Further Piecrust Adventures: Cookie edition

It's traditional in my family to make three pumpkin pies, so technically I only need three crusts, but I just double the two-crust recipe and have enough for four. The rest get rolled out into pie-crust-cookies. You roll them out, just like for a pie, then cut them into roughly cookie size pieces, and sprinkle with a mix of cinnamon and sugar before baking. They're quite tasty, and usually I make them at the same time as the pies, but it was late last night so I put the rest of the dough in the fridge to use this morning.

Well, the dough I make handles much better warm, so I was trying to cut the one large ball into several smaller pieces so that they would warm up faster. There was a lot of resistance to the knife, so, to get more leverage, I held the dough in my left hand with the knife in my right and started trying to cut through it. You can probably see where this is going... When the knife was almost halfway through, the whole thing suddenly gave way. The knife whooshed straight through the dough and into the middle finger of my left hand. It dug out a small chunk of flesh, maybe 0.25x0.5 cm at the extremes. Despite this, it didn't hurt much at first. It started to hurt when I started to wash it off. Anyway, it's quite interesting to roll out pie-crust dough while trying to keep pressure on a finger to stop the bleeding. I had to throw out one cookie, as I bled on it. I would have eaten it, but I figured my mom would have a fit about it.

The finger did eventually stop bleeding. It's still a bit sore, unsurprisingly.

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Piecrust Adventures

A few interesting conundrums whilst making the pumpkin pies last night.

(1) I had only one pumpkin from my garden. It was fairly small, and, when I cut into it, I discovered one part of it was rotten. I had my mom get some canned pumpkin as backup. I got 2 cups from the good parts of the real pumpkin, and had to fill in the rest with the canned pumpkin. Annoying, but workable.

(2) I could not find my pie-crust-bag. It was not on the top shelf of the closet where it's supposed to be, nor in any of the other places I thought I might have decided to put it. If it doesn't turn up, I'm going to assume it got thrown away accidentally and order a new one. The problem is that gluten-free crust is extremely delicate. You need the plastic to hold it together long enough to get it into the pan, and even then there are almost always cracks and holes to patch. So I improvised. I had some jumbo-size ziplock bags. I rolled the first crust inside the bag and then cut two of the edges open so I could extract it, then rolled the other crusts with the bag slit open. It worked better than I expected. I think the crust didn't stick to the ziplock as badly as it generally did to the pie-crust bag. However, the pie-crust-bag is reusable many times over, whereas the ziplock would need to be replaced each time, and the jumbo ziplocks are rather pricey.

(3) I ran out of sweet rice flour on the first crust. It's what Bette Hagman recommends be used for sprinkling on the inside of the bag to help keep it from sticking. I sighed, thought a moment, and used corn meal instead. Actually, I think it worked better than the sweet rice flour. I think the idea with sweet rice flour is that it's supposed to stick together better than other GF flours, so it should help the crust stick together. The problem is that rice flour is dry, and so the more of it you use for rolling, the more you need to add more liquid to the dough. The corn meal seemed to be better at keeping the dough from sticking, and it didn't dry out the dough as much. We shall find out today whether it causes any general weirdness in the eating. If not, I may just switch over to cornmeal for piecrust dusting.

And now, I have cornbread, coffeecake, roasted pumpkin seeds, and piecrust cookies to make.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Random Holiday Rambling

(1) Pouncer had a cold for a few days this week. I can't remember ever seeing a cat with a cold before; it took me a day or so to realize that's what was going on. First I noticed he was drooling a bit, and seemed to be leaving his mouth open more than usual. He also wasn't his usual "First!" self. I noticed that he seemed to have a bit of a runny nose and he was wheezing a bit, and then made the connection to his keeping his mouth open: he was breathing through his mouth because his nose was stuffed up. It lasted 2-3 days, and I just kept an eye on him and made sure it wasn't getting worse. It may have just been good timing, but it started to go away shortly after I shared some roasted chicken with him and the other cats. Probably coincidence, though it would be nice to think I cured him.

(2) I was beginning to think I wouldn't get any turkey this Thanksgiving, but my mom found a free-range Norbest turkey, which specifically said "gluten free," and their web-site indicates that all of their whole, uncooked turkeys are also soy-free. Gluten-free we had covered, but soy free is tougher, since every turkey I looked at had unidentified "natural flavors" in it. Technically "natural flavors" can include stuff made from wheat, but I never had a gluten-reaction to anything labeled that way. I have had several soy reactions. As far as I'm concerned "natural flavors" is equivalent to a skull and crossbones symbol.

(3) Apparently three weeks away from push hands was good for me, as Don and Mark both commented on how much more relaxed I have been the past two Saturdays. It seems backwards until you've tried it/experienced it/felt it, but being relaxed makes your attacks and defenses much more effective. Hmmm... possibly I should experiment with my dice and see if relaxed tosses produce higher rolls than tense tosses. Somehow I suspect that won't be the case, but it doesn't hurt to try. ^!^

(4) We still haven't finished with the chest in D&D, and we won't finish this week since our thief will be out of town. So even though I may start writing a narrative version of it, there won't be much point in posting it until we actually finish with the chest and I can include a conclusion.

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Zucchini Bread

For the first time in a while, I tried making zucchini bread. I'd been having a problem of it not getting done, so I modified the recipe a bit. To convert it to gluten free, I'd been adding an extra egg (adds protein and helps hold it together), but, on the suspicion that there was too much liquid in the mix, I did not do so last night. Instead, I added two teaspoons of dried egg. I also increased the leavening (from 1/4 t baking powder and 1 t soda to 1/2 t baking powder and 2 t soda + 1 t egg replacer) and replaced half the oil with butter. The resulting batter was considerably thicker than the batter I'd gotten in the past, and seemed to bake much better. I was still cautious and only put one inch of batter in the bread pans, but, as it got done with no problems, I think it would be safe to increase that depth next time. Oh, I also increased the baking temperature from 325° F to 375° F. So here's my grandmother's zucchini bread, modified to be gluten free:

Gluten Free Zucchini Bread

3 eggs
1/2 c oil
1/2 c butter (softened)
2 c sugar
2 t vanilla
2 t soda
1/2 t baking powder
1 t egg replacer (or other leavening agent)
1/4 t salt
2 t dried egg whites
2 t xanthan gum
3 c featherlight rice flour mix*
3+ t cinnamon
2 c grated zucchini
1 c chopped pecans or walnuts

Preheat oven to 375° F. Grease pans and dust with rice flour. Put the eggs into a stand mixer and let them beat while you mix soda, baking powder, egg replacer, salt, dried egg whites, xanthan gum and flour together in a separate bowl. Add the oil and butter to the eggs. Add the sugar and vanilla. Slowly add the flour mix to the mixture. Add the cinnamon. Add the zucchini. Add the nuts. Mixture will be very thick. Distribute amongst three 8" by 4" bread pans and bake for 1 hour.

Note: If you make smaller loaves or muffins, you'll need to adjust the cooking time. I only needed 45 minutes last night, since nothing wound up more than an inch deep.

*Featherlight rice flour is one of Bette Hagman's mixtures. I've modified it a bit. Instead of white rice flour, I use brown rice flour. Instead of potato flour, I use rice protein powder. Since a lot of the GF flours are low in protein, I figure adding a bit in, particularly rice protein to a rice mix, is a useful thing to do.

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Soy, the Other Poisonous Food

One of the current theories about food intolerances is that people are born with a genetic susceptibility, and that circumstances, particularly stress, determine whether or not it actually develops into anything. I've had a minor sensitivity to soy for quite a while now, but it seems to have turned into a full-blown intolerance. I'm pretty sure it was the stress of getting the terminal contract notice that did it, too. It would be amusing if I had enough medical documentation to sue the university over it, but I have no proof whatsoever (unless chocolate wrappers with the ingredient 'soy lecithin' count as proof that I wasn't strongly sensitive until recently), so there's no case. However, this incident definitely lends credence to the susceptibility/trigger theory.

Soy is at least as hard to avoid as gluten, though I've already been minimizing my exposure as mush as possible. It used to be that only soy protein and soy oil caused a strong reaction. Now, it's pretty much anything with any sort of soy in it. People ask me if it's hard not to "cheat" on eating gluten, and now soy... It's not hard at all when the moment you eat it, you start feeling so sick to your stomach that you don't want to eat anything else for the rest of the day. The only major sticking point for me right now is chocolate. I'm going to have to start stocking up on the few soy-free chocolates that I know are out there, or else I'm going to go completely nuts. I'll probably links to the sites at some point. Whole Foods Market carries several good varieties, and there's also Enjoy Life.

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Deby's Carrot Cake

At Deby's bakery, she had various kinds of cake, packaged theoretically as single servings (as well as full cakes). I couldn't resist getting a piece of carrot cake, though I actually cut it into four slices as it was almost 4 inches square, and I didn't need that much all at once. Looks like the carrot cake isn't available for order on her web-site yet, but there are some carrot cupcakes on the "order" page at her web-site. It's not giving me a direct link to the order page for some reason.

But I couldn't resist the carrot cake because I have very fond memories of always buying one of the little slices of carrot cake for dessert whenever we went to Skipper's when I was little. Now, I can't even eat at Skipper's any more, and I never seem to get around to making carrot cake myself, so it was nice to finally have it again. Deby's version is pretty good. It needs more spice, imo, and a bit less frosting, but overall I'd recommend it. One warning: the label did say "contains trace amounts of soy." I usually don't react to small amounts, but anyone extremely sensitive should avoid, well, most of Deby's products actually.

**Just noticed this on the order page: "Note: all Deby's breads are Gluten Free, Dairy, and Egg Free, and contain only a trace amount of Soy (from the nonstick pan spray)." Blasted soy-lecithin strikes again. I'm half-tempted to buy one of the good refillable spray bottles and send it to her. At Bed, Bath and Beyond I found a metal refillable spray bottle, and I swear that, other than the pumping, I cannot tell the difference between the way it sprays and the way the aerosol, soy-laden, store-bought ones spray. It holds the pressure much better than the old plastic one I had, and the spray is much, much finer. It is one that you have to pump, as it uses air pressure to send out the spray, but, again, it works much better than the plastic pump one that I had before.

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Gluten Free Haven

Okay, if I have to relocate for job reasons, I want to aim for the Fort Collins/Denver area. Why? Well, let's see... Whole Foods Market, in both cities, has a large gluten free sections and even stocks items from local gluten-free bakeries in its bakery section (which I wouldn't have noticed except an employee mentioned it when I asked about finding a certain GF flour), there are at least three gluten-free bakeries (one in Fort Collins, two in Denver), plenty of GF-friendly restaurants, and a store devoted to selling only GF items (Granny's gluten-free, on the outskirts of Loveland as you head into Estes Park).

It was incredibly bizarre to walk into Deby's GF bakery in Denver and realize that I could actually eat anything in there that I wanted. She does use some soy, but that's all clearly labeled. Incidentally, this is the source for Beau-Jo's GF crusts, and apparently the reason they improved wasn't because the formula changed, but because Beau-Jo's employees got better at working with the GF mixes. As it turned out, Deby herself was running the cash register while I was there, and, not surprisingly, tried to get me to buy some of her own GF flour mixture. I asked if it made good white cake, as that was one item I had not been able to get to turn out well. She said that it would, and suggested adding a can of pureed canned pears to it, as well as beating the whites separately before adding them. I haven't tried it yet, and I already knew about beating the eggs separately to improve texture, but I'll be curious to see if it works. I can only assume that the pears will add moisture to the mix, as GF flours do tend to be a bit drier than whe*t ones.

Incidentally, King Sooper's, one of the more prominent grocery stores in the area, also stocks gluten-free items, though I did not go in to see how much variety they had.

So for celiacs, the Denver area is looking pretty good. If you ever take a trip down there, there's very little worry about finding stuff you can actually eat. Now, off in the Northeast Corner, there's more to worry about, but even there the Wal-Mart has a gluten-free section. I checked the Chubbuck Wal-Mart, and did not find one, but the two I went to in Colorado both had pretty decent selections.

I still don't want to relocate, but that area is looking awfully darn good right now. Maybe one of the GF bakeries needs another cook...

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Sri Thai Update

I had a pleasant surprise when my mom and I ate at Sri Thai on Friday night (and not only because we barely made it into town in time to eat there). They've redone their menu, and dishes that can be made gluten-free are clearly labeled with the no whe*t symbol. One minor caveat: this does not mean that the dish is gluten free as usually prepared, some are and some aren't. It does mean that they will make it for you gluten free if you ask them to. We found this out the hard way by ordering the peanut-sauce chicken appetizer...and it arrived with toast on the plate. As soon as I mentioned "gluten", the waitress immediately apologized and explained about the need to specify if you want to be sure to get it gluten free, and then she got us another one sans toast, no questions asked.

A few of the dishes that I had ordered in the past were not marked as available GF, and one of them I had wondered about, but I'd never had a strong enough reaction to it to be certain. It was a tasty dish, so I hope they can make it available as gluten-free in the future, but oh well. I ordered their version of "Sweet and Sour Chicken" on Friday. Thai Sweet and Sour is nothing like most sweet and sour. The chicken is not breaded. The sauce is usually not thickened. The sauce usually has a subtler blend of sweet and sour flavors than typical "sweet and sour sauce."

At any rate, this is my favorite restaurant on the planet, bar none. They make the best Thai iced teas, and Thai tea floats (yes, those are marked as GF). Chang's does a decent approximation of Thai iced tea, but most other places make it so ridiculously sweet that I can barely stand to drink it.

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Floored and Iced

My mom wanted to stop at the Wal-Mart in Sterling, Colorado, today on our way down from Cabela's. They actually had a small section of gluten free foods. At a Wal-Mart. Admittedly, that's the only sizable store in Sterling, but I'm still surprised. It didn't have as much as the Fred Meyer in Pocatello, and now I'm curious to see if our Wal-Mart as anything. I'm betting not, since Fred Meyer and a few smaller "health food" stores fill that niche in Pocatello.

Oh, the new owners of the Akron hotel (which used to be the Crestwood and is now something with "Lighthouse" in the name) haven't been unplugging the room refrigerators when customers leave. This is a problem for any customers who might actually want to get anything into the freezer.

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GF Adventures

It's a bit weird to realize how much less I worry about taking enough food to get me through the whole trip to Colorado compared to a few years ago. Then, I would pack enough food for nearly every meal, and worry about that "nearly." Now, I know that there's Whole Foods Market in Fort Collins, Granny's Gluten Free on the way to Estes Park, and, since Mom wants to go to Denver, I found that there's a bona fide gluten free bakery (and it's not far from her oversized shoe store target), as well as two fish restaurants that are GF friendly. The last several trips, in fact, I've been ridiculously over-prepared, so this time I've pared down. I'm only taking 2 mini-loaves of bread, and some fixings therefor, and yogurt for breakfast. Breakfast foods are notoriously difficult to get without crumbs in them, as most places combine stuff on the same grill, so until I find a GF breakfast place, I'm just going to take my yogurt.

Anyway, here is the site for the bakery, and here is the one for the fish restaurant that we picked. The other one is only open for dinner, and we're hoping to be out of Denver by dinner. Oh yes, and here is the link for Granny's Gluten Free Zone. Seriously, if I did want to leave Pocatello, I think I'd go to Colorado. Of course, where I'd really want to be is Estes Park, and I'm pretty sure the cost of living there is through the roof, and there are no universities, etc, in the town, so who knows how I'd support myself.

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Carol Fenster's 1000 GF Recipes

I got this cookbook a while back (and it will probably be the last cookbook I buy for a while), and finally tried out a recipe from it on Monday. She uses a sorghum-based flour blend, probably as a compromise between the crumbliness of rice-based mixes and the sometimes overpowering flavor of bean-based mixes. I don't know for sure if it was the recipe or not, but the cupcakes I made were a bit crumblier than any I've made using Bette Hagman's flour mixes. It could also be because I used a mix of dutched and undutched cocoa, and she comments in the intro that it matters which you use. I may have to experiment to find out if she's right. ^/^ It's possible that it matter more with her flour mix than with others, for whatever reason.

As for the book itself, it is very thorough, with a good introduction, and some surprising extras. It actually contains a "southwestern spice mix" that is very similar to the taco spice mix that I came up with on my own. I may compare and see which I like better. This is the first GF book I've come across that does contain such spice-mixes, so that's a plus, though it doesn't contain very many of them.

I have one big complaint about the layout of the book. At the beginning, there's a table of contents with page numbers to take you to the different sections of the book (pies, cakes, pastas, etc.), which is fine. Then you turn to one of those pages, and there's a list of the recipes contained in that section, which is also fine, except that list does not give you the page numbers. You either have to thumb through the section or go to the index. I have a feeling that I'm going to be writing the page numbers in on sections that I wind up using a lot.

I'd also prefer that each and every cookbook was spiral-bound, or some equivalent thereof, but it seems that very few publishers understand this very basic principle. Still, in a cookbook this thick, the spiral binding would be especially appreciated.

The one recipe I tried was "Mini Mexican Chocolate Cupcakes" (page 535-536). I have to admit that I tweaked it a little. I mean, 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon? In a recipe that makes 24 cupcakes? I upped it to 2 teaspoons. I also just used the cocoa I had on hand, while she specifically calls for undutched cocoa. I played around with her frosting recipe, but didn't make it as written as I do not have a double boiler. Regardless, the cupcakes turned out to be quite tasty, if a bit crumbly.

So far, I'd recommend this cookbook, 1,000 Gluten-Free Recipes by Carol Fenster, but I may add more as I try more of the recipes. I am very interested to try out her flour blend in converting non-GF recipes myself. Up to this point, my favorite blend to use for that has been Bette Hagman's Featherlight Rice Mix, and sometimes her 4-flour bean mix (made with WHITE bean flour, NEVER EVER EVER Garfava), but it's always interesting to play around with a new mix.

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Calamari!

I just discovered that one of Chang's Garden's Calamari appetizers is actually gluten-free. It's called "salt and pepper squid". This name is misleading, unless you think "pepper = jalapeño pepper". It's a bit spicy, but it's quite good. It's also fried in what I think is a corn starch batter. It was too spicy for my mom. I thought it was a pleasantly warm amount of spice. And the flavor was excellent.

AM ADDENDUM: Actually, the "appetizer" is large enough that if you just ordered some rice on the side, and maybe a bit of sweet and sour sauce, there would be plenty for a meal.

I also forgot to mention that the other calamari on the menu, labeled "fried calamari", is not gluten free. I'm not really sure why they can't just use the same coating, but apparently they don't.

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GF: Kinnikinnick English Muffins

At Fred Meyer a few weeks back, I happened to spot a new gluten free product in the freezer of the Natural Foods section. It was on the top shelf, buried between some non-GF stuff, but I'd spotted the GF label in passing and went to investigate. It turned out to be Kinnikinnick English Muffins. I bought a package, mostly out of curiosity and because I hadn't had English muffins in a very long time. They are awesome. I have absolutely no idea what people normally do with English muffins, but I've used them for toast and mini-pizzas. I think they'd work well as hamburger buns, too. Great flavor and excellent texture.

The downside is that they're a bit pricey. I think they were $5 rather than $5.60 at Fred Meyer, and that's for four English muffins. Now, the intent is that you cut them in half to use them, so that's 8 servings if you use them separately, but they're so thick that I usually cut each one into three pieces, yielding 12 servings from the bag. That's not so bad for $5. And, honestly, these have better taste and texture than the non-GF English muffins I bought once a very long time ago. Highly recommended.

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GF: 5-Grain muffins

The first time I encountered Bob's Red Mill was a couple years before I found out I was gluten intolerant. I came across their 10-grain hot cereal mix, and bought it, despite the fact that I almost never ate hot cereal. However, there was a muffin recipe on the back which I did make, many times. Fast forward a few years, and I discovered that the mix contained several varieties of wheat, so I can't use it any more. However, there is an alternative which makes muffins just about as good: Bob's Red Mill's Mighty Tasty GF Hot Cereal (I'd link to the product page, but the site seems to be down). It also comes with a recipe on the back, but it's not nearly as good as the original (which you can find here), so I decided to adapt the original. To give some idea of the difference, the original recipe uses a full cup of the dry cereal. The one on the GF cereal uses 2 Tablespoons.

Mighty Tasty 5-Grain GF Muffins

2 eggs
2 t vanilla
1/2 c raw sugar*
1/3 c butter**
1 c 4-flour bean mix***
1/4 t salt
1 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1 t xanthan gum
1 c Mighty Tasty GF cereal mix ****
1 1/4 c milk *****

Combine cereal mix with milk and let stand for at least 10 minutes. Preheat oven to 400° F. Cream sugar and margarine; add eggs and vanilla. Add all dry ingredients except the flour and mix well. Add flour and mix well. Add cereal and milk mixture and mix well. Spoon into a prepared muffin pan. Bake 18-20 minutes.

* if you can't find raw sugar (sometimes branded "Turbinado") substitute brown sugar.

** I used olive oil instead, and the muffins still came out with a rich, buttery flavor.

*** this is one of Bette Hagman's flour mixes, only I use white bean flour instead of garfava flour; mainly, you want a moist, protein rich flour for these muffins.

**** Any GF hot cereal made by chopping grains into small bits would work here. Cream of rice, cream of buckwheat, cream of quinoa... The more different grains in the mix, the richer the flavor, though.

***** Original recipe calls for buttermilk. I generally just use goat's milk. When I could still have soy, I often used soy milk.

On the latest batch, I also added 1 t cinnamon to the mix, but these have a very good flavor all their own. The cinnamon made a good complement, though. These are very rich, flavorful muffins, chockful of fiber, and with less fat and sugar than most muffins.

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GF Products: riceworks Gourmet Brown Rice Crisps

I'm not finding the flavor I bought available online. Though Amazon lists it with its riceworks products, it says it is not currently available through them. I found these at CostCo, and a quick scan suggests they may also be available at Target. CostCo has a surprising number of gluten-free snack options available, though they don't have too much in the way of gluten free baking ingredients.

The flavor I tried is Sea Salt. I was ... very pleasantly surprised by these chips. There is a small list of items that I still miss and have not found anything remotely equivalent in gluten-free options. I can now cross "Triscuits" off that list. The texture is not the same as Triscuits, but the flavor is strongly reminiscent. I can't compare directly, of course, but I can say that whatever it was that appealed to me about the flavor of Triscuits is also in the flavor of these chips. The texture, though, comes closer to that of the fried tortilla strips that I sometimes found in Mexican offerings, but crispier.

So I finally have one product I can recommend today without reservation. Unfortunately, I can't provide a retail link to it, so you'll have to hunt around Targets and CostCos if you want to try it.

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GF: Hodgson Mill - Apple Cinnamon Muffin Mix

This is a GF baking mix that I found at Albertson's, of all places. Though, looking at the online prices, it was a bit overpriced. (Hodgson Mill's Site, Amazon)

On the one hand, it's nice to have an out-of-the-box muffin mix that's easy to find. On the other, there was an odd taste to the bread that I didn't care for. In this case, I'm not sure what ingredient is resulting in the funny flavor. Like the Glutino bars below, flax seeds are part of the ingredient list, but I know what flax seeds taste like, and that's not what I'm tasting; however, there's a note on the box that says Hodgson uses "specially Milled Flaxseed" which is processed to make the Omega-3 oils more absorbable. It could also be due to the millet flour, which is an ingredient I haven't used in any of my own cooking.

This is one that I would not buy again, but I think that you would need to try it yourself to see whether or not the "funny taste" was something that bothered you or not. The only way I've been able to eat these is by putting a ridiculous amount of strong-flavored jam on them, to drown out the funky taste. FYI: 3 of the 9 Amazon reviews are positive; one neutral review suggested that adding a freshly grated apple to the mix would improve it; and the 5 negative reviews agree with me that it has a funky, bitter taste. So... try at your own risk.

EDIT: I just noticed a note at the bottom of the Hodgson Mill page, that says "Garbonzo[sic] is out and Sorghum is in", so they've recently changed the formulation. I checked my box, and I have the newer formulation, but some of the Amazon reviews may be for the older one using garbanzo ... which would make the flavor even worse.

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GF Products: Glutino Gluten Free Organic Bars

I got two varieties of these at Wealth of Health a few weeks ago. Chocolate Peanut and Wildberry. They were ... okay, but not particularly good. Both suffer from the same problem, at least in my opinion: flax seeds.

In hearty, multigrain offerings (crackers, breads, etc.), I don't mind the flavor of flax seeds. It goes well with other hearty flavors. It does not go well in something intended to be a sweet snack. Everything except the flax-flavor was enjoyable, so if it weren't for that, I would recommend them without hesitation. As is, if you've tasted flax seeds, you'll have a pretty good idea if you would like them in a sweet offering. If not, you might consider trying one box to see if you like them better than I do.

(Interestingly, Glutino has voluntarily recalled the chocolate/peanut variety, due to the salmonella scare. No one's actually been made sick by the bars, though.)

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Gluten Free Tips Index

5.April.09 UPDATE: I finally decided to separate the recipes from the rest of the stuff below. Hopefully that makes it easier to find stuff here.

The list isn't very long yet, but I thought it might be useful to have an index for them, for anyone who wanders over here looking for gluten free info. Hopefully I'll keep it updated as I continue to add tips.

General:
Bean Flours
Chicken Stew
Coatings for Frying
Pie Crust (links to a recipe)
Pizza
Pumpkin Cookies (links to a recipe)
Restaurants (national chains)
Restaurants (Southeast Idaho)
Yeast Bread

Recipes:
Blueberry Muffins
Corn Bread
Corn Bread II (rice-free)
Five-Grain Muffins
Hot Cocoa, Hot Chocolate
Hot Vanilla
Hot Spiced Apple Cider
Red Rice "Salad"
Taco Seasoning

Products:
Amy's Rice Crust Cheese Pizza
Annie's Rice Pasta and Cheddar
Bob's Red Mill: GF Pancake Mix
Glutino Crackers
Glutino GF Organic Bars
Hodgson Mill - Apple Cinnamon Muffin Mix
Kinnikinnick - Cookies and Donuts
Kinnikinnick - English Muffins
Kinnikinnick - Frozen Waffles
riceworks - Gourmet Brown Rice Crisps (Sea Salt)
Stuff to Avoid


Cookbooks:
1,000 Gluten Free Recipes by Carol Fenster ***NEW***

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GF: Kinnikinick Frozen Waffles

Yet another gluten-free item I found at Wealth of Health in Idaho Falls. And they are very, very good. I've had two other varieties of GF frozen waffle, and the best I can say for them was that they were edible with a good texture and mildly pleasant taste. There are two varieties available on Kinnikinnick's web-site. I seem to have the "cinnamon brown sugar" version, so I can't say for sure that the original version is good, but I suspect that it is. So if anyone's been missing their "eggo's", these are a very good alternative.

FYI: There are six waffles in a package, and I found that I needed to leave them in the toaster oven longer than the package said.

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GF: Taco Seasoning

Before finding out I was gluten intolerant, my family would always make Mexican dishes using spice packets from the store. Unfortunately, nearly all of them contain "whe*t flour" as an ingredient. My best guess is that the gluten is supposed to help the spice stick to the meat. Whatever the reason, it means that I cannot use the pre-made spice packets. So I took it upon myself to make up my own spice mix. Essentially, I noted the spices used in the pre-made spice packets, and tried mixing them up.

There are two versions below the fold, but the instructions for use are the same:

Brown meat (usually beef), drain fat, add 2 T of spice mix per pound of meat and approximately 3/4 c of water per pound of meat, cover and let simmer for 10-20 minutes, uncovering for the last few if there's still too much water. Serve with your favorite taco fixings.

Here's my very first attempt. If you like very spicy tacos, it's pretty good. If not, go down to the milder version.

Spicy Taco Mix

5 t cumin
6 t chili powder
3 t cayenne or red pepper
3 t oregano
2 t paprika
1/2 t garlic or onion salt
1/2 t salt
(use 2 T spice + 3/4 c. water per pound of meat)

Mild Taco Mix

5 t cumin
2 t chili powder
1 t cayenne or red pepper
3 t oregano
6 t paprika
1/2 t garlic or onion salt
1/2 t salt
(use 2 T spice + 3/4 c. water per pound of meat)

Essentially, I just switched the amounts of chili powder and paprika, and decreased the red pepper. This time, I tried 3 t chili pepper to 6 t paprika and left the red pepper at 3 t. It's just a touch spicy to me, which means that my mom would hate it. As for the various salts, they're completely optional, imo. You can always salt the meat itself, and I usually put a fresh onion or garlic clove in with the meat anyway.

Oh, the level of spiciness will also depend on the kind of chili powder you get. Some are very mild, while some are almost as hot as the red pepper. So keep this in mind, depending on where your preferences lie.

The mixes result in 20 t and 18 t of mix respectively. 18 t = 6 T = enough for three batches if you cook one pound of meat at a time. I usually mix up a double batch and keep it in a jar.
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