Don't hold the anchovies!

Hello all, another weekend has come and gone, all too fast for me. ::sigh::

On Friday, I tutored again in the evening, so that meant another dinner out. But, during the day I took a few moments to bake something. I had been eying this recipe among many others on Karina's blog, so I made it!

Here's one of my squares:



Yum! They were of course delightful--a chewy cakey brownie-like cookie bar or something to that effect. ;-) But they were delicious. They actually weren't too sweet which I was concerned about given the amount of sugar and the sweetened coconut and so on. But really, the amount of flour offsets this and allows them to be just sweet enough. I used coconut oil and a GF flour blend that I put together with sorghum, rice flour, potato and tapioca starch and xanthan gum. These were delightful, and it's awesome that I can just pull one or two (or ten) out of the freezer whenever I feel like one!

On Saturday evening, I kept it simple and pretty much had a repeat dinner here. I picked up some wild-caught Alaskan cod and marinated it in a sake-soy marinade (2 Tbsps sake, 1.5 Tbsps wheat-free tamari, pinch of sugar, and chopped green onions) and then gently pan-cooked the fillets with some minced garlic. I served it with some brown rice, spooning some of the marinade juices in the pan on the rice, and some steamed broccoli tossed with extra-virgin olive oil, lemon juice, sea salt, black pepper, and red pepper flakes. Simple, but delicious:



Then for dinner last night, I went to my Sicilian roots. As you may have noticed, I don't cook much in the way of Italian food, preferring instead to cook other Mediterranean-inspired dishes. But, I had this inspiration last night when I remembered how much my mom always raved about a dish that her sister always made her when she visited her when I was young and in school. The dish is, simply put, spaghetti with anchovy sauce:



There are many subtle variations in recipes on the internet, but they are not too different from each other. I just made it based on my mom's descriptions when I was a kid (which at the time I thought were "gross" but as an adult, I find it quite appealing!). So, I cooked up some brown rice spaghetti. I'm finally getting the hang of cooking up the GF pasta without over or under-cooking it--it's not quite as easy a semolina pasta. Anyway, while the spaghetti was cooking, I put a few tablespoons of light olive oil in a small pan and gently sauteed about 4 cloves of minced garlic. I then added a can of wild-caught anchovies (I left the oil behind) and gently broke them up and delicately simmered the mixture to infuse the oil with the garlic and anchovy flavor. I also added some red pepper flakes. I also added about 2 Tbsps of the spaghetti water to add just a touch of starch to the anchovy sauce. When the spaghetti was done and drained, I tossed it with the anchovy sauce which was incredibly flavorful and provided just enough coating without drowning the pasta. I also added some chopped fresh parsley and some pine nuts. Man, can I tell you how good this was!

To accompany the pasta, I made some green beans sauteed with some reduced plum tomatoes:



Again, easy. I just prepped the fresh green beans and chopped two plum tomatoes. I then quickly sauteed some minced garlic and then added the green beans and tomatoes and let it gently stew until the green beans were crisp tender. I also seasoned them with some sea salt, black pepper, and red pepper flakes. To serve, I sprinkled on some freshly-grated parmesan cheese.

It was a great dinner with some nice red wine.

Finally, I was sooo happy this weekend when I finally found some GF oats at a supermarket that I've begun going to. They are so hard to come by! In fact, I ordered some online but they were back-ordered so I figured I'd be waiting for quite some time to have oats again. But, I got lucky this weekend and got the last package.

So, before going to bed last night, I prepped some oats so that I could get up this morning, turn on the oven and put the dish in there to bake. I began by mixing up some molasses, coconut oil, agave nectar, and egg and some rice milk in a dish. I then added some baking powder, sea salt, and cinnamon. Finally, I stirred in the oats and some unsweetened organic coconut. I then washed, cored, and sliced an organic apple and layered the slices at the bottom of a pie plate. I then spread the oat mixture on top of that. I baked the oats at 350 for about 20 minutes this morning and enjoyed a nice healthy dose!



It may not be the most beautiful dish, but it sure was fantastic!

Jackie wants a cracker...

...and she made some! Happy Friday. One food I immediately missed with the GF diet was crackers. I eat a lot of hummus and other types of dips of a similar nature, and not having easy access to crackers is hard sometimes. For Christmas, I received two GF cookbooks and one of them contains a chapter with cracker recipes. I've been avoiding making crackers because I had a couple of earlier attempts when I was new at GF baking that just went "so-so". But in looking through the recipes again this week, the cheese crackers recipe had me remembering the yummy salty cheesy goodness of "Cheezits" and I decided that it was worth a short. The recipe was pretty easy too. So, yesterday, I took a break from my writing and got on it and the result:



A plate full of tasty cheesy salty GF crackers. Yum! The only thing I could've done differently is let them bake even longer to get more crispy. I already had them in the oven longer than the recipe called for, but they could've been in longer. The crispier ones towards the edges were wonderfully cheesy and crunchy. The softer ones were still good, but I prefer the crisp. Nevertheless, they are addictively good and I will definitely be making these again!

For dinner, I kept it simple and made an Asian noodle salad:



...with shrimp on the side:



The salad was just some rice stick noodles cooked and cooled and tossed with some cucumber, cabbage, carrots, and shallots. I then tossed the mixture in a Malaysian sauce of soy sauce, lime juice, garlic, green onions, chili paste, and some brown sugar. I added some ginger and sesame oil as well to round out the flavors. I also put some crushed peanuts on top of the salad.

I cooked the shrimp by first quickly marinating it in some lime juice, sea salt, and white pepper and then gently pan-cooking it.

Finally, this morning, I was awaken early at 8:30 (lately for me, that's early, but fortunately I've been sleeping better these last couple of nights) and so I made myself some cornbread pancake muffins:



I call them cornbread pancake muffins because I used glutenfreemommy's cornmeal pancake recipe which leads to amazing cornbread-tasting pancakes and baked them in muffin cups to have real cornbread tasting muffins. Fresh out of the oven I melted on some coconut oil for extra nutrition. Mmmmm. Some melted cheddar or some fruity preserves would also go great on them!

Have a nice weekend and hopefully the sun will shine even if just for a little bit!

Currying favor with this dish

For dinner last night, I made what I had originally planned to make the previous night. And thank goodness because I ended up having yet another terrible allergy yesterday and needed nothing more than this wonderful Thai yellow curry:



Okay, so this was as authentic as I could make it from scratch. A trip to the Asian market provided me with all I needed (minus the kaffir lime leaves which I couldn't find, D'OH!). I used this recipe, following it along. The only two differences were the lack of the lime leaves and I used a sweet potato instead of regular potatoes.

Overall, it was fabulous--a true curry. I fear, however, that the sweet potatoes made the dish tooo sweet and some of the savory aspects of the curry were lost. Next time, I'll stick with the regular potatoes. I also steamed some Jasmine rice and the steaming method produces much better rice than the boiling method--the texture was exactly what I enjoy.

It was just a great dinner and I was really pleased and the spice and warmth and all helped to quell the allergies a bit...and I'm better today.

Soup for a gloomy day

Yesterday I had a great dinner planned and was all excited to go shopping for the ingredients, but after lunch, I suddenly felt strange. I think sometimes my blood pressure drops too quickly and I just feel awful. But, it passes as it did yesterday, and around the same time, the sun began to peek through the clouds and I showered and went for a nice long walk. I decided to hold off on last night's dinner plan until tonight (I can't wait) and planned on making something simpler and lighter: soup and salad.

Those who have been reading know that I'm a big fan of soups of all kinds. One of the gifts I received for Christmas this year was an immersion ("stick") blender, which makes smooth and creamy-style soups quick and easy meals. "But what soup should I try today?" I thought. So, I went to my first search place for delicious soups, Karina's blog and my search ended there. I opted to make for the first time her potato leek soup. Now, the only time I've ever had a potato leek soup was in Germany and I must say that all the soups I enjoyed on that trip were wonderful and left a highly-favorable impression. And Karina's soups are always so warm and comforting and everything you could want in a soup so I knew this would be a worthwhile endeavor. The only thing, however, is that as you may have noticed from reading, I'm not a real "potato person". Sweet potatoes I'll eat any day, but regular potatoes are not typically something I prepare. It stems largely from the fact that I didn't enjoy potatoes as a kid--the way I was made to eat them was plain baked out of the oven (no offense Mom), or the fake fried potatoes that come from the frozen section of the supermarket (which I usually ate with a gluten-filled hamburger bun and felt terrible afterward). So, needless to say, I don't have the most positive associations with potatoes. But, I do prepare them occasionally because they do provide benefit to any healthy diet.

Anyway, without further ado, here's my soup:



As expected, it was wonderful. It was mild and creamy and nice to the tummy. I followed the directions as written however, at the end, when the recipe instructs to add 2 cups of non-dairy liquid post-blending, I had intended to add some rice milk that I bought, but I realized I accidentally bought vanilla-flavored rice milk, not plain. D'oh! Well, at least I noticed my error BEFORE I put it into the soup! Anyway, instead, I added 1 cup of water and 1 cup of buttermilk. I don't buy or consume regular milk at all anymore, but I do typically keep a quart of buttermilk in the back of the fridge for use in baking and occasional cooking. The cultures in the buttermilk make for better texture and consistency and I don't seem to be bothered by it--it's sort of like adding yogurt. Anyway, the soup was wonderful and easy and I'm looking forward to leftovers for lunch today!

Typically when I make soup I make some sort of muffin or bread or biscuit or something to go along with it, but this soup was a carby potato soup so that wouldn't do. Instead, I opted for salad, specifically, a spinach salad since it's been a while since I've had some spinach. I was feeling uninspired though as far as what to put on the spinach, and so I did another search and found an apple vinaigrette recipe here. I pretty much followed the recipe for the dressing, but cut it in half and omitted the sugar using just a bit of honey instead. I served the dressing over the spinach with some pecans:



It was good. My only complaint about the dressing was the overpowering of the apple cider vinegar--it was too acidic. I added some more oil, but it needed something else. It wasn't bad though, and I found the addition of the apple to be really nice. But, I think I'll keep looking for better dressings appropriate for spinach salads.

Finally, an experiment that had both positive and negative results:



This is a garbanzo bean blondie-brownie. I know what you're thinking, but stop! First off, a few entries ago I posted a picture of my flourless garbanzo bean chocolate cake that was out of this world amazing. When baking with beans, the result does not taste like beans--and the texture just comes out like real tender chewy baked goods. Okay, so the recipe is here and elsewhere on the internet for that matter. I followed the recipe as is but used organic raspberry jam instead of strawberry, plain organic creamy peanut butter instead of chunky, and 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder instead of brown rice powder to make them more like brownies. I also doubled the baking powder to make them a bit more, er, fluffy. I also mixed in some extra chocolate chips and organic unsweetened coconut into the batter before spreading it in the pan to bake.

Okay, the good: the texture was absolutely perfect! Exactly what you'd want in a blondie--a bit chewy, a bit cakey.

And the bad: I think they suffer from the flax seed. I think 6 tablespoons is just too much. I think I could've either omitted the flax or reduced it or replaced some it with some sorghum or rice flour. It imparted too much of a nutty (or as John put it, a "healthy" flavor) that overpowered all of the other ingredients. Also, I tend not to go for overly-sweet foods, or rather, I care not to eat too much of them, but this was perhaps under-sweet. I think I'd probably use honey or maple syrup instead of the sugar next time to give it more of gooey-ness and more natural sweetness...plus, it'd be healthier that way.

So, overall, I just couldn't seem to decide how I felt about them. I definitely didn't love them, I definitely didn't hate them either. We'll see, I'll try another one today after they've been chilling all night to let the flavors meld together. One possibility is that they need a bit of cinnamon, or maybe a delicate light icing or something. Overall, it definitely wasn't the resounding success that the internet boasts the recipe to be, but it certainly wasn't my biggest flop either.

That's what experimentation is for, right? ;-)

BTW, I just found a recipe for white chocolate chestnut blondies that I think I might have to try (just gotta make it GF) so maybe you'll be seeing them soon too!

Nothing gritty about this one...

Welp, the gloomy weather has returned. This has been an odd year weather-wise. We seem to have two days or so of nice weather (not quite up to the usual temperatures, but sunny and bright) followed by days of damp, gloomy, chilly, stormy weather. It wouldn't be such a problem to me if I weren't so apparently affected by the poor weather. I feel it in my body when it's coming and when it's here--very strange. I never knew I was so in tune with nature.

I'm writing these days, and the benefit is that I can stay home, which means better food. For lunch yesterday, I made some bean flour crepes. Typically, I make them savory, but yesterday I wanted something a little on the sweeter side. They don't look like much:



...but they were very satisfying. This was extremely simple. I took 1/4 cup of garbanzo bean flour and mixed it until smooth with 1/4 cup of water. I then added 2 more Tbsps of water, some cinnamon, vanilla, stevia, and turmeric and mixed until smooth. I then cooked like crepes as you can see. To fill them, I spread on some coconut oil, some Sunbutter (sunflower seed butter, my new love), and a bit of mango preserves. Yum!

For dinner, I was inspired to make a broccoli rabe and polenta dish from my vegetarian cookbook. However, the recipe in the cookbook wasn't completely what I wanted. So, I began searching the internet and found there are many variations on the broccoli rabe and polenta theme. However, all of the recipes seemed overly-complicated and I decided to take matters into my own hands and my result was just a wonderful, comforting meal:



For the polenta (grits), I whisked 1 cup of cornmeal with 1 tsp of salt and 1 cup of cold water. I then added two cups of boiling water to the pot and stirred over medium heat until the polenta was thick and cooked and creamy. I then stirred in 1 Tbsp of organic butter (yes, a little splurge) and some freshly-grated parmesan cheese. I then spread the polenta into a lightly-oiled cake pan and smoothed the top. On the top, I grated on some parmesan cheese and sprinkled on some parsley and paprika. I then baked it in the oven at 350 deg until the outer edges were crusty and the inside was still smooth and creamy. So easy!

While that was baking, I did a quick sauteed of some coarsely chopped broccoli rabe with fresh minced garlic, red pepper flakes, sea salt, and black pepper. Also extremely simple.

Finally, I served both with a fancy Greek salad I had made earlier. I coarsely chopped cucumbers, green peppers, red onions, grape tomatoes, marinated artichoke hearts, and added some feta and Greek kalamata olives. I then tossed the mixture with a simple Greek salad dressing of extra-virgin olive oil, champagne vinegar, oregano, sea salt, black pepper, and minced garlic and let the salad marinate until I was ready to eat it.

The result was a totally comforting meal that felt extremely decadent and gourmet, but really was incredibly simple.

Here's to good eating!

When life hands you lemons, make lemon poppy seed muffins!

Hi everyone,

I'm having a hard time with the pace at which the days are passing--I just can't keep up!

Anyway, here's what was cooking this weekend:

On Thursday night, I got home late from school and decided to make something easy again. I decided to try my hand at some tostadas:



This is easy and anyone can do it. For mine, I began by making some "refried" white beans. For that, I diced some onion and minced some garlic and sauteed them until soft and fragrant in a saucepan. I then added a can of organic white beans (great northern beans in this case), some cumin, and sea salt, and some vegetable stock and mashed the beans with a potato masher into the pan. I then cooked them until hot and dry like refried beans. After that, I took some broccoli florets and cut them small and I diced some zucchini. I then gently sauteed them until crisp-tender and seasoned them with a bit of sea salt, black pepper, and red pepper flakes. To assemble the tostadas, I briefly warmed some gf corn tortillas, and first spread on some of the bean mixture, then topped that with some of the broccoli and zucchini mixture, some grape tomato halves, and then some monterey jack cheese. I then baked them in the oven until the cheese was melted. I drizzled on some sri racha sauce and enjoyed them with some mixed greens tossed in extra-virgin olive oil, cracked black pepper, and cracked garlic and sea salt. Yum....

On Friday I felt pretty bad physically. I've been having a lot of trouble sleeping and then the weather was cold and damp and rainy as it had been all week and for some reason my body just ached all over (but I wasn't sick). I stayed home for most of the day doing chores and errands and things, and I made some gf lemon poppy seed muffins in order to use up some more of my lovely bag of organic lemons:



As you can see, they have that moist wet top like "real" lemon poppy seed muffins, and that is due to a lemon-sugar syrup that gets spread on top when the muffins come out of the oven. A total guilty pleasure. They are not the prettiest muffins:



...but they were very tasty. I got the recipe here, but that was before I realized that I have some lemon poppy seed recipes in my gf cookbooks. I enjoyed the muffins, but found them to be a bit dense. I want to try another recipe with a lighter gf flour combination. The flavor however, was great, and the lemon came through. Yum! I also added some chopped strawberries to these as you can see, with the suggestion at the bottom of the recipe. So, I was pleased, but will try other recipes too. It's like cornbread--I never stick with the same recipe because I feel I can always do better. :-)

So, after I made them muffins I went in to school late on Friday for an appointment I had as I am doing a little tutoring, and after the appointment I was exhausted and the thought of cooking was just not appealing. So, I asked John if he wanted to go out to eat with me and he agreed and we went to a Thai place that is great and I had my favorite: Thai curry. It seemed to be just what I needed as I felt so much better after that--my aches and pains subsided and I felt more "up".

On Saturday, I spent the day doing things here and there, but nothing particularly special. By the evening, I was relaxing and John came and did some cooking for me. We collaborated on the planning phase, but he did the execution for me. Here was his result:



It was a lovely result of roasted zucchini, chicken, sauteed broccoli, onions, grape tomatoes, and garlic and fresh oregano and basil mixed with gf brown rice penne (which he cooked perfectly) topped with high-quality freshly-grated parmesan cheese. On the side were some sauteed baby portabella mushrooms. It was all great, especially with a nice glass (or two) of French red wine.

Yesterday was more of the same for me, not really doing anything in particular, just little odds and ends and I went for a walk or two since the weather was actually nice. But, dinner was inspired by my desire to have something "bready". As you can see, I go many days (sometimes weeks) at a time without having some bread and I find that I actually need some good carbs on occasion. While I do fine enough on low-carb diets, I start losing weight after too long and need "my fix". So, I endulge...mmm..

Anyway, I digress. Yesterday, I planned to make GF calzones (or something of the sort). I found the recipe on glutenfreemom's site here. And here are my results (two shots so you can get a good look ;-) ):





Here was my plan of attack. I defrosted a small batch of thin-sliced chicken breasts I had in my freezer and sliced them into strips. I then seasoned some cornstarch with sea salt and black pepper and put a light coating on the chicken. I then pan-cooked them until the starch made a delicate crispy "breading" while the chicken was cooked on the inside. Then, I made a broccoli-zucchini mixture much like that for the tostadas (had to use my leftover veggies!) along with some garlic and mushrooms and I seasoned them with sea salt, black pepper, and crushed red pepper flakes. I gently sauteed them until they were crisp-tender and set them aside. I then made the calzone dough according to the directions, but halved the recipe. Unfortunately, I had trouble rolling them out like they did. GF dough tends to be very sticky--this was actually really close to "real" dough, but still too sticky for the tools I had. So, I went brute force and made the calzones by hand. I must say, I'm getting good at manually working with gf dough. The only trouble is that the outcome isn't nearly as pretty and clean as the rolled out version, and it takes much longer, but there's something special about the final products looking really homemade. Anyway, I created four disks and on each I grated some mozzarella cheese. Under normal circumstances, I'd advocate only using fresh mozzarella, but for this application, I used the "fake" stuff because the fresh mozzarella is too watery and would leak in the calzones and make a mushy mess. For two of the calzones, I topped the cheese with strips of the cooked chicken, slices of fresh tomato, and some fresh basil. On the other two, I topped the cheese with the broccoli-zucchini-mushroom mixture. I then closed them up the best I could (I over-stuffed them) and then put three slits in the top, brushed on some light olive oil and sprinkled on some sea salt and sesame seeds. I then baked them in a 400 deg oven until golden brown and bubbly.

They were delightful. All the work was worth it and completely satisfied my craving for something bready. The best part? No lump in my stomach. I felt completely wonderful eating them and had no sickness at all--gf baking is a dream come true! I enjoyed them with some tossed mixed greens and red wine.

Last night was a killer Food Network line-up. Sunday nights are special as I really just look forward to turning on the Food Network and watching the shows. Last night was the premiere of the new season of "Next Food Network Star" followed by a new episode of "Iron Chef". So, Sunday nights are special and I always like to have a little treat after dinner. Since I was having the carb dinner, I didn't want to bake anything too heavy. Instead, I opted for fruit with a special chocolate dip inspired by whfoods.com's recipe here.

Here's the chocolate dipping sauce:



I pretty much followed the recipe, but what I did was buy a single serving container of vanilla Greek yogurt and I added the cocoa and maple syrup as directed. I dipped in some organic strawberries and some fresh pineapple that I broke down earlier in the evening. Oh, it was sooooooooooo good and such a wonderful end to the wonderful dinner.

Here's one of the strawberries!

Pudding some goodness on the table

Another week almost gone already. Time flies by too fast.

Yesterday I opted to make another salad for dinner, a sort of "glorified Caesar salad" with salmon:



This was a quick fix: some organic romaine, grape tomatoes, red onion, orange peppers, and cucumbers for the veggies. For ease of preparation and due to the late hour that I arrived home, I picked up a can of good quality wild Alaskan salmon (without any preservatives and stuff). For the dressing, I made the dressing from whfoods' healthy caesar salad recipe (a fantastic dressing recipe indeed). Finally, I put it all together with some good quality freshly-grated parmesan cheese. It was great! I had picked up a box of GF breadsticks (the crunchy kind) at the supermarket to try and they were tasty and went well with the salad. In fact, I started dipping them in the extra dressing.

But the real winner last night was my dessert, a sweet potato pudding (or custard) with a walnut-brown sugar topping:




This yummy little sweet potato pie-like treat was a quick throw together based on a recipe I read earlier in the week. I roasted a leftover sweet potato from the night I made fries two days ago and put it in the fridge until yesterday. When I got home, I quickly threw the sweet potato into the food processor (skin and all) and processed until smooth. I then added an egg, a few tablespoons of organic yogurt, about 1/4 cup of maple syrup, 1 tablespoon or so of molasses, a sprinkling of stevia, 1/2 tsp or so of cinnamon and 1/2 tsp or so of allspice, a bit of sea salt and that's it! I processed until smooth and creamy and divided the mixture into 4 dishes. I then made a little walnut topping out of chopped walnuts, some organic brown sugar, and about a tablespoon or so of coconut oil and sprinkled the topping onto the pudding. I then baked the puddings in the oven at 350 deg until a knife inserted in them came out clean (I believe it took an hour or so while I was eating).

They were absolutely delightful! So warm and comforting and pretty much guilt-free if you're watching what you're eating. I highly-recommend it!