Family Affair Continues

Gramme, Grandpa Bud, Dad, Me and Ceci (June 2011)

The other night I got a fantastic voice mail on my phone from my Gramme, while all phone calls from grandmas are great, this one was exceptional.  When I was home in Oregon, about halfway through the visit my Dad got a phone call from his mom saying that she wanted to try a gluten free diet to see if it would help resolve some of her health concerns.  Tonight's phone call was to tell me she was feeling better than she has in years!  Can I just tell you that she sounded like a new woman!!!  I have to be a bit honest the family has been questioning grandma's lucidity the last few years, that was not the lady I heard on the phone tonight, I am so excited to see this change.

I called Gramme back today and had a long chat with her about how she was feeling and the changes she noticed from being on a GF diet.  I was blown away to hear that she was no longer suffering digestive problems like she had for years, and was feeling fantastic.  Gramme also told me that she had been to the Dr recently and the Dr had taken her off more than half of the 16 medications that she was taking less than a month ago!  Can you imagine!  16 medications per day!!  All that was cut in half from following a gluten free diet.  You can't imagine how excited I am that making a change in diet worked so well for her.

While I was home we had a visit with Gramme and Grandpa Bud where Gramme repeated the same story twice within 10 minutes and with almost the exact same wording each time.  This sadly is not uncommon, the whole family knows it happens and is concerned about why it's occurring.  It's intriguing from a celiac perspective because Tim has noticed that when I eat gluten I become tired, listless and unable to concentrate.  Now if I multiply those symptoms out by 76 years worth of tortured digestive and immune system, maybe there is a glimmer of what Gramme has gone through.

The gluten free diet was a bit of a rough start, Gramme was worried about switching over to a gf diet and the difficulty of having to read every single label and having to entirely reeducate herself.  I have to say I know it is tremendously daunting to start on a gf diet, but to do so at 76 years old is pretty frightening.  Dad and I wanted to do as much as we could to help, so we made a trip to whole foods to grab some easy introductory gluten free foods to bring over to Gramme.  A few days later Gramme was over to Mom and Dad's house for a party and had tons of questions about what was safe to eat and what wasn't.  I took a sheet of paper and on one side I labeled the top "safe to eat" and the other side was "not safe foods" and just started writing down as many things as I could think of on either side.  Gramme had several specific questions so I wrote those items in the appropriate columns, such as potato chips, chocolate covered raisins, rice, potatoes, and many more.

The fact that Gramme may have celiac is hugely interesting, because up until we realized my Dad suffers from Celiac I was alone in all this.  We've known that Celiac is a genetic disease, but no one else in the family had symptoms, so I was this little genetic anomaly that was just full of every recessive gene possible that didn't seem to affect anyone else.  Turns out I just had the least tolerance the earliest in life, as well as being the one with the greatest resources to discover what the heck was going on with my poor little body.  This is AMAZING!!  I'm normal in my family!  It comes from somewhere, I'm not weird!  (Ok, at least not regarding celiac.)

So the possible genetic path of celiac for us has been paternal grandma, Dad, Me, and now Ceci.  I'm the only one who has tested positive so far and the last time I tested positive was in 1997 via blood test.  I think the positive test is not the most important, it was something that Dr Vikki Petersen brought up in one of her youtube videos, don't get hung up on the positive or negative test, if a gluten free diet makes you feel better.  Dr Vikki Petersen also talks about the frequency of false positive tests in another video.

Recently I have realized that when Tim or I visit the Dr, we not only need to mention our medical history, we also need to discuss how Ceci's health concerns relate to us.  If your child or grandchild has a genetic illness, it would be wise to have the parents or grandparents tested.  Our family's medical history is not the only place to look for answers, we are connected through genetics and together we can find the answers to our illnesses.

Baked Brown Rice

Brown Rice ready to be covered and put into the oven

Tonight for dinner I made Alton Brown's Baked Brown Rice recipe, one of my favorite foods in the world.  If I didn't have to serve it for dinner, I would probably sit and eat the entire 9 x 9 inch pan in one sitting.  It could not be easier to make brown rice, I always feared brown rice a bit knowing it took twice as long as white rice to cook on the stove.  We cook a lot of white rice in our little half Asian/gluten free household, so some days we like a break from it.  Tim and I are huge fans of anything Alton Brown, I'm pretty sure the man could film a show about how to use a can opener and I would watch it.  We saw this episode where he baked brown rice, and it was unreal!  It took a while before I got around to downloading and printing the recipe, but once I did it found a permanent home on the refrigerator.  Right now the fridge is overtaken with small character magnets, and crayon drawings, so the 1/4 of a scrap of paper with the recipe found a new home in the recipe box.  Today I realized I wanted it back out as a simple side for a simple dinner, rotisserie chicken, spinach salad, and brown rice, what's not to love??

Finished version, DELICIOUS!!

The brown rice comes out perfect every time and there is no stirring or babysitting the pot.  It's fluffy, tender, sweet, and has that tiny crunch that brown rice should have.  It goes with absolutely everything, I just realized this whole time we could have been throwing fresh herbs in at the end right as the rice comes out of the oven, maybe I will try that next time.  Maybe you will try it with some herbs or other twists and let me know what you come up with.  Enjoy!  I hope you love this as much as we do!

Alton Brown's Baked Brown Rice

• 1 1/2 cups brown rice, medium or short grain
• 2 1/2 cups water
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Place the rice, water, butter and salt into an 8-inch square glass baking dish.
Cover the dish tightly with heavy-duty aluminum foil. Bake on the middle rack of the oven for 1 hour.  After 1 hour, remove cover and fluff the rice with a fork. Serve immediately.

White Rabbit Bakery

Duchess Gluten Free Cake from White Rabbit Bakery

For the last two weeks I have been visiting my parents out in Oregon where I grew up.  Usually I don't expect much from the world in regard to gluten free eating while I'm there, sometimes if we are lucky we are able to run to Bob's Red Mill.  This trip was vastly different!  My Mom took me for a brunch treat at White Rabbit Bakery, and I'm positive that when I stepped through the door I fell down the rabbit hole into a world of nonsense and make-believe!

It was fantastic!  First of all, the building the bakery resides in used to be an old antique shop, as many buildings are in Aurora Oregon.  I have vivid memories of my mom dragging me into this particular shop as a young tween/teenager, it was filled from floor to ceiling with all sorts of odd treasures.  There also used to be a particular dusty old smell to the place.  All that has more than disappeared!  The smell is some sort of sweet heaven mixed with cinnamon and coffee.  Here's where the bit of nonsense comes in, I'm positive someone picked up a bakery straight out of the Lower East Side of Manhattan and plopped it right into this building in Aurora Oregon.  Anyone who has ever driven through Aurora and managed not to blink knows it's the oddest little town FULL of antique shops and old man bars, so to find this amazing gem was truly a surprise.  I think the biggest moment of visual disbelief was when the adorably sweet lady, Becca, behind the counter let me know that there were more GF options in the case than regular items, WHERE AM I!?!?!?!  Each item was more enticing and beautiful than the last!

I ordered a Chocolate Chip Oat Scone (GF) and a cup of coffee, and sat down in the cute dining room with it's antique chairs and rustic wood tables.  The coffee came in a clay pottery mug, and my scone sat nicely on a plain white plate.  It was fantastic!  I admit the scone was a bit of work to chew, from the deliciously fibrous contents, lots of oats and Becca said they also use Amaranth flour, but it was worth every chew.  The hardest thing for me was to sit there watching the counter and see all the other delicious GF treats be sold off one by one, it gave me horrible anxiety!  I finally stood up and got a few things to go, Oscar one of the owners was a tremendous help and with that infectious smile, I might have bought the whole store if he had asked.  I took home a Plum Tart (GF), and two Her Majesty Cupcakes (GF), both gorgeous and you would never believe to look at them that they were GF.

I ate them on two separate days and even had dreams about how delicious they were!  Some how Emily the owner and head baker at White Rabbit has managed to suspend the laws of physics when it comes to baking without gluten!  I don't understand how she made such amazingly moist and tender cake, or a perfectly flaky dense delicious tart crust, it's nonsense!

Plum Tart Gluten Free

The Plum Tart was pretty, with sweet red plums baked into the top.  Oscar had told me it had almonds in it so I didn't dare share it with Ceci, but it was worth keeping it from her because it was Wonderful!  The crust was flaky and buttery and dense while the filling was sweet with a hint of lemon that paired perfectly with the sugary and slightly sour plums.  I wanted about 10 more of them after that.

Her Majesty Gluten Free Cupcake

The next day I took the Her Majesty Cupcake out of the fridge and finally noticed the cute leopard print liner it was in, I had been so distracted by the perfect top of the cupcake I never looked down to see the liner.  Her Majesty is a vanilla poppy seed cake, with a lemon curd and raspberry jam filling topped with vanilla butter cream frosting, and possibly a dash of heaven!  Light, fluffy and tender don't even begin to describe the poppy seed cake, and it could not have been a more perfect palate for the creamy and tart lemon curd, the sweet raspberry jam worked perfectly with all of it.  Finally the vanilla butter cream spoke directly to my heart and my stomach, I'm a huge frosting fan since it was all I ate at birthdays and weddings for most of my life.  The frosting was tremendously rich and buttery, I could have sat down with a tub of that and the raspberry jam and eaten all day.

The last thing I picked up at White Rabbit Bakery was a menu, and after the amazing success of the Her Majesty I just had to have a birthday cake!  After more than an hour of pouring over the menu I decided on the Duchess cake!  It didn't hurt my decision that Ceci calls me Duchess (from the Aristocats Movie). But I was so excited to try the Chocolate cake, with raspberry jam filling and more of that amazing vanilla butter cream frosting!  Tim placed the order for my birthday and spoke directly with Emily the baker/owner and said she was very accommodating even though we missed the 48 hours of notice.  She said she could have it ready by the next afternoon for us.

Cut section of Duchess cake

The last item I ate from the bakery was a Marionberry Sour cream Muffin (GF) that I tucked into my carry-on for our flight.  It got smashed in all the hassle of travel but that didn't alter the flavor at all, it was bursting with cinnamon and nutmeg and reminded me of holiday baking yet was perfect for a summer breakfast treat.  The Marionberries  made the muffin even more moist than just the tender muffin by itself.  I'd say it was the perfect treat to end my long flight home to NY.

I'm so sad that I'm now so far away from the bakery and won't be able to get more treats until we are out in Oregon again.  I'm so spoiled now, I have even less tolerance for bad texture or horrible tasting GF foods, after having Emily's beautiful creations there is no excuse to eat bad food!  If I had more regular access to White Rabbit I think I would end up like Alice in Wonderland when she eats the cakes, she grows bigger and bigger and bigger.  I would certainly not be getting taller from these cakes though!

I'm so inspired to work harder on my own recipes to make them even better in taste and texture.

To Emily, Oscar and all your staff;  please keep up all the hard and delicious work!  You are doing amazing things with gluten free flours!  You might want to consider writing a cook book for those of us who can't always make it into the bakery, or maybe shipping some of your amazing treats would be great.

Tim learned a new trick!

We are so lucky to have a very active library that offers tons of free classes.   Usually I only look at the kids classes for Ceci and I, but last month one caught my eye, a Mozzarella making class.  I told Tim to sign up for it since he is always excited to learn new cooking techniques, I figured this would be perfect for him.  Apparently during the class there was a reporter from the library newspaper who interviewed everyone.  The other day one of our favorite librarians told me that she saw Tim's picture in the Patch, of course it took me several days to get around to looking it up.  Thought I would share it with everyone, nothing fancy, just me being a proud wife!

Library Article about Mozzarella Class

Happy Mother's Day to Me!

I'm sure some of you have seen the photo from our Holiday Cookie Party and my tremendous mess of flours in all sorts of miss-matched containers.  That was all solved this weekend!  My Tupperware delivery arrived, and I was able to sort though all my flours and put them nice and neat into the cabinet.  I feel so much better looking into that pantry shelf now, no anxiety!  These were my Mother's Day present from my husband, even though I picked them out and ordered them.  Oh well, I still love him!  I think it might finally be time to throw away the lingering tub of wheat flour that has been in the cabinet forever.  I used to make separate batches of waffles, or cookies for myself and my husband, now I just make him eat GF, poor guy!  It would be torture except he prefers the GF stuff anyway.

Did I mention the Tupperware is liquid tight, air tight, and guaranteed for life?  That's what got me!  Now I won't ever have to worry about Ceci dropping a container while she is helping me bake, and no more haphazard Tetris inside the panty!

After the wonders of Tupperware!

Before

Where are you from?

my poor princess passed out at the dinner table after eating cake and ice cream for dinner

I'm just curious where you readers are from.  I've been watching my stats page for a while now and I see people visiting this page from so many incredible countries, and I just wonder what your gluten free stories are?  This is the first blog I've ever written and it's amazing to see the accessibility over the entire world.  Please leave a comment and introduce yourself, I'd love to know more about the people who know a little bit about me and my family.

Thanks,
Andrea

Gluten Free Italian Cheesecake

Baked Italian Cheesecake

The other night we were invited to friends for dinner and told it was an Italian theme, and since most of the other courses of food were covered I sat and thought for days about what kind of dessert was "Italian".  I could only come up with Tiramisu for a long time, and then Gelato, but wasn't inspired to make either one, finally I came up with Italian Cheesecake!  It's been a million years since I've eaten an Italian cheesecake, and I have NEVER made one, let alone a NY style cheesecake.  I contemplated for a while about whether or not I wanted to really take on this challenge and how crazy I was willing to make myself.  I also received a request to bring GF Italian Bread, so now my work load was up, but I was feeling like a challenge.  The bread did not turn out well so I won't be posting that debacle anytime soon.  But the Cheesecake was a fabulous success!  I nearly had to abandon the idea midway after realizing one friend seriously dislikes ricotta cheese, the main ingredient in Italian cheesecake, after a quick strategy session with his wife I decided to go ahead with the plan.

I did some research on the internet about Italian cheesecakes and found that the recipes are not at all consistent with one another, some had crusts, most didn't, some used whole eggs, some only yolks, and on and on.  With that in mind I figured I would just go ahead and make my own recipe, and cross all my fingers that it would come out okay.  

I got tons of approval from everyone, even the ricotta hater!  He said it was the best cheesecake he had ever had because it was so light and fluffy, not like those other ones that are so heavy and dense.  Don't worry, no one let on that it was full of ricotta, it was pretty funny though.    I loved it too, soft, tender, light, fluffy, not overly sweet, and just a touch of lemon to balance out the flavor.  Hopefully I'll have another reason to make it again soon because it was fantastic.

Now to add to the vast array of Italian cheesecake recipes on the internet, here is mine.

Gluten Free Italian Cheesecake

1/2  Cup GF Graham Crackers, ground up
2 lbs of Ricotta
1   Cup Sugar (granulated)
2   Tbs  Tapioca Starch
4   Whole Eggs
1    tsp Vanilla Extract
Zest of a whole lemon
Juice of half a lemon

Drain Ricotta by placing layers of cheesecloth into a colander, and pouring ricotta into the cheesecloth.  Let the ricotta sit for a while, be sure to place the colander in a larger bowl to catch the drippings so that you don't end up with a sloppy mess on the counter.  (If you don't have cheesecloth, I used paper towels and a mesh sieve pretty successfully.)

While Ricotta drains, smash up GF Graham crackers and spread in bottom of 9 inch cake pan, or spring form pan.  Set aside.

Once the Ricotta is drained, place it in a stand mixer, and blend in sugar, and Tapioca starch.  Add eggs one at a time, mixing each one into batter.  Finally add extract, lemon zest, and lemon juice, mix until everything is fully incorporated.

Pour the batter into a 9 inch cake pan (I don't own a spring form, if you do, you can use that instead.)  Bake at 350 degrees (F) for 50-60 min, until a knife inserted into the center of the cakes comes out clean.