Green: Eat Like You Mean It!

Simple, Simple Supper

Sometimes I prepare big feasts for  my family, sometimes I don't. There are lots of days when a meal has got to appear on the table fast. Last night's answer to the supper crush? Pizza bread. All you need is a decent baguette or two, some cheese, the topping of your choice, some olive oil and some pizza sauce.

Begin with a hunk of baguette.

Slice it down the middle lengthwise.

 
Heat up your pizza sauce.

Yep, you can just buy a can or jar of decent sauce at your local co-op or other grocer. I made mine by carmelizing some organic tomato paste in a small sauce pan with a little olive oil and raw sugar. After a time I tossed in some salt, pepper, dried basil, and water. I gave it a good whisking, then tasted it to make sure I had the rich, robust flavor I wanted. (It really doesn't take but a moment to make your own sauce, and it's so much better!) Once the sauce is ready, spoon it onto your bread.

Add  your toppings. This bread was for my kids, and they wanted fresh deli pepperoni. If I could eat the wheat bread, I would have chosen some garlic, arugula, and maybe mushrooms. Oh well...

At this point, I placed my bread in an iron skillet, and topped it with grated parmesan cheese and a drizzle of olive oil.

After spending maybe 10 minutes in a 400-oven, out came some tasty-looking pizza bread, ready to cut and serve to hungry kidlets.

Served up with a little tossed salad, pizza bread is a super fast, super simple, super supper!

--Sheila

Waffles...Yum!

Who doesn't love waffles, I ask you...Well, my 10-year-old doesn't. Crazy baby. I love waffles. Everyone else in my family loves waffles. And what's not to love...sweetened batter, grid-fried on a hot iron, buttered up and ladled with pure maple syrup, maybe tossed with a few fresh berries and a dollop of whipped cream. Now I'm hungry. Actually, I'm not, because I just finished eating my waffles!

It's kind of funny, really. Waffles are pretty much just pancakes fried up differently. But a heaping platter of waffles conjures up a different feeling somehow. Pancakes are hearty and loving, but waffles...waffles are a sure sign that someone adores you! With my giant griddle, I can pan-bake up to 16 pancakes at a time. Two rounds of batter and you're done. Plenty of pancakes for breakfast with some to spare for snacks and the next day's breakfast. But waffles take time. Once the batter is made, you have to stand at the iron, frying up just a pair at a time. It just feels special somehow, like visiting your favorite grandmother.

In fact, I have two waffle irons...the Belgian waffle maker I received as a wedding gift, and the old Westinghouse iron my grandmother used to make waffles for my cousins and me. I LOVE using that old iron, being reminded of how much Grandma loved us whilst I make waffles for my brood.
 
Today's batch was made on the wedding iron, however. In a large bowl, I dumped some tapioca flour, potato flour, corn meal, and some of Bob's Red Mill All-Purpose Gluten-Free Baking Flour. Can't say exactly how much, because, well, you know...that's just how I roll! I added a wee bit of xanthan gum, some fine-ground sea salt, some raw sugar and baking powder. In a smaller bowl went four egg yolks, vanilla and olive oil. I dry-whisked the powdery stuff in lieu of sifting it, then whisked the wet ingredients together and added almond milk and water. I stirred the wet into the dry and let it sit a wee bit to make sure the corn meal had a chance to absorb enough moisture to not stay crunchy. Meanwhile, I whipped the egg whites up until they were nice and fluffy. While the waffle iron heated up, I brushed it with a little olive oil (I use enough olive oil every day to indicate that I should have been born Italian...what gives?) and folded the egg whites gently into the batter.

Several rounds of spooning batter and stacking waffles later, it was time to eat.

Honestly, what's better than this? Waffles I can eat (I cheated with the whipped cream, but don't tell anyone!), no one else missed the gluten or, indeed, would have known they were gluten-free if not for the clue that I was eating them. And the best part of all, is that I ate waffles on one of my grandmother's old plates. Gotta have a little Grandma with my waffles!

--Sheila

What's YOUR favorite food?

Eating, like cooking, should be fun. One element of fun with food is the pre-requisite that you like what you're eating! This can be challenging in a large family full of people who prefer different things. Harder than cooking at home is going out to eat; given that I'm wheat- and meat-free and dairy-limited, finding a restaurant where I can eat more than salad and maybe potatoes can be a challenge. Especially given that no one else in the family shares my dietary needs. There's a lovely little family-run Mexican restaurant up the street, El Norteno, where we like to go. Everyone can eat something. The food's very good, and it just means that I eat dairy. Fine. An evening at El Norteno means I don't do dairy again for awhile. No problem. There are also a couple of grilles nearby where my family can enjoy a full-on flesh feast and I can at least have the specialty sweet potato fries (Longfellow Grille) or the garlic-parsely fries (Town Talk Diner) and a creative salad.

Another family favorite--and my personal favorite!--is a local Indian restaurant called Ghandi Mahal. They serve lots of wheat-free vegetarian food, but the rest of the fam can eat all the tandoori chicken their hearts' desire (they have plentiful meat offerings besides tandoori...)! Actually, Indian and Middle Eastern food rank super high on my list of favorites, as well as Thai and other SE Asian cuisine.

For supper tonight, I made a 'build-your-own' curry dinner:  In separate pots and pans I made...

Curried fried potatoes (made this way so they'll be easily re-heated tomorrow and served with an egg for breakfast),

Curried mixed veggies, literally a using up of what's waiting in my veggie crisper,

Curried chicken, thigh and breast pieces,

And a pot of brown basmati rice and some coconut-red curry sauce.

Once done cooking in their spice baths, the chicken, veggies and potatoes each got a ladle of the sauce. Then I turned everyone loose to build their plates to their liking. My plate included the rice, potatoes, veggies, a healthy dose of the curry sauce, and a generous sprinkling of crushed red chilies.

Little Ada went for a spoon of rice, a spoon of veggies, and a nice juicy chunk of the chicken.

When cooking for my brood, I try to make meals that are flexible and allow for tailoring to personal tastes. I really like to turn up the heat in my food, but no one else currently living here does (my oldest, on his own, also shares my love of spicy food). So I make my sauces more mild than I prefer, but keep a supply of heat close at hand. (Even my morning egg, over-easy on gluten-free toast, gets a healthy dash of chili flakes!).

Another recent meal I can share was the one I made for my daughter Olivia's 19th birthday. She asked for shrimp and sweet potatoes. The shrimp were marinated for the day in olive oil, lime juice, salt, a few chili flakes, and freshly chopped garlic. When it was almost time to eat, I tossed the shrimp into a giant hot iron skillet with a little more olive oil. When they were done, I tossed them with chopped flat-leaf parsley.

The sweet potatoes, one of Olivia's absolute favorit foods, were cut into disks, tossed with olive oil and generously seasoned with sea salt, fresh-ground pepper and sweet paprika, then oven roasted.

I didn't think that was enough food options for the whole group eating, so we also enjoyed garlic-mashed potatoes with parsely, a simple green salad tossed with my ex's mustard-shallot dressing, and a loaf of local bakery bread.

Simple foods, all, but tasty and so satisfying. Most importantly, for this family, such meals as these offer a little something for everybody! Until next time...

--Sheila

Tostadas!

It's summer, we're all busy with my kids constantly scattering like dice on a backgammon board. Sometimes supper needs to be super quick. On tonight's menu? Tostadas!

To start, I tossed a few boneless chicken thighs and breasts in an iron skillet with some olive oil, salt and cumin.  While they cooked, I chopped avocado, cilantro and green onions. Meanwhile, I put a large can of organic puree in a saucepan and turned it into my version of mole sauce, adding in olive oil, salt, raw sugar, cumin, coriander, paprika, chipotle powder, and cocoa powder. (You could just buy a jar at your local co-op!) Finally, I shredded the cooked chicken right in the pan, and also shredded a block of co-jack. Start to finish at this point, half-an-hour.

All that was left to do was toss a few corn tortillas on a lightly oiled skillet to crisp them up. Then everyone just compiled their own as desired. Above was my daughter Aurora's tostada, with a little shredded chicken, lots of cheese, a splash of sauce and a sprinkling of cilantro.

Below is little Ada's, with more chicken, less cheese, more sauce and lots of avocado. She even tossed on the onions and cilantro.

FInally there's my all-veggie version, with lots of avocado, a little cheese, and plentiful sauce, onions and cilantro:

And so you have it:  A fast, easy summer supper flexible enough to satisfy everyone with only a few simple ingredients. What's better than that?

--Sheila

It's Raspberry Time!

It's summer in Minnesota, and my raspberry canes are slathered with berries, both red and black. They're ripening now as fast as we can pick them. What a joy to walk out the front door and follow the little garden path to the raspberry patch.

A few years ago, when my canes had spread like ruby wildfire, I sketched out a model for a pyramidical trellis and asked my husband to build a couple for me. He did, and they make my berry-picking life much easier. Once my berries are done for the season, I'll cut back this year's berry-producing canes, leaving the non-producing canes to continue growing and gathering their photosynthetic power! Those canes will be tied up to the trellises and left alone. Next spring, those will be the canes that produce berries, while all the fresh upstarts will grow beneath, gathering steam and bioligical maturity for the following season. And so the berry cycle goes.

As for me and mine, we love all that those scratchy canes (they're related to roses, you see) have to offer. The dried leaves make a lovely tea that soothes the gallbladder meridian and tonifies smooth muscle tissue (like the uterus, making raspberry leaf tea a staple for pregnant women for generations!). What berries we don't stuff right in our greedy mouths while picking end up in fruit salads, on fresh-baked tarts, sugared up and spooned over ice cream or yogurt, smooshed into smoothies, baked into pies (One of my favorites is a mixed berry pie baked with balsamic vinegar and basil! Trust me...).

Today's berries were baked into these lovely little gluten-free raspberry scones.

To make them, I combined Bob's Red Mill All-Purpse Gluten-Free Baking Flour blend with some tapicoa flour.  In I tossed salt, sugar, baking powder and xanthan gum. I cut in some butter, just as if I were making a pie crust. Then I added heavy cream until I had a proper dough. In went the fresh berries. The whole purply mess went out onto a board, upon which I patted the dough out flat, mayber an inch thick. I cut the dough with a pie server, then set my soon-to-be scones on buttered baking sheets. After chilling them for an hour, I sprinkled them with more raw cane sugar, popped them in the oven and waited until they smelled delicious and their edges were beginning to brown.

Big, big, yummy, thanks to the raspberry patch!

--Sheila