Recipe: Oatmeal Raisin Cookies (GF, Dairy-free)

Adapted from Oct 2016 Cook's Illustrated

4 T Spectrum palm shortening
5 t blackstrap molasses
1 1/4 c raw sugar
3/4 t salt
2 T coconut milk
1 T water

1/2 c raisins

1/2 t baking soda
1/4 t cinnamon
1/2 c oil
2 medium eggs
1-1.5 t butter-vanilla emulsion
3 c old fashioned oats
3/4 c rice flour
1/4 c potato flour

Put the shortening, molasses, sugar, salt, coconut milk and water in a saucepan.  Boil for a few minutes, until most of the sugar is dissolved.  Add the raisins, stir, turn off heat.

Mix the rest of the ingredients together, then stir in the hot oil/sugar mixture.

Divide into 20 balls. Flatten onto parchment paper.  Bake at 350 or 375 F for 8-10 minutes.

(CI version has 4 T browned butter, no coconut milk or water, and regular wheat flour. Also, 1 lg egg + 1 yolk.)

NOTE: Almost all of these ingredients can also be found at Walmart.  Yes, butter-vanilla emulsion is tastier than just vanilla; no, it does not have any actual dairy ingredients in it.  Yes, you can substitute ingredients, but it probably will turn out different.

Why I Hate Cooking Dinner (Recipe: Really Good Moroccan Chicken)

Put  the children down for nap/quiet time/mama needs a break.

Realize that your meal plan says chicken and the chicken is frozen solid.  Dump chicken in pot of hot water for an hour. Then brown  chicken in 1 T  oops, glug glug, 1/4 c of olive oil.

Peel some mangy sweet potatoes you found in a drawer.  Look at them, then peel another. Chop into giant inch thick slices because you are in a hurry.

Realize that you have zero onions.  Gnash teeth.  The baby wakes up and starts crying.  Throw a cup or two of broth into the chicken pot along with two cinnamon sticks, some cardamom pods because who has time to grind them, and pepper.  Squash a couple tablespoons of coriander seeds and some fenugreek in a mortar, and throw it on top of the chicken along with a few tablespoons of mediocre pre-diced garlic because who has time to dice garlic. Leave simmering (covered) on low on the stove.  Hope the house doesn't burn down.

Toss your two screaming children in a minivan; pick up a third child (surly) and a carpool child (also surly).  Deposit carpool child, then take your three arguing, whining children to the grocery at 3:30 PM on a Friday.  Regret everything.  While you are there, remember that you have 24 hours to produce baked beans for 100.  Buy some chocolate.

Go home an hour later and frantically dice up an onion or two.  Saute until browned and slightly burnt; try not to set off the fire alarm or take off a finger. Feed the baby half the raisins you'd intended to use as she pounds on a stool and shouts 'Moah!' Take the chicken out of the pot, getting garlic bits everywhere.  Swear.   Throw in the onions, sweet potato, raisins, olives, chopped apricots, some more garlic probably, two drained cans of garbanzo, an inch of ginger root peeled and finely diced, and whatever else you feel like.  Stir; stick the chicken back on top and bake in a covered dish in a 325 F oven until the sweet potatoes are tender. Take out and cut up and debone chicken. (Put chicken back in.)

Serve to the accompaniment of whining children who will refuse to eat it even though they like every single ingredient.  Vow to never cook them dinner ever again.  Pour a glass of wine and count the minutes to bedtime.  Lather, rinse and repeat.

Ingredients:

1 chicken preferably brined
An onion
Garlic
Some olives (8 oz - mine were the $1.79 marinated pack from TJ's)
Golden raisins (4 oz)
Apricots (whatever size they come in- 8 oz?)
Sweet potatoes (5 medium)
Chicken broth
2 cans garbanzo beans
Coriander, cinnamon sticks, fenugreek, green and black cardamom
Ginger root
Dash of despair and salt tears

How to Lose Weight

Have a sick baby who nurses six hours a day for two weeks.

Be allergic to practically everything. 

Leave your dinner on the stove.  Go nurse cranky baby, leaving cranky older children with extremely cranky spouse.  Do not say to spouse 'Please turn this off soon' because he is a grown-ass human.

Return an hour later to a burnt, inedible pot of mush.  Eat one baked-oatmeal muffin and half a red pepper for dinner. Go to bed hungry. 

Repeat.

Thanksgiving Rebels

While Babycakes is nursing, I usually read things on the Internet.  Since I'm not a big fan of nonfiction (life is depressing enough) I usually read fiction, or recipe blogs.

My parents did a family Thanksgiving for many years, featuring turkey, smoked corned beef, smoked salmon, and grilled tofu; pig-sausage-containing and vegetarian baked dressing; candied sweet potatoes with and without marshmallows; five kinds of pie; mom's famous rye sourdough; shredded cranberry/apple salad; and freshly prepared horseradish.  And, in later years, green beans and salad in response to Dr. S's plaintive "This is all delicious, but is there something green to eat?" Also a couple special things for our friend with Celiac Disease who always comes.  Bless their hearts for accommodating all of us difficult weirdos.

BUT!  I'm tired of baked turkey.  Time for a revolution!

Readers, I have now decided that what I truly want for Thanksgiving is turkey sausage (possibly sausage gravy and biscuits).  Heresy, I know!

I'm also thinking of brussels sprouts baked until crispy (or, if I have a stove again by then,* sauteed with mustard and wine until crispy), a reprise of the chestnut/cornbread dressing,** and pumpkin custard.  Pie crust is too much work and I don't like it anyways.  Maybe an encore performance of Chocolate Pie For My Sister's Wedding. Possibly something with cranberries but not cranberry sauce because I'm tired of it.

Any suggestions for things that taste of Thanksgiving but aren't a million hours of work, or boring?

*Stovetop bit the dust three weeks ago.  ETA: two more weeks. You can cook a surprisingly large array of things in the oven.  Reminds me of the year I spent in France where I had only a skillet.  Skillet cookies!

** Which I made last year and it was SOOOO GOOOOD.  My uncle has a chestnut tree and he brings me chestnuts every year.  I KNOW.  Having decent family support is amazing.  My dad is coming down next week to watch the kids while I go get my ears fixed, too.  

A (Mostly Cheap) Brownie For All Allergies

(Adapted from Smitten Kitchen's recipe)

Dear Readers, do you know how I feel about insult (can't eat anything) being added to injury (dairy allergy)?  I feel frickin' ticked off.  However, these brownies help.  You can make them gluten-free.  You can make them dairyless.  You could even make them vegan, though I haven't tried that yet, so caveat comestor.  You can also make them from normal things that normal people have around the house, or at least from stuff you can buy at Walmart* with a minimum of inconvenience.

Cocoa Brownies

10 T probably-not-butter
(options:  Crisco**; coconut oil, either refined, mysteriously de-coconut-flavored, or not refined, it's all the same; palm shortening, sold as Spectrum vegetable shortening, or whatever  You can use oil if you have to but it tends to separate out.)
1/2 c sugar
2 T molasses
A little less than a cup of cocoa powder.
(Look, I use the Toll House brand because that's what I can buy.  They taste fine.  Would fancy expensive cocoa powder taste better?  Probably, but...)
1/4 t salt
1/2 t vanilla extract (you can use vanilla bean past if these need to be alcohol-free for a Muslim pal)
2 large eggs (or 1/2 c hot water + 1 T ground flaxseed, or EnerG)
1/2 c flour-like substance.
(Half food-processored-oatmeal and half cornstarch; some corn flour and rice flour and cornstarch; tapioca and rice flours if you can eat those; whatever.)
Optional: 1/2 (?) c chocolate chips.
(Ghirardelli semi-sweet contain no dairy AND taste good, though not as good as the bittersweet ones which do contain milk fat, and though they have the standard 'made in a facility that processes dairy', I am super-extra-allergic to dairy and the semisweet ones are fine for me.  YMMV.)

Preferably in a bowl over simmering water/ a double boiler, melt the shortening with the sugar, molasses, cocoa powder, and salt.  Or you can microwave it if you have to.  Beat in the eggs for about 30 seconds; it should get kind of thick.  Add the vanilla extract, flour, and chocolate chips.  Mix very well.  Put 12 muffin papers in a muffin tin and divide the batter into 12 brownie-cupcakes. Bake at 325 F for 20-30 minutes or until you feel like they are done enough to eat.  If you are using coconut oil it may bubble up around the batter in a disturbing fashion.  Do not be alarmed!  It will all soak back in once you take them out of the oven.

(Not recommended: All in one pan.)

* The main grocery store in these parts.  I live in the hills, y'all.
** Yes, I know that Trans Fats Will Kill You; I can't eat it anyways, and it's not like one should make this every day.  Trying to make this easy here.

On Being Wrong

I once went to the allergist because I'd had a very bad reaction to something I ate.  I wrote down everything I'd eaten for the last week, then figured out which things I hadn't eaten in a while, and so on.  "I think it must be the green papaya," I said, "because it's the only new thing."  So they gave my my (other) allergy shots and a lab slip for an IgE test for papaya.

While in the waiting room demonstrating that I was not going into anaphylactic shock, leafing through a book, and I happened to come across a description of something called "Birch-Celery syndrome..."  (I am violently allergic to birch pollen.  It is now known as oral allergy syndrome.)  And, you see, the papaya salad?  It had celery in it.

My point is that, despite my careful and logical analysis, I was completely wrong.  I had eaten celery the week before and I was fine; it was a sudden onset; biology is WEIRD.  Food intolerances are even weirder.

So when people go on new diets, do they feel better because they're eating lots of vegetables and lean protein rather than cookies, or snacking on nuts and carrots instead of potato chips, or do they actually have a problem with gluten/ dairy/ Zoroastrians?  I don't know, and neither do they.

(Unless they wait several hours, eat some fill-in-the-blank, and wait several hours to see what happens.  Or eat it accidentally once or twice and feel mysteriously ill.  Then the hypothesis has been tested and data has been collected, and my scientific soul is satisfied, thank you very much. Unless the 'something' was 'an entire package of Oreos, in which case... well, I'd feel ill too.)

(This blog has been getting a lot of hits for things like "fake celiac disease", so, for the sake of the Internet: YES, celiac disease is a very real, very serious disorder.  However, the only completely accurate test involves an intestinal biopsy.  The blood tests have both a  relatively high false-positive and a relatively high false-negative rate, i.e. they're not entirely specific.  "I gave up gluten and now I feel better" is not a diagnosis.  It is a noncausal association.  Celiac disease is different from an intolerance; similarly, a true allergy and a food intolerance are not the same thing [though celiac has an autoimmune component because immune systems: WEIRD]. From a practical standpoint, they differ only in that people with celiac disease cannot - in general - have even a tiny little microgram of gluten, whereas people with an intolerance may or may not react to very tiny amounts. Thank you, this is our public service announcement for the day.  Moving on!)

Book Review: ALL NATURAL by Nathanael Johnson

I reserved our public library's copy of this book because the author is a friend of a friend, who told me I might like it.  Here's the verdict: I do!  I like it immensely!  I am thinking of buying a copy for my mother, since she would also enjoy it!

(Nobody paid me anything to write this.  I sent the author a message once, but we are largely unacquainted.)

The book starts out with a very amusing recounting of the author's childhood, being raised by wolves radical back-to-nature types.  (They make my mother's Vegetarian Nut Loaf look positively mainstream.)  He meets his future wife, the daughter of a surgeon, and they marry and are soon expecting a child, at which point we segue into a chapter on birth in America.

I could have written this chapter.  My favorite line: "I was looking for something more like No Nonsense Evidence-Based Midwifery." Ah, Bug's midwives, of "a zero-transfer C-section rate is unrealistic and dangerous" fame!  He goes into the statistics of C-sections, maternal morbidity and mortality, and ensuing complications carefully, in detail, and in a very understandable manner - and also talks about the bad outcomes that can happen in the absence of medical care, and the fine line between lifesaving interventions and overcautious practices that harm patients (like routine continuous fetal monitoring).

The next chapters are about raw milk, nutrition, vegetables, sugar (really, doesn't affect immunity; nicely dissected and taken down, with a fine understanding of the phrase "There is no evidence."), pork farming, immunity, vaccines, the environment.  These subjects are all handled delicately and in a very neutral manner with no proselytizing.  

The last chapter is about medicine, and how to balance lifesaving treatments with unnecessary testing and intervention.  The author shares an anecdote from his mother, who intelligently researches a possible hepatitis infection, and insists on a second test because the first one has a high false-positive rate.  He also relates his own bout of appendicitis.  He talks about primary care, emergency medicine, and end-of-life care, our problems with dealing with the root causes of... well, everything - and one of medicine's great failures, that of treating the symptoms. The last chapter is a nice bookend to the first- C-sections and suicides, birth and death.

There are 19 pages of closely-spaced endnotes.  A lot of research went into this book.  I would like to add I've found no inaccuracies in this book, which is high praise from this pedantic, proofreading-maniac of a scientist.  In some cases, I would perhaps have liked to see a stronger opinion come through (if you want to read about vaccines go look up Andrew Wakefield's financial interest in scaring people, and the reasons for his medical license being revoked in Great Britain).  Some subjects could perhaps use a bit more depth; for example, the author talks about  the 'immunity hypothesis', that more dirt and germs prevent autoimmune disease, and cites the rise of things like asthma in developed countries-  but he doesn't mention the role of pollution, or of cheap and accurate sequencing in diagnosis. On the other hand, there's only so many pages in a book, and the author clearly doesn't want to be prescriptive or evangelical.  He is leading you through his journey of exploration.  

If you have a friend who thinks that ridiculous, stupid, inaccurate, dangerous Sears book is the gospel, this will not convince him or her.  If you know someone who has an actual inquring mind - especially people who are not trained as scientists- this is perfect.  As for you, dear readers, you should all go read it immediately.


* Did you know this strain has a stable plasmid with a horizontally-transferred Shigella toxin, which binds to ribosomes, and that's why it's so toxic?  I wrote a paper about it in college.

Resentful, and Food

So I'm sure you're all deeply curious about my FEELINGS.  Especially about suddenly being unable to eat anything, and therefore sounding crazy.

Well, how I feel is !@$%^& ANNOYED.  I have to cook frigging everything because the only things we ever have around that are snack-like (that I can eat) are raisins, sunflower seeds, and cashews.  Sometimes chocolate chips, but then I eat them with gloom-filled rapidity.  Also oranges.  These are all things that rapidly get old.  Sometimes I bake things with weird rice flour and stuff, but 1) it's a lot of work; 2) we are moving and I have zero time; 3) about half the time they turn out just one step above compost quality, i.e. really strange*; and 4) if they aren't strange, all the other people in the house eat them too.  They'll have what Mama's having.

Anyhow.  Annoyed!  And tired!  And about twice as tired of that whole 'coming up with dinner' as I was before.

*I can't eat tapioca flour or soy or dairy, so most commercial EVERYTHING is off-limits.  Also  no 'modified food starch' or 'tapioca maltodextrin.'  (Read your labels some day and be amazed how many things those are in.  Gatorade!  Rice crackers!) 

Recipe: Banana-Oat-Yogurt Muffins (Gluten-Free, Optionally Vegan)

My child!  He doesn't eat.  And then he is SURLY.  So I keep making up protein-filled recipes that I hope he will eat in the morning, and he does (for a week or two) and then we start all over again.

Banana, Oat, and Yogurt Muffins
(makes 36, or 12 and 2 8" round cake pans)

3 c quick rolled oats
1.5 c oat flour (2 c oats, food processor-ed)
0.5 c buttermilk or dry milk powder
0.5 c soy protein powder
4 T ground flaxseed
0.5 c sugar
4 t baking powder
2 t baking soda

2 t cinnamon
1 t salt
1 c greek yogurt
2 eggs
2/3 c soymilk

2/3 c oil
6 medium bananas


(For a vegan version, substitute soymilk powder or flour for buttermilk, soy yogurt for greek yogurt, and 4 T flaxseed + 1/2 c boiling water for the eggs).

Mix wet ingredients together (mix dry ingredients separately too if you have more patience than me), mix it all together, bake until done in a moderate oven (350 F, 15-20 minutes for muffins, longer for cakes).

Per muffin: about 130 calories, 6 g fat, 5 g protein, 8 g sugar, 2 g fiber.
(P.S.  I haven't tasted these; they are a hit with the small children, but I suspect they taste kind of... healthy.) 

In Retrospect, Maybe Not

We interrupt our regularly scheduled angst to bring you this breaking news:

Nicole (who comments frequently, but doesn't blog) and I have stolen rescued about 4 or 5 8 or 9 bushels of apples,* with fine disregard for things like "property law" and "no trespassing signs".  There were ladders and pointy tools and tarps involved. Nobody was arrested.

We are now making an insane quantity of applesauce while our children roam free in the yard.  There may be pictures.

I think we're going to have to make most of into apple butter, because I estimate it'll yield about 25 GALLONS of applesauce.  There are not enough Mason jars in the world.  

*My neighbor's tree, N's neighbor's tree, and an abandoned apple orchard now owned by a construction company.  It wasn't a great year for apples up here, or there might have been (oh dear) more.  

Also: FREE! Also: organic!  Nobody sprays abandoned trees.  Sometimes very organic, indeed. 

On Vegetables

My two sisters and I used to be vegetarians.

At Prudence's bat mitzvah, we stayed with friends of friends.  They served a traditional Shabbat dinner: salad, sweet potato casserole.... chicken.  My middle sister looked at her plate.  Then she looked at me.  Then she picked up her fork, because we were brought up to be polite.

Prudence came to visit one Pesach and was seduced by a roast chicken.

And one day in France I got really, really hungry.

And that was the end of that.

When I married Dr. S, I wasn't a vegetarian, but the kosher butcher was six miles away and I didn't have a car.  We'd have chicken or fish for Shabbat- sometimes. He promptly lost 20 of his 195 pounds (he's 6'2"), leaving him a very shadow of his former self.

We still don't cook very much meat.  For one thing, we are poor, and yea verily, kosher meat is expensive. Tofu, on the other hand, is not.  Completely separate from that are a couple moral and health considerations:

1) According to various sources, the average American eats between 0.5 and 0.75 pounds of meat per day.  This is not environmentally sustainable, especially not under humane animal-raising conditions.
1a)  It's not especially good for one's health to eat that much meat, either.  Manifestly. 

2) I believe that, as part of the prohibition on cruelty to animals, if one is eating meat, it should be prepared in a delicious fashion.  This takes a lot of time.
2a) And it's more of a special thing for us because we eat meat once every week or two.  This suits my sense of frugal appreciation of the delicious, delicious animals.

This week was Pesach, on which we always indulge in a brisket.  Delicious, delicious animals. Vegetarianism, I have forsaken you.  I fear it will be forever.