First we mix the dry ingredients. Stir together 1 cup of white rice flour, and 1 cup of corn meal, being sure to select a brand of corn meal that isn’t mixed with wheat flour.

Then mix in 1/4 cup sugar, 1 Tablespoon of Argo baking powder, and 1 teaspoon of salt. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!]

And of course the magic fairy dust of gluten-free baking, xanthan gum. If you haven’t made the leap yet to doing your own baking, don’t be scared of this stuff. It’s just 1/2 teaspoon of magic fairy dust, that’s all. No biggie.

Now for the wet ingredients. First, melt one stick plus another two Tablespoons of Fleischmann’s Unsalted Margarine (not Original) in a large bowl in the microwave.

Then we’re going to add two cans of corn. But one will be a normal can of corn, drained of its extra liquid…

And one will be an undrained can of cream style corn. Note the word “style:” this is a case where a cheap generic brand will be to your benefit, because it will not actually contain any dairy. Mine is pretty much just corn, water, and salt, partially blended to resemble… something creamy, I guess.

Break two eggs into the bowl. One-handed is not a requirement, it just makes you look cool. (You could also substitute 4 Tablespoons of potato starch mixed into 2 Tablespoons of water, if you wanted to make it egg-free.)

Then mix in one container of plain coconut milk yogurt. Or you could go with soy instead, if that’s what you’re into. But I’m definitely not into that, myself.

And finally, 1/4 cup of honey. See that funky measuring cup I’m holding? It’s part of this awesome set I got for Christmas, which are designed as a collection of nesting Russian dolls. Cool, huh?

Finally, mix the wet with the dry, and stir vigorously.

Scrape it all into a well-oiled 9×13 baking dish, and smooth everything into place. Unlike the majority of gluten-free batters, this one is wet enough that you can just use a spatula instead of pressing it into place with your hand. Lucky you!

Bake for 45-50 minutes at 350 degrees, and you’ll end up with something like this. Firm enough to be cut into squares like corn bread, but richer and sweeter: corn casserole!

Happy Eating!

The GFCF Lady’s Corn Casserole

1 cup white rice flour
1 cup corn meal
1/4 cup sugar
1 TBS GF baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp xanthan gum

1 1/4 sticks Fleischmann’s Unsalted margarine (NOT Original)
1 can corn, drained
1 can cream-style corn
2 eggs
1 container coconut milk yogurt
1/4 cup honey

You’d think boiling the eggs would be a no-brainer, but you’ve got to do it right or they won’t peel cleanly. Start with 18 eggs in a pot of cold water, and turn the heat to high. Once the water reaches a rolling boil (that is, giant bubbles splashing everywhere, not tiny little simmery things,) then start your timer for 15 minutes.

You’re destined to lose a few eggs during the boiling process, like this one that exploded spectacularly underwater right before my eyes. But we can still use the yolk in the filling mixture, and the white can be set aside for taste-testing purposes. I can always find at least a couple that are just not pretty enough to go on the plate, and I have no choice but to eat them right then and there.

Once you’ve drained the pot, set it in the sink and refill it with cold water, then plunge the eggs back in. This will cause the insides to shrink back from the shell, and they will come out nice and smooth when you peel them.

Then cut all those little suckers in half lengthwise…

And drop the yolks into a large mixing bowl. If they’re cooked right, you should be able to just give the egg a little squeeze and it will pop right out.

Mash them up with a fork until you’ve gotten all the large lumps out.

Okay, sure, there can be a few lumps left. We’ll continue to work on those as we add the wet ingredients. First, mix in 3 Tablespoons of French’s yellow mustard. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas at any time. Always check your labels!]

Then add 2 Tablespoons of pickle relish. Most major brands are gluten free, but sadly enough some aren’t, so double check yours. It’s up to you whether you go for sweet or dill relish — generally I would say dill, but this time I’m using a spicy-sweet specialty brand called Wickles. I could eat that stuff with a spoon, I tell you.

Then add 1 Tablespoon of Lea & Perrin’s worcestershire sauce (make sure you use the original flavor, as their lighter “chicken” worcestershire sauce is not dairy-free.)

And 1/4 teaspoon of McCormick’s celery salt.

Finally, add in 2/3 cup of Hellman’s mayonnaise. As a relatively bland ingredient, the mayonnaise’s role is entirely for smoothing out the texture. So to that end, you don’t want to put in too much, or your filling will get runny, and then the only way to fix it will be to boil more eggs and harvest the extra yolks. I personally like to go cautiously and start with 1/2 cup of mayo, and add in more as necessary, but I freely admit that I take my deviled eggs very seriously.

Swipe about a Tablespoon of filling into each egg half with a spoon, smoothing the top a little so it’s at least moderately attractive. If you want to get really fancy, you can scrape the filling into an icing bag and squirt it in all decoratively. But an upside-down spoon’s good enough for me.

Finally, sprinkle the tops with paprika. Such a pretty spice.

And you’re ready to go! This is an especially nice hors d’oeuvre if you’re trying to cook a GFCF holiday meal for extended family members who aren’t used to eating on strange diets, because other than some judicious brand selection on your part, the ingredients are the same as you would find in a traditional recipe. Heck, with the right collection of recipes, your family might even get through the whole meal without realizing it was restricted to begin with.

Happy Eating!

The GFCF Lady’s Deviled Eggs

18 eggs
3 TBS French’s yellow mustard
2 TBS Wickles relish
1 TBS Lea & Perrin’s worcestershire
1/4 tsp McCormick celery salt
2/3 cup Hellman’s mayonnaise

Start with one cup of pure corn meal.

Then add one cup of brown rice flour (or white rice flour, or some other gluten-free blend if you prefer. But I dig the brown rice flour in this recipe, personally.)

2 Tablespoons of sugar,

1 Tablespoon of gluten-free baking powder,

1 teaspoon of salt, and 1/2 teaspoon of xanthan gum to round out our dry ingredients.

In a separate bowl, prepare your wet ingredients. Start with 1/3 cup of canola oil. Incidentally, I’m a complete sucker for photos of liquid in motion. It’s my inner physics nerd.

And this one’s even better! How cool is that? It’s one cup of almond milk, by the way.

And one egg. Beat everything together well, and then dump it into your bowl of dry ingredients.

Now stir like you mean it!

Eventually, you’ll be ready to scrape your dough into a greased 9″x9″ baking dish. Don’t cop out early, you want everything to be nice and blended. And hey, who doesn’t want shapely biceps, right?

As usual, the dough will be thick, and you’ll need to press it down into place with a very wet hand. When it’s nice and smooth, just pop it in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.

How easy was that! The texture on these is pretty decent, but I’ll tell you a secret: it is way, way better the second day. Save half of them in an airtight container on the countertop (not in the fridge) and see if you don’t think they’re better the next day too.

Happy Eating!

GFCF Corn Bread

1 cup corn meal
1 cup brown rice flour
2 TBS sugar
1 TBS baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
1/3 cup canola oil
1 cup almond milk
1 egg

I don’t know if I buy it, but I’m desperate for approval, so I’ll try to conform in my own lazy way. Let’s cook up some breakfast tacos!

I don’t know about you, but I like potatoes in my breakfast tacos. Ore-Ida also makes a more traditional hash brown product, which would strictly speaking be more, well, traditional here. But you know what you would have if you took a bunch of hashbrown pieces and squashed them back together? A french fry! And by the transitive property, it is therefore completely legitimate to cut these fries up and call the result a suitable potato ingredient for breakfast tacos.

Also, it was what I had in my freezer.

We like the Zesties fries, but you could go with a plain Ore-Ida frozen potato product of pretty much any kind. [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!]

Anyway, the whole point of getting the potatoes out first is they have to cook in the oven according to package directions. And toss the bacon in there while you’re at it.

Wait, what? Yes, I said cook the bacon in the oven. A friend of mine taught me this trick, and I’m telling you, it has changed bacon consumption in this house forever. Just spread some parchment paper on a large pan, and lay out your bacon strips. A general cooking guideline for them is anywhere from 15 to 35 minutes at 350, depending on how crispy you like your bacon. But if the oven has to be hotter for the potatoes, don’t sweat it, just keep an eye on the bacon and pull it out whenever it’s done. It will come out perfectly, with far less mess, and then you too will be a bacon-in-the-oven convert. (And for the record, you don’t have to use turkey bacon, regular bacon is fine too, though you will need to stick with a brand that uses no gluteny preservatives, like Applegate Farms.)

Now, grab some Food For Life brown rice tortillas out of the freezer, and pop them in the microwave for about 10 seconds. Then peel off the actual number of tortillas you need from the now not-quite-frozen stack, and toss the rest back in the freezer for another day.

Okay, it’s finally time to cook the eggs. See why I don’t put out this much effort often? Although I will admit that in dinner terms, it’s not as much work as most other meals, so half the time we’re not actually eating these for breakfast at all. But regardless of what the clock says, you’ll need to grease your pan. I use tub stuff for pans because you can use more or less than an exact tablespoon without messing up those handy measurement markers they put on my margarine sticks. Please note that not all Smart Balance products are casein-free–as far as I know, this one “light” flavor that says “Now with Flax Oil” is the only one.

Scramble your eggs in a bowl, and dump them in the heated pan. Resist the urge to shove them around the pan too much while they’re cooking, just let them sit until the bottom starts to set, then scrape it up so more liquid can flow underneath it. Repeat this a few times, and it will naturally create the right texture. Seriously, don’t stir them all over the place the whole time, it messes them up. Scrambled eggs is one of the few things I was really good at cooking before embarking on this adventure (and I lucked into the technique just by ignoring the pan for the most part–see, sometimes being a lazy cook works out for the bettter!)

Finish heating the tortillas, and fill with scrambled eggs, bits of french fries, and a slice of bacon. Feel free to add a GF salsa, if that’s your thing. Down here, it kind of goes without saying: everything gets salsa on it.

Happy Eating!

Breakfast Tacos

Food For Life brown rice tortillas
Ore-Ida frozen potatoes
Applegate Farms bacon
Eggs
GF salsa (optional)

Look, it’s my favorite kind of meal: a quick weeknight dinner that can be made with little-to-no effort! Tonight on the menu we have Lemon Chicken. It only has five six ingredients!

First, one diced onion. Sautee it in some olive oil until it’s nice and golden, about 8-10 minutes. (And no, the oil doesn’t count as an ingredient. It’s a kitchen staple.)

You’ll want to be using a deep skillet with a lid, because once the onion is done you’re going to place one pound of boneless chicken pieces on top. These are thigh fillets, but you could do white meat instead, or a mix of both. All that matters is they’re boneless, because bone-in meat takes much longer to cook (the tradeoff being that it’s more moist with the bone still in, but that’s not necessary for this recipe.) Do be sure you’re using quality chicken meat that hasn’t been “injected with broth,” because that broth usually contains gluten.

Are you keeping count? Here comes ingredient number three: rosemary. I think it’s about a teaspoon, but I just sprinkle it on all willy-nilly like this. It’s hard to mess up rosemary, just make sure the coverage looks good and it will taste good too.

Now add a Tablespoon of water to the pan. I’m cheating and not counting this as an ingredient either, even though it does get a measuring spoon dirty.

Then close the lid and let it continue to cook over medium heat for about 15 minutes. It won’t look like there’s much liquid in the pan right now, but the chicken’s going to give off a lot as it cooks.

Meanwhile, get your lemon sauce ready. We start with two egg yolks. You can buy a little kitchen gadget that will separate your yolks for you if you want, or you can do it the old fashioned way, passing the yolk back and forth between the two shell halves while the white falls into the bowl below.

Just gently pour it over…

And let the white drip out behind it. Shouldn’t take more than a couple passes to get the yolk left by itself.

Then set the yolk aside in another bowl, and do the second egg the same way. If you have an immediate use for the egg whites, use them by all means, but don’t try to keep that stuff in the fridge for a long time or anything.

Then measure out 1/4 cup 2 Tablespoons lemon juice. I’m not a lemon juice snob, you can get it from the little yellow bottle too. I just happened to have real lemons available this day. One advantage of the bottle is it will never squirt your camera lens unexpectedly.

Thoroughly mix the lemon juice and the egg yolks. Also, mix in 1 Tablespoon of Cascadian Farm apricot jelly.

Once the chicken is cooked, lower the heat on the pan, and gently pour the sauce in, making sure to stir well and get everything evenly distributed among the chicken and onions. Cook for another minute or two until the sauce thickens, raising the heat a bit if necessary. But don’t go too hot, or the sauce will set like a custard.

Oh yeah. There aren’t gonna be any leftovers for this one, I promise. This is a good one to pair with yucky vegetables, because the sauce can be used on top of them too, and it does a pretty good job of getting them in the little mouths with minimal complaining.

Happy Eating!

Lemon Chicken

1 med onion
1 lb. boneless chicken pieces
1-2 teaspoons dried rosemary
1 TBS water
2 egg yolks
2 TBS lemon juice
1 TBS Cascadian Farm apricot jelly

The first thing she had me do was cut back on the sugar in the old recipe. So now we start with 3 eggs, and only 3 Tablespoons of sugar. TheGFCFBoy never missed it.

Then came a major change: she wanted me to switch flours to one that is higher in protein. “But I don’t use flour,” I protested, “I use a baking mix.”

“Pah!” she said. “That’s just flour with xanthan gum, salt, and baking soda mixed in. You can do that, no sweat.” And she was right! So add 1 1/2 teaspoons of xanthan gum…

1 1/2 teaspoons of salt…

And 2 Tablespoons of baking powder. Make sure your baking powder is gluten-free–mine’s a generic brand, but Clabber Girl is one national brand that’s also GF. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without notice. Always check your labels!]

Give it all a good stir, and add 3/4 cup of grapeseed oil. (Or stick with canola oil like in the original recipe. I don’t even remember at this point why grapeseed oil was supposed to be better. Sometimes I think our nutritionist is deliberately making me hunt down weird things for her own personal entertainment.)

Now apparently, even though I switched flours to one that’s higher in protein, this still wasn’t enough to appease the protein gods. (In all seriousness, the majority of kids don’t get enough protein, especially early in the day. Turns out a big breakfast of ham and eggs is actually really good for a growing kid. Too bad my kid won’t eat either of them.) So we supplement the mixture with 1/3 cup protein powder. Yes, it’s hemp. No, it doesn’t make you high. Moving on… This does make the final product ever so slightly green-tinted, unfortunately. I started small and added a little more each time I made a batch so he didn’t notice. You could instead use rice protein powder or golden pea protein powder if the color is going to be an insurmountable issue, but the hemp powder has the most bang for the buck.

The other thing we supplement our waffles with is calcium. Being dairy-free means it’s hard to get enough calcium, and adding this completely tasteless powder into their waffles meant the kids had one less vitamin to take each day. Just 2 Tablespoons ends up being 500 mg of calcium per waffle, which is a lot.

Incidentally, please remember that nothing on this website is intended to be taken as medical advice. Always consult a professional nutritionist or physician (one who’s DAN certified, if you want my personal opinion on the matter.)

Whew! Okay, we’re finally ready for the flour. And hey, turns out it’s the same stuff we use any other time we need a flour substitute, so that’s really handy. Who knew Bob’s All-Purpose was so high in protein? (Well, the nutritionist did, I suppose.) Add 4 1/2 cups to the mixing bowl, and stir it about gently with a fork until it’s a gooey, clumpy mess.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped having trouble getting the lumps out of my batter. I think part of it is just the consistency of the new ingredients, but part of it is I started adding the water gradually instead of all at once. So add just two cups of water to the bowl…

And mix as well as you can with a hand mixer. Then add another cup…

Mix again, and add one more cup of water, for a total of 4 cups.

Now, here’s another incredibly important lesson I’ve learned recently: it’s all about the waffle iron. The quality of your waffle iron will 100% determine the quality of your waffles, end of story. You can tweak your recipe forever looking for a better texture, but the day you get a professional-grade waffle iron you will realize just how meaningless it all was. Say it with me now. It’s all about the waffle iron.

Now, let me warn you, this King of All Wafflemakers is not cheap. Not at all. But you get what you pay for, as I learned the hard way. In just six months, I broke no less than 3 different mid-priced waffle irons–that is, I wasted over $100 on junk–before I decided it was time to get serious about the value of my product. I’ve actually been using this one for a few months now (which is a new record for this house,) because I wanted to make sure it would last before I officially recommended it. But even if there had been a problem, this one comes with a complete no-questions-asked one-year warranty, so already it’s cheaper than a new $35 waffle iron every 2 months. And that’s before you even get to all the reasons why this one’s better than all the others!

Reason number one: when they say nonstick, they actually mean nonstick. You do not have to spray this waffle iron with oil of any kind, ever. No, I am not kidding.

Reason number two: see that little digital timer? That’s the actual amount of time it will take to cook these waffles. The cheap waffle irons all took about 10-12 minutes to cook each set–just think about that time difference for a moment. I can make an entire batch of waffles (including cleanup!) in under 30 minutes now, as opposed to an hour and a half. I don’t know how often you have to restock on waffles, but in my house it’s about every 10 days, so this is a huge quality-of-life improvement for me.

You can manually adjust the cooking time, by the way, and there are settings for both texture and color. I like it on “crisp exterior, soft interior” and halfway between 3 and 4, myself.

There is one drawback to this model, however. The timer beeps very loudly, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to turn the sound off. You can just imagine that if this were in a busy cafe somewhere, it would need to be heard over the din of cooking and customers and everything else, but in my kitchen it’s pretty startling.

The waffles come out as one giant waffle, but they tear apart really easily. You may notice this wafflemaker makes very tall waffles; that is, the squares are very deep. So these new waffles don’t lend themselves as well to making sandwiches as some of my old waffle iron shapes did. Then again, those are broken, and this one’s not. Firmly squashing the waffles into a flatter shape with my palm seems to work just fine.

I’ve also figured out a better way to store them in the freezer, separating the stacks with strips of parchment paper rather than wrapping the whole bundle in plastic wrap. Cheaper and less waste this way.

Oh, and here’s how you clean a waffle iron, which I completely neglected to mention at all last time. After you’ve pulled your last waffle off, dump a Tablespoon of water on the grill and immediately close the lid. Any remaining residue in the crevices will be steamed right out. But there won’t be much, because like I said, there’s no need to oil it, so there’s no oil leftover.

And here’s my soldier line of waffles, ready to go into the freezer. I only get 25 out of a batch nowadays, but on the other hand, with the hemp powder they are definitely more filling, so the kids almost never eat more than one anymore.

Happy Eating!

The GFCFLady’s Waffles

3 eggs
3 TBS sugar
1 1/2 tsp xanthan gum
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 TBS baking powder
1/3 cup hemp protein powder (optional)
2 TBS Kirkman’s unflavored calcium powder (optional)
4 1/2 cups Bob’s Red Mill All-Purpose Flour blend
4 cups water

Start with two butternut squashes, about 3 pounds total. If your children see you cooking them, tell them that they’re just “funny-shaped pumpkins.” Kids are dumb, especially if they think they’ll get pie out of the deal. The top stem is the hardest to cut through, so I always start along the side, then rotate it up on its end to get the most leverage.

Scoop out all the seeds and gunk.

Lay two halves on a plate, and cover them in saran wrap. Make sure to get around the bottom too, or else the skin will leave this waxy residue on the plate that is nearly impossible to get off. Cook it in the microwave on high for about 8-9 minutes. You can’t do all four at once, unless you have a gargantuan microwave, and even then, the cooking time would be off. So just get the second one ready and waiting.

Meanwhile, add 1/3 cup sugar to a large mixing bowl, and 1/4 cup almond milk.

Crack in two eggs, and try to ignore the creepy face that’s staring back at you now.

This is my newest discovery at my grocery store: powdered vanilla extract. The key here is that extracts are usually suspended in alcohol, and often these are grain alcohols; i.e. gluten. I don’t know how they magically make it into a powder, but the taste is exactly the same, and you use the same amount of it as you would regular liquid vanilla. I’d already hunted down a liquid extract that was gluten-free, but you know what? This one says it right on the label, and I like to support companies that do that. So I’ve switched. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your ingredient lists.]

So on top of the egg mixture, that’s 1 tsp vanilla, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp nutmeg, and 1/4 tsp salt. I don’t know what was up with my camera focus in this shot, but it’s apparently the only one I got of this step, so you’ll have to live with the disappointment.

When your microwave beeps at you, take a look at the squashes. See the brighter yellow circle in the middle there? That’s not cooked all the way through. This one needs another minute or two, at least.

Once they’re an even, dark orange color, scoop out the insides and add them to your mixing bowl. This should take no real arm strength if they’re cooked properly, but they will be extremely hot, so you’ll probably want to use an oven mitt.

Mix everything together thoroughly, making sure it’s nice and smooth. Then scrape it into a 9×9 baking dish sprayed with canola oil.

Now, prepare the crumb topping. That’s 1 Tablespoon of melted Fleischmann’s unsalted margarine (not salted original), 1/2 cup (firmly packed) brown sugar, and 2 Tablespoons of Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-Free All-Purpose Flour blend.

Mix well…

And sprinkle evenly on top.

Pop in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes, just enough to warm everything through and melt the sugar on top a little. And then tell your children that since they were so good today, they can have dessert on their plate right with their meal. Ha ha ha…

Happy Eating!

Butternut Crunch

2 butternut squash (about 2-3 lbs.)
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup almond milk
2 eggs
1 tsp Adam’s Best vanilla
1 tsp McCormick cinnamon
1/4 tsp McCormick nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
1 TBS Fleischmann’s unsalted margarine (not salted original)
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 TBS Bob’s Red Mill All-Purpose flour blend

I know, everyone’s got a meatloaf recipe, but this one’s tried-and-true. And more importantly, it has a few subtle alterations that make it GFCF.

Start with 1/4 cup crushed Rice Chex cereal. [As always, manufacturers can change formulas without notice. Always check your ingredient lists.]

Crack in one egg.

And add 1/4 cup of… well, liquid. I’m using water here, because I was out of everything else I might normally use. Seriously, everything. Of course I didn’t realize that until I was at this point in cooking, but I had hungry kids and had to make do. I suppose I could hide my shame from you and re-photograph the meatloaf recipe on a night when I didn’t screw it up, but then you might get some notion that things always work smoothly around here. One of the biggest barriers to starting this diet is thinking that everyone else out there is some Baking SuperMom with a spotless 1950s apron, and you are the only one who can’t hack it, but that’s just not true. Anyone can do it, even those of us who can’t remember to go to the grocery store on a timely basis. 

But normally, I get super-sneaky at this point and use pureed vegetables for my liquid. The kids don’t even know they’re eating them. The store has these perfect GFCF veggie purees in little single-serving jars, all ready to go… stocked in the baby aisle. That’s right–I put baby food in my recipes. Check your brands to be sure, but the majority of them contain nothing but the pureed vegetable and water. Butternut squash or sweet potatoes are the easiest to sneak in, but you can even try for something more hardcore like peas if your kids won’t notice the slight color change. Maybe it’s a disciplinary cop-out, but it is so much easier than fighting with them about how many bites of vegetables they’re going to eat tonight.

I also add a Tablespoon of dried minced onion. This stuff is effectively a spice; it doesn’t count as a vegetable at all. See, says right on the label: THIS PRODUCT HAS NO SIGNIFICANT NUTRITIONAL VALUE. That always cracks me up, I have no idea why.

1/2 teaspoon of basil…

1/2 teaspoon of salt…

And 1/4 teaspoon of pepper to round out the spices.

Then two Tablespoons of Heinz ketchup. Technically, ketchup is a pureed fruit, so you could fairly call this a “fruit and vegetable meatloaf,” if you wanted. But then your kids might suspect you were duping them. Better to call it “Meatloaf with No Vegetables In It, No Sirree.”

I love food that retains the shape of its container. I don’t know how old I was before I figured out that cranberry sauce isn’t naturally shaped like a can. Anyway, this is 1 pound of ground beef, shaped like a little plastic-wrapped tube.

Mix well.

And smoosh it into your meatloaf pan. Make sure you spray it with canola oil first, or you’ll be hard at work scrubbing it clean later. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

The final product isn’t very pretty, but meatloaf never is. The kids are gonna cover it in ketchup anyway, right?

Happy Eating!

Your Basic Meatloaf

1/4 cup crushed Rice Chex
1 egg
1 jar GF baby food (butternut squash)
1 TBS dried minced onion
1/2 tsp basil
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
2 TBS Heinz ketchup
1 lb. ground beef

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

Warning: this is not a recipe to be fooled around with. This frosting is possibly the richest, most decadent thing I’ve ever put into my mouth. It is, in fact, the first homemade item I learned to make that I had to admit was better than the store-bought counterpart. Seriously, that little can of frosting has nothing on this stuff.

The recipe is very basic, it’s just a question of making sure each ingredient you use is GFCF. [As always, my brands were verified GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change their formulas without notice. Always double-check your ingredient lists.] Start with one stick of melted Fleischmann’s unsalted margarine (not salted original), 1 tsp McCormick’s vanilla, and three Tablespoons of your preferred milk substitute. I used almond milk this time since I had some in the fridge and it’s a little richer than rice milk, but either is fine.

Dump in one entire box of Domino powdered sugar (also called confectioner’s sugar, or 10-x sugar.) Did you see that? An entire box of sugar on top of a whole stick of margarine. That, my friends, is why this stuff tastes so good, and why your hips may not thank you later.

Beat it with a hand mixer, and frosting magically appears. It’s so simple, it’s practically criminal. You can use this frosting on any kind of gluten-free cake or cupcake that you want.

Me, I sometimes put it on brownies.

I know, I know. Frosted brownies? That makes no sense! But it’s what I like, and I’m just keeping it real. Pretend it’s a chocolate cake, if that makes you feel better. I’m fond of a lot of Bob’s Red Mill products, and the brownie mix is no exception. Also, Bob happens to look just like one of my relatives, right down to the beret and yellow shirt and everything. It’s kind of spooky.

Just following the package directions here, first you want to melt a stick and a half of margarine in the microwave. Don’t start thinking about the total amount of fat that’s going into this dish. Instead, just remind yourself that margarine is way healthier than butter, and that makes it all okay, right?

Meanwhile, mix together one egg and 2 tsp vanilla.

Now, I deviate from the bag recipe and add 2 TBS of sugar. The final product just doesn’t taste very much like brownies to me without it. It’s more like… chocolate bread, I guess. Trust me, it needs the sugar.

Dump in the melted margarine and the entire bag of brownie mix, then add 3/4 cup water and mix well. It’s really hard to mix it by hand, because this batter is thick.

But on the other hand, if you choose to use a hand mixer, you are guaranteed to end up with a little chocolate tornado trying to climb the beaters, and you’ll have to stop the mixer every 5 seconds or so to scrape it back down. It’s your choice.

Now, this part is important. After you’ve scraped the whole mess into a greased 9×13 baking dish, you have to get it to settle properly into place. Normal batters do this part on their own, but normal batters also make my kid a raving lunatic, so we have to work with what we’ve got. Get your hand very wet in the sink, and gently push the batter down as if you were shaping playdough.

As soon as it starts to stick to your fingers, put them back under the faucet and get them really wet again. Just keep pushing and smoothing until you have a nice, flat, normal-looking pan of brownie batter.

The bag says bake for 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees, but it always takes longer than that for me, especially if I use a glass baking dish. See my messy toothpick? This batch of brownies was ultimately in the oven for 45 minutes before the toothpick came out clean.

And now we can put the frosting on this lovely chocolate cake that I got from somewhere else. Nobody’s been putting frosting on any brownies around here, no sirree… But here’s another important tip: make absolutely sure that your brownies or cake or whatever has cooled completely before you apply the frosting. Since it doesn’t have a whole bunch of chemicals and gluten holding it together, this frosting will start to break down if it’s subjected to anything warmer than room temperature.

It’s a well-known scientific principle that rainbow sprinkles make everything more delicious. Not that this frosting needs any help.

Happy Eating!

Buttercream Frosting

1 box Domino powdered sugar
1 stick Fleischmann’s unsalted margarine (not salted original)
3-4 TBS almond or rice milk
1 tsp McCormick vanilla

Bob’s Red Mill brownies

1 bag Bob’s Red Mill Brownie Mix
1 1/2 sticks Fleischmann’s unsalted margarine (not salted original)
1 egg
2 tsp McCormick’s vanilla
2 TBS sugar