Gluten Free in the Greens

Desert Island Cookbook List

2009-05-29T13:32:00.003-04:00

I bought the Science Teacher Culinary Artistry for Christmas one year. Towards the end, the chefs featured in the book rattle off their desert island lists, the ten or so ingredients they would choose to spend eternity with if stranded on a desert island. I seem to remember that olive oil recurs the most.

Enter the desert island cookbook list.

With our impending move to Tbilisi, we're in the position of drastically downsizing our cookbook collection, which, while not huge, contains well-used books. Unlike Foreign Service families, we don't get over a 1000 lbs of freight; instead, we'll fly with everything and pay for a few additional duffles for the extras. Space for books is at a premium and has to be divvied out among cookbooks, teaching books, and fun books.

The question is what to take. I'm leaning towards How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and Joy of Cooking (new edition). But my beloved Jane Brody cookbooks (Good Food Book and Good Food Gourmet) and the Moosewood Daily Special are clammering to come along--and I use them all of the time. And there are the books like the Moosewood Book of Desserts, which I use for inspiration and just love reading. We're definitely planning on copying a bunch of recipes from our other cookbooks and taking them along.

What two or three cookbooks would you take with you?

Date-Hazelnut Balls Dipped in Chocolate

2009-04-14T07:10:00.011-04:00

Better (way) late than never.

For a holiday that's infamous for a week without bread, Passover sure involves a heck of a lot of food that contains matzo. Everyone has an odd favorite food to eat while being afflicted--matzo brie, for instance--and there are whole cookbooks devoted to soaking, pounding, and grinding matzo into food that's meant to be more interesting than plain buttered matzo. During Passover this year, I watched a mom spend a half hour turning matzo into pancakes in hopes that her son wouldn't beg for Cherrios. The result? Kid wrinkles his nose and says "they taste like matzo." Well, yeah.

The most ironic concoction I've come across this year is matzo cake meal--flour that's been baked into matzo then ground into flour. Oh I understand why the process is necessary (you might unintentionally consume something leavened if the "flour" you use isn't made from matzo, which has only been baked for a short amount of time and is certified by a rabbi). But if you really think about it, matzo cake meal isn't ironic at all. Passover is all about recreating the Exodus story and revising it to be relevant to our lives year after year. That's why we always list modern plagues (like hunger) alongside the ancient plagues (murrain, anyone?).

While Passover should be a gluten-free smorgasbord, you still have to be really careful. Matzo shows up in just about as many things as flour does during the rest of the year, though there do tend to be more meringues around than usual. This year, I took chocolate-dipped dried pineapple, dates, and apricots to my first seder. While I was dipping the dates, I slit a few, dabbed hazelnut butter into the cavity, closed it up, and dipped them in chocolate. Wow, yum. There's a reason why Nutella sells.

So for our seder, I wanted to expand on that idea a bit. I soaked dried dates in hot water then pureed them in the blender, added ground hazelnuts, and tasted. The concoction lacked the intense hazelnut flavor that I wanted so I add a big spoonful of hazelnut butter and a little salt. That really did the trick so if you're experimenting, definitely add some nut butter. I mixed it all up, rolled the glob into balls, dipped the balls in melted chocolate, and had dessert. Eat your heart out Ferrero Rocher. These are even good for you.

Date-Hazelnut Balls Dipped in Chocolate
Makes 18-20.

1/2 lb dried dates
1 c. ground toasted hazelnuts
2-3 tbsp. hazelnut butter
1/8 tsp. salt
3/4-1 c. chopped chocolate for melting

Soak the dates in hot water (especially if, like me, you don't own a Vitamix--I've already killed one mini chopper this year) for 10-15 min. Puree them in a food processor. Scrap into a bowl. Add the ground hazelnuts, salt, and hazelnut butter. Mix it all into a paste and roll into golf ball-sized balls.

Melt the chocolate (I generally microwave the chocolate for 30 sec., stir, then microwave for 15 sec. at a time, stirring in between, until the chocolate is fully melted). Coat the balls in chocolate by dropping each ball into the melted chocolate, rolling it around until fully covered, and lifting it out with a fork, allowing the excess to drip off. You can thin the chocolate with a little milk (cow, soy, coconut, whatever's your pleasure) if it's too thick by itself. Allow the balls to cool fully on wax paper.

Enjoy!

Millet: Bring On the Bird Seed

2009-04-05T11:06:00.003-04:00

I probably used millet for the first time in preschool. Remember those pinecone bird feeders smeared with peanut butter and rolled in birdseed? I've never been particularly interested in birds or the composition of their food, which means I didn't actually learn that millet is a key component of ordinary birdseed until I was an adult.

My first encounter with millet as a food source was in Russia. My host dad, Zhenya, brought some home in a little 2 lb. sack. I looked at it, and he said, "Eta prosa." Prosa, of course, what was I thinking and where was my dictionary? I deduced it must be couscous and thought it might be good for breakfast. I cooked my prosa in water, topped it with jam, and ate a deeply unsatisfying meal. So ended my relationship with millet for quite a while.

I decided to give it another shot after my celiac diagnosis. I mean, why limit myself even further by turning up my nose at a grain after one bad experience? I check millet out on wikipedia and found out that millet is a fairly common staple grain in many semi-arid and arid countries, including India and many African nations. Check out this website for more information about millet.

Millet was actually one of the first grains we fed the Little Potamus, and he loves it, especially millet-cauliflower mash, which has the surprising texture of mashed potatoes (see below for a recipe). Millet seems to pair particularly well with tahini, so lately I've been eating it for breakfast with that and a little soy milk.

Basic Millet

1 cup millet
2-3 cups water
pinch of salt

Heat a little olive oil in a pan. Add the millet and cook until the grains smell toasty. Add 2-2 1/2 cups of water and cook for about 20 minutes until all of the water is absorbed. You might need to add more water if you want very soft grains. Add salt and pepper for a very simple dish, but millet is also excellent with nut butters, cheese, scallions, toasted nuts, etc. (though perhaps not all at the same time!).

Here are some ideas for cooking with millet:
Mark Bittman's Autumn Millet Bake at 101 Cookbooks
Gluten-Free Mommy's Millet Oatmeal Bread
Millet-Quinoa-Cashew Kugel
Spicy Millet-Chickpea Pancakes
Millet-Cauliflower Mash (add cheese, tahini, or miso to the mash at the end for a great variation)
Karina's Gluten-Free Irish Soda Bread (made with millet)

High-Protein Breakfast Smoothies

2009-03-27T07:39:00.003-04:00

The Little Potamus sucking down a pint of smoothie.

I've never thought of a smoothie as a meal in itself. A great addition to a weekend breakfast maybe. A good use for last-summer's berries. A reminder that it won't snow forever. But smoothies never seem to have the staying power or the chew factor that I usually deem necessary in my breakfasts. Probably the ones I've made in the past involve too much sugar and not enough protein.

When we went to the Yucatan last month, though, I found myself wanting a light and cool lunch in the middle of the day--I just couldn't face a plate of enchiladas in 80 degree heat. We stayed a few days in this little town south of Cancun called Puerto Morelos that had a smoothie-coffee-sandwich shop on the corner (Le Cafe d'Amancia--check it out here). The smoothies were good with fresh fruit and milk (you could also get fresh juices for those of you who are dairy-free) though not mind-blowing. For that I would have to go back a few days to the tumblers of strawberry-pineapple-orange juice we ordered and reordered in Valledolid, but that's a whole other post.

When we came back, I found myself craving smoothies for breakfast. I wanted a recipe without sugar so that I could feed it to myself and to the 18-month-old Little Potamus sans guilt. When I found a one that contained dates, I knew I was on the right track. I'm always totally amazed at the ability of dates to make more conventional sugars totally unneccessary. Add some peanut butter, and it's starting to get more substantial. I've become totally addicted to the following recipe, though it's taken some adjustment to my banana buying habits. I have to buy far more than I'm used to so they don't all get eaten up before they ripen enough to freeze!

Protein-Packed Breakfast Smoothie

Makes 1 pint glass.

1 chopped frozen banana
1/2 c. plain yogurt
1/2 c. milk of choice
4 chopped dates (rehydrated, if neccessary to make them soft)
1 tbsp. nut butter

Dump all of the ingredients into the blender, and blend until your smoothie is smooth, creamy, and, well, smoothie-like.

Check out these protein-packed smoothies for more ideas:

Karina's Vegan Blueberry Smoothie

Ginger Lemon Girl's Chocolate-Peanut Butter Breakfast Smoothie
Naomi's Pure Banana "Ice Cream"

Go Michelle O!

2009-03-20T14:29:00.002-04:00

When I saw Michelle Obama on the cover of O Magazine with Oprah, I winced then yanked open the magazine to the interview. Like a lot of people, I think I get my American royalty fix from reading about their lives but I also hate feeling like this incredibly professionally experienced woman is reduced to a great pair of arms, nice clothes, and sound mom-skills.

On the other hand, maybe she's also just very politically saavy and determined not to go the way of Hillary. She does seem to be taking a small but firm and public stand on family and food issues.

Regardless, I never really expected that they would have a White House garden. Gee, a reasonable request from the American public actually being implemented? I guess I'm still a little cynical, despite the Obama-infused euphoria.

Check out the NYT article on our new White House farming operation!

Gluten Free in the Greens is Moving...

2009-02-10T11:45:00.007-05:00

Physically but not virtually. The Science Teacher and I just accepted teaching positions in Tbilisi, Georgia, for the next two years. Wow.

There's a back story here that needs to be told. Once upon a time there lived an undiagnosed celiac girl who loved all things Slavic. She discovered Russian in high school, majored in Russian in college, spent a year in college rumbling around St. Petersburg, worked in Odesa, and finally ended up in Sofia to jump start her Bulgarian. After that long travel bender, she landed back in Virginia without a job.

She fixed on Vermont for her new destination. Vermont featured an ex-boyfriend, who wasn't quite ex enough, and, man, was it a gorgeous state (yup, I'm one of those people who moved to Vermont after having spent a summer there--quite a shock when those -25 degree F January days rolled around). She got an Americorps VISTA position at Middlebury College, rented a U-Haul, and drove north. Hello life.

Middlebury was only supposed to be a pause between trips. She went to the Peace Corps info sessions that fall on campus and put together her Fulbright application to study Bulgarian poetry. Everything was going according to schedule.

Then came Thanksgiving. She'd met a girl from Middlebury during the summer who was coming home from grad school for the holidays and who invited her to dinner. Sounded close and familial, so she accepted. She rang the doorbell and was ushered by her friend's mom into the kitchen with her mushy Granny Smith apple pie (I still have no idea what happened to that pie). And there stood the Science Teacher in a plaid shirt. He got her a glass of wine, they sat down beside each other on the couch and discovered their Swarthmore (her)-Haverford (him) connection, and the rest is history.

Within a weekend a half, we'd been on a snowboarding date. Within two weeks, we were pretty much inseparable. Within seven months, we were engaged, and a year later we got married in a Quaker ceremony in his parents' backyard.

But in the midst of this lovefest came my Fulbright letter--I'd gotten my grant. There wasn't ever really a question that I'd go without him, but our relationship wasn't quite advanced enough to see him quit his job and us married within a year of knowing each other--that's what we would have had to do if I had decided to take the Fulbright. But I saw where our relationship was heading, and I liked the trajectory. As most of my relationships have shown, whether one works has a good deal to do with timing. I've dated some wonderful men, but I never found someone who was in the same relationship head space as me until I met the Science Teacher. I knew enough to not reject that connection lightly.

In the end, I sent the letter and gave up my grant. The Science Teacher has always felt pretty guilty, especially when I'm going through a tough period. I don't really dwell on it--my decision has given me a partner who I love and who can communicate; the opportunity to go to grad school, discover that I like teaching, and figure out that teaching could be an interesting way to live abroad; and have a supurb Little Pottamus.

One of the things that brought the Science Teacher and I together is our desire to see the world by travelling but also by living abroad. As teachers, we have a better shot at actually doing that than most--there are hundreds of international schools that employ certified (and non-certified) teachers to enlighten kids from all sorts of countries. When I decided to give up the Fulbright, we shook on the fact that we would live abroad together someday. We've been talking about ever since, but there has always been something to stop us: grad school, student teaching, the Little Pottamus. This year, however, we decided to get serious.

Turns out this year isn't a great year to get a job anywhere, much less in an international school. The job fair we went to had many more candidates than jobs. After a fraught weekend, however, we managed to come away with an offer to teach at the QSI International School of Tbilisi. I won't say much about Georgia here since I'm sure there will be much more in the future. Check it out on wikipedia.

Of course, moving to a developing country brings up all sorts of issues when you're trying to follow a special diet. When I lived in Russia, I was trying to be vegan, but after a while, I just got tired of lentils and kidney beans and rice. Thankfully, I can and am willing to eat dairy products this time around, but I know this adventure is going to force me into adaptation mode again. I've been thinking a lot recently, especially when I was reading Straight Out of Bed Cakefree and Dried for the Adopt-A-Blogger event, about how much a lot of us have had to give up in terms of our diets and how much resilence and creativity we keep showing no matter what we--voluntarily or not--take away. After reading Sally's recent post, I'm guessing that we're all constantly adapting, getting comfortable, and then having to push ourselves to change again.

In past posts, I've talked about how frustrating it can be for me to feel the need to take a suitcase full of food every time I travel. Of course, I love having my favorite cereal in the mornings and Larabars when my blood sugar dips. But I also think longingly to the days of me, a small backpack, and six weeks of train hopping (of course, with the Little Pottamus, those days are long gone, regardless of my diet). In some ways, this move will be the next big push for me--I won't be able to order special gluten-free food, so I'll be limited to what I can carry with me and to what I can convince people to bring me.

I have my hand grinder so I'll be able to grind nut butters as well as flour from whatever whole grains I can buy (probably millet, white rice, and kasha). Dried fruit and nuts will be readily available, as will all sorts of yummy dairy products, some kinds of dried beans, and probably root veggies in the winter. In season, I'll be able to buy all sorts of fresh veggies and fruits.

I'm also excited about the changes this will obviously bring to this blog. I'll probably blog fewer recipes and more about my experiences finding food in Georgia and explaining celiac to strangers in Russian.

If you've read this far, thanks! Here are a few questions. If you were moving to a foreign country, would you try to bring as much special food with you as possible? Would you accept that you'll have to give up certain foods--like my favorite quinoa--and adapt to what's available? Would you compromise and eat questionable foods, such as oats, in the name of nutrition (I should note that I don't have immediate or severe symptoms when I've eaten gluten)?

Great Gluten-Free Resource

2009-02-10T11:07:00.003-05:00

Great blogs are partly about creating new and interesting content and partly about gathering and disseminating information. Rachel over at The Crispy Cook does both. She always has great recipes, but now she's compiled a list of 101 gluten-free blogs. If you haven't branched out recently into new gluten-free blogs, head on over to see what new thoughts are afield. Thanks to Rachel and to everyone who rounds-up recipes and organizes blogging events!

Gluten-Free Herbed Cheese Bread

2009-01-31T09:59:00.006-05:00

The snow is piled up to the window sill after the storm last week (and the Science Teacher still didn't have a snow day!) and the forecast calls for the temperature to sink to 10 or 20 below night. We're hunkered down with cups of coffee, Car Talk, and the blessed quiet of the Little Pottamus's nap time. What better time to bake a loaf of bread?

Yeasted bread has become less and less a part of my life since I gave up gluten. I don't eat sandwiches anymore, and when I want something on which to spread my nut butter for breakfast, I'm happy with a rice cake or corn thin or slice of gluten-free frozen bread. In the beginning, I spent quite a bit of time trying out various gluten-free mixes and invariably ended up eating something that tasted like cornstarch. Dislike really doesn't describe my feelings toward the taste of cornstarch.

Quick breads, on the other hand, I make far more than I used to. Pre-celiac, I wouldn't really have considered quick bread "bread." Corn bread, ok, and maybe the beer bread from Joy of Cooking, but otherwise I thought of quick bread as dessert. Now a warm quick bread with a bowl of soup takes me back to the days when I took for granted the luxury of cleaning that bowl with a crust of bread. Bread is less a set of ingredients than a state of mind.

I've been wanting to try a gluten-free version of Herbed Cheese Quick Bread from the Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special for some time. One reason that I prefer quick breads to yeasted breads is that they need no refined starches or flours to make them taste good. I have yet to discover any good yeasted bread recipe that isn't at least one-quarter starch. I would also say that I haven't decided for myself how much starch is too much, an attitude that gets in the way of my yeasted bread enjoyment. What is your attitude towards starch? I'd love to hear what other people think. In any case, here's a yummy starch-free recipe, perfect for the upcoming football "holiday." If you like this one, you might want to try my Brown Bread recipe.

Gluten-Free Herbed Cheese Bread (adapted from the Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special)

2 c. of gluten-free flour (I used 1/2 c. brown rice, 1/2 c. sorghum, 1/2 c. teff, and 1/2 c. GF oat flours)
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. xanthum gum
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. brown sugar
1/3 c. fresh, chopped scallions or chives
1/2 tsp. fresh, chopped thyme (1/4 tsp. dried)
1 1/2 c. crumbled (not shredded) sharp cheddar cheese (low-fat cheese works fine)
1 lightly beaten egg
1 c. milk

Preheat the oven to 375 and oil a 9 x 5 loaf pan. Combine the flours, baking powder, sugar, and salt, and stir well. Add the herbs and cheese, and mix. Combine the egg and milk in a bowl. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Stir to mix. Pour batter into the loaf pan. Bake for 45 min to an hour or more. Don't underbake quick breads! Just keep checking it until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Adopt-a-Gluten-Free-Blogger Healthy Resolution Edition: Straight Into Bed Cakefree and Dried

2009-01-16T14:29:00.011-05:00

I've wanted to participate in one of the Adopt-a-Gluten-Free-Blogger events--conceived of and sponsored by Book of Yum--for quite a while. It's such a great idea--giving us bloggers an opportunity to interact with each other on a somewhat deeper level than the normal reading and commenting. When I saw this month's theme (Healthy Gluten-Free Recipes), I knew I needed to get baking so I actually could create something on the web instead of just spending (way) too much time surfing. It feels healthy to be writing instead of only reading.

One of the reasons that I chose Naomi of Straight Into Bed Cakefree and Dried is that her dietary constraints and subsequent recipes really demand that we confront the question "What is bread?" The more I cook and bake gluten-free food and talk to other people about eating gluten free, the more I've been thinking about this question. Is bread a set of ingredients or an experience? If your "whole-grain" bread is half cornstarch, does that make it equivalent to the wholesome whole wheat of our past breakfasts? What if there's no flour at all? Who would call that bread, and who wouldn't? These aren't meant to be rhetorical questions; they are questions that increasingly intrigue me.

It always comes back to Shakespeare! Juliet, of course, said "What's in a name. That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." But then remember Anne of Green Gables. She said "I don't believe a rose would be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage." At least where bread is concerned, I think I agree with Anne. Eating "bread" is somehow different than eating "rice cakes."

In the past, Naomi has posted more conventional gluten-free recipes that I've made, adapted, and riffed off of: her Teff Pita Breads were the basis for one of my first gluten-free Middle Eastern meals. Currently, Naomi's following a much more restrictive diet in the hopes of getting her digestion back on track (no pun intended). The Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) eliminates all grains, including gluten-free ones; processed foods; most dairy; all refined sugar; and other foods. I'm tempted to say, wow, that sounds terrible, but I won't. I know how adaptable we are to new diets and how restriction often sparks our culinary creativity. Come to think of it, that bit about restriction breeding creativity is true about a lot of life.

Another reason I won't say, wow, that's terrible, is the recipe I made for this Adopt-a-Blogger event. I chose Naomi's Hazelnut Pan Bread for a few reasons. First of all, it looks fabulous. Naomi takes beautiful pictures of her food. Second, with 1-2 eggs, enough butter to grease the pan, and no refined starches, it is definitely a "healthy" recipe. Third, since I don't have ready access to hazelnut butter in a jar, this recipe was a great excuse to use my new hand-turned grain/nut mill!
Fourth, she definitely has a good sense of food is what you call it. Here's a quote from her Hazelnut Pan Bread post:

"'Is that cake?' asked Fin incredulously as he was drawn in nose first, on a ribbon of hazelnut scent.

'Cake?' I chortled indulgently, 'of course it's not cake - who has cake for breakfast? It's hazelnut pan bread Fin, sit down and have a slice.'

And Fin sat down and ate two slices of not-cake..."

I made Naomi's recipe as written, except that I used one egg (I only had one on hand) and a very modest pat of butter in my small cast iron skillet (maybe 1-1.5 tsp.). The first time, I finished it under my broiler for 10 min and the top completely charred. So I scraped off the top and ate the rest--not pretty but definitely yummy. The second time, I finished it in a preheated 450-degree oven for 10 minutes. It still slightly charred around the edges. For a third try I might try 400 degree for 8-10 minutes, checking it every few minutes.

In any case, the Pan Bread was filling, moist, and rich. But in spite of that I didn't feel like I was being indulgent--it's a very healthy recipe and makes good use of a small amount of fat and natural sweetener. Seemed like bread to me.

Gluten-Free Homemade Grape Nuts

2008-12-19T14:48:00.003-05:00

I got pregnant a month after going gluten free. All I wanted was to wake up to starchy comfort food, but being new to the world of GF buying and cooking, I had a hard time finding anything I wanted to eat. I wrote an entire post a while back on gluten-free breakfast ideas hoping to help newbies out. I have found quite a few hot breakfast cereals that I love: Bob Red Mill's GF Mighty Tasty Hot Cereal and Creamy Buckwheat Cereal. I also eat a lot of quinoa and popped amaranth and the occasional bowl of oatmeal.

But I've really missed cold cereal since going gluten-free. I used to start every day with wheat flakes, Cheerios, and Grape Nuts all mixed together with raisins and chopped almonds. Yum. I've been less successful in finding satisfying gluten-free cold cereals. Perky O's sort of taste like Cheerios but not really. Nutty Rice and Nutty Flax similarly sort of approximate the consistency of Grape Nuts but not really. And all the Peanut Butter Panda Puffs-type cereals? They all have tons of sugar and/or no fiber. I have nothing against sugary cereals, but I at least want a healthy option.

Flakes are a little beyond the home baker, but I've discovered that people do make their own Grape Nuts (and, of course, load them down with sugar). Since Grape Nuts in the box are pretty simple--just flour, salt, and water--I decided to just leave out the sugar in my own recipe. You do have to bake them twice (once as a cake and once as crumbles to dry them out), but you could double the recipe easily. I had a bowl with raisins and almonds the next morning, and they really do taste just like Grape Nuts!

Grape Nuts
This recipe makes one quart.

3 1/2 c. whole-grain gluten free flours (I used 1 c. GF oat flour, 1 c. sorghum flour, 3/4 c. brown rice flour, 3/4 c. teff flour)
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder
2 c. milk

Combine the dry ingredients and mix in the milk. The mixture should be something like cookie dough (not the pudding consistency of GF yeast bread). Spread it 3/4-1" thick on a baking sheet. Bake at 375 for 20-25 min. Remove the tray from the oven and cool for 20-30 min.

Break up the baked bread into large chunks and pulse in food processor until the pieces are the size of Grape Nuts. Spread over two jelly roll pans and bake at 300 for 1 hour. Stir every 15 min. Let them cool before eating or storing.

Menus for Nov. 17 and Election Thoughts

2008-11-12T14:40:00.009-05:00

After a long absence, I'm back to the Gluten-Free in the Greens. Thanks to those of you who wrote asking if all was well. Your emails made me feel part of a community, not just a lone voice talking to the void. My last post at the end of June came just as we embarked on a lonnnggg road trip to see family and friends (a great reason that I wasn't posting). Then came weeks of debilitating seasonal allergies culminating in a nasty sinus infection (an unfortunate reason I wasn't posting). Then came the weeks of catch up. But I'm finally back, juggling blogging between freelance writing, a 14-month-old, and life. It's nice to feel normal again.

Gluten-Free in the Greens is decidedly an apolitical blog, but I am a decidedly political being. On election night I sat up watching CNN, listening to Democracy Now! and NPR, and monitoring www.fivethirtyeight.com. I am definitely a news junkie. I can't not talk about how over the moon I am that Obama has been elected. I can't not talk about it especially because this election symbolizes for me something like what this blog symbolizes for me. (BTW, Check out my friend Laura's report about Grant Park on election night!)

As much as I like Obama and want to sit back while he fixes everything that's bad (Universal health care! No more war! Peace in the Middle East! Global warming stopped!), I know that's not going to happen. Hopefully he will pursue a progressive political agenda and pass some of his legislative priorities, but that's not the point. For me, the point of his campaign and election has been that I, along with a lot of other people in this country, can change something, can accomplish something I believe in.

Change isn't the property of politicians. I started this blog because I needed to make a change and embrace the fact that I'll never eat gluten again. And all of you gluten-free bloggers out there have done the same thing. I can't count the number of times I've met someone with celiac, sent them to my blog, and heard back that reading what I've written and discovering other blogs has really helped her make the transition to gluten-free eating.

After so long without blogging, I was a little a afraid that I'd just give up. It would be so easy. I've gotten out of the habit of reading my favorite gluten-free blogs. I haven't been cooking as much. I haven't been taking pictures of my food. But this forum is important to me, so I'm using this post as a recommittment to myself that I will keep blogging. This week I had a rather painful interaction with someone I love that touches the root of what celiac disease can cause: social isolation. In the wake of that, I realize that I have to keep blogging. It's my responsibility to raise awareness about issues that are important to me. People do listen if you keep talking about something that needs to be talked about. That's what I've learned from this blog, and that's what I've learned from Obama.

So....here's what I'm eating. The Gluten Free Menu Swap is being hosted by Esther at The Lilac Kitchen this week. Head on over there to find out what other gluten-free bloggers are cooking!

Sunday: Broccoli Quiche with the Gluten-Free Girl's crust (sans sugar and cinnamon), mashed sweet potatoes with coconut milk
Monday: baked beans, applesauce, sauerkraut, brown bread
Tuesday: Laotian feast at book club (we're reading The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down)
Wednesday: baked beans again!
Thursday: tomato soup with home-canned tomatoes (!) and grilled cheese
Friday: socca and chard
Saturday: tomato soup and grilled cheese

My One-Pot Meal: Tamale Pie

2008-06-19T10:32:00.007-04:00

I'm participating in the "Go Ahead Honey, It's Gluten-Free" Blogging Event for the first time! The theme is "One-Pot Meals." Maybe soon I'll actually get around to hosting an event...

In any case, tamale pie is my one-pot entry. It's a natural one-pot meal. You get your veggies, protein, and grain all in one whack. It's also versatile: I've made this recipe with meat, without meat, and vegan.

If you've never encountered a tamale pie, which I hadn't until I married the Science Teacher, it's not a "pie" in the crimped pan of flaky dough sense. There's a layer of chili on the bottom and a layer of cornbread on top. Of course, this is where your preferences come in--how do you like your chili? Beany? Meaty? Vegetarian? Lots of veggies? Just tomatoes and onions? So hot you may as well have rubbed a habenero all over your tongue?

The cornbread part is a whole other debate. Our tamale pies tend to have thicker cornbread crusts, but the Science Teacher's mom's version is of a thin-crust variety. And then the question of what kind of cornbread to make arises. Cornbread is a funny creature. Whenever I mention to anyone around here that I've made cornbread, I tend to end up in conversations like this:

Me: "I made cornbread last night--it was totally rainy-day comfort food!"

Other Person (surprised): "Cornbread? Really? How do you make it gluten-free?"

Me (somewhat bemused): "The same way you make watermelon gluten-free--it just is."

OP (persistently): "But how do you make it without flour....."

Sigh. I'm considering getting tee-shirts printed with the recipe. This is what I get for moving north to Vermont, the place where no one says "y'all" (except, of course, the Science Teacher, and he attempts to use it in the singular, as in when he addresses me with "Whatta y'all want for breakfast"--I don't even dignify such grammatical frippery with an answer) and all cornbread contains flour.

You see, I grew up with all-cornmeal cornbread. I have since discovered that there exists "Northern" cornbread, which is usually at least half flour and contains more sugar than its southern cousin, and "Southern" cornbread of the type I ate growing up (case in point, even the Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special refers to their cornbread recipe as "Southern Wheat-Free Cornbread"). Check out the wikipedia entry on the regional differences in cornbread recipes.

Before I give you the recipe I use--which does change every time I make it--let me give some tips for tamale pie customization.

The Crust:
For the crust, you can basically use your favorite cornbread recipe. One cup of cornmeal/flour (not including the other ingredients) will yield a fairly thin crust; two cups a nice thick crust. You can simply adjust your favorite recipe for the amount of cornmeal/flour you need. The batter must be thin in order to cover the entire pie so you might need to add a little liquid to achieve the right consistency. Don't worry too much about it--cornbread is forgiving.

If you prefer lighter, cakier cornbread, use half cornmeal half gluten-free flour (brown rice, sorghum, or whatever you have on hand) plus a 1/2 tsp. of xanthum gum. Use 3-4 tbsp. of sugar, honey, or maple syrup per two cups of cornmeal/flour for a sweeter cornbread, or 1 tbsp. (or none) for a more savory cornbread.

You can also add shredded cheddar and chopped jalapenos, if you like.

The Chili:
Since you probably have your own favorite chili recipe (at least, I hope you do!), I won't make suggestions here. Just make sure that you have enough filling to balance out the crust you've chosen. Three cups of beans or a pound of meat plus veggies is probably enough for a 1-cup-of-cornmeal crust but not enough for the thicker crust.

Tamale Pie
As you can probably tell, tamale pie can be highly improvisational. Here's a starting place for your experiments! These recipes are inspired by those in Jane Brody's fabulous Good Food Book and Good Food Gourmet.

Crust:
2 c. cornmeal
1/2 c. boiling water
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tbsp. honey
1 egg
2 tbsp. oil
1 1/4-1 1/2 c. buttermilk or yogurt

Chili Filling:
1 lb. ground buffalo
1 tbsp. oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 c. green pepper, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 c. kidney beans
1/2 c. black or green pitted olives
1 can of diced tomatoes
2-3 tbsp. tomato paste
1 bottle gluten-free beer or 12 oz. water
1 tbsp. gluten-free worchestershire sauce
2 tsp. cumin
2 tsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
1 heaping tbsp. chili powder
salt and pepper to taste
generous pinch of cinnamon or allspice

Mix 1/2 c. of the cornmeal with the boiling water. Stir until combined. Mix with the other liquid ingredients. Combine the dry ingredients in another bowl. Set aside until you're ready to pop the pie in the oven.

Brown the meat--if you're using it--rinse it in cold water (this gets rid of any grease), and set it aside. Heat the oil and saute the onion, green pepper, and garlic until soft. Add the cumin, chili powder, and cinnamon or allspice, and cook for about a minute. Add the rest of the ingredients, and cook for 20-30 min.

Transfer the chili mixture to a greased 2-3 qt. casserole dish (deeper is better as the cornbread will rise). Stir the wet crust ingredients into the dry ingredients, and pour over the chili filling. Bake at 350 for 30 min.

Asian-Style Tofu Loaf

2008-06-07T14:25:00.004-04:00

I grew up pretty much unaware of tofu as food that I might actually want to eat. Most of the meals I remember centered around meat: chicken casserole, hamburger goulash, baked flounder, etc. Not terribly unusual for someone whose grandparents grew up on farms.

I first encountered tofu on a regular basis in college, where firm tofu was ubiquitous on the salad bar and, for the first time, I had friends who were vegetarian. I ate it then, but I can't say I loved it. Even when I experimented with my food identity, first becoming vegetarian and later going through a vegan phase for 8 months, I never really got the hang of tofu.

In the past few years I've found new techniques for cooking tofu though. I have a killer baked soy-sesame tofu recipe from Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special. I learned about stir-frying tofu from a mini-tutorial in EatingWell. In general, I feel more confident in my abilities with tofu now. So last Friday, when I needed to either invent dinner from our larder or go shopping, I opted to stay home and do a little experimental tofu cookery. Enter Project Tofu Loaf.

I've never made a loaf out of anything but flour, turkey, or ground beef. So I did what most internet-addicts do--I googled it. A Google search for tofu loaf turns up a bunch of results for a recipe called Tip Top Tofu Loaf. At first, I thought someone had just discovered the nirvana of tofu loaves. After reading a few negative recipe reviews, however, I realized that they were all test-driving a particular recipe from La Dolce Vegan. The message I got was: whatever you do, don't make it bland.

Most tofu loaves call for tofu, some bread crumbs or oatmeal, spices, ketchup, and maybe some tahini. I couldn't find any "this was fabulous!" reviews for this breed of loaf so I decided to base my flavor principle on one of my favorite condiments: spicy peanut sauce.

When the Science Teacher came home, the loaf was already baking and I was upstairs playing with the Little Pottamus. He walked into the room, and we started talking. Casually, I said, "Guess what's for dinner, honey?"

"Soup from the soup restaurant?" he answered, half hopefully. "No," I said, "even better." He gave me the dubious look he reserves for my announcement that I've snuck vegetables into the dessert again and asked, "Okay, what then?"

"Tofu loaf!" I said brightly. Then a forlorn expression of horror and disbelief crossed his face. I laughed so hard I fell over on the floor and cried. "Is it shaped like a turkey?" he asked as I continued to cry.

When dinner time arrive, he poked skeptically at the loaf and said, "You should have called it tofu bake. 'Bake' doesn't conjure images of lentil pate and other hippie delicacies." Then he took a bite. And another. And another. After consuming the bigger part of a large hunk of tofu loaf, he asked, "Next time will you put some chopped up peanuts in it, too?"

Asian-Style Tofu Loaf

1 14-oz container firm tofu
1/2 c. TVP
1 c. GF bread crumbs
2 tsp. olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 medium carrots, chopped
1-2 tsp. chili-garlic paste (sriracha)
2-3 tbsp. peanut butter
2-3 tbsp. soy sauce
1 tsp. tumeric
1 tbsp. lime juice

Place the TVP in a small bowl. Pour boiling water over the TVP until it's covered. Put a lid or plate over the bowl, and allow to sit.

Saute the onion and carrots in the olive oil until the carrots are tender (maybe 10 min.). Add the chili-garlic paste in the last few minutes of cooking.

Crumble the tofu in a large bowl. Add the TVP. Add the sauted veggies. Add the peanut butter and stir well to distribute. Add the soy sauce, tumeric, and lime juice, and stir well. Press the mixture into a greased 8x8 dish, and bake for 50 min. at 350 in a preheated oven. Allow to cool before cutting.

Gluten-Free Chocolate Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Icing

2008-05-31T14:22:00.006-04:00

I'm back after a two-week hiatus! I've just started a new part-time job and am still juggling my old part-time job (as well as my full-time+ job as a stay-at-home mommy). All of that has led to not as much cooking experimentation. We've been eating some old favorites and emptying out the freezer--after all, it's almost blueberry season here, and I need to make room!

As some of you might remember, I went to my cousin's wedding two weeks ago. I felt pretty good about how my gustatory experiences panned out: I think all the food I ate was safe, and I managed to eat more than just the salad (though I'm definitely going to take Sally's advice next time and take salad add-ins for a more substantial dish!).

I couldn't eat the dessert at the wedding, of course. They served cupcakes that you ice yourself. Apparently, the caterer thought allowing guests to ice their own cupcakes was a terrible idea. My opinion is that you can do what you want at your own wedding and that it's no better or worse of an idea than the current trend in wedding appetizers: the mashed potato bar. Think ice cream sundae meets mashed potatoes, chives, and bacon. There were even sundae-style dishes. Suspecting lurking gluten, I skipped it.

Missing out on ice-your-own-cupcake fun wasn't a terrible hardship. I've never been much of a dessert person when I eat out. Not that I don't love dessert. I once attempted to fast for Lent (don't ask me why) only to fail when I encountered a chocolate chip cookie for the first time in months at Bohemia Bagel in Prague. But I have found that my waistline and my general well-being both appreciate it when I consume very moderate amounts of high-sugar desserts. I'm much more likely to eat a small piece of dark chocolate or a few spoonfuls of ice cream partnered with squishy Medjool date than a whole piece of cheesecake.

Enter mini-cupcakes. I bought two mini-cupcake pans last summer when I was experimenting with gluten-free cake recipes and didn't want to have to eat a whole piece of cake just to try out the recipe. I'd get to try a few bites of a new recipe and not have to feel like I was splurging. So all summer, I made cupcakes, tried them out, and then took them to picnics to share with my friends.

This is the beauty of the cupcake. Think about it: when you make a whole cake, there are no "tastings." You bake the cake, you ice the cake, you refrigerate the cake until serving time. With cupcakes, you bake the cupcakes, you ice the cupcakes, and if one or two get eaten between then and the party, no one's the wiser.

I tried a few of Brendan's recipes at Something in Season before he decided to stop blogging: the caradmom-date cake and the ginger cake with dark chocolate glaze stand out. I wish he still maintained his archive so that I could link to them. I hadn't tried a chocolate cake, though.

Having a solid chocolate cake recipe in your repertoire is key. The flourless chocolate cake--a blessing to us gluten-free folks--is not what I'm talking about here. Don't get me wrong, the flourless cake is heavenly--smooth, decadent, and super-chocolaty. But it's also expensive, relying on lots of eggs, butter, and good-quality melted chocolate, and fancier than what I have in mind.

I'm talking about an old-fashioned, layer cake type of recipe. With that, you can always make a great birthday cake. Before going gluten-free, I used the thrifty Moosewood chocolate cake with no eggs or butter (it uses oil and is leavened by a reaction between baking soda and vinegar--remember those volcano demonstrations in elementary school science?).

Making a gluten-free version turned out to be easy. I started with the Moosewood, threw in a pinch of Brendan's ginger cake and some cinnamon, and voila! Chocolate cake, or rather, mini cupcakes. I iced them with an old-fashioned caramel icing that my grandmother taught me how to make. The only substantial change I made to her icing was to add sea salt for a salted caramel taste. Yum!

Gluten-Free Chocolate Cake with Salted Caramel Icing
This recipe will make 1 8-in cake, 12 cupcakes, or 24 mini cupcakes (plus a ramekin of batter for the cupcakes).

1 1/2 c. brown rice flour
1/3 c. cocoa powder
1 c. dark brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. xanthum gum
1/4-1/2 tsp. salt
a generous pinch of cinnamon
2 eggs
1/4 c. oil
1/4 c. pureed prunes
1 tsp. vanilla
10 tbsp. brewed coffee (or water)

As simple as it gets. Mix the dry ingredients. Mix the wet ingredients. Mix them together. Spoon into your prepared pan of choice. Bake at 350 for 15 min. (mini cupcakes), 20-25 min. (cupcakes), or 30-35 min. (8-in cake), until a knife comes out smooth.

Salted Caramel Icing

1 c. brown sugar
2 tbsp. butter
1/2 c. milk (any kind)
1/4-1/2 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. vanilla
1 3/4-2 c. powdered sugar

Mix the sugar, butter, milk, and salt in a heavy pot. Bring the mixture to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer for about 5 min. Add the vanilla. Cool the mixture to room temperature and beat in the powdered sugar a bit at a time with your mixer. (The cooler the caramel when you add the powdered sugar, the less you'll have to add to get it to a spreadable consistancy. Alternatively, you can mix in the powdered sugar and refrigerate it--the icing will stiffen as it sits.) Ice your cupcakes and refrigerate!

Weekly Menus: May 11

2008-05-12T09:12:00.005-04:00

Our menu this week comes mostly from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman. Recently, he's inspired me to cook my own beans instead of buying canned. I never realized how easy it is. With a 12-hr soak, the beans are usually cooked in less than an hour. I plan to use them in a few meals and freeze the rest. For the price of two cans of Progresso chickpeas (about $2.50), I get 2 lbs of cooked beans, or over nine cups. And their taste is immeasurably better than canned.

Tips for cooking dried beans: When cooking your own beans, add 5 inches or so of kombu to make the beans easier to digest. Don't add salt until the beans start to become tender.

Our Mother's Day meal--sushi bowls--consists of brown rice topped with pickles (in the small bowl), Japanese omelets, braised veggies, and avocado. Mmm! What more could a first-time mom want? I've included the recipe for spicy 2-hour pickles. Don't be too scared by the amount of sriracha called for--my palate doesn't tolerate very hot chiles, but I don't have a problem with these.

The Gluten-Free Menu Swap is being hosted by Faking It Gluten-Free Style this week so head on over there to check out what other GF bloggers are eating.

Question of the Week:

What do you do when you're invited to a wedding (or similar event)?
Take your own food? Call the restaurant ahead of time? Talk to the caterer?

Sunday: sushi bowls with Japanese egg crepes, pickled daikon (see recipe below), and braised carrots and parsnips

Monday: stewed chickpeas in their own broth with tahini and bread crumbs, kale

Tuesday: chicken soup, yet-t0-be-determined veggie

Wednesday: chickpea redux

Thursday: Dinner at my in-laws'

Friday: my cousin's rehearsal dinner

Saturday: my cousin's wedding

Spicy Quick-Pickled Daikon (a variation on Bittman's Asian-Style Quick Pickles)

1.5 lb. daikon sliced into quarter circles
1 tbsp. salt
2 tbsp. dark sesame oil
1 tsp. sugar
2 tbsp. soy sauce
3-4 tbsp. chili-garlic sauce (sriracha)

Place the daikon in a colander. Sprinkle the salt over it and rub it around with your hands. Put a plate over the salted daikon (still in the colander and in the sink or over a plate to catch the liquid) and a weight on the plate (I use my iron tea pot). Let it sit for 30 min. Mix the rest of the ingredients together. Put the daikon in a bowl and pour the chili sauce over it. Let it still for at least one hour before eating.

Eating Out and Gluten-Free in D.C. Part II: Java Green

2008-05-01T14:35:00.004-04:00

The last time I was in Washington, D.C., I discovered Teaism and their gluten-free menu. We just returned from another visit--and, oh, were the azaleas gorgeous! No Teaism this time, as delicious as it was during my last trip. I was hunting for new gluten-free territory, and I found it at Java Green, a downtown cafe on 19th, near K St.

After a morning at the National Portrait Gallery, we headed over to Java Green. The Science Teacher raised his eyebrows when I told him, somewhat sheepishly, that it was a (mostly) vegan cafe. He has nothing against vegan food, but having worked summers at a camp with a not-terribly-good macrobiotic chef, he maintains a healthy skepticism towards it. However, he loves to eat out and loves it even more when I get excited about eating out, so he was game.

We arrived and the place was fairly busy, but it was around 1 p.m. so we were able to order and find seats without waiting too long. The menu is large and consists of paninis, wraps, noodle and rice bowls, salads, and huge selection of blended juices and smoothies. They also only use wheat-free soy sauce! Kaveat: nothing on the menu is designated "gluten-free," but there are a number of items labeled "wheat-free" (their online menu doesn't indicate the wheat-free options, but you can download their new menu, which does show the wheat-free dishes, at the bottom of their homepage). From what I can tell, beyond the obvious fact that a panini isn't gluten-free, some of the fake meat products or the sauces used on them contain wheat and some don't. The Science Teacher ordered sweet potato noodles with spicy mock chicken, which was not wheat-free; however, if he'd ordered it with the regular mock chicken, it would have been wheat-free.

I ordered the Silk Road (pictured above), a plate of baby spinach, steamed silken tofu, mock chicken in a sesame-soy dressing, carrots, cucumbers, and roasted nori. I was a little worried about the mock chicken, thinking about my favorite vegetarian sausage that I had to give up when I went gluten-free (isn't all of that stuff made with seitan??). I questioned the woman who took my order, and she went back to the kitchen to check. When she returned, she said it was only made of soy products. I was good to go! As you can see, the food was beautiful and fresh. It was also very tasty. I usually don't finish my restaurant meals, but I kept nibbling at the mock chicken until nothing was left on my plate. It was a pleasure to be able to order something "as is" from the menu.

Java Green also bills itself as an "eco" cafe. They compost the food waste and recycle their utensils, glass, and paper products. They use china dishes instead of disposable and biodegradable carry-out containers. They buy wind power to offset their carbon footprint and support a variety of eco-conscious, fair-trade organizations. You can eat gluten-free and support a business that's trying to act in an ecologically responsible manner!

The Science Teacher's sister told me that Java Green is also one of the few places that her kosher-keeping friends can eat downtown. Another plus!

Also, check out the DCGluties' post on Java Green and other information on their website about eating out gluten-free and finding gluten-free food in the D.C. area.

Stay tuned for reviews of gluten-free eating (in non-chain restaurants) in Vermont:

Kismet in Montpelier serves up gluten-free buckwheat crepes, wheat-free tamari, rice bowls, tamales, gluten-free bagels, and more. The owner's son has celiac so she knows what she's doing.

That's Life Soup in Montpelier always has gluten-free options, and they're labeled on the menu. They also usually have vegetarian and dairy-free soups. Call ahead though because the menu changes daily and sometimes they run out of some soups by dinner time.

The Skinny Pancake in Burlington offers up a complete menu of gluten-free crepes to nosh on as you listen to their great line up of musicians.

Quinoa-Almond Butter Cookies (Kosher for Passover)

2008-04-22T10:10:00.009-04:00

Passover's almost over, and I'm surrounded by people who are sighing over their matzo and guiltily buying non-kosher-for-Passover food because they're starving and can't find any other food. I could feel bitter. After all, when Passover ends, I don't get to return to wheat, barley, oats, rye, and spelt. Instead, I listen with bemused detachment and a smidge of pity.

Every year those eschewing chametz spend a week in gluten-free boot camp. They're never there long enough to become accustomed to always carrying food they can eat and to not feel somewhat deprived without gluten (given, there are other foods restricted by Passover, such as legumes, but giving up black beans for a week isn't the same for most people as not eating bread).

Having been gluten-free for a year and a half, I also know that life without wheat isn't that bad. It's not bad at all, in fact. When the Science Teacher told me that he and his friends used to eat matzo pizza in desperation, I thought Who needs matzo pizza when you've got a quinoa crust? I made quinoa porridge this morning for breakfast, which very few non-gluten-free people would think of eating, and it was delicious. Nutty and a bit sweet with cinnamon and nutmeg. I have a huge advantage because I have all of this culinary know-how at my disposal. I think of trying quinoa for breakfast as a part of my endless search for new great breakfast cereals whereas it probably wouldn't occur to a gluten-eating person. Of course, part of the point of Passover might be feeling some deprivation. If so, I guess the gluten-free folks get an easy out for once!

In any case, it's great to be able to share some goodies, savory or sweet, with those who are feeling deprived without chametz and kitniyot. I whipped these up in moment of anti-macaroon sentiment...

Passover-Friendly Quinoa-Almond Butter Cookies
These cookies are a version of my peanut butter-oatmeal cookies. The banana flavor is pronounced so if you don't like banana just leave it out and add a little more liquid (for the coconut milk to soak up). The almond butter flavor, however, is much less pronounced than the peanut butter flavor is in the original version so you might add either some almond extract (1/2-1 tsp.) or more almond butter.

1 c. quinoa flakes
1/4 c. quinoa flour
1/4 c. coconut flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. salt
1/3 c. almond butter
1/3 c. honey
1/3 c. brown sugar
1 egg
1/4 c. mushed banana
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 c. (or more!) chocolate chips

Preheat the over to 350. Mix the flakes, flours, baking soda, cinnamon and salt in a small bowl. Mix the almond butter, honey, brown sugar, egg, banana, and vanilla in a large bowl. In several parts, pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix. Stir in the chocolate chips. Spoon tablespoonfuls onto a greased baking sheet. Bake for 12-13 minutes--until the tops just start to brown--for soft cookies. Cool for a minute or two on the baking sheet and transfer to wire racks to cool.

Similar Recipes (not necessarily kosher-for-passover as written)

Gluten-Free Quinoa Almond-Butter Cookies
Monster Qunioa Peanut Butter Cookies
Almond Butter-Chocolate Chip Cookies
Peanut Butter Banana Cake

Homemade Yogurt

2008-04-17T21:02:00.009-04:00

I've been eating yogurt for years, but until I lived in Russia, my yogurt consumption was limited to Dannon and Yoplait. I hated dumping Dannon Fruit on the Bottom yogurt into a bowl and watching it hold its cup-like, gelatinous shape. Reminded me of cranberry sauce from the can (which, I admit, I love, but the can ridges are a bit scary).

In Russia and later in Ukraine, I discovered yogurt made from 1%, 2%, and even whole milk. Suddenly I could get any kind of yogurt I wanted and in all sorts of surprising flavors, like prune and pineapple. After growing up on the ubiquitous berry concoctions, I was hooked. Later I lived in Bulgaria, the home of yogurt, and discovered tarator (see below for recipe) as well as the joys of a good-quality plain yogurt.

Yogurt flavors and companies have multiplied since I was a kid eating from a conical Yoplait container. Dannon sells their Activa brand, which claims to help your digestion (though I'm not clear how it differs from any other yogurt with active cultures), in fun flavors, like fig. A recent perusal of my dairy aisle turned up whole, 1%, and several kinds of Greek-style yogurt. I'm not, however, terribly excited about the amount of sugar or, worse, artificial sweeteners used in them. And now that the Little Pottamus is eating yogurt, I need to be able to find organic whole milk yogurt for him. Shame on Dannon, Yoplait, and even Stonyfield's for putting so much sugar in their yogurts marketed at kids!

So why not make my own? Turns out it's super easy and far cheaper than buying yogurt from the store (even with the most expensive organic milk our coop has on offer homemade yogurt is half the cost of the commerical yogurt I would normally buy). And homemade yogurt tastes better than anything you can buy in a store--it's creamy and you can make it as rich as you like. Making yogurt doesn't take much time. I usually put the yogurt on as I'm cleaning up the kitchen or prepping dinner. Give it a try!

Homemade Yogurt
Some recipes call for added powdered milk to make it thicker. I've never had a problem with homemade yogurt not being thick enough, but you might experiment. I like my yogurt plain or with a little maple syrup or tahini and, of course, with plenty of add-ins!

Ingredients
1/2 gallon milk (2% is my favorite, but you could use any kind of cow/goat milk--see below for non-dairy tips)
1/2 cup plain yogurt with active cultures (a carton of Dannon or Stonyfield's will do)

Equipment
candy thermometer
2 quart-sized glass jars with lids
1 8-oz. glass jar with lid
large pot with lid (for sterilizing the jars)
pot with heavy bottom (for heating the milk)
small cooler or pot (for keeping the milk warm as it becomes )

Step 1--Sterilize the jars: Put two glass quart jars, their lids, and a small (8-10 oz.) jar and lid into a large pot (I use my pasta pot) with a few inches of water. Put a lid on the pot, bring the water to a boil, and boil for about 10 min.

Step 2--Scald the milk: While the jars are sterilizing, heat a 1/2 gallon of milk in a large pot with a heavy bottom. Hook a candy thermometer on the side. Heat, stirring occasionally, until the milk reaches 85-90 deg. Celsius.
Step 3--Cool the milk: Remove the scalded milk from the heat and cool until the milk reaches 50 deg. Celsius. I partially fill the sink with cold water, plunk the pot in the sink, and stir to speed up the cooling process.

Step 4--Inoculate the milk: Put 1/2 cup of plain yogurt with active cultures (I've used Dannon, Stonyfield's, and homemade yogurt from a previous batch successfully) in a 1-cup measuring cup. Add 1/2 cup of the cooled milk and stir to remove all of the lumps. Pour the yogurt-milk into the rest of the cooled milk and stir to combine.

Step 5--Pour the milk into the jars and cap them. Place the jars in a small cooler or deep pot. Add enough hot water until the jars are 3/4 submerged (you may need to place the smallest jar on top of an upside-down cup to make it tall enough). The idea is to keep the milk at around 50 deg. Celsius. At this temperature, you should have yogurt in about 3 hrs. (don't test the jars until 3 hrs have passed, or you risk losing heat each time you check on them). If the milk has gelled, congratulations--you've made yogurt! If not, just leave it a little longer, until it gels. Stick it in the fridge and enjoy. You can also freeze yogurt, just don't fill the glass jars too full or they will break (yep, one of my nice Mason jars broke yesterday).

Yogurt Recipes and Resources

Homemade Yogurt at 101 Cookbooks
A Comprehensive Yogurt-Making Tutorial (a more in-depth version of my instructions)
Homemade Soy Yogurt
Homemade Soy Yogurt at Fat Free Vegan Kitchen
Homemade Coconut Milk Yogurt at Stephen's Recipes
Buy a GF, Soy-Free, Dairy-Free Yogurt Starter!

Tarator (Balkan Cucumber-Yogurt Soup)
Labneh (Yogurt Cheese)
Greek-Style Soy Yogurt or Soy Yogurt Cheese

Gluten-Free Menus: April 14

2008-04-14T20:43:00.004-04:00

The Gluten-Free Menu Swap is being hosted this week by Gluten-Free Sox, so head on over for some great menu-planning ideas...

Passover starts next Sunday. In our household, we celebrate Shabbat on Fridays and major holidays, but, not being Jewish, I don't fast on Yom Kippur and don't purge my house of chametz (which does actually include some things that the gluten-free do eat) before Passover. We don't, however, serve ham at our seders--all the food there is above board and kosher for Passover. Gluten-Free Bay's Passover Roundup 2007 has great resources and recipes whether or not you'll be heading to a seder soon!

This year, we're going to a record number of seders: three! To all three, I'll take gluten-free mock matzo, and I'll take the tzimmes dish below to the first one. I'm on the list for a dessert for seder #2, and I'm looking for a yummy, not-t00-bad-for-you dessert that TRAVELS. We'll be driving 10 hours the day of the seder. Any ideas?

Sunday: turkey chili, apples and kale, cornbread
Monday: Chipotle Macaroni and Cheese, salad
Tuesday: Black Bean Burgers, mashed butternut squash, kasha and onions
Wednesday: mac n' cheese redux
Thursday: more bean burgers!
Friday: pizza, salad
Saturday: We're taking Winter Squash-Chicken Tzimmes to a pre-seder seder

Gluten-Free Menus: April 6

2008-04-07T20:24:00.003-04:00

In How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, Mark Bittman suggests that one strategy to preparing vegetarian meals--that might involve many "side" dishes rather than one main dish with a few sides--is to prepare a big pot of beans and/or grains early in the week and find ways to incorporate them differently into several meals. This week I'm trying this menu-planning tip out with kidney beans. I bought two pounds at the co-op. I'll use some in the kidney bean-apple dish, some in the chili, some in a quinoa salad for lunches. I might even make some lobio, a classic Georgian (the country, not the state) dish. If so, I'll definitely blog about it--such a tasty salad is not to be missed!

This week we're eating...

Sunday: broiled rainbow trout, steamed broccoli, baked sweet potatoes

Monday: broiled crab cakes (Virginia-style, not Maryland, for you crab cake aficionados), steamed broccoli, creamy buckwheat cereal with pesto

Tuesday: sauteed kidney beans with apples, braised cabbage, cheese

Wednesday: turkey chili, corn tortillas

Thursday: pizza with a quinoa crust

Friday: kidney bean night redux, challah

Saturday: turkey chili for friends, cornbread

Quinoa Pizza Crust

2008-03-26T15:51:00.012-04:00

I've always loved pizza. Pizza for sleepovers. Pizza for end-of-season elementary school basketball team parties. Pizza nearly every night in college (remember someone knocking on doors around 11 or 12 trying to get together enough people to buy pizza at $1/slice?).

I grew up on Pizza Hut and Little Caesar's, usually on Friday nights. Those days, after my ballet lessons, we'd pick up a pizza and eat the breadsticks on the car ride home. That pizza was always much more edible hot than the day after. I remember discovering "gourmet" wood oven pizzas in high school with "exotic" toppings, like BBQ chicken, and the idea that everyone could order their own.

When I moved to Vermont, I discovered American Flatbread. My favorite was the Punctuated Equilibrium, a combo of red sauce, mozzarella, kalamata olives, roasted red peppers, and local goat cheese. When I was in graduate school, the Science Teacher and I had weekly date nights at Flatbread after my late seminar. We'd order pizza--half with sausage half without--split a salad of local greens and talk about Slavoj Zizek. Then came my diagnosis...

The first gluten-free bread I made post-diagnosis was a pizza crust. As bummed as I was never to eat another Moonshadow (red sauce, mozzarella, feta, artichoke hearts, spinach, roasted red peppers, and walnuts) at Positive Pie, I was comforted to know I didn't have to give up pizza altogether. I've tweaked the first recipe I ever tried here and there, subbing quinoa flour for some of the brown rice flour and starch, but having found a recipe that worked, I didn't really experiment with other recipes.

Until this week. We had plans for dinner and Euchre with friends on Friday. Our friend asked the Science Teacher whether we could order pizza. "Great," the Science Teacher said, "except Kara won't be able to eat it. How about we'll bring the crust and you supply the toppings?" I was feeling a little experimental so I looked through some cookbooks for inspiration. I ended up perusing Jane Brody's Good Food Book. She's a science writer for The New York Times, and her cookbooks all revolve around the premise that whole grains are good for you and sugar/refined grains aren't. She's also the anti-Atkins--you should read her praising the nutritional qualities of the potato. The Good Food Book also is half nutritional information, making it a great cookbook for people who love to read about the food you're eating. I've been cooking and eating from her cookbooks since I was a kid.

She gives a recipe for a brown rice pizza crust. Not brown rice flour, the whole grain, mixed with mozzarella. I thought it sounded somewhat strange, but I'm used to weird ingredients turning into phenomenally tasty food (my chickpea brownies come to mind) by now. I googled the recipe to see whether others had tried it and came up with a few hits describing a similar-sounding crust in Veganomicon. In fact, Fat Free Vegan Kitchen just used a brown-rice crust in a quiche. Sounded promising.

Here's the two mini-pizzas from brown rice I made for lunch to try out the recipe. I mixed shredded mozzarella into one crust and a parmesan/nutritional yeast combo into the other. I liked the parm/nutritional yeast crust though the Science Teacher thought the mozzarella crust had a better texture. Neither particularly tasted ricey, which I found surprising. The crust was also solid with a nice crunch--you could pick it up without fear of disintegration. I made a rice crust and a "regular" crust for our Euchre night--both were a hit (well, at least they were all eaten)!

Last night, when we were having a take-out food night (a very rare occasion in our house) with friends, I decided to make myself a quinoa crust using the same technique instead of ordering out. If you're new to quinoa, definitely give it a try. It has a ton of protein, a nutty flavor, and a consistency similar to that of couscous--and it cooks up in about 15 min.

I liked the quinoa crust as much as the rice version though it took a bit more egg to make the grains stick together. The crust was crunchy with no detectable sogginess and substantial--I could pick it up and eat it. I topped my pizza with red sauce, mozzarella, feta, walnuts, chicken sausage, caramelized onions, and sauerkraut. Yum!

Quinoa Pizza Crust
This recipe could easily work with any whole grain. If the grain is sufficiently glutinous (i.e. a sticker rice), I think you could omit the eggs (and cheese) for a vegan crust.

2 1/2-3 cups cooked quinoa (1 cup raw quinoa--I like to toast my quinoa before adding water)
1 whole egg plus 1 white
1/2 tsp. dried basil
1/2 tsp. dried oregano

1/4 cup parmasan
2 tbsp. nutritional yeast.
(or try a 1 cup of shredded mozzarella instead of the parm/nutritional yeast combo)

Preheat the oven to 450. Mix all of the ingredients into the quinoa thoroughly. Oil a baking sheet and sprinkle liberally with cornmeal. Press the quinoa into a pizza-like shape on the baking sheet. Bake for 20 min. Create your dream pizza--don't forget the walnuts--and bake for about more 10 min.

Gluten-Free Menus: March 24

2008-03-23T14:31:00.005-04:00

Thanks, food bloggers, for the fabulous food we made last week! I didn't post my menus so I'll let you know how they turned out:

The Science Teacher made Ginger-Lemon Girl's Cheddar Baked Hominy (see photo above). We added 10 oz. of spinach and some cottage cheese and used Cabot 50% Reduced Fat Cheddar to great success!
I cooked up Gluten-Free Bay's Spicy Black-Eyed Peas and Collards with some brown rice (I first sauteed it with a little olive oil and some spices before adding water).
On Saturday, we tried Book of Yum's pesto-buckwheat fries (except that we used Bob Red Mill's Mighty Tasty Hot Cereal)...they sort of melted into a flat pile of pesto-corn goo in the oven (I think we didn't cool the cereal long enough). Tasted fantastic, though the aesthetics were lacking. We'll try again this week.
Lastly, I jumped out of bed on Easter morning to bake some of Gluten A Go Go's Irish soda bread. As always when a bread calls for lots of starch, I subbed in some more protein- and fiber-rich flours. I used 1 c. GF oat flour, 2/3 c. brown rice flour, 2/3 c. corn flour, 1/4 c. sorhgum flour, 6 tbsp. tapioca flour, 2 tbsp. white rice flour. Lovely!

Here's what we're eating this week...

Sunday: pulled pork, slaw, cornbread
Monday: Turkey-Quinoa Balls (subbing quinoa for the couscous), polenta fries, salad
Tuesday: beer-marinated tempeh tacos (inspired by Sea's menu last week), slaw
Wednesday: stuffed mushrooms, kimchi, buckwheat pilaf
Thursday: Wednesday redux
Friday: Tacos redux
Saturday: out to dinner!

Homemade Kimchi

2008-03-19T09:30:00.009-04:00

Kimchi, a fermented cabbage dish, is a staple of Korean cooking. "Staple" might be a bit of a misnomer since when I think of staples, I think of eggs, cheese, raisins, and oatmeal--all ingredients that show up fairly regularly in the foods I eat each week. But I don't include all of them in most meals, which seems to be how kimchi figures into the Korean diet. The only analogous food I can think of for myself is peanut butter.

Kimchi's importance to the Korean diet has recently propelled it into the world of big media. (As a political aside, I find it absurd that The New York Times covers the kimchi beat but has ignored the testimony of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in Winter Soldier II.) Kimchi, which on Earth is a live food teeming with good bacteria, could apparently turn evil in space. Sort of like Spawn infesting Spidey. Yes, scientists are worried about mutant kimchi (taking over the space station?) and exploding kimchi (getting all over the equipment). The last point I understand: only last week I was making sauerkraut-apple-millet soup when I opened a fresh jar of sauerkraut and suddenly had bubbling, fermented cabbage juice spewing all over me.

I recently attended a kimchi workshop at our local co-op. Cramped into the small conference room that barely passes for a workshop space, we talked a lot about the friendly bacteria in fermented, "live" foods and how healthy they are for your digestion. What a bonus for those of us with sensitive innards! She had already completed steps 1-3 (see below) so we were left to add our choice of spices and pack it all into our jars. I went home with a happy little jar of kimchi ready to do its thing on my counter.

I put it into the fridge after about a week. I was worried that I hadn't let it ferment enough because it didn't particularly smell bad to me. It turns out my concerns were groundless: the Science Teacher took some in his bento dinner to his weekly snowboarding trip with his middle school students. Their comment? "Woah, it smells like my locker..." Sounds (smells?) like kimchi success to me!

Homemade Kimchi
This recipe was adapted by Sandra Lory, a Vermont herbalist, from Sandor Katz's Wild Fermentation.

Makes: 1 quart
Prep Time: 20 min.
Fermentation Time: 1 week or more, depending on room temp and how fermented you want it

Ingredients
Brine:
4-5 tbsp. sea salt (not iodized table salt)
non-chlorinated water (boiled and cooled water)

Veggies:
1 lb. green cabbage (any kind)
1 med. daikon radish, sliced or grated
1 med. carrot, sliced or grated

Spices:
1 med. onion, finely chopped
1 bulb garlic, peeled and minced
3 tbsp. ginger, minced
fresh and minced hot pepper or cayenne, to taste

1. Make a brine: mix 3-4 tbsp. sea salt with 3-4 c. non-chlorinated water until dissolved.

2. Mix the veggies together and pour the brine over them. Cover with a plate (or something with a little weight) and leave for a few hours or overnight. This step allows the veggies to soften by themselves.

3. After the veggies have softened, drain off and save the brine. The veggies should taste salty. If they don't, add some salt--up to a spoonful (note: adding too much salt will slow down the fermentation).

4. Mix together the onions, garlic, ginger, and hot pepper in a separate bowl. Add to the softened veggies. Use your hands to crush them, which will help release the juices.

5. Pack the kimchi tightly into a quart jar with a wide mouth. Press down on the kimchi and try to get all of the air bubbles to rise to the top. The brined juices should cover the veggies when you're done. Add a little brine if necessary.

6. Place a small jar filled with water on top of the kimchi (which is left open to the air) to weight it down and make sure the brine continues to cover the veggies. This step prevents spoiling.

7. Allow the mixture to sit for at least a week unrefrigerated. Press the kimchi down each day to make sure it stays submerged in the brine. You can adjust the seasonings at any point. The longer the kimchi ferments, the sourer it becomes. The more salt, the slower it ferments. You'll smell it beginning to ferment. Allow it to ferment until you achieve the flavor you like (1-3 weeks).

8. Cap the jar and place it in the fridge. It will last for months if kept cool. Mold and discoloration on the top is normal; just skim it off. Don't tighten the jar too much or you'll end up with an exciting kimchi eruption.

Gluten-Free Vacation: South Carolina and Beyond

2008-03-15T14:37:00.002-04:00

I love to travel. After I finished my MA in English a few years ago, the Science Teacher and I took off for 5 weeks of sightseeing, training, swimming, and eating through the Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia, and Bosnia. We had a blast. One of our more amusing post-trip jokes came when we realized that in practically every picture I'm toting a little plastic bag that carried yogurt, fruit, and muesli. Ahh, muesli. Muesli was my travel staple before I went gluten-free. Either it or the ingredients for it have been available practically everywhere I've traveled. I carried bags of it around that summer and ate it for breakfast with yogurt practically every morning. Now that I'm gluten-free, though, most commercial muesli is out. What's a gluten-free girl to do for food when she can't carry it all with her?

I mentioned previously that my first gluten-free trip took us to Istanbul and that I was somewhat disheartened at the large suitcase of food I ended up taking. In the past, I have prided myself on my ability to pack light. For our previous 5-week trip, I schlepped all my stuff in a daypack. My 22 in. suitcase felt like a Louis Vuitton trunk set.

In hopes of lightening my load, I've come up with some gluten-free travel tips. As my bits of advice are completely dependent on the kind of trip you're taking, check out Book of Yum's account of her recent Florida trip for another take on gluten-free travel. I take lots of road trips and pack tons of food. For such a trip, the challenge is in eating out, not figuring out what to eat for breakfast. And my South Carolina trip was a hybrid--I definitely made room for some unnecessary favorites. It's the I'm-carrying-my-life-in-my-backpack travel that's more challenging for the gluten-free packer. So before thinking, "but I want my GF pancakes in the morning," consider whether you're taking:

a car trip (i.e. you're taking the Subaru wagon and the big coolers): read my advice and laugh as you enjoy your Cardamon-Date Muffins (aka Not-Too-Sweet Midnight Muffins), your sandwiches on millet-oatmeal bread, and your Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies.
a plane trip to single destination (i.e. you're taking a suitcase and won't have to carry it around except in the airport): read and decide how much of your suitcase will go to clothes and how much to food. You might find you don't have to fill it half with food...
a plane trip to multiple destinations (i.e. you may have to run 1/4 mile with your luggage to make your train): I'm really talking to you!

I've realized that successful gluten-free travel for light packers depends on a few points:

1. Don't rely on specialty GF products for most meals. I'm not saying don't bring your Bumble Bars or homemade granola bars or GF chocolate. Those are more for treats and emergencies than for providing regular meals. But do figure out what you would be happy eating for breakfast that doesn't involve access to Bob's Red Mill products. Rice porridge? Millet? Kasha? Baked sweet potato? Eggs? Yogurt? Choose food that can be purchased at your run-of-the-mill Food Lion where maybe you'll find a new GF product to try (the Food Lion on Lady's Island, SC, had a surprising GF shelf--I wouldn't call it abundant, but there was cereal, flour, and snacks). Choose staples to take that use space efficiently: a bag of cooked cereal, some fruit and nuts, energy bars, etc. (Did I really need those rice cakes that took up so much room in suitcase on our Turkey trip?)

Staples I Packed for SC:
Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies (I'm addicted...)
6 Cardamom-Date Muffins
natural peanut butter
millet
energy bars
Dagoba's dark chocolate
roasted almonds
dried figs

Light Packer Rating (1-5): 3 (I definitely took several space-suckers, but the muffins were great!)

2. Do your research. Where are the grocery stores? Are there natural foods stores? Visit the local celiac association website and/or email a contact for advice. Be confident: if you can find a grocery store, you will be able to buy rice, fruit, vegetables, dairy products, etc. There are worse things than eating a lot of stir fries.
Research for SC:
My research turned up Whole Foods in SC but none in the areas where we'd be. A few web searches turned up a chain called Earth Fare. I found Bob's Red Mill GF Gluten-Free Oats, which I thought were sold out all over the country, and millet flour. My aunt also recommended a store in Columbia called The Fresh Market. Other web searches for restaurants turned up your regular chain restaurants with GF menus (sorry, but I'm not an Outback Steakhouse girl) but nothing that sounds interesting enough to check out.

Light Packer Rating: 5 (I knew exactly where I needed to go to find my food the day after we arrived.)

3. Make sure you have food for the plane, for when you first arrive, and for emergencies. There's nothing worse than looking for a grocery store in a country where you don't speak the language when you're hungry and jetlagged. Traveling light on food requires energy for foraging.

Food I Took For Traveling:
The Science Teacher and I stopped by our local co-op on the way out of town for lunch and dinner supplies, though after reading Biggie's post on airplane bentos, I can't believe I didn't pack bentos for the both of us.

1/8 lb. nitrate-free smoked turkey
small chunk of asiago cheese
avocado
1/8 lb. nitrate-free roast beef
small chunk of provolone
Mary's Gone Crackers crackers
1 container Greek-style yogurt
1 banana
1 apple

Light Packer Rating: 3 (The food took up a lot of space in my backpack. A bento would have allowed me to condense everything much more with the added aesthetically-pleasing factor.)

4. Find a kitchen. Surprisingly, this usually means staying either high or low on the room rate scale. "High" might mean condo, suite, or house. "Low" probably means friends/relatives or hostels. It's hard to cook that rice if you don't have a heating implement.

Our SC Kitchens:
Our aunt and uncle's kitchen in Columbia, and the family beach house kitchen in the low country. The Science Teacher made paella and pasta arrabiatta....mmmm.

Light Packer Rating: 5 (We always had a place to cook...)

Gluten-Free Menus: March 10

2008-03-10T21:51:00.002-04:00

It's taken me longer to get back in the real-life groove than I thought. We had a great off-line, trip to South Carolina: no computers, no iPods, no blogs (for me), no video games (for the Science Teacher). We played the Settlers of Catan Card Game, and the Science Teacher cooked up lots of gluten-free seafood dishes (think: paella and pasta arrabbiata). I'll be up with a debrief soon.

One of the reasons I've had a hard time getting back online is our new attempt at convincing our almost six-month-old to fall sleep without nursing. Breastfeeding is one thing (and I'm in no way weaning him), but using me as a human pacifier is quite another. It's been more emotionally exhausting than I would have thought. First, there's been the crying (yes, we are pursuing the controversial cry-it-out strategy). Second, there's the realization that my baby's taking little steps away from being completely dependent on me. Both have been hard for me, but as I see our kiddo be more well-rested, I'm feeling less emotional (and more able to blog!).

The good things that have come from our new sleeping plan? I get to see a beautiful new relationship evolving between the Science Teacher and the pottamus as he gets to take an equal role in the putting-to-bed of the baby. The Science Teacher and I have reclaimed our bed and room. And the pottamus is learning to comfort himself and be okay playing by himself a bit in his crib. He's gone from waking up every 2-3 hrs. to sleeping 8:30 p.m.-7 a.m. with maybe one feeding. Everyone's sleeping better!

Here are my menus for the week sans any 5 a.m. experimental baking:

Sunday: mushroom-onion pizza, baked sweet potatoes
Monday:Chicken Cacciatore, polenta, sauteed asparagus
Tuesday:falafel, pita, veggies, olives
Wednesday:baked beans and sauerkraut-apple casserole
Thursday: the Science Teacher's off snowboarding, and the pottamus and I will have dinner with friends
Friday: more beans and kraut...yum
Saturday: still up for grabs...

See You in a Week for a Gluten-Free Vacation Debrief

2008-02-25T06:38:00.004-05:00

When I was growing up and going to school in western Virginia (not WEST Virginia), schools had quite a few short breaks planned during the spring. Of course, Virginia still had snow then so make-up days meant that a Thursday-Friday-Monday off over Easter often turned into just a three-day weekend. But in Vermont--and I guess in most of the northeast--the weeklong February and April breaks are sacred.

Well, it's February break, and the Science Teacher, the pottamus, and I are off to the hopefully sunny, not-really-that-warm South Carolina barrier islands for a week. The Eye on the Sky is forecasting another foot of snow on Tuesday so island life, albeit chilly, will definitely be better than salting the steps and shoveling the Subarus out again. I'll be back next week (though not next Monday) with a post-trip debrief on my gluten-free trip and gluten-free eating on the go in general. I'm off to roast some almonds, take some muffins out of the freezer, and bake some cookies for my stash before we leave. Happy cooking and creating!

One Recipe: Gluten-Free Graham Crackers, Cinnamon or Ginger Snaps, and Thin Mints

2008-02-21T11:06:00.004-05:00

Last summer was my first summer of gluten-free, s'moreless camping. I was eight months into my gluten-free adventures, though, so I'd progressed past the point where I would have been sitting around the camp fire morosely drooling over everyone else's s'mores. I took my favorite chocolate chip-peanut butter-oatmeal cookies (which I need to get around to posting someday soon), intending to use them as graham cracker replacements. But unlike a conventional s'more, I found the cookie-s'more to be less than the sum of its parts. I tasted chocolate-peanut butter goodness and toasted marshmallow goodness but not as much of either as I wanted. So I ate them separately. No big deal.

But I'd like to be able to make a s'more, if I wanted one. So I started perusing the web for recipes. My problem with most graham cracker recipes, though, is that they contain an incredible amount of fat and sugar. They're more a cookie than the slightly sweet cracker I always ate as snacks growing up. I started tweaking recipes and came up with a whole-grain, no-starch graham cracker like those I remember....and three other variations. The latest turns the graham crackers into Thin Mints, which I've been craving ever since making Karina's Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies last week. Note: all of these recipes have been tested in the middle of the night, as I attempt to bore my 5-month-old into sleep!

Gluten-Free Graham Crackers

This recipe can be easily doubled--it makes a bunch of little crackers but not so many regular- sized ones. These crackers would make a swanky s'more dipped in chocolate with toasted marshmellows...or with homemade marshmellows dipped in chocolate...or both.

2 tbsp. teff flour
2 tbsp. gluten-free oat flour
2 tbsp. brown rice flour
2 tbsp. sorghum flour
1 tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. cardamon
1/8 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. xanthum gum

1 tbsp. honey
1 tbsp. molasses
2 tsp. canola oil
1/4 tsp. vanilla
water (as needed)

Preheat the oven to 350. Mix the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Mix the wet ingredients in a small bowl. Pour the wet ingredients into the flour mixture and stir until a smooth ball of dough forms. Add flour if the dough seems too sticky or a little water if it is too dry. Chill for 10 min. Divide the dough in half. Flour a surface and roll out one half to 1/8 in. thickness. Cut out in squares or using cookie cutters. Place on a greased baking sheet and bake for 10 min. Let the crackers cool on the tray until they are crisp. Makes about 3 doz. 1.5 inch cookies.

Now for the Variations!

Gluten-Free Cinnamon Snaps
Omit the cardamom and add 1/2 tsp. nutmeg. Increase the sweetener by 1 tbsp. white sugar and 1 tbsp. molasses. If you want a very crisp cookie, bake 1-5 min. longer.

Gluten-Free Ginger Snaps
Omit the cardamom and cinnamon. Add 1 tsp. ginger. Increase the sweetener by 1 tbsp. white sugar and 1 tbsp. molasses. If you want a very crisp cookie, bake 1-5 min. longer.

Gluten-Free Thin Mints
Girl Scout Thin Mints without all of the not-so-healthy ingredients! Omit the cardamom and cinnamon. Increase the sweetener by 1.5 tbsp. white sugar and 1 tbsp. molasses. Add 2-3 tbsp. cocoa (preferable a dark cocoa, like Hershey's Special Dark or Dagoba's). Add 1/2 tsp. peppermint extract with the vanilla extract. When the cookies are cool, melt dark chocolate, stir in 1/2-1 tsp. of peppermint extract, and dip cookies (on one side, or completely coated for an authentic Girl Scout experience).

Gluten-Free Menus: February 18

2008-02-17T21:28:00.008-05:00

Gosh, I haven't posted since last week. But my lack of posts doesn't mean I haven't been cooking--I've been tweaking a gluten-free graham cracker recipe that I hope to post about this week. Also, stay tuned: I'm going to make yogurt and labneh (a yogurt cheese) for the first time ever! Why, you might ask, am I making my own yogurt? Well, it has to do with my reading...

Last week, I discovered that other foodie bloggers are reading what I'm reading. I just finished a fiction jag (during which I read Pevear and Volohkonsky's new and fabulous translation of War and Peace--I highly recommend this version, which is far superior to any previous translations) a few weeks ago and picked up Michael Pollan's new book, In Defense of Food.
Sally over at Aprovechar mentioned that she's reading it, too, and that she was somewhat disappointed with the book (its scope is much less than that of his previous book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, which I also hardily recommend). I wasn't exactly disappointed, but the book seemed less full of new ideas and more full of somewhat extended ideas from OD. The book can be summed up by his mantra: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."

In any case, it's very well researched and documented, and I found myself at our local library on Friday checking out some of the books he cites, notably Marian Nestle's What to Eat and Food Politics. What to Eat is a look at our supermarkets and the politics that goes into what is available for us to buy and how it's labeled. I'm both horrified and fascinated by the statistics and anecdotes she recounted: almost 70% of Danimals yogurt is sugar; the USDA routinely tries to weaken rules governing organics and is only stopped (some of the time) by hundreds of thousands of letters from consumers; farmed salmon can have double the fat and saturated fat as wild salmon (not to mention all of those artificial dyes--how many times must I have exclaimed over food coloring on a platter?).

So, while we have very high quality yogurt produced locally, I was interested to find out exactly how difficult making my own would be. Hence my forays into yogurt-making. I'll keep you posted.

Here's our menus for this week:

Sunday: Indian-style savory mashed sweet potatoes (from Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites), curried lentil-carrot salad, pineapple-apple chutney
Monday: Pumpkin-Chicken Enchiladas, sauteed kale
Tuesday: Enchiladas, Take Two!
Wednesday: Mezza with olives, hummus, labneh, pita, and roasted squash
Thursday: We're out of the house...
Friday: Red Lentil-Apricot Soup, kale, challah
Saturday: Friday leftovers

Need healthy snacks or desserts? Try these gluten-free chickpea crackers--I've made them several times and am never disappointed. They're also a great use of Bob's Red Mill All-Purp GF flour, if, like me, you can't stand the beany taste it imparts to everything. Also, try Karina's Mint Chocolate Cookies. I adapted them to be lower in fat and to be completely whole grain very easily: use equal parts brown rice, teff, corn, and sorghum flours in place of her flours, and replace half of the oil with applesauce. Instead of mixing the chocolate chips into the cookies, I melted them, added a little mint extract, and dipped the cookies. Almost like Thin Mints!

Gluten-Free Menus: February 11

2008-02-11T14:15:00.000-05:00

I just bought a new cookbook at our fabulous new-used bookstore in town--I took in a few old books and turned them into Mark Bittman's (aka The Minimalist's) new cookbook, How To Cook Everything Vegetarian. This comprehensive vegetarian roadmap is quickly becoming the go-to cookbook in our house. All of the recipes this week are found in or were inspired by this 4000-recipe tome. The strength of this cookbook lies not in any individual recipe, though everything I've cooked from it has been tasty, but in its underlying principle. Bittman doesn't say, "Hey, this is what quinoa is and here's a quinoa recipe." Instead, his book is packed with charts called "Improvising Asian-Style Noodle Bowls," lists like "13 Other Fillings for Rolled Kale or Stuffed Grape Leaves," and variations on stock recipes like classic guacamole. I'm sure there will be more great recipes to come, and I'll keep posting my new finds.

Here's what we're eating this week:

Breakfast Bonus! Please check out my recent post on gluten-free breakfasts to see what fiber-and-protein-filled goodness I eat in the mornings.

Sunday: Paella with turkey and shrimp, carrot sticks
Monday: Thai Corn Cakes, Vietnamese spring rolls with a spicy peanut dipping sauce
Tuesday: Monday redux
Wednesday: Coconut Lemongrass Soup with crunchy tempeh
Thursday: We're out of the house
Friday: sushi bowls (brown rice, avocado, scallions, daikon, radishes, smoked salmon with nori to scoop it all up)
Saturday: sushi bowls strike again!

Bonus Dessert: In honor of this week's theme, I'll share this recipe for Dark Chocolate Meringues, which satisfied and continues to satisfy my recent chocolate cravings. These cookies are different than other chocolate meringues I've made in the past, containing both cocoa powder and melted chocolate, which impart a richness and chewiness unusual in meringues. Who cares about gluten with chocolate such as this?

Gluten-Free Breakfasts

2008-02-06T20:56:00.000-05:00

I love breakfast. But as I've said before, I'm a creature of habit. Before I was diagnosed, I ate a bowl of oatmeal almost every morning. There were a few weeks after my diagnosis that I thought I was going to have to give up oatmeal, but I was lucky. I found out about my gluten intolerance right about the time Lara's Gluten Free Oats began to be available at our local co-op. Besides those few panicky weeks, I have little to complain about. My temporary oatmeal hiatus, however, has prompted me to diversify my breakfast fare. I'm hedging my bets against future GF oatmeal price spikes and shortages...

I've compiles a picture of what I might eat for breakfast, mostly because early on I spent a ton of time surfing the web for healthy, interesting gluten-free breakfasts:

1. Oatmeal

Thanks to the companies listed, I often eat a bowl of oatmeal cooked in soymilk with raisins, blueberries, flax meal, and walnuts. If you love oatmeal, too, read this poem by Green Mountain State poet, Galway Kinnell.

Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free Rolled Oats and Steel Cut Oats
Lara's Gluten-Free Oats (and oat flour!)
Gifts of Nature (you can buy oat groats here)

2. Bob's Red Mill Mighty Tasty Gluten-Free Hot Cereal

At first, I saw this corn-based hot cereal as an oatmeal substitute. I cooked it in soymilk and added raisins and chopped-up apples. The taste wasn't inedible, but it wasn't inspirational either. And it wasn't oatmeal. Then last summer I noticed a grit, cheese, and jalepeno bowl on the menu of our favorite breakfast place. Hmmm. The Mighty Tasty GF Hot Cereal does have a suspiciously grit-like consistency, though it's protein and fiber content make it nutritionally superior to most grits. When I started treating it like the grits it was, I found out why it was dubbed "mighty tasty." This cereal is a great choice for a cheesy (see below), warm, savory breakfast with lots of protein and fiber.

To try, cook 1/4 c. Mighty Tasty GF Hot Cereal (or grits or Arrowsmith's Rice 'n Shine cereal--they taste the same in the end, though the rice cereal has less protein and fiber than the corn cereal) in 3/4-1 c. water for about 10 min. Put 1 ounce of chopped-up cheddar cheese in your breakfast bowl (I use Cabot 50% Reduced Fat Cheddar). When the cereal is done, pour it over the cheese and stir to melt. Add flax meal, walnuts, and salt and pepper.

2. Gluten-Free in the Greens' Multigrain Hot Cereal

When I was little and refused to eat cold cereal (drinking the milk totally grossed me out), my mom would make me a creamy, wheaty hot cereal with raisins and honey. This multigrain cereal reminds me of those winter mornings when it was so cold I'd get dressed in front of an open oven door. The beauty of this hot cereal is that you cook all the grains in one pot ahead of time, preferably on Sunday night, pop it in a Tubberware, and have hot breakfast fixings for the rest of the week. My directions assume you'll be making it ahead of time and will be eating it for about 4 days.

In one pot, pour:
1/3 c. millet
1/3 c. brown rice
1/3 c. amaranth
1/2-3/4 c. GF steel cut oats
4.5-5 c. water
(This recipe makes about four servings. To adjust the amount or types of grains, just add three times more water than grain.)

Bring to a boil and cook for 20-30 min, covered. Check it from time to time to see whether the pot needs more water. Turn off the heat, leave the lid on, and allow the grains sit for 15-20 min. and absorb any remaining water. If you're cooking this the night before, spoon the cereal into a tubberware and wait for breakfast...

To eat, add 3/4-1 c. of the cooked cereal to a pot with raisins and a little salt. Add 1 c. milk or soymilk.* Cook gently until the milk and cereal are thick. Turn off the heat, cover the pot with a lid, and let the cereal rest for a few minutes. I add frozen blueberries at this point. Pour into your breakfast bowl. Add cinnamon, cardamom, or whatever spices you like, and flax meal and walnuts.

*note: I really like the taste of cooked soymilk, though I don't like that of cooked milk. If I was using regular milk, I'd just heat the cereal in microwave and add regular milk to the already-hot cereal. Just be aware, if you decide to cook the cereal in regular milk, that it won't taste like cold milk you added to already-hot cereal.

3. Not-too-sweet Midnight Muffins

One of my quirks is that I love to spread and dip (the little pottamus and I should get along well when he hits toddlerdom), which means that ordinary muffins, meant to be eaten plain in all their sweet-fruity-nutty goodness, don't really satisfy me for breakfast.

As a result, I've tended to like toast more. Unfortunately, I've struggled to find a brand of GF bread that has a decent protein and fiber content and that doesn't contain a lot of starch. Toast is also problematic because it gets cold when you take it to a restaurant. Eating cold toast when everyone around you has warm and crunchy wholewheat makes me want to invest in a travel toaster. So my search for a whole grain bread product that I can spread peanut butter on (isn't all bread just a vehicle for peanut butter?) and that travels well to breakfast restaurants has led me back to muffins.

Enter the pottamus. He hasn't been sleeping terribly well recently, and I've found myself up in the middle of the night, pacing up and down our small downstairs. He usually doesn't buy it. He's not upset; he just doesn't want to sleep. But I've found that baking is a surefire way of getting him to sleep. I wear him in the Ergo carrier or my ring sling and go about cooking. It bores him to sleep, I guess. Either that or there's something more peaceful about the movements I make while cooking than the please-go-to-sleep-so-I-can-go-to-sleep ones I make while pacing. Regardless, I've found myself inventing muffin recipes at 3 a.m. several times recently.

Because I want something healthy for breakfast, my rule of thumbs for muffins for muffins are little or no starch, not too much fat, and not too much sugar. This recipe makes about nine muffins (a strange number, I know, but I'm the only one eating them so I don't like to make too many, in case I don't like them). I eat them split and spread with peanut butter with a touch of honey.

In a large bowl, mix:
1/4 c. corn flour
1/4 c. teff flour
1/4 c. GF oat flour (quinoa or sorghum would also work)
1/4 c. brown rice flour
1/2 tsp. xanthum gum
spices: I like 1/2 tsp. each cinnamon and cardamom
1/8 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda

In a small bowl, mix:
1/2 c. unsweetened applesauce
1 lightly beaten egg
1 tbsp. canola oil
2 tbsp. honey (if you don't want to add jam or PB to your split muffins, you might add 1-2 tbsp. more sweetener)
3/4-1 c. milk

Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients. Mix. Add in 1/3 c. dried fruit (I like chopped dates). Pour into muffin tins and bake for 20-25 min. in at 350. Go put your sleeping baby to bed.

4. Japanese-Style Breakfast

a bowl of rice
a hard-boiled egg, or leftover fish from dinner
miso soup

5. In the Greens Tips for a Healthy Cold Cereal Fix

Gluten-free cold cereals aren't difficult to find: Panda Puffs, Gorilla Crunch, and Brown Rice Twists are fairly ubiquitous in natural food stores. But I didn't eat sweetened cereals before I was diagnosed, and I wasn't about to start buying the organic, GF equivalent of Frosted Flakes just to get a nice, cold crunch on a summer morning. Here are the gluten-free cold cereals I've found that have a decent amount of fiber and protein and little added sugar. I tend to mix several cereals together and often add flax meal and walnuts or almonds to boost my fiber and protein intake (and for the added crunch!).

make your own granola or muesli
Perky O's
Nutty Flax
Mesa Sunrise

A Healthier Gratin

2008-01-31T13:21:00.000-05:00

When I was in college and some friends and I used to do The New York Times crossword every day, I used to say that I'd only marry someone who would do the Sunday puzzle in pen. As NYT crossword aficionados know, the Sunday puzzle isn't terribly difficult--it's about a Wednesday on a difficulty scale that stretches from Monday to Saturday--it's just bigger. The part about having to use a pen is more about attitude than actual smarts (or, rather, esoteric crossword knowledge), the willingness to commit to a guess even if you have to scratch it out later. When the Science Teacher and I started dating, one of the first regular activities we did together was the Sunday puzzle. And, yes, he does it in pen. That, along with a few other characteristics, pretty much sealed the deal for me.

While we don't buy the newspaper any other day of the week, we always buy the Sunday Times. We're horribly stereotypical in our reading: he grabs the Sports; I go for Sunday Styles. But we often read the Magazine together. Sunday supper always starts with a discussion of "The Ethicist", where people write in with their ethical dilemmas for Randy Cohen's snarky, though apt answers, and ends with the Sunday crossword.

Somewhere in between we'll read "The Way We Eat," which the Science Teacher especially loves. You see, he's a meat chef; he excels at the empty-out-the-frig dinners and is always my go-to person when I can't figure out whether I should be adding cumin or thyme. "The Way We Eat" is a column for meat chefs, all about dreaming up dishes, most of which most people who value their hearts wouldn't actually make, like caramelized bacon (ingredients: 1 lb bacon, 1 lb brown sugar). I'm always a little scared that he's actually going to want to make one of those recipes involving two cups of cream and a stick of butter.

I'm a control freak when it comes to food. Sure, you might say, but you're gluten intolerant, it comes with the territory. I can't blame it on the gluten. I'm a butter-cream-and-oil control freak. I've always been this way; food is where I hold my tension. I am getting better though. When the Science Teacher made millet instead of quinoa the other night (they do look alike dry) and added some olive oil and cheese--because, let's face it, dry millet isn't terribly tasty--I almost had to make some quinoa right then without any extras. But at the last moment I took a big breath; said to myself, this is not about quinoa or millet, this is about control; and let it go. The Science Teacher almost fell out of his chair.

In any case, when "The Way We Eat" had a column recently on gratins and the Science Teacher looked at it hopefully, I was a little scared. One recipe called for a cup of cream and a 1/2 lb of brie; the other called for 6 eggs and 2 cups of cream. He assured me that we could make it more healthily with cottage cheese and fewer eggs. I reluctantly agreed.

Looking at the recipes, I realized that a gratin wasn't a last-minute meal. It was going to take over an hour to cook plus the prep time. Even though I knew the Science Teacher wanted to experiment himself, I decided to give it a whirl earlier in the day. I combined both recipes from the column, using potatoes and chard and made a low-fat cheesy bechamel to pour over top of the vegetables. When I picked the Science Teacher up at the gym later in the day, I apologized for poaching his meal with a guilty grin, saying how long it took to cook. He looked at me, smiled wryly, and said, "Is this about time or control?" It's nice that your partner knows you well, I suppose. "Both," I said. He sighed. "That's ok. I'll try it myself some other time. It's probably good that you attempted it first yourself." Home we went to eat. He loved it (and so did I)!

A Healthier Potato-Chard Gratin
This recipe might be nice if half of the potatoes were replaced with another veggie, such as zucchini.

2 large potatoes
1 bunch swiss chard
1 tsp olive oil
1 onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp flour
12 oz can fat free evaporated milk
12 oz low-fat milk
3 oz reduced-fat cheddar, grated
3 oz good quality cheddar or smoked cheddar, grated
1 tsp rosemary
salt and pepper to taste
3 tbsp cornmeal or breadcrumbs
3 tbsp parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 350.

Slice the potatoes 1/8 in. thick. Grease a 7 x 12 casserole dish, and layer half of the potatoes in the bottom of the dish. Remove the stems from the swiss chard and chop the stems and leaves. Saute the stems in a little bit of olive oil for about 2 min. Add the leaves and wilt slightly. Remove from the heat. Spread chard on top of the potatoes.

Saute the onions and garlic in a bit of olive oil until soft. Spread on top of the chard. Layer the rest of the potatoes on top of the onions.

Heat 1 tbsp of olive oil in the sauce pan. Add the flour and cook for about a minute, stirring constantly. Add the evaporated milk and regular milk. Cook until slightly thickened. Remove from the heat and add the cheese. Stir until melted. Add the salt, pepper, and rosemary.

Pour over the potatoes. Sprinkle the cornmeal and parmesan over everything. Pop it all in the oven and bake, covered in foil and bake for 30 min. Remove foil and bake for another 30-45 min, until the potatoes are tender and the top has a lovely golden crust.

Gluten-Free Menus: January 28

2008-01-28T09:33:00.001-05:00

After spending three weeks with Vegan Planet, which I checked out of our local library, I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking to reduce their meat consumption. We tried five recipes from it--a stew, a stir-fry, a sauce, veggie burgers, and croquettes--and all were tasty and easy to prepare. Most of the recipes are either gluten-free or easily converted to gluten-free (i.e. by using GF breadcrumbs). Only a few recipes rely on wheat gluten or use seitan or a grain that not easy to substitute for.

Here's what we're eating this week:

Sunday: turkey cutlets with paprika, walnut-millet-celeriac croquettes (courtesy of Vegan Planet), salad
Monday: Chinese Velvet Corn Soup (from Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special) and a yet-to-be determined asian-inspired salad
Tuesday: broiled salmon, brown rice, miso soup
Wednesday: potato-chard gratin (it will be a combo of the recipes in this article replacing the cream, brie, and tons of eggs with cottage cheese, lower fat cheeses, and fewer eggs)
Thursday: we're out of the house!
Friday:Cranberry and Herb Turkey Burgers (I use quinoa instead of couscous), baked sweet potato fries, challah
Saturday: Turkey Burger redux

Red Lentil-Apricot Soup

2008-01-21T10:06:00.001-05:00

One of our favorite restaurants is That's Life Soup. The owner has a simple and seemingly successful business model: make four or five large pots of soup each weekday morning; sell soup, sandwiches, and salad all day; focus on lunch; sell whatever's left over for dinner. I was lucky enough to go to this restaurant once or twice before giving up gluten--I got to try some of her lovely, grilled sandwiches (think: manchego and mushrooms). And when I was noticeably pregnant this past summer, I got free soup. What a great sale: free soup for mamas-to-be!

After being diagnosed with DH, I ran into the owner on the street one day and asked if many of the soups she cooked were gluten-free. She looked at me in a somewhat annoyed way and said, "there are really too many dietary restrictions for me to take them all into account when I'm planning my menus." Fine, I thought, I didn't want to eat at your stupid restaurant anymore anyway. Which, of course, was a complete lie.

A few months later the Science Teacher and I went back to the restaurant and, lo and behold, all of the soups were marked if they were gluten-free, lactose-free, vegetarian, and vegan. And every time I've been there since, there has always been a gluten-free option. Hmm. Seems like quite a few customers had been asking about their dietary restrictions. The lesson I take from this? Always ask about gluten-free food, because when enough customers ask, owners listen.

During two recent trips, I found a red lentil soup with apricots on the menu. The first time it was so delicious that I went out and bought red lentils with the intention of immediately recreating the soup at home. One of the great qualities of the chef is that she keeps her cookbooks on a shelf in the small dining room. Anyone can walk right up and check out what's in the soups she makes. This recipe is adapted from the Armenian-Apricot Soup in The Soup Peddler's Slow and Difficult Soups. Note: The second time I ordered this soup, it was too sweet--if you're tempted to play, remember, a few apricots go a long way.

Red-Lentil Apricot Soup
serves 4

1/2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1/3 c dried apricots
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1.5 c red lentils
5 c chicken stock
1 c diced tomatoes
2 tbsp lemon juice

Saute the onion, garlic, and dried apricots in the olive oil until the onions are soft. Add the spices and saute for 30-60 sec.

Add the red lentils and stock. Bring to a boil and reduce the heat. Simmer for about 30 min. Add the tomatoes. Cook for 10 min. Puree. Add lemon juice and serve.

Bentos Love Gluten-Free Lunch

2008-01-18T21:00:00.000-05:00

One of the first challenges I had to tackle when I went gluten-free was figuring out how to make myself an exciting lunch. Dinner at our house could be anything, but earlier in the day I was a creature of habit. I needed my oatmeal fix for breakfast and most days I took the same lunch: an Annie’s veggie burger or a peanut butter, banana, raisin, and honey sandwich on my favorite whole wheat oatmeal bread.

I’m back to eating oatmeal thanks to Lara’s, Bob’s Red Mill, and Gifts of Nature. Lunch, however, will never be the same. Annie’s burgers use bulger (try saying that three times fast), and the time may have come for PB&J to be a weekly, not daily, staple in my diet. After a few sad tries with sandwiches on gluten-free bread, I was in the market for a new lunch. I wanted to be the envy of my lunchroom, not the pitiable, gluten-free girl (no offence to Shauna).

Around that time, the Science Teacher, who has lived in Japan, told me about bento lunches. For bento newbies, bento boxes are the compartmentalized, lacquered containers found in many Japanese restaurants. They’re often filled with sushi or sashimi with rice and pickled vegetables. In Japan and increasingly in the rest of the world, bento boxes are also lunch boxes for homemade, packed lunches. Bento lunch boxes aren’t the lacquered trays of your local sushi bar. Instead, they are compact, often stackable boxes with lids packed with many different kinds of beautifully arranged food (or a just few sort of attractively arranged foods). You don't need a special box, though; I've used a square tubberware before. Check out Cooking Cute’s “About Bento” for a great explanation and “Gallery” for cute food inspiration. Just Bento has good information about getting started with bento and includes lunches that are more doable for those of us who don’t have time to cut our vegetables into flowers.

I now own a Mr. Bento lunch thermos and a more traditional stacked bento box. The Science Teacher got a Laptop Lunch for his birthday and now takes his lunches a la bento. Bentos have helped me get away from my sandwich mentality, encouraged me to try out lots of new recipes, and, most importantly, helped me focus on the aesthetic experience of eating in a way that wasn’t, for me, attached to gluten.
Above is a bento I packed for the Science Teacher in his Laptop Lunch. I pack his lunch everyday—it’s my little expression of love that's especially useful on those days when the little pottamus is fussy and we don't have a lot of time for each other. This bento contains black bean mini burgers (a recipe I definitely recommend) and a hardboiled egg on a bed of greens, a dried fruit and nut cup, brown rice with sesame oil, tamari sauce, and cherry tomato halves, and steamed broccoli with tahini-lemon sauce.
And this is a lunch I packed for myself in my traditional bento box. The top tier contains roasted root veggies, marinated chickpeas, and sugar snap peas. The bottom has baked tofu with tamari and sesame oil along with quinoa sprinkled with sesame oil, edamame, and nori. Looks good, huh? Everyone in the lunchroom definitely wanted my lunch that day.

I started this post some time ago. After reading Gluten-Free Bay's recent post about her struggle to balance the "yummy" recipes for gluten-free breads and desserts most people seem to search for with the healthier recipes that she's trying to eat more of, I decided to finish it. Bentos have been a huge part of making my gluten-free lunches healthy (i.e. starch free), as well as fun and beautiful to look at. Check out my favorite bento blogs (Cooking Cute, Just Bento, and Lunch in a Box), and try one for yourself!

Gluten-Free Menus: January 14

2008-01-13T13:44:00.000-05:00

This week I'm participating in the the Gluten-Free Menu Swap hosted by Natalie at Gluten-Free Mommy. The Science Teacher and I have decided to aim for 3-4 vegetarian meals each week in the new year. We eat pretty healthily normally, but, after reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, we both want to try to eat more responsibly as well. For us, this means buying more locally-produced meat and veggies. Finding the ingredients for our meals isn't terribly difficult; we're lucky enough in Vermont to live a near great co-op and farms that produce eggs, all varieties of meat, dairy products, and even some vegetables through the winter. Finding the cash to finance our localvore idyll is something else--good food is a luxury. In this month's Wired, the "Infoporn" section contains a graph that shows where the calories, sugar, cost are in your grocery store. Unsurprisingly, veggies are high in one of those categories and pretty low in the others. I'm sure organic meat would show a similar result if they included such a section. That's where eating less of higher quality meat comes in. For our adventures in vegetarianism, I checked out Vegan Planet from our local library for some inspiration that doesn't involve plain ol' beans and rice.

Sunday: Salmon Cakes (I use canned salmon) and salad
Monday: Three-Way Sesame Coated Tofu (that would be sesame seeds, tahini, and sesame oil), stir-fried broccoli, brown rice (courtesy of Vegan Planet)
Tuesday: Cottage Pie
Wednesday: Artichoke and Chickpea Stew (courtesy of Vegan Planet)
Thursday: Cottage Pie leftovers
Friday: Artichoke and Chickpea Stew leftovers

Eating Out and Gluten-Free in D.C.: Teaism

2008-01-02T08:49:00.000-05:00

I don't like going out to eat as much as my husband does, but I do love to travel and traveling for any amount of time usually means eating out. Last February we took our first gluten-free trip to to Istanbul. I've always prided myself on packing ultra-light and being able to schlep my own bags on any mode of public transportation necessary so I was somewhat disheartened--I think I actually cried, silly as it seems--to have to take, what I considered, a large suitcase mostly full of rice cakes and peanut butter.

It turns out Turkey is a great place to go for gluten-free food, though. I took cards explaining my dietary restrictions in Turkish and handed them out wherever I ate. And eat I did. I ate broiled, whole, fresh-caught fish, I ate kebabs without pita, I ate simmered bean dishes. I ate badem (Turkish amaretti), lookum (Turkish delight), dried fruit, nuts, and lots of yogurt.

Dining in the U.S. is rarely as exciting. Case in point: my family and I went to an old favorite Lebanese restaurant in Washington, D.C. over the holidays. Normally the gluten-free options aren't bad: hummus, ful, stuffed grape leaves. I, however, had the flu. All I wanted was rice and OJ, which you'd think a Middle Eastern restaurant wouldn't have a problem supplying. They were out of orange juice. Not a big deal, I ordered the cranberry. But the rice? It was mixed with vermicelli. Wheat vermicelli. Sigh. I drank my dinner that night.

But D.C. does offer some fabulous gluten-free fare. Teaism, a D.C.-based tea house with three locations, does gluten-free well. Most of the food is Asian--bento box meals, ochazuke (Japanese rice and tea soup), seaweed salad, green tea ice cream--which makes it easier to find gluten-free food. But here's the clincher: on the wall near the cash register, there's a posted list of all of their dishes with columns indicating whether each dish is vegetarian, vegan, or gluten-free and how to adapt each dish, if possible (for instance, leaving out the soy sauce to make the food gluten-free).
What a great idea! I could read what was safe, instead of having to question a poor cashier who may have no idea what I'm babbling about, and the cashier could with confidence refer to the list. They even offer two versions of a classic afternoon tea. The traditional menu involves scones, crustless sandwiches, and tartlets, but the Asian menu is completely gluten free with rice balls, nori, salmon, tofu, pickles, mochi, green tea ice cream, and truffles. Yum. But remember to take your own bottle of wheat-free soy sauce...

Gluten-Free Gingerbread Cookies

2007-12-27T17:33:00.000-05:00

It's not fun being sick over the holidays, especially when your loved ones go out of the way to make gluten-free goodies that you can't eat without feeling nauseous. Sigh. There are, however, baking successes to share, even if I can't eat them. This is my contribution, by the way, to the Gluten-Free Holiday Baking Event sponsored by Gluten-Free Gobsmacked and others. Be sure to check out all of the recipes!

My dessert triumph this year has been gluten-free gingerbread cookies, an adaptation of the cookies I grew up baking with my mom. These cookies were always a major part of our holiday bonding, a recipe whose dough we came to know intimately over dozens of batches and that no one else we knew could make as well.

When I was about eight and, for an unremembered reason, we decided to make gingerbread cookies for the first time, out The Joy Of Cooking came.The 1975 Joy was always the go-to cookbook in our house (I bought the sadly disappointing 1997 edition and immediately reverted to 1975, which this summer still trustily led me through the creation of a perfect lemon meringue pie. I mean, why ditch "The Foods We Eat" sections for a separate part on tofu? Joy isn't exactly my go-to tofu cookbook...The 2006 edition is purported to be a much better revision.). That first time we only baked one gingerbread man at a time to find out whether they should be baked for 7 minutes or 9. We discovered that an 8-minute bake time on insulated baking sheets in our oven was perfect and that the dough doesn't roll out smoothly when the humidity is too high. And, over time, we acquired great seasonal cookie cutters--not the ones with only shapes but ones that imprint pictures of witches, ghosts, Santas, and fir trees on the cookies, too.

The original recipe is about as far from cookie dough in a tube as you can possibly get. The dough and the bake time are pretty finicky, which basically means that a little practice working with the recipe helps a lot. I've made some changes over the years, though, that have helped the dough be more predictable and workable.

Last year at Christmas I tried to make these cookies gluten-free for the first time. I didn't know much about gluten-free baking yet, so I just substituted Bob's Red Mill All-Purpose Gluten-Free Flour, which of course has a garbanzo bean base, for the wheat flour. The rolling out was difficult, though not impossible. Predictably, they came out crumbly and tasting somewhat like chickpeas. Yum.

I tried again this summer, substituting sorghum flour for the flour, adding xanthum gum, and mixing a little canned pumpkin into the dough to make it roll out more easily. The flavor was great, but the consistency was lacking--they still tasted slightly powdery instead of chewy. The dough rolled out more smoothly than they ever had before, so the pumpkin was a keeper.

A few weeks ago, I tried yet again. This time I used a mix of flours: sorghum, corn (I got the idea from Shauna's post about the baked goods she ate in Italy), brown rice, teff, and tapioca flours. I also chilled the dough, which I'd never done before. The result? Just like mom's...

Gluten-Free Gingerbread Cookies
These are spicy so experiment with the level of spice if you want a more mild cookie. Double the recipe for about 3 dozen cookies.

Blend:
2 tbsp butter
1/2 cup brown sugar

Beat in:
1/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup canned pumpkin
1/2 tsp vanilla

Sift:
1/2 cup sorghum flour
1/2 cup corn flour
1/4 cup brown rice flour
1/4 cup teff flour
2 tbsp tapioca flour
2 tsp ginger
1.5 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp allspice, cloves, nutmeg
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp xanthum gum
pinch of cayenne pepper

Mix the flour mixture into the with butter mixture in three parts alternating with 2 tbsp of water (begin and end with the flour). Chill for 30 minutes. Roll out the dough 1/4 inch thick and cut out with cookies cutters. Bake for 8 minutes, or until you can lightly touch your finger to the cookie and any indent pops back, at 350. Makes about 20 cookies, and the recipe is easy to double.

Gluten-Free, Low-Fat Kitchen Sink Cake

2007-12-11T16:37:00.000-05:00

I wouldn’t even post this cake recipe except for the fact that it turned out unexpectedly well and that it entailed very thrifty use of leftovers in my kitchen. I had a bake sale confection to make today, but it’s been snowy and I didn’t feel like cleaning off the car and driving to the store. Add to that the fact that we’re leaving town next week and you get a gluten-free baker out to empty the frig, not fill it up.

The answer: a kitchen sink cake. I started with Karina’s recipe for a gluten-free, vegan coconut cake. Then I raided my refrigerator and cabinets and pulled out everything that needed to go (and that could conceivably be put into one cake): ½ cup of sweetened condensed milk, ½ cup of lite coconut milk, applesauce leftover from Hanukah, ½ a bag of old marshmallows, Bob’s Red Mill pancake mix that I never use, the end of a bag of confectioner’s sugar, a few half empty bags of chocolate chips, some sweetened coconut from the freezer. You get the picture.

Never let anyone tell you that gluten-free baked goods aren’t forgiving. I did keep a few gluten-free baking principles in mind, but basically I was throwing my leftovers in a bowl without really measuring. I would have never done this before going gluten-free. All the experimental cooking has been great for my culinary creativity. This cake turned out great, if not quite sweet enough. But the need for a little more sweetener allowed me to use even more leftovers! Try this out or make up your own kitchen sink cake…

Kitchen Sink Cake

Preheat the oven to 350 and grease an 8 x 8 dish. In a small bowl, combine:
1 ¼ cup Bob’s Red Mill pancake mix (includes xanthum gum, starch, baking powder, baking soda, and salt)
1 tsp baking powder
½ cup cocoa powder

In a large bowl, combine:
½ cup sweetened condensed milk (honey or maple syrup would be fine)
¼ cup packed brown sugar
½ cup lite coconut milk
½ cup applesauce
1 egg

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir in:
½ cup chocolate chips
2/3 cup flaked coconut

Bake for 35-40 min or until an inserted knife comes out clean. Cool in the pan. When cool dust with confectioner’s sugar or frost. You can use your favorite frosting or mix up the one I concocted.

For the frosting, melt over low heat (stir often to prevent burning!):
½ bag of marshmallows
1 tbsp chocolate chips

Transfer to a bowl. With a mixer, blend in the following ingredients, adding enough cocoa and sugar to bring the mixture to the consistency and chocolatiness you desire:
¼-1/3 cup cocoa powder
¾-1 cup confectioner’s sugar
3-4 tbsp milk

Spread over the cooled cake and cut into squares. Eat within a day or two.

New England Comfort Food….with Gluten-Free Brown Bread

2007-11-29T19:39:00.000-05:00

Comfort food in my family is country food: biscuits, pepper-flecked milk gravy, thin-slices of salty country ham. If a snowstorm closed school, I could count on a biscuits-and-gravy breakfast before heading out to stomp out a sled track down the hill behind my house. Comfort food is warm; comfort food is soft; and as much as I love vegetables, comfort food rarely entails anything green.

Not being a native New Englander, I have to take the authors’ word for it when my cookbook mentions classic New England comfort food. But when it’s written about baked beans and bread, I’m inclined to believe them. Baked beans were church-supper staples growing up; they are definitely warm and soft, not to mention cheap and easy to prepare (with a few sliced-up hot dogs, anyone?). I didn’t grow up eating brown bread with my beans, but I read about it. For those of you who read Caddie Woodlawn as kids, remember that her Bostonian mom cooks pans of beans and steamed brown bread for Sunday dinners.

Though I’ve been making a dinner of simmered beans, sweet brown bread, and applesauce since before I stopped eating gluten, I’ve only attempted converting the bread to gluten-free twice. The first time, the result was acceptable but a little dry, so I decided to give it another whirl.

Two-thirds of the dinner was easy. I stewed a pot of navy beans (canned for a quickie dinner) in mustard, maple syrup, and gluten-free barbeque sauce (I use Annie’s). I was also inspired to make apple-quince sauce after reading Gluten-Free Bay’s quince-apple pie recipe and then actually finding quinces in my local co-op. If you haven’t tried them and you’re lucky enough to come across them in the grocery store, definitely give them a try. You do have to peel quinces and they are fairly sour, but they add new flavors to regular apple dishes and are great stewed or in jam.

The brown bread is basically a quick bread, rather than the classic brown bread that is steamed for several hours. The original recipe calls for equals parts cornmeal, rye flour, and white flour. I kept the cornmeal, replaced one part with sorghum flour (my baking flour of choice), and combined teff flour and some Pamela’s mix for the remaining part. Teff and molasses add a nice, dark color. For more moisture, I replaced some of the buttermilk in the original recipe with canned pumpkin.

The Science Teacher gave the bread three thumbs up for taste, moisture, and non-crumbliness! Give it a try on the next rainy or snowy night with your favorite baked beans recipe. It really tastes great! It’s a last-minute dinner bread—just start it baking before making the beans or the applesauce.

Gluten-Free Brown Bread (adapted from “Brown Bread” in the Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites)

This recipe makes one 8.5 x 4.5 loaf pan.

½ cup cornmeal
½ cup sorghum flour
¼ cup teff flour
¼ cup GF flour mix
2 tbsp. dark brown sugar
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
½ cup raisins
1 tsp. xanthum gum
½ tsp. cinnamon
¼ tsp. ginger
¼ tsp. allspice

¼ cup molasses
½ cup canned pumpkin
about ½ cup milk (any kind)

Preheat the oven to 350. Grease one 8.5 x 4.5-inch loaf pan.

Combine all of the dry ingredients, including the raisins, in a large bowl. Add the molasses, pumpkin, and milk and stir until a batter forms. You may need to add a little more milk to obtain a batter-like consistency.

Pour the batter into the pan and bake for 40-45 min., until the loaf is firm and pulls away from the sides of the pan. Cool the bread in the pan for 15 min. before removing from the pan and serving.

Gluten-Free Challah

2007-11-17T17:27:00.000-05:00

As Gluten Free Bay recently mentioned, gluten-free challah represents somewhat of a Holy Grail for gluten-free Jews. There’s no obvious substitute for tearing apart and sharing bread with your friends and family, and that not-so-gentle reminder arrives each Friday at sundown when you hover for Shabbat prayers around a cutting board bearing a braided challah. The first time I had to sing the hamotzi over a rice cracker while everyone else ripped apart the bread, I cried.

And I’m not even Jewish. The Science Teacher is, though, and we have blessed candles, wine, and challah more or less every Friday since we started dating. Sometimes I would make the challah, other times we would buy buttery, sesame challahs from our favorite local bakery, Manghi’s, but regardless we always had bread to share. Even more than the flavor or feel of bread, I missed participating in a ritual I’d adopted. I never fully understood the cultural importance of breaking bread until I couldn’t do it.

For about six months after my diagnosis, I googled “gluten free challah” repeatedly, hoping that someone in the blogosphere had solved my problem already. Pretty soon I came across Sara Nussbaum’s recipe on the celiac.com forums and references to Bette Hagman’s recipe for “New Challah” in the Gluten Free Gourmet Bakes Bread, but I was reluctant to test them. Why? For starters, I was afraid of disappointment. Challah is a specific bread that I associated with a specific taste and texture. What if it tasted like starch, a flavor I loathe? What if it crumbled or wouldn’t rip apart satisfactorily? Also, neither recipe tackled the problem of the braided loaf, a characteristic I considered aesthetically, if not symbolically, critical.

But right before Passover last year—admittedly, an ironic time to be test-driving challah recipes—I decided I couldn’t face another rice cracker Shabbat. I took out Sara’s and Bette’s recipes and decided to get baking. Neither seemed exactly right, so I decided to combine them from the start. I knew I wanted to reduce the starch in the recipes I had, and I knew the challah had to be braided and rippable.

Both Bette’s and Sara’s recipes call for a large proportion of starch. One of my gluten-free baking goals is to pare down the starch in favor of whole grain flours, so I decided to use 1 part starch to 3 parts “regular” flour. Because both Bette’s and Sara’s recipes call for the same amount of liquid (I use two cups of flour which raises to fill the pan), I decided to follow Sara’s recipe for the wet ingredients. Bette’s calls for orange juice, honey, and brown sugar, which I thought might be too sweet for my taste. I used to use oil and honey in my gluten-containing challah, so I thought those ingredients might help make the flavor closer to that of the bread I used to make.

After scouring posts looking for someone who successfully braided a gluten-free challah, I only found one person who suggested piping the dough from a plastic bag with the corner cut off. As I couldn’t figure out exactly how that might work, I decided to do the next best thing: order a braided loaf pan. My version of these recipes doesn’t call for the additional egg yolk because the top of the bread bakes on the bottom of the pan, making it impossible to do the egg wash. I do spray the pan with cooking spray and sprinkle it liberally with sesame seeds.

The result? My gluten-eating father-in-law, who has definitely sampled a large range of challahs in his lifetime, declared it a success and even used some for toast on day 2. It even tastes good untoasted the next day—I actually prefer it untoasted. And the best part? You can rip it apart with your hands.

With all of the gluten-free challah experimentation happening in ovens and being blogged about, I’ll never spend another Shabbat breaking rice crackers! Here’s my recipe. I’m working on reducing the starch even more and on creating a cholesterol free version. Last night I only used two eggs with success. Let me know how it works for you…

Gluten-Free Challah

I regularly halve this recipe successfully—since I make it each Friday and only the Science Teacher and I are eating it, I don’t want tons of leftovers in the freezer—to fill half of the braided pan.

½ cup tapioca flour
½ cup sorghum flour
½ cup brown rice flour
½ cup white rice flour
1 tbsp. yeast
1 tbsp. xanthum gum
2 tbsp. dried milk powder or almond meal

2 tbsp. potato flakes
1 cup warm water
¼ cup oil
¼ cup honey
3 eggs

cooking spray
sesame or poppy seeds

Turn the oven to 200. Spray the pan (I use a Kaiser Bakeware Laforme Braided Loaf Pan) with cooking spray and sprinkle with your seeds of choice.

Combine all of the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Dissolve the potato flakes in the water. Add the water/potato mixture, oil, honey, and eggs to the dry ingredients. Mix on medium for 2 minutes, until the batter looks like pudding. Transfer to the baking pan. Put the pan in the oven and turn the oven off. Let the dough rise until it reaches the top of the pan, about 30-35 min.

Turn the oven to 350 and bake for 50 min. Enjoy warm or at room temperature. Freeze leftovers, if you don’t finish the loaf within 2-3 days.