Intro

Gluten Free, Dairy Free, Divine


Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Thanks for a great year of expos, everyone!

My expos are over for the year, so now it's time to jump in and work like mad on the next books! 

This has been a huge year for me, with events in Phoenix, San Diego, Las Vegas, Salt Lake and Ketchikan, and my chaotic move back to Alaska. There have been loads of amazing moments, great people, days when everything threatened to fall apart and days when everything miraculously came together. Mostly though, it's been completely exhausting. I am beyond ready to get off the roller coaster for a bit and just hold up in my kitchen. I think the kitchen is glad to have me back, too. Check out our experiment from last night! 

Apple Crumble Cake 💘
The cake is perfect, first try! That's no minor miracle. It's tender, moist, and flavorful, with a soft bite and great rise in the oven. The crumble top tastes lovely, but will get at least a revision or two for texture and cohesion before the recipe goes into The Holy Grail of Gluten Free Holidays. 

If I have anything to say about it, that next Grail will be available holiday season 2015. But for that to happen, I have to get crackin'! Expect some preview shots in the months to come and the occasional cut recipe. Mostly though, expect me to be in the kitchen.

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Leaving Las Vegas, with S'mores

Once again, I've disappeared for a bit. But you'll forgive me, won't you? This time it was so that I could move back to Alaska, which has been loads of work, but is inspiring all over again. Instead of sweating my buns off in Vegas, ruing the thought of even approaching the oven, now I get beachside campfires, glorious wild berries, a monthly local market to bake for and old friends to share with. In short, I have more motivation to bake and create than ever.

This month I've come up with one more cookie recipe for the Holiday book, no dairy, low fructose pudding, and have two great cake recipes in the works which just need some refining. My favorite achievement though has been polishing my recipe for truly nummy Graham Crackers. Yay! (Except that I can't stop eating them.) They're destined for the summer section of the forthcoming holiday book, right next to the corn syrup free marshmallows I perfected just before leaving Las Vegas. 

I've also tested a nut free version of my beloved chocolate chip cookies with truly glorious results. I might be persuaded to post that one here for everyone if there was enough interest... Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know what I mean?

Till then, I'm off to dive head first into a patch of red huckleberries. God, I love them! I think red huckleberries deserve their own dessert. Don't you? For anyone Ketchikan way the first Saturday in August, I will be at the Blueberry Festival, possibly selling some miraculous new recipe full of glorious red huckleberries, selling and signing books and even peddling some baked goods. See you there!

Sunday, May 25, 2014

A short culinary, cautionary tale

When I go to expos with my book, it generally means skipping lunch. Stopping to eat would mean that the booth goes unmanned, generally when there is plenty of traffic to be missed, which essentially defeates the purpose of being there in the first place. That's ok. On all but the longest days, I don't even notice, since the excitement and constant interaction with new people tends to make the hours fly by. 
At the last expo though, the first day was a long one. I had just enough time between people to recognize reall hunger bubbling up. A very cheerful young woman from another booth came bouncing by and ascertained that we authors would not be getting lunch. If this were a fairy tale, she would be the lovely, deserving, Rose Red. I supposed that would make me the dwarf with her beard caught in the tree, stuck as I was in my booth, and needing a little rescue. Huh. Why am I never the ingenue, even in my own story? Oh well. Dwarf I was. 
Our Rose Red, with all the sincere, helpful spirit of her fairytale counterpart, stole back to the booth she was working and swiftly returned with a couple slices of that company's gf pizza (with the usual rice plus starch based crust) for me and a snack for another author as well. If you know anything about me at all, you know how I feel about rice flour and the horrifying things it does to texture. In short it's not pretty and I am adamantly opposed to the GF industry's long standing reliance on inferior ingredients. See, I do sound like a querulous dwarf, don't I? But at the time, I put my food standards aside and gratefully accepted the offering. I was hungry, and she was kind, and at that moment the whole thing was lovely.
But, it was still an expo. I snuck nibbles of the pizza between chats with attendees, whenever I had an odd, unengaged moment. I was grateful for the warm bits of food finding their way into my belly. The dwarf wins a quasi freedom. Except of course that the warm, fresh pizza soon became cool and then room temperature pizza, and as you might expect, the stolen nibbles became harder and harder to chew. Finally, after a longer than average stretch of constant talking with attendees and selling and signing books, I snuck a last bite of pizza that had gone so hard once cooled that I broke a molar when I bit down on it. As in actually cracked it down into the root and the severed chunk of tooth had to be worked out of the gum, and I'm cringing now talking about it so I'm gonna stop. Rice flour strikes again. Damn you Rose Red and your ironically cruel kindness. Ow. The dwarf emerges free, but broken, and not entirely as grateful as our heroine might wish.
So a cautionary tale it is. Never eat cold rice crust pizza. Or better yet, don't eat crappy foods made with rice flour at all. Either way this is why, querulous dwarf as I may be, I generally get to eat way better baked goods than other gf'ers, because I will not bake or write a recipe with rice flour. So at least at home, I'm in no danger of breaking teeth. (Insert advertisement for my baking book, here. ;-) 

Ps. Yes, this is an entirely true story, except the part about me having a beard. I'm just not that hairy. And no, I will not tell you which company's pizza it was that I broke a tooth on. It could have been almost any mainstream GF pizza, since the formulas are all so similar and they all achieve a nearly rock like state once they've been out of the oven for an hour or so. It is an industry wide problem. And damn it, she was being nice! I'm not going to say anything that will get our heroine into trouble with her employer. Even as a dwarf, I'm just not that mean.

Monday, May 5, 2014

Flour Substitutions for HGGF

It seems the more events I do, the better feel I get for what different people can and can't eat. In the spirit of ultimate accessibility, here are some of the possible substitutions that should yeild the best possible results.

Please note that I have not tested all of these and those I have, I probably haven't tested in every case, so while it is the best information I currently have to offer, it likely will not be flawless. Also, I will update this page periodically as I gain more insight into each possible substitution.

Flours/Ground Nuts & Seeds
Can't eat              Use instead
Almond Flour        Cashew Flour or Ground Sunflower Seed
Amaranth Flour     Millet Flour possibly cut with a little starch, say 1-2 Tb out of each cup
Buckwheat Flour   Oat Flour (reduce or omit lemon juice added to soften buckwheat, but ONLY if leavened with baking powder)
Oat Flour              Buckwheat (be sure to add a little lemon juice to soften it, up to 1 Tb)
Quinoa Flour         Oat Flour or Buckwheat Flour (add up to 1Tb lemon juice to soften buckwheat)
Potato Starch       Arrowroot Starch
Flaxseed               Chia Seed
Fats
Grapeseed Oil      High Oelic Sunflower Oil (perfect and healthier substitute, same weight as olive oil)
Binders
Egg                      1Tb ground flax or chia mixed into about 3 Tb water, allow to sit 10 min
  (Remember, egg substitutes work best in small, contained items like muffins and rolls)
Xanthan Gum       Guar gum (use about twice as much, you will loose some rise)

About Xanthan Gum: If you find yourself reacting badly to Xanthan, and use the one sold by Bob's Red Mill, consider trying another brand before giving up on it entirely. Bob's, for some unfathomable reason, ferments theirs by feeding it WHEAT STARCH. I personally react very badly to their brand. But Xanthan performs so very well in baking, it seems a shame to discard it entirely if you don't have to. Hodgeson Mills is my new favorite for Xanthan. It performs consistently well, doesn't hurt me, and they sell it in little, inexpensive pouches, so it won't cost you a fortune to try it out, and it's always fresh.

What an awesome expo!

So, the GF Food Allergy Fest has now come and gone, but I have to say it was AMAZING! It was the first event presented by Living Without's Gluten Free and More magazine, but I'm certain no one could tell. They were so well organized, everyone was just amazing to work with, the variety and quality of businesses represented was top notch and every customer I interacted with seemed to be enjoying themselves. That last bit says so much about the quality of the expo. If this was their first effort, I can't wait to see what happens once they have even more experience.

The Gluten Free Food Allergy Fest will be making its way to Indianappolis in August and to Portland in September. If you possibly can, GO. Find your self at one of these amazing events. If I could, I would be at every one!

Thank you so much to all of you, not just the event organizers, but the other vendors, the volunteers, and especially the wonderful attendees who came out and celebrated with us. It could not have been the brilliant weekend that it was without a single one of you. Thank you so much!

Goodbye, my booth!

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

GF Food Allergy Fest Ticket Giveaway!

I can't believe how stealthily time is creeping toward the Gluten Free Fest in San Diego. With only 3 1/2 weeks leftI think it's about time I book a hotel room and GIVE AWAY SOME TICKETS! Don't you? So here's the deal.

I have 2 full weekend tickets to Living Without Magazine's Gluten-Free Food Allergy Fest.
To enter, all you have to do is comment here or on my Facebook page. I will draw 2 winners at random on Sunday, April 13th, and announce the winners here and on FB. Winners will have one week to message me with their full names if it's not in their comment, and winners' tickets will be waiting for them at will call at the event.

Also check out:
My FB Page
Fest's FB Page
There's a list of speakers and classes on their FB page that you might want to check out.
Comment to win, cause I want to see you there!!!

Two words...

Breakfast     Curry
Oh. Yeah.