Random Recipes

Last night I made chicken picatta for dinner. I did not take a photo of it, so you'll have to use your imagination. But imagine it was hot and tender and a bit lemony, and you'll have the gist of it.

I used a random recipe I found online from Giada De Laurentiis. It was good, very good. I will likely make it again.

Lately I have been making a lot of random recipes. Sometimes they're recipes I come across on Pinterest or on my favorite food blogs. Other times they're recipes I seek out because I'm looking to use certain ingredients—the chicken breasts in the freezer, as was the case last night, or some leftover bacon, or produce from our weekly CSA delivery that I don't normally cook with.

Some of the recipes I've tried recently include mashed potatoes and turnips with greens; grilled garlic scapes (yum); a slaw with fennel, cabbage, and kohlrabi from a weekly CSA email; a gluten-free version of strawberries and cream biscuits (a failure once they baked, though as you can see above they were pretty pre-oven; but the original version from Smitten Kitchen looks divine so please make them for me!); black bean sweet potato flautas (below); cheese papusas; huevos rancheros; and beef with snow peas from The Pioneer Woman. Most of these recipes were good. Most of these recipes I'll make again.

Along with those random recipes I've been making recently, though, I've also been relying on a couple of cookbooks.
The first is Gluten-Free Girl Every Day by Shauna James Ahern. She writes my favorite gluten-free cooking blog, which I reference frequently here, and also wrote the first gf cookbook I ever purchased. That first book, Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef, tells a lovely story and includes some delicious albeit rather aspirational recipes—most aren't the kind you'd have the time or ingredients to make on an the typical night. (Well, maybe you do, but I sure don't.) That's why I picked up the new book. Because it's made—as the title says—for everyday cooking.

One of the things I like best about the new cookbook is that it doesn't just give you recipes. It tells the story behind them and includes the hints and tips and tricks that make cooking easy and enjoyable for the Aherns. I appreciate knowing what substitutions I can make or how I can modify a recipe if, say, I don't want to include dairy.

So far from the new cookbook I've made waffles (though not the fried chicken that accompanies them—cross your fingers I have time for that soon!), the browned butter peach buckle (above), a chicken recipe that involves lemon and raisins and pistachios called "everyday chicken," and a nice loaf of bread (which I'll share with you someday).

I've also been cooking—a lot—from PrairiErth Farm Cookbook by Katie Bishop. This one has a special place on my countertop because it's actually the cookbook written and published by PrairiErth Farm, which is where we get our wonderful fresh organic produce each week.

The recipes are divided up by type of produce, which makes it easy to find something to make with our loot. If I want to make something with leeks or fennel or kale, I just flip to that section of the cookbook. A lot of the recipes come straight from Katie; others are from other CSA members. I have yet to try a recipe I didn't like. So far this year we've had roasted beets with rosemary, scalloped potatoes with fennel, and garlic scapes hummus (below).

As I write this, I'm pretty sure I've made more than just those few recipes, but now I need to get out the cookbook and check. You should probably just go order a copy and try them out for yourself anyway.

So there you have it. A random roundup of some of the many recipes we've tried recently. I welcome any suggestions you might have on other recipes I should add to my "to try" list.

Failure

I love reading food blogs. If time allowed, I'd spend hours gazing at them. All those striking photos of decadent cakes, divine dinners, and everything in between are like porn for food lovers.

My cooking and baking life is nothing like those food blogs. Sometimes, when I have a success with a recipe I try, I think I may be getting there. But you know what? I'm not even close.

In fact, I've determined recently that my success ratio in the kitchen is about 3:1. For every three tries that work out beautifully (or at least reasonably well), I have one failure. Usually an epic failure.

(Here's one—some flourless banana muffins, a popular recipe on Pinterest. They were the most hideous things I ever made and didn't taste all that great either. They actually looked a lot worse than this in real life.)

The failures happen for any number of reasons. Sometimes I just pick a dud of a recipe that is rather lackluster even when I follow the instruction to a T. But often it's user error. I don't quite have the right ingredients so I leave something out intentionally. Or I just plain forget something that was vital to the recipe's success. Sometimes I fail to measure things out precisely enough. Or I get distracted by Little Man and my timing is off. There are lots of reasons I fail and fail often in the kitchen, and I'm realistic about my abilities being middling at best.

Case in point: Recently I made homemade graham crackers for Little Man. I tackled it, as I do with most baking these days, once he went down for a nap, excited that he'd have fresh, warm graham crackers for his afternoon snack. Only I decided to throw in a load of laundry and handle a few other minor household to-dos before I started in on the recipe, and alas, as he's wont to do anytime I'm baking, he woke up earlier than usual from his nap, while the just-mixed dough was still sitting on the counter.

By the time I was able to get back to rolling it out, the dough was incredibly sticky and hard to work with, so I wasn't able to roll the crackers as thin as I should have. Needless to say, the end result wasn't all that fantastic. Fail.

Fortunately, I followed up that failure with a couple of successes. Some decadent chocolate-caramel-shortbread bars I'll share with you soon, the crepes I posted recently, and a Father's Day sponge cake that also will make an appearance here before long.

That was three, so I was bound for another failure. And this one was a doozy, as it resulted in the complete ruination of dinner. Usually my failures are of the "well, it's not the best but it's edible" variety, but this one was just plain bad. And it was pizza, by gosh. How does one mess up pizza that bad?

I'm not sure what happened, but I knew something was off with the crust after it rose (very little) for an hour and fell apart when I picked it up. I thought it was maybe just a little dry but, on the bright side, that meant it wouldn't stick so much when I rolled it out. So I proceeded to make the crusts and then load the pies with toppings and bake them some more. The end result looked good, but it was so chewy and hard we couldn't even really eat the pizza.

(I forced myself to eat some so as not to waste all that food, Little Man devoured his toppings but left the crust alone, and Conservative Hubby had to scrounge around for something edible to substitute for dinner.)

Big disappointment. Big. Huge.

Now I have to figure out how I'm going to redeem myself.

Buckwheat Crepes

My first—and for the longest time only—experience with crepes came when My Parents would occasionally throw parties for their friends. Everyone would get dressed up and have cocktails and eat all sorts of tasty treats. I never attended these parties, mind you. But I'd enjoy the leftovers, and my favorite leftovers were the crepes My Mom would make on her old crepe maker (yes, there is such a thing), fill with ice cream, freeze, and serve with homemade hot fudge sauce. Heavenly. And, I thought, something only to be bothered with for very special occasions.

It wasn't until I was in college that I realized crepes weren't reserved only for the sweet—and that some of the best crepes are actually the savory ones. (That's also when I learned how to actually pronounce crepe, so thanks, Little Diplomat!)

Yet until today I never even considered the possibility of actually making crepes myself—at least, not without My Mom's handy crepe maker. And I never in a million years thought that making crepes could be so easy.

Then I stumbled across a recipe for buckwheat crepes on the Gluten-Free Girl website. (Yes, they're gluten-free, but that's beside the point.) They included a video showing how easy crepe-making was. Little Man sat patiently on my lap and, enthralled, watched the video with me. That's when we decided we were having crepes for dinner.

Just like that. No big menu-planning. No dinner party-throwing. No agonizing over technique. Just, come on, let's make crepes for dinner.

And you know what? Crepes are easy to make. I'm not saying pretty crepes are easy to make, as mine definitely are not. But they're easy to whip up. Milk, eggs, buckwheat flour, a dash of kosher salt. That's it. I didn't have coconut oil, as the recipe called for, so I used butter instead, and it worked just fine. (But you don't want to do 2 tablespoons all at once. That first crepe was ... uh ... buttery, to say the least.)

To keep things simple, Little Man and I had ham and cheese crepes for dinner. As you can see, he was a fan (though he pulled everything apart and ate the ingredients separately ... lovely).

For dessert, I may or may not have indulged in a crepe slathered in peanut butter. Just because I could.

Now that I've stopped thinking about crepes as something only trained French chefs (or lovely mothers looking to impress dinner guests) whip up, I'm imagining endless possibilities. Sweet, savory, you name it.

However, I do plan on making some homemade ice cream soon, so re-creating My Mom's fabulous dessert crepes may be on the agenda first.

Chicken and Dumplings

Remember a while ago when I talked about my comfort food-making spree?

Well, along with meatloaf and mashed potatoes and quinoa and cheese, I made chicken and dumplings. (Apparently, comfort foods must be a combination of two key ingredients connected by a conjunction. ... Sorry, word nerd.)

I first grew fond of chicken and dumplings as a little girl, when my grandma made this dish for dinner one night. I don't remember a lot of the details about the chicken and dumplings I ate back then, honestly. I just remember that I loved the light, fluffy biscuits floating on top of the stew.

So I was excited to come across this recipe, because it's quick and easy and hearty. I've made it twice since I found it and will undoubtedly make it again.

This version calls for gluten-free Bisquick (it's one of many swell gluten-free recipes from the Betty Crocker website), but you could just as easily make it with regular Bisquick, I'm sure, although you might want to follow a slightly different dumpling recipe than this one if you do that.

What You Need

For the Stew
2 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 1/2 cups cut-up cooked chicken
1 cup frozen mixed vegetables
1 teaspoon seasoned salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 cup milk
3 tablespoons cornstarch

For the Dumplings
3/4 cup Bisquick Gluten-Free mix
1/3 cup milk
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 egg
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley (or, if you're like me, this time of year you'll just add a few shakes of the dried stuff instead)

What You Do

1. In a 3-quart saucepan, heat chicken broth, chicken, vegetables, salt, and pepper to boiling. In a small bowl, mix 1 cup milk and the cornstarch with a wire whisk until smooth; stir into chicken mixture. Heat just to boiling.

2. In a small bowl, stir dumpling ingredients with fork until blended.

3. Gently drop dough by 8 rounded spoonfuls onto boiling chicken mixture.

4. Cook uncovered over low heat 10 minutes. Cover and cook 15 minutes longer.

Enjoy!

Ditching Wheat

For breakfast, I love a fresh, fluffy biscuit or a nice, crumbly muffin. If you stop by here very often at all, you already know that I'll take a cookie with my coffee or for an afternoon snack with my tea any day. Few things make me swoon like a flaky pie crust. And a warm, crusty slice of bread with dinner? Don't even get me started.

And yet, about two weeks ago, after a pizza and breadsticks binge, I gave up wheat.

Why?

Because a few years ago, when I had surgery to remove a giant cyst from my ovary (which also resulted in the removal of my ovary, too), I learned that the cause of that darn cyst was endometriosis.

To make a long story short, once the cyst was gone, I was pain free for a while. But a few months later, all sorts of symptoms that I soon found out were related to endometriosis started cropping up. Then, I got pregnant, and for my entire pregnancy and most of the time I was nursing Little Man, I was once again symptom-free.

But now, in the past few months, my symptoms have come back full force. I'm not going to bore you with an explanation of endometriosis or the many symptoms it causes, but if you're so inclined, you can learn the basics.

Please note: I don't tell you this to make you worry about me or feel sorry for me or anything of the sort. Endometriosis is a chronic illness that affects a lot more women than you might realize. In fact, odds are you know more than one woman who has it, although it's not the sort of illness most women talk about openly. (Which is actually something I'm hoping to help change, by the way.)

Fortunately, although there is no cure for endo, there are a variety of ways to manage it. And one of the natural ways many women are able to keep symptoms somewhat in check is through diet.

Guess what's at the top of the list of foods to avoid if you have endo? Yep, you guessed it.

Wheat.

I'm not going into all the details on why here, but needless to say there is quite a bit of evidence—scientific and anecdotal—that for many women with endometriosis, eliminating wheat from their diet has a positive effect.

I'm not interested in trying the different drug therapies that are out there for endo, because most of them are only somewhat effective and come with some nasty side effects. (Uh, no thanks on the excess facial hair or starting menopause at age 30—although I know these treatments are very necessary for some women.) And I'm hoping to avoid having surgery again, although laparoscopy is often a woman's best chance at obtaining relief from endo.

So that leaves natural treatments, one of which is diet.

Perhaps giving up wheat will help. It's too early to really know for sure. Maybe it won't. But either way, it's worth a try.

I can tell you that if it doesn't seem to make a difference, I'll be back on the wheat train. I don't think wheat is something to deprive yourself of unless you have a medical reason to do so. An increasing number of people are hopping on the gluten-free bandwagon just because they've heard it makes you feel better or because celebrities do it. That's crazy. Sure, everyone should probably eat wheat in more moderation than most Americans do (the same with pretty much everything Americans eat). But to cut it out completely just because it's trendy is nuts—and it may even have unintended health implications.

Anyhow, random soap box again. I keep jumping up on those darn things.

For now, my goal is to make going wheat-free as easy as possible. I'm not going to be nuts about it. If I slip up a few times, it's not the end of the world. I'm going to be as low-maintenance about it as I can—skipping the items that contain wheat when eating out or at someone else's house, but not freaking out if I have to eat something with wheat on rare occasions. (Trust me, if you've seen me in need of a snack, you will understand that eating something with a bit of wheat is preferable to a hungry Julie.) I don't have celiac disease, in which case any exposure to wheat can be incredibly harmful. So a little wheat here and there, if absolutely necessary, won't be the end of the world.

Fortunately, it's a lot easier to skip wheat than it was even a few years ago when I first starting investigating natural endo treatments. (At that point, the thought of actually giving up wheat never even crossed my mind because I didn't see how I'd survive!) Now, there are fabulous blogs and books devoted to making incredibly delicious gluten-free meals and even baked goods to rival those with gluten. There are also some pretty darn good gluten-free breads, snacks, cereals, you name it available at many grocery stores.

I knew all of this well before my no-wheat diet began two weeks ago, because over the past few months an increasing number of gluten-free recipes and products have been sneaking into our house anyway. That's because there's a chance Little Man has a sensitivity to wheat, too.

I know, I know. Now you think I really am nuts. It's OK. This one is a bit more of a stretch. It isn't really grounded in any research or trials, like ditching wheat for endo is.

The thing with Little Man is totally different. You see, around the time he started eating solid foods beyond his introductory all-fruit or veggie purees, he developed one cold after another—and every single on turned into a sinus infection that required at least one, sometimes two, rounds of antibiotics. Within a week of clearing up one sinus infection, his runny nose would be back, and we'd start the cycle all over again.

I started to do some research, talked to some other moms, and heard of other kids that had similar issues. Eventually, in a few cases, it turned out wheat was a culprit. I was desperate for anything that would prevent our almost-monthly trips to the doctor's office and the pharmacy, so we took Little Man off wheat to see if it would help.

Since the wheat was finally out of Little Man's system, he hasn't had a sinus infection. Not a single one. He's had a few colds (but who hasn't this winter?). None of his recent colds has turned into a sinus infection like every single one used to.

Is wheat the culprit? Who knows for sure. It could be an environmental allergy or a seasonal allergy that's the problem. Kids can't really be tested for allergies until they're three (I guess their bodies don't really respond to the tests until around then), so it's going to be quite some time before we know for sure. But as long as he keeps doing well sans wheat, I'm not going to mess with what's working.

And so now, after I'm pretty sure no one is actually still reading, I get to the point of this long, rambling post. Which is this: I'm probably going to be trying all sorts of gluten-free recipes in the near future. And I'll probably post them here. But I promise not to turn this into a gluten-free cooking and baking blog. I promise to post lots of things you wheat-eating people will still like.

And if I do post gluten-free recipes? It will be because they're just plain good. And because they've gotten the ultimate endorsement from Conservative Hubby: either he liked them enough to eat them knowing they were gluten-free, or they were good enough he never realized they were gluten-free in the first place.

That's how you know a recipe really is fit for the masses, or at least a couple of loyal blog readers!

(I also promise not to really post about endo on this site at all, or only very rarely. I'll save all that info for my fellow endo sufferers over at this blog, which is a work in progress but the beginning of a bigger project I'm actually pretty excited about. I'm not expecting most of you will read it, but if you have endo or know someone who does, perhaps you'll be interested in checking it out.)

Quinoa & Cheese

When I say "comfort food," what do you think of? Mashed potatoes and meatloaf? Chicken and dumplings? Homemade macaroni and cheese?

Well, that's what I think of. And apparently I've been in a comfort food kind of mood lately, because we had all three of those things in the past week. Only the macaroni and cheese didn't actually involve macaroni. Instead, it was with quinoa.

In case you're not familiar, here's the scoop on quinoa. It's actually a seed, but people often treat it like a whole grain. It cooks pretty easily, has a great texture, is gluten- and cholesterol-free, and offers 9 essential amino acids (hello, protein!). Plus it provides a nice alternative to rice or pasta.

It looks much prettier when you see a scoop of it on a plate. But guess who forgot to take photos of that? Fortunately, you can see the lovelier version when you visit the recipe here. (One note: I used fresh spinach rather than frozen, since that's what I had. And I went light on the spinach so it wasn't too "green" for you-know-who.)

Plus, I served it with a rosemary dijon pork loin. Having meat is incredibly important if you're going to make you-know-who try a new dish.

Generally, I gauge whether a recipe is fit for the general public and not just wacky-me consumption by you-know-who's (aka Conservative Hubby's) reaction. The night I made quinoa and cheese, he said, "This is kind of weird." But he said it as he was scooping up seconds.

And when we ate leftovers the next night, I figured he'd pass on the reheated dish. But instead, that's all he wanted for a side.

I liked it, Little Man liked it, and I guess that means Conservative Hubby liked it too. So take that for what you will.