Cake

Since today was my boyfriend's birthday, I decided to be awesome and make him a birthday cake using this recipe. It turned out great and was super easy to make, however it wasn't without drama.

My original plan had been to use both regular dark chocolate and some flavored with espresso for more of a dark and exotic taste. Going into Whole Foods, my standards for chocolate were high: obviously allergen-free, fair-trade, and organic if possible. A word to the wise, fair-trade and organic do not always mean safe. There is one company in particular I was looking for, Taza, because they meet all of the requirements and are also locally produced in Massachusetts. Alas, there was none to be seen. Every other bar of chocolate I looked at had soy or milk in it. I stood forlorn in the aisle, banging my head against the shelves looking for inspiration. Eventually I found a bag of Enjoy Life chocolate chips, which are made in a dedicated allergen-free facility, however I had to let go of my stipulation of the chocolate being fair-trade or organic. One down, one to go.

Next I looked for some cocoa to use. Once again, everything had soy lecithin in it. Everything. I ended up buying a canister of Ghirardelli unsweetened cocoa, but decided against using it because it is made on the same equipment that makes soy products and is made in a facility that processes milk. So much for my dream of hot cocoa this winter.

What am I going to do with you? 

Then there was peripheral drama because I had no idea what to bake the cake in, considering that college students aren't in the habit of carrying tart tins to school. And then my boyfriend and I weren't able to get eggs this weekend, so my roommate saved the day by getting me six aluminum pie tins and a half-dozen eggs when she went home. I owe her big time. The pie tin worked out great because the cake got some nice scallopy edges on it!

Isn't it purdy? Om nom nom....

As for the actual cake making process, it went swimmingly. I substituted the butter with coconut oil, which adds a little extra flavor, and used almond milk instead of regular. Because I couldn't use the cocoa, I added a half cup of rice flour to thicken things up a bit. So technically, this wasn't a flourless chocolate cake. But whatever. I also never used any vanilla extract. I didn't want to buy a bottle because it gets pretty expensive and I don't think I'd use it for much else. I was tempted to go for the vanilla almond milk, but the "natural flavors" listed on the package turned me off. In the end, safety is safety when it comes to my boyfriend's diet and I figured that with the coconut flavor I could let it slide. I also didn't use the salt, but heck, it was only 1/4 teaspoon.

All in all, the cake was delicious and went fast. It packs a lot of flavor even though its only a couple inches high. If you have a 10 oz bag of chocolate chips laying around the house, I highly recommend that you give this a try!

Quit bashing my national dish

I'm tired of everyone bashing the haggis. Often when I Google the recipe, I come up with snarky sarcastic websites that give you the directions and then usually say something like "serve with a glass of whiskey so that you can actually eat the stuff!". Even Alton Brown, Food Network Chef and new darling of Concord Grape Juice, ends his recipe with "Serve with mashed turnips and potatoes, if you serve it at all!"

Well excuuuuuuuuse me!

What is haggis you may ask? In basic terms, a sausage. Albeit a large, football sized sausage, but a sausage none the less. However it gets a bad rap because the contents are a sheep's pluck (heart, liver, lungs, and tongue) and is cooked in the sheep's stomach. Sure, organ meat isn't everyone's cup of tea, but sausage is traditionally made from various "bits" of animals. Want to know what makes the casing of a sausage crisp when you cook it? That would be the small intestine that the filling is pressed into.

Haggis and other types of sausage were a great way to use up the nutritious organs of animals before they went bad (the pluck got it's name this way, because these organs were the first to be "plucked" from the carcass). They were a cheap way to make sure that  you were using all of the animal while getting a hearty meal.

I am determined that some day I will make haggis. In fact, I hope it will happen this year. There is a man at the farmer's market who sells sheep, lamb, and goat meat and I think sometime I'll ask if he could hold the pluck and stomach for me. There is a lot of prep time involved, because you have to soak the stomach overnight, cook the organs, and then boil the mixture in the stomach for three hours. However, apart from butchering the various organs (which I have minimal experience with), it's pretty much just waiting for it to be done. Plus, I think I can just use ground beef instead of suet, because for some reason suet seems to be extremely hard to come by in these modern times. I am so becoming a butcher's best friend in the future.

And if I decide to go all out Burns Supper, I am so reciting "Address to a Haggis" and ceremonially stabbing the haggis. It's hard to memorize poems with a Scottish accent, though.

(image from here)

Better late than....

Back in May, I emailed Larry and Luna's Coconut Bliss about the origin of the xanthan gum in some of their flavors like the chocolate almond brownie and ginger snap. I got a reply saying that they would look into the xanthan gum issue because they get their brownie and cookie base from another company. Alas, the xanthan gum is indeed made from corn. However, it is extremely comforting to know that my email was not lost in the void of customer questions. I had been wondering if I would get a response for a while, and just when I had given up hope the reply appeared in my inbox.

For anyone who still hasn't tried Coconut Bliss, please do so. It's amazing.

Clean out the fridge soup

The other day was the day that we pick up a fresh load of (free!) veggies from a local farm, which means that we have to make room for them. How? By eating last week's veggies of course! Our freezer is packed with peppers and kale, and the vegetable crisper had some hot peppers and leeks going mushy. Plus, there was a surplus of potatoes. So I figured I'd just throw it all in a pot and see what happened. The result? Potato and leek soup crossed with kale soup! YUMMMMMMY!

This actually tasted like kale soup, and I think it's a good substitute for vegetarian/vegan crowd. Since kale soup has sausage in it, that's obviously out. However, the potato added a similar texture (biting into something that isn't kale) and the hot pepper added the spice round in the hot Italian sausage we usually get. Curious? Here's the recipe!

Clean out the Fridge Soup (Vegetarian Kale soup)

Olive oil

Kale: not just an alien, it's an amazing leafy green!

1-2 stalks leeks (or one large onion), chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 hot pepper, chopped into small-ish pieces
2 bell peppers, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
2-3 medium potatoes, cut into 1 inch pieces
1 can red kidney beans
1 Tbsp. dried basil
1/2 tsp. chili powder
Salt and pepper to taste
1-1 1/2 cups loosely chopped kale

Coat the bottom of a soup pot with olive oil and heat. Add leeks (or onions, if using) and cook until soft, then add garlic. Let cook 1-2 minutes until the garlic starts to cook a little, then add the hot and bell pepper. Cook until slightly soft and add potato, kidney beans, basil, chili powder, salt, and pepper. Pour in enough water to cover the vegetables by a half inch. Let soup simmer until potatoes are almost done and add kale. When potatoes are tender, serve it up and enjoy!

-------------------

This is sort of a hodgepodge soup recipe, however it had a striking resemblance to kale soup when we ate it. I supposed if you wanted to, you could substitute chicken or vegetable stock for the water if you wanted a little extra flavor, but I thought it was just fine on its own. If you want it less spicy you can use less chili powder, or if you wanted it spicier you could even add another hot pepper (for the original, we used one and a half to get them out of the crisper). All in all, this soup was hot, tasty, and perfect for the cooling October weather. Plus, it was super easy.

(image from here)

Procrastination station!

While in the midst of trying to figure out how exactly to do my Linguistics homework, I started looking up recipes to give my mind a break. Well, truthfully I started looking up Russian pelmeni (they look so yummy!) and then got sidetracked. But I digress.

I realized that being both gluten and casein free is hard. Like, really hard. At least for me, because every recipe I know from my mom's cooking has butter or some kind of dairy. In fact, I'm finding being casein-free harder than going gluten-free. Now that I'm more familiar with baking and cooking with rice flour, I'm starting to get a handle on the addition of xanthan gum and other additives. I have a lot to learn, but I think with some experimentation I can convert wheat flour recipes to gluten-free. Plus, with this recipe I found for wonton wrappers, the pelmeni will be close behind! YAY!

However, what about my old friend butter? For most of the recipes that have required a solid lipid substance, coconut oil has been the prime candidate. However, I'm not sure if coconut oil would work exactly the same for things like toffee, and then there's the taste. There are some recipes that I can't imagine without the creamy, slightly salty taste of butter. Alright, so I won't make them. Or I could use a substitute like the casein-free ghee we found a while ago, but I'm still very skeptical.  Having butter without casein sounds to me like saying "It's snow, but without the frozen water crystals" or "It's Hitler, but without the genocide". It's so integral to how I perceive the object that I can't see how ghee could exist without the casein.

I'm mostly surprised because it suddenly hit me how many restrictions we have when looking for recipes. For instance, on the Gluten Free on a Shoestring website recipe page, especially the dessert section, there are so many recipes that still have butter or cornmeal. It just narrows the playing field a little more. However, there is an upside. This leaves room for experimentation. Maybe almond meal instead of cornmeal, or maybe we could find ways around using butter by taking the basic idea of the recipe but tweaking it a bit. You would have no idea how many recipes say they require butter but then only use it for caramelizing onions or a small amount of frying. We could always use oil, especially safflower oil, which tastes slightly buttery on its own.

Despite the fact that eating gluten/casein/soy/and corn free can get hard sometimes, we still have a bunch of recipes to work with. For instance, tonight we're having leftovers from the BEST SHEPARD'S PIE WE'VE MADE YET! I can't tell if it was the extra veggies, the garlic in the mashed potatoes, the tomato, or the half pound of bacon, but it's delicious. Personally, I think it was the bacon.

(image from here)

I'm a mutha' truckin' foodie!

It's been a long time since I last posted on this blog. Like, a really long time. I could blame school, or the fact that I haven't had too much to report as far as food labels go, or even my laziness. Maybe it's all of the above.

Going gluten/casein/corn/soy free has been both hard and easy. It's easy because my boyfriend and I have been experimenting with some really yummy recipes and adding twists to old ones. Seriously, adding cumin was the best idea for the good ol' standby of rice and beans. Plus, I lost a ton of weight. The process has been hard, however, because of the budget. We buy all of our fruits, veggies, and meat from the local farmer's market, which gets pretty pricey. But that's only half of it. The rest of our snack items as well as sundries like olive oil, salt, and spices either come from Whole Paycheck Foods or a local health food store. Each shopping trip tends to add up to about $70, and we usually need to stock up on snacks once a week or so. Things had to change.

Luckily, my boyfriend worked at a farm out here over the summer. We considered purchasing a CSA share from them, which would be a deal where we pay about $135 to cover the season and every week we pick up a load of veggies. However, since my boyfriend either planted, weeded, or harvested the veggies, the guys running it said we could get the food for free. SCORE!!!!!!! Plus, we're even closer to the farming community out here and we get invited to potlucks and potato feasts with them, which is always fun.

So how does this make me a foodie? Well, now that we have more veggies than we could every possibly afford on our own, this has freed up the food budget so we can go a little crazier with our meals. The result? This:

Acorn Squash stuffed with Lamb and Rice

1 cup rice
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp chili powder
1 bell pepper-- cut into small chunks
2 medium carrots --cut into bite-sized pieces
1 lb cubed lamb meat or lamb leg steak cut into chunks
Olive oil
Garlic (about 3 cloves) minced
1 tsp rosemary
2 acorn squash
Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Cook rice according to directions on package. When done, stir in cumin, chili powder, and bell pepper.

Coat a skillet or pan with olive oil and heat. Place in lamb meat, garlic, carrot, rosemary, salt and pepper. Brown lamb on all sides, but do not cook through completely. Spoon out the meat and carrot garlic mixture and mix into rice. Save the olive oil left in the pan.


Cut squash in half and scoop out the seeds. Place in a glass cooking dish or other pan which will hold the squash flesh-side up while cooking, Score the squash flesh or spear it with a fork. Pour olive oil left over from cooking the meat over the squash halves and season with salt and pepper to taste. Spoon meat and rice mixture into the hollow left from scooping out the seeds, making sure that each squash half has at least one or two chunks of meat (it's only fair!).

Place stuffed squash in oven and cook until squash flesh is tender and top layer of rice is slightly browned and crunchy. Enjoy!

----------------

I had been thinking of cooking lamb with cumin rice for a while, however when we got the acorn squash from the farm, I needed to find a way to cook it. Plus I had  to find a way to get some of the carrots and pepper out of the fridge. Hence this recipe. I had watched my mom make stuffed peppers before, so I made an educated guess as to the oven temperature. I don't know the exact cooking time because squash cooks slower than peppers and I was also doing dishes at the time, and kept running back to the oven to check the tenderness of the squash. Basically, the squash was done when the dishes were done, but that's no accurate measure.

Also, all the measurements were approximated. Really, the only thing I measured was the rice. This gives some flexibility if you want to try the recipe yourself. If you want the rice hotter, add more chili powder (mmmm). If you want it less cumin-y, use less than a teaspoon or leave it out all together. You could also try this recipe with ground beef if you aren't a fan of lamb. If you don't want meat, I bet this would be tasty with some eggplant in lieu of meat!

Seriously, how many other college students are making lamb in their dorm? I bet none. Sorry I couldn't add any pictures, but the meal has been long since eaten and I couldn't pause to take a picture when I was so hungry!!

Thank *insert deity here* for Larabar

For a few months now I've been fretting about what I'm going to eat for snacks once I go back to college. Because my boyfriend and I are going to be in the same building, I have decided to go allergen-free. However, that means a complete overhaul of my eating habits.

The meals I'm not so worried about. However, snacks were where I took in most of my gluten as well as my Red 40 and artificial flavors. It was getting hard for me to start thinking about healthy snack foods that I would actually want to eat. I'm not in the habit of eating fruit unless someone hands it to me and everything salty or sweet has gluten, casein, corn, and soy. And then came Larabars, down from the heavens like a majestic eagle of snacking. If I am waxing overly poetic, it's because I love them.

If you haven't encountered them before, Larabars are snack bars. Unlike other snack bars they use very minimal ingredients. For instance, their Cashew Cookie flavor contains only dates and cashews. That's it. Plus, they have a huge number of flavors that couldn't be pulled off by other snack bar companies. I don't think any other company could convincingly pull of a coconut cream pie flavor, let alone one that only uses five ingredients.

Okay, so we've well established that I love the taste, but why is it great for being allergen-free? It says right on the label that they are gluten and soy-free. There are no corn ingredients that I can see as well. The flavors that contain chocolate say that there might be some milk in that, but there are a bunch of great flavors that don't have chocolate so it will be easy for me to avoid those. Plus, the greatest think about the labels in my opinion is the fact that not only are the ingredients listed clearly and bluntly, they also put the nut products in bold print so that they stand out. They are drawing attention to the potential allergens contained in the product. They do this too with the warning about milk.

This is such a simple thing and yet I appreciate it so much. I like the company's honest statement about the ingredients as well as the fact that they blatantly admit that there are allergens to some people. With just a glance you can see if the product is safe or not. On checking their website, it appears that they are committed to being gluten-free, ensuring no cross-contamination and testing for gluten. They also explain that although they use milk and soy-free chocolate chips, the manufacturer shares the equipment with chocolate chips that contain milk and therefore there is potential for contamination. Why is it so hard for other companies to be this honest? Why don't other companies spell out the potential for allergens in clear and concise language on easy-to-find web pages? Why is it always buried deep in the depths of the FAQ page or in the wishy-washy language of customer service emails?

Larabar definitely has my business, both for their honesty and the fact that I now have an allergen-free way to get my sweet fix.

If you're curious, check out their list of products or pick up a few flavors. From what I've seen, their pretty easy to find if you go toward the natural food section. Enjoy!