What's Cooking.

Gluten Free Crullers and Choux Pastry

We are snowed in here in Southwestern Ontario, so what better thing to do then make donuts! (Actually, I can think of a few things, but this was a good option :)  ).

Mark and I's favourite Tim Horton's donut (doughnut?) is their Honey Cruller. At some of the other donut joints around, they are also called French Crullers. Since Mark's celiac diagnosis in December, we have both missed having these donuts. Okay, not me, since I eat them when I am at my place, but I do feel bad for him for not being able to eat them too.

This recipe comes from a great site called "The Art of Gluten Free Baking". Love this site!  All the recipes have been good so far, and this one is excellent. I didn't totally follow the choux pastry recipe on her site, but I did like the beautiful photographs and step by step instructions. Her advice to use aluminum foil to transfer the crullers to the oil is genius.

As far as the choux pastry recipe goes, I used my regular recipe but substituted Jeanne's flour mix for the wheat flour. I've modified my regular recipe to use more of her mix, and I think the crullers need to cook until they are fairly well browned. A candy thermometer would help! If you don't have one, drop a 1 inch cube of potato into the oil, and if it starts bubbling around it and is softened but not browned in about 60 seconds then that should be about right. A thermometer really helps, though.

Mark's favourite picture of the crullers:

Gluten Free Brownies

Hello again!

Here's another gluten-free recipe for you. I was at home the other night and had a chocolate craving, and I decided to make brownies. Of course, along with the craving was the thought that I should make something that Mark could eat as well and so began the quest for gluten free brownies!

Since I was baking these at my house, the only gluten-free flour I had on hand was cornstarch. Mark's mom had sent me a great looking recipe for gf brownies, but that recipe required potato starch as the main flour.  So -- off to the local grocery store I went.  The only -- and I *do* mean only -- gluten-free flour they had there was a small packet of Club House Rice flour. I brought it home and decided to see what I could come up with.

A little note about experimenting with gluten-free baking: sometimes it just doesn't turn out. In this case, the brownies turned out AWESOME, but some of my experiments lately haven't been so successful.  Gluten free bread has kicked my you-know-what, but I will keep working on that. In this case, I couldn't find a recipe that had only the ingredients I had on hand. There is no xanthan gum or guar gum here (there is now :) ), just rice flour, cornstarch, and eggs, which is why I had to make things up as I went. I think this would be a good recipe if you are new to GF Baking, simply because the ingredients aren't too 'out there' and should be easy to find. If you are new to gluten free, it's worthwhile to follow a recipe until you're comfortable baking with new flours and ingredients - there are lots and lots of great things to eat on the gfree diet! 

The Chia and/or Flax seed that I've included in the recipe might be unusual for you, and so they are completely optional!  I like adding Chia seed because it acts, I think, as a binder for the ingredients, and it's good for you. Not that I, or anyone, should eat brownies because they are good for you (no thank you, black bean brownies! Give me sugar). However, a little bit of something that might almost be considered healthy makes it easier to justify eating a pan of sugar. You can also substitute out the cornstarch for any other starch, like tapioca or potato starch, if you are sensitive to corn.

Gluten Free Dairy Free Banana Cream Pie

Happy Holidays!

The title should read "Gluten free, dairy free, refined sugar free, banana cream pie", but that just seemed a little over the top long.

It was a good Christmas, with a nice brunch at my mom's -- where she made some delicious gluten free goodies for Mark.  We skipped dinner here, but did have a great banana cream pie. 

All right. I'll be honest - we didn't actually skip skip dinner. We ate bacon. And then banana cream pie. In a roundabout sort of way, we got at least a few food groups in.

The banana cream pie was a trial run for a lunch on Monday, as one of my friends is wheat intolerant as well.  So between the three of us we have two people who can't have wheat (one with no gluten either), and one dairy free person.  This pie has a custard made from light coconut milk, corn starch as thickener, maple syrup as sweetener, and meringue for the topping.

The crumb base is made from a crumbled cake I made using a recipe from the book "Babycakes: Vegan, mostly gluten free, mostly sugar free recipes from New York's most talked about bakery". I really, really wanted to like this cookbook, but have not had much luck with the recipes.

The recipe is after the jump, along with a mini-review of the book.

Gluten free Blueberry Oatmeal muffins

Well, that's been a long hiatus!  

I decided to post this recipe because I've noticed how hard it is to find simple Gluten-Free recipes!  My significant other is undergoing some investigation for Gluten intolerance and/or Celiac disease, so I have started experimenting with wheat free cooking.  It's a challenge, that's for sure!  Bread will be the next big thing I attempt, since both of us really used to enjoy those grainy artisan breads from the bakery.  

Mark (my significant other) wants me to make gluten-free beer, but I think I'll stick to baking. This recipe calls for ingredients that should be easy to find. 

Just a note about ingredients:  I've used oatmeal in these, and oatmeal is generally considered safe for Celiac and wheat-free diets (and here is another link from Health Canada).  However, the 'generally' is there because there is some fear of cross-contamination of the grain. If you are incredibly sensitive to gluten, or deathly allergic to wheat, please use caution with the oatmeal!  If in any doubt at all, don't make these, and if only a little worried, then make sure to use certified gluten and wheat free oats. If you are newly diagnosed, then tuck this recipe away, and make it when you are reintroducing potentially problematic foods!

Healthy Eating on a Budget: Alternatives to Pizza

This is Part One of Healthy Eating on a Budget and is about healthy, inexpensive alternatives to ordering pizza.

I completely understand the allure of ordering pizza after working all day and getting home late to a hungry family.  For my gang of four it costs about $22 to order pizza and garlic bread. I'd like to think we could get away with no garlic bread but I'd just be lying to myself.  There are the cheap pizzas in the city - Hot and Ready for $8 (mediums, and they advertise $5 but I haven't encountered one of those yet) - and once in a while I get a couple of those as well.  Any way you look at it, it costs me about $20 to get pizza. 

The problem with pizza is that for what you are getting it costs a lot.  Start adding salads and anything remotely healthy and the price goes up.  There are healthier alternatives to ordering pizza, that are almost as quick and easy after working all day.

Eating Healthy on a Budget

Eating healthy on a budget can be really challenging. It isn't easy to stick to a healthy diet, and it certainly doesn't help that food prices, especially for fresh produce, have gone up so much in the last couple of years.  I've actually been working pretty hard at eating healthier these days - I have quit eating candy, drinking pop, and replacing meals with junk food like chips or chocolate. It has not been an easy change; in fact, it's taken about four months for my body to stop feeling like crap without the sugar!  I'm shocked by that, to be honest. I figured it was going to take a few days but it has been much longer. Now that I'm over that hump I feel great, probably the best I've felt in my life. But -- it isn't easy, and it isn't easy to do when you're on a budget, either.

It isn't impossible, though. I have some hints to help you out, some new recipes I'll be posting, and some tips on price-booking when I get the chance.  The first thing to know about eating healthy on a budget is that you save money but sacrifice TIME for the savings.  So while you can buy precut peppers and veggies to save time in the kitchen, you will pay for convenience.  This is true of most things, in fact.  Expect to spend about double your time in the kitchen as you start eating healthier for less money.  If you're an avid cook, or a frugalista already, then you may not end up spending too much more time in the kitchen after all.  If you're a chronic pizza parent, donut for breakfast, McDonald's for lunch type person, then your time is going to dramatically increase. You have the time!! Don't think you don't, even though the extra food prep time in the kitchen may feel like a burden as you start eating healthy. You are worth this extra time!  

If kitchen time feels too much like a burden, then by all means spend the extra money if it means you will actually eat the fruits and vegetables you need. Change is challenging, so do what you can to make that transition easier at first.  

A bit more micro-blogging for now. I just bought a side of beef (split the whole steer with my sister) for $2.40lb which should really help with my $35 week grocery goal. It cost me about $800 for 325lbs, and it has FILLED my freezer to the brim. Insane. More recipes to come to help us all figure out how to save money on one of our biggest household expenses -- food. Happy Holidays!

Hey - microblogging! Just ate a not-so healthy supper of chicken nuggets and french fries. I hope to start blogging about healthy eating on a budget soon. It's not easy, or cheap, but it's necessary, right?

Upcoming

Hi everyone - once again I've had a long hiatus from my poor, neglected blog! 

I thought I would give a quick update, though, to let you know I haven't completely disappeared. First up, the very cool guys and girls at Jerky.com have sent me some incredibly cool samples to review. After a little bit of a roundabout trip to the other Megan O'Neil in my town (thankfully she didn't eat them!), I finally got the jerky delivered to my P.O. Box. Check out the Jerky.com site if you have a chance, it is a really cool place!! And they sell Jerky! I love Jerky!  I have two samples here, one is a pineapple jerky, and the other has been described as a cross between beef jerky and an energy drink. I can't wait to try them both. If you have guys or girls in your circle of people who like to eat jerky, take at look at the jerky gifts that Jerky.com sells.

The second cool thing to update everyone on is a great new project that I am spear-heading with my editor from Et Cetera Magazine. It's called the One Tomato Project, and you can check out more information at www.OneTomato.org. We launched the project on Earth Day this year, and it has grown exponentially since then! We're really excited about it, and hope you'll check out our website. One Tomato is encouraging everyone to eat local and 100-Mile Diet, make an impact on the environment, and to help feed people who need it. We think this can all be done if everyone grew just one tomato each. That's it, one tomato. I'll be back to update you more on it very soon.

More real grocery bills

Well, on a good note, I haven't really been to the grocery store since the beginning of the month! That's probably more because of lack of time as opposed to any real will power.  I have three 'bills' today - one is for Easter, which was a very low key affair at our house this year, one is for a last-class party and the munchies for that, and the last one is the real grocery bill. So I guess I have been to the store, but not for grocery shopping - and I LOVE grocery shopping, so this is a good thing! To be honest though, I did go out for lunch twice last week, after months of good behaviour and packing my lunch. One day was soup from the local awesome soup place, called Spoon Lickins, and the other was a slice of deep dish Hawaiian pizza from the local awesome pizza place called Vinnie's. Both cost less than $5.00, but that's about $9.50 added to my food bill this month.

I spent $44 on Easter candy for my three kids and I. No toys, no bikes, no new wardrobes -- Mr. Bunny is trying to support sustainable holidays and support the very poor people in the world. At least that's what he told me, and I told my kids. I had $50 budgeted for Easter, and I stuck to it. 

My after class party was $14 worth of goodies, and that was too much, really. I just wanted to make sure I got at least one tart of each kind, so I had to buy two packages. My prof's husband made us a chocolate cheesecake though, so the tarts weren't actually needed. I've frozen them and I'll pull them out next time I need some sort of treat somewhere. 

The grocery bill came to $52, and there was some stocking up in there as well. I'll have to figure out what exactly I've come into this challenge with - I've said it before, but I have a very well stocked pantry and freezer. When I separated from my husband I had this media-induced fear of going hungry and I think I've pretty well succeeded in making sure that won't happen!! But I'll save that for another post. $52 for groceries is the important point to remember.