Gluten-Free Cooking Made Easy

I have a secret.  As much as I love cooking and baking, some of my favorite recipes mostly come from a box.  I know.  It's not exciting or sexy or a good recipe, but sometimes it's not worth the extra effort.  I mean really, I've never made my own pie crust, and yet I've received tons of complements on it.  I feel that pancakes fall into the same category.  Go for the mix!  Now that I'm eating gluten-free, my new favorite pancake mix is the Fresh & Easy brand.  But any brand will do.  I mix mine with soy milk or coconut milk.  And the real secret?  I fry them up in coconut oil.  Seriously.  Try it.  You won't even need syrup.  

I also add chocolate chips.  Because everything tastes better with chocolate.  Just make sure the chips you buy are also gluten-free.  I could eat these every day for breakfast, except that they're not all that good for me as an everyday meal.  

You can also experiment.  Sometimes I substitute things like oatmeal or quinoa ground into flour for some of the pancake mix.  Or add blueberries or bananas in lieu of chocolate chips.  Or in addition to chocolate chips!

I also tried something new today.  I started with some Glutino pretzels.  If you're looking for things like bagel chips or pretzels of the gluten-free variety, I highly recommend this brand.  I try to minimize how many "fake" wheat things I eat, but sometimes you just want something with your hummus or guacamole or cheese that is not made of vegetables.

Next, I melted some chocolate.  I leave it up to you which kind of chocolate you like.  I like dark chocolate, so I used a Ghiradelli Extra Dark Chocolate bar.  I melted it in a frying pan, as my double boiler was packed away.  You have to keep the heat low and be careful not to burn the chocolate.  I lined a cookie sheet with wax paper and poured the melted chocolate over the pretzels.  I mixed them around in the chocolate, and put the whole thing in the freezer to set.  I'm sure there's a more elegant way to do this with less chance of melty chocolate covered pretzels when you're done, but I'm ok with eating mine out of the freezer.  

A Change In Direction: How do you eat when your food is trying to kill you?

So back when I started this (and when I actually posted), this was meant as a collection of modified recipes to track when I tried to make things healthier, or cope with only having whatever ingredients were on hand.  But 8 months ago I was diagnosed with a host of food allergies - including tree nuts, wheat, tomatoes, squash, and celery.  Celery.  Who is allergic to a plant that is basically water????

This has made eating hard.  Wheat is in everything.  Celery is in most soup stock, so that's hard.  If I want to order a salad is it often full of nuts or tomatoes to compensate for the lack of wheat and celery.  Bottom line:  food is trying to kill me!  Well, I'm not that allergic (yet), but it's definitely doing its best to make me an itchy, snotty, inflamed mess.

This means that I need to step up cooking, and also step up my creativity while cooking.  So I'm attempting to step up the blogging, and share my new allergen free takes on recipes.  Stay tuned!

Dream Dinners: Sweet Potato Lamb Shepherd's Pie

Yesterday's request from my husband:  Do you know what would be delicious?  A Shepherd's Pie with sweet potatoes.  Me:  I can't eat beef (technically I can, but it's one of dozens of foods I have a mild allergic reaction to, so I try to avoid it).  But don't you think lamb might be delicious?

And so the below cooksperiment was born.

I browsed a few sweet potato recipes and shepherd's pie recipes, but all seemed to have one thing or another I'm avoiding because I either have to (tomatoes) or should (dairy).  So this is a bit of a mash up of what I found on the web.  WARNING:  I don't measure anything when I cook like this, so it's all best guesses.

Pie Filling:

Brown 1 lb ground lamb (I used a ceramic dutch oven that could go straight to the oven, but a frying pan would work too).  Remove when cooked, drain oil.
Saute 2-4 cloves of garlic in coconut oil.  After about a minute (when the garlic smells fragrant), add one yellow onion, diced.  Cook until translucent.
Add 1-2 cups sliced mushrooms and continue cooking for another 3-5 minutes.
Add 1/2 cup each frozen peas and corn.  Cook until they become bright.
Add the lamb back in with 1/2 cup chicken broth (or broth of your choosing) and set to simmer.  Add a dash of basil, cinnamon, thyme, salt, pepper (to taste), and a bit of flour as a thickener (I used gluten-free flour).  Simmer approx. 5 more mins.

Sweet Potato Topping:

Peel, cut into small rounds, and boil 2-3 large sweet potatoes (or yams) until tender.  This should take about 20 mins at a boil.  Remove from water, and mash with 2 TBS coconut oil, 1/2 cup unsweetened coconut milk (or fat and milk of your choice).  Add a bit of cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice.

Top pie filling with a mashed sweet potato crust, and bake for 25 mins at 350.  It should then look like this:

Let it sit and cool for 10 mins, and then it's ready!  We had 4 testers last night and all were fans!  The best part is that it was gluten, tomato, beef, and dairy-free!  Allergen free meal.  

Trust me - it tastes a lot better than it looks....

Allergic to EVERYTHING

I recently started allergy testing.  I'm only halfway through foods, but suddenly wheat, tree nuts, tea, celery, squash and tomatoes are all off limits.  Tomatoes and wheat.  What kind of Italian am I????  On the borderline list is dairy, beef, corn, pears, beans (incl peanuts) and chocolate.  CHOCOLATE.  If coffee was on that list all my vices would be forbidden and I would have gone into far worse of a tail spin than I already had.  How does an amateur foodie who loves to cook live without all these foods?  Worse - how does someone with my work hours find enough time to prep foods that won't make me itch and sniffle and possibly someday have a deadly reaction to?  The hardest part so far has been keeping my energy up while hiking - all of my traditional hiking snacks are suddenly off limits.

I have a long way to go before the list of allergies stops growing and I get a good handle on what to eat.  But I'm finally up for the challenge, and I'm going to have to get creative with my cooking!

Spaghetti Squash for the Week

Spaghetti Squash is rapidly becoming my go to lunch for the week. This time I prepared it with veggies and homemade turkey meatballs.Prep: Roasted squash (cut in half) for 25 minutes at 400 degrees. Rubbed brown sugar/salt on the cut side first. Roast cut side down, cool on rack for 10 minutes. Then scoop out the seeds and shred the squash with a fork to get the spaghetti.

To this I added sauteed kale and mushrooms and a half cup of parmesan cheese - instant weekday lunch!

To go with this, I made meatballs with a combo of ground turkey and ground sweet italian pork sausage. I used a meatloaf recipe and then baked it in mini muffin tins. Here was the end result:

YUM!

Wheat Germ Banana Pancakes

A few weeks ago we went to visit my old roommate in Monterey, and she took us to a breakfast spot called First Awakenings. There we had the most delicious wheat germ banana pancakes. Wes and I were obsessed. This morning I was determined to make something similar. I was feeling a little lazy, so started with a pre-made pancake mix from Sprouts. I'll still fine tune this recipe, but the first attempt was pretty great. The wheat germ adds a crunchy texture that we both love, and next time we'll add more. I also used only 1/2 a banana in the mix, and I'd add a whole banana next time. This recipe made 6 pancakes.

Ingredients:

1 cup Sprouts whole grain pancake mix

1/2 cup fat free milk

1 tbs oil

1 large egg

wheat germ

bananas

Directions:

Mix the pancake mix with the milk, oil and egg until combined. Add sliced banana and mix. Heat a griddle and grease with butter. Drop pancake mix in about 1/4 cup sizes onto the griddle. Sprinkle top liberally with wheat germ. Cook until bubbles form - flip and cook another minute or two more. Top with sliced bananas and your favorite Vermont maple syrup. Enjoy!

Easy Chicken Korma

Laziness and a desire for something tasty sometimes combine well. Found a jar of coconut curry (korma) sauce at Sprouts and picked it up on impulse. Came home, sauteed chicken, cauliflower, onion, red bell pepper and sweet potato (pre-cooked and cubed) in olive oil and chili powder. Added the sauce and simmered for about 10 minutes. Served with rice, roti and a bottle of Cougar Vineyard's Full Monte Wine. Delicious!