Welcome to Ingredients We Choose

Welcome to Ingredients We Choose

I am allergic to gluten (which is now thought to be in all grain). After challenging myself to go truly 100% gluten free, I have discovered that I am so sensitive I have to make sure there is absolutely no gluten cross contamination on even the most minute level (except rice). This currently means cooking every single meal in my own home and from scratch.  But I’ve come to realize it can be a great opportunity to be forced to slow down and think clearly what am I going to choose as my life?

Stay tuned for delicious gluten free recipes, tips on dealing with food allergies, and general musings on life and the struggle to choose the ingredients of my life more carefully.

Best Buttermilk Pancakes

Best Buttermilk Pancakes

 

Ingredients

175 grams gluten free flour (like rice, oat, millet, etc)
75 grams gluten free starch (like potato, tapioca, corn, etc)

       (or if using a mix, just use 250 grams total)
1/4 cup chia seeds, ground
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 TBSP dark brown sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1-2 cups buttermilk
4 TBSP unsalted butter, melted

Notes / Directions

Whisk together dry ingredients. Add wet ingredients to dry, only starting with 1 cup of buttermilk and adding until you have the consistency you like.

If you don’t have buttermilk, put 1 TBSP of lemon juice in a one cup measure, then add milk to the top. Let stand 5 minutes.

What Vitamin B12 deficency can do

Even though I am a social worker, I have a very scientific turn of mind. I was a chemistry major, before my passion for social justice was caught by a Women’s Studies class. I love finding out how things work. That is what I love about Dr. Osborne’s videos about gluten. He explains the how.

This video is on how there are three different mechanisms by which gluten intolerance can lead to vitamin b12 deficiency, aka depression, muscle/nerve pain, fatigue, anemia (red and white blood cell deficiencies), auto immune disorder and more.

Watch Dr. Osborne’s video
(oh and ignore the infomercially bits on the page. they aren’t in the video!)

Living the busy life

I have barely posted since the holidays. Work has been MADNESS. Plus, I have had an amazing breakthrough with NAET – Nambudripad’s Allergy Elimination Technique. My naturopathic doctor also does acupuncture, and she does this technique that lowers the body’s response to allergens. I will never be able to eat a piece of wheat bread, but I can now have trace amounts of wheat and not be sick for days. So, I can now go out to restaurants! I don’t have to cook every meal from scratch any more!

However, I have found that I might not get super sick any more but that I feel much better when I eat whole foods cooked at home (surprise surprise). Last week was my birthday, plus I had a bunch of training out of the office, and so I ate out about 5 meals in four days. This is highly unusual for me! And I felt lethargic, achey, angry, and depressed.

So I am back on the home cooking bandwagon. My partner and I bought a Vitamix at the beginning of the year, and I eat a lot of fresh fruit and veggies because of it (plus it is super fast, and saves a LOT of time). We just bought 50 lbs of fresh organic blueberries from a small farm outside of town for a measly $2/ lb!!  My other “simple diet” staple is something that I ate a lot while I was on the allergy elimination diet. It is very simple: lean ground beef, steamed broccoli, and rice, all mixed together and seasoned with salt and pepper. Very simple. Very clean.

It is amazing to me how much easier it is now to eat gluten free every day, and to mostly cook at home. A year ago, when I started, it seemed impossible! It was a hard year, but then, any new skill is hard at first. Now, I easily whip up a batch of homemade healthy and tasty food without blinking, when once it was arduous.

Nice to know some things get easier!

Happiness and love

After a grueling two and a half weeks of struggling with gluten-induced symptoms, I am finally remembering what it is to feel good.

I’d forgotten.

The last 2.5 weeks I’ve been exhausted, in pain, disoriented, and depressed. I’ve felt so bad I missed quite a few days of work, and been lying comatose on the couch, with only ibuprofen and a heating pad for company. The days I have gone to work, it’s been such a struggle to get out of bed and get through the day. In a rather dramatic moment of journaling, I likened it to dragging my broken body along the ground by the bloody stumps of my fingers.

Those of you who struggle with unseen chronic illness know what I mean.

This holiday season, it deeply hurt my heart the degree to which some family members dismissed my illness as being all in my head or said nasty things behind my back. I still feel quite sad and upset by it.

But other family members were extremely supportive, and actively sought out ways to help keep me safe, without my even asking. Even though it would have been easier transportation wise to have Christmas dinner in Seattle, many drove 60 miles so we could have dinner together in my house – the only place I can safely eat right now.

My partner has been extremely supportive, organizing the dinner at our house. She regularly goes out of her way to make sure that I am safe from being poisoned by gluten. She sees first hand what it does to me, how debilitating and painful it is, and does everything she can to make sure I don’t get sick. She still eats gluten at other places but washes her hands and face before leaving, and brushes her teeth when she gets home. She is vigilant in the shopping, making sure to read the labels each time. She watches what I eat, and if she has doubts she double checks with me if I’ve made sure its safe. She doesn’t hold it against me that I can’t go out to eat. If she wants to eat something with gluten in the house, she always asks first to make sure I won’t be tempted and then takes precautions, like spreading out a large towel that she eats over then puts immediately into the washing machine.

That is love.

My co-workers have also been very sympathetic. They too see how terribly gluten affects me. Normally I laugh and joke a lot, but the last few weeks I’ve been a wreak. They have really gone out of their way to try to make it safe for me. They rarely bring anything with gluten into our area, and if they do, clean up immediately. They have been genuinely wanting to know how I am and been quite understanding about my missing work recently.

Today, my partner picked me up after work. As we were driving home, the sunset was glorious and we drove to a point we could see it better. The capitol was lit up all firey and the clouds were gorgeous gold and pink. We kissed and watched the sunset. She loved my cheese and green onion scones I made yesterday for the firs time, so we ran to the store to get more ingredients. She dropped me off, and went out to play poker with some friends.

Happy to have a night alone and clean kitchen in which to play, I put on Lie to Me (my favorite show right now), and made scones. Gouda, green onion, and smoked paprika scones. Rather than spending the energy on cooking dinner, I just ate baked tempeh with avocado and ketchup at the kitchen counter. It felt so decadent! Then I curled up on the couch with a lovely cup of tea, and watched more Lie to Me. When the timer went off for the scones, I checked the oven…and it was empty! I’d forgotten the scones in the freezer – oops! But I was able to just laugh, and let them thaw a bit then popped them in the oven. I took a shower and I even found myself singing! My lovely girlfriend came home and we shared the first bites of scone – a new recipe and it was delicious!

I am thankful for these things. People, including myself, that care enough to protect me from gluten. Feeling good enough to actually enjoy a shower. A simple evening making scones.

This is happiness to me now.

Lately

Lately its been a whirlwind madness. Holidays are like that. Recovering from moving is like that. Having to cook-every-meal-from-scratch-three-times-a-day-to-not-get-sick is like that.

But I am surviving.

Nukadoko - starting the process of making Japanese rice bran pickels, nukazuke

My new job in my lovely new (old) little town is really great. I am finally really getting to know many of the young adults on my case load, many of whom are homeless, from foster care, low income, etc. I adore them. They are so brave and smart, and wounded and confused, and brilliant and amazing and have such tenacity in the face of a world that has betrayed them on nearly every level. I love seeing their eyes light up when I tell them how proud I am of them, and I love watching them walk away a little taller.

I was so looking forward to the holidays this year, which is a rare thing for me. They were both wonderful and horrible. More on that later. A lot of lessons learned, and I have much more empathy for those of us in the gluten free community who bemoan the approach of holidays with a sense of hopeless impending doom.

Sukiyaki for Christmas dinner

My partner has been a paragon of sweetness and support, as always. She has deeply embraced the lifestyle of cooking everything at home and being hyper vigilant of a poison strewn world. Her advocacy for my health and safety is part of what made the holidays so wonderful, and triggered such awful behavior from others.

We have been trying to trade off who does cooking and who does cleaning each night. Its mostly worked, and its been great. Some of the best benefits are that I have had some nights off from cooking, our house is cleaner, and most of all that she has developed even more confidence in her cooking. She has really branched out – trying many new recipes and expanding her skills.

One of my favorite recipes she makes is felafel. Her fried felafel are phenomenal, and tonight she experimented with just lightly patting them with oil and baking them. They still turned out wonderfully crispy and were much lighter. She also made a fresh salsa of mango, red onion, tomato, cucumber, yellow bell pepper, lime juice and orange juice. She just made it up out of her head! It was delicious.

Last night I made miso yaki fish and chawan mushi. Miso yaki is firm boneless white fish marinated in miso, mirin, sake, and sugar for 1-3 days and then broiled. The miso makes the fish very firm and savory. The broiling gives it a lovely caramelized flavor. Chawan mushi is translated as egg custard, but it is often considered a soup course by the Japanese. The ratio is 1:3 beaten egg and dashi (mushroom or kelp stock). When steamed it creates lovely soft delicate pillowy savory slightly sweet and salty goodness. Better yet, hidden with in this divine substance hides little treasures to uncover, like a few slices of shiitake and shrimp, and topped with a few splashes of bright green, like finely sliced rounds of green onion.

Upside-down Pie with gluten free crust

I have also learned a very very dangerous skill. I have learned to make pie. My raspberry and strawberry rhubarb pies are my favorite. I no longer bother with the bottom crust – I make upside down pie. I fill a square casserole dish with the pie filling and then put on the top crust. All the crusty flaky pleasure of a upper crust pie with half the fat and carbs. Of course, eating it more than twice as often eliminates that advantage!

What has been helping me keep track of all this meal planning is a lovely app I have discovered called Mealboard. I did a lot of searching and tried (and bought) quite a few apps, but this one is by far the winner. I love the integration of recipes and shopping lists, as well as being able to visually see and easily rearrange which meals are on which days. (I am not getting any benefit by recommending them, I just really like this app)

Other meals of note: we made mochi from scratch and hand pounded it on new years eve, we had ozoni (mochi soup) on new years day, and we made a huge sukiyaki fest for christmas eve for the combined families. I also have made my own nukadoko rice bran pickling bed, nicknamed my rice bran monster, for making my own nukazuke (rice bran pickles) by burying vegetables in it for days. I love my rice bran monster.

I don’t believe in new years resolutions – not that I don’t believe in resolutions, but I don’t believe in only doing them at new years. My resolution today is to make more of an effort to post more often and to talk about living, not wait til I have recipes. My favorite thing about writing about all this is that it helps me maintain hope in the struggle. And hopefully inspires in hope in anybody who reads it.

Akemashite omedo to gozaimasu!! Happy New Year!

Most days

Most days are not pretty picture recipe perfect meals. Most days are stumbling out of bed, trying to not be late to work and still feed myself. Most days are getting home exhausted and not feeling like doing anything, but needing to load the dish washer because there are no clean plates in the house and needing to do the laundry because I have nothing to wear to work the next day. Most days I scrounge for left overs or something that I can just microwave.

The problem with having a debilitating condition related to food is that when I am freakin exhausted (often because of contaminated food), I just want something quick and easy and I’m so tired I can be careless and make mistakes.

So I’ve worked hard to find quick solutions to the I-need-sustenance-right-now-or-I-am-going-to-hurt-somebody-(probably-myself)-problem.

I said I’ve worked hard to find them. I didn’t say I’ve found them.

Today I had a Lara bar for breakfast. A coconut one. This is not filling, but its quick and can tide me over if I also have a few cups of tea.

Thus far I have not had any problems with Lara bars, although it looks like they were bought by General Mills, so I am a bit worried. Of course the ingredients aren’t inherently gluten, and they are very simple and seem to be “whole” foods. The fewer the ingredients the better, since this reduces the chance of them being contaminated prior to arriving at the factory (statistically). And whole foods are the best – aka not processed at all or very little. The Lara bar website says they have “manufacturing controls in place to ensure that there are no cross-contact concerns”, which actually concerns me a LOT. If they used dedicated machines, they would say so. If it was a dedicated facility, they would say so. What they do introduces major possibilities of human error and the “good enough factor”. The problem with companies is that they are for profit, and they will do as little as possible to impact maximum profit. They test for “Gliadin gluten”, but quite frankly random testing does NOT ensure the entire batch is safe, particularly if they aren’t using dedicated machines or facilities! And besides, I recently heard that there are something like 400+ gluten proteins besides gliadin (all of which can make me sick).

Hmmmm, maybe Lara bars are out.

Know where I can buy my own dates and nuts any one?

Le sigh.

For lunch, I had left over nasu miso (eggplant in miso sauce). Now its a bit of a risk since I don’t know how the miso is made, but its pretty freakin unlikely that gluten would be introduced in its manufacture (unless its a miso with wheat in it, then I avoid that brand). I also made my own Japanese pickles out of nappa cabbage and cucumber and salt. Only took about 10 minutes, while I was making the miso soup. I boiled dried kombu (a thick seaweed) and shiitake mushrooms, removed the kombu, then added tofu, white miso and reconstituted wakame (a thin delicate seaweed). It was very washoku (I’ll post about that later).

I’d be proud of myself, but I waited waaaaay too long to eat and had a bit of a headache and was so cranky I yelled at my cat. Ooops.

For dinner, I had baked tempeh strips, dipped in Emeril’s Bayou Blast (made myself with all McCormick guaranteed gluten free spices) and Annie’s gluten free ketchup.

Yes, really. I’m not kidding. That was dinner.

I also made kick ass split pea soup, but it wasn’t ready anywhere near dinner time. I’ll eat it tomorrow. It’ll get better for stewing, right?

Although I am tempted to feel like a bit of a culinary failure, I got through the day without getting glutenized and quite frankly that is pretty damn good.

Homemade Almond Milk – Easy, Stunningly Delicious, and Completely Gluten Free

I try to eat healthy. And for the most part I succeed. But I have a weakness for dairy products. Particularly cheese, especially melted, and crème fraiche.

I learned how to make crème fraiche from a blog I love, and its been all over since then. I keep a jar of it in my fridge more days than not, which is amazing considering how quickly it gets eaten. The ingredients of crème fraiche are very simple: for every one cup of cream, add one tablespoon of buttermilk with live cultures. Let sit two days and voila, creamy buttery goodness… that I eat waaaaay too much of.

Its not just the calories.

Casein, a protein in milk, is being found to be very bad for you. In the documentary, Forks Over Knives, they site many studies that show that casein (and indeed all animal protein) can lead to major health problems including cancer.

I eat a lot of casein, aka dairy products. Its not just the cancer thing. Its also about staying gluten free. Many dairy products nowadays have fillers – thickeners like gums which might be made with gluten and added fats like glycerides which might be contaminated in the manufacturing process. It is very hard to find dairy products without these additives, and almost impossible to find dairy substitutes that don’t have them.

So any substitute I can find that I will actually eat and that is truly gluten free is a great thing.

The bits of almond left over from the straining is, let’s be honest, not as good as crème fraiche. However, if crème fraiche is a ten this is a seven. Pretty darn good. Even better with a spoon of vegan plum butter.

But the almond milk? This almond milk is so delicious that I don’t miss cream. It is so spectacular that when I spilled some on a cutting board, I licked it off! It is so tasty that when it is done, I don’t even wait to pour it into a cup, but pick up the bowl and drink.

It is more than worth the effort.

Everybody will like their almond milk a little different. Some may add nutmeg, or leave out the cardamom. Honey can be expensive, so I sometimes use half brown sugar, half honey. Others may like maple syrup as a sweetener, or nothing at all! Experiment and play around to find the perfect milk for you!

I would strongly suggest that you use unsprayed or organic almonds. They taste way better and don’t have any nasty chemicals – imagine adding RAID to your almond milk! Ugh! (thanks to Momnivore’s Dilemma for the analogy!)

When removing the almond skins, I usually plunk myself down in front of the TV or talk with a friend so I have something to do while shelling them.

You could just soak the almonds overnight, but I find the quality and milkiness of the final product is much improved if I let it soak at least 24 hours.

For straining the mixture, you actually can NOT strain it if you want! But its kind of gritty. When straining it, a fine mesh strainer is usually not fine enough (and even if it was, it would need to be BIG, and squeezing it out would be hard). I went to my local co-op – they sell linen cloth bags to use in their bulk section for less than $3 that work perfectly.

You can also not strain it all the way. When it is still moist enough to be firmer than sour cream but softer than ricotta cheese, this stuff makes a lovely creamy replacement for those types of dairy products. (As the milk is a great replacement for cream or milk)

Tools needed:
Saucepan
Bowls
Blender
Cheesecloth or a linen/muslin bag

Ingredients:
1.5 Cups Almonds (unsprayed or organic are best – better tasting and no nasty chemicals)
3 Cups Water for boiling

1 Cup Water plus another 1 Cup Water for blending

2 Cups Water
2-3 TBSP Honey
1/4 tsp Cinnamon
1/8 tsp Cardamom

1 Cup Water for sprinkling on almond mix

Blanching/Skinning the Almonds:
Bring three cups of water to a boil. Add the almonds. Let boil about three minutes, then drain. Let sit until cool enough to touch. Remove the skins. I just squeeze them and let them pop out into the bowl.

Soaking the Almonds:
Add filtered water to the almonds. I usually use the rule of adding enough water to double the height of the almonds (so if you have an inch of almonds, add water to the two inch mark). Let soak at room temperature, preferably 24 hours.

Blending the Almonds:
Drain the almonds, and put them in the blender. Add one cup of water. Blend on med high setting. Soon the mixture will be so thick it stops moving. Keeping the blender running, remove the little insert in the lid (or if you don’t have one carefully lift the lid part way) and drizzle in about ¼ cup of water. It will likely start to move and then stop again. Keep adding small amounts of water until it is just barely enough water to keep the mixture moving, but no more water than necessary. Keep blending it until it is a very fine puree. Turn off the blender.

Adding the rest of the Ingredients:
Add two more cups of water. Put the lid on, and turn on the blender. Remove the little insert in the lid, and add the spices and the sweetener. (I do it this way rather than putting them in then turning it on because that way spices don’t end up on my lid rather than in the milk) Taste. Adjust.

Milking the Almonds:
Get your linen bag wet with filtered water, squeeze out. Over a bowl, pour the mixture into the bag. Let it drain for a minute or two. Tilt the bag so that one of the corners is pointing down (like a icing bag for a cake), then gently squeeze over and over for several minutes until it is as dry as possible (unless using the almond mixture for something else). Open the bag and sprinkle with water, the try squeezing again. Repeat until you are satisfied.

Drink the Almond milk:
Try to share. It’ll be hard, but your friends and family will love you for it.