Banana Raspberry Muffins

Or bread, take your pick because I have directions for both.

I made these muffins last week, and they came out so well--the texture was almost exactly that of a regular wheat-based muffin. As with pretty much all the gluten free baked goods I've made, I wrapped these in foil and froze them after they had cooled completely.

Recipe and details are behind the cut.

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The continuing saga of dietary unfunness

So the recipes here will now be gluten, soy, and dairy free, at least to the best of my ability. I'm on some pretty hardcore meds for my Crohn's Disease, and have been slightly discouraged that they haven't been working as well as I had hoped, so I decided to go get some food allergy testing done a couple weeks ago to see if per chance I was eating something that was continuing to make me sick. My skin tests came back highly positive for wheat, rye, barley, and soy, as well as mildly positive for almonds and egg whites.  Although my celiac biopsy was negative, I'm allergic to the gluten containing grains so the easiest fix for that is to just do a fully gluten free diet, and in terms of soy, I'm just going to have to cut it out. I've bought some rice milk and have been using that in cooking, which seems to be working out just fine. I've been learning how to read nutrition labels for the not-so-obvious bad ingredients, so I'm hoping I'll start to notice an improvement soon.

On to the good stuff...pizza!

It's been a while since Chris & I have made pizza, it just didn't seem quite as exciting with our limitations, plus my crust never turns out quite as cooked as I'd like. I really had a craving for it last week though, so we decided to give it a shot after finding some shredded rice cheese at Wegmans.

Details after the cut.

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CSA Week 2

I'm a tad bit late, but we picked up our second tray of produce last week at the farmer's market and we had a few new treats. I can't find the slip of paper that I wrote the breakdown on, so I'm going by memory and the picture above.

Here's (most of) the haul from Week 2:

• 4 graffiti eggplant
• 1 purple eggplant
• 1 giant head of broccoli
• 3 green peppers
• 1 red pepper
• 1 yellow pepper
• 2 tomatoes
• 8 potatoes
• 5 apples
• 4 white peaches
• 14 jalapenos
• 5 round red hot peppers
• 3 yellow onions
  

They're flying off the shelves like bagels!

That's a Heidi Klum quote from one of the Bravo Project Runway seasons, if you're wondering.

Continuing on the path of bread products that I love but have to find good recipes for, we have bagels. Even if it was nowhere near as convenient as stopping at a bagel place, the end result was worth it. They may not look like the bagels from the bagel shop, but think of them as artisan!

This delicious recipe comes from Living Without, a fantastic magazine for people with food allergies. I've bought my issues in the Nature's Market section of Wegmans, but I'm not sure where else its available. I'd highly recommend checking it out if you have food sensitivities or allergies, particularly if they're to more common things like gluten, dairy, soy etc.

As with most gluten free baked goods, I'd recommend individually wrapping the bagels in foil and freezing them if you're not going to use them all in one day. I sliced mine prior to freezing them so they were ready to go once defrosted. Enjoy!

Recipe and details behind the jump...

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Spinach & Eggplant Lasagna

Who doesn't love lasagna? It's one of my favorites, particularly because I can make it on the weekend and it covers at least a few lunches during the week. Although it may be semi-time consuming it's totally worth it for those extra days you don't have to worry about lunch.

Lasagna is somewhat of a challenge with our gluten-free and dairy-free diet, so I've been avoiding making it for quite a while. While I was searching for a new eggplant recipe to use up the eggplant from last week's CSA, I came across a recipe on Go Dairy Free that looked delicious, Eggplant & Spinach Lasagna, and decided to try it. I found a Basil Tofu Ricotta recipe in Vegan with a Vengeance and decided to try a melding of the two.

It turned out delicious! The only thing it was lacking was a bit of salt, which I think was just because I used no salt added tomato sauce along with the fake ricotta mixture.

NOTE: If you're a fancy pants and plan to use Herb Scissors, like I did, DO NOT run your fingers down the blades to try and get the basil that gets stuck in between the 3 blades. You will bleed. Not like I know from experience......

Recipe with my tweaks is behind the jump...

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Cinnamon Buns

The farmer's market that we go to has tons of stands - you can buy anything from crepes, to bison meat, to veggies, to bread. One of the first stands, and what I look forward to every weekend, is the bread stand, Gracie's Pastries. They have about 20 varieties of bread, but also some eat-right-now goodies like scones, cookies, and the-most-delicious-cinnamon-buns-everrrrr. They're seriously the best I've ever had in my life.

I've known I had a gluten sensitivity for almost 6 years, and I do try to limit myself, but sometimes exceptions have to be made. I never eat a whole one by myself though, Chris and I always split it. I've been pretty good the last month though, and have only had one, but it totally sucks to walk past the stand every week.

I did some searching last weekend and found a recipe for a gluten free cinnamon bun, and decided to give it a try after reading fabulous reviews. I found the recipe at Gluten Free Homemaker, who had tweaked Roben Ryberg's recipe so that included sorghum rather than just starch. They turned out super yummy, I just need to let them cool for about 15 minutes before pouring the icing next time, because it melted all over and made them kind of gooey.

Here's the link to her original post which has tons of pictures, and the recipe is after the jump.

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I could eat bread all day long, every day...

Which poses a problem for a person with a gluten sensitivity. I was biopsy-tested for Celiac Disease after having a positive blood test, but the results were negative. My doctor concluded that I just have a sensitivity to it, and I now know how much I can tolerate, and usually abide by those limits. Bread is my vice. There's nothing I love more than a toasted piece of sourdough with a little bit of Earth Balance, followed by the rest of the loaf.

I've gone on and off gluten free diets, and currently I'm mostly back on one. Sometimes I slip, like last week when I hadn't made any gluten free bread in a while, and was at Trader Joe's and saw a loaf of ciabatta, bought it, and ate a giant chunk.

I've made a few bread recipes lately, and here are two from Karina's Kitchen. The first was for English Muffins, which is one of my favorite breakfasts, and the second was a good old Sandwich Bread.

I followed her recipes to the tee, outside of not using a bread machine for the loaf and then altering the baking time slightly—my edits are in italic, but visit Karina's site for the full posts. Get the recipes after the jump.

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CSA Week 1

Chris and I have been looking at CSAs for over a year, not super seriously, but decided to take the leap and join the Fall CSA being offered by a farmer that has a stand at our local Farmer's Market.

For those of you that don't know, CSA stands for community supported agriculture, and when you participate you're essentially buying a share in the farm. It's like the stock market, it can be risky, because you pay upfront and always have the chance of the crops failing due to things like poor weather or insect infestation. We shop at our market almost every Saturday, and thought this would be a great chance for us to get creative with cooking because someone else is picking out your produce for the week. It should also open our eyes to things we might not use frequently, like kale or collard greens.

I'm going to document what we get each week at our pickup, and hopefully write a post at the end of each week that details what we used everything for.

Here's our Week 1 haul:

• 1 giant tomato
• 1 acorn squash
• 7 potatoes
• 3 onions
• 4 apples
• 3 nectarines
• 4 ears of corn
• 2 green peppers
• 1 red pepper
• 2 eggplants
• 12 jalapenos
• 1 bunch kale
• 3 handfuls green beans

I think we should be able to go through almost everything, the jalapenos may be tricky and in all likelihood may just get sliced and frozen for salsa useage later, but I'm trying to make a plan for everything else.

Grilled Portobellos

I love mushrooms, and portobellos are one of my favorite types. Chris on the other hand, does not love mushrooms, so it was a challenge for me to make these and actually get him to try it. He did however, and now I've made them at least 3 more times in the past few weeks, so try new things - you might be surprised!

I removed the stems from the mushrooms, gave them a good wipe with a wet paper towel and then put them in a ziploc freezer bag. I made a balsamic marinade with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, crushed garlic, and salt and pepper, then poured it in the freezer bag and tossed everything until fully coated. I let the mushrooms marinate for about 4 hours, gill side down, tossing things around about half way through.

When the grill was good and hot, we put the mushrooms gill side down for 5 minutes, flipped them, and topped with basil pesto, carmelized onions, baby spinach, and a roasted red pepper and let them cook for another 5 minutes until fully tender. We served with sweet potato fries and grilled corn and they were delicious!

I want to be a blogger.

I read blogs daily, and it's one of my favorite parts of the day (next to breakfast, lunch, and dinner, of course.) I love reading what others have to say, and looking at what others are cooking - I love trying new recipes, and then tweaking them to my liking when necessary.

I'm not sure how well I'll do in this venture, as I've tried several times before. The best I did was a class in college where had to design a blog, and then write a certain number of posts per week. I tend to do well at things when I'm being judged or graded. After that quarter was over though I think I may have updated it another 5 times in 5 months. I'll try harder, I promise.

I've been thinking of trying blogging again for a while, so I have a backlog of posts to write, which may actually help to make me more successful.

I guess I'll find out.