Category Archives: Recipes

Yummy Dirt

by

On Wednesday I made shortbread cookies. Basic recipe is from the Rose’s Christmas Cookies book.

Then Thursday I had the urge to try and make a gluten free version for a friend that was coming to visit. I did a little reading on substitutes and decided to replace the AP flour in the recipe with rice and oat flours. I made my own. To my surprise, when I measured a half cup of rice, and then ground it up in my spice grinder, the resulting flour was about the same volume. I thought it would settle, but it appears to have been fluffy enough to compensate for that. The same thing happened with the oats.

My Recipe:

1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar

– Put these into the food processor and run on 1 for about a minute to make the sugar extra fine.

1 1/4 cup butter

– Cut into cubes and add to food processor. Run on 1 just until combined.

1 1/4 cup white rice flour
1 1/4 cup oat flour

– I ground these myself from whole and it was a little crunchy. Not as flour fine as I would like. I’ll have to look into a better mill for grinding, or just buy the flour in the store next time.
– Add these to the food processor and pulse until combined. You shouldn’t see any more dry flour. Don’t over process any of these steps. It will be crumbly beads of dough, not a solid mass.
– Scrape the dough into a mixing bowl and hand knead the dough into a solid ball. If it feels too sticky, you might want to refrigerate this for 30 minutes or so.

Bake on 275 for about 50 minutes.

Remember that every oven is a little different, and also that you don’t want shortbread to get golden, so you are pulling it out before it develops any browning at all. This might take some experimenting to figure out when it’s completely baked, but not yet golden.

Quality of Resulting Cookies

As I mentioned above, the rice and oat flours weren’t fine enough, so they’re a little crunchier than I’d like. That crunchiness might just be the rice flour not being fine enough. It might work if it were all oat flour.

They’re still tasty and quite edible, and after a conversation with another friend about it, they were dubbed “Yummy Dirt”.

In the photo above you see the regular shortbread cookies at the top, and the Yummy Dirt below. I don’t really think anyone would mistake them for shortbread at this point. I’ll have to try and improve that, or simply give them a new name.

Oats may not be entirely gluten free, according to Caroline (the gal with the gluten-free diet), because they are often processed through the same equiptment as wheat. She had a mild reaction to the cookies. UGH!

Smoothie Update

by

There are now kiwis going into the smoothies. The idea of putting whole fuzzy fruit in there was weird at first, but honestly it disappears in there like everything else.

Aside from that, I wanted to write a little update on how the smoothie making routine has formed up over the last few months.

    1) Buy bulk fruits and veggies at Costco

    2) Use raw if you can,

    3) but if it’s something that’s going to go bad before you can use it all, then you need to get it into the freezer. And if you’re using frozen fruit and veggies for smoothies, it needs to be in usable chunks.

      a) baby carrots. Add a couple paper towels to the bag to absorb excess moisture, stays in the fridge no problem for a long time.

      b) baby spinach. Use a fresh handful in each smoothie until it starts to wilt. At the first signs of wilting fill freezer bags with the spinach, and then add water to cover it all, squeeze out the air as you zip the bag closed. You want the bag to be flat, maybe an inch thick, when you put it in the freezer. Not bulging. I was skeptical of this process at first, but have successfully broken the ice chunks apart for smoothie use.
      Continue reading →

Orange-Mango Sorbet

by

We have an ice cream maker, which makes this pretty simple. Put all ingerdients in and run it until it’s done. I’m sure freshly juiced tangerines would be even better, but our version made with half a can of orange-mango juice from concentrate was quite delicious!

INGREDIENTS
3 cups fresh juice from tangerines or manderine oranges (or: half a can of frozen juice concentrate made into 3 cups of juice)
3 Tbsp lemon juice
3/4 cup sugar
1 Tbsp corn syrup (optional)
(Original recipe found here)

DIRECTIONS
1. Put half a can of juice concentrate into 4-cup size pyrex measuring cup. 2. Add water to the 3 cup line and mix. 3. add other ingredients and mix. 4. Pour into ice cream maker and run until done. 25-30 mins. 5. Done. Enjoy.

T-day Foods Made

by

mac & cheese cheesecake

1) My regular baked mac & cheese made with vegetable radiatore. In the background you can see Mike’s peas dish with onions, parsley, marjorum, butter lettuce, etc…

2) Brownie-Bottom Cheesecake: Brownie layer made from scratch, baked for 20 mins (could be more) and then cheesecake layer added and the whole thing baked for another 30 mins. This cheesecake mix has sour cream in it, which is delicious!

Green Smoothies Day 5!

by

1 banana – peeled and quartered,
1 orange – quartered and peeled,
1 apple – quartered & seeds removed,
10 cherry tomatoes,
~Dozen baby carrots,
~Dozen grapes with seeds,
1 large handful of spinach,
9 fat cubes of ice.
Makes: 2 large glasses full

Today, I made the smoothies all by myself! Mike was a little anxious. I kept having to shoo him away. 😉 All went well. This stuff filled the blender jar more, but it handled it just fine. Extra ice was added in the glasses. And, Delicious!