Gluten Free Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies

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Artichoke & Lemon Pasta

     There isn’t too much more that I love than a simple bowl of pasta dressed up just slightly with a little something special. It is the ultimate in comfort foods for me and I could eat pasta almost every day for lunch at work with no regrets. I would make it more often at home, but the spouse isn’t the biggest pasta fan and tires on it rather quickly, so I try for maybe twice a month or so.

     This pasta dish is a quick throw together lunch for one, or you could easily double or triple it for dinner for the family or for several lunches during the week. It comes together so quickly, that I’ll sometimes make it in the morning while I’m scurrying around the house getting ready for work. I try to heat up my lunch and store it in a thermos so I can avoid the lines at the microwave in the break room and the awkward conversations that brings. It is also super convenient to just grab my thermos and walk over to a local park and eat lunch outside – it makes for a great change of scenery.

Artichoke & Lemon Pasta
Serves 1 hungry person

Ingredients
1/3 – 1/2 Jar of marinated artichoke hearts
1/4 bag Trader Joes Brown Rice Pasta
1/2 Fresh lemon

Optional Toppings
If you’re feeling ambitious, you can zest a bit of the lemon into the pasta
For a creamier pasta dish, add a bit of non-dairy salad dressing. I like Drew's All-Natural Salad Dressing and 10 Minute Marinade, Roasted Garlic & Peppercorn, 12-Ounce Bottle

Method
First... Boil your pasta according to bag instructions, drain, and return to pan. If you want this to be a cold dish, which is equally delicious, rinse your pasta in cold water for a minute or two.

Then... Remove the artichoke hearts from the jar and cut into quarters. Separate the layers and add to pasta. Squeeze the lemon, being careful to avoid seeds, into the pasta.

Finally... Stir well, adding any optional toppings you want, before serving immediately or packing away for lunch.

- Patricia

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Morning Rice

By the time the boyfriend and I get our coffee going and morning started, we've already been in the kitchen for about half an hour. I find it odd that considering this, I hardly ever make breakfast for myself. The boyfriend will toast these amazing-smelling toaster pastries we get him to hold him over, but I'm often left roaming the kitchen like some half-crazed, half-starved loon.
 
I've written before about how breakfast is that one meal I still struggle with to get some sort of consistency with. I understand that this is, technically speaking, not a difficult task to do. Bananas, cereal, oatmeal, eggs; there are tons of different foods available for breakfast time that are gluten free. For me, it's a combination of being a broke college student with a crappy part time job and a slight failure in the meal planning department I seem to be having. When I do my weekly meal planning, I often forget to get items for other meals besides dinner, so we'll end up eating the pasta I was saving for Wednesday night on Sunday afternoon.

The same thing goes for breakfast - I forget to pick up groceries for it. This is an exceptional pickle to place yourself in because it's a bit more difficult to convince yourself to eat pasta for breakfast. This got me thinking about a satisfying breakfast I could make with just what we had on hand.

We have rice. Mountains of several kinds of rice, and enjoy them all. We truly love rice. The grocery store nearest to our home has a great deal on 5lb bags of un-enriched Jasmine rice from Thailand we buy once or twice a month. So, this morning when I was trying to figure out what to make for breakfast, I naturally reached for the rice.

Hot Jasmine Rice Breakfast
Serves 1



1 C water, brought to a boil
1/2 C Jasmine rice
3 Tbs cane sugar
Cinnamon, to taste
1/4 C soy milk
1 Tbs vegan butter


Add rice to boiling water and stir well. This will cook a little faster than a normal serving of rice will, so watch it carefully to prevent scorching. When the water is around half absorbed add the sugar and cinnamon and stir well. 
When the rice has finished cooking add the milk and butter, stir well, and enjoy!

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Cookbook Review: The Allergy-Free Cookbook by Eileen Yoder

     Eileen Yoder has serious experience dealing with food allergies. She states in the preface to her second edition of *The Allergy-Free Cookbook*, her family has five generations of known food allergies. Some allergies are the same for one or two people and other allergens vary. As you can imagine, this cookbook came about out of sheer necessity.

     Yoder's cookbook is laid out so that information you might be searching for is easy to locate. There are two parts to the book. Part one is planning. Here, a section on replacements for the common allergens such as eggs, milk, and soy can all be found in one place, a section for dealing with children and food allergies has its own chapter, and easy ways to start and maintain an allergy-free diet can be found in another place. Part two is the recipes and begins with menus and lots of tips with shortcuts and time savers. Part two ends with listings of foods and their families, a very handy chart for those who are allergic to whole families of foods such as nightshades or

     The only unexpected thing I noticed in *The Allergy-Free Cookbook* is that while the front cover states “How to avoid the 8 major food allergens and eat happily ever after”, some of the recipes include these very ingredients. I had assumed when I got the cookbook (which I got here, by the way) that all of the recipes would be free of these allergens.

     Its not a big deal at all, and the cookbook is still an invaluable resource that can save your sanity if you are trying to meal plan and avoid more than one or two food allergens.

     While not all of the recipes are gluten free, many are gluten free naturally or can be easily adapted. There does seem to be quite a few recipes that call for wheat, rye, oats or oat flour, and barley. While these grains are usually easy to substitute out with other grains or a gluten free oat in most of the recipes, there are a few recipes that might prove more challenging to convert than others.

Happy cooking!

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This Quesadilla Brought to You by Daiya

The tiny town in Texas that I grew up in had a stellar Mexican food restaurant that was ran by a local family. Being the creature of habit I am, I ordered the same thing every time our family ate there – cheese enchiladas. The dish came three to a plate with a side of refried beans and Mexican rice. Add sweet tea and it was one of my favorite eats in town.

I'm still a fan of cheesy goodness of any kind, but the whole dairy-free thing can really hinder that for me, as you could imagine.

A couple years ago I posted about casein-free cheese and my experiments with them. It wasn't that good. In 2009 Daiya took the vegan cheese market by storm and has been picked up as the vegan cheese standard by hundreds of pizza outlets, frozen dinner brands, and restaurants across the country. It's still a bit pricey at around $4 and some change for a standard sized bag of shredded goodness, but it's worth it every once in a while to change up the meal plan around here.

This quesadilla, for instance, was made with Daiya. Delicious and quick breakfast for one this morning when I was up before my boyfriend and room mate.


Quick Quesadilla for One
(vegan & gluten-free)

Ingredients:
2 corn tortillas
baby spinach
½ small onion, chopped
1 baby portobello, chopped
shredded carrots
Daiya

Place small skillet over medium heat. While heating, place one tortilla in skillet, add Daiya, and top with half of the spinach. Add onions, mushrooms, and carrots then top with remaining spinach. Sprinkle liberally with Daiya and place final tortilla on top. Once cheese on the bottom is beginning to melt flip the quesadilla and brown the other side.

If you would prefer the stuffing cooked a bit more, you can brown the vegetables together and then assemble the quesadilla to prevent burning the tortillas from continued cooking.

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Commitment Free Lasagna

      Making traditional lasagna is a commitment of at least three hours. I don't know about you, but I don't even have kids running around, unless my cats and rabbit count, and I find it hard to come up with three hours to make dinner on most days. Sure, there are some lazy Sundays with afternoons just begging to be used by the oven, but most days are full of better things to do than stand over a counter and stove for the good part of an afternoon.

     Now there comes a problem into sight: I love lasagna.

     I have always loved lasagna. I was not raised in an Italian family with tables filled with foods and family, so it's not that kind of love, but my family would rock the frozen lasagna from the grocery store. Plate it up with salad and garlic bread, and you have one of my absolute favorite meals in the galaxy. That lasagna was the epitome of Italian for me. Rich tomato-y sauce, firm, frilly noodles with four or five kinds of cheese, and slightly well done to make the cheese extra crispy on the top layer.

     After I went gluten and dairy free my cravings for lasagna did not subside. My food tastes have developed a bit since the days of frozen-in-box and I still long for deliciously rich lasagna. 98% of the time when I'm converting a recipe to suit our food habits I do not have a problem, but once in a blue moon I will have a bit of a challenge put before me when I'm trying to figure something out. Lasagna was one of those moments for me. Most of you know that my household is vegetarian, so meat and meat sauce are both out, and I can't do dairy, so cheese is also out.

      “So what's left” I would tell myself; I pretty much gave up on the idea before I even tried it and went lasagna-less for about a year and a half or so.

      I dabbled in lasagna for a while before I came up with this recipe that I follow pretty closely now. It's right at an hour start to finish for me to prepare, cook, and serve. This cut in time made it a very accessible recipe for me to incorporate into the rotation of meals. With most of my cooking I do not use recipes for exact instructions but for ideas and inspirations. With that theory, I hope that you use this recipe as a base for you to spring from.

Commitment Free Lasagna
6 lasagna noodles
½ pound baby spinach
1 onion, finely chopped
1 jar artichoke hearts, chopped
½ C water + stock cube or ½ C liquid stock
tomato sauce to taste
shredded basil

Bring large pot of water to a boil and add lasagna noodles one or two at a time until al dente. When the noodles are done, lay them out on a plate to cool. While this process is going, heat skillet over medium heat and add artichoke hearts and onions, cooking until onions are translucent. Add stock, tomato sauce, and basil to onions and mix well. Place spinach on top of onions and place lid on pan until spinach has wilted and can be easily incorporated into the onion mix.
Once the spinach is incorporated, the stove can be turned off and the oven preheated to 350*F. Using a spoon or fork and starting about half an inch from the start, line the center of a noodle with a small amount of filling. Roll the noodle up starting from the end with no filling and place into a baking dish. Continue in this manner until all the noodles have been used and top the dish with the remainder of the filling.

Bake for about 20 minutes, or until filling and noodles are hot and any cheese added has melted.

Served with garlic bread and a salad, this will generously serve two or three people, depending on appetites.

      For variations, try making a white sauce or pesto sauce to use in place of the tomato sauce, adding zucchini or mushrooms, experimenting with shredded carrots, or using vegan cheese to give it some extra body.

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Casein Free Milk and Butter - Part II

     In my previous post on casein free milk and butter I cleared up exactly what casein was, why so many folks with Celiac also react to casein, and suggested a few casein free alternatives to traditional animal products. If you haven’t checked that out yet, be sure to pop over there before you leave!
     I still get asked plenty of questions about what exactly is casein free in the dairy isle and I want to address some of those more common ones here today. Many of the questions that come in regarding casein are wondering if their favorite diary product has casein in it. Does butter have casein? Does being dairy free really mean no casein? Is there casein in soy products? What about skim milk or reduced fat milk? Does sheep or goats milk have casein? What cheeses are casein free or have low casein amounts?
     To give a brief run down on casein, it is one of the proteins that make up all animal milk usually contributing around 80% of the total proteins. Casein is often used in protein powders and meal supplement bars to help boost nutrition and give the consumer a full feeling thanks to the wonderful coagulation properties of the protein which allow for long-term digestion and absorption of the protein.
     This sticky coagulation property is one of the reasons folks with Celiac will have a problem digesting it – the protein is strikingly similar to the gluten molecule and the body will react very similarly to it.
     Now for a brief run down on what is and what is not safe in your dairy isle…
     All animal milk is off limits. I have yet to find one that says “casein free” on the label. There are plenty of lactose free milks available, but lactose is not casein, it is another protein entirely so be sure not to confuse these two. Skim milk has a higher concentration of protein - including casein - than full fat milk does, so don’t make this mistake either. The higher protein in skim milk is caused from taking the milk, spinning off the fat and using the remaining liquid as the final product. So this has the same protein content as before, with a smaller overall volume, thus the higher protein concentration. Boiling or heating milk does not remove the casein, either.
     Rice, soy, hemp, cashew, almond, and coconut are all popular replacement milks for those of us who find animal based milks off limits. You might find that you prefer one over the other or even one brand over another, so shop around and see what you like and what works best for your kitchen. Everyone’s preferences are going to be different.
     Just as all animal milk is off limits, so is all animal based cheeses. Remember how casein is a great coagulator and kind of sticky? Sadly, this is how cheeses come out so deliciously solid making it off limits for us, as well.
     There are many cheese alternatives available on the market today, but a good bit of them still contain casein, so this is where label reading skills come in especially important (you are reading those labels, right?). Some good brands that I look for include Daiya, HeidiHo, and Tofutti. They all look, act, and taste like the real thing. I’ve been away from cheese for a good bit now, but the spouse, who is a devoted dairy consumer, seems to enjoy them all the same. I’ve also heard good things about Follow Your Heart, and Teese Vegan Cheese. Check around your local grocers and see what they have. If you can’t find something for you, ask the manager to order a product for you. Chances are if you want it, someone else does too.
     Butter also falls into the same off-limit category as the above animal-based milks and cheeses. Anything that is made with animal milk needs to be avoided 100% to be sure of a fully casein free diet.
     There are several alternatives on the market that are very tasty and act just the same for cooking and baking. I’ve enjoyed using Earth Balance Vegan Buttery Sticks and Spread for several years now and haven’t had any issues with it. I enjoy the flavor and the fact that I can bake and cook with it. Coconut oil is another popular alternative that many folks turn to. I’m not a huge fan because of the smell, but it’s wildly popular nonetheless. Country Crock might work for you, but it does contain whey and lactic acid in some of their varieties, so proceed with caution here. Check around your dairy isle and see what products they have for you.
     Ghee is the last category that I want to cover. Ghee is tricky. In theory, it should be safe for those of us with a casein allergy. Ghee, or clarified butter as it is sometimes referred to, is made by simmering pure butter until it separates into layers. The top layer is whey and becomes foamy and is removed during cooking with a spoon or other method. The very bottom layer is the milk solids where the casein resides. The middle section is the ghee. The ghee is very carefully poured off the solids and usually strained through a sieve or cheesecloth to ensure all solids are removed from the ghee. This process should leave the end result with no casein, but there is a high chance of cross contamination and left over solids, so this is where caution comes in. I still indulge in Indian food and most of the time I do not have any issues. Use your own judgment on this one.
     I hope this clears up any questions you might have regarding a casein free diet. Feel free to comment below or email me any additional questions you might have or issues you would like me to address.
- Patricia

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