Category: gluten free

gluten free · gluten free travel

Gluten Free in Lego Land California

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Traveling with food allergies is never done without a whole lot of thought. I get nervous when I travel that I will accidentally eat gluten in something, or that I won’t be able to find anything to eat when I am really hungry. To ease my nervousness I brought quite a few gluten free bars, both Kind bars and NuGo Free ones. It turned out to be fairly easy to find gluten free foods at the park though. When we first got there on the first day we went directly to the closest eating area serving coffee, and while we were in line I looked around at the gf options~ there were pre-made salads, yogurt, and smoothies in the refrigerated areas. Sitting out in the open there were dedicated gluten free baskets carrying snack foods and bars from Nana’s and Think Thin, as well as Sahale nut mixes. When it was lunch time I went into the Garden Restaurant and asked if their soup was gluten free, which turned into a game of telephone, ending up at the manager who got out a big book and walked over to show me that it was not listed as gf because of possible cross-contamination. The tuna was the only option that was listed as gf, without the bread, but he showed me that the pizza place and hamburger place had gf options. I ended up getting the tuna on lettuce instead of bread, which took a very long time and an awful lot of discussion, but when it finally came it was indeed gluten free, and enough to feed three hungry loggers. The next day I looked at the hamburger and pizza place menus to see if the had gf bread or crusts, but did not see anything listed, so I think the gf options must mean fries and salads. I got a premade salad for lunch the next day from the same Garden restaurant as before, and without dressing, it was safe from contamination. There were also popcorn stands around the park, so, in short, celiacs and the like won’t starve at Lego Land, especially if you eat meat b/c I’m sure they can put a hamburger or turkey on lettuce too. As for San Diego itself, we went to a Mexican restaurant called Coyote Cafe for our Thanksgiving dinner (Feliz Thanksgiving!) and they had a small, separate menu of gluten free food. I ordered the fish tacos, which were mediocre, but that was because I didn’t like the fish and there was no cilantro to be found anywhere. Everyone else seemed to really like the food though, so I would definitely try the place again if we are ever in San Diego again. Everywhere else we ate I was able to find salads that were gluten free. It was actually fairly easy~ even the Alaskan Airline flights had gluten free vegan options, which I didn’t try but was grateful for all the same.

gluten free · parenting

Sunday Cooking

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There is nothing better than cooking all day on a rainy, windy, dark Fall Sunday. We had a busy time  outside yesterday, first the zoo for early trick-or-treating, then to a lively farm for pumpkin picking. It was nice out so everyone else was out too, because the forecast for today was not for the weak. Even those native to the area of western Washington have to pause when headed out the door today, although it did not stop the three natives in my life heading out for a Sunday drive. And actually, I heard at the store today that there is a game or two happening today (Huskies? Seahawks? Some other team?) so I’m sure somewhere there is a stadium full of gortex yet remarkably few umbrellas. Before the weather turned quite so wet we went to a nearby elementary school for some playtime. My older son found the baseball pants that his cousins handed down to him so he was immediately interested in baseball, fussing at me to find a baseball shirt and scurrying around the backyard looking for an old, forgotten bat. One does not pick up a bat and perfectly hit a ball (tennis-all we had) from the start though, much to his chagrin. There were some frustrating moments, to put it mildly, and also some moments of pure excitement when he actually hit the ball. My younger son was cold and not thrilled with how wet the playground was. In short, Charles Dickens came to mind as we were packing up to leave, “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” Indeed. Taking refuge in the kitchen was a no-brainer for the rest of the day. Here’s what I made: penne for Asher (boxed shells and cheese. The reason we call it penne is a long story.) A simple green salad with a lot of fresh basil to make it taste not quite so mundane. Chili from scratch~ I used about a cup of veggie stock this time to make it thinner than usual, and I added a big leek, both are changes I like. Then I roasted ridiculously few pumpkin seeds from my older son’s pumpkin with butter and Mediterranean salt. Next I made gluten free cardamom cupcakes with chai “buttercream” frosting~ both are recipes from the gluten free, vegan cookbook put out by the Flying Apron’s original owner, Jennifer Katzinger. I use this cookbook all the time because it uses whole grains and does not use xantham gum, an ingredient in gluten free baking that I’m just not convinced needs to be there. I substituted the garbanzo bean flour with oat flour and as for the liquid sugars, which she gives 3 different ones as an option, I did not have, at least not 3 cups worth. So I used one she recommended (maple syrup) and two others that were not listed as options (honey and molasses.) Obviously, those change the taste quite a bit, but it is still really good. Oh, and I made egg salad. If you happen to live where you can get the Mediterranean salt mix that Whole Foods sells in plastic containers with their own name but it is actually Sarah’s salt mix, then you really need to put that salt into egg salad. And if you can eat that mixture on rosemary bread, gluten free or otherwise, it is awesome.

gluten free

Gluten Free Oat Flour

kristenann2 Comments

I have been baking with a lot of oat flour lately, specifically Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free Oat Flour, and it makes me wonder why more recipes don’t take advantage of this flour…? Granted it can be risky using oat flour that isn’t certified gluten free, but since there is at least one readily available one I’m surprised more gluten free cooks don’t regularly use it. The bread, biscuits and scones I’ve been making have been really good lately. I mean a scone made with oat flour or a scone made with garbanzo bean flour…which would you choose? Last night a mixed up a batch of cinnamon blueberry scones and set the mix in the fridge overnight. Baking them up this morning was especially gratifying b/c the blueberries I used were ones my sons and I picked at the end of the summer.  They really enjoy picking and eating the ones in our backyard, but they actually were not so excited about picking from a blueberry farm. It was a good time all the same, since they got to play Star Wars with our friends who met us there. And they definitely enjoy these scones. They are from the Flying Apron cookbook, but I made them into more of a biscuit size because the way the book has you do it results in huge scones~ that would be all my boys would eat in a day!

gluten free · gluten free bread

Bowls of Memories

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Yesterday afternoon nostalgia struck as I was cutting up veggies for some more lentil soup. When I worked at a natural food store called Rainbow Blossom (yes, it was started by 60s era hippies, how did you guess?!) I ate a veggie soup with a tomato base every day. Even now a certain tomato-veggie soup smell reminds me of that place. When I lived in Prague my flatmate made lentil soup with parsnips. It was such a luxury to eat homemade soup there, as I’ve mentioned before we mostly ate junk, that I have never tried parsnips in my own version, as it would never live up to that memory. While there we did go to a restaurant called Husa, meaning ‘the Goose’, where they served lentil soup in bread bowls. We would go there often on Friday afternoons after picking up our checks from the language agency that employed us, as well as our work schedules for the following week. Fridays were great for that reason~ I normally had one morning class to teach, and then the long weekend stretched out before us, starting with a visit to Husa with whichever of the teachers cared to joined us. I often ate that lentil soup in a bread bowl with a dark beer, then went home and napped. The life of a singleton with no real responsibilities! Of course, as luxurious as that was, I didn’t feel well. I didn’t know it was the gluten at the time, but I did have a feeling it was something I was putting into my body, and I was scared it was too much coffee. At least I can still get overly wired, if not accompanied by a ‘regular’ bagel. I’m tempted to try to make bread bowls though~ gluten free of course. It shouldn’t be that hard although I think a bit of a rye taste would be best for the lentil soup. If I come up with a recipe I’ll post it, or post the link if someone already has made them.

gluten free · gluten free bread

Fall, Rain, and Warm Kitchens

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The weather has changed and so have the recipes we are craving in our little house. I spent all day yesterday in the kitchen, making gluten free focaccia based on the recipe in Gluten Free Baking Classics, to accompany the White Bean Salad which is a combination recipe from my mother-in-law and myrecipes.com. It actually calls for tuna but neither my mom-in-law nor I added it, enjoying the beans, hearts of palm (her brilliant addition), and capers with olive oil, vinegar, and fresh herbs on their own. I also squeezed some lemon juice on it, and added dried herbs along with the fresh (basil, oregano, the usual Italian ones.) Once I made it with green onions instead of the red onion it calls for and liked it just as well. It is a great pairing~ the focaccia and the beans. My seven year old loved both, surprisingly, and seeing me in the kitchen all morning inspired him to make cookies. He got out his little cookbook and apron (I don’t even have an apron!) and we were warming the oven back up for chocolate chocolate- chip cookies. They turned out okay, both the boys liked them, but the recipe is definitely dubious. I too felt the need to make something sweet and dessert-y, but couldn’t find a recipe that didn’t require me to go to a store, which meant putting on clothes that weren’t lounge-around-the-house clothes and that just was not going to happen. Maybe today.

gluten free

Vegetarian Chili and Gluten Free Corn Bread

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Autumn began on Friday, so of course chili was not far behind. The cornbread with it was a delightful combination this weekend, but will be even better on this cooler, rainier, Fall-ish Monday evening. The chili was the very healthy version I have written about before here. The picture to the right shows what it starts out as, a rainbow of veggies. I may have even added more of the veggies this time around, and it was delicious. My husband and I enjoyed it thoroughly, although my oldest son just picked the beans out and spread them on his quesadillas that accompanied his meal.  He likes his veggies a little soupier. My youngest son did not even try the chili, but he did try the cornbread and, shockingly, he loved it! It is really good, but this little guy only likes about 5 things and not one of them begins with “made from scratch”, until now that is. The recipe is from Annalise Roberts’ Gluten-Free Baking Classics, although I used Bob’s Red Mill GF baking mix instead of her flour mixture. The only thing I found lacking was the actual corn taste. It was definitely cornbread, but I think I would like it a bit corn-ier. On second thought, if my youngest will eat it as is, then I won’t change a thing.

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Hummus for Breakfast

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Before yesterday I never considered hummus a breakfast food. Then I toasted a gluten free English muffin and was all set to put some avocado on top, with tomato slices (from the tomato plant in the backyard) and fresh basil leaves off the plant in the kitchen, when I was dismayed to find the cut avocado was already more brown than green. No! I needed something else, so I reached for the hummus and lo and behold it was excellent! It felt healthy, filling, and most importantly, delicious. I recommend it.

gf bread · gluten free

Bread

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In the book Sugar Blues there is a story about how Andy Warhol used to go to the trouble to make himself a nice steak, then while it was cooking he’d eat bread with jam on it because, “all I really want is sugar”.  I feel the same way about bread. As a child I would eat wheat at every meal, and I mean the wheatiest wheat. While other kids begged for sugary cereals, I’d eat grape nuts with gusto, then often a wheat bagel for lunch, and either a sandwich on whole wheat bread or pasta for dinner. In my last year of college I worked at a Great Harvest in Cincinnati where we were allowed to take home old loaves. I lived on that bread, and when I went “grocery” shopping I’d go to a bagel shop and get a dozen plus about twice as many cans of diet coke. Maybe I overdid it…? Now, I don’t mind gluten free crackers or other baked goods~ I like Food for Life’s English muffins, PCC’s zucchini muffins (when my kids aren’t looking I can sneak one out of the four-pack) and I have made some decent scones and biscuits, but bread…it just isn’t the same. I have looked all over the Internet and in books for recipe that doesn’t call for a bunch of different flours and gums to just make a nice bready-bread, but it seems most people use about 4 different flours to try to emulate the texture, taste, and rise of wheat bread. This is off-putting to me simply b/c it waters down the whole grain taste with a much ‘whiter’ taste. Plus, I’ve heard some not-so flattering things about those gums. What are xantham and guar gums, anyway? I made the quinoa bread from Flying Apron’s book last night which I really like, but it isn’t a sandwich bread, nor a dipping into soup bread, so it is just an eat and enjoy bread, which is fine every once in a while, but I am determined to find something more versatile.

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September

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These last couple of weeks have been eventful with summer ending and school beginning, a transition that was more poignant this year because my youngest started Kindergarten. Late August and September are actually host to my favorite time of year, when Fall starts to beckon softly at night and linger in the morning breeze. But there is a melancholy to it, that either suits one or it doesn’t, and I can understand why some people prefer Spring. For me that melancholy hits me low in the stomach, colored with hope, nostalgia, longing, appreciation, and a need for beauty…and I like it. It fuels me, somehow. Unfortunately I could use a dose of direction too, but the autumn winds don’t seem to carry that in her basket this year. She’s a bohemian at heart, at least in my mind’s eye, wearing bright colors with a haphazardness that accompanies her C’est la vie attitude. The leaves fall where they may, skirts flutter, sweaters shrug on and off as the sun plays off-handedly. With both my sons in school now I suddenly find myself alone for hours per day for the first time in over seven years, and I seem to be flapping my wings and getting no where. It’s only the third day, but really, I’ve gotten remarkably little done in those three days and it bothers me. This morning I ran into a good friend at the school drop off and we went to the Flying Apron for coffee and gluten free goodies, which was a treat indeed. They were playing really good music, the art has been changed since last week and I liked it, and the espresso was just what I needed. Another good friend told me about a new place in Redmond that is allergy-free and looks awesome~ we’ll be trying it soon with more information to follow. It makes me grateful, once again, to live somewhere with so many options for gluten free living, especially since last week I must have eaten some wheat accidentally because I felt sick for days. The reactions are definitely getting more severe which is not what I expected at all. Shouldn’t my intestines be getting healthier? What is the deal? Maybe I’ll use some of my new alone hours to find a Gastroenterologist who has more to tell me than, “you are too dark to be a celiac. They are fair. You look more like you are lactose intolerant.” Seriously, that was all I got from him. Then he read my palm. No, just joking about that part but that is how it felt! He did say that many people have problems with gluten, not just celiacs, but I guess I want someone to tell me for sure if I have a genetic issue or not, and not just jump to a conclusion by my skin/hair/eye color. I would like to know if my children are susceptible or not, after all. Don’t they have x-ray vision goggles yet in doctor offices? Someone should invent that.

food · gluten free · gluten free food · gluten free foods · gluten free symptoms · gluten free travel · gluten intolerance · gluten intolerance diagnosis · gluten intolerance symptoms · gluten intolerant

Pineapple Juice

kristenann1 Comment

While living in Prague my spectacular flatmate and I talked about everything under the sun, but really, the majority of the time, by a significant amount I’d say, we talked about food. Usually it was what we’d be eating if we were home right now, or in some other city, or what we ate at such and such restaurant, and what we would like to cook if only we could find the ingredients in these tiny little grocery stores. Because of that, I know far more about the frozen foods in Canada’s fine stores than any American should, and she probably will make a pilgrimage to a certain dark coffeehouse in a bad corner of Cincinnati one day. At the time we were both pescatarians in a city that is more red meat and potatoes than Texas. Needless to say, our options were limited. We lived on bread and cheese and surprise, surprise, I got horribly sick for months. At that time I was not aware of my gluten intolerance, but my natural foods background let me know it was something diet related. I started steaming broccoli for breakfast and living off Uncle Ben’s minute brown rice. And pineapple juice. Prague didn’t have much in the way of juices, but it had the best pineapple juice ever~ we drank it daily out of the same kind of box we later in the day would drink our ‘fine’ wines. The juice sections in Prague grocery stores at the time amounted to about half of an end cap. My flatmate went to Berlin over the holidays and all I remember from her trip was that the juice sections there were whole aisles, just like here. Anyway, at Trader Joe’s last night I saw they have a new pineapple juice in the cold section and I just had to try it. The ones in glass that sit on the shelf have never lived up to Prague’s standards so I have cautious hopes for this one. It isn’t organic so I won’t get it often, but in homage to my lovely friend and our days in Prague I’m going to down a glass and then throw together a sopsky’s salad, hold the fried cheese, please.