And thanks to everyone who posted about what they’d like to see in the future, I’m going to do my best to provide the most helpful recipes I can. Speaking of, have you ever made your own beans? I avoided it for so long, because it had such an old-school mystique about it, I thought it must be terribly hard. But it isn’t! What’s more, beans are very healthy, and homemade ones cost one-tenth what canned beans do.

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Look, it’s a bag of beans! Everything I’m about to describe goes for all types of beans, by the way, I just happen to be using black beans because they’re my favorite.

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The first thing you must do with real beans is soak them overnight. There are ways you can try to speed-cook them, but the beans don’t come out as well, and what’s more, soaked beans cause less flatulence. That’s better for everyone involved, don’t you think? I find a drink pitcher to be the most convenient way to soak them.

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Fill it most of the way with water and just stick it either on the counter, or in the fridge, before you go to bed. Being at room temperature will speed up the soaking, and help the oligosaccharides break down faster, which is what makes the beans easier to digest and ultimately leads to less gas. But they probably shouldn’t have more than about 12 hours soaking at room temperature. So if I’m going to be slow-cooking them in the crock pot all day, I soak them overnight at room temperature and deal with them in the morning. If I’m going to be cooking them in a normal pot on the stove, I soak them in the fridge, and leave them there all the way until the late afternoon when I’m ready to start cooking them.

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One way or the other, when you’re ready to start cooking your beans, pour your nasty water out (see how handy the pitcher lid is for this?) and cover them again with fresh water.

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Boil them for 2-3 hours on the stove, or 5-6 hours in the crock pot on low. If you have to leave them in there for longer, it’s not really a big deal, they’ll just be extra soft. Make sure you start with at least 3 times as much water as you have beans, because they’re going to absorb and swell a lot.

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The seasonings depend entirely on what kind of beans you’re making, and what kind of recipe you’re going to use them in. I was going for a Mexican flavor this night, so I put in 1 teaspoon each of chili powder and cumin. (After it was done, I kinda wished I’d put some dried cilantro in there too. Oh well, there’s always next time.) Now is when a lot of people like to put bacon or other pieces of pork in with the beans to flavor them. If you do this, make sure you get a gluten-free brand of bacon, and preferably one with no added nitrates or nitrites either, like Applegate Farms. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change recipes without warning. Always check your labels!]

When you store the leftovers — and you should definitely have some, because the whole point of cooking beans is to make a huge batch at once — keep them covered with some of the remaining liquid so they stay moist. They’ll freeze well this way too. When it’s time to reheat them, you can drain them like you would a regular can of beans, or…

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You can dump the whole thing back into a pan on medium-high heat, and shove them around a bit until they mash up and become refried beans. Who knew it was that easy?

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Here we have my concoction for the evening: sorta-refried black beans over Mexican rice, topped with corn and mango pico de gallo (you can find a discussion of pico de gallo in the comments section here, if you’re not familiar with it.) You could also put them in tacos, in a soup, as a side dish… one batch can be used for several very different meals throughout the week, saving you lots of time, money, and effort.

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Happy Eating!

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But never fear, the recipe still conforms to its humble origins as a super-fast, super-easy, super-cheap, super-tasty meal! All in all, it’s just a super soup supper.

Forgive me, I have obviously had too many GF cookies this afternoon.

Anyway, here are the ingredients arrayed nicely on my stovetop. That’s Pacific Foods beef broth, a can of cream corn, a can of mixed veggies, Amy’s Fire-Roasted Southwestern Vegetable soup, a small can of Contadina tomato sauce, and a can of plain pinto beans. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change their formulas without warning. Always check your labels!] For the corn, veggies and beans there are many safe brands–just make sure the ingredient list includes nothing but corn, veggies and beans respectively. Also, make sure you do not use the “Italian Spices” flavor of Contadina tomato sauce, only the unseasoned flavor.

Keep in mind we’re not using the whole box of beef broth–just half of it, or roughly two cups. Pour everything into a large soup pot. Now this is important: don’t drain any of the cans. Just open them and dump them in.

Now add 1/2 teaspoon of salt…

And 1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder.

Heat through, stirring occasionally. And that’s it! Instant soup! Well, not instant instant, but you know what I mean. Oh, and you know what?

This soup goes great with cornbread!

Happy Eating!

The GFCF Lady’s Vegetable Soup

2 cups Pacific Foods beef broth
1 can cream corn
1 can mixed vegetables
1 can Amy’s Fire-Roasted Southwestern Vegetable soup
1 can Contadina tomato sauce (NOT “Italian” flavored)
1 can plain pinto beans
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp garlic powder

Let’s make some tacos! You have three options for the wrapper: a 100% corn crunchy shell, a 100% corn soft tortilla, or… these crazy things. They’re corn tortillas, but they’re from “sprouted corn.” Basically it means they grind the corn up later in the growth process, so the plant is more mature and it’s had longer to build up more nutrients. I dunno, we like them mostly because the texture is much thicker and chewier, like a flour tortilla, rather than those translucent corn tortillas that tear if you look at them funny. Plus, the GFCFHusband says normal corn tortillas taste like lard and he hates them.

Anyway, they’re in the freezer section of our health-food store. You can either microwave them, or go all fancy and toast them in a dry pan on the stove, whatever floats your boat.

Shred some cooked chicken, or brown some ground beef if you swing that way. If you season the meat, don’t use those pre-made “taco seasoning” packets, because they’re always full of gluten. You can easily put the spices together yourself–those things are basically just cumin, chili powder, maybe a little onion powder, and salt. My chicken up there? Totally unseasoned. This was a lazy, lazy night for me as I recall.

This fabulous stuff is mango pico de gallo (pico de gallo is just finely diced tomato, onion, cilantro, and jalapeno pepper, for you people who don’t live within spitting distance of the Mexican border.) It’s not hard to make, but it is a little time-consuming to chop everything up, so I’ll confess I usually buy it pre-made at our grocery store. Plain old diced tomato would work just fine too.

Sprinkle on some lettuce and you’re good to go! What these tacos really need is some avocado, but alas, I didn’t have any this night. That is a surprisingly rare occurrence, I should tell you. I almost always have guacamole in the house. You could also add refried beans, black beans, or mexican rice to bulk them up a bit, if you wanted.

Happy Eating!

Tacos

100% corn tortillas or tostadas
Shredded chicken or ground beef
(Season to taste with cumin, chili powder, onion powder, and salt)

Toppings:
Tomato
Lettuce
Avocado
Beans

First, take a can of navy beans. If you’re really hardcore you can cook your own–it’s certainly cheaper that way–but that assumes you’ve got an extra day to pre-soak the dried beans, then another couple of hours to cook them. Plus, it assumes your children will let a large bowl of tantalizing liquid sit undisturbed on the counter for 15 minutes, let alone 15 hours. Ain’t gonna happen in this household.

Do be careful to check your brands, but this is another one of those foods where you ought to be able to just pick the right label off the shelf: it should basically say “Navy Beans, Water, Salt.” Don’t even bother with anything else.

Dump the whole can in the blender. If you cooked your own, you’ll have to estimate how much of the cooking liquid to use to get the right consistency.

Now, add 2 Tablespoons of nutritional yeast. (You may notice the picture shows a smaller measuring spoon, but that’s because all my tablespoons were dirty. 3 teaspoons = 1 Tablespoon, in case you ever find yourself in a similar situation.) Now what on God’s green Earth is nutritional yeast, you ask? Well, I’m glad you asked. Most people are familiar with the concept of the “good bacteria” in your stomach that aids digestion. It’s the healthy stuff you find in yogurt, as opposed to the nasty bacteria that can give you food poisoning. Well there’s actually a form of good yeast, too, which is totally different from the bad yeast (Candida albicans) that can cause intestinal distress just like its bad-bacteria counterpart. The scientific name for this good strain of yeast is Saccharomyces cerevisiae–which is precisely why people call it “nutritional yeast” instead.

You can buy nutritional yeast at health food stores, usually stocked in those big self-serve bins in the bulk department. Buy a half a cup or so, and you can store it in an airtight container in your pantry indefinitely. The flavor is just sort of… magic. It’s kind of like salt, in that it somehow brings out and complements the flavors of whatever it’s added to. But it doesn’t taste like salt. The closest way to describe it is it tastes like Cheetos. (And it is, in fact, what they use in these things, one of the best GFCF snacks out there.) Anyway, it tastes so good, I even know people who eat it straight out of the container. And just like the good bacteria in yogurt, your body needs the good yeast to maintain the right digestive balance, so it’s got benefits beyond flavor.

Blend again, and it’s ready to go! At this point it’s a basic white sauce: you can add sage and cooked ground sausage, and all of a sudden you have a flour-free sausage gravy. Or you can mix it with chicken broth and use it as a base for any kind of cream-based soup. Or cook it on the stove to thicken it a little bit, and you have a “cheesy” filling for enchiladas. Or mix in some tahini, garlic, and lemon juice, and you have a dip for veggies or chips that’s very similar to hummus. The possibilities are endless! (But if they’re too endless to manage, don’t worry, I’ll be posting some recipes that incorporate it in the near future.)

Happy Eating!

Cream Sauce

1 can plain navy beans
2 TBS nutritional yeast

Step one: beans in a pot. 2 cans of Bush’s Country Style Baked Beans, to be specific. [You know the drill. Don't rely on me, or the past good behavior of manufacturers. Always check your own labels.]

Step two: about 4 or 5 Applegate Farms GFCF hot dogs, sliced up.

Hot dogs in pot.

And stir.

This is another one of those meals that you can sneak a jar of pureed veggies into, if you have some sort of nutritional guilt complex you need to assuage. Or you could just open up a can of fruit for the hungry horde, too. Either way, don’t you dare feel bad for needing a night off from the intensity of this diet. Remember, normal moms across the nation take their kids to McDonald’s all the time, and if you think that’s even half as healthy as this, you are living in fantasy land.

Happy Eating!

Franks And Beans

2 cans Bush’s Country Style Baked Beans
4-5 Applegate Farms hot dogs

This is my favorite chili recipe of all time. You can use ground beef if you really want, but give the turkey a try at least once. It tastes better, it’s healthier for you, and it’s cheaper. How much more could you ask from a humble meat?

First, dump 2 pounds of ground turkey into a big soup pot with a couple tablespoons of olive oil. Check out those beautiful blue handles–that’s my Lodge dutch oven, and I’ve been in love with it since the day I got it. The inner surface is this sealed enamel stuff, and it cleans easier than any Teflon-coated pan I have. Plus, you can throw the whole thing in the oven, lid and all. Which means you’ll be seeing it again whenever I get around to posting my pot roast recipe.

While the turkey starts browning just a bit, dice an onion. I’ve seen some official definitions of “dice” that are pretty ridiculously tiny for the amateur chef to achieve, so perhaps you may choose to say I am merely “chopping” an onion. Whatever, just get it into the smallest pieces you can manage without cutting off a finger.

Add your onions to the pot, along with 3 cloves of minced garlic (or 1 1/2 tsp of the jarred kind) and 1 Tablespoon of chili powder. You can add more if you like it spicy, but don’t make that decision yet until you check out the next step.

This, my friends, is chipotles in adobo. It sounds fancy, but really it’s not–a chipotle pepper is actually just a jalapeno pepper that’s been roasted. The “adobo” part is where the real flavor comes from, and that’s what that red sauce is. Recipes vary, but it’s generally a mixture of tomato paste, apple cider vinegar, garlic, oregano, cumin, and black pepper. Think of it as a spicy Mexican barbecue sauce. Anyway, you buy this stuff in a little can in the ethnic foods aisle, but check your brands for gluten. I can’t even remember the name of the brand I get, because it contains whole peppers, which are kind of a pain to work with, so what I do is throw the entire contents of the can in a blender, and store it in a tupperware in the fridge–so that can is long gone. 1 Tablespoon of the blended sauce is equal to about one chili pepper. In this big recipe, 1/2 a Tablespoon will still leave it mild enough for the kids, or if you’re really worried you can just use the sauce without the peppers blended in. Don’t omit it entirely though, because that wonderful smokey flavor is really essential to the final product.

Okay, enough with the chipotle pepper lesson. Mix it all up and let the meat brown, stirring occasionally.

When the meat is cooked, drain a can of Bush’s red kidney beans and dump it in the pot. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without notice. Always check your labels.]

Add a can of crushed tomatoes. My generic brand is probably not available in your area, but really, all a can of tomatoes ought to have in it is tomatoes, water, and maybe a little salt. Don’t even waste time with brands that put extra crap in their cans, whether it’s ultimately gluten-free or not. It’s a can of vegetables, for pete’s sake, it doesn’t need anything else.

Also add in two cups of GF chicken broth. This is another ingredient you have to hunt down a suitable brand for, and in my experience you usually have to spring for the organic brands before you get one that’s safe. As a side note, another thing you have to watch out for is that packaged chicken breasts will often be injected with broth (the package will say something like “Up to 10% solution.”) Take the time to verify with the manufacturers that the broth they’re injecting is gluten-free, or pay more for organic, it’s your call.

Now, give the chili a good stir and let it simmer for about 20-30 minutes. In the meantime, it’s time to make the corn cakes! The number of ingredients can seem daunting, but if you lay it all out in front of you it’s not so bad.

This is 3/4 cup rice flour, 1 cup of cornmeal, and 2 TBS brown sugar.

Then 1 tsp of salt, and 1/2 tsp of xanthan gum. I resisted buying xanthan gum for a long time when I started gluten-free cooking, because the name was just too weird, and I didn’t even know what it looked like, and I just didn’t want to deal with something so foreign, you know? But eventually I figured out it’s just another white powder in a Bob’s Red Mill bag, and hey, I already have like 3 or 4 of those in my kitchen already, so what the heck. And it really does make a difference in these recipes. It adds that fluffiness and stretchiness back in, the things that used to be taken care of by gluten in your old life.

Then 3 tsp of gluten-free baking powder, and you’re done with the dry ingredients.

Then the wet ingredients: 2 eggs, 4 TBS Fleischmann’s margarine, and 1 cup of almond milk. Don’t put that milk away just yet; we’re going to need it again in a second.

Melt the magarine in the microwave, and whisk in the eggs.

Then add the almond milk…

And work that bicep. My great-grandmother must have been super buff, whisking stuff like this every single day.

Now you want to add just a teensy bit more almond milk, to get the batter to the right consistency. It’s usually about 2-3 Tablespoons.

It will still be thick, like all gluten-free mixes, but you want it so the batter stretches, rather than tearing into chunks.

Ladle it into your preheated pan (oiled with Canola cooking spray or dabs of margarine,) and give it several minutes before flipping. You won’t see any bubbles surfacing like there would be with a normal pancake batter, you just have to test the underside every once in awhile and see if it’s easy to slip the spatula under yet or not.

Because the batter is so thick, sometimes an air bubble will get trapped underneath and you’ll end up with strange designs on your corn cakes. This one looks like a key to me, or maybe a guitar, I can’t decide. I’m still waiting for the day I hit the jackpot and get one that kind of looks like the Virgin Mary, and then I can sell it on eBay for a ton of money and hire someone to make all my corn cakes for me.

Right about the time you’ve cooked all your corn cakes, the chili should be ready to serve. You could, of course, serve the cakes alongside the chili, or even forego the whole cake shape in the first place and make them muffins or something instead.

But what I like to do is serve it underneath the chili. You get a bit of corn cake in every bite, and it’s a fun surprise, like fruit at the bottom of your yogurt. Except we can’t have yogurt anymore–all the more reason to adapt the food-hiding-within-food presentation to new and exciting dishes, am I right? Plus, it’s a corn cake, which makes this final product remarkably close to Frito Pie. Truth be told, when I’m running short on time I actually serve it over Fritos to begin with.

Happy Eating!

Turkey Chili with Corn Cakes

2 lbs. ground turkey
1 med. onion
3 cloves garlic
1 TBS chili powder
1 TBS chipotles in adobo
1 can Bush’s kidney beans
1 can crushed tomatoes
2 cups GF chicken broth

1 cup corn meal
3/4 cup rice flour
2 TBS brown sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
3 tsp GF baking powder
2 eggs
4 TBS margarine
1 cup plus about 2-3 TBS almond milk