Would you like some gluten-free lemon-coconut pound loaf (cake)? Why, yes, I would!
Showing posts with label Gluten-Free. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gluten-Free. Show all posts
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Successes and Failures
Wow, I didn't realize it has been nearly a month since I last posted. A week later after I posted last, we went to another city for 10 days. It was warm and sunny there with low humidity. Meanwhile, it'd gotten downright chilly and rainy back in our city. When we returned, we were completely unprepared when we stepped off the plane and onto the tarmac. I froze in seconds wearing only a thin shirt and thin short-sleeved cardigan. As soon as we retrieved our baggage, I opened my bag and put on another cardigan and two scarves. It took us an hour and half to get home from the airport (we took the subway and then the metrobus) and we were freezing. The sad thing is, I didn't even own a coat yet. I got rid of my coat back in the States because it was 6 years old and the lining was getting shredded. After we'd been home for two days, we hustled out and I bought a coat on sale. I'm ready for winter now.
The city we were in isn't exactly a vacation spot. I'd originally described it as desert in my newsletter (just not the conventional desert with sand dunes) but I wish I could retract that. It's not a desert; it's simply barren. The mountains are barren, rocky, brown dirt. They're still beautiful in their own way. The view from the plane as we were coming in for landing was gorgeous with the cliffs, plateaus, gorges, and peaks. The valley that the city is nestled in is flat and wide with the Euphrates river running through it. It's not a lush green valley though, even with the river. There are groves of fruit trees everywhere but as far as I can tell, there weren't a lot of natural, indigenous vegetation. The climate generally stays dry. It was an interesting place. I think you should be able to click on the pictures below to enlarge them.
After we returned from this city, we hit the ground running by returning to language training, doing laundry, catching up on things, series of doctor appointments, etc. We were already exhausted when we returned to our city but we really ran ourselves ragged by the time weekend came rolling around. We shut ourselves in our apartment all weekend and did nothing but eat, sleep, nap, read, watch movies, etc. I think now we have recovered and we're back to our kind of normal. I say our kind of normal because what's normal about living overseas?
Did I ever tell you that we have a convection oven? Not gas or electric. I'm not quite sure I know how to use it. There are no words on the oven, just pictures which I am deciphering and trying out. The other day, I was cooking a pumpkin in the oven (no canned pumpkins to be found so I make my own pumpkin puree) for a couple of hours and turned off the oven when I was done. A little while later, I kept smelling the oven which has a slight distinctive smell when it's turned on. By nighttime, the smell was strong. I reached to open the oven door to check the interior and nearly scalded my hand. The handle, the oven door, and even the countertops were hot. The oven was still on even though the dials were turned off. The oven interior light and the indicator lights were off. We didn't know how to turn it off except to flip the breakers so G did. The entire kitchen was turned off - in other words, the refrigerator was turned off. We ended up running an extension cord to the refrigerator from the other room. After some false start with flipping the breaker back on (G managed to turn off the electricity to the entire apartment by accident and had to run downstairs to turn it back on in the, what I guess you would call the master electrical box), we found that the oven didn't turn back on. Problem solved. Or so we thought.
A couple days later, I decided to make pumpkin muffins. This is how it turned out:
Scorched tops and uncooked middle. I checked the temperature dial and settings. It was correct so the oven temperature must've been off. Obviously, the oven is not working correctly now. I managed to salvage the muffins by cutting off the tops and baking the rest of the muffins again. They were edible but...eh.
Last night, we had a couple of nationals over for dinner. They wanted to try American food. We racked our brains and G suggested black-eye pea stew over rice, a Southern dish. I'd meant to make cornbread with it but forgot. I decided to brave the capricious oven and make a gluten-free apple crisp (what's more American than apple pie?) and it turned out delicious, which surprised me because I'd winged it after looking at couple of recipes. We served it with vanilla ice cream, naturally. Our guests had second helpings of everything and the apple crisp was a big hit with them. G treated them to a Coke float which was a first for them and made us laugh with their reactions. We tried to describe root beer to them (for root beer floats) but they had no frame of reference for that.
Now, the apple crisp turned out well because I watched it diligently so the top wouldn't be scorched and bottom undercooked. I may try and attempt pumpkin muffins again and station myself in front of the oven to watch them.
Oh, I wanted to share about grinding almonds into flour for my gluten-free cooking (the pumpkin muffins required almond four). After searching for some time, we found a coffee grinder which people have said they successfully used for grinding flour. Coffee grinders aren't in abundance here and they are expensive. I finally put my new coffee grinder to use. I chopped up the almonds and dropped them in.
Flour came out. Sweet! So I put in more almonds. Nothing more came out. After working at it for some time, I realized that I'd ground the almonds so much that it turned into almond butter.
Fresh almond butter is quite delicious but that wasn't the result I wanted. I managed to get some finely ground flour and some meal (differences in fine and coarse) before I gave up trying to clean the machine of the almond butter. The machine may have died an early death but I've set it aside to try and clean it before I give it up for good.
Nonetheless, I wasn't deterred. I pulled out my food processor and ground more almonds into flour. It does the job but not as well. Fine flour is required for baking so I used my flour sifter to sift out the fine flour and save the coarser flour for coating, meatballs, etc. My first almond flour went into the disastrous pumpkin muffin attempt above.
So, my lovelies, I hope this post catches you up with us sufficiently!
The city we were in isn't exactly a vacation spot. I'd originally described it as desert in my newsletter (just not the conventional desert with sand dunes) but I wish I could retract that. It's not a desert; it's simply barren. The mountains are barren, rocky, brown dirt. They're still beautiful in their own way. The view from the plane as we were coming in for landing was gorgeous with the cliffs, plateaus, gorges, and peaks. The valley that the city is nestled in is flat and wide with the Euphrates river running through it. It's not a lush green valley though, even with the river. There are groves of fruit trees everywhere but as far as I can tell, there weren't a lot of natural, indigenous vegetation. The climate generally stays dry. It was an interesting place. I think you should be able to click on the pictures below to enlarge them.
After we returned from this city, we hit the ground running by returning to language training, doing laundry, catching up on things, series of doctor appointments, etc. We were already exhausted when we returned to our city but we really ran ourselves ragged by the time weekend came rolling around. We shut ourselves in our apartment all weekend and did nothing but eat, sleep, nap, read, watch movies, etc. I think now we have recovered and we're back to our kind of normal. I say our kind of normal because what's normal about living overseas?
Did I ever tell you that we have a convection oven? Not gas or electric. I'm not quite sure I know how to use it. There are no words on the oven, just pictures which I am deciphering and trying out. The other day, I was cooking a pumpkin in the oven (no canned pumpkins to be found so I make my own pumpkin puree) for a couple of hours and turned off the oven when I was done. A little while later, I kept smelling the oven which has a slight distinctive smell when it's turned on. By nighttime, the smell was strong. I reached to open the oven door to check the interior and nearly scalded my hand. The handle, the oven door, and even the countertops were hot. The oven was still on even though the dials were turned off. The oven interior light and the indicator lights were off. We didn't know how to turn it off except to flip the breakers so G did. The entire kitchen was turned off - in other words, the refrigerator was turned off. We ended up running an extension cord to the refrigerator from the other room. After some false start with flipping the breaker back on (G managed to turn off the electricity to the entire apartment by accident and had to run downstairs to turn it back on in the, what I guess you would call the master electrical box), we found that the oven didn't turn back on. Problem solved. Or so we thought.
A couple days later, I decided to make pumpkin muffins. This is how it turned out:
Scorched tops and uncooked middle. I checked the temperature dial and settings. It was correct so the oven temperature must've been off. Obviously, the oven is not working correctly now. I managed to salvage the muffins by cutting off the tops and baking the rest of the muffins again. They were edible but...eh.
Last night, we had a couple of nationals over for dinner. They wanted to try American food. We racked our brains and G suggested black-eye pea stew over rice, a Southern dish. I'd meant to make cornbread with it but forgot. I decided to brave the capricious oven and make a gluten-free apple crisp (what's more American than apple pie?) and it turned out delicious, which surprised me because I'd winged it after looking at couple of recipes. We served it with vanilla ice cream, naturally. Our guests had second helpings of everything and the apple crisp was a big hit with them. G treated them to a Coke float which was a first for them and made us laugh with their reactions. We tried to describe root beer to them (for root beer floats) but they had no frame of reference for that.
Now, the apple crisp turned out well because I watched it diligently so the top wouldn't be scorched and bottom undercooked. I may try and attempt pumpkin muffins again and station myself in front of the oven to watch them.
Oh, I wanted to share about grinding almonds into flour for my gluten-free cooking (the pumpkin muffins required almond four). After searching for some time, we found a coffee grinder which people have said they successfully used for grinding flour. Coffee grinders aren't in abundance here and they are expensive. I finally put my new coffee grinder to use. I chopped up the almonds and dropped them in.
Flour came out. Sweet! So I put in more almonds. Nothing more came out. After working at it for some time, I realized that I'd ground the almonds so much that it turned into almond butter.
 |
| Almond butter stuck in dispenser |
 |
| Almond butter smeared on cutting board |
Nonetheless, I wasn't deterred. I pulled out my food processor and ground more almonds into flour. It does the job but not as well. Fine flour is required for baking so I used my flour sifter to sift out the fine flour and save the coarser flour for coating, meatballs, etc. My first almond flour went into the disastrous pumpkin muffin attempt above.
So, my lovelies, I hope this post catches you up with us sufficiently!
Monday, September 26, 2011
My Life Just Got Easier
Have I mentioned that I love my parents? I love them because they're my parents and I really appreciate their love, generosity, and support. One of the best things they can do from long distance is to send me gluten-free stuff, which they have done and they continue to do so as I am expecting packages any day now. I really feel loved when they do that for me because they ease my life here in a substantial way, all the way from the other side of the ocean.
So far, I've gotten GF Bisquick mixes for waffles, GF rolled oats which I use for granola, sorghum flour for baking sweets, brown sugar, dried herbs and spices, Crystal Light, M&Ms for A, etc. Somewhere over the Atlantic, a package is making its way to me, full of sweet rice flour, coconut flour, tapioca starch, potato starch, and xanthan gum (which replaces the gluten as acts as gluten does in baking). My pantry will be very well stocked and complete for all the GF cooking and baking that I need. I only need to grind my own brown rice flour and almond flour, for which I am on a hunt for a coffee bean grinder. Here, you can buy almonds in bulk, which is cheaper than in the States. I can make my own almond milk (great flavor to replace cow's milk with in baked goods), almond butter, and almond flour. Yep.
I found a magazine website called Vegetarian Times, and it has an excellent recipe search engine with several search options such as gluten-free, egg-free, dairy-free, etc. I can search by ingredient (for example, zucchini) and click on "gluten-free" and get plenty of recipes that are pretty simple (not requiring a lot of pre-made stuff from the States which may or may not be available here). My life just got easier! Whew.
I'm slowly learning how to substitute and make from scratch. For example, I have been wanting to learn how to make chickpea vegan burgers since there are chickpeas aplenty here. I also found a chickpea chocolate cake (very simple, no flour) recipe. G accidentally poured an entire kilo bag of dried chickpeas (2.2 lbs) to soak. I didn't think about it either until I realized that we were soaking more chickpeas than we needed. SO, it looks we'll be eating a lot of chickpeas this week! At least, it's healthy. Chickpea burgers, chickpea chocolate cake, and homemade hummus are on the menu this week. I hope we can use it all up.
Back to my original point about my learning to substitute and cook from scratch. Chickpea burgers require eggs and breadcrumbs to bind the burgers together. Since I am still waiting on the package that's somewhere over the Atlantic, I can't make my own breadcrumbs. The big supermarket may or may not have GF bread. So, I did research and found that I can use rolled oats as a binding agent to replace the breadcrumbs. Score! I have GF rolled oats! My life just got easier.
I don't like to cook but I don't hate it either. I like to eat delicious food so that's what makes me cook. One thing I really hate is to think up what to cook every night. Doing meal planning for the week really saves me of the nightly hassle of staring into the pantry and refrigerator without a single idea of what to cook. Now, I'm trying to save myself even more hassle by planning for the month. It seemed really daunting until I found a tip on a random blog for planning a month of meals - do themes. For example, salad every Monday, soup every Tuesday, ethnic every Wednesday, and so on. You only need to find 4 recipes/ideas for each theme. My life just got easier.
You can probably see the recurring theme here: my life just got easier. I am celebrating this. I am thankful for my parents who help me by sending packages and for the Internet for tips and recipes. Very thankful...
By the way, I posted on A's blog about her going off to preschool on her first day today. Check it out!
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Gluten-Free Challenge
I have to say that it's a bit frustrating to cook here. Well, more than just a bit because of the celiac issue. I know eventually I'll get the hang of it and have a collection of recipes to cook from which won't require so many ingredients either unavailable here or unavailable as gluten-free (such as soy sauce). On top of that, it's been frustrating to feed a stubborn, picky 2-year-old. I have been spending hours researching recipes, substitutions for ingredients, and finding recipes to make ingredients from scratch like worcestershire sauce, evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk, brown sugar, vanilla extract, etc.
There aren't a lot of gluten-free flours and other GF ingredients available here. I can find GF pasta, hazelnut meal, all-purpose GF flour, bread (which is dry and hard to swallow), corn starch, and maybe some other products that I never used in the States anyway. I need a lot more than that, namely xanthan gum. It acts like gluten does and provides the elasticity needed for soft, spongy bread.
I ran out of gluten-free oatmeal that I brought from the states so that left me with very little to choose from for breakfast. It's challenging to find breakfast foods that can last me a long time. Fruit and yogurt doesn't always cut it and I end up needing a snack before lunchtime. Fortunately, I was able to buy a crockpot last week from a family here so now I can make porridge from brown rice for breakfast.
A couple of weeks ago, I tried to make ranch salad dressing from scratch with fresh ingredients. It wasn't terrible but the recipe wasn't worth keeping. I used what is basically sourish watered down yogurt for the tart milk-based liquid ("ayran," a popular drink here) for the dressing but it was too runny. It wasn't until after the dressing was made that I realized that I could've used plain yogurt. What I didn't like was the tons of veggies left over:
The small pile closest to the knife was all I needed for the dressing. The green onions are bundled together in such a single, large item so I had to buy the whole thing. I ended up chopping the rest of the green onions and freezing them. The white container to the right was filled to the brim. It'll be good in omelets and as toppings on salads.
I also learned how to make crepes which can be a good breakfast (with scrambled egg stuffed in it - if I could eat eggs) and dessert with jam inside the crepes. I just found a recipe for raisins and bananas in crepes with vanilla ice cream scoops on top. Delish.
Anyway, for now, I will just have to make simple dinners like steamed veggies and rice. My mom is mailing me a couple of packages of GF stuff so life might get a little easier once the packages (hopefully) arrive.
**EDIT**
After hours of reading and searching, I finally came up with a menu plan for the next 5 days or so. Take a gander:
Ratatouille
Balsamic Veggies with Pasta (a variation of my friend's recipe at scarbroughkitchen-dot-blogspot-com)
Mediterranean Chicken with Vinegar Roasted Peppers
Zucchini Fritters with something else on the side
Curried Tomato Lentil Soup
Lemon Yogurt Cake
(Recipes are from kitchenparade-dot-com, glutenfreegoddess-dot-blogspot-dot-com, allrecipes-dot-com, cookitallergyfree-dot-com. Let me know if you want to know where a recipe is specifically from).
There aren't a lot of gluten-free flours and other GF ingredients available here. I can find GF pasta, hazelnut meal, all-purpose GF flour, bread (which is dry and hard to swallow), corn starch, and maybe some other products that I never used in the States anyway. I need a lot more than that, namely xanthan gum. It acts like gluten does and provides the elasticity needed for soft, spongy bread.
I ran out of gluten-free oatmeal that I brought from the states so that left me with very little to choose from for breakfast. It's challenging to find breakfast foods that can last me a long time. Fruit and yogurt doesn't always cut it and I end up needing a snack before lunchtime. Fortunately, I was able to buy a crockpot last week from a family here so now I can make porridge from brown rice for breakfast.
A couple of weeks ago, I tried to make ranch salad dressing from scratch with fresh ingredients. It wasn't terrible but the recipe wasn't worth keeping. I used what is basically sourish watered down yogurt for the tart milk-based liquid ("ayran," a popular drink here) for the dressing but it was too runny. It wasn't until after the dressing was made that I realized that I could've used plain yogurt. What I didn't like was the tons of veggies left over:
The small pile closest to the knife was all I needed for the dressing. The green onions are bundled together in such a single, large item so I had to buy the whole thing. I ended up chopping the rest of the green onions and freezing them. The white container to the right was filled to the brim. It'll be good in omelets and as toppings on salads.
I also learned how to make crepes which can be a good breakfast (with scrambled egg stuffed in it - if I could eat eggs) and dessert with jam inside the crepes. I just found a recipe for raisins and bananas in crepes with vanilla ice cream scoops on top. Delish.
Anyway, for now, I will just have to make simple dinners like steamed veggies and rice. My mom is mailing me a couple of packages of GF stuff so life might get a little easier once the packages (hopefully) arrive.
**EDIT**
After hours of reading and searching, I finally came up with a menu plan for the next 5 days or so. Take a gander:
Ratatouille
Balsamic Veggies with Pasta (a variation of my friend's recipe at scarbroughkitchen-dot-blogspot-com)
Mediterranean Chicken with Vinegar Roasted Peppers
Zucchini Fritters with something else on the side
Curried Tomato Lentil Soup
Lemon Yogurt Cake
(Recipes are from kitchenparade-dot-com, glutenfreegoddess-dot-blogspot-dot-com, allrecipes-dot-com, cookitallergyfree-dot-com. Let me know if you want to know where a recipe is specifically from).
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Banana Yum-Yum and Two
I made some gluten-free banana muffins yesterday. They're a big hit with A. I have literally had to hide them from her. Here's my favorite recipe for all youse who know gluten-free peeps and can pass along:
Gluten- Free Banana Bread
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup canola oil
3 medium ripe bananas, mashed
2 eggs
2 cups sorghum flour
1/2 tsp GF baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp milk
1 tsp GF vanilla extract
1 tsp cinnamon
1 cup finely ground pecans
1) Preheat to 350 degrees. With an electric mixer, beat sugar and oil. Add eggs one at a time and beat until smooth. Add mashed bananas and mix well.
2) In separate bowl, sift together sorghum flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the dry mixture gradually to the wet banana mixture, beat until combined.
3) Next, add milk, vanilla extract, and cinnamon; beat until mixed well. Fold in pecans. Bake in a loaf pan for 35-40 minutes until an inserted knife comes out dry and clean. For muffins, bake for 25-30 minutes.
*Note: you can substitute the sorghum flour with something else. Sorghum flour is sweeter than most gluten-free flours so it's used often for baking sweets. I have used flours from beans and rice and they make the banana bread taste different so you will need to experiment.
Credit: (I've been using this recipe for over two years and can't remember when I got it from; possibly from www-dot-celiac-dot-com.)
A little quick sewing project tonight: an applique on a shirt for A's second birthday next week. I know every mom says this about their own child and I will say it, too: "I can't believe she's turning two!"
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| Sorry for the yellowish tint - I usually sew at night and take pictures of my projects at night. At least you can make out the "2". |
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Spring and Waffles
Spring is coming! It was gray for a few days when I bought the hydrangeas to cheer us all up and they were gorgeous.
We ordered a non-electric waffle iron and tested it for the first time this morning. It is a non-stick Belgian-style waffle iron. It's flat and fairly light that it's perfect for taking overseas without any worries about plugging into different outlets and electrical systems. You can heat it on the electric or gas stove.
The waffles turned out golden, fluffy, and delicious - thanks to G, the breakfast guru in the house. We made this with Bisquick's gluten-free pancake mix which we have found to be the best among gluten-free pancakes mixes and recipes that we have tried. I think we made a good investment in a waffle iron and it'll be a treat to have waffles every now and then overseas.
G and I have officially received full approval from our company to go overseas. There was a ceremony with pomp and then we came home two days ago. We will head to training on April 25. As you can guess, we are just a mass of mixed emotions. The emotional roller coaster that we are sure to embark on hopefully won't be drastic with extreme highs and lows but I am sure some of that will be inevitable.
Ending on a lighter note, I will repeat the introductory sentence of this post: spring is coming!
We ordered a non-electric waffle iron and tested it for the first time this morning. It is a non-stick Belgian-style waffle iron. It's flat and fairly light that it's perfect for taking overseas without any worries about plugging into different outlets and electrical systems. You can heat it on the electric or gas stove.
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| Cooking.... |
 |
| Voila! |
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| My first gluten-free homemade waffles |
The waffles turned out golden, fluffy, and delicious - thanks to G, the breakfast guru in the house. We made this with Bisquick's gluten-free pancake mix which we have found to be the best among gluten-free pancakes mixes and recipes that we have tried. I think we made a good investment in a waffle iron and it'll be a treat to have waffles every now and then overseas.
G and I have officially received full approval from our company to go overseas. There was a ceremony with pomp and then we came home two days ago. We will head to training on April 25. As you can guess, we are just a mass of mixed emotions. The emotional roller coaster that we are sure to embark on hopefully won't be drastic with extreme highs and lows but I am sure some of that will be inevitable.
Ending on a lighter note, I will repeat the introductory sentence of this post: spring is coming!