meaningful to us. However, when that is not possible, we need to be flexible enough to redefine ourselves, developing illness-compatible aspects of our identity so that we may continue to feel whole and supported.

As we go into the new year (and the new week) ahead of us, take stock of what your chair looks like. If it looks like it could use some wood glue and a couple of vice grips, think about what aspects of your identity could use developing, or what new aspects you would like to create.

Start with the question, “who am I?” Then set some goals, both short- and long-term, that support your identity. If you don’t like what you see, or you don’t have enough legs to stand on, create some goals that put you in the direction of developing your ‘self’ more. It might feel daunting at first, but start with some baby steps, and remember that the more energy you put in to the development of your ‘self,’ the more you get back.

If you’re like me, you’ve got some work to do…

Happy new year to you all and best wishes for strong chair legs this year!

--------------------

For more on how goals related to our sense of identity improve our mental health:

Ryan, R. & Deci, E. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68-78.

McGregor, I., & Little, B.R. (1998). Personal projects, happiness, and meaning: On doing

well and being yourself. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(2), 494-512.

For more on how chronic illness affects our mental health through loss of the self:

Charmaz, K. (1983) Loss of self: A fundamental form of suffering in the chronically ill. Sociology of health and illness, 5(2), 168-195.

Superman at a kryptonite party

2010-12-28T20:01:00.000-08:00

It’s hard to imagine there was a time in my life when butter used to sit in my refrigerator so long that it actually expired.

It was my second year of grad school and I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies to get me over the hump of the start of a new term. Imagine my horror when I happened to glance at the side of the box and saw an expiration date that had passed three months prior! I didn’t even know butter expired.

Fast forward to now. In the past two or three months I have gone through at least 4 pounds of butter; using it to bake cookies, scramble eggs, and on toast – just to name a few. Butter wouldn’t dare expire on my watch now.

‘Tis the season, of course. What would holiday baking be without butter?

Ben and I went to a holiday cookie party the day before Christmas Eve, where the hosts were baking up batches of sugar cookie cut-outs and guests were decorating with various colors of icing. Basically, it was a gluten-filled feast. Being the only non-gluten eater there, I was given the title of “Superman at a kryptonite party” – I had to resist all those sweet, delicious, gluten-filled treats, lest see my demise (insert evil laughter here).

In reality, it was a piece of cake (no pun intended), but I love the title, so I’m going with it. Who wouldn’t want to be thought of as superman?

Although that was an awesome compliment, I received an even bigger one that evening: The gluten-free sugar cookies I brought were eaten by the gluten-eaters, who exclaimed how good they were! If good things come in threes, I think our luck is good for that inch of snow to fall tonight that will bring Portland to a screeching halt (no work Wednesday anyone?).

If you’ve got some snow-related time on your hands, or if you are just a super-human and actually have butter left in your fridge at the end of this month, try mixing up your own better-than-kryptonite sugar cookies.

Peppermint sugar cookies

I made these into candy cane cookies, but you can also roll the dough into balls (just smaller than a golf ball) and flatten to about a ¼ inch thick and sprinkle with red sugar before baking. A neat trick I picked up from my mother is to use the bottom of a small glass – 1) rub some dough on the bottom of the glass to get it a bit greasy (this step is just to get started), 2) then press the bottom of the glass onto a small plate filled with the colored sugar, 3) then press the sugar onto a rolled ball to flatten into a cookie. Then repeat steps 2 and 3. I found it works best if you use plenty of sugar and do a quick squash with the glass, then flatten the cookie a bit more with your hand.

¾ cup brown rice flour
¼ cup coconut flour
½ cup tapioca flour
½ cup millet flour
1 tsp baking powder

¾ tsp xanthan gum

¼ tsp salt

½ cup butter, room temperature
¾ cup turbinado sugar

1 egg
1 tsp peppermint extract (make sure it’s GF)
2 tablespoons any milk

Options:

Red food coloring

Crushed candy cane and/or red sugar

In a small bowl, mix flours, baking powder, xanthan gum, and salt.

In another bowl, or the bowl of your stand mixer, cream butter and sugar using your mixer or hand-beaters.

Add egg, peppermint extract, and a tablespoon of milk and mix well. Add the flour mixture a bit at a time until incorporated (you may need to take your hands to it if your mixer can’t take the dough).

Add another tablespoon or so of milk if mixture appears too dry. The dough should be moist and firm, but not sticky at all.

To make these into candy cane cookies, place half of the dough into another bowl. Add 15 drops of red food coloring and work into the dough using a spoon. Now you have a ‘white’ ball of dough and a ‘red’ ball of dough.

Place each ball of dough on a sheet of cling wrap and flatten slightly. Wrap up the dough with the cling wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour (can go overnight as well).

When you remove the dough from the refrigerator, preheat the oven to 375F.

To make each cookie: Grab a small bit of ‘red’ dough about the size of a quarter. Work the piece of dough into a ball and then roll out on a plate so that you have a ‘snake’ (remember making ‘snakes’ out of play dough when you were a kid? This is sort of like that). Your snake should be about 6 to 7 inches long and ½ inch across. Do this with the ‘white’ dough as well. Place both snakes side by side and wrap one around the other so that they are twisted. Bend the top around to make the hook in the cane. Flatten slightly and place on the cookie sheet. At this point, you can sprinkle with red sugar or wait until they are baked to sprinkle with crushed candy cane.

Place cookies on a baking sheet and bake at 375F for about 10-12 minutes, depending on the thickness of your cookies. When done, the edges will be firm and the cookies will be slightly golden on the bottom.

If using the crushed candy cane, sprinkle the cookies with it as soon as they are out of the oven. Let cool a few minutes on the cookie sheet before moving to a wire rack to cool completely.

Summer salads

2010-08-11T19:31:00.000-07:00

I am waiting ever so patiently for my cherry tomatoes to ripen.

We have what I think are the largest cherry tomato plants in all of Portland, weighted down with countless clusters of cherry tomatoes. See them in the picture below? Taller than our fence? Unfortunately, they are all green. (I have actually had to do some serious cutting them back at least three times already!)

In a way, it is good they haven’t ripened yet, since we our cucumbers are just starting to become big enough to harvest, and one of our favorite summer salads is Greek salad. We slice cucumbers with cherry tomatoes, throw in a little sliced red onion with kalamata olives, olive oil, oregano and black pepper. Traditionally, from what I’ve experienced in Athens and on Crete, the feta cheese is served in a block on the side, but we often crumble ours up and toss it with the salad.

Yes, we actually planted the tomatoes and the cucumbers with that salad in mind.

Meanwhile, we’ve been putting together chop salads with our carrots and celery, along with spinach and other veggies we find at the farmers’ market. I can’t get enough of these fresh veggies. All I can think about is those winter months when avocadoes will be hard to come by (at least, avocadoes that ripen properly) and the taste of perfectly ripe peaches will be a distant memory.

A coworker of mine leant me her Cook’s Country magazine from a few years ago, which contained a number of great summer salads. This one is an adaptation of one of those salads, and sort of a twist on a greek-inspired salad. Though this works great as a picnic salad now (and is certainly a crowd-pleaser) it doesn’t require a lot of various vegetables, so could still be easily thrown together as winter approaches.

Greek-inspired shredded lettuce and spinach salad
I’ve made this a number of times in the past couple of months. I really love the crunch of the iceberg lettuce, though it doesn’t lend much nutritional value. The first time I made it, I threw in 2 cups of cooked rice and used less spinach and lettuce. You could toss in some rice to this to make it feed more people, or perhaps some cold rice pasta (as written below, this feeds about 4). To “shred” the iceberg lettuce, wash and core the head, then slice it in half. Place the cut side down on a cutting board and, using a sharp serrated knife, slice thin slices of lettuce. Then go back and cut across the slices perpendicular to your initial cuts to make small pieces of lettuce.

Mix together in a large bowl:
½ head iceberg lettuce, shredded and chopped fine
8 oz baby spinach, chopped fine
1/3 cup sun-dried tomatoes, diced fine
1/3 cup sliced kalamata olives
¼ cup toasted pine nuts
1 cooked chicken breast, cooled and cut into bit-sized pieces
1/3 cup shredded parmesan cheese

Mix together in a small dish and toss over lettuce mixture:
¼ cup olive oil
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 minced garlic clove
1 tsp dried basil
½ tsp sea salt
Freshly grated black pepper

Enjoy!

Caramelized red pepper and onion over lamb burgers

2010-07-26T19:33:00.000-07:00

Some of you might have noticed a little tag on some of my posts called, “Things Ben demands we cook.” These are things that are particularly a result of Ben’s cravings and is more or less an inside joke between us. (Well, not so inside since the anyone with an internet connection and a decent computer can now read about it!). He will come home from an evening out with his guy friends and say, “I had the best gyro tonight… we should really do up some tzatziki sauce this week, with some lamb…” Or, he’ll suddenly become very excited about an idea he has to change up one of our old favorites. Sometimes, they are things he becomes obsessed with until we try a recipe. I am often not very good at documenting these things, sadly, like a lot of the things we cook, they don’t end up here on this site.

However, since he is almost as in love with flavors as I am, he is often coming up with some great ideas that stretch and improve upon my own.

For example, we are both big fans of lamb burgers. Sometimes we mix in other meats, like ground pork or ground chicken, but most of the time we leave them straight up lamb. We always season our lamb burgers. I haven’t ever posted a particular recipe for them, but described them previously here. That is the general gist, and we absolutely love them.

“We should do caramelized red pepper and onion to put on top of the lamb burgers, with some crumbled feta,” he said one Saturday morning as we were trying to come up with that week’s meals. As he spoke, he motioned excitedly with his hands to add emphasis to how the peppers and onion would go ’on top’ of the burger.

Yum. This might become another staple.

How to sauté up some caramelized onion and red pepper strips:

What you need:
1 red bell pepper, cored, seeded, and sliced into long thin strips
½ small onion, sliced into long thin strips
Olive oil
Apple cider vinegar

What you do:
Heat enough olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat to just cover the pan. Wait until the oil is to temperature and toss in the veggies. Stir frequently until the veggies begin to wilt and blacken in some spots (if it seems to be cooking too fast, turn the heat down a bit). When the oil is almost all cooked away, splash a bit of the vinegar into the pan and keep stirring. Once the veggies start to caramelize, move them immediately to a plate and serve.

Grilled Broccoli

2010-07-12T21:31:00.000-07:00

During the long, gradual, uphill climb, in 95 degree+ heat last week, I thought to myself, “you asked for this.” I had been yearning for, dreaming about, a hot summer day. A day when the wind blew warm in the afternoon and the sweat on my skin from biking home wasn’t that bittersweet beaded sweat, gone almost as quickly as it started, but one that was so undeniably fierce, it came down in little rivulets off my face and arms.

This was definitely one of those days.

As I passed the Hostess Wonder Bread Outlet, and the wind became unforgiving, I felt a mix of satisfaction and pain. And, to take my mind off of my physical anguish, I began creating smoothie flavors and ingredient combinations in my imagination. Frozen bananas, coconut milk, blueberries, with a dash of cinnamon? Frozen bananas, cream, coconut milk, strawberries, and a long, slow drizzle of honey?

When I got home, the crockpot was filled with Karina’s Rustic Chicken Mediterranean Soup and the house smelled undeniably awesome (really, if you haven‘t tried this yet, DO IT. You won‘t be sorry). I set to work with the blender, some frozen bananas, half & half, coconut milk, and sugar. I then poured the mixture into the ice cream maker and set it to churn while I sat a the kitchen table to catch up with some of my favorite food bloggers (the ice cream later became a base for the banana & strawberry smoothie).

Shauna (aka The Gluten Free Girl), queen of inspiration and asker of great questions, was asking readers when cooking from scratch became easier or more fun. I looked across the kitchen. Amazing soup simmering in the crock pot and homemade ice cream churning away… no question about it, cooking from scratch became more fun and a heck of a lot easier when I started taking advantage of the local ingredients, in season. It is amazing how much better the food tastes.

Then there are all of these great people online sharing their recipes and waxing poetic about favorite vegetables and childhood food memories. I can’t help but be inspired by how passionately some talk of food and how creatively some pair flavors, in ways you never thought possible.

Especially among the gluten free set, and the gluten free and vegan set, and the entirely grain free set, who don’t let any of their dietary “restrictions” feel like restrictions, but rather make them reasons to live. In the process, they create some of the most delicious, perfect recipes, and they drop morsels of life lessons in their stories, from which we all benefit.

This great food love of mine has taken me down the road of home gardening, and organic home gardening at that -- bugs and all -- and it has been an adventure to say the least. There is no better education than experience; I can tell you life has proven this to me over and over again. We are beginning to really harvest our vegetables - our broccoli turned out beautiful, though we lost quite a bit of it to the bugs.

This is what we did with some of the good bunches - grilled in foil packets.

Grilled broccoli
This is less a recipe and more a method, so I’ll list what you need and what you need to do.

Here is what you need:
Broccoli, cleaned, sliced into long spears
Butter
Fresh or dried thyme
Granulated garlic
Sea salt
Pepper
Lemon juice
Aluminum foil squares

Here is what you do:
Arrange the broccoli in the center of the foil square like the picture above
Sprinkle with the salt, pepper, thyme, and garlic. Dot the top with butter.
Fold the sides up to meet in the middle and fold the seam over so that no butter can leak out when it melts. Now you have a rectangle, with two ends open. Roll each open end of the foil until you reach the broccoli and make sure everything is good and sealed.

Grill on a hot grill (400-500 degrees) for about 10 minutes, turning once. Open the packets carefully and empty the contents onto a plate or into a bowl. Toss with additional butter if desired and sprinkle with lemon juice.

Pea and bacon quinoa salad

2010-07-05T16:53:00.000-07:00

My brother used to call them “ball-balls.” (sorry brother). I am suspicious, though, that my brother calling these little, green, ball-shaped veggies by this particularly descriptive name had less to do with my brother’s innovative mind and more to do with my parents trying to get us to eat our vegetables.

“Eat your ball-balls,” my parents would encourage. And, if we managed to make them disappear off of our plates, “Do you want some more ball-balls?” my parents undoubtedly asked.

Turn the food into something “fun” and your kids will think it tastes better than it really does? Does that work?

The rivers of peas my siblings and I used to construct under the lip of our dinner plates seem to argue that, no, it does not work. In fact, I think peas might have been the most dreaded vegetable of my childhood.

Funny how our tastes change. Even if yours hasn’t, I’m willing to bet you’ll love this salad - pair anything with bacon and suddenly even the pickiest of eaters will be asking for seconds…

Pea and bacon quinoa salad
This salad is easy to throw together and tastes great cold or warm. It will make a great picnic salad this summer - bring it to the park with a blanket and some cold chicken or take along to a summer barbeque with friends. This is also great to make when you have a few slices of Sunday-morning breakfast bacon leftover.

½ cup quinoa (red or white), rinsed and picked over
1 cup chicken broth
1 ½ cups sweet peas, cooked
3-4 slices cooked, crisp bacon, crumbled or cut into small pieces
2 green onions, sliced
Parmesan cheese, grated
Pepper

Place the quinoa and chicken broth in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Stir, then cover and simmer for about 15 minutes until broth is absorbed and the germ is visible in the quinoa (the curled little sprout of the grain that appears when it is cooked).

Toss in the bacon, onions, and sweet peas.

Top with grated Parmesan cheese and season with freshly grated pepper to taste.

Greek Frappe

2010-06-26T17:01:00.000-07:00

“…sunshine today with possibly a few sprinkles tomorrow and that is it for the next seven days,” I heard as I reached over to hit the snooze button, “It looks like we finally have arrived.”

Indeed we have, Mr. 94.7 disc jockey. (I’m not sure of your name, but I invariably wake up to your voice every weekday morning). The past week has been gorgeous and suddenly, we are thrown into summer. T-shirt and tank-top weather. Summer dresses and sunglasses because-you-need-them kind of weather.

We didn’t even get those few sprinkles you mentioned, Mr. DJ.

This weekend I made Ben a Nescafe Frappe, just like my friend Nikos made for us while I was in Greece a couple of years ago. It’s the best way to do coffee when it’s hot. And you must drink it with a straw.

Now excuse me while I go read a book in my sunny backyard. (recipe below!)

Nescafe Frappe
If you don’t have an immersion blender or a milk frother (the vibrating kind, not the steaming kind), you can put the dried coffee, sugar, water, and ice cubes in a plastic shaker container/bottle or plastic container with a lid and shake it up until it gets all frothy. Then pour it into a glass. Also, don’t omit the sugar entirely -- it helps develop the foam. I think traditionally this is made with evaporated milk, but you can use any kind of milk you can tolerate or perhaps coffeemate ‘original’ creamer, which is both lactose and gluten free. I used half and half this morning.

Per serving, you will need:
2 teaspoons Nescafe classic dried coffee
1-3 teaspoons white sugar (depending on how sweet you like it)
Water
Milk (any kind) or creamer (half and half, coffeemate, etc)
2-3 ice cubes

Place the coffee granules and the sugar in a large glass (16 oz works best). Add an inch or so of cold water. Use an immersion blender or milk frother (not the seaming kind) to blend until foam almost reaches the top of the glass.

Add a splash of milk/creamer and the ice cubes to fill the glass.

Use the straw to stir the drink as you enjoy it.

Enjoy!

Wash-and-wear gluten free cornbread muffins

2010-06-20T16:08:00.000-07:00

I’ve found myself looking online for simple meal ideas. For easy, quick, whole-foods kinds of meals. No-frills, wash-and-wear-kind-of-gal meals.

I’m looking for ways to simplify and streamline my life lately, especially in the kitchen. I want to come home from work, put away my bike, change into human clothes, and put together a simple meal so I have time to enjoy working in the garden or relaxing outside with a pear cider.

It must be the warming weather. I feel a furious need to spring clean - to get behind the refrigerator and wipe out the built-up cat hair and dust, to clean crumbs out of the toaster, to find a place for things that Ben and I have been kicking around since we moved in (in September) and for which we haven’t quite gotten around to developing a system.

This is helping. Ben and I tackled the project of designing and building a built-in bookcase in one of the upstairs bedrooms, to house our numerous books. Ben got them into place this morning and they're not quite organized yet (we were just too excited to get all of what you see here off of the floor and ‘put away’ as much as possible), so they look pretty cluttered right now, but it already feels 100 times better.

Basement - you’re next.

In my quest for simplicity, I’ve given in to frequent returns to one of our favorite baking mixes - Bob’s red mill gluten free cornbread mix. We had this for the first time when my sister purchased it to make cornbread while we were in Minneapolis for Christmas. Really, not too shabby, but a bit dry.

So, I’ve been tweaking it, playing with it, coaxing it into something fluffier, sweeter.

These make for a great morning breakfast treat or an afternoon pick-me-up, buttered with a drizzle of raw honey.

As part of my no-frills cooking this week, we will be having these tapas-style with sliced manchego, slices of avocado, and sautéed chickpeas with zucchini, seasoned with cumin, garlic, and cilantro.

If anyone has any good low-maintenance meal ideas, please leave a comment and we can all live a little simpler as the weather warms.

Doctored Bob’s red mill Gluten Free cornbread mix muffins
Have all your ingredients at room temperature.

1 package Bob’s red mill cornbread mix
2 eggs
1 ½ cups milk (any kind)
1/3 cup + 1 tablespoon melted butter
2 tablespoons raw honey
1 tablespoon raw sugar or brown sugar
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
About ¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

Preheat oven to 375F and line muffin tins with paper liners (makes 12 muffins).

Pour mix into a large bowl with cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar. Blend well.

Add eggs, milk, honey, and butter and mix until you have an even consistency. Spoon the mixture into the paper liners (they will all be full).

Bake for about 20 minutes, until golden brown on top and the muffin tops don’t give when you lightly press on them.

Enjoy!

Gluten free -- Mainstream?

2010-06-16T20:08:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I indulge a small fantasy of mine.

I think to myself about all of the delicious naturally gluten free food in the world, like strawberries, peaches, asparagus, or sweet potatoes, and my mind naturally follows to all of the wonderful gluten free baked goods I’ve eaten from my own kitchen and several others‘. Scones, muffins, cookies, and pies. All gluten free. All just the right amount of sweet, crunch, and tenderness.

When I think of all that I eat and all that I can create to feed myself and loved ones, gluten free style, I start to wonder why the world even needs wheat, barley, or rye? If we can eat this well and feel this satisfied without these particular glutenous grains, are they really necessary to harvest for “normal” consumption? Especially given the evidence that suggests gluten is difficult for humans to digest in general (even for those who are not gluten intolerant per se), I can’t help but think we would all be better off if mainstream food producers started to remove the gluten altogether.

I start to imagine a world where everyone’s go-to thickener for sauces is tapioca starch rather than wheat flour, or where dredging fish in almond meal or rice flour for fish and chips is the standard. Bakeries stock their flour bins with buckwheat, sorghum, or coconut flours.

Would anyone miss the gluteny grains? Would there be a mass uprising to bring back flours that contain little nutritional value and give most people troubled tummies? I smirk at the thought of crowds of people outside their city halls and in DC holding signs, calling for the return of wheat to their Wheaties.

My little utopia-bubble bursts quickly each time when I come back to reality and think about the mass production of wheat - it’s a historically high-yield, low cost crop that food manufacturers can use as an inexpensive filler - and it has become so ingrained (no pun intended) in our culture as a staple food product to make removing it feel like going up against “the machine.” Plus, shifting how people think about baking, taking for granted the binding properties of gluten, would certainly be another sort of paradigm shift.

Then, I see things like this:

Mainstream cereals going gluten free.

No, they don’t have their “gluten free version” of Chex. A while back I posted a review for Betty Crocker’s gluten free brownie mix. They have a gluten free brownie mix and a regular brownie mix. However, if you want honey nut Chex or chocolate Chex, for example, you have one option - the gluten free option. Simple as that. No more barley malt flavoring their cereals. (They still have wheat Chex however, which are obviously not gluten free). I'm not big on processed foods in general, but know very well how handy they are in a pinch, and I'm rather intrigued by such shifts in mainstream food producing.

It’s like someone in the company woke up one day and realized a whole segment of the population couldn’t eat their product because they were using a particular flavoring that could easily be replaced by something that didn’t make 1 in 100 people sick.

While I don’t think we will ever live in a gluten-free world, I at least have hope that as consciousness grows about things like gluten intolerance, not only will individuals think more critically about what they put in their bodies, but food suppliers will think more critically about what they offer - they will ask themselves if they can create something that is slightly better tolerated, more nutritious, or less processed by changing a few small practices or ingredients.

Sausage and white beans with swiss chard on crostini

2010-06-12T16:27:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, you just need a little inspiration. And some sunshine.

We’re pulling out of the grips of a horribly wet stretch here in Portland, finally seeing some reliable sunshine for the first time in months. Between my last post and this week, I felt paralyzed, the cool and damp weather sapping all motivation to pursue personal projects. However, the world is finally waking up, and after what seemed like endless coaxing, fruit and vegetables are starting to grow. They’re starting to appear at the farmer’s markets and in gardens all around Portland.

Our garden beds are starting to look like they are about to burst. We’ve already enjoyed fresh spinach from our hanging basket and will soon have more ripe strawberries and blueberries than might be good for us. --- okay, that’s nonsense, there is no such thing. We will make more blueberry jam and strawberry crisps. We will pop them right in our mouths for a sweet snack. We might even preserve some in wine for ice cream sundaes.

This past week, I’ve been cooking out of the Farm to Table Cookbook - quite possibly the best cookbook purchase I’ve made since stumbling upon the Gluten Free Girl cookbook a couple of years ago. It is written by a Portland author, so the ingredients she features for each season happen to also be abundantly available locally, because these are the produce that grow well in Oregon. Also, the recipes are almost all naturally gluten-free, since she features whole foods (none of that “one can of cream of mushroom soup” junk), and for those recipes that are not GF, the substitution is obvious. For example, in a pasta dish that calls for whole wheat pasta - use rice pasta instead. However, the real reason I am in love with this cookbook? Reading the recipes is better than any romance novel or chick lit book you’ve ever tried to read (let’s face it - we’ve all picked up a brain-insulting book for the beach at some point in our lives) and every recipe I’ve tried has exceeded all of my expectations about what good food should taste like.

I started with Stuffed Vegetables Provencal, which stuffs zucchini, eggplant, bell peppers, or any other vegetables of your choosing with a mixture of bacon, bread crumbs, herbs de provence and other goodies, along with the ‘meat’ of the vegetables you are using. This smelled delicious and tasted even better. I had never heard of Gremolata butter before using this book, but after tossing it on roasted veggies, I want to bathe in it. Thursday night I made Roasted Chicken Peperonata (pictured below with gremolata buttered roasted new potatoes) and thought I had died and gone to heaven. I’m not much of a bell pepper fan, but this was like no bell pepper preparation I had ever tried. I’m glad I did.

I was inspired to try something I made up - a variation on something I like to cook in the spring with Raab. This is what I call Sausage and White Beans with Swiss Chard on Crostini. I even used a veggie I hadn’t yet tried before - swiss chard. It’s actually pretty darn good.

Sausage and White Beans with Swiss Chard on Crostini
I bought a sesame batard from New Cascadia’s farmers market stand to use as the bread in this. If you are not blessed with a source for delicious, artisan-style gluten free bread where you are, and you don’t want to bake it yourself, you might try spooning the sausage mixture over cooked quinoa or some other hearty gluten-free grain. Buy a good pork sausage, from the butcher or the deli for this recipe.

1 small sweet onion, finely diced
1 bunch swiss chard, roughly chopped
1 pound pork sausages, cooked and sliced
1 can great northern beans
2 cloves garlic
½ teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried rosemary
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Olive oil

1 gluten free sesame batard, sliced thick

Prepare your bread by rubbing one side with the cut side of a sliced garlic clove and brushing with olive oil or butter. Place slices oil-side-up on a baking sheet to bake later.

Preheat oven to 350F. Dice garlic cloves.

Heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil in a large pan over medium heat. Saute onions until they begin to soften and slightly brown on the edges. Add the herbs, garlic, beans, and sausages and saute for a about 5 more minutes before reducing the heat to low. Add in the swiss chard and stir to evenly distribute. Cover and let simmer.

Meanwhile, slide the bread slices into the oven and bake at for about 15 minutes, or until the edges are golden.

To serve, place two slices of bread on a plate and top with the sausage mixture.

Enjoy!

Grilled tomatoes with lemon caper creme sauce

2010-04-19T20:14:00.000-07:00

The future home for delicious carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, and beans (to name a few) are pictured here in our lovely backyard. Ben and I recently spent an entire weekend digging up grass, building cedar walls, and pounding in stakes to create these three beautiful raised garden beds. This week we will have soil and this weekend we will have starts planted!

We plan on getting a cherry tree for the front yard and we will be building a trellis for hops along the south side of the house, which gets a good dose of sun.

Those hops? Yeah, they will make gluten free beer. Gluten free beer with chocolate and coffee notes. The kind of beer I used to drink, but that no company currently feels like making. Ben and I will be making our own, exactly how we like it.

Home projects like this have been keeping us busy for a while. And the Portland spring sunshine has been calling to us, pulling at us, asking us, will we please come out and play? We’ve been stepping outside, shedding our layers, with the sun slowly drawing the chill from our damp winter bones. I’ve been biking to work yet again, feeling the cool crisp air nipping at my face in the morning while the streets are still quiet, and peddling easily home in the warm afternoon.

One Saturday morning, I taught Ben everything I know about basketball; how to shoot, dribble, protect the ball, box out on the rebound, and pass. I filled his head with random tidbits I remembered about things like faking out, pivot moves, defensive positioning, and working the lane.

The next morning we both woke up feeling like we’d been hit by a garbage truck. Oi! Our bones are less than forgiving these days.

We have been taking every opportunity to use our grill, sitting in our backyard with a beer and a book, while combination of smoke, barbeque sauce, and food smells torture us until it’s ready to eat. Ben makes his own sauces, rubs, and mustards, so – yes – we are incredibly spoiled.

This is one you all need to try. We mixed up some lamb burgers with nutmeg, rosemary, garlic, and a dash of sea salt and freshly grated pepper. We then threw some asparagus and a few whole tomatoes over our smoker box in on the grill (filled with hickory chips). We cooked them over medium heat, turning once, until the tomato skins began to crack. Inside the house, I mixed a few spoonfuls of crème fraiche with a spoonful of capers and a few drops of lemon juice. I spooned this mixture over the perfectly smoked veggies and after one bite of the tomato, I ran to get my camera – this was too good not to share.

Lemon-ricotta pancakes!

2010-03-01T19:11:00.000-08:00

After my miserable failure of an attempt at gluten free lemon-filled donuts, I was inspired by a co-worker to use one of the remaining sweet lemons to make lemon-ricotta pancakes, which her and her husband had eaten at Jam, one of Portland’s many delicious breakfast places.

Lemon. Ricotta. Pancakes. Need I say more?

I could imagine their spongy, light texture and tangy-lemony flavor before I even began plotting my recipe. I imagined them accompanied by lemon curd or maple syrup or even the marionberry jam we still had in the freezer from this past summer’s jam session.

Once imagined, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It didn’t take me long to find the gluten-filled version of a recipe for them, easy to adapt because it only called for a half cup of flour. So, we had breakfast for dinner one night last week, complete with grapefruit mimosas, fried potatoes, and mango-fruit.

The last lemon was used to make my favorite lemon-scented white chocolate cookies for our little get-together we had this past weekend. (They were a huge hit!)

Gluten free lemon-ricotta pancakes

I adapted this recipe straight from the Gourmet magazine (1991) recipe that’s floating around the internet. Since it only calls for ½ cup flour, I imagine the type of gluten free flour you use here doesn’t change the final results much, but would probably be particularly good with almond flour or buckwheat flour, if you don’t tolerate tapioca or sorghum.

4 eggs, separated

1 1/3 cups ricotta

1 ½ tablespoons sugar

Zest of one meyer lemon

¼ cup sorghum flour

¼ cup tapioca flour

¼ teaspoon baking powder

Blend flours and baking powder in a small bowl. Set aside.

In another bowl, whisk the yolks, ricotta, sugar and lemon zest. Stir in flour mixture.

Using and electric mixer, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Stir ¼ of the egg whites into the flour-yolk-ricotta mixture, then gently fold in the remaining egg whites.

Heat a nonstick skillet over medium-ish heat (I used just slightly lower than medium heat on my stove). Using a ladle or measuring cup, scoop mixture onto skillet and cook pancakes for about a minute or two on each side. These seemed to cook up much faster than traditional pancakes.

I always put a plate in the oven, on at 200F, and stack cooked cakes on the plate to keep warm until all of the cakes are cooked.

Serve with maple syrup, berry jam, or lemon curd (or all three!).

Enjoy!

A little food for thought

2010-02-22T20:46:00.001-08:00

“It is a very safe space for you isn’t it?” Ben asked after I finished explaining how quickly time passes while I’m at the gym.

“It’s like I just get a run in and start with some weights, and before I know it, it’s already been over an hour and I need to head to the showers,” I had said. I thought about his question for a moment and his use of the words ‘safe space.’ I quickly understood he didn’t literally mean that the space literally felt free from physical threat or danger, but rather that it was a place I felt comfortable and competent.

“Yes,” I replied.

For him, the gym is a very intimidating space, where he is too aware of the people around him who might be watching and judging; he is unsure of how he should dress or how to operate a treadmill. For me, it’s a place where I feel strong, where I focus on things I’m good at, and where everything else sort of goes away.

When I complete a challenging workout and my body feels rubbery and drenched in sweat, I feel like I can take on the world. It’s just what I need when other parts of my life feel out of control or particularly stressful.

This, of course, got me thinking about places where we feel competent and how we move through these spaces in the course of our day and what this does to our psychological well-being. Feeling competent is one thing – it makes us feel good about our selves, provides a feeling of self-efficacy in that domain, and gives us a boost of energy. But what happens when we feel so competent in a space that we feel bored? It would seem that in order for us to continue to feel engaged and energized in a space, there needs to be a certain element of challenge, to keep us from feeling like our activity (job, hobby, etc) is too easy and therefore not really worth much…and thus reducing our sense of accomplishment and self-esteem.

It reminded me of what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (“Mike” to those who know him) was getting at when he conceptualized his idea of “flow” – which is what you experience when you are participating in an activity that balances skill and challenge, and time seems to cease to exist. Everything else falls away in favor of your focus on the task at hand.

Although these flow experiences require a bit of up-front energy (think of what it feels like to drag yourself to the gym instead of staying at home on the couch), participating in them results in feeling energized. Though I had always thought Mike’s concept of flow was a remarkably astute observation of human motivation and productivity, it began to occur to me that maybe it is indeed at the crux of happiness – that engaging in activities that offer just enough challenge to feel somewhat difficult, yet we feel competent enough to try, elevates our mood and provides a sense of enjoyment.

For example, I feel competent at the gym because I’ve had a lot of experience with running, rowing, and weight-training. I have little trouble logging a four- or five-mile run on any given day and this makes me feel good… but not for long.

It gets boring.

So, then I change it up and add inclines (if I’m on a treadmill – or, change outdoor routes if outside) and speed changes. I add weight to my reps or reps to my sets. I continually up the ante, to keep feeling challenged, and my lust for the activity flourishes.

Similarly, being gluten free has forced me to become pretty competent in the kitchen (talk about a challenge at first – whew!). Periodically, though, I get bored. Bored of the same cookie recipe, bored of the same meals.

So, I up the ante; I buy meat I’ve never cooked with before, or I experiment with a spice I’ve never tried. I wonder if I could pull off a better gluten free pie crust. With a challenge in front of me, I can come home from a full day of work and an hour at the gym and still feel energetic enough to stand over the counter and chop vegetables.

I've noticed that doing this keeps me feeling challenged and interested. In turn, I feel competent and self-confident.

The funny thing about flow, though, is that the process is cyclical. It seems that competence and skill and energy are all so intertwined as to feel like the question of the chicken and the egg – which one comes first? They are so dependent on one another that you could find yourself in a delicious feed-back loop of challenge-competence-energy. On the other hand, if you find yourself in a space where you are seriously lacking in any of these, figuring out how to jump into the loop can seem daunting, doesn’t it?

If you aren’t experienced with baking, for example, starting the gluten free diet and suddenly being faced with baking your own gluten free baked goods can seem especially foreign. Maybe you don’t even own measuring cups or a muffin tin. (As a side – this can be a blessing actually, because then you aren’t faced with donating or otherwise getting rid of your plastic or silicone bake-ware previously contaminated with gluteny flours). As you set out to bake some gluten free muffins, the balance between challenge and competence might feel horribly weighted towards the challenge side of the scale – almost enough so that you don’t even want to start. You feel an unnecessary amount of trepidation for the task in front of you; wondering if you have all the supplies you will need, wondering weather there are things about baking (and baking gluten free) that you don’t know you don’t know.

These situations seem to require the most amount of up-front energy to start.

Once you’ve had a few good and bad experiences under your belt, however, your sense of competency grows, and you find yourself excited to bake a batch of muffins you know will turn out well. Then, you feel enough mastery over muffins to want to move on to pie crusts.

It seems to make sense. As we move through our day, into various spaces and activities, the more activities we undertake that contain an appropriate balance of challenge and skill, the more opportunity we have to feel good about ourselves and our accomplishments. Understandably, we will encounter a number of situations where the challenge feels a little outside of our ability, but if we muster through these difficult situations, as uncomfortable as they might seem, we might turn these activities into equally safe spaces in the future.

Just a little food for thought :)

P.S. The picture at the top is one I took at the Olympic ruins in Greece - it's the archway leading into the auditorium; I imagine Olympic athletes all vary slightly in the balance between challenge and skill they feel upon entering competition.

Sausage and vegetable cassoulet

2010-02-18T22:10:00.001-08:00

Let’s mark the day – February 16^th.

Tuesday was the first day of 2010 that I got to run outside sans long pants, sans fleece. In fact, I was in running shorts and a t-shirt.

Though purple crocuses are starting to pop up along the sidewalks in Portland, I felt like I needed to pinch myself this week when I realized it was more than pleasant enough for an easy outdoor run. While on said run, I noticed pink cherry blossoms starting to bloom along the waterfront.

The signs of spring in Portland are already here.

It still seems strange to this Minnesota gal to think in February that the season of warm, hearty soups and stews will soon be over. Scenes like the one above, a picture I took on a recent snowshoeing trip on Mt. Hood, will be a distant memory – at least, until next year.

But, we’re not quite there yet. There’s still time to enjoy some heavy, warming bowls of foodie goodness.

Like this cassoulet – one of my favorite dishes. It’s not quite as heavy as a thick, meaty stew, but it’s certainly hearty and very easy to throw together.

Sausage and vegetable cassoulet

This isn’t really a true cassoulet, which are usually baked in a pot with lots of meat pieces in the oven – they are usually much heavier. I like the simplicity of this one. I also like to take it off the heat while the veggies are still al dente (just a bit of bite left). Just personal preference.

4 pork or chicken kielbasa sausages, sliced

4 carrots, peeled and sliced

1 onion, diced

4 or 5 stalks celery, sliced

3 or 4 small zucchini, sliced

1 can white navy or cannellini beans

2 cloves garlic, minced

1-2 tsp dried basil

Freshly grated black pepper

Crème fraiche

In a large pot or dutch oven, sauté onions, carrots, and celery with a few tablespoons olive oil over medium heat until they begin to soften.

Add sausages, zucchini, garlic, and basil, continuing to stir. Add the can of beans, with liquid and stir to mix. Cover and let simmer for about 15 minutes.

Garnish each bowl with a dollop of crème fraiche and freshly grated black pepper.

Enjoy!

Process

2010-02-15T19:26:00.001-08:00

Ben has been bugging me for months – maybe even an entire year – to attempt a gluten free donut recipe. More than that, he has been not-so-subtly suggesting a lemon-curd-filled gluten free donut.

This weekend, I finally attempted to make his dream a reality.

I failed miserably.

I thought about taking a picture of the pale, flat, bland little discs on the baking sheet to share with you all how miserable it really was, but couldn’t even be bothered with it. Despite the resounding failure, however, Ben was appreciative of the attempt and even ate a number of them dipped in the lemon curd we made.

“They taste like bland little cookies,” he said, as he made a lemon-curd sandwich with two of them. I love how Ben can always take lemons and make…lemon sandwiches.

I ate my usual rice cakes with sunbutter for breakfast that morning and we tossed the remaining batter in the trash, moving on with our day. Though the donuts won that morning, I will certainly try again, until I get it right.

Our day took us to the Hawthorne district, where I purchased the print pictured at the top of this post. We were at Greg's - recently re-opened almost a month after his passing. He was truly one of Portland's most amazing people (those of you who knew him know) and Ben and I were incredibly saddened to hear of his death. I'm not sure he really knew how many lives he touched, even by some of the simple things he did every day, but Ben and I knew him for a scarce 5 months and we have felt a loss of someone we really admired.

We noticed his shop was open, so we had to go in. A number of Nikki McClure's prints resonated with me, but this one did especially. I often speak of how enjoyable the process is in accomplishing any task, but mostly with cooking and baking.

The process of coming up with a fantastic gluten free donut recipe, is, believe it or not, enjoyable. It's a challenge.

So, the fact that this print depicts someone pitting cherries (which are lush and delicious, but pitting them can be tedious) with the word "process" - it really spoke to me. It also reminds me to slow down, to appreciate the little daily things that might appear tedious, and to think about how these small things matter. Similar to the all the ways Greg touched the Portland community just by doing and being what he did every day.

This will go up in my kitchen.

Though we don’t really “do” the whole Valentine's day thing, I thought it was a good enough excuse as any for us to share a nice red wine and some of our favorite small-bites foods. Taking center stage last night was our bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with toasted almonds and feta cheese.

I know I might get sick of these if I ate them every day, but it would probably take years. They are impossibly delicious – the perfect blend of salty and sweet, especially with the good, thick-sliced bacon and big, juicy medjool dates we used.

These definitely turned out – no more experimenting required!

By the way, that is Dewey in the background - sitting up at the table, grumpy because there is no bacon for him :)

Bacon-wrapped dates

I bought a brick of feta cheese, which is easier to use because you can cut narrow bricks to stuff into the dates. Also, the meatier (less fatty) your bacon, the easier it is to put these together and the better they hold up. You can also use chevre and pipe it in using a plastic bag – just stuff the cheese into the corner of the bag and snip the tip with a scissors and squeeze into the date after you stuff in the almond.

10 medjool dates

5 slices thick-sliced bacon

10 toasted almonds

Feta cheese

To remove pits from the dates: using a long, narrow object (I used an orange peeler), push through the end opposite of where the date was attached to the stem and push the pit all the way out of the other end. Remove all of the pits and create a pile of your dates.

Slice 10 small, narrow bricks of feta cheese and pile these pieces next to your dates.

Place your almonds next to your cheese and dates. Then place 10 toothpicks there as well.

On a separate place, slice the bacon slices in half, so you now have 10 shorter slices of bacon.

Stuff each date with a piece of the cheese, then an almond. Then roll the date up in a bacon slice and secure with a tooth pick. Repeat for all dates.

Place dates in a baking dish or a sheet pan with edges and bake at 425F to 450F for about 15 to 20 minutes, or until bacon is cooked through. Higher temperatures will obviously cook the works faster and will make your bacon crisp up more.

Let them cool a bit before you bit into them, because the cheese will be very hot!

Enjoy!

Toasted coconut and chocolate cookies

2010-02-12T19:03:00.000-08:00

I had itchy hands yesterday, both literally and figuratively.

In the literal sense, I recently had a flare-up of my DH (Dermatitis Herpetiformis), which many of you are likely familiar with. For those of you who don’t know, DH is a skin condition experienced by approximately 25% of all celiacs that produces itchy blistery bumps, most typically on your hands, knees, elbows, and ankles. And, according to Dr. Peter Green (Director of the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia), if you have DH, you have Celiac disease.

There are a number of photos of patients with this rash online and many look beyond worse than I’ve ever had it. At its best, I’ve had a random bump here and there that doesn’t really itch that much. At its worst, I’ve had close to 10 bumps on each ankle, irritated and blistery and itchy something furious. It was at its worst for me when I was healing, about 4 or 5 months after starting the gluten free diet. I’ve read conflicting information about whether these bumps go away completely on the gluten free diet, and how long that takes. Some say the bumps often go away on a completely gluten free diet (this might take up to 2 years) and flare-ups mean the re-introduction of gluten into the system. Others say someone with DH will mostly rid themselves of the rash when on a gluten free diet, but will have rash flare-ups throughout one’s life and it isn’t connected at all to whether that person ingested gluten or not.

I’ve recently had a particularly bad flare-up on my hands and am left wondering – did I ingest gluten accidentally somewhere? And, if so, was it recently or does it take some weeks for these symptoms to appear? Alternatively, I’m coming up on my two-year gluten-free anniversary in March, so my body might still be riding itself of toxins… Or, these flare-ups are just going to be a fact of my life… Or, I could be reacting to something else? All of this feels very frustrating. The itching is one thing (mine aren’t that itchy), but they also leave scars.

The best I can do in this situation is to not drive myself nuts looking for answers, but rather to monitor my diet and monitor my symptoms. If there is something to know there, then I will find it.

In the figurative sense, my hands were itching to get into the kitchen, to mix up some dough, to create and experiment. I haven’t baked anything in a while and the last batch of cookies I did were from a mix.

I needed to bake cookies.

One of my favorite flavor combinations for sweet things is coconut with chocolate (well, that and peanut butter and chocolate). Ben doesn’t care much for chocolate at all, but this weekend, I will finally be giving Ben something he has been waiting for for some time now – gluten free lemon filled donuts! So, since we are baking something especially for him this weekend, I decided these cookies would be all about me. Nice how that works, isn’t it?

And a cookie was born.

Toasted coconut and chocolate cookies

I have been having a lot of good luck lately with quinoa flour, so I thought I’d continue experimenting with it here – with great results! The texture of these are awesome. They are not grainy and they don’t get soggy after a day or so (which happens with some gluten free baked goods, I’ve noticed). Keep them in an airtight container on the counter or freeze ‘em for later.

1 cup quinoa flour

1 cup tapioca flour

½ cup coconut flour

1 tsp xanthan gum

1 cup butter

1 cup raw sugar (turbinado)

1 tsp baking soda

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup toasted coconut

1 cup chocolate chips

Mix flours and xanthan gum in a small bowl to create one homogeneous flour mix. Set aside.

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until well blended. Add eggs and vanilla and stir until incorporated. Add flour mixture, about a third at a time, until it is all mixed in. Then stir in your coconut and chocolate chips. The mixture will be quite tough at this point, and you might want to use your hands.

Roll dough into golf-ball sized balls and place on a plate so they are all ready to go.

Place the balls about an inch or so apart on a parchment-lined baking sheet and flatten with your hand or the back of a spatula to about 1/5 inch thick. Bake at 350F for about 12-15 minutes.

Allow to cool on wire rack.

Enjoy!

Plumbing projects and The Cravings Place cookie mix

2010-02-01T21:30:00.000-08:00

Although I didn't truly mean to, I did stew over that last recipe for days... A number of weeks, in fact (yowza). But it was that good...

In the meantime, we've been retreating to hearty standbys - chicken and vegetable soup, stuffed acorn squash, and risottos. I pulled together a little home-made marinara sauce (with freshly grated nutmeg - as the Germans do) and we enjoyed a number of nights with buffalo meatball and vegetable spaghetti. Anything full and warming that combines meat and vegetables in one warm bowl was definitely what we wanted on the menu.

This past weekend, inspired by a friend and our trip to Otto's Sausage Kitchen the weekend prior, I made potato-leek soup with creme fraiche and bacon (if you live in the area - go there! for their sausages smoked on site, and then buy some fresh meats to take home with you. All of their sausages are gluten free!). Long story short, friend took home some bacon (and later declared that if she disappeared it was because she had eloped with said bacon) to add to her potato leek soup she planned on cooking up later that day. I heard her version was delicious, right down to the last drop. Mine? Yes.

And, you might be surprised to know that this foodie knows her way around other parts of the kitchen as well; I installed our drinking water faucet and under-sink filtration system all by myself (and even in-between dragging rolls of insulation upstairs and pushing them through the attic access to Ben, who was installing an attic blanket!).

Beautiful! And it works just as good as it looks. (and, by the way, I installed the sponge-holder you see there the day before - it keeps the sponges out of the way and allows them to dry quickly, reducing stink build-up).

After my plumbing task was done, I had to try out a cookie mix given to me by a co-worker. Although the gluten free mixes cut baking time down considerably, I don't buy them often because, 1) my cookies usually turn out better, and 2) when I bake, I actually enjoy the process of baking - blending the flours, creaming butter and sugar, and seeing the dough take shape - mixes take that away from me.

However, when time is of the essence and I am 100% out of any form of sweet treat, baking cookies from a mix is better than no sweets around when a craving hits. So, I am known to have one lurking in my pantry from time to time (maybe 2 or 3x a year?), but many have been disappointing; I was curious to know if The Cravings Place lived up to its name.

First of all, putting the ingredients together couldn't have been easier. I did a test batch to see how they spread and quickly realized they didn't. So, I rolled the dough into balls and flattened with my hands. They don't spread or flatten beyond where you physically shape them, so keep that in mind.

Out of the oven, they are amazing. Very delicious, with only a hint of grainy mouth-feel. The next day, after hanging out on the counter in a plastic container, they are still pretty good and hold their own fine, but pretty grainy. But, they don't change much after a number of days on that same counter (which is a fine feat, as many of us gluten-free-ers know). Overall, as far as processed gluten free cookies go, they're up there among the best. Compared to home-made? Definitely a notch below.

I would definitely go to these again in a pinch, and feel confident to try their other mixes. They are all also egg free, dairy free, and nut free.

I could stew over this for days...

2010-01-06T20:24:00.000-08:00

There I was, holding the bowl with my left hand while I used my right hand to turn the mixture over repeatedly until the ingredients were thoroughly blended, until there were no spots of rosemary or flour, but rather the mixture was one coherent pinkish-brownish hue. I tried hard not to think about those big brown animals that dotted the Dakota plains and how the mixture in my bowl used to be part of one.

I let a little memory float past of a family vacation we took while I was in the 5^th grade and, using my 110 camera, I took dozens of pictures of the wild Buffalo we saw as we made our way to Wall Drug, the Badlands, and Mount Rushmore. Those animals were about the most exciting thing on the trip, apparently. And, those were the days of not knowing, of course, whether any of your photos would turn out – and I was anxious to make sure I got at least one good shot of those peculiar animals that weren’t quite like cows and certainly were no horse. (What did we ever do before digital cameras?)

I shook off the visual of those big brown animals with matted, dangling hair, and steeled myself to finish the task at hand. I had to take this meat-flour-egg-herb-salt-sorghum-millet mixture and roll it into little balls in my hands.

This is just meat, I told myself.

Food.

Rich in protein.

And then I thought of what my mother would say if she were inside my head right now – “Lauren, stop being so silly,” I could hear her say. But, the truth is, I still get squeamish about cooking meat.

For a number of years post college, I was what I called a “flexitarian” – meaning, mostly a vegetarian unless someone else was doing the cooking. Even then, I mostly felt more comfortable eating sans animals. I think it’s something about it’s former living state, a good amount of something about livestock living conditions, something about bacteria, and probably mostly delusional. But, if you had asked me 5 years ago to cook you up some buffalo meatballs I would have called you delusional (or maybe something worse!).

Since the gluten free diagnosis, however, curiosity and my love of good food override the squeamishness. It’s like how curiosity and my love of travel override my fear of flying. I know there is something wonderful waiting for me on the other side.

And this – this buffalo adventure – was well worth it. It was amazing, in fact. It was the kind of meal that I suddenly want to make for everyone I know, to tell everyone I know, and share with all of you. It’s the kind of meal that will make me feel like a culinary genius for months.

Buffalo meatball stew

You will want to have all of your ingredients prepped and at-the-ready while making this (no chopping onions while the meatballs are browning), and it will feel as easy as pie.

For the meatballs, mix the following together in a bowl until one consistent mixture:

1 pound ground buffalo

1 ¼ tsp rosemary

1 tsp sea salt

Freshly cracked black pepper

¼ cup GF flour or bread crumbs (I used 1/8 cup sorghum flour

1/8 cup millet flour)

1 egg

Pull small bits of the mixture and roll between your hands to make balls about 1 inch across.

Have the following ready for the stew:

1 medium onion, chopped

½ pound mushrooms, sliced

4 to 5 smallish boiling potatoes, diced into large-ish bite-size pieces

4 cups mushroom broth

1 tablespoon potato starch

¼ to ½ tsp ground mustard (to taste)

freshly cracked black pepper

Crème fraiche (or pure sour cream) for garnishing

Heat some olive oil in a large stock pot over medium to medium-high heat. Toss in the meatballs and brown on all sides (be a bit patient so they don’t fall apart on you – make sure they brown well on one side before trying to turn them).

Toss in the mushrooms and onion and stir for about a minute. Reduce heat to low and cover. Heat cook until onion and mushrooms are tender, stirring occasionally.

Add the potato starch and stir. Bring heat back up to medium-high. Add mushroom broth, mustard, pepper, and potatoes. Stir to mix.

Bring the mixture to a boil for about a minute, then reduce heat to simmer and let simmer uncovered for 30-45 minutes or more, stirring occasionally, until the potatoes are soft and the liquid has reduced some. If liquid begins to reduce too much for your liking, you can always put the cover back on.

Serve with a dollop of crème fraiche.

Enjoy!

Magic cookie bars and New Year's day Pork roast

2010-01-01T12:09:00.000-08:00

We returned yesterday to Portland after a week in Minneapolis visiting with family and friends. We thought we had left the snow behind, but we were surprised to see a small layer of white coating the lawns in our neighborhood. Apparently, the rest of Portland had been surprised as well.

During our stay in Minneapolis, about a foot of snow fell in 24 hours and everyone shrugged their shoulders and thought, "Meh... where's the big snowstorm they were forecasting?" while driving to their holiday destinations. This made reading about Portland's unexpected 4-inch snowfall Tuesday night seem pretty silly. Then again, Minneapolis expects snow and is prepared. But... it makes me think... in each of the past 5 years I've lived here, it has snowed at least a little during the winter (or iced) and each time, everyone freaks out and the city shuts down. Shouldn't Portland also expect snow and be prepared?

In any case, the lawns were covered in feet of snow in Minneapolis as we baked some holiday treats on Christmas day morning. And family braved the snow-coated roads to meet at my parents' house for an evening of watching the twins (my nephews are twin boys about 2 1/2 years old and they are adorable!) play with their new toys, tackling a new 1000-piece puzzle, and good food.

My mom and I put together some gluten-free magic cookie bars and a made-from-scratch gluten-free version of her famous cheesy potatoes (you know, the ones with hash browns, tons of cheese, and usually a can of condensed cream-of-mushroom soup?). I made the "condensed soup" from 1 and 1/4 cups milk, 1/4 cup chicken broth, 2 tbs of potato starch, some sauted onion and a bit of pepper, garlic and salt. All you do is mix the milk and the potato starch in a bowl or measuring cup and add to sauted onion and heat, while stirring, with other ingredients until thick. It was a huge success.

The cookies, too, were just as I had remembered them. We used a package of Pamela's shortbread cookies and about a half cup each of coconut and millet flours in place of the graham cracker crumbs. My mom whirred them in the food processor until they were a coarse crumble and we mixed in the flours and the butter, pressing the mixture into the baking dish. We then followed the traditional recipe, sans nuts. They indeed disappeared quickly... like magic. (they are still a bit warm in these photos - you can see the chocolate chips are a bit melty!)

Today we are spending the day watching the weather oscillate between sunbursts and rain showers while the delicious smell from the pork roast in the crock pot tortures us. We will be ringing in the new year with pork, which is supposed to symbolize progress in the new year, and is one of our favorite things lately to do in the crock pot.

This morning, Ben chopped and onion, three large carrots, and three medium potatoes and placed them in the bottom of the pot. Then he chopped a couple cloves of garlic (rubbing the meat with one of the cloves), placed the meat on the veggies, and sprinkled everything with the garlic bits, some fresh ground pepper, mustard powder, and rosemary. If you have a crock pot, you need to try this - cook for about 10-12 hours on low. If you do not have a crock pot, you need to get one and try this!

I can't hardly wait until dinner...

Best wishes to all for a happy new year and may your year be filled with many wonderful new flavors, food, and recipes :)

Go ahead honey its gluten free: Chewy ginger chocolate cookies

2009-12-21T18:55:00.000-08:00

The story of these cookies start with playing cards at a friend's. Okay, not really cards, but a scrabble word play poker game Ben picked up at the store a while back, on a whim.

Dare I risk digressing by mentioning I am not a card-game or board-game kind of gal, though once I begin to play, I surprise myself by actually enjoying it. I inexplicably defy Marti Seligman and his learning theory of punishment and rewards when it comes to card and board games....

But what were you saying about the cookies, you ask? Oh yes, where was I? Ben and I brought this card game over to a friend's a few weeks ago and while we drank red wine, talked and joked, and, while we played our hands, Erin watched from the kitchen.

When things really started to heat up and we began betting with Lego bricks (oh yeah, we were living dangerously that night), Erin emerged from the kitchen with a plate of ginger chocolate cookies and sat down to join the game. They were not gluten free by any means, so I unfortunately could not tell you empirically how good they were, but according to the chorus of approving moans and groans, I can tell you they were pretty awesome. Ben ate one as 'research' so that he could let me know how my gluten free version (should I attempt one) compares to the gluten-filled version.

Now, how can I back down from a challenge like that? I took Erin's recipe and baked the gluten free version yesterday. Or, should I say, yesterday, I baked the best chewy ginger chocolate cookies ever.

Really, they are the best you will ever taste.

... I'll even bet you 6 Lego bricks on that one.

Happy holidays to you all! This is my entry in this month's go ahead honey its gluten free round-up, hosted by Stephanie of Gluten Free by Nature with the theme of holiday cookies. Be sure to check out her site at the end of the month for everyone's submissions!

Mmmm... just look at those delicious little crackles in the top of the cookies and the big sparkles of sugar :)

Chewy ginger chocolate chip cookies

These turn out wonderfully crisp on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside. You could use regular grain sugar to roll them in, instead of the Turbinado, but the large grain sugar really makes these amazing. By the way, I am finding that quinoa flour really does the trick in keeping gluten free cookies tasting fresh after a number of days. These are awesome right out of the oven and stay great on the counter or in the refrigerator for a number of days.

3/4 cup Sorghum flour

1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon quinoa flour

1/2 cup tapioca flour

1 tsp xanthan gum

1 1/4 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground cloves

1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg

1 Tablespoon ground cocoa (unsweetened)

1 stick butter

1 Tablespoon freshly grated ginger

1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar

1/2 cup unsulfured molasses

1 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 tsp boiling water

7 ounces dark or semi-sweet chocolate in chips or chunks

1/4 cup Turbinado sugar (for rolling)

Sift together: flours, xanthan gum, ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, cocoa.

With a mixer beat butter and fresh ginger for about 4 minutes, add brown sugar until combined, then add molasses until combined

In a small bowl, dissolve baking soda in boiling water.

Beat half of flour mixture into butter mixture. Beat in baking soda mixture,then remaining half of flour mixture.

Mix in chocolate; turn onto plastic wrap. Pat out to 1-inch thickness, seal with wrap. Refrigerate until firm, 2 hours or overnight.

Preheat oven to 325. Roll dough into 1 1/2 inch balls and roll each ball through a bowl of the turbinado sugar. Place 2 inches apart on baking sheets ( use parchement paper or spray with butter). Refrigerate baking sheets with cookies for about 10 minutes, then slide into oven and bake about 12-15 minutes.

Let cool 5 minutes, then transfer to cooling rack and let cool completely.

Enjoy!

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Apples and Feta

2009-12-01T21:17:00.000-08:00

If you haven’t already figured out how strange I am, the fact that I love Brussels sprouts might just be the bit of information you need. I am well aware of most people’s disdain for them, and I accept that most would find my love for them at the very odd end of the spectrum.

However, I am convinced those who dislike Brussels sprouts have never snapped them off the stalk, cut them into quarters, and roasted them in the oven with olive oil.

Most people’s experience with Brussels sprouts begins by opening the freezer door and cutting open a plastic bag. No wonder they find these little, green, mini-cabbage-like veggies a turn-off. No matter how you prepare frozen Brussels sprouts, they just don’t compare to cutting them up fresh and roasting them until the edges get just a bit crisp and the middles are tender.

After indulging in far too much ham, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie this weekend, I threw together this simple little meal Sunday night, something I made up on the fly with things in our fridge that desperately needed using. Miles Davis provided the background music as I chopped veggies and apples and tossed them into a baking dish with a little olive oil and a smattering of spices. We sat down to a warm, satisfying plate of my vegetable-fruit creation and Ben and I agreed we needed to remember this one.

And, it just might convince even the staunchest non-Brussels-sprout fans that there is something to like.

Roasted Brussels sprouts with apples and feta

The amounts do not matter that much here, just cook as much as you are going to eat. Even though I’m a big fan of Brussels sprouts, they do loose some of their luster as leftovers – growing a bit bitter.

What you need:

Brussels sprouts, quartered

One or two medium apples, diced

One or two handfuls of walnut or pecan pieces

Splash apple cider vinegar

Olive oil

Dash rosemary

1 tsp or so ground coriander

1 tsp or so sea salt

Feta cheese

Preheat your oven to 400F. Line a baking dish with aluminum foil. Use a dish that is large enough so that the veggies and apples are in a single layer as much as possible.

Toss your chopped veggies and apples into the baking dish and drizzle with olive oil. Add the splash of apple cider vinegar. Stir a bit to mix in the oil.

Sprinkle the spices and salt over the top, evenly. Toss the walnut or pecan pieces evenly over the top.

Bake for about 20-30 minutes, until sprouts are soft and just beginning to brown.

Divide among plates and top with a tablespoon or so crumbled feta cheese.

Enjoy!

Gluten free pumpkin spice mini cakes

2009-11-22T20:10:00.000-08:00

I laid in bed this morning, just as the sun was coming up, listening to the tick-tick-tick of rain against the window and the lightly-high-pitched sound of rain draining through the downspout outside. I have always felt grateful that I have a roof over my head, but now as a homeowner, I am keenly aware of how grateful I am to have a roof over my head that has relatively new shingles and gutters that are properly attached.

I was thinking contentedly of this as I heard Ben, who got out of bed a few minutes before, in the kitchen feeding the cats. I rolled over, turning towards the kitchen and listened to him talking with Dewey as he divided the wet food among three small plates (our attempt to make sure Dewey gets his fair share of breakfast).

“Merrrr-ooowww!” cries Dewey.

“What’s that Dewey? Little Jimmy fell into the well?” I hear Ben say, intonating as if he lived in a Lassie movie.

“Rrrrr-ooowww?” is Dewey’s reply.

“Oh, we better hurry, huh boy?”

This morning’s rendition of cat-feeding-theater was particularly humorous and I enjoyed a satisfying giggle, laying there under the warm comforter, feeling happy, content, and fortunate. I lingered there a pair of minutes more, but as soon as I heard Ben snap off the burner, pick up the pot of water and pour it into the French press, I knew it was time to get up. Someone else making coffee is about the best reason ever to get up on Sunday morning.

We enjoyed our coffee, slowly, and talked about what we had on tap for the day. Me? Off to the artist’s market with a friend, bake pumpkin cakes, organize bills and paperwork, plant tulip bulbs (I hope I’m not too late!), and rake the yard (finally!). Ben? Off to get Christmas lights for outside, stain and seal the shoe rack he built, insulate the downstairs windows, clean the gutters, and fix the furnace filter. To name a few.

Needless to say, we were busy today.

And, for those of you who are keeping track - after dinner, after we devoured our pumpkin-cake dessert, Ben asked, “Are you sure we can’t put up the Christmas tree tonight?”

I laughed. Now he’s just pushing my buttons.

I wish you all a happy Thanksgiving and I hope you are surrounded by loved ones and lives for which you are all grateful. I know I am.

Pumpkin spice mini-cakes

These cakes are so moist and delicious! I did them with chocolate chips, but you could throw in some pecans instead or maybe coconut ribbons. They would be great without any add-ins and maybe with vanilla, chocolate, or cream-cheese frosting.

1 cup Sorghum flour

½ cup Tapioca flour

½ cup Millet flour

½ cup sweet white rice flour

1 tsp xanthan gum

1 ½ T baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

1 tsp ground cinnamon

½ tsp ground nutmeg

¼ tsp ground clove

¼ tsp ground ginger

1 cup pureed pumpkin
2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1/3 cup agave nectar

1/3 cup butter, melted

½ cup “butter milk” (any milk + a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar or lemon juice – see note)

Optional add-ins:

1/3 to ½ cup chocolate chips, pecans, coconut, or anything else your little heart desires.

Line 12 muffin cups with paper liners or grease with butter and rice flour. Heat oven to 350F.

Mix dry ingredients and blend well. Add pumpkin, eggs, vanilla, agave, butter, and “buttermilk.” Stir to mix well.

Spoon into muffin cups and smooth tops with the back side of a spoon if you wish (I usually fill a measuring cup with water and dip the spoon into the water so it doesn’t stick to the dough).

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until slightly golden brown.

Cool for a few minutes before removing to wire rack to cool completely.

Enjoy!

Note: to make “buttermilk,” pour a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar or lemon juice into a measuring cup and then add any kind of milk (hazelnut, coconut, almond, rice, regular moo cow, etc) to make ½ cup milk.

Gluten free apple crisp

2009-11-19T15:21:00.000-08:00

I have been wanting to share this recipe with you for almost a week. I’m home sick with what is likely the dreaded flu (H1N1), though it appears I have a very mild case. It feels like I slept for almost all of yesterday and then slept like a rock last night for about 12 hours. Today I feel almost normal. Hooray for that!

The cats have gotten some special mama time while I’ve been home, especially Rosie, who sleeps by my side always (when she’s not cruising the kitchen counters for kitchen scraps we forgot to clean up). And Zora and Dewey have been the Happiest Cats Ever, sleeping soundly on the new sofa bed we put in our recently-put-together television/guest room (we now have a television-free living room - it is awesome!).

Although I’ve shared another crisp recipe on this site, I am particularly pleased with how the topping on this turned out. I’m definitely a crisp-topping girl – don’t get me wrong, the fruit also needs to be delicious, but the topping is really what sells me on a fruit crisp of any kind. We ate this crisp for dessert last week… and breakfast Saturday morning!

Next week is Thanksgiving! I have felt behind all year on the seasons, but I’m taking the time this week to mentally prepare for the celebration of gratitude and the tradition of food that goes along with it. If you are having gluten free guests at your home, check out my post last year on cooking gluten free around the holidays. Also, don’t assume the turkey is gluten free – just like any other meat, if it has been pre-injected with sodium preparations or broths, it might not be gluten free.

By the way, if you live in the Portland, Oregon area, check out New Cascadia Traditional for gluten free pies, bread (for stuffing), rolls, and other delicious gluten free baked goods. They are accepting pre-orders for such things right now, so give them a call! If you are not in the Portland area, check out Whole Foods – they have a number of frozen gluten free pie shells, pre-made pies, scones, rolls, and many other gluten free baked goods in their bakery department. These certainly take the guesswork out of gluten free baking!

Next week also marks the start of the Christmas season and Ben’s long-awaited favorite time of year. Seriously, I had to make the rule that we don’t put up the tree until the day after Thanksgiving and he has been counting down the days. Soon our home will be filled with green and red and twinkling little lights! I am looking forward to a fire in the fireplace with stockings hanging from the mantle and a hot cup of apple-cinnamon tea!

Gluten free apple crisp

Filling:

3 medium-sized apples, sliced

2 tsp vanilla

2 tablespoons raw sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

dash of allspice

dash of nutmeg

Preheat oven to 375F.

Mix the above ingredients in an 8x8 baking dish (mix well to evenly distribute spices and sugar). Spread to evenly fill dish.

Topping:

1 cup gluten free oats

½ cup tapioca flour

¼ cup millet flour

¼ cup raw sugar

2 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp allspice

½ tsp nutmeg

1/3 cup butter, cold and cut into pieces

handful pecans or walnuts (optional)

Mix your oats, flours, spices, sugar, and nuts (optional) until well-blended. Using a fork or pastry blender, cut in butter until mixture resembles course crumbs. Spoon over apples, evenly covering the fruit.

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until topping is slightly golden.

Enjoy!

Sausage and apple-stuffed pumpkin

2009-11-11T15:12:00.000-08:00

We have certainly settled into our new home, I thought, as I walked from the grocery store, down our street to our house. It feels like home. I know a place feels familiar when the automatic pilot turns on and leads me there without actual brain input. We have only been living here for about two and a half months and I wonder what it will feel like years from now. Five years from now? Ten?

I mentioned this to Ben that night after dinner and he smiled, with a look that said, “It could only be wonderful.” Christmases with a fire in the fireplace and stockings hanging on the mantle, evenings with friends eating good food and drinking good wine in the dining room, summers in the backyard garden tending to vegetables…we will see many of these in our new home over the coming years. Feeling settled, to know we will be here years from now, in this same house, is a feeling unfamiliar to both of us in recent years, but it indeed feels wonderful. Although we have what feels like an endless list of “things” we want to do in the house (install a fan in the bathroom, for example), we are certainly taking the time to savor and enjoy this part of our lives and anticipate all that is to come.

Right now, our street is littered with leaves, all of the leaves having fallen off the trees at the same time, or so it seems. We are preparing for our first winter season in our new home, and our first holiday season. (I broke down and bought a package of red apple-cinnamon-scented tea-lights a couple of weeks ago, despite my resolve to not indulge in Christmas things before Thanksgiving has passed. I blame Ben – he just gets so excited about Christmas! If it were up to him, our tree would be up in September.) I got a little nervous when I read we have a pumpkin shortage this year, on account of the spoiled fields out east, but I came across a large display of canned pumpkin at the grocery store this past weekend and a little voice inside my head cried, “hooray!” I know, I know, freshly roasted pumpkin tastes much better, but the canned stuff is pretty darn good and you can’t beat the convenience with a stick.

About this time last year, I made pumpkin scones and I have been waiting to find the canned pumpkin in the stores to make them again! I bought four cans. I am in pumpkin heaven. But maybe I should go to the store later tonight and get more…I think I have an obsession.

This doesn’t mean I haven’t been cooking with whole pumpkins prior to this – au contraire! Well, you all know about the pumpkin soup I made for last month's Go Ahead Honey it’s Gluten Free round up. I also made stuffed pumpkins for dinner last week and got rave reviews from Ben. I certainly know what we will be eating each fall for the years to come!

Sausage and apple-stuffed pumpkin

1 small sugar pumpkin

2 sausages, sliced (I am digging Al Fresco’s roasted red pepper and asiago chicken sausage)

1 small apple, diced

½ cup pecan pieces

Butter

Real maple syrup

Wash and dry the pumpkin and stick it in the microwave for about a minute (this makes it a tad easier to cut). Remove the stem and slice in half. Scoop out the seeds (and save to roast later) and pulp.

Place pumpkin halves cut-side down in a baking dish with about ¼ inch of water and bake at 350 for 40 minutes to an hour (depending on the size of your pumpkins). Mine took about an hour – they should be really soft.

Remove pumpkins from the oven and turn them over in the dish so the cut side is now up. Place a couple small dots of butter inside the cavities and drizzle with maple syrup. Divide the sausage slices, diced apple, and pecans evenly between the two pumpkin halves. Fill each pumpkin half with the apple and sausage, then place the pecans on top. Drizzle a bit with more maple syrup, if desired.

Bake for an additional 20 minutes, until the pecans are good and toasty and you can’t stand the delicious smell any longer!

Enjoy!

Pumpkin soup and playing catch-up with the season

2009-10-29T17:43:00.000-07:00

As you can see, we are a bit behind on our raking duties. It seems like we have been a bit behind on the seasons all year, though. Is it October already? Indeed the leaves falling on our lawn won't let us forget.

Oh wait, it's nearly November!

This year has been flying by, dear readers. A pair of weekends ago weekend Ben and I traveled back to the town where I grew up for my 10 year high school reunion. (I know writing this outs me on my age, but there you have it - I'm, relatively speaking, pretty young!). Ben and I took a day and headed to my old stomping ground in South Minneapolis to tour the galleries of the newly renovated and expanded Walker Art Center. Some of you might know this area of town for the famous sculpture garden nearby (yes, the one with the cherry and the spoon).

Afterwards, I remembered how close we were to the French Meadow Bakery, which has always had a famous to-die-for bakery case, and I had heard recently they began offering a selection of gluten free baked goods. Needless to say, we stopped in for a cup of joe and a sweet treat.

Their gluten free offerings were all pre-packaged and well-labeled. That day, they had a choice of a brownie, a chocolate chip cookie, and an apple-cinnamon muffin. I chose the brownie, of course, because I wanted some chocolate and felt the need to compare it to the Betty Crocker brownie I made earlier in the month. The French Meadow Bakery brownies were awesome. Period. Really nothing more to say about them, except I wish their cafe was here in Portland! They do offer online ordering and list several stores in Portland that supposedly sell their products, but I haven't found the gluten free items in two of those stores (but, many more stores can be visited and phone calls can be made!).

In our farm share this past month, we have received a number of sugar pie pumpkins and we inadvertently grew a pair of small ones in our front yard (planted there by previous owners, we're guessing). So, when handed pumpkins, what does one make?

Well, we made pumpkin soup. And it was good.

This is my entry in this month's "Go ahead honey it's gluten free" event (started by Naomi at Straight into bed cakefree and dried), which is being hosted by Heather over at Life Gluten Free. The theme is pumpkin treats! Check out her round up!

Pumpkin soup

1 medium-sized sugar pie pumpkin

1/2 small onion, diced

4 cups chicken broth

2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1/2 tsp gound cloves

olive oil

coconut milk or half and half

toasted pecans

grated Parmesan cheese

ground black pepper

Cut the pumpkin in half and scoop out the seeds (save them and roast them after dinner!). Place pumkin halves cut side down in a baking dish and add water to the dish until the water covers the bottom of the dish about an 1/8 inch high.

Bake in the oven at 350 for about 40-50 minutes until soft. Allow to cool and scoop out the flesh into a bowl.

Saute diced onion with some olive oil in a large soup or stock-pot until they become translucent. Add the broth, pumpkin, and spices. Stir well to mix.

Simmer on low for about 20-30 minutes, until heated through and somewhat cooked-down. Blend in a blender until smooth.

On each serving, drizzle some coconut milk (or half-and-half), and sprinkle with pecans, cheese, and pepper.

Enjoy!

Oh Betty!

2009-10-01T18:04:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning I pushed a cart up and down the grocery aisles wondering where all the people came from. Where I grew up, the phrase, "Before church lets out," meant something. Primarily, it meant that if you get your errands done Sunday morning before noon (a.k.a., when church 'let out' for the day), you would enjoy less traffic in the stores and in general. It was usually our goal to get things done before this time ran out.

Around here, this doesn't really mean much apparently. Sunday morning at the grocery store was pretty busy. I tried to tuck briefly into the baking aisle to pick up some paper muffin cups (Ben appreciates the ease of clean-up when I use these to bake muffins or cupcakes) and was forced to make my way down the entire aisle because traffic blocked any sort of quick duck-out.

Imagine my surprise as I sped past the baking mixes when I saw the words, "Gluten Free," in big, red print on a row of baking mixes. These were the much talked about, but yet to transpire, Betty Crocker Gluten Free baking mixes. I couldn't resist slowing down, stopping, and picking up the packages to examine them more closely.

The ingredient list indicated the primary flour in the mixes was rice flour. I should have you know I am weary of any gluten free baked good that relies primarily on rice flour because they are usually grainy and not so flavorful. This particular store stocked the vanilla cake, chocolate chip cookie, and brownie mixes. They were about $4 a box, which is less expensive than Pamelas or Bob's red mill (at around $6 a mix), but more expensive than their 'regular' mixes, which come in between $1.50 and $2. They are made in a dedicated GF facility. Even though I knew they were likely to be not that great, considering their reliance on rice flour, I HAD to try one.

It was maybe the novelty of it (I haven't eaten a Betty Crocker product in over a year at least) and mostly curiosity that made me do it. I chose to purchase the brownie mix. I have heard it is hard to screw up gluten free brownies and I haven't eaten a brownie in over a year either. I have yet to attempt to bake gluten free brownies. And, heck, at least the ingredients were pronounceable!

So, Betty came home with me that day and sat proudly on the kitchen counter for about two days. I took pictures of her. Then I baked.

First of all, the batter is easy to throw together. It only fills an 8x8 pan, however. I figured the toughest thing to replicate would be the brownie top - you know, that flaky, crispy top? These did that just fine. I was a tad disappointed with the rest of the texture and the flavor. The texture was a bit too gummy. Brownies are supposed to be chewy, I know, but these were somewhat different...almost like they seemed too unnatural. And the flavor - the little chocolate chips definitely saved these brownies because without them, I think they wouldn't really be flavorful at all.

I think people forget that wheat flour has taste and rice flour does not. When you rely on rice flour as the primary substitute for wheat flour, the flavor suffers. You really have to include other flours or other flavors to make up for it.

I'm not sure how much of my distaste for the brownies comes from simply baking from a mix (don't home-made baked goods always taste better than ones from mixes?) or my lack of other gluten-free brownie-eating in the past year or ? Perhaps Betty has some more work to do before her mixes are up to par with what we expect.

In any case, they were "good enough" brownies, especially for those looking for a familiar brand and for those baking for gluten-free loved ones who don't want to invest a lot of money in various flours to bake from scratch (If you are in this category be sure your pan is clean and don't use old scratched-up pans or silicone pans, which harbor gluten. You can always line your pans with aluminum foil or parchment paper if you have any cleanliness worries. You can read more here for baking and cooking for others). They are also incredibly fast and "good enough" for those who have little interest in investing lots of time to their baking.

Have you tried any of the other Betty Crocker Gluten Free mixes? What did you think of them?

Applesauce raisin cake

2009-09-28T20:38:00.000-07:00

I realized something the other day, as I was cutting up potatoes and yet another batch of carrots pulled from our garden, something that has been on the edge of my consciousness for a while now but hasn't yet been fully articulated in my mind. Since I began eating gluten free, I have become so much more aware of food - where it comes from, how it is grown, and politics surrounding access to and cultivation of it.

I've become so much more excited about growing my own food, baking and cooking from scratch, and, recently, pickling and canning the harvest. I've also noticed that I'm not alone in this.

I read a fair number of gluten free blogs and have noticed the trend towards a heightened awareness around what one puts in one's mouth. At first thought, this makes sense because those of us who have to eat gluten free are much safer when we eat things we have prepared ourselves, using whole ingredients. If we don't know the source or method of manufacture of a food product, most of us are hesitant to subject our bodies to gluten-roulette or be the guinea pig of the "does this food have gluten" experiment. Thus, as a rule, food prepared by others is always suspect (unless, of course, they know and love us and take good care of our health by keeping the gluten far, far away!).

Delving a little deeper into understanding, I would even go so far as to say that I tend to avoid even non-gluteny ready-made foods now more so than ever if they have unintelligible ingredients. Because, heck, my body needs some TLC and why would I go to such lengths to treat it well by avoiding gluten and then turn around and harm it with chemically-processed anything? That just seems to defeat the purpose. By the way, I learned last night that the sugar substitute Equal is an effective ant-killer because they are attracted to the sweet taste, but the chemicals kill them. What does it do to our bodies then?

But the thing that really dawned on me the other day was this thing called control. This thing called "internal locus of control" has been a favorite topic for many researchers in psychology (and credit needs to be given to Rotter who is often cited as the originator of this concept). In a nutshell, mounds and mounds of research has evidenced that the more control one feels over one's life, the happier, healthier, and generally better off one is. According to this research, some people generally feel they have control over the trajectory of their lives; if they work towards something, they will one day see the positive rewards of their hard work. Others tend to feel that no matter what they do, the world has more control over what happens to them. Those who genuinely believe they control their life experiences are happier and healthier as a whole. This can also be true for situation-specific sense of control. For example, one thing we can all relate to is feeling a sense of control over one's work day. Are you told when to take your breaks? Are you told not only what to do but how to do it? This low-control environment makes for generally unhappy employees while they are at work.

Now imagine you are told you have a disease in which your body's immune system is attacking itself and the best way to cure your symptoms and heal your body is to avoid a protein called gluten that you can't visibly see in some foods (outside of the obvious) or on cook surfaces. And American food manufacturers seem to put it in all sorts of things under all sorts of names and restaurant staff may or may not pay attention to cross contamination or understand what gluten is...

Woah. Suddenly the blissful ignorance of what went into food others made for you feels dangerous and the steps you have to take to understand your illness and eat safely feels overwhelming - and you want control. By taking action and learning as much as you can about food - the one thing that will heal you - you regain a sense of control over a part of your life that feels out of control. And this sense of control over your diet makes coping with the illness much easier.

I remember in my earlier gluten free days, I would "treat" myself to an expensive item I wouldn't normally buy or try a new product each time I went to the grocery store just for the sake of doing it, because I could. I would pick out an expensive cheese or olive oil or I would try a new vegetable or fruit. It was my way of feeling like I could say "yes" to something new or interesting or fun when I had to say "no" to so many of the other products that lined the grocery store shelves. It made me feel more in control of what was in my fridge.

More importantly, though, I became obsessed with reading about celiac disease, gluten free cooking, and food in general. At first it was intimidating, but it quickly felt freeing; knowledge removed the feeling of suffocation and enabled me to act. Now that Ben and I grow some of our vegetables, get almost all of the rest of our fruit and vegetables directly from the farmer who grows them, cook the majority of our meals at home from scratch, take care to pay attention to stainability in food production, and have begun canning and preserving, I feel in control of the food that I eat and, as a result, in control over my health.

I have never felt so good.

This is the cake I made for Ben's birthday this year (less fancy than the one I made last year, but still totally delicious). It's a cake his mom used to make and I adapted it to make it gluten free! We served it topped with real whipped cream, but you could certainly frost it if you like (cream cheese frosting would probably be delicious with this). I made the cake again in cupcake form this past weekend...but I would recommend sticking to the cake version unless you are able to make 16 cupcakes at a time. I only have a 12-muffin tin and had a bit of batter leftover, even after over-filling the wells. As you can see, the cake is very moist and stays that way for quite a few days in the fridge!

Applesauce raisin cake

2 cups brown rice flour
½ cup tapioca flour
½ cup potato starch
3 teaspoons baking powder
3 teaspoons cinnamon
1½ teaspoons nutmeg
1½ cups turbinado sugar
1½ cups applesauce
2 teaspoon baking soda (stirred into applesauce)
1 cup raisins
½ cup butter, melted
1 teaspoon xanthan gum
2 eggs
½ cup any milk (hazelnut, almond, etc.)

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease and flour (with rice flour) your cake pan(s). You can use a 9x13 cake pan or two 8-inch pans.

Mix dry ingredients (except raisins) until well blended. Stir in applesauce, eggs, milk, and butter.

Fold in raisins and pour into prepared cake pan(s). Use a spoon or spatula to spread to edges.

Bake for about 25 minutes for 8-inch pans, or about 35 minutes for 9x13 pan. Cake should turn golden on top and when a toothpick is inserted into center, it will come out clean.

Zucchini!!

2009-09-16T19:54:00.000-07:00

I want you all to know we have not fallen off the face of the Earth. We have, in fact, gotten closer to the Earth.

We’ve moved, that is. Down from the 9th floor of a downtown apartment tower to a house.

A home.

A home in a quaint little neighborhood with parks nearby, bike lanes aplenty, and a farmer’s market within a mile. We couldn’t be more ecstatic. Ben has a painting studio, each cat has a room of one’s own (seriously, we joked there were enough rooms for one cat per room and they indeed each claimed a room), and I have a kitchen that functions! Best of all, the ground is right where it should be, just outside the windows, waiting for us to plant in the spring. It’s our own space to eat dinner in the backyard and build a fire pit and plant as many fruit trees as we see fit.

We’re in heaven, ironically, now that we are closer to the earth.

From our container garden, which has now exploded onto our yard, we've harvested some of our figs and our carrots keep on coming!

And, I have been cooking and baking and taking pictures, but instead of posting them and sharing stories from our lives, I’ve been packing, making decisions, unpacking, making more decisions, making still more decisions, cleaning, making more decisions, and celebrating. Our farm share has been providing us with an abundance of vegetables the past month and we have been using them well.

This is what Ben made us for lunch this past weekend. A colorful Greek salad with vegetables from our farm share - just look at the pretty tri-color cherry tomatoes! They were so sweet and delicious!

Right about now you are probably sick of trying to come up with ways to use all of that zucchini you got from your neighbor, the farmers market, or your own garden. Well, I have a little secret – I honestly could never get tired of zucchini and I am always coming up with new ways to eat it, even if some “new” ways aren’t that different from other ways :)

In the past few weeks we have been blessed with lots of zucchini, including donations from a friend whose garden is exploding in vegetables right now. We made two dishes using shredded zucchini – one inspired by a dish Ben had at a restaurant when he lived in Maryland and another is what I call the lazy version of that dish. I will share with you the lazy version and you can make it the not-lazy version as you wish. I call the lazy version zucchini pie and the not lazy version zucchini cakes. So sweet they are.

Zucchini Pie
This is a great base recipe; feel free to add or change what you want. You can add artichoke hearts or kalamata olives or spinach… the options are endless. If you want to be not lazy, shape the mixture into balls and flatten onto a baking sheet and bake in the oven for about 15 minutes, to make cakes. You can fry them up as well and serve with fried eggs!

What you will need:
About 2 cups of shredded zucchini
½ of a red onion, shredded
4-5 small-ish potatoes, shredded
½ a block of feta cheese, cut into ¼ to ½-inch chunks
¼ cup pine nuts, toasted
¼ cup sorghum or millet flour
1 egg
¼ cup almond flour
2 tsp sea salt
Garlic, pepper, and basil to taste

9-inch pie plate
butter

Begin by greasing your pie plate with the butter.

Place the shredded zucchini into your colander in your sink. Mix in the sea salt and let sit for about 10-15 minutes and allow water to drain. With a big spoon, push down on the zucchini to squeeze out water. Wait a few more minutes (go and check your email or something to distract yourself). Squeeze some more water out. Then mix in the shredded potato, onion, pine nuts, sorghum flour, egg, and seasonings. Then stir in all but a few of the feta chunks.

Spoon the mixture into your pie plate and flatten with the back of your spoon. Sprinkle the almond flour on top. Mash down the remaining feta chunks with a fork and sprinkle over the almond flour.

Bake at 375 for about 40 minutes. You may need to loosely cover with aluminum foil if it begins to brown too much.

Enjoy!

There will be snacks (and pickles)

2009-08-02T12:12:00.000-07:00

I know we're gonna meet someday
In the crumbled financial institutions of this land

There will be tables and chairs
Pony rides and dancing bears

There'll even be a band

'Cause, listen, after the fall
There'll be no more countries

No currencies at all

We're gonna live on our wits
Throw away survival kits
Trade butterfly knives for adderal

And that's not all -- Woah!
There will be snacks, there will
There will be snacks
There will be
There will be snacks!

I've had this song by Andrew Bird in my head for days now (above is an excerpt). And I've been so intrigued by its lyrics - the air-balloon lightness of some words couple with the lead-weighted seriousness of the topic, like the comic relief in a tragic Shakespearean play. Some lines really get to me, like, "Just don't let the human factor fail to be a factor, at all." And I love how something simple and common-place as snacks are included in his idyllic description of what the world "after the fall" will be like. (See the video below I found on YouTube of someone's class project where they used this song as the soundtrack to a video collage of news on the Hamas transition to power in 2007)

Anyway, something Ben and I have been snacking on lately has been our home-made pickles. We grew impatient (okay, Ben grew impatient, picking up a jar every day or so to look at them and ask if I thought they were ready. "You tell me," is what I would reply, since, after all, the recipe was his mother's mother's recipe) and we opened a jar of pickles we sealed up on July 12th. Ben bit into one and excitedly exclaimed how delicious they were, then he walked over to me, sitting at the computer, and offered me a bite. I took a bite and was met with the perfect blend of vinegary, salty goodness that melted in my mouth, yet remained crunchy. They were perfect!

Honestly, I love pickles. My sister, sister-in-law, and I hover over the pickle and olive spread at family gatherings and I'm not sure if anyone else gets to enjoy any of the briney goodness but the three of us. These home-made pickles? The best pickles I have EVER eaten.

So, since our first batch was an overwhelming success, we made more this weekend. We picked up some more regular cukes and a huge bunch of dill at the farmers market. We also got some lemon cucumbers in our farm share, so we decided to experiment, using the lemon cucumbers to make pickle chips in our smaller canning jars in addition to the pickle spears we would make in our quart-sized canning jars.

Ben sliced up the cucumbers and I mostly watched and took pictures :)

Pickles
A recipe courtesy of Ben's grandma. This will make approximately 2 1-quart-sized jars of pickles - double and triple as you wish!

2 large cucumbers
6 sprigs dill
2 cloves garlic, chopped

2 cups water
1 cup white vinegar
2 Tablespoons salt

2 1-quart-sized canning jars

Run the jars through the dishwasher or boil in a pot of water for a few minutes to sterilize.

Slice the ends off of the cucumbers and slice into spears, determine the length of your spears by planning for some head-room at the top of the jars.

Place a clove of chopped garlic and 3 sprigs of dill in each jar, then stuff with the cucumber spears.

Heat the water, vinegar, and salt in a large pot and bring it to a boil. Pour over the cucumber spears in the canning jars and seal with the lids (careful - the glass jars will be hot!).

Place the jars somewhere hidden so you won't have to anxiously look at them everyday and wonder if they are ready yet. Wait about 2 weeks until you try the first jar and, once the jar is opened, store it in the refrigerator.

Enjoy!

Tzatziki sauce

2009-07-31T07:09:00.000-07:00

I got to work Wednesday morning to find the air conditioning broken. It was going to be 107 that day.

I waited around for about an hour, getting some work done, but mostly feeling just too hot to concentrate. Then I walked home, where the little AC unit we have was keeping our apartment at a tolerable 85 degrees, so the cats didn’t evaporate. I put on a pair of Ben’s old boxer shorts and a tank top, turned the AC up a little stronger, and sat down at the computer to log into my work account. There I worked, at home with the blinds drawn to block the sun and cats jumping in, and then back out of, my lap. They stayed only a few minutes in my lap at a time, deciding it was too warm to share body heat.

This past week we broke heat records around the Portland area and the weather was the topic on the tip of everyone’s tongue. And why wouldn’t it be? The weather here becomes extreme for maybe two weeks out of a normal year – for about a week in the winter when it snows maybe an inch or two, or when the mercury dips below 32 while it’s raining and we get a layer of ice over everything, and for about a week in the summer when the breeze refuses to blow and the temperature shoots above 100.

We make jokes about things like frying eggs on the sidewalk, but mostly we complain about not being prepared for any of it – not enough sand trucks in the winter to even hope to make a dent in the ice on the roads, no one owning air conditioning for their homes in the summer – and in both instances, life slows to a snail’s pace. Not wanting to expose ourselves to the extremes Mother Nature bestows upon Portland, we hunker down, choose carefully only those things that need to be done, and wait…

This too shall pass and we will be once again enjoying mild summer sunshine with cool, breezy evenings. And the topic of everyone’s conversation will shift as the weather once again falls into the background of life.

I know this is all temporary, but I have to admit, I’m getting a little antsy to be back in the kitchen again. The blinds stay drawn, making for a rather dark living and cooking environment, and, for that matter, we’ve been trying desperately to keep cooking to a minimum.

But, in all honesty, sometimes the need to cook a certain way leads one to expand their cooking repertoire, to break from the norm. In hot weather, there’s no better way to eat than mimicking how those who live in hot climates. So, this week, we cooked up a crockpot full of black beans and ate burrito bowls with home-made guacamole. We lived Mediterranean-style with Greek salads (complete with our home-grown spinach!). And what goes better with Greek salads than tzatziki sauce?

I pulled out the hand-written recipe my friend Sara had written down for me in college – a tzatziki sauce recipe from a cookbook of her mother’s. The recipe is as close as I’ve ever had to the real thing outside of Greece (and let me tell you, I’ve had my fair share of bad, Americanized – and even Germanized, tzatziki sauce). At the time she copied it down, in her distinctive handwriting, we didn’t know it would be almost a perfect replica of the tzatiziki sauce would enjoy together many years later at the ‘piggy’ restaurant in Athens (that was our pet name for the restaurant that had a pig as it’s ‘mascot,’ for the lack of a better term). I love now the irony that it was her who passed this recipe onto me.

Tzatziki sauce

Don’t be intimidated by this sauce – it really is easy to make. If you don’t have fresh dill, the dried stuff is okay too, but use less because it is usually stronger dried than fresh. I didn’t quite squeeze the cucumber dry because I wanted more cucumber taste, but you can use your own discretion when it comes to how much cucumber juice you want in your sauce.

2 cups yogurt cheese (see note and picture below)

1 small cucumber, peeled, seeded, grated and squeezed dry

2 cloves garlic, minced

4 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

½ teaspoon salt

Combine all ingredients into a bowl and mix well. Store in the refrigerator for up to a week – I saved the yogurt container and used that to store it – and it tastes even better as the ingredients have a chance to blend a day or so.

Note: To make “yogurt cheese” spoon a 32 ounce container of plain yogurt into a coffee-filter or cheese-cloth-lined strainer. Set the strainer over a bowl and let stand in the refrigerator at least 2 hours (or overnight). Discard the liquid. (see my picture above) I used Trader Joe’s Greek Style yogurt, though, and I don’t think I really needed to do this step, because the Greek Style yogurt is already really thick. So, if you get a good, thick yogurt, you could possibly skip this step.

Drunken cherries and berries

2009-07-16T18:21:00.000-07:00

The Oregonian published an article recently on preserving sweet cherries, with one of the recipes calling for Rainiers and wine. Wine and cherries? Ben and I were sold.

We already had berries and cherries on the brain, so we added this idea to our list of weekend preserving projects.

This is the time of year when you can’t decide which berries to eat. When you want to buy at least a pint of every type of berry at the farmers market. But if you did, you would eat berries all week and still never make it through all of them – red raspberries, white raspberries, blueberries, gooseberries, blackberries, marion berries, and even currants, all fill the market. Marion berries are my current favorite – they are the sweetest, softest, juiciest blackberry you will ever eat. They, unfortunately for those not living in the Pacific Northwest, are primarily unique to this area, and, like the hood river strawberries, are too delicate to make it past the local markets.

We set to work this weekend, our refrigerator filled with fruit. We made marionberry jam. We made blueberry jam. Then, we heated some cheap wine in a saucepan with lemon zest and sugar, brought it to a boil, reduced it, and poured it into the quart canning jar, already filled with fresh bing cherries. We did the process all over again, but this time, Ben filled two quart-sized canning jars with marion berries. I poured the heated wine into the jars and sealed them tight. They will be delicious over ice cream. They will be delicious over just about anything and even delicious over nothing! I also imagine folding them into some kind of baked good, such as scones or muffins. We also made pickles, using Ben's grandma's recipe of garlic, dill, and vinegar.

If you have never made jam, don’t be intimidated by it. It is actually really simple. You can even buy pectin that allows you to make sugar-free or reduced-sugar jam. I used this pectin in the marionberry jam, using only about 1/3 cup of raw sugar and it set right up perfectly. Nothing compares to home-made jam, using berries at the peak of freshness and adding only those things YOU want in your jam, nothing else.

We have already dug into the first jar of cherries, eating a few after dinner for dessert, and then grabbing a few more.

The other day, we made home-made vanilla ice cream. When we sat down to eat our ice cream, with a heaping of the marion berries preserved in wine, we were in heaven. Ben said this is his favorite dessert ever. I agree. And, there will be quite a bit of the 'juice' left over once the berries are gone - I'm thinking this sauce will make delicious ice cream floats!

Marion berries preserved in wine:

You can get some cheap wine for this, either in a box or in the big jugs. We used a rose for the cherries and then chose chianti for the marion berries, wanting to try a drier wine. Both turned out delicious, so I encourage you to experiment and pick wines you like. We also did one with the vanilla and lemon and one without and, again, both were delicious and different.

1 quart-sized canning jar

1 pound (about 2 pints) fresh, ripe marion berries (or berry of your choice)

2 cups wine

1/2 cup raw sugar

1 tsp vanilla (optional)

zest of one small lemon (optional)

Run your canning jar through the dishwasher or stick it in some boiling water to steralize it. Wash your berries and place in the clean jar.

Heat the wine in a small saucepan over medium-high heat and stir in sugar. Allow the sugar to dissolve and the mixture to come to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer and the zest, if using. Simmer until the mixture reduces to about 1 1/2 cups, about 15-20 minutes. Remove from heat and add the vanilla.

Pour the wine mixture over the berries and seal tightly with the lid. Allow the jar to cool completely at room temperature and then stick it in the fridge. If you are listening nearby, you will hear the 'pop' of the lid sealing as it cools. Keep the jar in the fridge - this isn't shelf-preserving.

Wait at least 2 days before you enjoy them (I know, the waiting can be hard!!). Use within 3 months or so.

Enjoy!

Beans, Beans...

2009-07-08T06:42:00.000-07:00

We talk and think a lot about food in our household (a surprise, right?). We have conversations over the dinner table, talking about what we want to make next. We discuss what our weekly farm share will bring, what enjoyment it brings us, and how we want to cook the fresh provisions it contains. We glowingly dream about all the berries and fruit in season right now and all the cooking, baking, and preserving possibilities they present us.

Ben’s eyes will grow wide, his speech will become a bit faster, and I know he’s hooked on a particular idea. These ideas take various forms, from gluten free doughnuts with lemon cream filling (which, we still haven’t done, so I continue to hear about it) to gluten free onion rings (which we did last weekend with sweet walla walla onions). He was, in fact, the impetus behind our strawberry-jam-making session last month.

For the past two weeks, he has talked about beans. Beans, beans, the musical fruit… (sorry, I can’t talk about beans without hearing that childhood song in my head). We received a generous bag of dried pinto beans in our first farm share this summer and that started his wheels turning. The wheels got stuck on home-made baked beans. He envisioned slow-cooking them in the crockpot with bacon and sweet walla walla onions.

I have to admit, I don’t think I’ve had baked beans since I moved out of my parents house, but there is something so very Americana about them – something that reminds me of summers and fourth of July family gatherings with corn-on-the-cob, paper plates, soda and beer in the cooler on the deck, and lawn chairs in the grass. And, I have certainly never had any other baked beans than Busch’s baked beans from a can.

So Ben set about pulling together the ingredients and threw them all into the crockpot Monday morning before he left for work. We were greeted at home later that evening by a mingling of sweet and savory aromas…and well, the rest is history. Delicious, sweet, salty history. We ate them with gluten-free bratwurst and my home-made gluten-free bread rolls.

Baked beans:

1 pound dried pinto beans

1 pound raw bacon, cut into small pieces

½ sweet onion, diced

¼ cup raw sugar

1/3 cup molasses

1 heaping tablespoon Dijon mustard

The night before, rinse and sort your beans. Place them in a large pot of water and bring to boil for about 2-3 minutes. Remove from heat, cover, and let sit overnight (this is called “heat-soaking” and removes a larger amount of the sugary starches from the beans, which reduces their musical tendencies :) )

When you are ready to assemble the ingredients, rinse the beans well with cool water and place in the crockpot. Add the rest of your ingredients and stir to mix.

Turn your crockpot on low and cook for about 10-12 hours.

Enjoy!

New Cascadia Traditional Bakery opens in Portland!

2009-07-05T13:07:00.000-07:00

It's been HOT here the past few days. So hot, we haven't had much of an appetite for food - if you can believe that. Lauren, the person who gives people the "food tour" of Portland to whomever comes to visit, doesn't feel much like cooking or even eating.

Yesterday, around 1:30pm, as I biked perhaps the mile or so to the New Cascadia Traditional Bakery and coffee shop, I realized that I had eaten breakfast around 8am and completely forgot to eat lunch. That never happens to me. Forgetting to eat is against my religion (well, that is, if I had one). Regardless, I had planned on getting a delicious gluten free baked good from my favorite gluten free bakery and enjoying it with a stumptown coffee while I got some work done.

How surreal it was to walk into a coffee shop and to be able to select ANYTHING I wanted from the menu without worrying about gluten. Not even a speck. They are a dedicated gluten free facility. I felt normal again.

(For those of you who don't know, New Cascadia Traditional has opened their own bakery/coffee shop in SE Portland. Check out their website for more details.)

I picked out a delicious-looking berry muffin and an iced coffee. The muffin turned out to be a blackberry muffin with struessel topping, just like the bakery-style muffins I remember from my gluteny days. It was ridiculously good. I realized in that moment, in that first bite, that I had almost forgotten what regular muffins were like. This one jolted me back to gluteny days gone by...and I have to admit I quickly realized the "muffins" I make at home are not really muffins. I'm sure they are more nutritious than what I ate yesterday, but they are indeed something other than muffins.

I already can't wait to go back.

Today all I could think to eat was something cold, like a fruit smoothie. We had just bought a couple of pints of blueberries and I had thrown a couple of uber-ripe bananas into the freezer this week, so I made a banana-blueberry smoothie for Ben and me. It was our lunch, or snack, or something. In any case, it was good. Those of you in Minneapolis might recognize the glass from my old stomping ground...

We're also getting really excited because our plants seem to be doing really well. We have already harvested and re-planted spinach once this summer. We also have an abundant-looking crop of carrots growing expediently and about five figs developing on our fig tree (see picture below). Our blueberries have not done so well this year...partially because of an air-conditioning mistake (long story) and partly because I don't think bees get this high up to pollinate. We just planted our brussels sprout starts in their larger containers today (see picture above, with carrots in background). Think good sprout-thoughts!

Banana-blueberry smoothie:
When your bananas start to over-ripen, toss them into the freezer, skin and all. To use them in a smoothie, or bake with them, set them out for a few minutes and then peel with a knife. The skin sort of falls off them.

1/2 cup milk (I used hazelnut, but often use coconut in my smoothies)
1/2 cup ice
1 cup blueberries
1 banana, cut into pieces (a great use of frozen bananas, but regular ones are okay too)
2 tablespoons ground flax seed

Dump all the ingredients into your blender and blend until smooth. Yep, it's that easy.

Enjoy! and feel refreshed!