Kim's All Purpose Gluten Free Flour mix

We have been gf for 3 years next month. In that time only once have I purchased an all purpose flour. I tried Bob's Red Mill and I greatly disliked it. It had bean flour in it and I just don't like the flavor of bean flour. Everyone and their dog sells their own special blend of "All Purpose Gluten Free Flour." It costs a small fortune. I found that when I was browsing the internet for recipes and someone listed an all purpose flour mix, I would just click on by because I will not buy that stuff because of the ridiculous price. Then a couple of weeks ago I decided to create my own. No, I have no plans on trying to sell it. Most of them are roughly the same anyway. But I have to say, I was really, really pleased with the way it worked. I have used it as a 1:1 substitution for wheat flour in some of my favorite Christmas treats (recipe to follow) and it turned out EXACTLY like as if I had used wheat flour. That said, I have yet to try this in anything fried and I have not tried it in bread but it did work great in everything I have tried it for. So here is what I did for a very, very small fraction of the cost of buying a prepackaged "All Purpose Mix."

Kim's All Purpose Gluten Free Flour Mix

1/2 cup white rice flour
1/4 cup tapioca flour
1/4 cup potato starch
1/2 tsp xanthan gum

I used the inexpensive flours I get from the Asian market. They are very fine and powdery. I just mix it all up in a Ziploc and store it in there. I hope it works as well for you as it has for me.

Teff Polenta with Grilled Veggies

A while back we discovered teff. Not familiar with teff? You're not alone. When doing a spell check the word isn't even in the spell check dictionary. Here is some info on teff. We read about it's nutritional benefits and we were sold. Without discussing it with me, Ron ordered 25 pounds of the ivory teff flour and 25 pounds of teff seed. He has such faith in me that I would be able to figure out what the heck to do with it all. I just finished my 25 pounds of flour last week. It lasted about 7 or 8 months. I use it in place of brown rice flour in many cases and it is the base of my bread recipe. The seed, well that is another story. We use it in our 9 grain cereal and I have used it to make cornless cornbread (which was awesome and I will post soon) but beyond that I am not sure what to do with it. For lunch today I was craving something light and yet hearty. I was determined to use some of that teff seed. I whipped up something that reminded me of corn polenta but only much, much better. Have you ever had one of those meals that just makes you feel happy? One that makes you feel satisfied, not guilty, not craving, not bloated and just plain...well... happy? Well that is how this dish made me feel. I was able to get Sage (5) to try it and she liked it and came back for more. I couldn't get Rori (3) or Justus (18 months) to even try it. Oh well at least one of them tried and liked it. I loved it. I served it with grilled veggies. I sliced the veggies and grilled them outside, dry, with nothing on them. Once they were done to my liking I drizzled olive oil and a bit of kosher salt on them. They too were fantastic!

Teff Polenta

1-2 T olive oil

3-4 cloves of minced garlic

1 can diced tomatoes

1/2 cup teff seed

3 T minced fresh basil

1 1/2 cup water

salt and pepper to taste

Warm olive oil in medium skillet. Add minced garlic. Cook on medium heat for a minute. Add tomatoes, teff seed, basil, water, salt and pepper. Stir and cook covered for about 15 minutes on medium low. Remove lid, turn off heat and stir. Let it sit for about 10 minutes and as it does it will thicken more. Serve with a drizzle of olive oil on top.

Kale Chips

I'll admit it, I don't like kale. Kale is that stuff that sometimes comes on your plate as a garnish that you quickly remove. Kale is that stuff that you see in salad bars that the salad is sitting on. It is a green, leafy veggie that is a bit tough and I think it is a bit bitter. So when I kept seeing other people blogging about kale chips I quickly clicked on by. But I kept seeing it and everyone raves about it. So, trying to be open minded I decided to give it a whirl. I made Kale "Chips". I am not going to bother to post a picture because to be honest, they are not very pretty and this has been blogged about so much by so many others, what is the point, right? I am adding it here so that I don't forget about it. Do you ever do that? Just completely forget about something that you love??? Anyway, stunningly, these are amazing. Seriously, they are fantastic. The first time I made them my mom and I ate an entire bunch to ourselves. I should point out here that she had the same kale aversion that I had. Then I served them as an appetizer to about 15 people. I made 3 bunches (or are they heads?) and it was all eaten. Now for the most unbelievable thing... all 3 of my very picky kids and my husband all like them (although my husband won't admit that he likes them, he did eat a lot of the plate)!! That is what I should have done: taken a picture of my kids devouring them. Now here is the best part; it's nutritional benefits. This is now a regular in our house. Making it is so easy that it isn't really even a "recipe" but here is what I did.



Kale Chips



1 bunch of kale (washed and dried)

olive oil

kosher salt



Preheat oven to 350. Tear kale up in bite sized pieces. Toss the tough, woody stem. Lay the pieces out on a cookie sheet and do not let them overlap. Lightly sprinkle with olive oil. It would be good to have a sprayer for this but I don't so I just drizzled it. Then, very lightly sprinkle with kosher salt. Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes or until they are crispy. (If they are not crispy and are still a bit pliable, they will be tough~ and then you just have kale) Serve immediately as a substitute for potato chips or the like.

Flax Bread

Here is one to put in the regular rotation. Super high in fiber and omega 3 and 6. It is grain free, sugar free, dairy free and obviously gluten free. I made this last week. I can take no credit for it but I wanted to post it with the changes that I made so that I could repeat it - often! This one comes from Elana's Pantry. Here is the original recipe. Here is what I did.



Flax Bread



1 cups flax meal

1 teaspoons baking soda

1/4 teaspoon xanthan gum

1/2 t salt

1 T agave nectar

3 small eggs, whisked

1/4 cup water

⅓ cup olive oil



Preheat oven to 350. Spray a glass pie plate. Pour in batter and bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool slightly and cut into wedges. Great as a side for dinner.



This was awesome with butter and would probably have been great with some jam. I had to restrain myself from eating the whole pan. (with that much fiber, that would not have been pretty.)

Celiac Disease: It's More Than Just The Trots

Let's say that someone in your family had a history of breast or testicular cancer. Then one morning you are in the shower and you feel a lump in your breast or testicle. What would you do? Would you go see your doctor to be evaluated? Of course you would, right?! You wouldn't sit at home and try to ignore the lump. You wouldn't say, "my breast/teste is too important to me so I don't want to find out what this lump is because that may mean losing it." That could possibly be suicidal, right? Well, Celiac Disease is no different. Untreated Celiac Disease can cause conditions that can be fatal. It should not be ignored. Good nutrition is the basis of health and Celiac Disease prevents good nutrition. In CD, even minute amounts of gluten (which is found in more than just "flour") will destroy your small intestine. It will cause damage even if you are not having symptoms. Your small intestine is where all the vitamins, minerals, protein, etc is absorbed. They are absorbed by tiny little finger like projections called villi. Celiac Disease flattens and destroys those villi making it impossible to absorb the nutrition you need to stay healthy and fight disease. Gluten will eventually cause disease, debility and yes, even death in a person with CD. CD is an auto immune disease. It is not an allergy, a sensitivity or an intolerance. It needs to be taken as seriously as cancer. It is more than just the inconvenience of a few extra trips to the bathroom.

I talked to a woman a couple of weeks ago and she was saying that her friend has a daughter with CD. "But she (the young girl) has so many other health issues that (the mother) just lets it (the CD) go." She said that the diet was just too hard and the child's symptoms weren't that bad so they just don't worry about it. I could not believe what I was hearing. Clearly it isn't completely the mothers fault that there is a Grand Canyon's worth of education missing in this family. That mother has no idea that most, if not all, of the child's other issues are a result of her Celiac Disease and just because she wasn't having diarrhea did not mean that it wasn't an enormous problem. The woman told me that this poor little kid has crippling Rheumatoid Arthritis. It is so bad she can't even walk up stairs. It is heartbreaking to me that the mother doesn't know that RA is also an autoimmune disease and that it was likely triggered by untreated CD. Why didn't the girl's doctor educate the mother? Maybe it was because he didn't know. When my husband was diagnosed they weren't looking for CD so we had no idea what was coming. We were completely unprepared. The day he got that diagnosis the doctor handed him his biopsy results and said "you need to go on a gluten free diet, permanently." That was it. No further education. Done. He just got instructions to follow up for another biopsy in one year. When my friend was diagnosed this March, her GI doctor told her that "at least you can still have Mexican food." (I can't even count the number of ways that this is wrong.) Again, no education, no referral to someone who could educate.

The newest research says that 1 in 100 people have CD and that if you have a blood relative that has CD, you have a 1 in 22 chance of having it. Mark my words here and now: those numbers are inaccurate and the true number is much, much higher. Of all the people I know that have CD, they are not the only one in their family who has it. If you have a family member that has CD you NEED to be screened. Saying that the diet is just too difficult or you don't have the time to do it or that you love your bread or pasta or whatever too much, isn't a good enough reason to not get screened. You need to ask your doctor to have the appropriate blood work done. If he/she refuses then find another doctor. Some doctors still believe that CD is rare. You need to be screened even if you don't have diarrhea. Some people have constipation. Some people have both and some people don't have a single symptom and do not feel sick. That doesn't mean that they don't have the disease or that the gluten that they are ingesting is not damaging their body. It may just mean they don't have symptoms yet. When you do get your blood drawn keep in mind that a negative result does not mean that you don't have CD and are free and clear forever. It just means that you don't have enough antibodies in your blood on that day. That could change in a month or a year or never. The point is, you won't know if you aren't screened. There is a grey area or continuum in CD diagnosis, meaning that there is a period of time from when the disease starts to when antibodies can be detected in your blood. That period of time is different for everyone. So, if you have symptoms or if you have a family member who has it, you should be screened regularly. If you have any autoimmune diseases (Type 1 diabetes, Arthritis, thyroid disorders etc) know that autoimmune diseases tend to come in groups. Meaning, if you have one you are at greater risk to have another.

I wonder about the number of kids that are on the autism spectrum (Aspergers, ADD, ADHD etc). There was a recent study just released about about the incidence of autism. Turns out it is much more prevalent that previously thought. I bring this up because I am absolutely positive that had we not had the diagnosis for my husband; my oldest daughter would be diagnosed with ADHD. When she ingests gluten she has more behavioral symptoms than GI (although she does have those too depending on dose). She gets hyperactive, defiant, belligerent, aggressive, angry, sad and volatile. It is horrible to see and our hearts break for her when this happens. I wonder if we would ever have gotten a diagnosis of CD if it weren't for her daddy's diagnosis since she doesn't present with "typical" symptoms. Prior to eliminating gluten from her diet her only other symptom aside from the behavioral stuff was that she was small.

The previous mentioned friend had both her daughters tested and one was positive. Other than just being small, she had no symptoms. My friend encouraged her family to get tested. They did. Both her father and her only other sibling both have it. Now, I am no statistician but that does not work out to 1 in 22. It's the same in my immediate family. 2 of our 3 kids have it. There are many in my husbands family that likely have it too. His mother and her father, though not diagnosed, in retrospect likely had it too. They both died in nursing homes with atypical Alzheimer dementia with a long history of bowel issues and depression. My husband is one of seven children. One other has an "assumed celiac" diagnosis and others report symptoms but have not yet been screened. That's not 1 in 22 either. That is only a few examples of many I could site.

Here is a list of possible symptoms of CD. Here is a list of conditions that are associated with CD. Here is a list of conditions that are probably associated with CD. Yes, it's a huge list and like I said, some people have no symptoms at all because the damage has just started. Don't wait until you have a laundry list of those ailments and don't wait until you have cancer. If you have a family member who has CD you must be screened and your children must be screened. Screen now and screen often. And pass on the message!


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GF, Grain Free, Doughnut - Muffins

I am on several Celiac message boards where people exchange all sorts of information about CD. A subject that has come up several times is fiber. Apparently a common complaint among people with CD is that they just can't seem to get enough fiber in their diet. I can't say that I understand that. I think others must eat a lot of processed prepackaged premade food. Of course the complaint that always accompanies the fiber complaint is that GF foods cost more. I don't get that either. Ron and I were talking the other day and we were trying to figure out if there are any items that cost us more now that we eat GF. We could only come up with one thing that costs more. Pasta. We like one particular brand - Tinkinyada and it is the most expensive (but it is worth it). Other than that we couldn't come up with a single thing that costs us more. We kill these two "birds" with one stone by buying almost no processed foods. We buy a bunch of different flours/whole grains (and then grind into flour) and we buy them in bulk. Yes they are more expensive than wheat but because I make all our bread, muffins, pizza crusts, cookies, cakes etc etc that more than evens out. And thanks to CD we now eat so much better than we ever did before. We routinely eat grains that I had previously had never heard of but are real powerhouses of nutrition. Along with better nutrition comes more fiber. Lack of fiber is NEVER an issue in my house. In this past week I made two different baked items that were grain free, gluten free and sugar free and oh ya super high in fiber. Yesterday I made these "Doughnut - Muffins." They were so good. We ate 12 in less than a day. Even 2 of the 3 kids liked them. Here is the original recipe. I didn't make many changes but I will post what I did change.

Doughnut - Muffins

1 cup flax meal
1 cup almond meal (I processed 1 cup raw almonds in my coffee grinder)
1 T baking powder
1/4 t salt
1 1/4 t nutmeg
1 t cinnamon
4 packets Truvia (stevia)
2 T agave nectar
2 T honey
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted
4 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup water
.
Topping:
1/4 cup sugar
1 t cinnamon
2 T melted butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin tin.
Mix dry ingredients well (exclude those used for topping). Add beaten eggs, melted butter, water, and sweeteners to the dry mixture. Mix well. Divide batter into 12 muffins. Bake for 20 minutes. Allow to cool slightly. Then (for the kids of course) melt butter in a small bowl. Dip a muffin top into the butter then dip it into the cinnamon sugar bowl. Tastes just like a cinnamon sugar cake doughnut.

New Picture

Life has been too busy to blog much. So for now, for my family, here is a recent pic. The kids love riding on their wiggle cars. Often they will all ride on the same one (always with Justus driving). It is hard to get a good picture of all of them at once. I so wish Justus and Rori had had clothes on. It's just too hot here to bother though.