Living Gluten-Free

I just made this Banana Crunch Cake from Gluten Free is Life. It was moist and delicious. She said it was a coffee cake but it would be just as good without the oatmeal crumble topping IMHO. It was not grainy -- it seriously took me back to my gluten days. It was full bodied and had a crumb just like a cake. It only called for oat flour -- no mixing or multiple flours and no guar or xanthan gum! It was easy and yummy!

It still amazes me how the gluten free products I try just keep getting better and better. I have learned a few things in the past year. 1.) The pre-made items are okay but can range from food grade cardboard to good but grainy. 2.) Some of the best brownies I have had were from a gf mix. Mixes are better than already made gluten-free products. 3.) The best gluten-free products that don't taste gluten free are the ones made from scratch.

I think I may be dreaming of this banana cake tonight. I am glad I did make it tonight (and sample it), with Little Miss Muffet's help (she helped sample it, also), because this means breakfast is made for in the morning.

Gluten-free living is getting easier. This past weekend we went on a scout camp out. It was rainy and cold! We were so glad our troop was in charge of cooking, that meant we could help out in the kitchen in exchange for beds in cabins and buildings. The first morning all those campers filed in looking forward to that warm liquid to help warm them up, whether it be hot chocolate or coffee. There were murmurs of the coldness and dampness and hopefulness it would warm up. My room was blazing hot, probably 90 degrees. It was absolutely stifling. I didn't dare complain because I was so glad to be warm and not sleep on rocks and have a bathroom literally three footsteps away from where I laid my head.

Working and helping out in the kitchen was fun. My entire family lent a helping hand with each meal in some capacity. One neat thing about helping with the food was access to the menu before hand -- also there was the boon of making sure there was not any cross contamination. Knowing the head cook helped so much because he kept our food needs in mind. I forgot we were having spaghetti, so really it only helps when one remembers things they shouldn't forget. We talked about what LMM and I would eat for dinner that night. We were hoping there would be a left over hamburger patty from lunch for each of us.

It's neat how things work out. We were both able to eat spaghetti!! Another camper also had Celiac. Her mom had made an entire package of gf pasta noodles. When she dropped them off in the kitchen ahead of time, I was able to introduce myself and I was able to glean some neat ideas from her. Her family has been gluten free for 8 1/2 years! She told me of an Asian market in town where I will be able to buy stir-fry to go and flours/noodles much cheaper than at the health food store. Yippee! She offered to share the noodles with us also. Usually, I would have thanked her but said no-thank-you. Not that afternoon, the noodles were good, they were not any noodles I had bought before. They were good, I just seemed to have required a lot of sauce with the noodles. I hope I can one day repay the kind act. Maybe I will make this banana cake and wrap up a couple of slices for her dear daughter.

The gluten free life just keeps getting better and better.

What's for supper...?

For some reason I didn't make out a menu for this week but I've had fun trying new recipes. So far I've made my grandmother's Chop Suey -- delicious! Then I made cabbage rolls, a black bean soup (I'm still searching for that special black bean soup recipe). I also made sandwiches, pimento cheese sandwiches. I used Paula Deen's recipe of which she credits her son. It contained cream cheese, grated cheddar, grated onion and I used roasted red peppers that I diced. It was delicious, we much prefer the cheddar to Velveeta. That brings us to dinner tonight.

I had some tilapia. Hmmm, what to make... so I searched and came up with this Spanish Moroccan Tilapia from allrecipes.com. We placed the tilapia and the Moroccan vegetables and broth atop some De Boles multi grain gluten-free spaghetti style pasta. Next time I would serve this on top of some brown rice, but we've had rice several times this week. The pasta was different, it was made with rice, quinoa, and amaranth. It was kind of crunchy on the inside but looked done on the outside. I cooked it for the recommended time. It was fine and made the dish not so soft.

It smelled wonderful when it was cooking and we all enjoyed it. It is definitely a keeper. I don't know if I will put it in rotation but it's great for those nights when you want something different. It was easy to make, there was a lot of dicing of vegetables but very easy to prepare. I did not add the garbanzo beans because I did not have them on hand. For the two red bell peppers I substituted mini sweet peppers. They are yellow, orange and red and added some really pretty color to the mixture. I used all the kalamata olives I had on hand, probably twelve or so. I diced them pretty small. The purplish-black flecks added a nice contrast visually to the dish.

The dish was a hit and the pictures don't do it justice. I was going to also include a picture when the tilapia was cooking but it was not visually appealing, it was just white globs on top of red. It tastes much better than the pictures look.

Produce Gems

I took an unplanned trip to the grocery store Tuesday, which is rare. Usually I have my menu plan made and the shopping list made from that before I go. We were in need of some fresh vegetables and fruit and I didn't want to wait until the scheduled shopping day.



I have read and heard over and over again, "Never go to the grocery store when you are hungry." Well, I didn't heed this advice. It was bad enough that I didn't have my trusty list.



With Celiac, it's not like I can buy cookies and chips and the regular junk food, but I wasn't hungry for junk food. I discovered many treasures in the produce department. I took time to stop and look because I didn't have my list.



We bought purple cauliflower, leeks, jicama, watercress, and broccosprouts along with the regular produce.



I decided to make pureed cauliflower for the first time, I even thought maybe I could pass it off for mashed potatoes to DH. I thought this wonderful, lavender find would turn white when I cooked it, just like the seeds I told you about in an earlier post from rareseeds.com. This variety became brighter and more purple as it cooked. Wow! How was I going to pull off purple mashed potatoes... I followed a simple recipe I found on http://www.recipezaar.com/ . I don't remember which recipe, but it had some water, chicken bouillon and a garlic clove that you cooked the cauliflower in. Then you puree it with some cream and butter. It looked like purple grits! It was tasty, it had a definite garlic taste, the texture was a bit different. I'm not sure what bright purple, look-like-grits, glop of goo is supposed to taste like but we never imagined garlic! It was all eaten but the white variety would probably work best next time.



I had chopped the jicama into thick matchsticks, so they looked like uncooked french fries. Some went into the salad. I thought it might be a good crouton substitute. We had fun munching on the left over jicama. We love jicama now. Tonight we finished it up, I spiced it up with some lime juice and lime zest and sprinkled it with chili powder and salt. It was yummy! It was a great snack, especially when you want something zesty and crunchy.



We are enjoying the watercress in our salads and on sandwiches. The sprouts are a welcome addition also. These new items have really dressed up our salads and made them more appealing. No more boring salads!



I've never bought/used leeks before, so I guess I'll be making potato and leek soup. These new produce items have really created some excitement. Everyone has been open to trying the new items, no matter what color they are!

Stealth Vegetables

In an attempt to provide adequate vegetables and fruits for my family, I added a stealth vegetable to a meal a few nights ago.

I made chili, I knew it was going to be a one dish meal, so I wanted to make sure to pack in some vegetables. I added a large can of organic diced tomatoes, but I do that every time. This time I added shredded carrots. The thick rich sauce of the chili hid the carrots. The carrots cooked and were tender. Mission accomplished.

I did not sit down and write out a list of New Year's Resolutions, but there are things on my mind that I want to accomplish this year. Don't get me wrong, I am definitely a list person. I love making lists, although they always seem so long ... I love marking through a task as it is completed and have the satisfaction of accomplishment, no matter how small or large the task. I hve come across lists that I have made, thankfully I have dated them, a year or two later and have found I have accomplished many things on that list even though I don't remember writing the list.

I didn't want to make "Resolutions", I just have a mental list of things I want to integrate into our daily life. One was start a new blog - well, that is done, you are reading it. I started one about four years ago, but abandoned it three years ago. I wanted a fresh start, so many things are different in my life now so I wanted a new blog to reflect that.

Sometimes we have one dish meals. Before finding out about having Celiac, we had homemade pizza quite often, once a week sometimes. Little Miss Muffet had even memorized the recipe. I would also make a salad to have with the pizza, but the salad was ignored. I don't know if we just got tired or bored with salads but they were ignored quite often, I was tired of wasting the money on salads only to see if the dogs would actually eat it. I decided it is just easier to add the vegetables to the pizza or whatever else might be on the menu. Tonight was stuffed baked potatoes. I seasoned the ground meat with Simply Organic's taco seasoning (it's gluten free). I thought about adding some stealth vegetables to it, but decided against it. There were the usual offerings; cheese, sour cream, onion, ground beef, sliced kalamata olives, but I also put out sundried tomatoes, organic baby leaf lettuces, mini sweet peppers (I love those things) and pepperoni. Okay, pepperoni isn't a vegetable but it was eaten just the same. I'll chronicle my attempts at stealth vegetables to save uneaten salads from the non-existant compost bin. In the middle of winter, there just isn't enough green matter to begin a compost bin.

Okay, all of this talk of food reminds me, I need to make out the menu for the coming week.

Wonderful Gluten-Free Bread

Since Little Miss Muffet was diagnosed with Celiac last February and me just a month later, the journey for a fresh, soft yeasty bread has been long and not the textures we had imagined, until today. Little Miss Muffet made the Bob's Red Mill Homemade Wonderful Bread Mix.

It was easy to make, rose high, and almost tastes like we are cheating. It doesn't have the dense cornbread like consistency of the breads we have tried. After letting it rest for a while, I slathered it with butter and lemon curd. It was light, airy, fluffy, yeasty and tasty. Yum! I'm sure this loaf is going to be eaten pretty quickly! It does have cornstarch in it, so Little Boy Blue can't eat it since he is allergic to corn. I did find Oro Wheat bread, it is made without high fructose corn syrup, Little Boy Blue enjoyed having a grilled cheese sandwich today. We also try to stay soy-free since Little Boy Blue and I both are hypothyroid.

Look how high this rose. You can see the indention where the top of the pan was. I'm thinking sandwiches for supper, french toast for breakfast...Yum! Next bread we will try is a few from scratch, we hope it will be as good as this one is.