Popcorn as a Snowy Day Snack!

I am surveying the wreckage of this morning. Another snow day here in the north east and it was the right call with all the ice and the slippery roads. The problem is that my house takes a huge hit in terms of cleanliness and my productivity as a working mother takes a huge hit as well.

It becomes the non-stop day of mini-meals prepared by the kids—fried eggs for one, pancakes for another, cereal and then later lunches and snacks and cups of hot chocolate and sopping wet clothes and middle of the day requests ‘can you drive me here or there.” This is the second snow day in the past two weeks so the routine is getting a little old.

My eleven year old dog just wants her uninterrupted naps and I would like to make a few uninterrupted phone calls. (All you gluten-free advertisers out there, today is an email day!)

One of the snacks we made is good, old, gluten-free popcorn. There are lots of fun things one can do with popcorn. In Ina Garten’s new cook book, How Easy is That, she makes popcorn with truffle butter! That sounds delicious, but truffle butter is not a refrigerator staple in my house.

I like the combination of butter, a little salt and a little sugar…I believe that is called Kettle Corn. We devoured a batch of that earlier. Another variation is ranch seasonings or a barbeque blend of seasonings.

I have stopped buying the microwave bags of popcorn because the popping popcorn with a touch of oil in a covered sauce pan is really easy, doesn’t start fire in the microwave and is a pretty natural and wholesome snack.

If anyone has any other popcorn ideas, I would love to hear them!
Kendall Egan

How gluten-free children grow up

When I post a blog, I always ask myself what makes it valuable to gluten-free readers. So I usually don't write a lot of personal stories. I know some blog followers really love personal writing and some gluten-free bloggers are great at it, but this is really a blog for Gluten-Free Living magazine and not me personally.

But today I think my personal story - really the story of my 20-year-old daughter who has had celiac disease since she was two - will be very helpful for any parent worrying about a child who has to follow the gluten-free diet.

Yesterday morning I held back tears as I watched my daughter wind through airport check-in on the first leg of her flight to London. She's studying abroad in the city of castles and queens and royal weddings for four months.

She stood out in the crowd in her bright green coat, with her long blond hair and deep dimples that attract admiring attention she is always oblivious to. To me she looked so small and so strong at the same time.

From the moment she was diagnosed with celiac disease, my husband and I made a commitment to never let her special diet roadblock anything she wanted to do.

She went to pre-school and ate special snacks stored in the cabinet there. She was a Girl Scout who sold the most cookies in her troop one year even though she has never tasted one. She played soccer, ice skated and danced. She traveled to Spain with a friend in eighth grade, went to New York with her marketing class in high school, and attends a college further away from home than any of the other fifteen students and graduates on our street.

There were small things to cope with too -- birthday and pizza parties to which she always brought her own food, classroom treats substituted from a bag of gluten-free goodies provided either by me or an understanding teacher, dinners out that required interrogating the server, college parties that could never include beer.

We hit some bumps along the way including one Oreo cookie she couldn't resist trying, some bigger girls in elementary school who wanted to take her un-tradeable food at lunch and a grumpy middle school cooking teacher who couldn't keep gluten-free arrangements straight. There are probably challenges and temptations she faced that I know nothing about.

But through it all we stuck to the simple motto that while the diet dictates what she can eat, it should never limit what she can do. When she was picking a college, one school was willing to buy special products and keep a designated area in the dining hall for her. But other factors lead her to choose a school where she would be more on her own to deal with being gluten free. We had encouraged her to make a choice that acknowledged her diet but was not controlled by it. We taught her that there are always ways she could find something to eat.

She surely took this lesson to heart.

She decided to study abroad this semester and worked through a labyrinth of arrangements to enroll, choose classes, cover costs and get to London. She is the only person from her large university in the program and headed across the ocean without knowing a soul. When I asked her about eating, she said she was sure she could find enough safe and varied options and never really worried about it.

OK, maybe she learned the lesson a little too well for my liking. We subsequently got in touch with the university in London to double check meal plans, dining hall options and other alternatives.

But deep inside, my heart bursts with how proud I am of her for wanting this adventure and making it happen.

The gluten-free world has changed so much in the 18 years since my daughter was diagnosed. Gluten-free food in those days consisted of a couple of dusty boxes on some back shelf in a health food store. The other choice was to fill out a paper order form and send it (in an actual envelope, with a real stamp, through a real mailbox) to the handful of gluten-free companies that existed. Or you could make the food yourself. We tried and failed many times to make edible gluten-free pretzels so I still get a little giddy when I see the bags of them in my regular supermarket.

Despite the changes, I suspect parents of children diagnosed with celiac disease or who have gluten intolerance have the same worries about the path and the future for their children as I did for my daughter.

Would she be able to grow up normally? Would she be able to eat safely? Would she have friends? Would she be teased because of her dietary differences? What about kindergarten, middle school, high school, college? Would she be able to handle the diet on her own?

So the point of my personal story is to say your children will be just fine. One day you might watch them walk away from you in airport. They will be nearly grown up, gluten free, yet very strong, confident, smart and fearless.

And while it might be a little painful to watch them go, it's what you've really hoped for all along.

Amy Ratner

Show me the Gluten-Free Money

Anyone on the gluten-free diet has a sense that it only makes sense for restaurants to make gluten and allergen free choices available. Not because they are just trying to be nice (although that's a good reason, too!) but because they can make money.
No business that does not make money can last very long.
Now, Paul Antico, a former stock fund manager at Fidelity Investments, has the numbers to back up the theory. His analysis shows that a casual dining chain like Chili's could increase its sales by 9 percent, or $270,000,  resulting in a $50,000 annual increase in profit.
“From a purely business perspective, it’s in restaurants’ best interests to accommodate the food allergy population, as it can lead to significantly higher profits,” Antico said.
He calculates 9 million restaurant customers concerned about gluten and allergens could be won over by restaurants willing to take the steps to truly meet their needs. (It would be nice if the meals they serve are also tasty, varied, healthy and reasonably priced!)
Antico based his figures on the fact that about 5 percent of the population has allergies, celiac disease or gluten intolerance. That translates into millions of Americans, he said.
In addition, these restaurant customers usually play a key role in deciding where an entire group of friends or family will go when they eat  out. If there is little or nothing gluten-free to eat, the restaurant loses not one, but several diners.
"Savvy restaurateurs understand the financial benefits of providing an allergy-friendly environment," Antico said. "Many restaurant owners are wisely taking extra precautions to accommodate food allergic and intolerant guests, having their employees trained in allergy safety, creating gluten-free menu options, providing ingredient lists, and seeking industry certifications."
Through his website, AllergyEats, Antico is trying to spread the word about restaurants that are allergen- and gluten-free friendly.
The site provides free consumer feedback on how well specific restaurants accommodate those with special dietary needs. He created the site after dining out with his two food-allergic children and becoming frustrated by the inconsistencies in restaurants – some were willing and able to accommodate food-allergic diners and some were not.
Dining out on the gluten-free diet has certainly gotten easier as awareness of celiac disease has grown.
The National Foundation for Celiac Awareness fills a whole convention hall once a year with Philadelphia area restaurants that provide great gluten-free options. And the group offers training programs to teach restaurants the ins and outs of gluten free dining.
The Gluten Intolerance Group has worked for years to help restaurants come up with gluten-free menus.
But it's still common to run into problems with cross contamination, uninformed and uninterested wait staff, and bland gluten-free menus.
Like Antico, I think that could change really fast if the gluten-free community applies a simple principle made famous in a Tom Cruise movie.
"Show me the money."

Amy Ratner

Tiny Typo Topples GF Treat

Subscribers to Gluten-Free Living know I’m not happy in the kitchen. But, like a 95-pound weakling giving advice on tackling in football, I ventured into the baking field in our last issue by including a recipe for my mother-in-law’s cheesecake. It’s delicious and really easy to make.

But like anything else, you need a little experience and careful attention to details. In this case, the attention to tiny details should have extended to the production portion of the last issue. The recipe, as printed in the magazine, says, “Beat the egg yolks until stiff.” Frankly, I know enough to be dangerous in the kitchen, but I have a feeling you could beat those yolks until New Years Eve 2011 and they still might not be stiff.

The recipe in the magazine directs you to first separate the eggs and then beat the yolks until thick. So far so good. But then comes the mention of beating the yolks until stiff. The copy should have read, “Beat the egg whites until stiff.” That tiny typo got by me, our entire editorial staff, our graphic designer and our proofreader. I’m really sorry.

So, in the event you are looking for something to serve New Year’s Eve 2010, here’s the corrected version of Lily’s Cheesecake:

Preheat oven to 325o

Crust: Actually the cake is fine without a crust. But if you want one, try Kinnikinnick’s Graham Style Crumbs, see if there is a recipe in one of your GF cookbooks, or simply crush some GF cookies with a rolling pin and mix them with melted butter (1-2/3 cup cookie crumbs to 1/3 cup melted butter). Press the crumbs into the bottom of a 9-inch spring form pan.

Filling:

6 eggs, separated
1 cup sugar
1 pinch salt
1 tspn. vanilla
1 tspn, lemon juice
1 lb. cream cheese (2 8-oz. pkgs.)
1 pint sour cream

Beat the yolks until thick. Then add sugar, salt, vanilla and lemon juice. Add cream cheese and beat, and then add sour cream. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff (but not dry) and fold into the egg yolk mixture. Pour into crust.
Bake at 325o for one hour. Turn the oven off and leave cake in the oven for one hour more without opening the door.
Serve plain or with whatever topping you’d like. This makes a very big cake.

Whether or not you serve Lily’s Cheesecake for your New Year’s celebration, I join Amy and Kendall in wishing everyone a Happy New Year and the best of everything in 2011. For my part, I promise to aim for no typos in our issues and no more terrible headlines!

Are You Prepared for a Blizzard?

What a storm! It put a damper on our travel plans, but I was so grateful to be safe and sound at home. Over the years I have tried to make sure my household had a level of preparedness for anything, but I have to admit that I was woefully unprepared this time around.

My refrigerator had the leftovers of Christmas and all the goodies I was supposed to take to our extended family celebration. I had our favorite sweet potato dish to feed twenty people. I also had salad fixings for that same number. I always make an apple crisp, so I have apples coming out the wazoo.

Milk, bread and other staples were still there but I had no bottled water and very few canned goods.

I can tell the kids are getting older because I did not have any AA or D batteries. Typically, Christmas time is the one time when I am loaded with batteries for toys or games! As a quirky twist of fate, I had picked up keychain LED flashlights at Home Depot as a stocking stuffer. Other than those, I only had one working flashlight. I had four pillar candles, two tapers and precisely three tea lights left. I had two logs for the fireplace after Christmas Eve and Christmas Day fires.

As the snow swirled and the inches piled up, I became increasingly concerned as I saw these pops of light from a transformer up on a power pole.

The next day, after the snow had stopped and we had finished digging out, we did lose power. As the house started to get cold and there were no Con Ed trucks in sight, I went out to gather some things to get us through the night. I picked up a jumbo pack of hand warmers, a jumbo pack of LED candles, lots of unscented candles, firewood and something to heat on the stove for dinner.

I illuminated the house with candles and everything glowed. Even though the wind was whipping, the house had not dropped below 60 degrees so it was fine.

I whipped up a huge pasta dinner that, according to my husband, managed to involve every pot in the kitchen. The celiacs had Tinkyada shells and the regulars had sausage and cheese raviolis that I had picked up in my shopping adventure. We grabbed some of the lettuce from the fridge and placed the milk and some juice into a snow bank right outside the back door so that we could keep the refrigerator closed.

All in all, it was a pretty cozy few hours. My blackberry was dead, my daughter’s iTouch was dead, the wireless was down, the celiac’s cell phone went dead…so we just hung out. As we were about to fire up an Uno game, we heard the big Con Ed cherry picker rumble down the street. Power was restored and we were back in business!

To me, this was a wake-up call. We are so wired and in constant communication that it’s easy to forget that when the power goes down, those little devices aren’t going to get you through an emergency. You have to actually take time to prepare. It’s time to stock up on canned goods, long shelf life GF food, batteries, bottled water and grab some of those LED candles too!

Something tells me it’s going to be a very long winter.
Kendall Egan

Gluten-Free Cookie Keepers

In my last blog I wrote about trying some new cookie recipes from General Mills "live gluten freely" website.
I'm happy to report that not only did they look very appealing, they tasted great too.
The Russian tea cakes had the traditional short-bread texture, softened a bit by the powdery confectioner's sugar. No one suspected they were made without wheat flour. And surely no one would have guessed the key ingredient was gluten-free Bisquick.
The grasshopper bars are made with a base of Betty Crocker gluten-free devil's food cake mix, topped with creamy icing tinted green and flavored with mint. They were easy to cut and  the bottom held together unlike some gluten-free bar cookies that crumble. They tasted moist and had that terrific combination of chocolate and mint.
Since these two recipes turned out so well, I was encouraged to try at third from the website, holiday layer bars. I had originally put the recipe aside because it uses the Betty Crocker chocolate chip cookie mix. I don't like the mix because it results in cookies that have that tale-tell gritty gluten-free taste and so many other chocolate chip recipes make much better cookies for less money. And the recipe called for candied cherries, which look and taste like plastic to me.
But I decided to just skip the cherries and see if this recipe, too, was a keeper.
The cookie mix forms the base of the bar, which is then topped by a mix of white baking chips, coconut, cashews and sweetened condensed milk. You end up with a rich, chewy bar. I think the rich topping helps cut the grittiness of the cookie bottom.
So I will file all three in my recipe box. You can find the recipes here.

Last minute gluten-free Christmas tips

I am at that point in the holidays when I don't ever want to be in a grocery store, department store, discount store or mall ever again.
At this point what I need most, I think, is the liquor store!
I jest.
Instead I am spending a lot of time in my kitchen making the holiday cookies that matter to me even though my family is scratching their heads over why we need so many different kinds.
A few years ago I started making almost exclusively gluten-free cookies. It saves me from having to keep my gluten-free daughter's cookies meticulously separated from cookies made with wheat flour.
In the early years, I made two versions of everything. My recipe cards still have notations on how to divide out a portion of the wet ingredients to mix with gluten-free flours.
But gluten-free flour mixes and recipes have improved so dramatically that I find the gluten-free cookies I make are fine for everyone.
I thought I would share some of the things I am doing this year, in case you are searching about for some ideas as the minutes count down to Christmas.

Birds' Nests

My family likes these treats made with a simple combination of one cup of  melted chocolate chips, one cup of melted peanut butter chips, one cup of potato sticks and one cup of peanuts mixed all together and dropped by a teaspoon onto wax paper laid on cookies sheets. Then just leave them to harden. The original recipe called for butterscotch chips, but I had trouble finding a brand that did not contain gluten from barley malt so I just switched to peanut butter chips.

This recipe couldn't be easier.

Peppermint Sticks

I found this recipe in an old magazine and thought it looked very pretty. Essentially, you dip the tips of old fashioned Peppermint Sticks in a chocolate mix made by combining four squares (1 oz) of bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate with 1 tablespoon of shortening in a saucepan and heating until melted. Dip one end of the stick into the chocolate, then dip that into chopped nuts or sprinkles.  Lay on wax paper until the chocolate hardens.

Peanut Blossoms

Aside from cut-out sugar cookies, these have to be one of the most popular holiday favorites. I always made two versions of this recipe until I realized that if you use a basic cookie recipe that calls for one cup of peanut butter, one cup of sugar and two eggs you will have a cookie that pleases everyone. After I mix the above ingredients I put the mixture in the refrigerator so it hardens up a little. Then I roll 1 inch balls, quickly roll them in granulated sugar and bake at 350 for about 10 minutes. While the cookies are still warm and on the cookie sheets, I press one unwrapped Hershey Kiss onto each cookie. Unwrapping the kisses is a great job for a child, teenager or spouse who is otherwise not much into holiday baking.

This year I also added some cookies from General Mills "live gluten freely" website. I tried the grasshopper bars and the Russian tea cakes, which are interestingly made with the gluten-free Bisquick mix. Both were easy to make and handled well. (One reviewer who made the tea cakes said they fell apart when she tried to roll them in powdered sugar. I did not have this problem, but I waited until the cookies were just slightly warm before picking them up. I also handled them very gingerly). I still don't know if these cookies pass the taste test since I quickly packaged them up and put them away for the holidays. I will let you know if they get raves or boos from my family. You will also find a Peanut Blossom recipe on this site, but I am happy with my easy and relatively inexpensive version.

I hope these suggestions come in handy as you try to get everything done by Christmas Day.

Happy Holidays!

Amy Ratner