The alternative to my "gourmet oatmeal" breakfast is granola. True, oats is a major component, but the mix is different. Since I am the only one eating it, I can add any ingredient my little heart desires. So, instead of going nutty, I decided that a little seedy activity would be appropriate.
Here is my recipe:
7 cups of gluten free oats
2 cups of a gluten free flour blend
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 Tablespoon flaxseed meal
1 Tablespoon flaxseed
2 Tablespoons toasted sesame seed
1/4 cup roasted & salted pumpkin seed
1/4 cup roasted & salted sunflower seed
2/3 cups coconut
1 cup oil
1 cup water
3/4 cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla
Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. Combine wet ingredients separately.
Stir into dry mixture & mix thoroughly. Spread granola evenly onto two greased 10 x 15 jelly roll pans. Bake at 350 degrees for 4 - 6 minutes sessions (total of 24 minutes), taking granola out of the oven and stirring it after each session. Cool. I keep my granola in a well sealed container in the refrigerator, so it stays fresh.
Just a note on my personal baking: After trying several alternative flours, the combination that worked best for me is approximately equal proportions of sorghum, oats, and soy. The oat and soy flours I use are gluten free, but I understand that these flours can still be an issue to some. If anyone does try these recipes with other flour blends, I would be interested in hearing how they turn out.
During my years of baking I have found recipes that I really enjoy, so one of the main goals in my recipe experimentation is to see if I can come up with GF versions of some of my favorites. Here is one of them:
Chocolate Cupcakes
1/3 cup sorghum flour
1/3 cup oat flour
1/3 cup soy flour
or other desired flour blend
2/3 cup sugar
3 Tablespoons cocoa
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 Tablespoon milled flaxseed
1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
2/3 cup water
1/4 cup oil
1 Tablespoon vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine dry ingredients, mixing thoroughly. Combine wet ingredients separately and stir into dry mixture. Mix until thoroughly blended. Spoon batter into a paper-lined muffin tin, filling them 2/3 full. Bake for 18 minutes or until the cupcakes test done. Made 11 cupcakes.
Since this recipe uses soda and vinegar, it is important to have the oven preheated so the batter doesn't sit before baking. I am also finding that since GF baked goods don't rise as well as their wheat counterparts that baking in small amounts (cupcakes instead of a cake) works better.
April and May always seems to be a busy time of year for some odd reason. It is not like we have a lot of usual activities during this time, but a lot seems to happen, never the less. Plus, while I have been busy with wooly-cotton projects, they are all still in progress, so I haven't any pictures to show as yet.
So here is catching up from the last few weeks:
In early April, my husband and I made our annual trip to visit his twin sister and her family to celebrate his and her birthday.
We attended my daughter-in-law's niece's quinceanera celebration mid-April. That was a first for me and was a lot of fun. It was great to spend time with her family.
After that we were busy preparing for our trip to Germany to visit our daughter. Long plane flights are no fun, but it was worth it to be able to experience a little of our daughter's world. What a beautiful country!
Once we got home, we were back into the usual routine. The garden is in full swing, so I am working to keep it weeded and harvested.
When walking in my neighborhood this past week, I crossed paths with a big tarantula making his way across the sidewalk. I did not invite him to walk me home!
One of the biggest events in my life lately is my beginning a gluten free diet. I have not felt well the past few months, and on rather an impulse I decided to see what would happen if I went wheat-free. While this has been a difficult change both logistically and emotionally, I am finding that I feel better and better. I am probably about 80% on the road to gluten free, but hope to get to at least 95% in the next few months. And as many other have done in making this journey, I decided to start another blog: http://thegluten-freebaker.blogspot.com/ Since I love to bake bread, I have been challenged with working with alternative flours and hope to come up with some decent simple recipes along the way.
That about covers the latest and greatest. Hopefully I will soon have more tales of the wooly-cotton variety soon. There is certain plenty in the works.
Variety. This is a key word for me in my current diet change. After realizing what a big part wheat played in my diet, I thought it would be good idea to mix things up as much as possible. Oats are going to be a major player now, so I decided that the extra expense of getting gluten free oats would be worthwhile. Even so, I am trying to keep a variety going where I can. Three days a week I am having oatmeal for breakfast, but not just any oatmeal. Here are the selections:
Dried apple and walnut oatmeal with maple syrup
Dried cranberry and toasted almond oatmeal with brown sugar and cinnamon
Dried apricot and pecan oatmeal with brown sugar, cinnamon, and ginger
Wow, I feel like a gourmet! :-)
Walnuts, that is. Ever wonder if some of the craziness that is going on in your life is all in your head? This has been my thought off and on the past few months. I am just a little past mid-century in my age, and since the first of the year have felt like age was progressing beyond its time: achy, tired, creaky age. The last few years have also meant rather random changes in food tolerances causing me to give up nuts, grapes, cherries, and olive oil.
A couple of months ago, I decided somewhat impulsively to give up wheat. I had heard at various times about wheat intolerances and knew that I couldn't handle a lot of whole wheat. Otherwise, I hadn't noticed any problem with wheat products and have been baking bread for many a year. Still, I thought it couldn't hurt to see what would happen if I were gluten free.
Well, the achiness has greatly subsided, there is less creakiness, I am not as tired, and strangely, my nose has stopped its continual drip. Still, this was not enough to convince me for sure there was an issue until I decided to try the foods I had previously given up. Started with grapes. Hmmmm, no problem. Nuts, however, caused a very painful digestive reaction, so with much hesitancy, I put some walnuts in my oatmeal this week. No pain! Three times I have had walnuts this week and no pain! I had thought I would do a trial by eating wheat again to see if I had a reaction, but I think I am convinced without it.
The other side of this equation is having to give up wheat bread. As I looked at going gluten free, I realized how central wheat was to our diet. I love to make bread, and I love to eat bread. Emotionally, therefore, this has been a difficult transition. Thankfully, since my husband still eats wheat, I can make bread. There is just something very satisfying about taking a lovely brown loaf or batch of rolls out of the oven. On the other hand, I have (or at least am working on) giving up the idea that alternate flours will do the same thing as wheat. This has been both aggravating and yet a challenge at the same time. I have done a lot of tossing experiments as I have tried out different flours, but I am finally beginning to find several that have possibilities. From there, I will see what recipes I can find that others had developed with perhaps a few of my own along the way. So with both sadness and hopefulness I step onto the road of being gluten free.
I hit a bit of a road block in my gluten-free baking, but there is some hope ahead. The alternative flours, with rice flour and brown rice flour being two of the main ones, are heavier than wheat flour. The rice flours in particular are very hard for my system to handle, and I was feeling discouraged yet again. In a chip or cracker, I seem to do okay, but in bread form it was just too much. Most of what I have read so far has said that a straight substitute of an alternative flour for wheat flour in a recipe doesn't work well. Well, I decided to give it a go anyway with sorghum flour, just to see how it did and how I handled it. Waffles seemed a good way to go since I can easily freeze and toast the leftovers, so that was this week's experiment. Modifying the pancake recipe I tried a few weeks ago, I was able to come up with some very yummy waffles. Next time I will increase the liquid to thin out the batter a bit more, but taste and texture-wise, they were quite good. My tummy wasn't a hundred percent happy, but it was definitely better than what I have experienced so far. Keeping the amounts smaller helps, but that is not a problem since they fill me up more.
I am going to try the same experiment with sweet potato flour, and then see if I can come up with my own flour blend.
Another experiment I tried this week was having brown rice as a breakfast cereal. I precooked the rice the night before and heated it in the microwave with some vanilla soy milk and a little brown sugar. Then I added a few dried cranberries. It was a nice break from oatmeal, but I don't know that I liked it well enough to do again. My current granola, which was made with the rice flours, is restricted to afternoon snacking, but my hope is that with an acceptable flour blend, I can create a recipe I can have for breakfast a few mornings a week. I like oatmeal a lot, but some variety would be very nice.
The binding is going on Squared, the Vineyard quilt top is all pieced, and once I piece the backing for the Ugly Duckling, it will be ready for quilting. The shawl is progressing slowing, and I am almost ready to start the decreasing on the hat. My knitting lately has involved as much unknitting as knitting, but for the most part I am moving the projects forward.
I hope everyone is having as lovely a spring as we are here. Next time I will plan to post some pictures of our garden. Blessings!
The gluten-free experiment continues and I am really feeling much better over all. Not only am I less achy, but my sinus allergies are better as well, even with all the oak pollen around. It has been a bit frustrating in the past since I could never pinpoint the cause of the allergies. The pollen count rarely seemed to match how I was doing, so I am now guessing that the wheat intolerance caused my body to be constantly producing histamines to try to counteract the wheat.
My second try at GF bread was a recipe for Irish soda bread. I added dried cranberries instead of currants and skipped the caraway seed. Fresh out the of oven, the bread was very good and even had a more chewy rather than grainy texture. It is only fair warmed over, but I will try toasting it to see how that does. I plan to make the recipe again, but use some more savory spices and herbs.
We are full on into spring now. All the trees have leafed out--the red buds and ornament pear trees were gorgeous this year. The garden is in--tomato, bell pepper, green beans, onions, zucchini, and yellow squash. I wasn't sure how much container planting I would do this year, but decided to go ahead and fill all my pots. Thought I would post a picture now, since they may or may not survive the summer heat.
There is no real rhyme or reason to my container planting. Whatever I can find at Walmart that seems suitable and looks healthy is what comes home with me. This year there are impatiens, begonias, New Guinea impatiens, cyclamen, and sedum.
In the wooly-cotton world, I am nearly done quilting the quilt I am making for my husband's workplace office so I should have pictures in a May post. With knitting, my goal is to have a shawl project going and then something that is "in the round" such as fingerless mitts, hats, and someday socks. The shawl project I pictured here recently is progressing nicely and I am very much enjoying the current hat project. Here is a picture, but I couldn't get the color quite right. The yarn is a lovely deep orange blend of wool and cotton.
That pretty much sums up the latest happenings around here. A happy spring to everyone!
