Christmas with CD #5 - PIE!

Today was pie day.

I looked at a bunch of recipes and finally settled on one that was not too complicated, but seemed promising.

I made a pumpkin pie with half of the recipe and I am planning to make cranberry pecan tassies with the other half, tomorrow probably.

The pie turned out super yummy, and I liked the crust, too. So did the kids and my mother-in-law. Pumpkin pie is her favorite, so I am encouraged.

Jim, my husband did not try it. He hates pumpkin. Perhaps next time. :)


I found the recipe through a link at celiac.com, and could probably find it again for you if you want the original link, but here's the ingredient list.

1 C tapioca flour
1 C white rice flour
1 t xanthan gum
1 T powdered milk
6 T butter (or cream cheese)
6 T shortening
1/3 C water

Step one. Mix dry ingredients
Step two. Cut in butter and shortening
Step three. Add water and mix so dough forms a large ball
Step four. Divide in half
Step five. Place each half between two sheets of plastic wrap and roll out to 8-9in pie crust

Bake as needed based on your filling.


A few notes:
- The dough is super white. Surprisingly so.
- The crust is also very forgiving. If you need to form it with your hands once in the pie plate, you can do it with no problem.
- The edges will probably burn so have tin foil or a protective crust ring on hand.

Christmas with CD #4 - Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is part of Christmas, right? Right?! Yeah, that's what I thought.

My dad called yesterday, and after the shame of being asked if my answering machine is broken... (it's not: I'm a slacker), we talked about the big T-Day. We're getting together for Christma-giving Day, and he called to talk menus. What a sweetie. We talked about salad dressings and salad toppings and desserts and all kinds of yummies. As he put it, "I just want to make sure that we don't bring something bad."

On the bright side, many of my blogging buddies who are also Celiacs have started posting their favorite holiday recipes for everything bready, from pie crusts to stuffings. Yum. (It's nice not to feel all alone in this holiday endeavor.)

This is gonna be a great holiday season after all. :)

Christmas with CD#3 - The trials begin

Before I could do anything, I had to shop and setup a prep area. As I don't have a lot of space, but I DO have a Costco membership, the results were a bit, um, overwhelming.

This is what happens when I wander Costco with baking on my mind...

And here is my prep area.

Had to have Christmas tunes, too, of course!

Once prepared, I made regular oatmeal raisin cookies to bribe my taste testers! (just in case!)


Ready to go! I have started with something simple: peanut butter. It's really hard to make a bad peanut butter cookie.

Cookie #1 was a flourless PB cookie. It's something I'd never heard of before, but apparently it's fairly popular. They turned out crisp and tasty. The recipe I used is at Lea's Gluten Free Blog. I made them without the chocolate chips that you see in her picture, and I flattened them with a fork first, too.
Yummy and delicious, but I wanted kiss cookies, so I dug out another recipe. One that uses flour.



Cookie #2 uses a combination of GF flours, and I found it at Recipe Zaar.

This is a very good cookie. It's not terribly soft, though. Once it cools, it's crisp like cookie#1, but it still has a great taste. A couple of tips for this recipe:
1. Below the recipe (follow the link above) you'll find some substitution comments and suggestions.
2. You may find it helpful to chill the dough for a few minutes so that it's a little more workable.
3. Make the dough balls much smaller than you would think you need for the kiss cookies. Otherwise you may end up with the oddly proportioned results you see on the right in the picture below!

The dough ball in the picture below is the size I used for the cookie on the left above. It's about 1", maybe a little smaller

4. Let the cookies set on the sheet. If you remove them too soon, it won't work well.

Overall, Saturday was a pretty good cookie-making day. Up next: pie crusts!

Christmas with CD #2

Guess what?! My ever-fabulous hubby has found me a good resource for cookie-ing. (I don't think that's a word....)

Here it is! http://gingerlemongirl.blogspot.com/2007/12/2007-gluten-free-christmas-cookie.html

I am very excited. I've already started a (mini)batch of peanut butter cookies, and he's agreed to be my guinea pig. I'm going to try to find some good recipe substitutions, too, so that I can keep making my favorites and not have to find ALL new recipes.

To the oven! AWAAAAAAY!

Christmas with celiac disease #1

I love tag. I've always loved tag. In fact, I was rather excited to get tagged again since I missed out on the first one. (Sorry, Mom!)

BUT

I was about to start a new train of thought on thishere blog. So, take 2, here we go.

Christmas is coming. I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE Christmas. But I have been worried lately about how I will deal with Christmas and family dinners and hors d'ouvers and especially how I will deal with Christmas cookies.

If you don't know me, you need to realize that Christmas cookies are the BEST part of the whole year. No exaggeration there...we even have special aprons that we wear once a year when we bake. It's a 2 week operation at least, from planning to shopping to baking to feasting to gifting. Let me tell you something. When I realized that I could no longer have Christmas cookies, I put my head down on the table and cried. (It was at work, and my friend who mentioned them felt really bad. Sorry again, Sam! I luv u! I'm coming to your cookie party anyway!)

I have decided that there is no reason to give up on the tradition of the past years. I will still make my family's favorite cookies, and my personal mission for this year is to find good ways to make MY favorites gluten-free.

So, if you're out there reading this and you have tips, tricks, or recipes to share, please do so! And, have a very merry Christmas.

Save me from this STUPID c.d.!

I have a new job.

(Hooray!)

On my first day, Beth, a neighboring teacher, brought me a cookie. I didn't have the heart to tell her I couldn't eat it. Of course I did tell her about my celiac disease eventually. She showed up about 10 minutes later with a grin on her face and handed me an apple. Beth's pretty awesome.

What's most difficult about my new job is having to re-explain my medical condition. Most people will just brush off my strange eating habits as part of some crash diet, but once in a while someone will catch me reading a label on something like whipped cream - something that you don't normally read - and they start asking questions.

It gets a little easier to explain every time, but it's hard. No one's heard of it, so they're confused and ask more questions, and then I have to see the look of confusion change to pity. The only ones who don't ask questions are the ones who are already dealing with c.d. in their lives.

I don't care so much anymore that it's a part of my life...I just want to be done explaining it over and over again. Maybe I'll just pass out informational 3x5 cards. :)

Testing out the oats

Well, today is a big day in my world. I ate oats for the first time since April.

It's Jim's birthday today, and he wanted meatloaf and cheesy potatoes for his birthday dinner. He tried to take it back after he asked for it because he realized that those are pretty much off the menu for me, but I wouldn't let him. It is his birthday, after all. The cheesy potatoes are out: they have wheat in the sauce, so I made mashed potatoes for Annie and me (she HATES the cheesy potatoes). But I don't make meatloaf with bread crumbs, I make it with oats. Always have. That's the family recipe.

I decided then and there that today I would take the plunge and eat the meatloaf. I had checked the Quaker Oats website right away when I was diagnosed with celiac to see if they considered their product gluten free. They were careful to point out that they only work with oats and that their plain old-fashioned oats are run on a gf line, but that each person should decide whether oats were a smart choice for their diet.

So far, so good! It seems that I will be able to eat the Quaker Oats after all. Only time will tell, I suppose, but I can usually feel the beginning ill effects of eating gluten within 15 minutes, and right now, I feel fine. I am very happy about this! I love meatloaf, so this is a very very good thing.

In case you're curious (and you can eat oats), here is my recipe. But, be warned. As my husband put it so delicately last month: "Mikki doesn't use recipes. She cooks like a grandma!"

Mikki's family's meatloaf recipe:
This can be doubled or trebled depending on the size of your family, of course. I usually use 2 lbs of meat.

1 lb hamburger (85-90% lean has the best flavor)
a handful of oats
one egg
a liberal dose of ketchup (perhaps 1/4 cup?)
a splash of milk (perhaps 1/4 cup - 1/2 cup?)
a heavy sprinkling of dried chopped onion - or a small, finely diced sauteed onion
salt
pepper

Other occasional add-ins: (not all at once, though!)
If you use these, reduce the amount of ketchup or add a few more oats to keep the moisture level well-balanced. You want the resulting loaf to be moldable, but not mushy, not crumbly.
Worchestershire sauce
A1 sauce

1. Place all ingredients in a large bowl, mix well. Tip: I've started using a potato masher to mix my meatloaf. It's quite handy. I used to just wash my hands and use those, but the fun has worn off of that method. (I am getting pretty old, you know.)
2. Bake low and slow. Schools of thought vary on this, but usually somewhere around 300 for an hour is good. Don't go above 350 or below 250, though. Higher heat=crumblier; lower heat=more solid

Tada!

No, really, that's it.
Yummy.