Gluten Free Fruitcake

Now HERE’s a real contribution to the gluten-free dessert recipe collection: a delicious, no wheat or soy in it, rich fruitcake that I would wager you could not recognize as gluten-free. Not eating wheat or soy (and a few other foods) has made a real difference to the health of one of our family members. Naturally, when the holidays rolled around, I googled the title of this blog entry. After perusing several of the results, I was not finding a convincing answer to my question. So I thought, OK, I will do this myself, I will come up with my own gluten-free fruitcake.

Digressing for a moment here, I want to brag up a set of cookbooks that I still go back to, especially when I want to cook something truly mid-twentieth-centurish. When she got married back in the late 1960’s, my sister was offered this set of books and she did not want them. So I leaped into the fray and obtained them from my mother. Fifty years later, they are frayed and stained, but they are cherished. I refer to the five volume set Favorite Recipes of America. They are signed by Mary Ann Richards, Staff Home Economist, and the set is dated 1968. She says “These recipes were selected from my files of more than 100,000 favorite recipes to represent the desserts that Americans like best. Many outstanding recipes are from winners of Blue Ribbons at fairs, officer’s wives, and home economics teachers.” Indeed, each recipe is signed and the position of the contributer identified. Some people would find these recipes to be out of step with modern nutritional wisdom, as they are. However, I am unwilling to give up occasional comfort foods and reminders of my culinary past, because they have become traditional. If you ever get a chance to see or own this set of cookbooks, I recommend you do. They are fascinating and an important part of the culinary history of this country.

Favorite Recipes of America

So, back from the digression, the basic recipe approach with which I started was a blue ribbon prize-winning recipe from a Lucile Heckman, La Verne, California, Los Angeles County Fair. The recipe can be found on p. 48 of the Desserts volume of Favorite Recipes of America. Lucile tells us that she began developing the recipe while living as a missionary in Nigeria, and that since she lived 400 miles from the nearest store it was necessary to make substitutions and to candy the fruits in her own kitchen. I have made this fruitcake at least five times in my life; it is quite good. In addition, I was inspired by the personal comments in the recipe to raid my own pantry and see if I could just make the fruitcake from what I had on hand, no trips to the store. The recipe that you see below, then is significantly modified from Lucile Heckman’s recipe. Most significantly, I replaced the flour, salt and baking powder in her recipe with something I have bragged about before in this blog—Bob’s Wheat-Free Biscuit and Baking Mix.

The finished gluten-free fruitcake

1/2 c. soft shortening
1 c. brown sugar
2 1/2 eggs
1 1/2 c. Bob’s Wheat Free Biscuit and Baking Mix
3/4 t. cinnamon
1/4 t. cloves
1/2 c. orange juice
1/2 lb. lemon peel
1/2 lb. candied red cherries
1/3 lb. candied pineapple + 2 dried apricots
1/2 c. dark + golden raisins
1/2 lb. candied green cherries
1/4 lb. each walnuts, almonds, pecans
1 c. moist shredded coconut

Cream shortening and sugar thoroughly; add eggs, one at a time, and beat well. Stir the spices into the biscuit mix and add in three parts alternately the biscuit mix and the orange juice to the egg mixture. Stir in the fruit, coconut and nuts. Pack into a greased tube pan (I used an old angelfood cake pan with removable bottom). Bake at 300 degrees for 1 hour and 30 minutes. Test with a straw. Cool, cut and enjoy, or cut into blocks, wrap and store.

Later this evening came the true test. The fruitcake was cut into slices and served with eggnog sprinkled with nutmeg. I couldn’t tell the difference from the other fruitcakes I had made from this recipe. Maybe it is the fact that being loaded with fruit and nuts, those flavors overwhelm any differences in the flavor of the flour filler. But whatever, here is the photo, we are satisfied, we have our fruitcake.

Eggnog and fruitcake

New World of Social Networking

A lot of my contemporaries register reservation, frustration or even contempt for the evolving world of cyberspace. For example, in one social group that I belong to, the median age is about 75. We meet monthly. A couple of the members have just given up on even email. Others struggle bravely with Google, cell phones, or even online commerce. Crashed computers, online failures, and virus problems are rife. Just a few, mostly dragged there by their middle-aged children, are registered facebook users.

I am widely known as a computer guru, but that is quite far from the truth. I really don’t have a quick answer to most problems that people have. Rather, it’s more like, me and computers, we are as close as my index and my flicking finger. Most people see computers as unpredictable. Whaa?!! I see people as unpredictable. Computers I can figure out. I like to have staring contests with computers, I hate that with people.

I digress slightly, but not really. I have been dancing with computers since Dec. 24, 1979, with the internet since around 1993. For me, even though I am now 71, the world of computers, and now, the world of cyberspace, is not scary or frustrating at all (Second Life being the only exception to that). Rather, it’s a huge and fascinating and ever developing landscape. One of the most fascinating landscapes of all for me has been the world of social networking, especially as it has been realized on facebook. I finally landed there last year after trying a couple of other systems. I have learned so much from my time on facebook that I scarcely can put it down in a blog post. Let me just focus on a couple of things about it that I find neat.

Facebook is a genuine new and rewarding bridge between the generations. I now have as friends my sister and her three sons, my brother and his daughter, an eighth cousin in Luxembourg, nieces and nephews of my dad, in-laws of my daughter, and my daugher and her spouse. One of the totally amazing facts about facebook conversations is that young people say things in front of you on facebook that you wouldn’t have a chance in hell of hearing in normal life. This is because the younger working generation uses facebook to blow off steam, talk about the frustrations of the job, share thoughts about music, plan impromptu get togethers, and just a whole range of everyday living concerns. AND if you are their friend, you get to eavesdrop on these conversations, especially if you risk making an occasional comment.

It took a while for me to get my stride in relating cross-generationally, if there is such a term. Many of the comments young people make on facebook, especially if they are living away from home in another place, probably reflect meaning and situations that you are entirely unfamiliar with. I discovered that I was prone to misinterpretation at first. In fact, my daughter and I went through kind of a problem period where we were kind of irritating each other without really fessing up. But I decided to hang in there, but with love in my heart. As with any social situation, online or other wise, hanging in there with love in your heart will pay off in the end, and will run away the people who don’t likewise share that trait. So you have to be brave, but cautious and listening, and eventually you will find the right pace. Mostly, I recognize that the best conversations are between people of my own generation, with an exception or two.

There is one other aspect of facebook that I want to share with you. It has to do with the synergy that builds up when you have more than 100 friends and half of them are actually paying attention to what you are saying. I have made a practice for the last year of trying to post one or two comments a day in the status line, the one that always prompts you with “What’s on your mind?” I try to make the comments down to earth, or thought provoking, or sharing a moment of my day, or even sadness or joy. Sometimes I don’t get any comments at all. But other times, the conversation that emerges, and between people who can be strangers to each other, is amazing. So let me just show you an example. I captured a snippet of one facebook conversation that emerged just today:

Facebook conversation

So here are these eight women tracking my casual thought. Two of them are former members of my church who moved away to separate locations years ago. Another was a good friend and the wife of a guy who went through graduate school with me. Another is my daughter. Still another is the daughter of a former colleague of mine, that became my friend when I posted a picture of her with sibs and parents from 30 years ago. And then there are two current members of my church.

But I am talking about cooking, and mostly, it’s women who talk about cooking. Forgive the stereotype, not saying that EVERY woman talks about cooking or that EVERY man doesn’t, it’s just a tendency. But doesn’t this just amaze you. All these different people, different ages, different places, different points of view, coming together to share a moment to talk about what I am cooking or what they are cooking. Or in my daughter’s case, making a joke about there being “eenies” in it, because she hated most vegetables when growing up. Certainly no zucchini for her, at least back then.

But note, if I didn’t risk and talk about these mundane facts about my life, no one would be commenting on them, and I wouldn’t be having this fabulous feeling of being connected, really connected, across space and time to these many prior and present acquaintances, friends and family members. It’s really no different than going back for coffee after church. You got to risk the awkward first attempts at conversation to begin developing a sense of the community that can come with church attendance.

I feel as if I am moving into a time when no one will be very far from anyone they want to relate to. One scenario I read about was that in the near future we will be able to walk up to any wall and say, “I want to talk to Liz Cunningham in Marietta, Ohio,” and before long, there her image will be, staring back at me from the wall I am looking at. Or how about a family room where there is a hemisphere of seats on one side and you see a hemisphere of seats from someone else’s living room on the other side? Or maybe just a webpage with realistic avatars of folks in boxes looking at each other and chatting.

In the meantime, I check my facebook a few times a day. Hey, I’ve got a busy life. I still shop, caregive, cook, eat, play the piano, read, sit in front of the fireplace. I’m not addicted to facebook. But I’m also not addicted to a world without facebook. My life always has been an open book, and now it’s an open facebook.

Poor old Tiger, So long Tiger

Maybe I do have something to say about Tiger Woods that hasn’t been said yet. At least I haven’t seen this angle in the news. But first, the background . . .

I am not a sports fan at all, just a person with an enduring interest in popular culture. Here is how bad it is: I never know who is going to be in the play-offs for the world series until I hear some of my friends talking about it. Then, in self-defense, I start paying attention to the news. And, golf, let me tell you, the ONLY time I have ever attended a golf match was to watch Arnold Palmer play a demonstration at OSU back in the ’60s, and that was at the begging of my drummer-buddy of the time, Ted Hamilton. I pretty much found out about the Tiger Woods scandal like most of the world. The news is saturated with the story.

Gradually, a picture of Tiger Woods began to emerge as just another superstar whose power and prestige led to him taking risks that most of us wouldn’t dream of trying. Tiger Woods was doing what most hot, relatively young guys in good condition dream of doing for most of their waking moments. I kept thinking of Bill Clinton. Clinton is one of the brightest and most talented men in the world, a guy with a phenomenal memory, the ability to connect directly with people, a genius for politics, genuine humanity, and on the downside, an ego the size of Manhattan and a sexual addiction problem. Oddly, I seldom read the words “sexual addiction” used when “Monica Lewinsky” was becoming a household word, and now I don’t hear those words used when Tiger Woods is being discussed.

Another part of this picture of Tiger Woods is that this guy is not a particularly deep-thinking person when it comes to matters of relationships and sex. Most of us aren’t—either deep-thinking or wise—when falling into the significant relationships we forge. We just find ourselves in the middle of them, and most of us don’t have the talent or skill to make the kind of bucks that Tiger does. And because we have to have our heroes perfect, Tiger has known for a long time that he has to pretend to be as perfect as we want him to be, and and the money-makers need him to appear to be. He made all the right moves, mainly learning to keep very quiet. Unfortunately for Tiger, if a bright guy like Bill Clinton couldn’t avoid eventually being brought down by his political enemies, Tiger was doomed to be revealed in his (actually unbelievably excessive) dalliances by some self-interested person along the way.

So, to summarize, genius golfer, average social and moral intelligence, and sexual addiction pretty much equals this mess. It’s a real tragedy, and I’m not inclined to be too hard on the guy, except, he shoulda known that this kind of outcome was likely and would be SO HARD on everyone close to him.

If making the right choices in life is hard for all of us, it must be infinitely more so for superstars like Tiger. The road to disgrace, however, is paved with the little tiny choices that face us every day. It took Tiger years to get himself into this mess. Look how long it took to catch Bernie Madoff at his incredibly destructive shenanigans.

I’m an old duffer now, and I never achieved much fame or fortune. But I have really worried about my choices as I moved through life. I have lots and lots of weaknesses and flaws that I will probably be working to improve until my dying day. But one thing I have really worked on is this. I really have tried to make my choices in life be ones I could at least live with. In my case, I stayed faithful to my partner for 25 years. It was hard, but I did it. I said, “The only way to have a relationship is to have one.” And before that, I played the field, so I’m not trying to pretend to be a moral goody two shoes here. But WHILE I was playing the field, I didn’t lead someone or “my public” to believe anything else. I don’t really think you can combine those two modes successfully, whether you make $5,000, or $50,000 or $5,000,000 a year.

Being good to the people you relate to, even when they don’t return the favor, is worth a lot more than getting your rocks off. And each little choice you make in your life can take you in one direction or the other. Each little choice. But it gets easier and easier to make the choice, whichever direction you choose to go in.

Cauliflower Quiche—Gluten-free

It looks like this blog is turning into a recipe blog. Maybe that’s because in this hectic time of mainly caretaking and basically surviving, cooking is one of the things I still manage to do successfully, and occasionally even have a little fun with. For decades now, I have been making a cauliflower quiche that’s to die for. But I hadn’t made it in a while, because the recipe uses a wheat flour crust, and you may remember that in this household we are spending the year gluten-free.

I got the original recipe out of this WONDERFUL 1981 cookbook edited by Janeth Jonathan Nix, who has since written many fine cookbooks. If you ever get a chance to obtain a copy of this one, go for it. Every recipe is a delicious treasure from the whole wheat zucchini pizza, through the Armenian vegetable casserole to the oatmeal pancakes with blueberry sauce! It is unfortunately now out of print.

What you do is make a quiche crust and partially bake it and then put in a quiche filling and bake it some more. In the original recipe, you made an oatmeal crust. However, what I did was to try the pie crust recipe on Bob’s Red Mill Wheat-Free Biscuit and Baking Mix for the first time. It IS a little bit tricky to make, because gluten-free flour does not hold together like wheat flour. I managed to douse my iPhone in pie crust mix when I flipped the crust over into the pie plate. Won’t make that mistake again. And I also had to patch up the crust quite a bit. I certainly don’t mind doing this, but I’d say most cooks would rather take a pre-made pie crust out of a package. There. I’ve been completely honest with you. HOWEVER, if you are on a gluten-free diet, and you PINE for pie with a pie crust, this may just be your best bet. Because the crust turns out to be crunchy and delicious, or at least as delicious as a gluten-free pie crust ever gets to a wheat flour hound.

And now, there’s the quiche filling. I’ll give you the recipe just the way it was in the original 1981 cookbook. The recipe was called “Golden Cauliflower Quiche” on p. 41, now stained with oil and batter in my copy.

1 small head (about 1 lb.) cauliflower
1/2 cup slivered almonds
2 eggs
1/2 cup each milk and mayonnaise
2 cups (8 oz.) shredded longhorn cheese (I use cheddar)
1/8 tsp. each pepper and ground nutmeg (I double these)

Prebake the crust. The flour version bakes in preheated 400 degree oven for 10 minutes, the gluten-free version in a preheated 425 degree oven for 16 minutes.

“Meanwhile, cut the cauliflower into 1/2 inch pieces. (You should have 4 cups.) Steam over boiling water until just crisp-tender (about 4 minutes.) Drain, plunge into cold water to cool, then drain again.

“Spread almonds in a shallow pan and toast in a 350 degree oven for about 8 minutes or until lightly browned (you should check). Place cauliflower in bottom of pastry shell and sprinkle with toasted almonds.

“In a blender or food processor, whirl eggs, milk, and mayonnaise until smooth. Add 1 1/4 cups of cheese, along with pepper and nutmeg, and whirl briefly to mix. Pour over cauliflower and nuts in pastry shell. Sprinkle with remaining 3/4 cup cheese.

“Bake on bottom rack of a 350 degree oven for 30 to 35 minutes or until an knife inserted in center comes out clean. Let stand on a wire rack for 10 minutes before serving. Makes six servings.”

I make several little modifications, but you will gradually develop this into a dependable recipe, because it is worth serving again. Tonight, I served it with a fancy spinach salad—lots of goodies like nuts, blueberries, goat cheese, black olives, pearl onions and the like with a vinaigrette dressing, Golden Monkey tea and a glass of Trinity Oaks Chardonnay.

Mmmmmmmm.

And sometimes, thy neighbor loves you, too

I had a nice surprise this morning. My neighbor, Dayle, lives two doors down the street in the same 1895 six-unit three-story yellow-brick row house building that we live in. She and her husband were one of the first tenants of this building when it was rehabbed in the early ’80s, so she knows all the block gossip. Stephen and I were out at the doctor’s this morning, and when I got home, there was a message from Dayle. She was providing the ingredients and recipe for the entrée to a fabulous supper, and all I had to do was put them together!

Ernst Janssen designed this six-unit row house building

Night before last when we were driving her home from a social gathering we both attended, Dayle heard my story of the labors of providing a gluten-free diet for Stephen loud and clear. The conversation then turned to kinds of flours alternative to wheat flour. “Did you ever try chestnut flour?” she had asked, and I had replied, “No, I didn’t even know there was such a thing!” And then she promised to follow through with her fail-safe quick and easy recipe for trout prepared with only four ingredients: the fish, lemon oil, chestnut flour and ground pine nuts. “Just go to epicurious.com and search for the recipe,” she had said, and now here she was today providing it for us.

Sautéed trout, lima beans, and an eggplant blend

This blog is proud to report the results of this unplanned and impromptu dinner. Dayle showed up as promised about 4 p.m. with a plastic bag of trout on ice, a small vial of lemon oil and baggies of chestnut flour and pine nuts. “The recipe calls for half a cup each of pine nuts and chestnut flour, but I like to use almost a cup of pine nuts. Just throw the pine nuts into a blender and grind. Then coat both sides of the boned trout fillets (cut along the back into two fillets) with lemon oil and dredge in the nut mixture. Saute in butter 3 minutes to a side and that’s it.”

So now I had a problem to solve. What to serve with the trout? No question there, I had an eggplant that had to be used in the crisper and half a can of diced tomatoes and half an onion to be used in the fridge. So I invented (or more accurately, reconstructed) a recipe for these things. Had I added sweetened vinegar and celery, I would have had a version of caponata.

• Put some olive oil in a sautée pan, heat and add some diced onions.
• Meanwhile, peel and dice an eggplant and add that to the pan, sautée and stir occasionally
• Add the tomatoes and a handful of chopped black olives, sautée some more
• Chop up three cloves of garlic, and add along with little piles of salt, basil and oregano
• When it looks cooked (about 15-20 minutes), turn on low, cover and keep warm while you do the rest

Also, I had half a package of frozen lima beans. Cook ‘em in a little water for about 20 minutes, add salt and sprinkle cumin.

Trout coated in lemon oil, dredged in chestnut flour and ground pine nuts and sautéed in butter

The trout turned out really fabulous looking. I had thought maybe more like 4 minutes on a side, but sure enough, Dayle was right medium heat, 3 minutes a side, starting with the flesh down, and then turning the skin down, produces a perfectly browned fillet. The first thing Stephen said was, “This has a really subtle flavor.” A couple of minutes later, there was not much trout left on his plate. I guess he was trying to find the flavor.

Dear Dayle, thanks for remembering to follow that old maxim, “Love thy neighbor.”

Why is this happening to me?

About the middle of June I wrote my first reflection on caregiving for my partner, Stephen. Here we are four months later, and Stephen is about the same, maybe a little worse. No need to go into the details of the illness, his basic problems are pain management and staying mobile on a walker. Also, it’s very likely that the situation is chronic. I think that Stephen and I have been doing a pretty good job of dealing with this situation effectively. Of course, Stephen does get discouraged and frustrated from time to time, but most of the time he still manages to summon up the courage and determination that he is made of. For my part, I have discovered surprising emotional stability and physical capability.

One of the recurring themes of this recuperation/adjustment period has been that occasionally, when the pain or stiffness gets so very hard to manage, Stephen will say “Why is this happening to me?” I used to try to help him look over the possible answers to this question, but lately, I have concluded that we don’t know the answer to this question. I have instead pinned my hope on the new doctor that he has just started seeing who seems to be more familiar with this type of problem. And I say so to him, that I don’t really know, and I am sorry that it is so difficult and long-standing. However, last night as I was getting into bed, I heard that question echo in my own mind, as if I were asking it: Why is this happening to me?

It was only just a few seconds before the answer came to me: “Because 25 years ago you took a chance on love and made a lasting commitment to Stephen.” This gave me hope and it solidified my belief that in fact this is not a period of difficulty but rather a different, perhaps now normal stage of our lives, this is my life and his. What else would I be doing as part of my life than just what I am doing? And I suppose a more direct and uncomplicated answer would be “Because people get old and/or sick, and other people who care take care of them.”

Someone may think that I am missing the point. Surely part of what Stephen means when he asks this question is “What is causing this to happen?” and given the cause, “What treatment can we use to improve things?” or “Is there any hope of improvement?” Well, I know that. Surely these are important questions to ask. But just in case the answer to these important questions is “There is no hope.” or “You may get worse,” then I think I have come up with the more basic, underlying truth here. Commitment can also be a cause that affects the outcome of situations, only for sure, commitment is something that we can do to and for ourselves, regardless of what the doctors tell us. You knew that, didn’t you?

But it does get back to something that I have thought of many times as I have seen my dear friends who are in a committed relationship break up and go their separate ways. Way back 25 years ago, I had just spent the ten previous years looking for and not finding that lasting love of a lifetime. Stephen and I have had our moments of being tested in our own relationship, to be sure. But for the last couple of decades, no matter the occasional murky matrimonial water, I have come back to the same conclusion: “The only way to have a lasting, committed relationship is to have one.” It’s all in what you want. Of course, your partner has to want you, too, and that is the gift that Stephen has given me.

Sensing and understanding consciousness

I recently finished reading the book Out of our Heads by Alva Noë. In my lifetime I have read many books on the nature of consciousness. Noë’s book is very thought-provoking, and his critique of much of current cognitive science is cogent. One thing he tells us is that neuroscientists who hope to find consciousness inside the brain are actually looking in the wrong place. There is a joke about the guy who was looking for his car keys on the pavement under the street light even though he had lost them in the grass, because there was more light under the street light. With all the brain imaging equipment that has been recently developed, scientists are looking at brain scans for traces of consciousness. What Noë tells us is that we will more likely find consciousness by looking at the relationship between us and our environment. That is because consciousness only develops through our interaction with the environment. He says that consciousness is something that we do, rather than a thing in someone’s brain. That is why I have made the title of this little essay, “Sensing and understanding consciousness”—sensing and understanding are things that we do, and in fact, they are good candidates for being forms of consciousness.

Noe also frequently says that we are in the world and that the world shows up for us. This is one way he states the antithesis of the Cartesian dilemma that Western Thought has been saddled with since the time of René Descartes. Descartes parlayed his certaintly that he doubted into giving mental phenomena, such as doubting, primary ontological status. For Descartes, the problem was how to explain our less certain knowledge of an “external” world. Many contemporary researchers have somewhat unwittingly substituted the brain for Descartes’ homunculus, Noë argues. The brain is where we look for the explanation of what it is that’s inside of us that accounts for our mental life. Noe thinks, by contrast, that we don’t even need this kind of explanation. No, we are born into a culture and a linguistic system that is mapped out on the world, and as we are educated, we are initiated into this complex, external mapping. As it were, our predecessors, following their predecessors, built a world of practices, and now as we are initiated into these practices, the mapped world shows up, in my words, we sense it and understand it.

When first I began to read Noë’s book, I was quite hopeful that what I was going to find in the final chapters was a positive theory of the nature of this externalized consciousness. With the passing of each succeeding chapter, however, I was—somewhat disappointingly—disabused of this assumption. But I got over my disappointment quickly by realizing that what Noë’s primary goal in writing this book must have been is to put the last nail in the coffin of the brain as little problem-solving agent in the cranium. Like he says, why do we assume that the mind stops at the cranium, as he then proceeds to expose the faulty reasoning that lead us there. He says basically that after all this recent neurophysiology, we still know zip about the relationship between the mind and the body. Maybe if we look at how we develop the relationship between the body and the world that we call mind, we will know a bit more.

Being the closet ontologist that I am—the only A+ I ever got on a philosophy paper was for a paper spelling out my “ontological Weltanschauung” back in 1966 at OSU—I still am asking the question “What is the nature, the being, of consciousness?” Noë has led me to formulate some new directions (for me) in which to go to find an answer to my question. I’m clearer than ever that the mental world cannot be entirely reduced to the physicist’s time-space causal manifold, at least not in the broadly known current state of physics as a discipline. I wonder, for example, if whenever we do understand consciousness better, it will be in terms of more than 4 dimensions. Physicists are now arguing over whether there are 10 or 11 dimensions. Maybe some of those extra ones, welded to the (x,y,z,t) coordinates of space time but tiny, form a mental manifold which we currently cannot sense, but can access indirectly through the understanding emerging from our initiation into language and culture.

Noë gave no hint of this answer, and I wondered if he does think that perception of objects is direct. I couldn’t buy that hypothesis; there are just too many problems with direct realism. It seems to me, as I reflect on my experience of the world, that I always infer to the objects of my perception, in that I predict that they will behave in such and such ways, and continually verify or falsify these predictions with each moment of passing experience. However, these objects do appear to exist in space-time relationships to each other. Now that DOES fascinate me. If this space-time manifold (which Kant and many others thought the knower imposed on experience) does not correlate with some structure in the brain, but rather with some structure in the world, what account can we give for it? I wish I had a hunch about that, but I don’t.

Gluten-free Apple Crisp

Today I needed a good dessert to take to share with my play-reading group, which has two gluten-intolerant members. In addition, my definition of gluten-free rules out wheat, rye, barley, soy and oats. We’ll have our quibbles about this view in another blog entry. I did finally find an apple crisp recipe on the web. This one comes from Scott Adams’ celiac.com website, identified simply as Apple Crisp #2 (Gluten Free). His recipe was for a 9″ x 9″ pan, I modified it for a 9″ x 13″ pan. Other than that modification, this recipe worked well just as written, but I have several food preparation points that I want to make in this blog.

10 large granny smith apples
1 ½ cup gluten-free flour
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/8 cup white sugar
1 ½ teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped pecans
3/4 teaspoon nutmeg (I use whole nutmeg and grind it)
1 ½ stick butter, melted

Mix together dry ingredients and add melted butter; mix well.

Peel and slice apples and put in a 9 x 13 buttered pan. Spread flour mixture evenly over apples and bake at 350 for 45 minutes. Increase heat to 375 and bake about 10 more minutes.

Peeling the apples

By far the most difficult task of making this dessert is peeling, coring and slicing the 10 Granny Smith apples. It is a major undertaking. Here is the technique I have developed for this task. First I peel all 10 apples, using a sharpened standard paring knife (not serrated), leaving the peel on the dimple above and below the core. If you focus your attention, a rhythm begins to develop, and you can do an apple a minute or less.

Quartering and coring the apples

Next, using a large chef’s knife (not serrated), I take each apple and cut it into quarters. Next, I take each quarter and cut out just the core and cut off the 2 little tabs of peel. It sounds time consuming, but there are two reasons why I do it. First, it doesn’t waste nearly as much of the apple as using a apple corer. Second, after a short time, you get into a pattern of cutting one tab of peel, the center core, and the other tab of peel in an “M” shaped stroke. The work goes quickly. I pitch each cored quarter into a large bowl.

Chopping the peeled apple quarers with a chef's knife.

And finally, I cut each quarter into thin slices of equal width. Using the large chef’s knife in my right hand (I’m of course right handed), and using my left hand to secure the apple quarter, I quickly and deftly slice it in 5 or 6 quick chops. I toss these slices periodically into the buttered 9 x 13 baking dish.

Permité moi a tiny rant about serrated knives. I HATE them. You cannot cut a straight slice with a serrated knife, and usually you cut yourself, because these implements of food and hand destruction are short, dangerous, and the WRONG tool for my kitchen. One of my great fears in cooking in someone else’s kitchen (e.g. family, etc.) is that I will encounter ONLY serrated knives. I have been known to bring my own knives on vacation. (Hint, hint.) Early in my career as a homeowner, actually, 35 years ago, I bought a good set of UNserrated knives, and I have used them ever since. They do have to be sharpened, however, almost every time. It takes 10 seconds to do so. Oh, and I’m adding this to my rant. Chop the pecans in this recipe with the 10″ chef’s knife. It will take you forever with a paring knife, and if you use a food processor or a nut grinder, you will end up with nut dust, which does not add the proper texture to your crisp. You’ve seen it on all the food channels a hundred times, just use a rocking motion on those nuts with your chef’s knife, and you will end up with chopped nuts of any size you want, depending on how long you chop. It’s quick, effective, and you don’t have to clean the blender. Just wipe off the knife.

Now the apples are chopped, but you can see from the first picture above that I actually made the streusel mix for the crisp part before I engaged in apple prep. Scott’s recipe calls for gluten-free flour. There are MANY such preparations; some are good for one purpose, some for another. I have taken to mixing my own gluten-free flour from a recipe given to me by my friend, Marsha. It gives good results in many situations and you can make as much or as little as you need. However, you do have to buy three different kinds of alternative flours. Use this combination: 6 parts rice flour, 1 part potato flour, and 1/2 part tapioca flour. Mix thorougly.

Apple crisp ready to go into the oven

Most everyone has made crisp topping, and making this crisp topping goes along pretty much in a standard way. Mix all the dry ingredients well, either stirring a while, or using a wire whisk blender. Melt the butter, and blend. I actually break up the lumps in the brown sugar with my fingers and then mix the dry ingredients and the butter first with a spoon or fork and finally with my fingers. Spread the streusel evenly over the apple slices. The dish will be quite full.

Ready to serve

I would say that timing is fairly crucial for this recipe. This particular mix of gluten-free flour burns easily, so timing and oven settings are critical. Better to err on slightly under 350 rather than over 350. But 45 minutes seems about right. Then turning up the oven for 10 minutes at 375 browns and bubbles the dish nicely. Remove immediately and turn off the oven, but the apples continue to cook after the dish is removed, and the crisp only fills up the dish to half level when cool. Serve and enjoy.

Cooking like Lorene, only gluten and cow’s milk free

Sausage and kraut with Lorene's spinach on the side.

This has been a rough year. Well, just for starters, mom died this January. Lorene was the one person that I knew I could always talk to, from the time I was very young, for about 70 years. One of the things I most valued about mom was that she was a really good cook, and we talked about cooking a lot. So was my dad, my grandmother, and her mother a good cook, but it was my mother’s cooking that made my day. Once I set up housekeeping on my own, never very many days went by without my cooking something “Like mom used to make,” a practice which continues to this day.

Cooking like mom becomes a special challenge when your partner has food sensitivities. Readers of this blog will remember that we are currently living in a gluten-free household. We are also avoiding OD’ing on certain other foods, cow’s milk being one of these. Now milk and flour were staples of my mom’s cooking, so to continue in this cooking tradition, I have to be really inventive and experimental. And once in a while, I do whip up a meal or two that I can brag is “just like mom used to make.” Tonight was such a night, and I am proud to report it one day after what would have been her 96th birthday.

The meal we had tonight was an entree of bratwurst, potatoes and sauerkraut, which honors the German strain in my mom’s cusine. The vegetable, I am calling Lorene’s spinach, simply because I have never seen or tasted anything close to it, except at Lorene’s dining room table. First I will tell you about the spinach recipe, and how I modified it to be gluten-free. Mom took two 1 lb. cans of spinach and dumped them into a skillet covered with bubbling hot butter. In another cast-iron skillet covered with bubbling hot butter, mom tossed several cubed slices of white bread and made toasty croutons. She had boiled a couple of eggs earlier in the day. She cooked the spinach until the liquid was mostly boiled off, and then right before serving, she lightly stirred in the croutons and the chopped eggs, and added salt and pepper.

Kinnikinnick Tapioca Rice Bread

For starters, there are many delicious fat substitutes for butter. This time, I used clarified butter (you can buy it or make it) because almost all of the milk has been skimmed or burned off of it, leaving only a delicious butter flavor. A bigger challenge was what to do about the croutons. I have been using for some time now a delicious brand of gluten-free bread by Kinnikinnick. I have tried both the tapioca sandwich bread and the tapioca Italian bread. I toasted two slices of the bread in peanut oil until it was crispy brown and then diced it. Finally, I didn’t boil the egg earlier today, in fact, I didn’t even get home until time for supper. However, I have found a quick substitute for a hard-boiled egg. Take an egg, break it into a lightly oiled cup, beat it up with a fork, and microwave it on 50% power for about a minute. The egg should be completely set. Do this first before you do the other cooking, then chop it and use it like a boiled egg. Finally, I added one improvement. Along with the salt and pepper, I added a dash of nutmeg, which also goes great with asparagus, too. Oh, yeah, and use frozen spinach rather than canned spinach.

Real close to Lorene’s Spinach. Happy 96 birthday, mom, one day late.

Love, Jim

Gluten-free Tomato Soup

Gluten-free tomato soup

Permit me a bit of a rant to start this blog. After reading the Progresso and Campbell soup labels for ingredients for 10 minutes this morning, and finding wheat or soy in every one of them, I decided that I would make my own gluten-free tomato soup,  better and cheaper than Progresso. And I did! Unfortunately, it took more time that just opening a can and heating. It took about 15 minutes. But the result was worth it, and so I am sharing this easily-modifiable reciple with the world.

1 cup water
1 boullion cube
1 1/2 tbsp. cornstarch (or other gluten free thickening agent)
1/2 tsp. onion powder
1/4 tsp. white pepper
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. sugar (or other sweetening agent)
1/4 c. tomato ketchup
1 16 oz. can of diced tomatoes
several fresh basil leaves, minced (or 1 tsp. basil)
heavy cream

Combine all ingredients in a medium saucepan, stirring until cornstarch and spices are mixed and dissolved. Heat over medium high heat, stirring to prevent “clotting”, until the mixture thickens. Put all into a blender or food processor and run for about a minute on medium speed. There should still be some small pieces for interesting texture. Return to saucepan, heat to almost boiling. Remove from heat and stir in a good dollop of cream for that bisquey look and taste. Serve with gluten-free crackers.

We also had almond butter and tart cherry jam on lightly toasted tapioca bread (Kinnikinnick) and peeled granny smith apple wedges. A good lunch.