Wednesday, November 27, 2013

An Allergy-Free Thanksgiving

Due to some ongoing medical issues, I am currently eating a top-8-allergen-free diet.  This means no dairy, no eggs, no soy, no wheat, no peanuts, no tree nuts, no fish, and no shellfish.  At times, trying to figure out what I am going to eat can be challenging as many of my old favorites included at least one of these items.  Today, I am challenging myself to make allergen-free versions of our traditional Thanksgiving fare.  Because of the way I cook (dump a little here, add a little there), I'm not going to include recipes, but I will include an ingredient list for each dish.   If you are faced with the same allergy-free challenges and still want to serve "traditional" Thanksgiving fare, I hope some of these ideas will help you out!

"Turkey": I have stomach issues with traditionally processed poultry and will be cooking myself some minimally processed Smart Chicken chicken breasts.

Dressing: Homemade gluten-free/vegan bread (from this cookbook), Jimmy Dean Hot Pork Sausage, WildTree Butter Flavor Grapeseed Oil, onion, celery, mushrooms, sage, parsley, pepper

Mashed Potatoes: boiled potatoes, water(saved from boiling potatoes), roasted garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper

Chicken & Mushroom Gravy:   WildTree Butter Flavor Grapeseed Oil, gluten-free flour blend, chicken pan drippings (liquid left from cooking a whole chicken in the crockpot), dried mushrooms rehydrated in boiling water, salt & pepper.  This was honestly going to be just a chicken gravy, but I made too much roux and needed more liquid.  Adding plain water would have just made a bland gravy.  Dried mushrooms added great flavor to this gravy!

Green Bean Hotdish: green beans, homemade mushroom gravy (dried mushrooms rehydrated in boiling water, gluten-free flour blend, WildTree Butter Flavor Grapeseed Oil, salt & pepper, poultry seasoning), homemade fried onions (onion, gluten-free flour blend, canola oil)

Pumpkin Chai Mousse:  Coconut cream, pumpkin puree, chai tea bags, vanilla, honey, Enjoy Life Snickerdoodle cookies (chopped into small pieces and sprinkled on top) Edit:  The tea bags didn't give it enough spice for me so I added extra cinnamon, ground cloves, ginger, and cardamom.

I'll come back and post pics and results of all my experiments after tomorrow! 

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Gluten-Free Flatbread Sandwich

This was so good, I ate two...
I've been going through some food/digestive struggles lately and haven't really made anything I deemed blog-worthy.  Until today...

This recipe is for a quick gluten-free pita, but I was too lazy to putz around trying to cut a pocket.   (No yeast means that although they puff, these don't form a pocket in the middle.)  Besides, you can fit in more goodies if you just slice it in half right?  So that's what I did.  This recipe, from Gluten-Free On A Shoestring,  sliced in half like an English muffin, only thinner. 

And the goodies inside?

Homemade hummus, adapted from a recipe in my American Masala cookbook.  (Hmmm, thought I had blogged that recipe... I'd better get on that!)
Fresh baby spinach
Sliced red bell pepper
Thinly sliced carrot

This pita/flatbread recipe was delicious.  My mind is going on and on with ideas for different flavors... Italian herb, garlic & cilantro, roasted garlic... I can't wait to experiment! 

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Yummy stuff from last week

Just a little update with a couple recipes I made last week that we really enjoyed.  Sorry guys, no pics... I didn't take any (palak paneer really isn't that photogenic...) and I'm not stealing anybody else's off their blog. 

Spicy Pumpkin Soup from Make It Naked.  This was good, but could have used a little more heat.  I put the minimum amount of cayenne in since my 2-yr old was eating it also and just spiced up my  individual serving.  Oh, and the 2-yr old says, "It's tasty". 

Palak Paneer  from Indian Simmer.  This was too spicy for the 2-yr old, but I knew that going in so I made him some other leftovers to eat that night :)  Instead of the thai chiles, I used 6 small serranos.  I also used queso fresco in place of the paneer.  (Sometimes you just have to substitute what is available at the small town grocery store... I was happy I could get queso fresco!)  This was delicious and was just as good leftover as it was the first night. 

Of course, I've made a couple other really yummy things this week, but in my traditional style of cooking, they involved using up the little bit of this, that, and the other thing and not writing a thing down!  So no recipes exist for them and they will never be made in that exact configuration again.  Sometimes the fun of cooking is trying the new recipe and following it, sometimes the fun lies in just throwing ingredients in a pan to see what you end up with...