My Top Three Favorite Allergen-Free Holiday Treats

A friend on Facebook brought up the subject of Holiday baking and it made me think I should catch up with this blog by doing a quick post with three of my favorite holiday cookie recipes. I never cared about baking before being diagnosed with multiple food allergies and most of the year I do not do much of it, but Winter in Portland isn't the same without some fresh baked goodies to share. Obviously, if you do not have food allergies or sensitivities, these will be easy to make with regular ingredients.

Happy Eating!

1) Rice Krispie Treats

Easy to do using a butter substitute like Earth Balance Soy-Free Spread and gluten-free crispy rice cereal (there are several good brands, like Erewhon and Nature's Path). Thankfully most marshmallows are okay for me to eat! I make these throughout the year and everyone loves them.

Here's a fun blog post with an easy to follow recipe and visual comparison between the two cereals by "Adventures of a Gluten Free Mom": Gluten Free Rice "Krispie" Treats

2) Ginger Molasses Cookies

My favorite cookie pre-allergies was always Snickerdoodles. Huge cookies with a crackly sugared outside and soft inside, they would make me swoon. I still love Snickerdoodles and the blog that has this and the next recipe has a recipe that is very good here, but these Ginger Molasses Cookies blew my socks off so hard that they're now my favorite cold-weather all-purpose cookie. I love them so much that I don't even want to share with anyone else!

Recipe: Gluten-Free Ginger Lasses Cookies by Beyond the Wheat

The only substitution I had to make to this recipe was to use powdered egg replacer. The cookies turned out looking almost EXACTLY like the photo and they were so good when eaten warm.

3) German Jam Sandwich Cookies (Hildebrochen)

Another "Beyond the Wheat" cookie recipe (she did 12 different cookie recipes for Christmas last year!) that is astoundingly tasty. This is a little more labor intensive, but the ingredients couldn't be simpler. These were good the day of, but even better the day after. They keep very well and I'm sure would freeze great if you can hold off devouring them long enough to do so! I did half with an all fruit black raspberry seedless jam and half with an all fruit apricot jam and both were very tasty, though the raspberry was my favorite. The glazing of powdered sugar really helped finish these little cookies off, but I only glazed the tops.

Recipe: Gluten-Free Hildebrochen by Beyond the Wheat

I had to substitute both the butter and the eggs in this, but had zero difficulties. The biggest key to success with these cookies is to let the dough chill long enough before rolling it out. Two hours minimum! The first time I made these I did not cut out the center on the top cookie; the second time I did and it made the cookies much prettier. Either way they're very tasty.

Note: I used Pamela's Ultimate Baking & Pancake Mix for my 2009 holiday baking, but I've since decided that I cannot tolerate the powdered buttermilk in this mix, so I'll be trying out other mixes this holiday season. I have a feeling that Bob's Red Mill All Purpose GF Baking Flour will be the most affordable option that also bakes up well and there's the bonus of them being a really awesome local company!

Gimme some mustard, honey!

Growing up, I always ALWAYS hated mustard. There wasn't a thing anyone could do to get me to eat it; just the smell made me irate! Then, I was diagnosed with all these food intolerances/allergies and suddenly, the list of condiments that I loved that I could still enjoy shrunk severely. Much to my chagrin, many mustards were 100% safe for me to eat and, desperate as I was, I figured I should give them a chance. I still won't eat run of the mill bright yellow mustard, but honey mustard is firmly on my list of wonderful things to put on food.

Here's something I whipped up tonight for dinner without any planning at all (or measuring!), just using what I had on hand. It turned out great and I'll definitely be making it again.

MsChristy's Happy Honey Mustard Shrimp & Chicken

Ingredients: (Please note, these are my best guesses on amounts, as I rarely measure while I'm cooking up something in a hurry!)

• 1 lb chicken breast tenderloins
• 1/2 lb raw peeled shrimp (thawed, if bought frozen)
• 5 Tbsp cooking sherry or white wine
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 Tbsp minced garlic
• 1/2 sweet onion, diced
• 4 Tbsp honey mustard
• 1-2 Tbsp honey (I like it sweet, so I used 2 Tbsp)
• 1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 Tbsp Balsamic vinegar
• 1 Tbsp brown sugar
  
• 2 tsp molasses
  
• dash chili powder (more if you like it spicy)
  
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 2 tsp paprika
• dash garlic powder
• salt and pepper to taste (optional)

Instructions:

1. In a large non-stick skillet over medium-high heat, add olive oil and 3 Tbsp sherry (reserve the other 2 Tbs for step 2); mix in minced garlic and diced onion. Cook for a few minutes to soften onion slightly, then lay chicken pieces in single layer on top. Cook for about five minutes until perimeter of chicken turns white, then turn each piece of chicken over. Sprinkle chicken with salt, pepper and garlic powder if desired.
2. While chicken cooks, in a small dish mix all the remaining ingredients, including the 2 Tbsp sherry not used in step 1, EXCEPT for the shrimp.
3. When chicken is white all the way through, pour the sauce mix over the chicken, making sure all pieces are evenly coated on both sides. Cover with lid or aluminum foil and decrease heat to medium, cooking for five minutes.
4. When sauce is bubbling and has reduced slightly, add shrimp and stir in to coat with sauce. Cover and cook for another five minutes or until all shrimp is pink.
5. Remove from heat and serve over jasmine rice with lightly seasoned steamed vegetables.
   

Daiya Vegan Cheese Review

Last month I started hearing of this new cheese-substitute that was not only vegan, but also free of casein (which is the protein in dairy that I cannot digest) AND soy AND all the other primary food allergens. I did some quick research and discovered that yes, it did exist and the reviews were excellent...one blogger claimed that it would turn the vegan community on its collective head! Well, I'm not vegan, but when it comes to everything but meat, I might as well be, so I got excited. REALLY excited. Then I learned there was a vegan convenience store here in Portland (unsurprising) who had gotten their first shipment in of Daiya Vegan Cheese. Garen swung by while shopping for bike parts and because he loves me a lot, bought the last bag of mozzarella style shreds. Thankfully he didn't have to hurt any vegans in the process. When he brought it home, I immediately thought...PIZZA!

A few days passed and I hadn't yet felt like making pizza, but I found the Daiya Cheddar Shreds at Whole Foods when I stopped in for my bi-monthly Earth Balance purchase. They also had some of the new So Delicious Coconut yogurt in flavors that Fred Meyer's didn't carry and of course I had to grab some Original Tings on my way out; I honestly only meant to get one thing, but it's kind of nice to have so many more options now.

The cheddar shreds didn't last long, in fact the next night for dinner I made myself the BEST mac 'n cheese I've had in a long long time. What made it even better was that I didn't have to worry about getting sick from eating it! Aside from the psychological factor, the Daiya cheddar really did come amazingly close to mimicking real cheese: it melted beautifully without having to be microwaved, it was both gooey and stringy, it tasted fabulous (not like a sharp cheddar, but more of a mix between cheddar, colby and American), it reheated great, and it went on my favorite products list after just one use. When I showed the leftover mac 'n cheese to Garen, he agreed that it looked just like real mac 'n cheese.

While very sad to see the last of the mac 'n cheese, I consoled myself with the fact that I still had the mozzarella shreds to try. This weekend we had both kids, so it seemed to be a good opportunity to try making a pizza with the Daiya cheese while simultaneously resisting the siren call of regular pizza (a hitherto impossible feat).

After preparing the crust, and adding sauce, I sprinkled a light layer of cheese that did end up melting with absolute perfection. The toppings went on next and since the pizza was a Chicago-style, they were super chunky and thick, plus the entire thing needed to bake for 20 minutes. If I had read the website more carefully, I would have seen that it would have been best to add the top layer of cheese half-way through cooking to avoid over-browning. Instead, I layered on the cheese very thickly and baked the pizza for the full 20 minutes, which resulted in a rather un-cheese like top crust. Fortunately, it still tasted great and since I'd layered it on so thick, most of it was just as melty and stringy as the bottom layer. Even Garen and the kids thought it was good! This may make it possible for us to completely stop buying regular pizza. Amazing.

While I'm not sure about Daiya turning the vegan community on its head, I do know that it has added some joy back into my life with its dairy-free deliciousness. I am absolutely certain that this product will continue to grow in popularity and if I had some extra cash, I'd be buying their stock! I give it five stars and it's going on my list of regular Whole Foods purchases. Hopefully they come out with slices and other flavors SOON!

Product Details

Item Name: Daiya Cheddar-Style and Mozzarella-Style Shreds

Company Name: Daiya Foods Inc.

Website: http://www.daiyafoods.com/company.html

Retail Price: approx $5.50 per 8 oz bag

Ingredients: http://www.daiyafoods.com/products.asp#ingredients

Pros: taste, texture, overall cheesiness

Cons: unit cost, flavor options

Ingredient Reading FAILURE

One would think after fourteen months of learning to scrutinize every single ingredients list on every single food I put in my mouth, I'd be an expert by now. Unfortunately, even expert ingredient list readers can be tripped up.

Sometimes it's due to things outside of our control, like sudden unannounced product changes. Usually, however, it's our own fault. Life decides to speed up, we get in a hurry, we reach out and grab something we think is something else, then we compound the problem by not catching the mistake until after the package is sitting empty in the trash due to a sudden snack attack.

This tendency to go into autopilot at the grocery store has brought me to my metaphorical knees more than once and it's very much the one thing that continues to plague me, even after all the cravings have passed and that switch in my head has reset so that the foods that really ARE bad for me smell and taste bad.

This time around it was a bag of crisps. We were at the grocery store a couple of weekends ago and I passed by the Riceworks display, remembered I was out and I snagged two bags. What I thought I grabbed were the Sea Salt and Salsa Fresca flavors, as those are the two I can eat (no soy or dairy, all are gluten-free). After sitting down and eating the entire bag Wednesday night, then waking up Thursday and feeling progressively horrible, I stopped and thought about what all I had eaten the day before and spotted the bag in the trash, realizing suddenly that instead of Salsa Fresca, I had bought the Sweet Chili flavor, which is chock full of soy.

The lesson I took from this was to SLOW DOWN and LOOK. The red and green packages obviously invoke traffic signals and they're a good analogy for food intolerances and allergies. That red bag should have screamed STOP to me, but I was in such a hurry that it didn't register...and once it had made it home into the pantry, it was "safe" and my brain completely set it aside for any further consideration. Assuming everything I've bought is safe when I know that I've been getting sloppy is dangerous. Days are lost feeling extremely ill, which then makes everyone around me suffer. If I had a job, that would be lost wages if I had to call in sick.

The hidden blessing to having food intolerances instead of true food allergies is that such a mistake doesn't land me in the hospital with anaphylaxis. Usually it isn't until the next day when every thing's happily landed in my intestinal tract that things start to go very very wrong. While I wouldn't wish this ailment on anyone, I do have to be grateful for that (at least for now).