Gluten Free Healthy Food

What if you could obtain the same blood-pressure lowering results exercise provides, but by skipping the exercise and eating dark chocolate?

I was just reading a science article about how researchers at Teagasc (the agriculture and food development authority in Ireland) are working to improve the taste, texture, and consistency of gluten-free breads through the use of the "pseudocereal" grains in gluten-free bread recipes. Their findings, not surprisingly, are that using pseodocereals (including amaranth, quinoa and buckwheat) results in a tastier, more nutritious gluten-free bread for coeliac disease sufferers as compared to "traditional" heavily starch-based gluten-free/wheat-free bread recipes (that almost exclusively use starches such as rice, potato and corn flours/starches -- each of which offers nearly zero nutritional value beyond carbs).

I so enjoy a great pizza! And, a nice crispy, crunchy gluten-free thin-crust pizza is a very welcome treat for me. My wife spent time this winter perfecting a wheat-free / gluten-free thin-crust pizza that is gum-free but yet strong enough to "hold up" when you pick up a piece of pizza loaded with your favorite toppings. And, here is the result: a crust that meets all of those goals and is now one of my favorite lunch or dinner gluten-free diet selections.

This recipe produces a considerably thinner, crispier, and crunchier crust than the traditional thick-crust gluten-free pizza crust recipe we posted a while back here on this blog (or, via this direct-link to the recipe on our recipe-library site: gluten-free pizza-crust recipe). Each recipe has its own merits depending on what type of pizza you like most.

If you are one of those persons trying to purchase our Gluten-Free and Wheat-Free Gourmet Desserts books, we must apologize for being out of stock temporarily. This is a situation that will be rectified soon, and once we are able to start fulfilling orders again, we will run a nice sale to show our appreciation for patient buyers.

This tasty salad is full of B-vitamins! Serve as a side salad, or just chow through the whole lot for a big, tasty hit of minerals & iodine – which is important for breastfeeding mamas. YUMMY. Apologies for the blurry picture. iPhones are slackers.

Serves 4

22g / ¾oz dried wakame (whole, cut, whatevs! 22g was half the packet)
1 cup carrot, shredded (or spiralised or julienne, if you like)
2 shallots, finely sliced
3 tbsp coriander (cilantro), finely chopped
3 tbsp mirin (sweet Japanese rice wine vinegar)
2-3 tbsp soy sauce (salt to your taste; use Japanese soy, not light)
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 banana/Hungarian chilli pepper, finely sliced (medium chilli)
1 tsp ginger, finely chopped
½ tsp garlic, de-veined & minced
2 tbsp sesame seeds (toasted or untoasted, as you like)

1. Soak the dried wakame in warm water for around 5 minutes. Drain, rinse, then squeeze out the excess water. If using whole or large pieces of wakame, cut into ½ inch wide strips or squares (your preferred texture).
2. Stir together mirin, soy sauce, sesame oil, chilli, ginger, garlic to make the dressing.
3. Combine wakame, carrot, shallots, & coriander in a bowl. Pour on dressing & toss until mixed well. Top with sesame seeds.

Notes
+ If you can’t find mirin, 3 tbsp Chinese rice wine vinegar (unsweetened, unseasoned) plus a teaspoon of sugar (dissolve) or agave should suffice. I’m not sure how it would go with raw apple cider vinegar – let me know if you try it!
+ I was out of sesame seeds when I made this on the weekend & took the photo, so used sunflower seeds instead. It wasn’t too bad!
+ I’m thinking it might be nice with some cucumber half-rounds added to it… I’ll try that next time!
+ Little cubes of tofu would make a tasty addition, too.

Filed under: easy meals, entrees, raw food, recipes, salad

I really like the flavors of Orange and Chocolate combined. And, thanks to my wife's latest gluten-free recipe creation, I have a new and delicious way to enjoy this favored taste combination: the Gluten-Free "Chocolate Orange-Juice Cheesecake"™, or "Chocolate Orange-Juice-Concentrate Cheesecake"™ (which would be more accurate)

This new cheesecake formula has moved the dessert into my "top 10 list" for now, and I have had the pleasure of enjoying two of these cakes in the past couple months - it is always good to double-test recipes before publishing (and, double-eat too!) I was hoping to share a more complimentary photo of the end-product, but my picture suffered a bit and does not really make the new cheesecake recipe look as good as it tastes; the piece cracked a bit getting it onto a plate... oh well. But, it is good enough to get the idea I hope:


I may be a bit biased about how great this Gluten-Free Chocolate Orange-Juice Cheesecake tastes, but I find it to be fabulous. Full of chocolate flavor, plenty smooth in texture, and a very sweet orange taste throughout too.

It reminds me a bit of a chocolate Tobler Orange (actually, I believe they changed the name of those to Terry's Chocolate Orange now - produced by Kraft foods), where chocolate combines wonderfully with the semi-pronounced taste of orange (from orange-oil). But, unlike those Terry's chocolate-oranges, this dessert does not get split into 20-segments resembling slices of an orange; in fact, if I had my way, it may only get split into 2 pieces... one for me, one for my wife :)

The recipe came about rather by accident: a lack of fresh oranges in the house made the move to frozen orange juice concentrate a move of desperation that resulted in taste sensation. In addition, it makes it much easier to make, since the need for fresh oranges has been removed. And, my wife made this recipe even easier by using standard chocolate-chips (so you do not need to worry about baker's chocolates and/or weighing chocolate). We hope you enjoy it!

Here is a link to the Gluten-Free Chocolate Orange-Juice Cheesecake Recipe on our website's recipe library. We're using an adapted crust from another one of our cheesecakes (from our cookbook), but any favorite crust should work fine. My preference for cheesecake crusts include ones featuring nut-meals, coconut, and the like. They are rather simplistic formulas, but very tasty.

And, though it should be obvious, this OJ Cheesecake is gluten-free and wheat-free, but not dairy-free. And, before anyone asks, I took the picture of the Orange a while back... it was not available for this recipe. It is actually what I believe to be a Satsuma-Mandarin-Orange that I got at Whole Foods, and I really liked how the leaves were still intact: made for a good photo.

The above pictures show a recent gluten-free cheesecake recipe we were experimenting with. This was to be a gluten-free peanut-butter-cup cheesecake of sorts (peanut butter cheesecake, with peanut-infused crust, all topped with a chocolate layer). Well, even though it *looks* rather good, it was just "OK", and needed some more fine tuning.

So, the question became: what to do with an entire cheesecake that does not meet the cut?

To begin with, I ate a fair amount of this cake myself. Like I said, it did not meet the cut for what I consider "top of the line" desserts, so the recipe will get tuned further before release to the public. But, it was not TOO bad,... it mainly suffered from texture issues, and was a bit thicker/springier than I wanted. It lacked some of the smoothness and creaminess that it should have had (I think there was too much peanut butter proportionately, and the next attempt should perhaps use part Marscapone cheese instead of all Cream Cheese - which is substantially thicker than the former).

But, I tired of this cake, and contemplated its removal from the house.

Perhaps the Mouse / Mice will like it?!
Instead of just pitching the cake into the compost, I decided to address a second issue of the moment (or season)... one that is an inevitability of country-living from what I have determined through conversations with everybody else living in a 20 mile radius here in the country: mice!

Well, it turns out that this time of year is especially prone to mice wanting to move into the house. When the farmers pick the crops and return the fields to nothing more than a bit of thatch, the mice seem compelled to seek refuge in some place a little more stable - and warmer - the closest human residence!

Trapping with Cheesecake
We use these really effective no-kill traps (we refuse to kill animals that are not of any threat to us). And, experimentation with baits had previously determined that the only thing more desirable than cheese was peanut-butter. So, how about a gluten-free peanut-butter-cup cheesecake instead?

The results are clear: mice prefer this cheesecake to all other bait by a factor of about 4 to 1. Seriously. They will ignore traps containing just cheese, and/or just peanut butter, and choose the mouse-bait recipe containing both of their favorite ingredients in one -- PB Cheesecake.

One of our catches:

Isn't it cute? The leaves around it should give a sense of scale... it is only about 2 inches long (tail excluded).

This one had very distinctive markings: those little tan patches on each side coupled with gray. Most mice have been either all gray or all tan, but this one was a hybrid. And, after release, it posed nicely for the picture, holding still for nearly a minute as I talked to it and told it not to return (I do no think my speech helped: I swear this SAME one showed up for "seconds" 2 days later). Oh well. I have a lot of cake for it to eat while I figure out where it gets in.

And Another...
We have also had these ultra-cute "Meadow Jumping Mice" (credit: picture borrowed from someone else online -- ours looked identical, but did not hold still for a photo):

These guys are SUPER TINY... barely 1-1.5" around when sitting like this. And, they "hop" around like little kangaroos. We see them hopping around outside the basement windows every so often, collecting grass and seeds (and, probably hauling that back into some nook of our house.). They might as well be a wild pygmy hamster or pygmy gerbil or whatever. Very, very similar. Too bad I got rid of the aquarium when we moved, or I would have been tempted to have one as a "pet".

Eradication continues...
I still have a lot of that gluten-free peanut-butter cheesecake recipe (attempt) in the fridge where it should last long enough for me to figure out where these little critters are entering the place from. Although they are cute and all, I wish I could just enter into a pact or accord with them whereby I deliver the cheesecake to some OUTSIDE location for their consumption, and they stay out of my house, instead of me needing to bait the no-kill traps that then force me to take them for a nice long walk out into the woods or field for release. But, such is... country living!

[by Mike] I wrote a Gluten-Free Recipes series here on the Gluten-Free Blog last year entitled "Garden-to-Plate", where I featured all sorts of homegrown vegetables grown right here in our organic garden. Some of those recipes included things like:

• a very versatile tomato, onion, peppers, basil, and garlic "base" recipe that we use for many additional recipes
• Zucchini, White Squash, Onion, Garlic, Basil recipe - fast and tasty
• Eggplant recipe featuring caramelized garlic, onion, basil, and some hot pepper flakes
• Pumpkin-Tomato Soup Recipe (using our versatile tomato-base above)
• A "recipe" of sorts: a recipe for a bio-diverse yard and garden
  

and now...

2009 Brings Spaghetti Squash to the Garden


Oh, how I love fresh Spaghetti squash, covered with all sorts of other fresh vegetables from the gluten-free garden! This simple recipe starts with baking a Spaghetti squash while simultaneously pan-searing some fresh zucchini, onions, garlic, tomatoes, and a bit of basil in some olive oil.

The spaghetti squash is cooked "al dente" (leaving the fibers in the squash just ever so slightly "crisp" or "firm" yet - versus overcooking), which makes for a wonderful texture just like a great "real" pasta cooked to perfection. In fact, I tried this gluten-free spaghetti squash with just olive oil and some fresh ground black-pepper (prior to topping with the tomato / zuchini sauce), and it was wonderful even served that simple.

I highly recommend these squash, and if you can not grow them where you live, hopefully you can find them at the grocery store. We are grateful to be able to grow them ourselves, especially given that (in the off-season for sure) they tend to be rather over-priced at the store. This year, we have already harvested 4 of these nice gluten-free diet products, with each being about 10 or 12-inches long by perhaps 5 or 6 inches in diameter.

Now, the only down-side to things is that we must soon leave our old organic gluten-free garden behind as we move, permanently, to our new house that has the much larger gluten-free farming area with it. Our old house has sold now (closes this week), and that means we have a LOT of work to do at the new property to get the garden ready for 2010 larger-scale production. That new "farm" will definitely include spaghetti-squash, as we have already saved and dried some seeds from the squash featured in the pictures here -- ready to plant next year. Oh how I look forward to planting an ever-increasing variety of Celiac-safe vegetables, fruits, and perhaps even grains (e.g., Millet, Teff, etc.)... if only my body keeps up with my ambition!

Looking Forward...
Nick should be back soon writing a few more wheat-free and gluten-free product reviews in the coming week once he finishes up some other business he had to take care of. I know he has a large lineup of commercial products to taste-test and share an opinion about.

And, once my wife and I are fully situated at the new house, we should have some later-season garden treats to feature on the Gluten-Free Blog in addition to other product reviews. We were lucky enough to have had the chance to plant some garden items at both locations this year, so we have plenty of squash, sunflowers, cucumbers, and even a few tomatoes at the new house that should keep us cooking up healthy dinners there... and recipes/suggestions for online too.