gluten-free – Page 3

My Chinese Kitchen: The Crockpot

April 4, 2012 by Carey Jane Clark

{Note: Too much time in the Chinese kitchen this week, so Hold the MSG will post tomorrow instead.}

As I mentioned in another post earlier this week, life in China has some challenges. Things take a little longer to accomplish. We use public transit, there are crowds just about everywhere, and we’re just not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy–or Toronto, for that matter.

I’ve been experimenting with gluten-free baking here. I think I just about have a handle on it (victory report forthcoming). We also have a historical issue with oatmeal. In the supermarket, it’s possible to buy instant and quick-cook oats, but I’ve never been a fan. In the market, you can by large flake oats, but they’re thicker than we’re used to, and the texture is chewier–like eating quinoa–which would be fine if it were quinoa, but it’s not. It’s oats, and we don’t like our oats chewy.

When we first came to China back in 2008, I brought along my grain mill. At the time, we were already eating flours with less gluten, like spelt. I brought a significant quantity of spelt groats with me (so they’d stay fresher than pre-ground flour) and used the mill I had bought back home to grind them.

grinder

We discovered this week that buying oat groats and grinding them makes a lovely consistency of oatmeal that everyone’s happy with. They’re not like steel-cut or rolled, so I don’t know what to call them exactly, but we’re happy with them.

ground oats

But that’s just an example of something that takes a little bit longer here. There’s also the dishwasher. It takes a little longer here too.

My sink

All of that to say, I’m always looking for kitchen shortcuts, like my Deluxe Crockpot Oatmeal. I originally found this recipe at A Year of Slow Cooking. Stephanie O’Dea who blogged and cooked in her crockpot for an entire year AND cooked gluten-free was a source of inspiration, and I looked forward to her every post.

I can’t find this recipe on her site anymore, but I’ll include it below. I made some adjustments to the original because it called for the oats to be cooked overnight, but what I found was that they cooked in about half the time, so if you truly put them on when you went to bed and you went to bed at a decent hour, you’d have partially burnt oats the next morning. I remedied this situation by setting an alarm for the middle of the night and turning on the crockpot. But really. Who else but me is going to do such a crazy thing?

Since returning (and perfecting my oat-grinding), I found the perfect way to make them “just right.” (I feel like Goldilocks.) I cook them for an hour on the high setting prior to going to bed and turn them down to “keep warm” overnight. Perfection!

Except if you forget to turn them down.

Which is precisely what happened to me last week, and which is the real reason for this post. My poor crockpot was toast. Burnt toast. Layers and layers of it. There was a solid, stuck-on mass of charcoal in the bottom of the pot and I thought I’d NEVER get it out.

But then I discovered this amazing solution. I am huge believer in baking soda and vinegar. They clean anything. If vinegar won’t do it, baking soda will. Vinegar for mirrors, baking soda to scrub the scum out of bathtubs. You can even use baking soda for laundry detergent and vinegar as a softener. Really. Love the stuff. Perfectly natural, things smell and look clean afterwards, with no heavy smells of chemicals.

But now I’m even more impressed with the power of baking soda. I turned my poor crockpot on and added my faithful baking soda (which is good for a post all on its own, don’t you think? I brought this home from the store and was already using it before I discovered something was not quite right…)

Armandhatchet

I let the crockpot come to a boil then turned it down and let it simmer overnight. This is the result. Nothing short of amazing! All the burned-on charcoaly stuff just peeled off, leaving my lovely crockpot behind, just like new.

Clean Crock

And now I can make my oatmeal again:

Deluxe Crockpot Oatmeal

1 cup oats
2 cup milk
¼ cup honey (or less, to taste)
1 tablespoon butter – melted
¼ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup finely chopped apple
½ cup raisins and/or dates
½ cup chopped walnuts or almonds (I omit these–not everyone in our family is a nut fan)

Grease the inside of Crockpot. Throw all ingredients inside Crockpot and mix well. Cook for one hour on high and turn to keep warm overnight. Stir before serving. Enjoy! (And don’t forget to turn it down overnight.)

- Carey Clark

Makes you Wonder…

November 10, 2011 by Carey Jane Clark

Even before we began eating gluten-free, we avoided wheat and ate whole grains. When we moved into this house in the middle of August and needed freezer space, we pulled out the loaf of bread that was already in the freezer. We stuck it on a small table in the corner of the kitchen. At the time, I said maybe we could feed the ducks with it or something (thinking like a regular city person, ’cause the ducks out here are well-fed all on their own).

To be fair, I’m not completely certain that the bread-pulling occurred then. It may have happened as late as the Tuesday after the Labor Day weekend, when we finally settled in and needed the freezer space. Before that, we’d been on a roadtrip.

All of that to say it really makes me wonder what is actually in a loaf of Wonder Bread because that thing is still on that corner table waiting for ducks, and there is not a single spot of mold on it. Anywhere.

Sandwich, anyone?

Going Gluten-Free

October 17, 2011 by Carey Jane Clark

It is with great reluctance that we head down this path. In addressing some of our health issues, it seems I can’t escape the suggestion that our family go gluten-free (dairy free has also been suggested—for the most part we eliminated that years ago, but while we’ve been in Canada, where it’s a little easier to get our hands on cheese, I must admit to a little—no a lot—of cheating in this area.).

This is not the first time this course of action has been suggested. I have resisted for several reasons:

We already eat a gluten-reduced diet, since we use flours like Kamut and Spelt that are low in gluten. That was something of an adjustment in the first place, but now something we’re very comfortable with (read: something we don’t want to change).
I want to eat whole grains, and many gluten-free recipes aren’t whole grain or use grains/flours I am not excited about using, like potato and corn.
It means saying goodbye to some favorite foods, and it seems unfair to “penalize” other members of the family whose diets don’t necessarily need altering.
This kind of diet is very hard to sustain when we move back to China, so what’s the point of shifting everything? It’s a lot of learning and unlearning for the family cook. (Sigh.)
Just how do you live without bread? Really. Some of the baked goods are easy enough to get rid of—they’re not necessary items. But say goodbye to toast AND sandwiches AND garlic bread…this seems a bit crazy, and hard to explain to a child. I’ve made attempts at baking gluten-free loaves before, and in China managed to gather up all the necessary ingredients (which meant importing my own xanthan gum), but all my loaves failed miserably. They looked glorious when I pulled them out of the oven, but moments later they crashed in the middle and were a disgusting mess. We sold our bread machine when we packed up for China, so I need old-fashioned bread-making recipes, and almost all the gluten-free baking recipes seem to be made for the breadmaker.
I can’t help feeling there is a better way. Is eliminating most of a food group really the best way to handle this situation?

Note: I had planned this post to this point until this past weekend when we had two experiences that changed my heart on this matter:

The kids and I made a successful and tasty gluten-free bread for home economics on Friday. I’ll share more about that tomorrow.
On the weekend, we visited with some friends we haven’t seen since college. Another friend was present who is violently allergic to gluten, so the subject came up. The friends from college shared their experiences going gluten-free for two years to help their daughter, who was having difficulties with attention in school and behavior at home. The problems they described were severe, but we have seen shades of every issue they described in one of our children. JavaMan, one of the biggest holdouts in this whole gluten-free thing immediately became more supportive to the idea.

So we’re going gluten-free. It was tough on the weekend, because I’m still not thinking that way completely, and after church there was cake and I had arranged no substitute. With our motivation firmly in mind, though, we’re going to make this work. I welcome suggestions and advice!

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