Eating Gluten-Free Doesn't Mean Sacrificing Great Food!
Many people believe the pico de gallo — a mix of tomatoes, onions, pepper, and cilantro — served in many Mexican restaurants is the only type of salsa there is. Salsa is, quite simply, Spanish for sauce, and these sauces can be as varied as sauces in any other cuisine.
For fish tacos, nothing beats a fruit-based salsa. I love the flavor of this spicy grilled pineapple salsa. It comes together quickly, and can be used for other dishes as well!
My sister, except for a brief period of time, has been vegetarian her whole life. When I took over Thanksgiving duties from my mother — something that made both of us happy — I made it a point to include a main dish that worked with my sister’s dietary restriction. That dish was a riff on spanakopita, a phyllo dough-wrapped spinach dish. I made mine as a casserole, featuring rice.
What I didn’t know at the time was that I was feeding my sister — and me — something that was making us very sick. We are both now gluten free and much healthier for it!
But I do miss that dish. It was a perfect vegetarian (though not vegan) main course, packed with flavor and nutrition. I’ve finally taken the time to recreate the dish, this time using thinly sliced potatoes in place of phyllo. As with that long-ago dish, this one was a hit (and gone the next day!).
Every day, my inbox and Twitter feeds are filled with delicious-looking gluten-free baked goods. While I remain in awe of those who have the time and energy to create these wonderful foods, I also remind myself of this: making these foods is not easy. It’s not foolproof. And, unless you bake a lot, it’s not all that cheap.
Wheat-based breads, cakes, cookies, and more rely upon gluten for elasticity in the dough. Baked goods rise. Gluten is protein that is sticky, elastic, and strong. Unfortunately, gluten-free alternatives require a lot of additional effort to mimic — but never quite achieve — those qualities. Continue reading “There Is No “Easy” in Gluten-Free Baking”
Short answer: Yes.
Longer answer: Yes, however….
Farmers practice something call “crop rotation”. This is just another way of saying that fields are planted with different crops at different times. This is good because it helps add different nutrients to the soil while reducing the chance of bacteria, bugs, weeds, or other problems associated with a single crop to take hold. Variety is good for soil and crops. Continue reading “Are Oats Gluten Free?”
I am a huge fan of really big salads — the kind of salads made famous by Elaine Benes on Seinfeld — but they are often boring. Really boring. Pretty much every menu of every restaurant has the same suite of salads, with some minor variations: Cobb Salad, Caesar Salad, Boring Green Salad, Chinese Chicken Salad, Taco Salad.
Sure, sometimes you get something wild like a Kale Caesar Salad, but when it comes to the world of restaurants, salads are predictable and generally not that exciting. And by not that exciting, I mean not all that flavorful — usually these salads rely upon the salad dressing to carry all the flavor work. This, as we all know, is how a salad goes from reasonably healthy to a calorie bomb in under thirty seconds. Continue reading “Salads, Little or No Lettuce”
I received a text from my sister: I just got glutened! Ugh. I feel so horrible.
And I felt horrible for her. Continue reading “Recovering from an Accidental Glutening”
Even though the gluten-free diet is constantly in the news, there’s a lot of confusion about what it means. Particularly when it comes to determining what foods are and are not gluten free. Actually, it’s pretty simple: foods that contain wheat, barley, or rye (including triticale, which is a hybrid of wheat and rye) are not gluten free.
All other foods are. Continue reading “What Is Gluten Free?”
