Of course, I eventually learned the error of my ways, under identical circumstances each time: I got invited on a date that involved said international cuisine, and I decided I liked the guy enough to suffer silently through a meal of torture. Come to find out, in both cases the food was much better than the gentleman after all! But that’s another story.

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The point is, I defected to the other side, and became a staunch sushi advocate. And it turns out, sushi rolls are surprisingly easy to make at home. First, of course, you’re going to want to start a batch of sushi rice (minus the wakame, in this case.) While that cooks, prepare your other ingredients for assembly. I’m making a modified California roll, so we’ll need a cucumber, peeled and cut into long thin slices.

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Make sure you cut the seeds off of each section, because nobody likes cucumber seeds.

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Also, we’ll need a bunch of avocado slices. (See this post if you need a rundown on how to properly cut up an avocado.)

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Now, traditionally, California rolls use “krab,” a substance that makes both foodies and English teachers cringe in unison. Those brightly-colored, perfectly straight sticks are not in fact made of crab at all, and more importantly, they are made of gluten. If you’re lucky enough to have a kid who will eat sushi, you must remember that all crab on a sushi restaurant menu is probably going to be the fake kind, even if they spell it like the real thing. But if you look in the right place in your grocery store, you will probably be able to find real, actual crab meat, and that’s something we can use.

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This is a sheet of nori, or seaweed paper. You can find it at an Asian market if your grocery store doesn’t carry any, but check your ethnic foods aisle first, you might be surprised. It has a shiny side and a bumpy side, and the shiny side goes face down.

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Spread out a layer of your sushi rice on top of the nori, leaving only a small space around the edge. The rice will be very sticky, so it’s easiest to do this with the back of a wet fork. You can also tell that I was too impatient and started spreading the rice on while it was still hot, thus partially steaming and shriveling my seaweed paper. Try to let it cool as much as you can. Then, line up your inner ingredients along the bottom edge.

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The bamboo mat is an essential piece of equipment for this, by the way. If you try it barehanded, your fingers are guaranteed to stick to everything and tear the delicate paper to pieces. Also, the proper technique would be to use both hands to make sure you’re rolling it as tightly and evenly as possible, but a photography assistant is just a teensy smidge out of my price range, so you’ll have to bear with me. (Truth be told, if I were filthy rich I’d hire a real sushi chef instead and still take the pictures myself.)

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As you inch forward, squeezing the roll tightly the whole way, peel the mat away from the front edge so it doesn’t actually get wrapped into the roll. I wouldn’t normally be doing this with one awkwardly stretched index finger, but again with the one-handed photography thing. Incidentally, there’s this pervasive idea on the internet that you should put a layer of plastic wrap on top of your bamboo mat to keep it clean. I’m here to tell you that’s ridiculous, and it just gets in the way. Use the bamboo mat the same way the Japanese have been using it for thousands of years, and wash it when you’re done; it’s not that hard.

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Slice your roll with a very sharp, wet knife, and voila! (Sorry for the linguistic insensitivity, but I don’t know how the Japanese would say it.) You should get 3-4 rolls out of this quantity of rice, depending on how full you stuff them with other things. I ended up with a little bit of cucumber and a ton of crab leftover, but I’m sure I can find a use for the crab later in the week. And if we’re lucky, it’ll turn out to be something worth documenting and I’ll share it with you!

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Happy Eating!

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Sushi Rolls

1 batch of sushi rice
1 cucumber
1 avocado
1/2 cup 100% crab meat (not krab stick)
3-4 sheets of nori

But with the return of school comes the return of social events, and parties and extracurriculars can of course be a nightmare for a GFCF parent. Our school has actually put in a complete no-food policy for all class parties, thanks to skyrocketing food allergies, but there are still plenty of other opportunities for disaster. The short answer is always, you bring your own. These days you will very likely find that you are not the only parent having to do so.

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But really, who in their right mind would whip up a whole batch of cupcakes every time you have a birthday party to go to? If you find a parent with that kind of time on their hands, send them over to my house; I’ve got some chores they can do. No, the trick is to make one batch, and cleverly dole them out one at a time as necessary. First, we start with 2 cups of almond flour, and 1/4 cup of tapioca starch.

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(Note that tapioca flour and tapioca starch are the same thing, while potato flour and potato starch are not the same thing. Just another one of those illogical facts you’ve got to memorize.) Now add 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda, and blend together evenly.

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In another bowl, mix your wet ingredients. First, 1/4 cup of grapeseed oil.

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Next, 1/2 cup of agave nectar. You can also use honey instead if you don’t have agave nectar available at your health food store, and you don’t want to order it online.

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And finally, 1/3 cup of unsweetened plain applesauce.

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Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, and mix everything into a sticky batter.

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Glop spoonfuls of the batter into muffin cups, leaving each one about 2/3 full. No need to smooth out the tops, the bumps will melt out in the oven. I’m not sure where I found these cupcake papers that have an outer foil wrapper so they will stand up on their own, but they’re kind of handy if your muffin tin is dirty, or already filled with batter.

Bake your cupcakes at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes, until the tops are golden. Make sure to let them cool completely before trying to pull them out of the muffin tin. Then put them in a Ziplock bag in the freezer for future use. You’ll probably want to taste-test one, though. Or three.

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Fast-forward several weeks or months, when your beloved offspring has been invited to celebrate the longevity of someone else’s beloved offspring. Pull one frozen cupcake out of the freezer, and while it’s thawing (or very gently microwaving up to room temperature, if you’re running behind schedule,) mix up a single serving of icing.

That’s 2 Tablespoons of powdered sugar, 1/2 Tablespoon of grapeseed oil, and 1/4 teaspoon of almond milk. You may notice that this is basically just our standard buttercream frosting recipe, scaled way down. Math is your friend! Granted, the one thing that won’t scale down well from the original recipe is the vanilla. If you’ve got an eyedropper available, feel free to put 6 and 1/4 drops of McCormick vanilla extract in as well. But honestly, it’s gonna taste just fine even if you skip it.

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As you whip everything vigorously with a fork, you will likely end up with this kind of mealy-textured mess. Now is the time to add tiny, tiny smidges of almond milk until you achieve a smooth texture. It shouldn’t be more than 1/4 teaspoon extra. If you go overboard and it gets too runny (or if it was too runny from the start,) sprinkle in more powdered sugar a pinch at a time until it’s right.

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I don’t know what was up with my lighting in this shot, but I promise you my icing was white, not gray. And my cupcake wasn’t burnt to a crisp either. Golden cupcake, white icing, that’s what you should be seeing here. Do not adjust your monitors.

For the record, it is in theory possible to make a full batch of frosting and freeze the cupcakes in an already-decorated state. But there are two potential problems with this approach. One, you will have to freeze them standing upright in a single layer rather than crammed in a plastic baggie, and you may or may not have the freezer space for this. And two, you will not be able to warm up the cupcake you need on the day of the party any faster than thawing at room temperature, because any added heat will make the frosting melt and break down.

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Pop it in a little tupperware container, and you’re ready to go! Don’t feel like you have to be limited to the cake portion of the birthday party, either. Just ask the birthday party hostess what she’ll be serving — chances are 99% it’s either pizza, or hamburgers and hot dogs, and you can easily bring along your own version of those for your child as well. Being GFCF doesn’t mean you have to be left out, not even for a moment.

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Happy Partying!

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Almond Flour Cupcakes

2 cups blanched almond flour
1/4 cup tapioca starch
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 cup grapeseed oil
1/2 cup agave nectar (or honey)
1/3 cup plain applesauce

Single Serving of Frosting

2 Tbs powdered sugar
1/2 Tbs grapeseed oil
1/4 tsp almond milk, up to 1/4 tsp more

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First, put two boneless chicken breasts on to boil in a small pot. While that gets going, dice up a medium yellow onion.

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Add a little oil to a very large skillet and begin sauteeing your onion pieces on low heat while your chicken continues to cook. (It should stay at a rolling boil for about 15 minutes, maybe more depending on how thick your chicken pieces are.) Add 1 teaspoon of salt, and 2 cloves of minced garlic to your onion.

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Also add 2 teaspoons paprika, 1 teaspoon cumin, and 1/2 teaspoon black pepper. Stir it so the spices are evenly distributed, then let the onions settle in to get nice and translucent.

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Meanwhile, chop up about 1/2 cup of fresh cilantro. Unless you are morally opposed to cilantro, don’t skip this step. It completely makes the dish. Then, while you continue to tap your toes waiting on your onions and your chicken (will this 15 minutes never end?!) whip up a double batch of avocado cream, for a total of 2 cups. Set it aside for now, we’ll get back to it in a minute.

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About this time your chicken breasts should be done, so yank them out of the water and give them a quick chop job. Then dump both chicken and cilantro into your giant sautee pan (you did choose a large enough one like I told you to, right?) Mix everything together thoroughly, then let it hang out and keep warm while you start to assemble your layers.

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First, start with a gluten-free tomatillo salsa, also known as salsa verde. This is kind of a specialty food, so there aren’t any nationally-recognizable brands I can suggest for you all (mine’s actually made in Mexico, so you’re not likely to be able to find it unless you live near the border like I do.) Of course the best thing is if your label contains nothing but whole, recognizable ingredients, but in a pinch I’ve even pulled out my cellphone and called a manufacturer’s customer service number right there in the grocery store aisle. Whatever gets the job done.

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Pour about 1/4 cup of the tomatillo salsa on the bottom of your greased 9″ by 9″ baking dish. This is just a thin little drizzle that’s going to help keep your bottom layer from sticking, it doesn’t really count as a layer. Your official first layer will be corn tostadas, broken up and overlapped a bit as necessary. You could also use soft corn tortillas, or even tortilla chips — though both are going to get soggier than these nice thick tostadas — as long as it’s 100% corn, whatever it is.

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Next, grab your avocado cream, and dollop half of it (or about 1 cup) on top of the tostadas, using the back of a spoon to spread it out evenly.

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Next, add a layer of tomatillo salsa. It’s about 1/2 cup, I think, but I just kind of eyeball it.

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Then, layer on half of your chicken mixture. Press it down a bit so it’s not full of air bubbles.

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Now, the final item in our layering scheme is diced green chiles. “But GFCF Lady,” I hear you say, “that can says whole chiles.” Well, yes, so it does. My son really, really likes the grocery store, you see, and shopping trips with him can be classified anywhere from mildly hyperactive to a Category 5 hurricane. In my hurry to get out of there on this particular occasion, I grabbed the wrong can. But no biggie, I just diced them up on my cutting board. Whether you buy them whole or diced, however, this is another one of those items that should contain nothing but the chiles. Don’t settle for added junk.

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Sprinkle half of your chile bits over the chicken, then start the layers over: tostadas, avocado cream, tomatillo sauce…

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…chicken mixture, green chiles. Bake uncovered in a 450 degree oven for 25 minutes, and the result will be the creamiest, tastiest enchilada casserole this side of the Rio Grande.

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Happy Eating!

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The GFCF Lady’s Enchilada Casserole

2 chicken breasts
1 medium yellow onion
2 cloves minced garlic
1 tsp salt
2 tsp paprika
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 cup chopped cilantro

8 corn tostadas
2 cups avocado cream
1 1/4 cups tomatillo sauce
1 can chopped green chiles

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Start with one container of coconut yogurt (that’s 2/3 cup if you like to make your own.) I’m doing this in a mixing cup with my immersion blender, but you could just as easily do it in a regular blender.

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Add one Tablespoon of lemon juice.

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Now add half of a small avocado. You know how to cut open an avocado, right? Just  slide the knife all the way around in a circle, then pry the two halves apart. Whack the knife into the pit (it makes a very satisfying thok sound,) and pull it out. You can use the other half for a sandwich, salad, or any number of things (including doubling this recipe,) or you can press the exposed side into plastic wrap or foil to seal the air out, and it will keep in the fridge for a few days until you decide.

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Score the avocado in both directions all the way down to the peel, but not through it. Then flip the whole thing inside out, and all your avocado pieces will fall right off, perfectly neat and formed.

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Which is not strictly necessary in this case, since we’re going to blend it all up anyway, but it’s nice to know, if you’re ever trying to fan out some pretty avocado slices on a fancy plate somewhere.

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Finally, add one Tablespoon of water. This will still leave it moderately thick; feel free to adjust the amount of water up or down to get the consistency you’d prefer.

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This, for example, is the perfect consistency for dipping carrot sticks, which is my personal favorite use for this tangy delight. But you may have noticed that my quantity mysteriously doubled here. You may also recall that I mentioned this sauce could be used, among other things, for casseroles. That, my friends, is what we in the business refer to as foreshadowing. Stay tuned.

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Happy Eating!

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Avocado Cream Sauce

2/3 cup coconut yogurt
1 TBS lemon juice
1/2 of a small avocado
1 TBS water

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Of course you’ll want to start with peeling and roughly chopping 4 medium sweet potatoes.

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Boil those suckers for about 25 minutes, until they are very soft.

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After they’re drained, I like to mash them up just a little so that things go easier with my hand mixer later on, but you can skip this step if you don’t mind huge chunks of sweet potato being violently flung around your pot.

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Now the important part. Add in 1/3 cup of Minute Maid orange juice (and sadly, yes, the brand is important. There are brands of orange juice with gluten in them, horrifying as that is…) In general, you may or may not need to avoid orange juice that has been fortified with calcium in the form of calcium lactate. What it boils down to is, most calcium lactate sources in the US are derived from non-dairy sources, but foreign-sourced calcium lactate could very possibly be made with whey, and some food manufacturers in the US do use the whey form as well. The only way to be sure is to contact the manufacturer, and always check your labels!

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The second key ingredient is 1/4 cup of honey. And that’s it! Now all you have to do is get out your hand mixer and whip those sweet potatoes into oblivion.

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Now why, I ask you, would you ever restrict something so scrumptious to just one holiday? Aside from being tasty, sweet potatoes are also very healthy, and deserve to be eaten year-round. Some people prefer to make them a little less healthy and melt a layer of marshmallows on the top. I’m morally opposed to it myself, but only because I don’t particularly like marshmallows. If you go that route, I believe Kraft Jet-Puffed Marshmallows are gluten-free, but like I said, I don’t have occasion to check up on that particular food product very often, so you’ll want to double-check before you buy. 

By the way, you see that other colorful pile in the background? That’s nothing but a bag of frozen “fajita vegetables” (i.e. red peppers, green peppers, and onions) with a couple handfuls of frozen corn thrown into the mix. Instant side dish! I made this post a two-fer to try to make up for my sporadic summertime posting. It’s a busy time of year, and I’m sure some of you out there are looking forward to Back to School time just as much as I am.

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Happy Eating!

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Sweet Potatoes

4 medium sweet potatoes
1/3 cup 100% orange juice
1/4 cup honey

Pepper Medley

1 bag frozen fajita vegetables
1 cup frozen corn

What you are seeing here is no less than a revolution in cheese substitutes. Joining the ranks of coconut milk, and coconut yogurt, there is a new product available that could rightly be called coconut cheese. But really, they’d prefer you call it Daiya. This product has been around for awhile — there’s a restaurant near me that’s been serving it for at least a year now — but Whole Foods and other consumer outlets have just recently begun carrying it on the shelves. If yours doesn’t have it, see if they’ll special order it for you. This stuff blows all the other fake cheeses out of the water, and I say that as someone who has roundly condemned cheese substitutes from day one.

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Anyway, enough about cheese, we’re making pizzas here. You could bake your own GFCF crust, but then this wouldn’t be a no-bake pizza, would it? What I’m doing here is placing a layer of Daiya cheese shreds between two Food For Life brown rice tortillas. The end result will be moist, yet crispy — the perfect New York style thin crust. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!]

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This is Muir Glen organic tomato sauce. There are indeed some tomato sauces that contain gluten, so make sure you can identify every ingredient listed if you choose another brand. Stay away from “natural flavors,” unidentified “seasonings,” or any other nonsense like that. Also note the proper way to spread the sauce over the crust: with the back of a spoon in an outwardly expanding spiral. My very first job as a teenager was at a Domino’s Pizza, and the gigantic flat ladle they use for this purpose is officially named a “spoodle.” Seriously.

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Add whatever toppings float your boat, but do be aware that pepperoni, Canadian bacon, or any other kind of processed meat is likely to contain gluten.

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Applegate Farms does make a official pepperoni, but I ended up using this package of salami instead. Technically, pepperoni is a type of salami to begin with anyway. The word’s not even Italian. If you went to Italy you’d have to order “spicy salami” instead, or they’d just stare at you funny.

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Pop it in the oven for about 10-15 minutes at 425, until the cheese is nice and melty. And boy, does it ever melt. I couldn’t get a good shot of it, but when you lift your first slice, you’ll see those stretchy strings just like real cheese. I am truly awed at what the Daiya people have accomplished here. But even if you go for another brand of fake cheese, or a completely different thing like grated polenta, this pizza crust is super-fast and sure to please.

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Happy Eating!

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No-Bake Pizza

2 Food For Life brown rice tortillas
1 package Daiya cheese substitute
1/4 cup Muir Glen tomato sauce
Applegate Farms pepperoni
Other toppings as desired

I hereby apologize for getting that stuck in your head like it’s stuck in mine. Misery loves company. We’ll leave aside the question of whether my compulsion to sing that song with this meal constitutes a form of echolalia, and get right to the recipe!

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I happened to get these pre-cut “fingerling” ribs, but the procedure is exactly the same for an uncut rack of pork ribs. Lay them out on a baking sheet covered with foil, and give them a decent sprinkling of salt and pepper.

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We’re going to be cooking these at a relatively high temperature so that we don’t have to leave them in the oven all afternoon. But in order to do this, we have to trap the moisture in around the meat so it doesn’t dry out. So make a foil tent over the pan, sealing it around all the edges but leaving an inch or so of airspace above the meat. Then just throw the pan in a 400 degree oven and walk away for an hour. Surely you have something else you want to do besides stand in the kitchen for an hour, right?

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When the timer goes off, carefully remove the foil tent, and take a moment to marvel at how well foil reflects heat. Once it’s off the (dangerously hot) pan, you can ball that sucker up with your bare hands to throw it away. Amazing!

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Now it’s time to baste the ribs in your favorite GFCF barbecue sauce. We like this brand called Sweet Baby Ray’s, but there are a number of options out there. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change recipes without warning. Always check your labels!]

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Brush the sauce liberally over both sides of your ribs. (I mean your pork ribs, not your your ribs. Put your shirt back on.)

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Put them back in the oven, uncovered, and after about 20 more minutes you’ll have this awe-inspiring collection of tender, juicy ribs. This is one of my favorite meals to make when I’m super-busy, because while it’s an hour and twenty minutes in the oven, it’s only maybe 5 minutes of actual work. It doesn’t get much shorter than that.

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Happy Eating!

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Okay, maybe that’s an obvious statement. But sometimes it’s hard to remember a world where food ingredients weren’t mysterious, where “seasoning” was something the average at-home cook was responsible for. Making your own breakfast sausage does not require a factory, it just requires a pound of ground pork and a spice drawer.

The spices we’re going to use are sage, savory, nutmeg, and ginger. There should also be salt and pepper in this picture, but I didn’t have space to fit them in. In fact, after deciding I’d do them in a separate shot, I then completely forgot to photograph them at all. Come back to me in August when school’s back in session, and I’ll be less of a mental wreck, I assure you.

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So that’s 1/2 teaspoon of sage, 1/4 teaspoon of savory, 1/8 teaspoon of nutmeg, and 1/8 teaspoon of ginger. Nevermind that my cute little measuring spoon calls it a “dash,” I’ve measured and confirmed that the spoons in that set are 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, and 1/64 teaspoon respectively. (They’re useful for measuring tiny doses of powdered medications as well, incidentally.)

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We’re also going to add 1 1/2 Tablespoons of grapeseed oil to help everything bind together. As always, you could substitute canola, olive, whatever kind of oil you have on hand.

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Then add 3/4 teaspoon of 100% real maple syrup. Please, please don’t use one of those bottles that are nothing but high fructose corn syrup and “maple flavoring.” They are not only terrible for you, but many have gluten as well. Real maple syrup has a completely different taste, and that’s what we’re trying to add to our sausage here, not sugar.

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Toss in 1 teaspoon of salt, and 1/4 teaspoon of black pepper, then squish and knead everything around until the seasonings are all evenly distributed.

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I form them into little link shapes, because I already make miniature hamburger patties for the kids out of ground beef, and it might blow their minds to have two foods that look the same but taste different. So sausage gets one shape, beef gets another.

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As each side browns, roll them forward a bit to get the next side. (Or just flip your patties, if your kids aren’t as neurotic as mine.)

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In the proper order of things, these should be served with a full breakfast, which would allow you to sneak maple syrup onto the sausage under the auspices of syruping your waffle. But if you’re not actually having a waffle, don’t be ashamed to just put extra maple syrup right on the sausages themselves. It’s so dang good.

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Happy Eating!

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Maple Sage Breakfast Sausage

1 lb. ground pork
1/2 tsp sage
1/4 tsp savory
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp ginger
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 1/2 Tbs grapeseed oil
3/4 tsp 100% maple syrup

But what is peanut butter, really? It’s peanuts, ground up, with a little extra oil. Grind up those peanuts just a little less, and you have a nut flour instead of a nut butter. So it should be no surprise that what is essentially an almond-butter cookie comes out delicious and moist, just like its peanutty counterpart. The advantages of working with almond flour instead of just buying a jar of almond butter are that it’s cheaper, you can use the almond flour for drier baked goods like pie crusts, and the final product has an authentic “crumb” feel to it while still being moist and chewy.

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When you’re baking with almond flour, there’s simply no better source than The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook. This one’s got everything from the basics all the way up to the ridiculously-named clafoutis. Most recipes are dairy-free, and the ones that aren’t are very easy to substitute with coconut milk or almond milk. Anyway, this cookie recipe came from that cookbook, in case you hadn’t guessed. Start with 2 1/2 cups of almond flour…

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Then mix in 1/2 teaspoon of pure baking soda, and 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

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I use this powdered vanilla, but the Adam’s Extract liquid vanilla also says gluten-free right on the label. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!] Of course if you’re using liquid, you’ll want to add it to your wet ingredients instead of your dry. Either way, it’s 1 Tablespoon.

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For your wet ingredients, blend together 1/2 cup of grapeseed oil (or another kind of oil, but grapeseed is very healthy…)

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And 1/2 cup of either agave nectar or honey, your choice. I’ve made it both ways. The agave is more expensive, but the honey has a more distinctive flavor that you may or may not want in your final cookies.

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Add your wet ingredients to your dry, and mix together very well.

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Don’t forget to fold in your chocolate chips. Enjoy Life is one brand of GFCF chocolate chips, or you can do what I did here and just chop up a dairy-free organic chocolate bar I happened to get at my local health food store. (They were giving them away as part of a promotion, which is actually what inspired me to make this batch of cookies in the first place.)

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You’re not going to be able to roll this batter into balls with your hands; just glop it onto the cookie sheet with a spoon. The recipe claims you can get 30 cookies out of this batch, but at the size I make them it’s usually more like 12, so adjust your spoonful size as necessary.

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They should melt out flat in the oven, but I usually feel the need to primp them into more of a cookie shape anyway.

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Bake at 350 degrees until golden brown. The recipe calls for 7-10 minutes, but my somewhat gigantic cookies take more like 12-15. Make sure you let them cool completely before removing them from the baking sheet, because they’re extremely soft straight out of the oven. Now if you’ll excuse me, I can’t look at this picture anymore, I have to go make another batch.

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Happy Eating!

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Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 1/2 cups almond flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup grapeseed oil
1/2 cup agave nectar or honey
1 TBS Adam’s Extract vanilla
1/2 cup Enjoy Life chocolate chips

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Of course my version is GFCF. (That’s kind of my thing. Did you know that? Sorry if it was too subtle.) So we start with a package of Applegate Farms hot dogs. They also make a decent turkey hot dog if you happen to prefer that.

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Slice the hot dog into bite-sized chunks, and jab half-sticks of uncooked gluten-free spaghetti into each piece. I’m actually using this cool new King Soba pasta my store started carrying, made out of sweet potato and buckwheat. Now before you go into palpitations, remember that buckwheat is not actually wheat. It’s a completely different plant, contains no gluten, and is one of the better GF flours to work with, in my opinion. It just has a stupidly inaccurate name, that’s all.

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Speaking of inaccurate, octopuses might not be the best name for these, since most of them end up having more than eight legs. You can call them jellyfish if your anal-retentive kid is gonna call you on it. When they’re still uncooked like this, I actally think they look like little Sputniks (which makes sense, because they’re Russian, remember?)

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Toss them into boiling water and cook according to your pasta’s package directions.

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And voila, we have noodly appendages! Do I think it looks appetizing myself? Well no, not really. But I don’t have a Y chromosome. Little boys think this stuff is hysterical, and they eat it right up. Literally.

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Happy Eating!

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