Cold season aproacheth

I haven't done much with this blog, have I? Sorry! (Who am I apologizing to? Does anyone even read this?) In all honestly, I'm not much of a cook and there's only so much you can write about trying not to burn the chicken while microwaving frozen vegetables.

But then I got a cold and I thought that saying something about cold remedies that won't mess with one's allergies might be a good idea.

So here it is. Tea.

Herbal tea, specifically. The Altivia and Traditional Medicinals brands, even more specifically. No added flavorings, just herbs and whatever you'd call things like licorice root and cherry bark. My own 'nuclear option' cold remedy consists of about five different herbal blends steeped in a glass of water for about fifteen minutes. I'm told it smells bad enough to kill so I don't recommend it for people with a working olfactory system. Still, there are some pretty good teas out there for colds, and they taste pretty good even without adding honey. Do recommend adding honey, though. It's great for colds. If you have allergies to any particular plants, you might want to get a brand of honey that specifies which flowers it's been made from.

Oh, and mullein tea with warm milk and honey is wonderful. Not sure how milk counts as part of an herbal remedy, and if you can't drink milk than you can leave it out, but dang if it doesn't feel good going down! And mullein is a traditional cold remedy. Kinda makes me want to head for the highway and dig up a couple plants to keep.

Holiday Meatballs or Meatloaf

I've tried a meatloaf recipe before and it was way too complicated. Not to mention crumbly. So I decided, to heck with it, and get Mom's recipe.

Shoulda done that from the start.

Now, the recipe is technically for meatballs, but it also makes a very good meatloaf.

Holiday Meatballs

1 lb hamburger
1 egg (I found out by accident that it works just as well without the egg)
1C crisp rice cereal
1/4C spaghetti sauce, tomato paste, or crushed tomato
1t dry or wet mustard
1t salt

Mix all ingredients together. Make 12 balls or throw lot into bread pan. Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes. Can prepare ahead and refrigerate.

Note: Last 5 minutes of cooking, spoon extra sauce onto tops of meatballs and return to oven. Looks extra fancy.


My guess is the 'extra fancy' part is why they're called 'holiday meatballs.'

And there you have it! Simple, easy, fast meatballs (or loaf).

Gluten-free bread pudding

Specifically Irish bread pudding. It was the simplest recipe I could find.

8 slices of bread
8 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon lemon zest
4 cups milk
1 tablespoon butter

1. Preheat oven to 370 degrees.

2. Break the bread into bite size portions. Place them into a 9x9x2 inch pan

3. Beat the eggs and sugar together. Add zest and milk and pour over the bread.

4. Dot with the butter and bake until mix is set, about 30 minutes.

5. Add toppings to taste.

I used about half a cup of honey instead of sugar and goat's milk instead of regular milk. The goat's milk might explain the slight bitterness I'm tasting. Also, it doesn't quite look like the bread pudding I had in Ireland. That might have something to do with gluten-free bread being so much denser than regular bread. Not as much of the egg and milk mix can be absorbed into the bread. Still, with a little lemon juice it tastes quite good. I may use actual sugar next time, though. The honey didn't mix with the other ingredients quite as thoroughly as I'd like to hope. May also explain the odd taste when I tried it plain.

Now if I could just do something about the pale yellow color.

Never forget the basics.

There's nothing quite like a simple PB&J for when you're in a hurry. Of course, if you have celiac that could be a problem. Or if you're allergic to soy. It's rather remarkable how many brands of bread have soy in them.

I'm not entirely sure what to recommend for the soy thing, except pay really close attention to the ingredient labels. The gluten thing I can help with, though. There are a lot of gluten-free breads available, but I've found that several of them taste too much like plastic for my tastes. Food for Life has a good track record in my experience (and at least some of them are soy free, too), but everyone has their own tastes. All I can really recommend is trying them all out and picking a favorite. Though I do recommend staying away from anything that looks like regular white bread.

Hopefully the next post will have an actual recipe. I hope to try some bread pudding this week.

Before You Make That Tuna Loaf...

You might want to check your cupboards for any canned tuna you have on hand. Does it say 'in water'? Do you think it's actually in water?

The labels! They lie!

Sort of. Chances are there actually is water in that can. It may even be listed right after tuna on the ingredients label. But right after that is going to be something else, something I wasn't expecting.

Vegetable broth. Yes, that's right, vegetable broth. What the heck is vegetable broth doing in a can of tuna? The vegetable in question is almost certainly soy considering that the label also read, "contains: fish (tuna), soy"

The fish part is something of a duh. The soy part was a great deal more surprising.

So I checked and discovered that every can from every brand of tuna had the same thing. Vegetable broth listed as an ingredient and that little warning that the can contained soy. All, that is, except for one. StarKist Gourmet Choice. There might be other brands out there that are soy free, but that's the only one available in the local grocery.

Just want to mention here that I am in no way affiliated with the StarKist company nor any parent company or child company associated therewith. I just happen to buy canned tuna from time to time and have a mom who's allergic to soy.

Now, I'm apparently not the only one who noticed. I'd actually be a little worried if I were. After a search for the terms 'canned tuna contains soy' I got a lot of blog posts on this very subject. I does bear repeating, though, as I didn't run into any that specified any particular brands that have remained soyless. Maybe they're worried that any brand mentioned might start following the trend of adding soy broth to the tuna. Be that as it may, I did want to mention that I was able to find a source of soyless canned tuna. How long it will stay that way is something we shall all have to wait and see.

Rhubarb Crisp and the Lost Art of Simplicity

Trying to find a simple, gluten-free rhubarb crisp recipe is really what inspired me to start this blog. It is ridiculously hard. Not that there aren't recipes out there, but they're either way too complicated to be practical, swimming in sugar, or involve some of the strangest ingredients. (Why, in the name of sanity, would someone put Cayenne pepper in a dessert?) As for cookbooks, mine seemed to be unaware of rhubarb's existence.

Of course, I might be spoiled. When I was a kid, well before I found out about Celiac's disease, Mom made the best rhubarb crisp bar none.

So that gave me an idea. Adapt Mom's recipe to be gluten free. Which I think she got from Betty Crocker, but I'm not sure.

Rhubarb Crisp

6 cups rhubarb
1/3 cup water

Butter 9x13x2 inch pan, pour in rhubarb, sprinkle with water.

1 cup rolled oats (use one that specifies that it's from a dedicated gluten-free processing plant, or, if you can't handle oats as well as the more traditional grains, you can try rolled rice)
1/2 cup all purpose gluten-free flour (I use Bob's Red Mill, but I should think any all purpose mix should do)
1/2 cup rice bran
1/2 cup honey
2 teaspoon cinnamon

Use a sprinkle of guar or xanthan gum to help hold it together. Not really sure how much, as I'll detail later.

Mix and sprinkle over rhubarb.

Cook at 350 for 30-40 minutes.

It doesn't get much simpler than that, right?

Well, a little experimentation might be in order to get the right texture. When I tried this the result was a much smoother, gooier crust than I remember Mom's crisp having. I might have used too much guar gum. Or maybe the all purpose flour wasn't coarse enough. The original recipe did specify whole wheat flour. But it tasted good, which is the main thing. For something like this, texture is really up to personal preferences. Next time I try this I may add a little millet flour or leave out the guar gum. Maybe mix some coarse oatmeal in with the rolled oats.

What's really great about simple recipes like this is that there's a lot more room for experimenting. At least there is for people like me who still burn things fairly regularly. (I'm getting better, mostly.)