Gluten Free Blogging
So I have entered this blog into a contest that the winner receives a free site redesign. So if I win I could update how this looks to be a whole lot better. So what I need is votes. Go to http://torchmysite.com/site-entries/ and vote for my blog (Logan’s Menu). If I could get some help that would be great.
I came home late one day and wanted a quick meal that was not what I had been eating the last few days. That meant cheese tortillas, salad, and most everything I had in my refrigerator was out. I looked at my canned goods and found a can of chili. Alone that didn’t sound to good so i kept looking. I came across a can of refried beans and beef broth and the idea came.
Gluten Free Taco Soup:
-1 can of your favorite chili
-1 can of your favorite refried beans
-1 can of beef broth
combine in a pot and heat on the stove. Bring to a roaring boil and cook for a minute or 2. This helps to thicken it just a little. If tastes good just as it is but you can season it a little if you want with onions/onion powder, garlic/garlic powder, chili powder or any of your favorite spices. Add corn chips or shredded corn tortillas to give it a little more substance.
Breakfast burritos are a quick and simple meal that I love to have any time. They are also really good because they are filling.
Needed Ingredients:
Optional Fillings:
Make the eggs and put some in a corn tortilla. Then top with what ever suites your fancy. I enjoy cooking the eggs with the meat and cheese in it then adding some salsa at the end. No matter what you like it is a good way to have a filling gluten free meal that is quick and easy. I really enjoy them for dinner too.
Yesterday was my roommates Birthday and we had quite the little party (given that it was a weekday). We made him dinner and then later some friends came over and we gave him a little surprise party. It was a really fun day. For dinner we made lasagna casserole and I made a small batch that was gluten free for myself. It was pretty simple and it is nice because it will last for a few meals. (To change it to normal lasagna just use lasagna noodles instead).
Ingredients:
2-3 cups of gluten free pasta noodles (I prefer the twisted ones but any will work.)
1/4 or 1/2 lbs of ground beef (depending on how much you like)
16 oz of tomato sauce (can be any flavor like meat or garlic, etc.)
32 oz of cottage cheese (for more traditional lasagna use ricotta cheese)
1 egg
1 tsp oil
grated mozzarella cheese (as much as you like)
start by cooking the ground beef with just a little salt and pepper. (I prefer to boil it to get rid of more fat.) In a pot combine the meat and tomato sauce. Warm that up. In a separate bowl combine the cottage cheese, egg and oil, then mix till blended. In a large greased loaf pan spread a thin layer of tomato sauce, put about half of the noodles in the pan and spread evenly, then spread half of the tomato sauce that is left over the noodles. Next spread half of the cottage cheese mix on top of that, sprinkle with mozzarella cheese. Then repeat the noodle layer, then tomato sauce, cottage cheese and top with mozzarella. Make sure to put enough mozzarella to cover the top to the noodles don’t dry out.
Now bake in a pre-heated oven for 35-40 minutes at 350 degrees F. You should be able to stick a knife in and not feel any crunchy noodles. Let it cool for 5 minutes then serve.
Easy variations can include:
To make it go faster you can boil the noodles in water while cooking the meat. Then reduce baking time by half. You just melting the cheese and heating it all the way through then. Top with something green to give more style and serve with garlic bread.
Lasagna is one of my favorite meals and being a celiac does not mean you have to give up on pasta which I am grateful for.
Today I wanted to make dinner with what I had on hand. Though at the same time not using the really quick stuff like frozen meals and such because I wanted to save those for busier days. So as I rummaged through my food supply I found a few ingredients I thought I could put together to make an interesting meal. And the recipe is:
1 can of chicken
1 can of white beans
1 can of petite diced tomatoes
I drained each of them and rinsed the beans. Then in a pan, on medium heat, I heated a little vegetable oil with some salt, garlic pepper, and basil. Once the pan was hot I added the chicken, beans, and tomatoes and cooked until almost all the liquid was gone. Next I put it on some corn tortillas and served.
It turned out really good because it was a different version of a taco without the taco seasonings. Though it had a really tomato-y taste, one that is not my favorite but not bad. I think if I do it again I would use half as much on the tomatoes.
Some variations that I think would be nice are:
So today I harvested the first zucchini from my garden and I thought I would make one of my favorite sweet breads. (I know it is late in the season for the first zucchini but I planted late and we are at a higher altitude and it was colder later into the year.) So I thought I would share the recipe and how it turns out.
1 1/2 cups Gluten Free Flour
3/4 tsp. xanthan gum
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1 cup sugar
1 cup finely shredded, unpeeled zucchini
1/4 cup oil
1 egg
1/4 tsp. finely shredded lemon peel (I just used lemon juice)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)
Preheat oven to 350. Grease one 8x4x2 loaf pan.
Combine flour, xanthan gum, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg. In another bowl, combine sugar zucchini, oil, egg, and lemon peel. Mix well. Add dry mix to zucchini mix. Stir just until moistened. Fold in nuts. Pour into pan.
Bake for 55 to 60 minutes, until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10 minutes, then remove from pan and cool completely.
You may think that taking gluten out of your diet is no big deal because it doesn’t do much but that is not true. Gluten is what gives bread that nice soft texture and what keeps it all together. Gluten is a protein that binds together giving you a great texture and something that will stay in one piece. Without it things just fall apart. There are substitutes for it such as Xanthan gum or guar gum. This are usually a power that are added to food that needs to be bound together. When they get wet the best way to describe them is that they turn into a sticky slime. If you mix it up on its own it doesn’t look to good but if used right they can really change they way a gluten free bread loaf turns out. Something you may find interesting is that gluten is something you have to develop, almost draw out of the wheat. When bread is kneaded the gluten is developed into almost a web like link in the dough to bind it all together. It takes a lot of time to develop this to a point that the gluten will hold together and also give you that light texture. No with gluten free doughs you are not developing that gluten so you don’t have to mix it a lot just enough to make sure everything is combined. (Though sometimes mixing more can be a good thing. I have found that making sure to mix the Bob’s Red Mill gluten free bread mix as long as it says or even a little bit more can make the bread not get as big of air bubbles in it. It could be from the eggs in the dough.)
Xanthan gum and guar gum are tasteless so you don’t need to worry about flavoring. Though it can be hard to know how much to put in a recipe. The best way is to just start by using recipes that already exist and then once you get the feel for it you can experiment on your own. Also some pre-mixed flours will tell you on the packaging how much you should use per cup of flour. Also it is best to mix it in with the flour before you add it to liquid so it will be evenly distributed through the dough/mix.
What really is the problem with celiac disease. Well first it is a genetic disorder that you carry for your whole life but it lays dormant and inactive until you trigger it. Then unfortunately it doesn’t go back to sleep once you have awakened it. It gets triggered through periods of high stress. Mine was when I had a few stressful days right in a row. My brothers was when he got pneumonia. For others it can be some sickness, a stressful time, over stressing the body, for women pregnancy can trigger it, or any other form of stress you can think of. For each person it is going to be different on how much it will take. Also because it is in the genes, just because someone in your family has it then it doesn’t automatically mean you have celiac disease. If you want to know if you have the gene there are some blood tests that you can do but they are expensive and they wont tell you when it is going to get triggered. I feel that it is better just to recognize the symptoms and if you think you have triggered it you can ask the doctor to do the other blood test. (The first one I talked about does gene mapping, the second one just looks for the presence of the anti-body that is made which is a lot easier to measure).
So celiac disease means that your body sees the protein gluten as a foreign substance that must be destroyed. I think it is kind of an interesting concept because something that your body uses to be able to deal with and it didn’t do any harm to anyone is no but on the bodies black list of death. It is like some commander crossed memos and the poor innocent gluten is now a fellow while there are more dangerous things out there that our body should be on the look out for. But oh well we are stuck with it for now and there is no going back.
This gluten when it enters the body is detected and because it is thought of as bad the immune system starts a full frontal attack on it. It produces an anti-body to attack this foreign substance. Though it is like the general gave the wrong coordinates of attack because instead of attacking the gluten it attacks the small intestine. The intestine is where the main absorption of nutrients happen in our body. There are small villi in the intestine which give it a great amount of surface area to absorb the nutrients. When the immune system attacks it is the villi that suffer causing them to be damaged. After a long time of this these villi can disappear.
This is what causes all the different symptoms that we experience. Depending on how bad it has gotten and what our body thinks is wrong. For some it is stomach problem, others just that they are really hunger, some other bodily disorders because the body is confused on what is really wrong. There are a wide variety of symptoms so one person can have one and another never have that.
Now a days lunch is on of the quickest meals around. We seem to fit in between here and there, giving our self only about 10 minutes to grab something to eat. That makes it hard because there are not really a lot of quick gluten free items out there. But with a little creativity and thinking you can have some really good things. Here are some of my favorite things to have for lunch:
These are just a few off the top of my head. As I think of more I will add to the lunch list. Though you can always think of your favorite meal that you use to have and see if you can take the parts out that have gluten in them.
There are many different types of gluten free flours out there and you could get your brain in a knot trying to figure out. They have taken any thing that is edible and have ground it up into flour. So if you are just starting out and you research gluten free flours you could end up with more information then you ever thought you could want. Here is just a start of a list of types of flours that they have made:
Amaranth flour, Arrowroot flour, Brown or White rice flour, Buckwheat flour (Buckwheat is not closely related to normal wheat and does not contain gluten), Chick pea flour (aka gram or garbanzo flour), Cornflour, Cornmeal, Millet flour, Potato flour, Potato starch flour, Quinoa flour, Soya flour, and Tapioca flour.
As you can see there is quite a lot of flours and these are just the basic starting one. There are many more that could be listed but you will probably never use them. Even with this list you will probably only use a couple.
Some recipes will have you use a few different flours to create a good texture. Usually if a recipe contains only one type of flour it will end up having a funny taste and be gritty. Though the only way to tell is to try. Some recipes will call for an all-purpose flour which is just a premixed blend of flours. Some cookbooks will have you make your own with a recipe they provide and tell you to keep it on hand so that you can always cook when you want to.
My favorite option is to use a premixed flour that you can buy. There are many options for these as well and you can try different ones to see which work well for you. The one I have found that works the best is the “Gluten Free All-Purpose Flour Mix” made by Life Tastes Good Again. It can be found by clicking here.
This mix is great because you can use it in any recipe that you want whither it is one that call for an all-purpose flour or there are a bunch of different flours. If your recipe calls for many different flours then just add up the total amount of flour called for and just use that amount of this flour.