Tag: gluten free

Where did all the flour go?

~ oneletterup ~ 30 Comments

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Sense of Touching

…post anything that stimulates or delights your sense of touch.

SixWordSaturday

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Fun fact – the grocery stores may run out of regular plain wheat flour, but around here they don’t run out of gluten free flour!

People may be desperate to bake, but lucky for me, apparently not that desperate.

So, armed with “Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free 1 to 1 Baking Flour” and a multitude of other ingredients, I tackled a complicated – but exceptionally delicious – corn muffin recipe this past week.

Since being diagnosed with celiac disease in 2009, my expectations for success in baking have nosedived…using recipes with as few steps as possible. However I made an exception after my daughter introduced these muffins to me several years ago. I was hooked.

They do have a strange expensive ingredient…Crème Fraîche…which can take a bit of searching in the dairy aisle. The container I had bought last month was still sitting in the refrigerator…its expiration date fast approaching.

And it proved to be what moved me to action as the rain poured outside and the light was low.

Having-something-to-use-up is a powerful motivator.

Baking kept my mind off the latest surreal news of the day…with delicious results.

muffins

 

muffin

Grandma Friendly Groceries

~ oneletterup ~ 21 Comments

Inspired by Frank at Dutch goes the Photo: Groceries
If you need to buy groceries that are gluten free (GF) or, as my 3 year old grandson says, “Grandma Friendly,” there are more choices then ever before. Ten years ago, when I was first diagnosed with celiac disease, “Gluten Free” supermarket aisles didn’t exist. You either made your own version of bread/muffins/cake or ordered from a catalogue or online. Crackers, pasta and snacks were hard to find.

Gluten free used to be synonymous with cardboard – both texture and flavor-wise. Since manufacturers jumped on the GF bandwagon (for better or worse) in the last decade, the situation has improved. GF versions of staples such as bread, crackers and cereal almost taste like the gluten filled real thing. If you close your eyes…and have a short memory. Some are tastier than others.

Labeling accuracy is still sometimes iffy, but for the most part a bit of research is all that’s necessary before venturing down the grocery aisle.

gluten free aisle
Grocery Aisle

 

Unless, of course, you want to skip some of the label reading and head to an outside aisle.

groceries
Outside Aisle

Also Grandma Friendly.

Photo a Week: What’s for Dinner

~ oneletterup ~ 15 Comments

Inspired by Nancy Merrill’s Photo a Week Challenge: What’s for Dinner

IN A NEW POST CREATED FOR THIS CHALLENGE, SHARE A PHOTO OR TWO OF A FAVORITE MEAL.

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In my family, there has never been such a thing as too much cheese. If a recipe called for 1 Cup, it would be a…very…heaping cup. Or let’s just sprinkle on some extra. Or use up the rest of the hunk.

My baked macaroni and cheese recipe – revised over the years – was a family favorite. My daughter has since tweaked it and made it her own; offering it to college friends and now her own family. Probably with even more cheese.

I had to change it up when I was diagnosed with celiac disease 10 years ago. Not because of the cheese (phew!), but the pasta. That was a challenge, as anyone who has cooked with gluten free pasta knows. I experimented with a few different pastas and cooking times until the recipe worked…complete with the bread crumb topping that – of course – is as important as the rest.

A recent dinner:
Gluten free macaroni and cheese
Green beans and a side of leftover chicken.
Tossed salad –  including home grown tomatoes from a friend’s garden.

plate

salad

 

Macaroni & Cheese Final Prep
Step 1: Sprinkle liberally with extra cheese
Step 2: Cover with buttered GF bread crumbs and crushed potato chips. Bake.
Step 3: Remove from oven

Extra Cheese
Add topping
Fully baked & ready to eat!

 

Dinner Time!

Anomaly

~ oneletterup ~ 7 Comments

This post inspired by V.J.’s Weekly Challenge #52: Anomaly

 

I should have seen this as an ominous sign of things to come.

The bizarre muffin situation of April, 2008.

It happened 11 months before I was diagnosed – much to my surprise and dismay – with celiac disease.

Marking the starting point of my downward spiral…into the land of massive shoulder shrugging by countless doctors and specialists. I was convinced somebody had answers to my pileup of accompanying symptoms and why and what-the-hell-is-going-on with my body questions….

…Back to the muffins…
What the heck happened here? I had no idea.
Regular muffins. Nothing crazy. A simple dependable recipe that produced muffins of uniform shape and size. One of the easier items to bake.
But this batch?
Odd. Weird. Peculiar looking.
An anomaly.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

So much so, that I documented. My husband and I had a few chuckles as well.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
One year later I started a new baking adventure: gluten free everything.
Including muffins. Which, though more difficult to make, never turned out like those weird ones from BC (Before Celiac).

I, on the other hand, had become an anomaly in the exam rooms in 4 states.

As health care professionals attempted to diagnose my ever expanding list of health problems…with answers that did little to satisfy…

I’ve never seen this before.
Mmmm…the usual tests look normal.
I’m not sure what to do next.
It’s probably autoimmune.
Most people don’t have all these symptoms.
There’s not much we can do.
Let’s wait and see…

and…my favorite…

Sometimes this happens.

Bread

~ oneletterup ~ 14 Comments

This post inspired by Ragtag Daily Prompt

Bread…the often maligned staff of life. A slice of evil carbs. The heaven-sent envelope for melted cheese.

I didn’t give it much thought on a personal level until 10 years ago. When I was diagnosed with celiac disease. And reluctantly began my adventures into the murky depths of the gluten-free diet.

Full disclosure: I worked my entire professional life as a registered dietitian, so I knew what celiac disease was. And what a gluten-free diet was.  My least favorite diet to teach someone about. Challenging to say the least.

It was not without great irony, that I embarked upon this new personal life chapter.

Returning to the subject of bread…

“Back in the day” as we baby boomers say, gluten-free (GF) bread was akin to extra thick cardboard…at best. Available only by mail order. Or at a lonely booth at the annual dietetics convention. Samples piled high as dietitians rushed past the company table. Towards the latest low fat potato chips on display further down the crowded aisle.

GF bread was oh so very dry. Like chewing on a rug pad. Sandy when crumbled. Taste? A junior high science experiment gone wrong.

When I was diagnosed in 2009, a hopeful light had started to appear at the end of the gluten-free diet tunnel. A few companies were starting to manufacture decent gluten-free mixes, cookies, cakes…and some breads. The marketing strategy was not so much aimed at those of us with celiac disease (we are only 1% of the US population), but for those with gluten intolerance as well.

However, the real economic driver for the cascade of GF foods on the grocery store shelves? The tidal wave of consumers who believe a gluten-free diet is a healthier diet overall (it isn’t, don’t get me started…).

All the attention is fine with me though. I benefit from more choices that actually taste…almost as good…as their “real” counterparts.

I tried making GF bread from a mix the old fashioned way. Letting it rise and all of that. There were a number of disasters until I found a mix that turned out okay…

gf bread 2011

…but the texture? meh… Taste? better than a GF loaf off the shelf. Still way too much work.

In 2011 my 2 adult children took pity on me and gifted me a bread machine at Christmas. Along with several bags of GF bread mix.

“It’s easy Mom. Just put it all in the machine and push the gluten free setting button!”
They were well acquainted with my aversion for recipes with more than 6 ingredients and a few steps.

They were right. It was easy. The bread tasted even better. And did I say it was easy?

The magic bread mix plus bread machine did equal a quality loaf of gluten-free bread. Not quite like the old days of hearty wheat and bran bread, but a definite improvement…

GF bread 2012

No more cardboard bread. The taste and texture acceptable. But still not…well…normal.

gf bread cutJPG

However…since I pride myself on reading directions – no matter what they are for – I also studied the recipe book that came with the bread machine.

I found a gluten-free bread recipe listing:

5  different flours plus
9 other ingredients
and 15 steps…

…I thought maybe I could make an even better GF bread. Worth the time to assemble. With so…many…ingredients. And the bread machine…

My curiosity got the better of me. As often happens.

I tweaked the recipe with:

1. What I had learned since my diagnosis (which includes: forget all you ever knew about baking bread)
2. Old Food Science class info nuggets pried from my memory bank circa 1976 (science is science after all).
3. Let’s try somehow to increase the fiber so eating white bread doesn’t feel so wrong.

It worked.
Excellent tasting gluten-free bread.

Which I know I have a photo of somewhere.
And when I find it, I will add it to this post!

One thing for sure: samples would go fast at the convention….