First of all, I’d like to apologize for being absolutely terrible at sticking to a schedule. I was planning on being good about getting sh*t done this summer, but alas the best intentions… I’ve been a smidge busy… I graduated … Continue reading
It has been a while since my last post….but summer is here! I’ll try to make my posts more regular as I’ll have more free time than usual. SO, for today’s recipe. I’m absolutely obsessed with the Food … Continue reading
For my and my sister’s birthdays, our parents got us a vegetarian cooking class! We put it on our calendars but when the day finally came, I bailed on her. I had a very long paper to write, so I … Continue reading
This is my new favorite thing. I’ve been making it for dinner about once a week and having the leftovers for lunch until I make it again.
This recipe combines so many of my favorite things: felafel, lentils, thyme, and using our brand new pressure cooker.
The recipe would work just as well on the stove top, but it would take a fair bit longer and require more attention and stirring.
Put the lentils, broth, garlic, thyme, salt, and pepper into a large pot or pressure-cooker. If you’re cooking it on the stove top, follow the cooking instructions for the lentils – you may need to adjust the amount of liquid according to those instructions. For pressure-cooking, cook on high pressure for 7 minutes, then manually release the pressure. Add water and saute for about 5 minutes or until lentils are soft (even slightly overcooked).
Add 1/4 cup of brown rice flour and 1/4 cup breadcrumbs, turn off heat, and stir. The mixture should be very thick (almost a paste) but with some lentils still discernible. Now this is the fun part: Roll the mixture into balls about 2″ in diameter, roll in egg, and then breadcrumbs seasoned with salt, pepper, ad paprika.
Pan fry on medium heat with just enough canola oil to coat the bottom of the pan (no need to deep fry), browning on all sides. When the felafel balls come out of the pan salt them lightly and put on a plate lined with paper towels to drain any excess oil.
My serving suggestions: either eat it in a wrap or pita or on a salad with hummus, lettuce, pickles, and tomato slices.
Or a really quick and yummy sauce to make for this: put a couple egg whites in the blender with a little roasted garlic if you have it. Then, slowly add canola oil until the mixture gets thick. (This usually ends up at about a 1 to 1 egg whites to oil. Then put in a bowl and stir in salt, a fair bit of lemon juice, and small cubes of cucumber.
It’s been almost a year since I started the low-glutamate diet. Since there isn’t much hard data on any of these things (the levels of glutamate in different foods and possibly more importantly the difference in effect and abundance or … Continue reading
I love cauliflower. It really is a magical vegetable. It can be cooked a million different ways, substituted for potatoes, or wheat in some cases, or even dairy (more on that coming soon!). This recipe evolved out of desperation. I needed to make dinner and had very little in the fridge. I had leftover roasted cauliflower and decided to make something with it.
Ingredients:
Directions:
The other day, I was desperately trying to scrounge up something for luck, but there was very little food in the house. I found some leftover cooked quinoa and a couple veggies and condiments so I decided to make veggie burgers.
I roughly chopped
and mix in a large bowl with
Note: If this mixture turns out a little too loose, feel free to add a little all-purpose GF flour to even it out but don’t worry! I’ve actually found that when the mix is a little egg-heavy, even though it’s a bit gloopy going in, the burgers stay together better once they’re cooked.
Rub a little EVOO on a non-stick pan and cook covered on medium heat until brown (about five minutes) and then flip the burgers and leave them uncovered to brown the opposite side. They’re best when they get pretty brown and a little crisp on the sides I think.
My favorite way to spice up a simple recipe like this is with some yummy condiments. My current favorites are guacamole, which I either make myself or (I’m almost ashamed to admit) I buy it from Costco, and Stonewall Kitchen’s Country Ketchup — one of the only ketchups I could find that doesn’t have corn syrup — a big no no for me. This ketchup also tops my charts because it has a little bit of a kick to it, like a cross between ketchup and salsa, making it a perfect match for the guac. If you can eat some kind of bread, buns, or even cheese (especially cheddar) any of those would be great with this. But if you’re like me and can’t, they’re great just the way the are.
ENJOY!
So first of all, I’d like to apologize for it taking so long to get this post up. Blog.com and I weren’t getting along – the site would randomly be unavailable for hours on end and decided to do this in the middle of my writing up the recipe so I lost it all. Hence the switch 🙂
I’ve always loved banana bread but when I had to swear off of everything fro dairy to nuts to gluten I didn’t think I’d be able to have good banana bread again. I set out trying to derive my own recipe after realizing that the recipes floating around the internet couldn’t help me here.
I adapted this recipe from this recipe on mustfollowrecipes.blogspot.com. It provided a way to get rid of dairy, but it took me a few tries to prevent the gluten free flour from ruining the texture.
Here’s what I came up with eventually.
IngredientsPreheat oven to 325. Oil and flour a 9×5 loaf pan. In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, oil, and sugar. Mash the bananas and add them and the vanilla to the mixture. In a separate bowl, use a (dry) whisk to combine the flours, baking soda, and cinnamon. Pour the dry ingredients into the wet and combine. Pour into the prepared loaf pan, bake at 325 for 45 minutes to an hour or until the top is slightly crisp and a toothpick comes out mostly dry (mushy banana pieces are allowed!)
My favorite thing to do with this after it comes out of the oven. First, eat some of it when it’s still warm and gooey. Then, cut the rest into slices, wrap them individually in plastic wrap, put all the wrapped slices in a big Ziploc bag, and freeze them. Then, whenever you’re in a rush and want a comfort-food breakfast, grab a slice, unwrap it, and stick it in the toaster oven. It’s almost as good as it is right out of the oven.
We got a Vitamix a few months ago and have been having so much fun playing with it. One of my favorite recipes is the Portobello Mushroom Soup from SmoothieSisters.com. Since starting my migraine diet, however, I’ve had to modify this recipe. I had to take out the nuts, and I made a few other changes just for fun/convenience.
My favorite part of this recipe is just how damn easy it is! You literally just stick everything in the blender.
It’s really as easy as that. Blend it as you would normally (depends on your exact blender. With the Vitamix this would mean starting on variable speed one, turning it up to 10, and then onto high where it’ll stay until smooth.
Finally, pull out the last mushroom that you set aside. Put it into the blender while the blender is on speed 10 and turn the speed down fairly quickly.
When you’ve done all that you should have something that looks like this. I’ll also give you my trick for the gluten free crackers pictured.
I practically live off of these brown rice tortillas. They freeze well and can be used for anything (more recipes using them to come).
To go along with this soup. I used an extra half a clove of roasted garlic, shmeared it all over the tortilla as evenly as I could, and put it in the toaster oven for a medium toast (until golden brown).
The garlicy flavor went amazingly well with this soup, and the crackers suprisingly seemed to mitigate my longing for the buttery and gluten-filled garlic bread I used to love so much.
I’m sure a similar process would work in the oven, or you could even fry them! Though I should warn you, these particular wraps tend not to get quite as crispy fried as they do in the good ol’ toaster oven!
The flavor of this soup is pretty strong. If you don’t like portobellos it probably won’t be your thing. But I love it! Takes 10 minutes max and is extremely healthy comfort food.
Enjoy!
Recently, I’ve been trying a new diet to combat my chronic migraine. I’m currently off dairy, gluten, corn, soy and fake sweeteners. As you can imagine, this is quite limiting so I’ve had to get creative with my recipes. I found this pancake recipe and I just had to try it.
All it is banana, egg, and berries.
I was quite skeptical, but it actually came out amazingly well! Light and fluffy like a pancake but actually sweeter than a real pancake is so, while in the picture there’s some agave, they really don’t need any toppings.
Here’s the recipe:
It really is that simple.
First mash the banana pretty thoroughly, then mix in the egg and whisk it with a fork (or a real whisk if that’s easier). Finally add your choice of berries (I used some cut up raspberries in mine), and cook in a pan or on the griddle with a little oil as you would with a real pancake.
** I’ve more recently found that putting that same ratio (1:1 bananas:eggs) in the blender instead of mashing works at least as well. In fact, if you leave the blender on for a minute after the ingredients have been incorporated, the eggs get fluffier and the pancakes puff up like real ones when you pour them in the pan. **
These are great and ridiculously healthy. That batch made 5 smallish pancakes at approximately 35 calories each (not too shabby if you ask me).
Note: The pancakes aren’t very good cold and I’m not sure how well they would reheat. I’d recommend eating them right away. They’re also a smidge hard to flip (the more berries you put in, the more they fall apart), which is why it’s easier to make them on the small side.
Somehow Still Scrumptious 