-French bread that will elicite a sign of contentment from any GF eater

I found this fantastic recipe on food.com in a fit of craving. Italian was the ONLY thing in the entire universe that sounded wonderful and delicious and pasta just simply cannot be had without a cushioney piece of warm french bread. The hunt was on. I haven't tried any other recipe, but I'm certain there cannot be one out there that is as delicious and fail proof as this one! I've take a couple things out that seemed unnecessarily added and added a few things that are VERY necessary in order to achieve deliciousness in it's purest form (as pure as GF can get, of course:) Here's the deal:

1 C white rice flour

1 C brown rice flour (gives it a more whole-grainy taste - if you like the simplicity of white bread use 2 C of white rice flour instead of using 1 c brown rice flour)

1 C Tapioca flour

1-3 tbls milled flax (adds some seriously delicious flavor and makes the loaves look really official - not to mention the protein and fiber benefits)

3 tsp Xanthum gum

1 1/2 tsp salt (I use a bit more to ensure a complete lack of blandness)

2 tbls sugar (last time I added a couple extra tbls of brown sugar just because - very delicious!)

1 1/2 C warm water

2 tbls quick rise yeast

2 tbls butter or margarine melted (or olive oil - it worked well)

3 egg WHITES, beaten slightly

1 tsp cider vinegar

In a stand mixer blend together dry ingredients (MINUS THE SUGAR) until sifted well

Dissolve sugar in warm water and add yeast - proof until foamy

Blend yeast mixture into dry ingredients for 30 seconds or so

Add in butter (oil), egg WHITES and vinegar - beat on high for 3 minutes or however long it takes for the dough to become well blended

-Now for the tricky part - you GF people know that GF batters and dough don't make themselves easy to work with - this is no exception, though it's not one of the worst I've come across - SPOON the mixture on to greased and corn meal dusted baking sheets - Thats right, you use a SPOON to deal with the bread dough - strange, yes. You have to fiddle with it a while to get it in to the loaf shape you want - I usually end up spraying my hands with a liberal amount of baking spray (or olive oil) and shaping the loaves that way. Once you have them looking loafish cut 3 VERY slight slits in the top of them (beware - these cuts get HUGE when the loaves bake - they really aren't all that necessary-they just add to the overall officiality of the loaf - but remember that we added the milled flax to help with that -so slit or don't slit. The choice is yours.)

Brush with melted butter (or oil) and cover dough to rise in 150 degree (or other very warm area) oven until loaves have doubled in girth - mine usually take 30-45 minutes.

Heat oven to 400 degrees and bake loaves for 40 or so minutes. Watch them carefully - if they bake too long the outside gets crustier than one would like and make create challenges for consumption

This loaf is pretty dang delicious. I've gotten very adventurous with it and added (not any extra liquid of course - I'm not nearly versed enough in GF baking to know how to counterbalance more liquid) DRIED minced garlic, italian spices - it is easily adapted to whatever taste you are looking for. My next try with it is to make a cinnamon swirl bread. I'll let you know how that goes - it should be to die for! One of the best parts about the bread is that it keeps quite well. It will STILL be moist the NEXT DAY! For GF, this is something to throw a party over! It can be frozen easily and used later.

Crepes, oh delicious crepes!

A few nights ago NOTHING I had planned for dinner sounded good, so I switched directions completely from the Southwest Chili planned and made Crepes. THEY ROCKED! The recipe given here is, I'm assuming, intended for sweet filling. It's from one of my gluten free cookbooks that I really have enjoyed. I've modified the recipe VERY slightly to avoid copyright issues: And, I don't know how to make the little tent thing over the first "e" on the word "Crepe", apologies.

Crepes:

1 C white rice flour

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp nutmeg (or allspice, cinnamon or cloves depending on what you want to fill them with)

1 C half and half (I used 3/4 c half and half and 1/4 c 1% milk. I'm sure all milk would work)

2 tbls melted butter

1/2 tsp vanilla

3 eggs

-combine all the dry and sift well

-whisk in half and half until smooth

-add butter and vanilla - beat until smooth

-whisk in eggs one and at time until batter is smooth

-heat 8 or 9 inch skillet over MEDIUM heat - slightly butter pan and pour 1/4C batter in

-cook for 45 seconds to a minute until the top looks dull and the edges are dry

-flip crepe and cook for another 20 or 30 seconds until it looks done

Fill with whatever DELICIOUS filling you can think of

For this particular meal I did a sautéed mushroom, cream cheese and maple glazed turkey breast(sautéed for a few seconds with the mushrooms just to heat it up) filling (Boar's Head products are CERTIFIED GLUTEN FREE - and their deli meat is to die for!) The cream cheese and maple turkey actually went really well with the slightly sweet flavor of this crepe recipe. I haven't tried leaving out the vanilla and spice, but I'm sure they would cook the same and would work for so many fantastic savory options.

The dessert filling I did was just the all around safe and wonderfully delectable bananas and Nutella ( which IS Gluten free, and was a HUGE sigh of relief for me when I found out. Some people want their jewelry in their caskets when they die. I'd rather just be piled deeply under jars of Nutella! - That is IF I even wanted to be buried, which I don't because it totally gives me the heeby jeebies. But thats neither here nor there when speaking of Crepes.)

One of the sweet and subtle joys of this recipe is that it includes ONLY white rice flour, which I'm certain is theeee cheapest GF flour you can get - AND, there's no xanthum gum!

Oh yeah! Freeze leftover (yeah right, as if!) crepes in between sheets of wax paper in a hard container for up to 3 months. Just thaw them at room temperature and proceed with your excellently brilliant plans for filling them!

A HUGE Life Saver - "E-Mealz"!!!

I've been doing "e-mealz" for a while and have loved it! It saves time, money, planning, sanity, and makes for a happier mother and wife. I don't have to meal plan anymore - I just let e-mealz do the work. Check this out!

http://e-mealz.com/amember/go.php?r=136268&i=l0

We were using the "Low-fat" meals for 2 until my sister mentioned, with great gusto, that e-mealz started doing a GLUTEN FREE menu! It's been SO wonderful! It even tells what brands are safe in certain recipes which has saved me a lot of time in label reading and "google-ing" prepackaged products.

I stray now and then when I have a craving for something other than whats in that weeks menu, but it really has cut down on my time planning meals, money spent on food and fresh food wasted for lack of being used in whatever awesome meal idea I had but never got the rest of the ingredients for (you know exactly what I'm talking about!) (I know that was a run on sentence)

Who AM I?

My name is Rebekah. I am relatively new to the GF world. I started eating GF in September ( I think) 2010. It's certainly NOT a voluntary diet for me. I simply adore eating and my husband and I really enjoying cooking together, so to have restriction put on that has been really tough. My mother-in-law (a wonderful and beautiful woman!) recently suggested I start posting the recipes we've tried and liked. There isn't really a good way to do that on Face Book, so I am forced to figure out how to blog!

My GF testimony:

In January 2010 I started experiencing diminishing hearing in my left ear. There was fluid in my middle ear, but the hearing loss I was experiencing was in my inner ear. We thought nothing of it until I was laid out flat with debilitating vertigo, nausea and violent vomiting for 12 hours one Thursday afternoon. Miserable! I recovered over the next couple of days only to have the bout return about 3 weeks later. At first the attacks were always around 3 weeks apart - my hearing would return to normal. It would begin again with diminishing hearing, ridiculously loud tinnitus, and slight vertigo. I was given Zofran that kept me from vomiting, but the recovery from these "episodes" was still several days of exhaustion and refractory vertigo. Fast forward 9 months from the first attack and my hearing in my left ear was functioning at about 80% most of the time, and sometimes much worse. I wasn't having vertigo "episodes" anymore, but still experiencing noticeable balance problems and constant tinnitus. Starting in May, when we moved to Florida for my husbands residency, had clustered together. There was no 3 week break of perfect hearing. It NEVER left! In desperation I made an appt with an ENT who referred me to get an MRI, an audiology appt to test for hearing and to have a "Meniere's disease" test performed (only has 60% success rate but mine came back negative - encouraging,despite the knowledge that the test isn't very accurate), and an allergy test. Turns out I'm perfectly normal. The "Meniere's" test was negative, I'm a HIGHLY UNallergic person and my brain scan was nothing but what was expected - normal. Encouraging, but discouraging. Those of you who've had a chronic, undiagnosable issue know how this feels. You just want SOMETHING to be wrong - at least then you know what you are dealing with.

I'm a "born again" believer. I don't often use the practice of "fasting" but woke up one Friday feeling very strongly that God was leading me to fast. So I obeyed. I was hungry but noticed quickly that I felt better physically than I had in MONTHS! I had energy, and my ear didn't seem to be quite as bad as usual. I'm not positive that this was a physical response or a spiritual response to my obedience, but I felt great. By the end of the day God had made it pretty clear that gluten would have to go. A daunting task indeed, but again, I was desperate for a solution! I cut it out (to the best of my knowledge at the time) and had more energy than I had experienced since before I had become pregnant with my first son over 3 years previous! (I had recently complained to my husband that I hurt everywhere all the time and had NO energy. I was exhausted, always, and didn't know why!) My outlook on life became not quite so bleak and I felt I was able to conquer the world, not to mention the fact that I could actually hear. (again, it had been several months since our move to Florida when my hearing took a serious turn for the worse). The tinnitus didn't disappear (and still hasn't) but quieted down, considerably! If I ate something with gluten the next few days were spent feeling blah and having a left ear "stuffed up" (the only way I know how to describe the sensation in my inner ear). I've learned over the last several months that gluten is in A LOT more than I could have ever imagined. It's been a true challenge to cut it out! I've asked God several times if he's sure I still need to be GF and the reply has always been the same. In fact, I'm not actually convinced I have a true gluten intolerance - I think this is a test of obedience and I am just fine with that. Not necessarily a test of obedience with avoiding gluten, but more a test of obedience in trusting that he really does have my life in his hands. I am NOT in control and he ALWAYS is, and ALWAYS has been and ALWAYS will be! Thats just all there is to it. (I'm sure this sounds crazy-go-nuts to some of you, but I can hear, so thats enough for me!)

Ufta, thats long and I don't know that anyone who sees that many words in succession actually wants to read it, so I'm done with that part. On to the recipes. (again, it will take me some time to figure out how to organize this blog - I'm an EXPERT when it comes to Face Book, but blogging is a serious challenge for me!)

Disclaimer!

(I am not an experienced blogger - so bear with me as I organize my brain while you watch)

I am the wife of a physician, but I myself am NOT a physician. If you are an on looker and wanting to try these recipes be mindful that I have done my very best to keep them completely lacking of anything to do with gluten, but there is NO guarantee. When reading these recipes and thinking of trying them be mindful that I may have overlooked an ingredient that is in fact not a safe ingredient. (and PLEASE say so if you know it is NOT safe!!!) There will be recipes from specialty GF cookbooks I've been given that will obviously be safe. However, there are several recipes that I've altered or just made up that I'm nearly positive are GF but of course I could be wrong! I've been GF for less than 6 months and am still learning the ropes. I've read hoards of information regarding Celiac disease and Gluten intolerance. I have been tested twice and have come up negative for Celiac disease both times. I know the test isn't fail safe, but I assume I simply have a gluten intolerance. So, if you try and recipe and get sick from it, I apologize profusely, but as I mentioned I am by all means NOT an expert in this area. I can ALMOST positively guarantee that all these recipes are safe (I have noticeable crappy side effects if I eat something that is contaminated), but please do not assume that my recipes are fail safe. So, there you have it. Now that I've covered my hind end lets create delicious, non bland, non grainy, non gross GF food!