REAL pizza. Yep – YUM!

Ok – so one of the big things lamented in our household (outside pasta) was a good pizza. Yes, you can get GF pizza a number of locations (our local one is Garlic Jim’s), and there are a number of frozen pizzas and pizza crusts available.

However, they all lack that yummy chewy yet crunchy thing that a good pizza has. Pizza crust should hold it’s own, and not be second fiddle to the toppings. It needs to have good flavor, and not wimp out under sauce and toppings. It should not need a fork to eat.

We’ve found pizzas that taste starchy. We’ve found crusts that are just crunchy, but with no chewy. We found savory nut-based crusts that are almost impossible to come by – they taste fantastic, but don’t have the chewy thing. And we’ve found some pretty funky tasting pizzas.

Making a pizza at home is a great family affair. Each kid has a favorite (mushroom and bacon seems to be the theme). It’s been a bit of a bummer to not be able to engage in this activity.

Until last night.

An acquaintance shared his GF pizza dough recipe and we gave it a try this weekend. WOW. Chewy, yet crispy, with a nice doughy flavor. Held up to our (hubby and mine) gourmet pepperoni/green olive/shallot/mushroom/mozzarella/goat cheese concoction.

The kids demolished their pizza. Then they went about eating the leftovers today for lunch. Yep – it reheats great!

This is someone else’s recipe, so I cannot post it in it’s entirety here. However, it’s based on the pizza crust recipe on side of a box of Schar white bread mix:

The additions are a bottle of GF beer, and enough corn starch to make it not-sticky. It was fairly easy, outside finding a local source for the above.

If you cannot find Schar locally, you can obtain online at the Schar online store, or at GlutenFreeMall.com.

Truly yummy – give it a try.

Enjoy!

Oddball ingredients?

Well – strange title, I know.

I dare you to walk up to a grocery store clerk and ask for Expandex. Go ahead, I’ll wait whist they finish either looking at you like you’ve lost your mind, laughing their asses off, or refer you to the local undergarments outlet store.

And some of the other ingredients will provoke strange mental images: Mesquite flour? Charcoal flavored, right? 

You need to realize – and come to accept – that GF cooking, or to be much more specific, GF baking, will require the use of ingredients that you may never have heard of, let alone considered using (or considered using in the quantities you will now).

For illustration purposes, let’s take a look back at the second post of this blog (School lunches and sandwiches). If you’ve gotten a chance to look at the ingredients on that box of bread mix, look again. And if you’ve not had a chance to look, go do it now. I’ll wait.

Yep, that’s right – the first ingredient is ‘maize starch’ – another way to say corn starch. You’ll be surprised just how much ‘starch’ you’ll use to get the baked good you want.

It’s ok – the starches do an excellent job subbing for the structure normally served by wheat flour.

And that Expandex thing? It’s modified tapioca starch, and useful to getting the nice snap you expect out of things like crackers. Mesquite flour is made from the dried seeds of the mesquite tree. Cinnamon-smelling and tastes a bit like it as well. Here’s the source I used to obtain it.

Both ingredients were introduced into our family baking repertoire by the 1000 Gluten Free Recipes book.

The whole point of this article is to say – it looks overwhelming, all the new ingredients and terms and measurements and quantities. But – remember when you first learned to cook. Yea – it seemed kind of the same then, didn’t it? So it’s not insurmountable.

So – in thanks for reading so far, another recipe!

This is a recipe for hush puppies (YUM) that I obtained from a magazine somewhere. A non-GF magazine. The original recipe called for a 1/2 cup of regular flour, for which I substituted a 1/2 cup off Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free All Purpose Flour (I should add here that you can find a lot of the ingredients you may be looking for at Bob’s Red Mill store).

I also substituted the onion for shallots.

The kids DEVOURED them.

Hush Puppies (makes ~ 20)

• 1 1/2 Cups yellow cornmeal (GF, of course)
• 1/2 Cup Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free All Purpose Flour
• 3 Tbs Sugar
• 2 Tsp baking powder
• 1 1/2 Tsp salt
• 3/4 Cup creamed corn
• 1/3 Cup milk
• 1 Large egg, lightly beaten
• 1 Small shallot, finely diced
• Vegetable oil, for frying
• A deep-fat or candy thermometer

1. Mix all ingredients, except the oil (and except for the thermometer, duh), in a large bowl until combined.
2. Fill a large pot with enough oil to be 2 inches deep. Heat the oil carefully over medium high heat until the thermometer reads 350 degrees.
3. Work in 3 or 4 batches (depending on size of your pan) – drop soup spoons full of the batter carefully into the hot oil. Fry, turning occasionally, until yummy golden brown.
4. Using a slotted spoon, remove from oil and transfer to a paper towel-lined plate to cool/drain.

Enjoy warm, and make sure you don’t leave them unattended – they may disappear!

Enjoy!

Goin’ GF, part deux

So when last I wrote, I started describing the experience of figuring out the GF lay of the land, so to speak. And our first ever GF shopping trip.

After that slightly depressing and disturbing shopping trip, we went home and regrouped. There had to be a way to do this GF thing without:

• Breaking the bank
• Forcing a 10 year old to eat gross things
• Ending up with a 10 year old in constant pain

Not to mention the rest of the family – the whole house went GF, so that we didn’t have to worry about contamination, or weak moments.

Low and behold, hubby found the GF bible – 1000 Gluten Free Recipes. We literally POURED over this cookbook. In one sitting, I read the entire preface section that described various essentials of GF eating:

• What is Celiac, how it’s diagnosed
• What is gluten
• What foods typically contain gluten
• Hidden gluten
• Ingredients for GF cooking
• How to measure those ingredients

You see – as a mom, you want to provide for your kids. You want to give them good food, stuff that doesn’t make them sick. And I needed to figure this out.

It became an obsession, almost.

I made a shopping list of every single ingredient we needed. There were a lot.

So off we went, looking for these exotic ingredients. Rice flour, brown rice flour, corn meal, corn flour, sorghum flour, fava flour, etc… there were quite the variety of flours, with an enormous variety of starches – corn starch, potato starch, tapioca starch, Expandex (which, I discovered, is modified tapioca starch).

And there we stood, back at Whole Foods, in the middle of the baking aisle, loading the easy-to-find items into our carts.

Then the more difficult stuff needed to get checked off – Expandex? Couldn’t find it. We also needed to find things like gravy, GF soups, etc…

We flagged someone down, and they helped us find almost the rest of the items on our lists. (more about Expandex and other exotic flours in another post)

Some great finds in our wanderings: GF elbow macaroni in the bulk aisle, along with a GF fruit and cereal bar.

Both were a major convenience food score – I make a mean homemade mac’n’cheese. We also found the Annie’s instant GF mac’n’cheese. YAY!

At that time, we were still experimenting with breads, tho, for daily sandwich lunches. Finding all the flours greatly increased our abilities, because we had the GF bible (mentioned above). We also have tried package mixes – Pamela’s, Bob’s Red Mill – but the best tasting we’ve found is that Orgran mix (mentioned in my first post).

(Well, then there’s Udi’s – but not a mix, a frozen item, and hard to find and small of loaf. But more on that in another post).

Shortly after our Great Flour Expedition (henceforth to be called the GFE), we went back to the Whole Foods store to find something else, and were stunned to see all the GF items coalesced into a single, easy to locate area at the front of the store. They even had special coolers and freezers in the same area for the GF items. I don’t think I’ve ever been so grateful to a grocer before. No more searching for hours for items we needed.

So by now, you’re probably thinking: Wait a sec. Isn’t this a food blog?

Yea – three posts in and not a single recipe.

Ok – so I don’t really make my own recipes up (well, I do, but never document them. Sometime that is gonna cause me pain).

So – the below recipe is a new family favorite. Found in an issue of Delight GF Magazine (delightgfmagazine.com), you’ll probably want a few tweaks to make it fabulous.

Sweet Potato Latkes

• 2 Russet potatoes, peeled and grated
• 2 Sweet potatoes, peeled and grated
• 1 Yellow onion, peeled and grated
• 4 Eggs
• 1 Cup potato starch
• 2 Tbs ground cinnamon
• 2 Tbs sugar
• 1 Tbs garlic powder
• 2 Tbs salt
• Oil for frying
• Sour cream or applesauce for garnish

1. Grate the potatoes, sweet potatoes and onion, and strain for 10 minutes, then place into a large bowl.
2. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, then pour them and the other ingredients (except the oil) on the potato onion mix.
3. Heat the oil in a large skillet. Form patties with the potato mixture, and fry on each side for 4 minutes, or until a crust forms.

This recipe is good – but a couple of gotchas.

• Make sure to drain – make it 15 min, if you can.
• Don’t mix and then leave the mixture for a while. You’ll end up with sweet potato onion soup.
• If the oil isn’t hot enough, the latke’s will absorb oil whilst cooking. This is not yummy.

Enjoy eating!

Goin’ GF

So we’re really pretty much new to this GF (Gluten Free) thing. It’s only been about 9 months, and when we realized we need to make a serious effort at this, it was a bit overwhelming.

For example – as I mentioned in my first post, have you looked at a school menu lately (late elementary)?

So – we embarked on a investigation/stock mission. See, we’re from the Midwest of the US (tho we currently live in the Puget Sound region of the Pacific North West). What does this mean? Having a pantry full of food from which we can pull to create a meal at any given point and time is a genetic trait. So is the deep freeze, in which we stocked such goodness as frozen loaves of bread, frozen pie crusts, etc…

So – first up was to eliminate the now poisonous food stuff. Even tho only the eldest is affected, we decided to make the house GF. So – many paper sacks of banned dry goods went to the food banks – pasta (Italian heritage, remember?), mac’n’cheese, boxes of those ‘instant’ side dishes (scalloped potatoes, rice-a-roni), soy sauce (did you know it contains wheat? yea, that was a surprise for us too), etc…

We also had to get rid of those convenience breads (refrigerator rolls, pizza crusts, etc…)

Oh – and then the condiments. Some of the normal stuff you find in your fridge may contain wheat, or wheat derivatives (thank whatever deity you like that there is now a regulation for identifying Wheat in foods  - right under the ingredients list, if a food contains Wheat, it must be noted). Read ingredients lists – carefully. You’ll become quite adept at this eventually, but for now, be slow and deliberate.

Actually, it’s probably a good idea to go through your whole fridge. Really. Pudding, for crying out loud. Gravy! Marinades that may contain soy sauce!

After we did this, we went to our local grocer. Um, yea. At the time,there was virtually nothing available at a standard grocer (yes, this is only 9 months ago).

So, we went to our local natural food mega-mart (ok, ok – Whole Foods). We knew that our best chance of finding stuff was likely there. We spent 2 overwhelming hours there trying to find things that a 10 year old would eat:

• Bread that was edible (for a 10 year old)
• Cupcakes (birthday parties, anyone?)
• Stuffing! (the holiday were impending…)
• Gravy (see above)
• Mac’n’cheese
• PASTA

All over the store. Been into a Whole Foods? It’s a WONDERFUL store. But – at that time (9 months ago) – if you were looking for the few items that were not going to cause you pain, you’d be looking for a while.

We left with $100 grocery bill, and a bunch of frustration. We were trying to replace everything we had eliminated. BIG mistake.

See – going GF is a big change in eating habits. Yes, for a 10 year old, it’s traumatic. But eating GF is, in my opinion, healthier. You’re not depending on those convenience food crutches. What you buy and eat is, out of necessity, something that you know fully what is in it.

To be continued……………………..

School lunches and sandwiches

My eldest (who must eat gluten free – GF) attends a public school.

Have you looked at public school menus lately. I challenge you to find ONE GF meal that would satisfy an almost 11 year old boy.

Yeah.

So – we make his lunch every day. Yep – I know, there are some families out there that do this with no prob. We’re a two earner household – both I and my husband work full time, so making lunch every day put a definite … change… into our schedule.

Finding an acceptable substitute to sandwich bread was a darn right challenge. It took us at least 2 months to settle on a brand/recipe. We tried at least 10 recipes.

We finally, with the approval of eldest son, settled on Orgran Gluten Free Easy bake Bread Mix (not to be confused with an easy bake oven cake mix).

www.orgran.com

We purchase from our local Whole Foods, which has created a whole GF section (more about our first GF shopping outing later).

This loaf bakes up full loaf size, unlike a lot of the frozen GF loaves (but there are frozen GF loaves that fantastic in and of their own right – that’s fodder for, you guessed it, another day).

This stuff, fresh from the oven, tastes sooooooo good. It’s a formulation that can be made without dairy and eggs, thus making it safer for those with multiple allergies. It has no yeast – it uses a combination of ‘raising agents’ to get loft. And – because it’s a GF bread, no need to knead.

Some tips for this bread:

• If your allergies can withstand it, add the milk and/or eggs. The final product will be better for it.
• If you are allergic to corn, this is not the box for you.
• Get a digital scale – this, and many other GF recipes you will find, depend on weights. Your favorite domestic store will have a selection from which to chose…

Anyway- dinner time.

Enjoy!

Changes!

Well, this is a new adventure.

I'm the mom of a 10 year old boy. He experienced consistent and persistent stomach pain for months, before we found out the true cause - he developed (or started expressing) a wheat sensitivity that may or may not be Celiac.

May or may not be - diagnostic tests to determine the presence of Celiac require an active response, and we're not going to put our son through pain again just to see if it's Celiac. We're working on the belief that it is Celiac (as his pain ceases when wheat is removed from his diet).

So - we're a family of four adjusting to the new world of GF (gluten free) cooking. Oh - and I'm from Italian heritage.

Yea, pasta.

Needless to say, the transition has been, um... difficult.

So I decided to start this blog as a way to share our experiences, difficulties, and successes - hopefully helping others.

Happy eating!