Gluten-free Twinkies? Yes, in this Great Cookbook!

Reblogged from Tante Gretchen's Kitchen:

In our  house of sweet tooths, we are still committed to a low-sugar* diet. But I was thrilled to find the cookbook Easy Gluten-Free Baking by Elizabeth Barbone at the bookstore. After looking through the photos and reading about her commitment to making GF taste like wheat, I was hooked. At home, we have had very good results with the brownies and the classic chocolate chip cookies, and are still trying other recipes.

Read more… 206 more words

This is a re-post from 2009, but still a good review of this baking book. We've fallen off the "low-sugar" wagon lately, but the advice still holds!

Transitioning to Gluten-Free Eating

Very tasty and sweet carrot muffins, from the Gluten Free Baking Book

There are countless blogs and websites dedicated to living gluten-free, so I won’t presume to re-invent the wheel here. But I know how daunting the idea can be, and thought I’d give it a try for those of you who may be considering it. I will say this, DO NOT try to do this halfway – if one person needs the diet, then everybody can do it, too. Yes, someone will balk, but it is an act of love for fathers and siblings to join in the effort. It won’t kill them, and they are learning an important lesson in family life. It will also make your life a lot simpler if you don’t have to juggle two food families!

So … first … clean out your cupboards. And I mean, be ruthless. It will be easy to stop the first time you have to toss a brand new bag of flour or entire box of cereal into the garbage, but you have to do it.  Think of it as a great way to help out  your local food pantry.

Second … get thee to a library and check-out two or three gluten-free cookbooks.  I recommend the newer ones over the older ones because the recipes are more realistic for parents today.  Do this BEFORE going to the grocery store!  When you peruse these books, you’ll have a better idea of what ingredients you will need for basic meals and baking, and get a much-needed vocabulary lesson (quinoa, anyone?)

Third … make a list of your 7-10 most common breakfasts, lunches and dinners, then list the GF/CF substitions you can easily make. Breakfast and lunch sandwiches will probably be the most difficult.  Here are some quick changes that won’t affect your family too much:

• Pasta – replace the regular varieties with Ancient Harvest quinoa (in a turqoise box) or rice pasta. We have both of these in the natural foods aisle of the affordable, large grocery store in town. They are pretty close to the “real” thing, but do read the cooking instructions carefully since both take much less time to boil.
• Cereal – almost ALL major brand breakfast cereals have wheat or wheat gluten in them, so just walk right by … oatmeal is a good option if the kids will eat it. If you are dealing with celiac, make sure to buy a brand that is certified that it’s not cross-contaminated. Full Circle brand toasted oats do not have wheat listed as an ingredient, so if you are non-celiac you may be able to eat these.  Full Circle is reasonably priced, though I do stock up when there is a sale. The Tightwad Gazette advice on breakfast is actually the best I can give for GF lifestyles: make yours from scratch. The Gluten-Free Baking Book has lots of great pancake and muffin recipes. We’ve made up the dry ingredients in zip bags ahead of time so it’s easier to whip them up quick in the morning or when you have breakfast for supper. If you buy the boxed mixes from the store for more than a week, you will go broke.
• Breads – here’s the bad news: there are almost no good substitutions for regular, “store-bought” white or wheat bread, so we basically quit eating sandwiches. (Yes, it was tough, but we got over it.) For toast we made the white bread from the Gluten Free Baking Book, which is also good for French toast if you slice it thick enough. The one GF bread product that I considered as good as “regular” would be Food for Life’s rice English muffins. They are in the freezer section at the store. They are also expensive, so again I stocked up when they were on sale. Our daughter loves putting them in the toaster oven with cheese and meat, and this became a sack lunch staple since they taste decent cold, too. (We don’t really like toaster ovens, but rice bread seems to do better with them because slices tend to bend over in a regular toaster and get stuck, sometimes making fire.)
• Fruit – add more. Most of us are so used to filling our meals with carbs, we forget that fruit is better for us, and filling, too. This has nothing to do with GF, but get the kind with real fruit juice and skip the syrup.

So, that’s all for now.  The single biggest factor in making a successful transition to GF is  COMMITMENT. And if I can do it, trust me, you can, too. Like I said, if your child responds well, it will be more than worth it!

Adele’s Chocolates (and Other Sweet Things) cont’d

A continuation of our story about Adele and life in her chocolate shop. So far, Adele has learned her daughter is planning a visit from California, but is confused because she hasn’t heard from Julie.  And the news came from her gossipy shop helper, Margie, whose brother ran into Julie at a restaurant when he was on a sales trip.

“Well, I suppose that means there is a letter in the mailbox. She’s pretty good about writing about her plans, if she does any planning, that is.”
“Do you want me to run down to the post office right now, Mrs. Sweet?”
“No, Margie, I’ll walk down at the usual time. It doesn’t do any good to go earlier. You know Big Tom. Eleven o‘clock and not one minute sooner.”
Margie already had her coat off, apron on, and hair tucked up under her hair net. Adele appreciated that she didn’t just talk fast, she also worked fast.
“Any special orders today?”
“No.”
“That’s too bad. Seems like we’ve been pretty slow since Valentine‘s.”
“Yes, we have.” Adele sighed. Valentine’s Day had been busy. A lot of young men were buying but they weren’t exactly big spenders, maybe because there weren’t nearly enough odd jobs for all of them. The magazines had been reporting that the population in the United States, was going up quickly. They even had a name for the children, “baby boomers.” Adele couldn’t help but hope all those future romances might help business. Today, though, she was happy to make a few sales and cover her costs, which now, unfortunately, included a new rug for the front of the store.
“Go ahead and get started checking the current stock, and the supplies, as usual. I’m going out to sweep the front step.”
Adele grabbed her coat again from the rack, not in too big a hurry to go back out into the wind, but she was a stickler for neatness. A dirty store meant dirty chocolate, and that would never do. And the first part of her business her customers saw was the front stoop, the wide display windows and the red and white awnings now flapping hard in the breeze. So it would look as perfect as she could manage.

- – -
As predicted, there was a letter from Julie in the mail. Adele was too curious to wait until she got back to the shop, so she stood by the service counter and opened the envelope.
“So how’s she doing?” Big Tom, the postmaster, knew everything that went on in town, of course. Three hundred mail boxes, three hundred households. Not too difficult to keep up, particularly since he’d grown up in an apartment at the back of Charlie’s Market, and had seen the same families and business proprietors walking in and out the post office door every day for 30 years.
“Oh, I’m sure she’s doing fine. As soon as I read her letter, I will let you know.” She liked Tom. He had nearly been her son-in-law, but then Julie met Jim and moved to California. Tom later married Margie, but still asked about Julie every time he saw the familiar postmark.

Dear Mother,
Big news. Will tell you everything when I get home Saturday. Republic flight 145.
Love, Jules

It didn’t take Adele long to read the letter, scribbled onto a tiny note card. It was practically a telegram. Well, that was interesting, Adele thought, and not helpful in any way. “So what‘s the good word?”
“She’s coming for a visit.”
“Really? What’s the occasion?”
“I have no idea. She says she has big news.”
“Another baby?”
She looked at him with pursed lips. Tom had five kids, but Julie hadn’t been able to have any more children after Frances was born. Nobody really knew about that, and even though Tom was just asking the normal question, it wasn‘t any of his business.
“I don’t think so. In fact, she didn’t even mention Frankie.”
“Well, if he comes, you know it’ll be noisy in Grandma’s house, won’t it? That boy’s a pistol if I ever saw one.”
Adele nodded, and gathered up the rest of the mail and moved toward the door. Tomorrow was Saturday and she had a lot to do to get ready for company.
“I’ll tell Tommy,” Tom called to her as the heavy glass door closed behind her. “He and Frankie have a blast together.”
She hurried across the street toward the shop. The weather was no longer a concern. She had to make a shopping list, freshen up the guest room and prepare Frankie’s favorite red Jello and bananas (with colored marshmallows). For once she hoped she and Margie wouldn’t be busy so she could go home at noon and get things ready. She also needed Margie to run the shop the next day so she could drive to the Des Moines airport.
“Any mail?” Margie looked up from counting chocolate behind the counter.
“Yes, there was a letter from Julie.”
“And?”
“And, she is coming.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? Oh my goodness, Mrs. Sweet. That means you are going to busy.”
“That’s what Tom said. Margie, can you take care of the shop this afternoon and tomorrow for awhile? I have many things to do at home today, and have to go to the airport tomorrow afternoon.”
“I certainly can.”
“Thank you.”
“Did she say why she was coming? This is an odd time of year, isn’t it? Is she bringing Frankie?”
“She didn’t say. She did mention ‘big news’ in her letter, but I have no idea what that could be about.”
“Maybe it had something to do with the people she was with when Jim saw her.”
“Maybe. But I don’t suppose we’ll know any of that until she gets here.” Adele dropped the stack of mail, mostly bills, onto the desk and exchanged her coat for an apron. “In the meantime, we’d better get to work. Twelve o’clock will be here before we know it.”

(end of chapter 1)

Intelligent Design Dish Cloth Pattern

http://www.mielkesfarm.com/dishclth.htm

Adele’s Chocolates (and Other Sweet Things)

This is a bit of a risk, I guess. I’ve started a story, and if you are so inclined, feel free to read it and tell me if you’d like to read more. Staying motivated is always a writer’s challenge, particularly on a long project,  so if you want more let me know and I’ll see if I can’t oblige!

Adele’s Chocolates (and Other Sweet Things)

By

Gretchen Heim Olson

Adele pushed open the heavy glass door of the shop, glad to be out of the wind. It was shaping up to be a warm day, finally, after a long winter, but the blast that followed her right up to the threshold still blew through her sleeves and under her coat and gave her the shivers. She pushed the door shut quickly behind her, and as the bell jingled, she felt instantly warm in the stillness.
She wiped her boots hard against the rug, noticing as she did that the letters “o” and “m” were starting to fade where customers had been doing the same thing for quite a few years now. She sighed. It would need to be replaced, somehow, and while nobody really needed to read the word “welcome” she was quite sure it wouldn’t do to have everyone tracking in all over the wood floors year around. That was part of the charm of the shop, and Adele understood that the way people felt when they came in was what kept them coming back, and heaven knew she needed every single customer since George died. There would be none of that newfangled linoleum, no matter what everyone told her.
She looked up toward the candy counter and thought again how odd it seemed to enter in the mornings and not smell chocolate. The rest of the day the scent was constant, and had sunk into every fiber of her clothing by the time she got home at night, but when she first stepped in the door, all she could detect was the faint odor of Murphy’s oil soap from the nightly scrubbing. She suspected it all went straight up through the ceiling to the apartment upstairs but she couldn’t be sure since the tenants hadn’t invited her up in awhile. That was all right. George had been the one to handle the rent, and she wasn’t inclined to go on her own, at least not yet.
She did her customary look around, making sure the teenagers in charge of cleaning before closing the night before actually did the job right. She liked the kids well enough, but she still had to keep an eye on them. If the right boy or girl came in right before she locked up, inevitably she would spot fingerprints still on the class counters or a pile of dirt behind the shelf of tins. Not that she ever yelled at them. She remembered. She met George in this very place. He was 16 and not too happy stuck in the back of the shop wearing an apron, and even more unhappy when he had to come out front to help some old lady with her young daughter. Well, that changed and now Adele was the one wearing the apron and desperately missing her George when these thoughts came unbidden.
She shook them off and after hanging up her coat, sat down at the desk in the back office nook and opened the ledger. This was her time to do the detail work, before Margaret came in to help start the chocolates for the day. It was nice to just immerse herself in the challenge of the numbers, and making those columns add up, though she always felt a little down when she finished because the expenses were adding up faster than the income. She was sure the national economy had something to do with it, and people had become afraid to spend with the threat of war. Her neighbors even had an underground shelter built in the backyard! But she was content with a few canned peaches in the basement pantry. Let the politicians sort it out, she thought. She was just a widow with a struggling chocolate shop in a little village. Fortunately, even when life was tough, ladies still wanted sweets, and she could count on that no matter what Walter Cronkite reported on the evening news.
She closed the ledger books just as she heard the bells signaling Margaret’s arrival, and the end of the quiet, at least until five o’clock this afternoon. As long as Adele had known her, Margie had been a chatterbox, and that was going back a long time to when Adele was her babysitter.
“I’m here! Adele, are you hiding back there again!” Adele heard the footstomps coming from the front of the store.
“Yes, Margaret, I’m at my desk, as always.”
“Oh, good!” She clapped her gloved hands together as she stepped into the back room. “I just have to tell you something!”
Margaret always had something to tell, and unlike some people who always talked about themselves, and had to make sure the conversation kept turning that way, her stories were always about someone else. That made her a gossip, Adele knew, but it did come in handy occasionally.
“And what is the big news today?”
“Julie is coming from California!”
“She is? Well, that’s funny. She never told me.”
“Oh, that doesn’t surprise me. You know Julie.” Margie had known Julie almost since a very long time, at least since kindergarten when they became fast friends after discovering they had the same birthday.
“Yes, I know Julie, and you are right. How did you find out?”
“Well, that’s another story altogether.” She took a breath just long enough to hang up her coat on the rack, then turned around. “ It was such a coincidence. Jim was having lunch at a restaurant with the other salesmen and in she walked! He knew she lived in the area, but didn’t really think much of it until her saw her.”
“What was she doing at lunch in the middle of the day?” Adele was certainly curious. Only rich, bridge-playing women went out to lunch, and Julie was neither of those.
“Well, I don’t know. Jim said she was with another woman and a man, and came right over when she saw him. That’s when she said they were planning a trip.”
“Hmmm. We’ll see. Sometimes she just gets homesick and you know men. Jim probably just thought she had made plans when she just hoping and dreaming.”
“Not this time, Mrs. Nelson! She said they had plane tickets and everything.”