Gluten-free Monday: favourite pancakes

Obviously I took a week off but... here I am today, nursing a cold, ignoring a nasty diaper, and generally pinning things to my Pinterest boards that I really want to sew.

My love of sewing has been reignited the last few months.  It began when I pulled out my long forgotten and unfinished Christmas tree skirt (still unfinished, I might add).  Whenever I start to sew a project again (rather than just sew on Girl Guide badges or make minor repairs), I fall in love with sewing all over again.  My next project will be a fun bag to tote my Girl Guide stuff in.  After that, it is finishing some other quilts while making some summer skirts for the girls.  But first, I MUST finish my Christmas tree skirt.

I also have a Gluten-free goodness board on Pinterest.  You can find it here.  And like most of my other pins, I haven't made a single recipe on there yet.  Maybe I'll change that this week and try one out.  I'm thinking the chocolate cookies.  Yes..... I see a project for Henry and I today!  Expect a review next week.

In the meantime, I'm going to share my favourite pancakes with you today (sorry no photos).  This is a recipe that I got from Baking Beauties but I have fully changed around to make much better (in our opinion).  We always add blueberries but plain is good too, as is any other fruit you can think of.  You can also add canned pumpkin and pumpkin pie spices for a really great treat.

Karen's Pancakes

1/2 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup sorghum flour
3 tbsp tapioca starch/flour
1/3 cup potato starch
2 tbsp ground flax seed
1 tbsp sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 tsp xanthan gum

1 egg
1 cup yogurt (plain or vanilla)
1 1/2-1 3/4 cups milk, depending on how thick you like your pancakes.
3 tbsp oil
2 tsp vanilla

Whisk all dry ingredients together.  Mix wet ingredients separately, whisking well.  Add wet to dry and mix well.  Sometime I have to add extra milk to make a thinner batter as I don't like my pancakes too puffy.  Melt butter in frying pan and add large spoonfuls of batter adding blueberries or whatever fruit you like.

This batter also keeps well in the fridge for a few days.

I honestly don't think a wheat-eater could tell the difference eating these pancakes.  There is not GF texture here at all. Yum!

Eating Gluten-free (plus a review of Chex Gluten Free)

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I've been eating gluten-free since January of this year. And I'm really strict about it. I don't eat Rice Krispie squares (yes, the cereal is rice but it contains barley malt extract). I ask servers about each item I'm considering on a restaurant menu. I scrape the breadcrumbs out of the butter. I wipe the bread knife before using it to slice a tomato.

Living gluten-free in a gluten household can be very challenging and adjusting your regular diet to switch to gluten-free is really hard at first but if you're doing it to function normally again like I have done then your motivation to succeed and figure out how to live gluten-free is very high.

I realized three things early on about eating gluten-free: first, don't replace foods that you can no longer eat with an inferior substitute. Bread is the best example of this. Bread relies on gluten to be good. Gluten is what makes bread supple and chewy and soft and stretchy. Without gluten, it's cardboard in the form of bread. I've tried numerous recipes and bakery versions and I've given up trying to find anything close to bread. Gluten-free bread sucks. End of story.

And second, gluten-free products are expensive. To save money and have the best outcome, you have to bake. I make great gluten-free coffee cake, muffins, scones and a KILLER chocolate cake, just to list a few of my winners. I'm trying new recipes all the time. I only keep the ones that taste as good as the gluten version.

The third thing I've learned about being successful in eating gluten-free is that I have to have gluten-free snacks in my house so that when I'm suddenly hungry, I have something quick to snack on.... carrot sticks don't always satisfy. I usually have the following on hand: plantain chips, homemade granola, gluten-free crackers, gluten-free English muffins, and some kind of cereal.

And now for the awkward segue into my review... If you eat gluten-free you know that prepared foods such as frozen GF English muffins and cereal are expensive. Recently I was given the opportunity by Mom Central Canada to try out a new GF cereal. Chex Gluten Free is sold in the regular cereal aisle (how refreshing!) and comes in two flavours: rice and honey-nut. Our whole family really liked them both. The kids LOVED the honey-nut. John and I showed a bit more restraint (it's a bit sugary) and reach for the rice version. It tastes exactly like Crispix (one of my previous fave cereals). After we ate through our sample boxes, I went to buy a new box at Loblaws and was so happy to find that it isn't priced like regular gluten-free products (read: trying to gouge we poor souls who are forced to buy these over-priced products). It was right around $5 a box, very comparable to other cereals in the cereal aisle. Chex has even created a list of dinnertime recipes that you can create using the cereal. You can find the recipes at www.chexcanada.com (I've tried to hyperlink this for the last ten minutes in the Blogsy app and I'M GIVING UP, DAMN YOU, BLOGSY!)

I plan to post some of my tried and true gluten-free recipes here over the next few months as well as links to some blogs and cooking sites and books that have really helped me. If you have tips, tricks or resources that have helped you eat gluten-free, please share them in the comments below.

Disclosure: I am participating in the Chex Gluten Free program by Mom Central Canada on behalf of General Mills. I received a Chex gift pack and a gift card as a thank you for my participation. The opinions on this blog are my own.

New favourite: beet hummus

While I was in Austin, my sister whipped up a batch of beet hummus, a concoction I'd never tasted before. It only took one loaded cracker to have me hooked. During my first grocery shop after I got home, I picked up two mammoth beets and last night I made my first batch.

It's extremely easy... if you have a food processor.... and an oven. And it is so good with veggies or crackers or pita or whatever hummus delivery vehicle you like.

Beet hummus

Roughly chop lots of beets and place in roasting pan with water. Cover with tin foil and roast at 350F until cooked through. Place beets in food processor with two large tablespoons of tahina (or to taste... I like a lot of tahina), one or two cloves of chopped garlic, and the juice of at least one lemon (again to taste) and salt and pepper. Blend until a hummusy consistency. Delicious!

The award is in the bag

Would you like to know what I just did?

I just finished making a batch of homemade doughnuts. Oh yes, I did!

Gluten-free pumpkin doughnuts to be exact. And after a very long hiatus, I'm putting this up on a Wednesday which means this is part of Shannon's awesome What's Cooking Wednesday.

Emily made the batter with me, I heated the oil and deep-fried those suckers and they are everything a homemade doughnut (in this case, Timbit, or doughnut hole for you Americans) should be: crisp on the outside, soft on the inside, sugary, pumpkiny, spicy, warm.

For those of you vying for the Best Mum of the Year Award.... how does my dust taste?!

A Little Bit of Foodsense: Hello Dollies recipe

I have my first recipe up at the new and awesome A Little Bit of Foodsense. I'm a contributor to the site. Go have a look! (And make some Hello Dollies!)

Canning it

I've learned a few things about having three kids after three months at it but the main one is that you have to seriously lower your expectations about what you can get done during a day. If I'm going to go out and do something with them, very little else will get done. If I'm going to unpack a few boxes (and there are still many, many to be unpacked - you should see our garage, my word - little piece of advice, do not move when you have three kids, one being a very small baby), the dishes won't get done. If I need to buy groceries, the laundry will sit untouched that day.

Time moves fast but everything else seems at a snail's pace. And unfortunately blogging falls to the bottom of the to-do list. And oh, how I miss it.

However, I have managed to do some canning this week. I love canning at this time of year - jams, pickles, tomato sauce - I love doing it all. This week, to the detriment of box unpacking etc, I put up peaches, made red pepper jelly and tonight, crabapple jelly. The crabapple jelly is extra special because we picked the crabapples from some trees nearby on city property; the apples were free for the taking. I've never made a proper jelly before, using a jelly bag; I really liked it. And the result is a lucious looking ruby red jelly that will be spread on my toast tomorrow morning. Mmm, mmm.


Later this week I'll ignore the garden and make tomato sauce!

My newest favourite baking website

If you triple love to bake like I do and you grew up in Canada or have made the right decision and chosen to move here (heh) then you HAVE to check out this website: Joy of Baking. It is a website full of beautiful photography, awesome recipes and very Canadian at that (lemon curd, scones, Nanaimo bars.... love it).

I'm going to make the red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing for this weekend to share with those I love (particularly myself).

My name is Karen and I love my ever-expanding gut

The lovely Andrea of the Fishbowl posted this very inspiring and funny post about loving her guts. (Can I also just add that even in my pre-pregnancy state I would be soooo jealous of that gut - with or without the washboard?)

So, thinking along the lines of improving my post-Christmas diet as well as the fact that I haven't really written much about this current pregnancy, I thought this would be a prime time to talk about my own eating regime post-holiday as well as show off my pregnant belly.

Right after the last Christmas cookie was eaten (likely by me) I decided to get serious about what I was eating. Breakfast - high in fibre (a la Andrea); I am going to seek out the Bran Buds she mentions but for now I'm having oatmeal with flax seed meal on it, some cinnamon and maple syrup and milk. Yum! Lunch - a favourite salad of mine which I'm starting up again tomorrow: tuna, avacado, green onion, lettuce and a lemon and oil vinaigrette. Double yum! I won't have this everyday but lots of days until I get sick of it. I really want to lay low on the carbs at lunch - hopefully going carb free but high in proteins and veg (but not the heavy meats - fish and eggs and cheese are more to my liking). Supper - whatever is our fancy. I'm not making any changes there. I do plan to lay low on refined sugar from here on in as much as my will power allows going instead with honey or maple syrup when I need a little sweet. So far, not hard. I had my fill over Christmas.

This is the gut I am currently sporting at 19 weeks pregnant:




Formidable, isn't it?

Well endowed for only 19 weeks pregnant. I hate to think what I'll look like at 36 weeks.

Seriously, I'm obviously not re-focussing my eating to trim any pounds obviously. I love my baby belly right now. I just want to eat as healthily as possible for me to keep up my energy and feed this growing baby right.

As many of you know I have a mystery illness (which I still suspect is fibromyalgia but no one professional has been able to tell me yet) and eating well seems to help me through my bad bouts which, until two days ago, had been few and far between during the pregnancy. Right now I'm in the middle of one: severely itchy skin, rashes, extreme fatigue, sore muscles, very sensitive and painful skin (even where there is no rash to see), sore rib tips and solar plexus. All so odd but from experience I know that this too shall pass.

And for me that's where the joy in my suffering comes from. I know it will pass. It's always an adventure to see what I can do to get it to pass more quickly and I know diet and exercise (hah!) and lots and lots of sleep (double hah!) get me through faster.

And with that thought, I'm going to sit on the couch, knit, drink tea and then go to bed.

Should you want to feel good about your own midrif, I suggest staring at the photos above a few more times.

Dreading the most important meal of the day

Before I started having to pack lunches for school, I had heard (from several reliable sources) that packing school lunches was attune to having your eyeballs pried out with a teaspoon.

I haven't found it bad at all but I think that is because I have a child with a very wide range of tastes and they all fall under the heading of "healthy".

But do you know what I despise making lately? Breakfasts! I find it absolutely loathsome. Most likely that is because, this week at least while I've either nursed other people's colds or my own, my grocery shopping and bread-baking has been sub-par. Every morning I wake up to find no bread in the house, apple but no other fruits that would be smoothie-worthy, eggs but no bacon (or bread as I just mentioned) or no time (or desire) to make pancakes.

And I'm looking it in the face tomorrow morning as well. I will likely be up early making muffins or pancakes.

And packing a lunch.

This week's menu

This week I'll be making:

Today: cauliflower pie with roasted beets

Tuesday: beef tacos with guacamole

Wednesday: Brazilian rice and beans with a green vegetable

Thursday: borscht with homemade bread and cut veggies

Friday: lasagna with salad

Saturday: ribs with roast potatoes and green veg

Sunday: squash soup, salad, bread and cheese

Notes: I have a lot of gr beef in my freezer from last week so I planned my menu to use that up. I also didn't make the squash soup last week after all so I put it back on the menu for this week. Ribs and avocados are on sale this week so I'm going to have both of those.

I'll add links to recipes a little later.


-- Post From My iPhone

The weekly menu

Well, last week didn't go as well as the first. I did very well the first week. I stuck to my menu and came in just over the budget of $120.

Last week wasn't as successful. Hope's birthday picnic was last Monday so that was unusual spending and it made everything else feel a bit off the rest of the week. I also wasn't terribly inspired by the menu I set.

This week will be different. I'm already excited about what I'll be cooking this week:

Tonight: Mrs Logue's chicken, roast potatoes and green beans bought this morning at the farmstand

Wednesday: Hawaiian meatballs, rice and salad

Thursday: sausage and lentils with roasted beets

Friday: linguine with lemon, garlic and anchovy sauce, sliced tomatoes from farmstand

Saturday: chili, homemade bread and salad

Sunday: butternut squash soup, tomato salad, homemade bread and cheese

Sounds good, doesn't it? I'll add links to recipes if I've posted them here before when I get my computer back from the girls.


-- Post From My iPhone

Turning a new leaf: meal planning

This summer I've been thinking and reading about ways to be more frugal; ways that I can trim our budget (or, hell, even set a budget!) and pay down more debt and increase our savings. We have a big trip coming up - two months in Texas - during which time we'll be paying two rents. We need to be as frugal as we can leading up to that.

Aside from the obvious ways to cut spending - no snacks or meals out, buying only when we really need something and not when we WANT something, getting clothes on consignment, reusing everything we can - I am absolutely committed to reducing our grocery spending. I know we spend more than we have to. However, I also have two priorities that I won't compromise on: buying local as much as possible and eating as healthily as possible (lots of fruit and vegetables in season). To achieve this I'm continuing to shop at the local farmers' markets (there are two great ones to choose from in the K-W area - a blog post to come) and as of yesterday I started to shop at farm gates. This is VERY easy here as many Old Order Mennonite Farms are only a 15 or 20 minute drive from my door.

I've also decided to do something else; something many people do every week and I've wanted to do for some time: make a weekly meal plan. Up until now, we decide what we're having for supper the same day that we make it. If I'm lucky, I decide the day before. This has resulted in more meals out, more trips to the grocery store and more groceries bought for full price. It also sometimes results in vegetables going rotten in the fridge when I forget what I have or buy it at the farmers' market and don't have a good plan for it. All this changes as of today.

Last night I sat down and made a meal plan for us based on what we like, what is in season, what I already had in the fridge. I didn't have any flyers in front of me. I knew I was going to the St. Jacobs Farmers' Market today and I knew what I would likely find. I expect the result of this new ritual will be a lessening of our food budget but I've decided to also set a limit on what I spend each week. I'm starting with $120 and hope to reduce it closer to $100 over time.

Here is our menu for this week:

Tonight: Brocolli strudel and corn on the cob (brocolli and corn bought at farm stands)
Wednesday night: Chicken simmered in white wine and fresh herbs (from the garden), roasted beets and potatoes
Thursday night: Spaghetti with cherry tomatoes and pecorino cheese (tomatoes bought at farmers' market today)
Friday night: Homemade pizza and salad
Saturday night: tourtiere (because Rose will be here and loves it) using beef and pork and apples from market, green and yellow beans (from market)

I'll let you know how it goes and I'll likely jump back into Shan's What's Cooking Wednesday (it's been a while!) and post one of the recipes from the week. Wish me luck. I'm not sure how I'll react to this much organization!

Liver sucks.

You know those things you decide when you were a kid that you realize as an adult you were totally off-base about?  Things like... coffee tastes bad.  Or smoking looks cool.  Or it makes sense not to wear socks in my shoes when it is minus 10 outside.

Yesterday I discovered something I was TOTALLY RIGHT ABOUT when I was a kid.

Liver sucks.

I made liver last night in an effort to boost my vitamin B levels thinking it could be a key to whatever is going on in my body.  I liked that it cost me $2 for a giant package.  I found a recipe on Allrecipes that said "Even my husband, who hates liver, loved this!  It doesn't taste like liver."  Sounded like the right recipe for me.  Because I LOATHE LIVER.  And always have.

My mum loved liver.  She made it for our family maybe twice before she stopped trying due to all the moans and protests and gagging and whatnot.  She still would order it in restaurants if there was calf liver available, her favourite.  

The liver I made last night was promising enough although I found it stomach-turning to have to slice the stuff.  It already had the liver smell and it is very gelatinous.  It reminded me too much of a CSI episode.  The sauce had lots of good flavours - brown sugar, Worstershire sauce, ketchup, garlic.

Unfortunately, the reality is nothing can mask the flavour and texture of liver.

I was totally right as a kid.  Liver sucks.

John was a pig in shite though.  He loves liver and in ten years of marriage we've never had it for dinner.  I announced last night that he'd be waiting ten more to have it again.

And what did the kids think?  Emily tasted it and said she didn't like it (smart kid).  Hope tasted it and asked for three more pieces.  Again, John was a pig in shite and kept saying how much he loved Hope and what a good girl she is, blah blah blah.  I credit it to undeveloped taste buds.  I mean, the kid dips waffles into ketchup.

Capital Cupcake Camp today!

I'm all set for Capital Cupcake Camp. I've made marble cupcakes with a white chocolate icing sprinkled with chocolate shavings. They've turned out well. I tasted one, icing free, last night and it is very yummy. I'm surprised by how much you can taste the white chocolate in the icing. (I admit to never having tried this icing before but the only difference from regular buttercream is the white chocolate in place of vanilla so how could it go wrong?)

I'll try and take lots of pictures this afternoon so you can see all the yummies that other people brought.

After it is all over, I'll likely send the kids out to run laps around the neighbourhood to burn off their sugar highs.

Capital Cupcake Camp

So, although I've put the baking business on hold while I work out my abdominal issues, that still won't stop me from taking some cupcakes to Capital Cupcake Camp on March 29. My friend, Jenn, alerted me to it and not caring whether I win or not, I think it will be so much fun! If you live in Ottawa, be sure to register as a taster and come out to eat cupcakes and support a great cause.

Pudding for breakfast

My parents held out on me. If we had hot cereal for breakfast at our house, it was porridge. Never Red River Cereal or Cream of Wheat. Just regular porridge. I'm not complaining. I really like porridge and it is really good for the old bod.

This morning I expanded our hot cereal repetoire around here and made Cream of Wheat. People, it is like pudding for breakfast. Especially when you top it with cinnamon, brown sugar, maple syrup and milk. It was so sweet.

I'm sure it is not so good me but man, is it a nice way to start the day. Dessert for breakfast? I'm all over that.

The first big whopper

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. I do love December for the anticipation of Christmas at home and at church with each Sunday marking a new theme during Advent. Today, appropriately, was hope and I have a lot of Hope this year.

In further anticipation of Christmas and all things wintery, today is our first Major Storm Warning put out by Environment Canada. They are promising us snow, ice pellets and freezing rain. Good times, good times.

Meanwhile, our garage is still full of bikes, strollers, a Christmas tree from Ikea, sand toys, SNOW TIRES, and absolutely no room for a car. Can you guess what I'm doing this afternoon?

My reward, albeit a few days late, will be on Tuesday, which I am forever going to call Tim Tam Tuesday because BECAUSE my friendly neighbourhood Loblaws man promised me over the phone last week that he was ordering in (now and forever) Tim Tams. Yay Mr. Loblaws Man! Christmas comes early this year!

That was a bust

While the sentimentality of my post below was commendable and certainly worth my efforts in the kitchen, the food did not produce the results I had hoped for.

Emily literally wiped her tongue with the back of her sleeve when she tasted the cider pork. That, my friends, is worthy of the Iron Chef judges, don't you think?

Smells like Mum

I just finished a day - with play breaks, pick up from preschool breaks, lunch breaks, nap breaks, tea break - of cooking. The kitchen smells amazing right now; like crock-pot cider pork (a new recipe) and rising oatmeal bread; and it has a warmth generated by all the kneading and stirring and chopping. And, I've got a hankering to make a real dessert - not just rice pudding out of a tub.

It smells and feels like my mum's kitchen and that is enough to perk me up on any day.

Keepers of the feast

This is a post I've been wanting to write since way back in the winter some time when my friend Shannon posted.... something. I can't find the post she put up that made me come up with this idea but I'll still give her credit. It was something about her daughter Abby learning to print. I think. Anyway, whatever brilliant thing she wrote or Abby did, it (for some reason) got me thinking about my favourite recipes and where I keep them. I started thinking about my mum's old wooden recipe box and then her "new" 1980's teale plastic recipe box and then the photo album recipe books she made for Beth and I.

I realized that there are as many stories about the boxes that hold recipes as there are about the recipes themselves. And I think they're probably good stories, family stories, stories we'd all like to hear.

Here are my two recipe holders:


I got the tin box from my very close friend Marnie (who I don't talk to nearly often enough anymore). Marnie and I were roommates for a good chunk of university and have been very close ever since. She did her third year abroad in Nice, France. She brought back a tin of cookies for me. The cookies were alright but what I really liked was the tin they came in. Needing a place for recipes I was collecting once and a while from roommates and friends, I started to stick them in the tin. It's been with me ever since. Once in a while I have to weed it as it starts to get full again and there are recipes I'm not using. It's hard to make the choices about what stays and goes as all the recipes have stories: who gave it to me, when I tasted it, where I was.

One year for Christmas, my mum gave Beth and I each a small photo album partially filled with recipe cards. On each card she had written our favourite recipes of hers. It was probably one of the best gifts she ever gave me and I use those recipes all the time. Not surprisingly, most of them are for baking; she was an outstanding baker and she bred that into Beth and I. The small album started to fall apart the year after I got it, simply due to use. I haven't replaced it yet, but I should. I'm just trying to hold out as long as I can, moving recipes to the back as the pages fall out. I don't want to give up the ratty thing because my mum picked it out. I doubt she laboured over which dollar-store album to buy, but it still means something to me just because it has been the home-away-from-home for these favourite recipes for so long, almost 10 years now, I think.

That's the story of my recipe holders. I'd love to see yours and hear your stories. If you choose to share them, just drop me a comment so I can link to you.