Super Bowl Menu

Let’s see…the Super Bowl is coming up. Another excuse for me to do some cooking. This year, I’m thinking a smorgasboard of dips would be fun. Dips and football just go together, so why not go crazy with it? Oh, and fried things. Of course!

Here’s what I’ve got so far:

• The NYT ran these two great cheese dips that look awesome, here and here
• The black-eyed pea patties that I’m still obsessed with, including their red pepper-habanero dip
• Some kind of crab dip
• My flax crackers standby (these are really, really good gluten-free crackers, by the way, with TONS of fiber)
• Veggie platter
• Homemade potato or beet chips if I get ambitious
• A “dip”-style dessert, like say, chocolate or butterscotch pot de creme

Go Saints!

In the meantime, I’m hosting a little Danish cooking party at my house this morning. We’re making sausage (medisterpoelse), snow pudding, and ableskivver. Rather, I should say, my guests are making these things! I’m just going to make some scrambled eggs. Mmm!

Viva la France!

I don’t know how to break this news, so I’ll just bust out with it: I’M GOING TO FRANCE!!!

That is right, my sweets! Moi got an invitation to visit a fabulous friend and her famille in the Aquitaine region of France this summer. Moi can hardly wait!!! (And, if I had a dollar for every time someone has said to me: “You’ve never been to Europe?!” It’s like I’m a unicorn. For the record, I have been to England, but never to le Continent.) Formidable!

I was telling another friend of mine that for some reason, I never really imagined myself visiting France. I don’t know why. It seems like something other people do, but not me. I have been studying French for almost a year now and I also took it in college, but it just never occurred to me that I could actually go there. Now, I can’t believe how idiotic I am. Of course I should go there! What a great motivator it’s been for my studies. And who cares about remodeling the basement anyway?

Honestly, now I’m thinking about my NEXT trip to France!

But back to reality.

This all came about because I was telling the house-friend of mine that another friend of mine had just celebrated her fortieth birthday with a big, all-gal, Phenomenal Forty party. While I was at said party, I imagined what I would do for my fortieth birthday, coming up in May. The idea of a party was just not sparkly for me. What I really wanted to do was travel. Traveling is something I haven’t done a whole lot of, and something I really want to do a whole lot of. My friend heard this and said something like, “Well, you could join me at my house in southwestern France this summer…” To which I coughed up a polite reply, in complete shock. I subsequently went home and obsessed for 72 straight hours, wondering if my friend could possibly have been serious! It seemed PREPOSTEROUS that anyone would invite me to their house in France. But maybe these are the kinds of things that happen to you when you turn 40!

Needless to say, I pulled my head out and accepted the invitation.

I now have a stack of books to prepare for the trip, including a whole book on where to eat in Paris (I’m not even sure I’ll go to Paris, but I just had to have this book!) And I’m listening to my Pimsleur language tapes like a French maniac (Ou est les toilettes?) I can’t believe that come July, I’m going to be hanging out with my pal, sipping wine on her terrace.

I keep thinking that something awful is going to happen, like I don’t know, I’ll have a stroke by then and won’t be able to go. Deep breaths. POSITIVE THOUGHTS!

How do you say pinch me in French?! Ouiiiiiiiiiii!!!

Cheese Bar! Steve’s Cheese on the Eastside!

Life-changing news has come my way this evening: Steve’s Cheese is moving to the eastside! Cheese Bar is the name of the new place and it’ll be located at SE Belmont and 60th. LUCKY LUCKY LUCKY!!!

Ten dairy pounds coming soon to hips near me.

Chocolate Chip Hazelnut Cookies

This is actually a master recipe for a light, biscotti-like cookie. It’s not as dry as biscotti, but still goes really well with coffee or tea. The variations you could make with these are endless. I have included some suggestions/substitutions after the recipe.

You could likely make these without the flour combo I use here and just go with 1 3/4 cups of Bob’s all-purpose gluten-free flour. If you try that, let me know how it turns out.

Gluten-free Chocolate Chip Hazelnut Cookies

3/4 c white rice flour

1/2 c hazelnut flour

1/4 sorgum flour

1/4 c cornstarch

1 tsp xanthan gum

2 tsp baking powder

zest of one orange

1/2 c butter

1 c sugar

1 tsp almond extract

1 egg

1 c chocolate chips

1/2 c toasted hazelnuts, skins rubbed off

Makes about 3 dozen

1. Preheat the oven to 325F.
2. Mix all the zest and dry ingredients together, except for the chips and hazelnuts.
3. Mix all the wet ingredients together.
4. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.
5. Stir in the chocolate chips and hazelnuts.
6. Spread the mix onto an ungreased baking sheet to form a biscotti-like loaf, approximately a 10″x6″ rectangle. It should be no taller than one inch.
7. Bake in the oven for 24 minutes, until the edges are brown.
8. Remove and let cool for a few minutes.
9. Cut into 1″ x 1″ squares or 1″ x 2″ rectangles, depending on your mood.
10. Let cool completely.

Ideas for other cookies based on this recipe:

• Macadamia nuts and white chocolate chips
• Dried cherries and walnuts
• Pistachios and craisins
• Pecans and lemon zest
• You get the idea. For some of your variations, swap out the almond extract for vanilla.

These are super good!

Bean Threads Taste Good!

Waaaaaay back in August, my sister gave me several chicken feet from her slaughtered chickens. I had them in the freezer all this time and finally, since it was now 2010, I figured I needed to do something with them. I made a stock and put it in the freezer, figuring it would be another several months before I actually used it.

Lucky for me, however, The Man got inspired. Part of our resolution this year is to eat more healthy (it’s like a broken record that just replays these same words every January). He made one of Nina Simonds’ super-tasty Chinese soups with the chicken feet stock and these AWESOME Chinese bean thread noodles that he found at the Asian market up the street. Made from mung beans and potato starch, they are nicely slippery and authentically Asian noodle-y, without being made from rice. Yea!!!

One caveat before you go slurping up all this goodness. Pass the Beano, if you know what I mean!

New Year’s Black Eyed Peas

If you’re looking for some good black eyed peas recipes to bring on the good luck for 2010, I tried these and they are super good, and healthy! Who knew a cup of black eyed peas only has 200 calories? Nevermind that they’re deep fried. Snacky-snacky!

• Black Eyed Pea Fritters with Hot Pepper Relish

New Year’s Breakfast

We made an awesome breakfast this morning and that got me to thinking that there aren’t many fancy breakfast occasions. The only ones I can think of are Christmas and New Year’s, and maybe Easter. I think we need more because there are so many fab things to make for breakfast.

Our New's Year's Day Breaky-poo

The Man got a waffle maker for Christmas this year from my dad. We busted it out this morning for its maiden voyage.

Gluten-free waffle in situ

I was going to refer you over to Oster’s site for the recipe, but since they do such a poor job explaining how to actually make this recipe (one assumed, incorrectly, that was the whole point of recipes), I am printing it in its entirety here. They can sue or thank me. I modified this for gluten-freedom and some other finer points learned by doing.

Light N’ Crisp Gluten-free Waffles

2 egg yolks

2 cups milk

2 cups Bob’s all-purpose gluten-free flour

1 T baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/3 cup oil

2 eggs whites, stiffly beaten

Makes five full-sized waffles.

Preheat the waffle maker to the highest setting. Put all ingredients, except egg whites, in a large mixing blowl. Beat on low until moistened. Increase to medium, mix until smooth. By hand, gently fold in beaten egg whites. Pour 3/4 cup batter over the hot waffle grid. Close the waffle maker and bake for 12 minutes.

You can freeze these apparently, too. I’m going to try that since these made quite a bit.

Why do perfect food items such as this make me so very happy?

Happy New Year!

And I say good riddance to 2009 as well.

Here’s what I’ll be doing tonight:

Homemade Hooches

My sister is a fellow homemade hoochaholic. Over the holiday we swapped, so now I have–in order of preference: strawberry (hers), quince (mine), pomegranate (hers), and apricot (mine). Yum!

And a belated Merry Christmas to all from Mr. Pickle!

I look ridiculous, therefore it must be a holiday.

Gluten-free Buche de Noel

This holiday season The Man and I decided to learn more about other holiday (food) traditions other than our own. The reason for this is that we have never once, either of us, spent Christmas away from family. We are always visiting a family, either his or mine. Not that I’m complaining. That’s great. But. It hasn’t given us a chance to develop many traditions of our own. I think if we had kids, this might be different. But we just have Mr. Pickle, our canine-kid.

So far this year, we learned a little about Hanukkah and made some traditional Hanukkah foods. That was fun and I would definitely do that again next year.

This weekend, we are celebrating Yule, which is more a northern European/German thing so far as I can tell. We have celebrated Yule for many years, but this year I had an obsession with making a buche de noel, so I decided that I would incorporate that into Yule night (tonight!)

Buche de noel is a traditional Christmas cake served in many French-speaking countries, as well as England. The cake is a rolled and filled sponge cake in the shape of a yule log. So that fits with my love of the French language and all things French, tres bien.

I ended up incorporating a couple of different recipes and modifying from there. I used Jacques Pepin’s cake as the base, Nick Malgieri’s coffee buttercream filling, and this ganache from Epicurious. I can say that all are very good, but I broke the filling and had to rescue it with copious amounts of powdered sugar. Not sure what went wrong there.

Lessons learned:

• Next year, I’m going to use the Epicurious cake recipe as well as their ganache recipe because the cake really does need to be chocolate/dark brown to get the color contrast of the cake against the filling ala the rolled “tree rings”. And their recipe is already gluten-free, so no modifications needed.
• This would be something fun to do with kids if one has a good attitude and lots of patience (sadly, that does not describe me).
• I love coffee buttercream filling a little too much.

People go all out on these things. But by December 20th, I’m already pretty holiday-crashed and can’t imagine doing meringue mushrooms and marzipan holly fru-frus on my buche. It was all I could do to complete the two-day process just to make the thing. I did put some powdered sugar (snow), pumpkin seeds (moss), and craisins (holly berries) on my buche, but that was pretty easy. I have to say I love the idea of moss and fungus on my cake. That seems fun and somehow…French. What a strange sense of humor.

This cake is RIDICULOUSLY rich and I’m so grateful I can dump it off at work tomorrow so The Man and I won’t have to eat it all. WAY too many calories!

Here it is before I frosted it. It's a bit hard to see the "ring" effect of the rolled center.

And after adding the forest accoutrements:

Happy Yule! Happy Chocolate Log!

Fun with Calories

A weird thing happened to me last summer. I don’t remember how exactly this occurred, it might have had something to do with peanut butter, but I got very interested in calories. I remember learning that two tablespoons of peanut butter has 200 calories in it. I ate several tablespoons of peanut butter on an almost daily basis. A little bit of math (ow, hard!) and light bulbs started going off all over my body, right next to all those flabby spots.

I have been writing down everything I eat off and on for about eight years. It’s part of the craziness of trying to figure out what foods bother me. For reasons I still don’t quite understand–besides maybe that I’m compulsive, interested in details, puzzles, etc–I started writing down in my food journal the calories, approximate calories anyway, of everything I ate. It was more an experiment than anything else, a chance to learn something more about food. I was genuinely curious about calories. They were fascinating! Who knew?

In a few months, I lost ten pounds (don’t worry, I have plenty to spare). I wasn’t even trying, but I had this new awareness now about how many calories were in things, how many calories typically suited me per day, and how many calories seemed appropriate for me per meal. It was really a strange experience. Kind of like, why didn’t I learn this in school? I have been pretty anti-diet my whole life. I have always believed in moderation. But without knowing how many calories are in things, I now see in hindsight how often I ingested large amounts of needless calories. No wonder I was getting so flabby.

Then, I started writing down how many calories I burned when I exercised. This was also fascinating. I would add up my total calories ingested and substract those burned from exercise for my total calorie count per day. Wow! Fun! Seriously. I have no idea how this became fun because just writing about it now sounds c-r-a-z-y. And now I’m totally into it! I do it regularly and I just get a kick out of it. And I rarely eat peanut butter anymore.

I have learned so much! I now know that a pound of flab flesh is equal to 3400 calories. When I walk for 40 minutes during lunch at work, I burn about 150 calories. When I swim, more like 400! If I eat a big lunch, then I have a lighter dinner. I eat one piece of cheese instead of two, etc. I just know now how to better gauge what I’m eating and to be a lot more mindful about indulgences, trying to savor things instead of trying to eat just to fill up my hunger. A friend of mine gave me the book French Women Don’t Get Fat around this same time and I really enjoyed it.

I can almost feel grateful now for being a celiac. I see that because I have this curse, I do eat a lot more healthy than I otherwise would. I still avoid grains for the most part because I suspect that they may contribute to the rash and arthritis (this is an ongoing experiment). But when I do have grains, I rely on substitutes like bean flour, hazelnut flour, and buckwheat flour. I rarely have moments anymore where I lapse into my pity party about not being a normal eater. Can I get a hallelujah, people?

So, this morning I made an updated version of my biscuit recipe. By substituting the cup of cream with a cup of buttermilk, I brought the calories down from 225 per biscuit to 160 per biscuit. Somehow this just feels really good. Solving problems! Love it!

This whole thing has made me think a lot more creatively about holiday baking as well. I’m so grateful there are so many bloggers out there creating healthy gluten-free things. It’s really a great time to be a celiac, healthy-eater, diabetic, whatever. We have so many options now.

With that said, I’m off to experiment with Karina’s buckwheat thumbprints to freeze for Christmas.