Gluten-Free Baked Oatmeal Casserole This recipe comes from Hillbilly Recipes and contains no gluten. Total Time: 50 minutes... Serves: 6 2 cups gluten-free rolled oats 1/3 cup brown sugar 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 cup walnut pieces 1 cup raspberries {any berries work} 1/2 cup milk chocolate chips 2 cups milk 1 large egg 3 tablespoons butter, melted 1 tablespoon vanilla extract 1 ripe banana, peeled, 1/2-inch slices Learning to make gluten-free flat bread is a necessity for those of us who want to have our bread and eat it, too. I modified a recipe for homemade tortillas, making a couple of detours to create a moist biscuit-like dough. Ironically, I used a cornbread "philosophy," heating sunflower oil in a cast iron skillet and adding the hot oil to make the dough workable. I actually like the taste of this flatbread made with two types of non-wheat flour. You will need: 2 cups buckwheat flour (millet -- buckwheat is not wheat) 2 cups brown rice flour 2 tsp baking powder 1 tsp salt 1/4 softened butter 1/3 cup sunflower oil heated in a skillet 1 1/2 cups water Preheat oven to 475. Heat approximately 1/3 cup of sunflower oil in an iron skillet. In a heat-proof bowl, mix flours, baking powder, and salt with a fork or whisk. Add warm butter and work with fingers. When oil is hot and sizzling, carefully pour oil in bowl and whisk. Add water and work dough with fingers. Sprinkle dry brown rice flour onto clean surface. Work the dough in your hands like biscuit dough. Using generous amounts, form balls of dough 2 to 2 1/2 inches in diameter. Dust dough balls with flour to keep them from sticking to your working surface. Gently roll the dough evenly in a cross pattern, making sure to roll it out the same number of times each direction. Do not allow the rounds to become too thin. This dough is forgiving, so if you mess up, you can start again. Dusting lightly with dry flour helps. Preheat a skillet lightly coated with oil on medium to medium high heat. Allow the flat bread to heat for several seconds on each side. Flip more than once. They are nearly done when you observe the flat bread turning a medium brown color against the darker gray-brown of the flat bread. Betsy's Breadless Bread -- A good friend, colleague, and mentor gave me this recipe. She, too, has gluten allergies and must leave wheat flour out of her diet. This is a bread recipe she created without flour of any kind. She suggests baking some up in several, small batches, freezing them so you can use them as required. I tried these at lunch and found them surprisingly tasty. One suggestion is to butter them and season them to your taste, then broil them briefly and eat them warm. My good friend's comments are in italics.
This doesn’t taste like bread exactly, but the consistency is similar, and it will hold together sandwich fillings and hamburgers, assuming these are not too juicy. I have developed a taste for this stuff. Somehow it “hits the spot,” and helps me to feel less deprived. Betsy’s “Breadless” Bread 4 eggs separated or 3 eggs separated plus commercial egg white to equal 1 egg (2 tbsps) ¼ tsp cream of tartar 3 tbsp ricotta cheese tiny dash salt 1 packet or ¼ tsp Splenda (optional, but I like it) vegetable oil spray Preheat oven to 325. In a large mixing bowl, add cream of tartar to the egg whites and beat until they are stiff but not dry. In a small mixing bowl beat the ricotta cheese, three egg yolks, and salt (and Splenda) until smooth and lemon-colored. (Store the remaining yolk to stir into breakfast eggs or to make Béarnaise sauce). With a spatula, gently fold the yolk mixture into the beaten whites, trying not to reduce the volume of the whites. Take no more than a minute to combine. Using a large kitchen spoon, create six stacks/mounds on lightly sprayed parchment on a baking sheet. Use it all. Bake 45 minutes to 1 hour, depending on your oven. The finished product should be lightly browned in high places and yellow in the lower ones and completely cooked. Remove from oven and cool. The puffy mounds will collapse somewhat as they cool. You’ll want to keep these in a plastic zipper bag with paper toweling in between. Store them in the refrigerator. Note: If you like them and wish to make plenty to keep on hand, I recommend that you make up this recipe several times in a baking session. I’ve tried to double it with disappointing results. For reasons that are probably clear to science teachers but not to me, the yolk/white mix breaks down rather quickly and will become too liquid to bake if allowed to stand while baking the first batch. 1/2 cup buckwheat flour 1/2 cup brown rice flour 1 1/4 cup oats 1 stick butter 3/4 cup brown sugar 1/4 cup melted creamed honey and cinnamon 2 cups applesauce 1 tsp baking powder pinch of allspice or star anise When I was twelve, the School Scheduler in my middle school put me in a home economics class, which turned out to be a total disaster. I had only one victory: I made applesauce-raisin bars myself. I suppose I have that teacher to thank for challenging me, because the t-shirt I was supposed to make that semester was a catastrophe. But I digress. The 2013 attempt at an applesauce-based dessert was a real victory. A good friend took our son home to spend the night with her son, and Jesse and I were left home alone. Rather than go out, we decided to stay home and eat. I made an easy dinner of hot wings for Jesse and started looking for a gluten-free, decadent recipe with my favorite ingredients and a chance to use honey and cinnamon, the bacteria-killers. Oatmeal lends a nice crunch to this dessert bar. You can add raisins or nuts if you like. Directions: Combine flours thoroughly. Melt butter and creamed honey separately. Add to mixture. Add oats. Stir until dry ingredients are incorporated. Mixture should be moist but not thin like cake batter. Working dough with hands helps. Spread half mixture in brownie pan followed by the applesauce, followed by the rest of the batter. Pat down evenly. Bake at 350 for 35-40 minutes. Best served warm with vanilla ice cream. My brother, who had to reinvent cooking for himself after a heart transplant in 1994, came over today along with my oldest son, and we set ourselves to cooking gluten-free stuff. We have started with a lot of traditional staples, and this fudge pie is a tribute to my oldest son's grandmother, Peggy Davis, who died in 2001 of colon cancer. She taught me most of what I know about cooking anything, and one of the first pies she let me fly solo on was fudge pie. We made the gluten-free crust from brown rice flour using a basic pie crust formula, only we substituted a stick of butter for 1/2 cup of vegetable oil. This gave us a biscuit like dough we could work. The whipped cream is homemade from heavy whipping cream, sugar, and a little labor with a mixer. Everyone agreed it tasted a lot like the previous version made with white, refined flour. I suggest watching it closely and removing it from the oven when the outside is firm but moist and the inside is underdone, although it is normal to have a "crust" develop on top. Homemade Whipped Crème 1/4 cup heavy whipping crème Mix the crème in a bowl until it turns thick and doubles its quantity. As it reaches desired thickness, add 1-2 teaspoons of sugar for desired taste. Fudge Pie Crust 2 cups brown rice flour 1 stick butter melted 1 tsp baking powder 1 tsp baking soda Filling 1/4 cup brown rice flour 1/4 cup cocoa 2 cups sugar 3 eggs 1 stick butter Mix wet ingredients first. Melt butter if needed. Add flour, cocoa, and sugar. Mix with spoon or fork until all ingredients are wet. I feel blessed to like rice dishes, because if I want any other pasta, I have to make it. The only way to have decadence in gluten-free food is to make everything from natural ingredients. I bent the rules with the Alfredo sauce; it's from a jar. This dish features summer squash, Roma tomatoes, California lettuce, and Vidalia onions. I used chicken rib meat because it's more tender than breast meat. I sautéed everything but the rice in sunflower oil, seasoning with Cajun spice and a bit of lemon-pepper. Sauteeing the vegetables on low heat allows the Vidalias to caramelize and adds a beautiful sweet-savory taste to the squash, which is normally tasteless without a lot of help. Last-minute, I added the rice and the Alfredo sauce, a mushroom sauce made by Bertolli. The best I can tell, it is gluten-free, although you have to be a chemist these days to know for sure. The sauce does contain yeast extract and probably a bit more sodium than those with high blood pressure would want. However, there was no mention of wheat or any form of gluten-based substances, so this brand is likely the least offensive to those on a diet like mine. Very soon, I will have to learn to make my own Alfredo sauce using brown or white rice flour and will post the results here. I love the word deadline. I love the sound it makes as it whooshes past. – Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy There is a photographer in Iowa, Mark Hirsch, who photographed the same tree for 365 days. There is something very loving and methodical in such a commitment. It reminds me of a long marriage or the way a man will go to the same dead-end job every day to feed his family or the way a woman will keep putting her kids first and do without every single thing she needs just to watch her kids grow up with what they want. More than that, watching the report on the photographer, I learned that things happen that change your perspective. He had a job and they let him go. They didn’t need any more print publication photographers, thank you very much. Next, he had an accident. There had been this tree Hirsch had passed on a rural road nearly every day. It had always been there. One day after the accident, the man realized he needed that tree. He needed to stop and photograph it. He needed to capture it. The Cherokee believed that a camera snatched your soul and stored it in the box. It must have sure seemed that way to look at that great square chamber with the fire pluming out and embers burning into the air, and the image appearing under water like something from another dimension. Poof! Another soul, gone! In the old days, developing a photo must have seemed like creation itself. There’s something to that line of thinking, that a photograph captures the essence of an object, person, or living thing, maybe even catches that thing or person showing off its true inner self with its guard down, how it really is all the time. Even when no one is looking. I used to think of deadlines as arbitrary dates set by a boss or a blind bureaucratic organization beyond which, if not observed or adhered to, penalties would be assessed, heads would roll, jobs would be in jeopardy. Steps would be taken. I now think of deadlines as points in time when something comes down out of another dimension, snaps a picture, and serves up the truth. For me, it was a neurological illness. I discovered that everything I ate was either part of the problem or part of the solution. That had been true long before I got sick, but now it was a matter of getting well or getting worse, a choice between living and dying. I have learned bits of nutrition wisdom in the most unlikely places. At my son's Tang Soo Do class, the master teacher told me about the healing powers of honey: specifically, he said, honey attacks bacteria. A woman from a Georgia mountain community shocked her grandson's Vanderbilt physicians when she applied a honey paste to the boy's bedsores. The bedsores healed. The doctors discovered that the honey destroyed the bacteria. I'm on a journey to discover the healing properties of food. I am cooking my way through a year of decadent gluten-free recipes to prove to myself that it can be done. These recipes will be my own creation or collaborative efforts with others. I discovered an organic store on the square in my hometown, Pa Bunk's, and I made my fourth shopping trip to stock my pantry. My first challenge: To make a tortilla with buckwheat and brown rice flour. I picked up creamed honey comb and cinnamon which happens to be made very near my rural home in Chapel Hill, Tennessee, and whole, organic milk. I have this idea of making crepes out of buckwheat and brown rice flour and stuffing them with various combinations of food, like salmon and mushrooms. I'm gathering the ingredients and hunting down recipes while my son licks glutinous, raw brownie mix from bowl and spoon and watches Master Chef with me. There are chocolate eclairs all over the screen. I start wondering if I'll be able to make cakes, pastries, pies, even cookies, out of the gluten-free flours. It will be a matter of trial and error, which I will record here. August 2, 2013
I've written quite a bit about my goals for gluten-free eating but very little about my illness. For seventeen months, since March of 2012, I have suffered a chronic syndrome my doctors determined to be a neurological condition. Probably not coincidentally, I was bitten by two tick nymphs, tested positive for Lyme Disease on an ELISA test, but I did not receive treatment for nine and a half weeks. In a strange series of missteps, my former doctor's staff told me alternately that: 1) the tests had not come back yet 2) I was negative for Lyme Disease 3) I should just keep taking the antibiotics (what antibiotics?) 4) No, I could not speak to my doctor. I demanded an appointment and finally got one, two weeks after the initial Lyme tests. When my doctor came into the room, her first question was, "How are you doing on the doxycycline?" That was ironic since I had asked, two weeks prior, for doxycycline and was refused "Until the test results come back." I later discovered the test results had come back positive within only a few days (during the time the staff was telling me their made-up story of the day), and the doctor had called in the doxy within two days of my office visit, but no one had bothered to answer my questions, call me, or give me straight answers to that effect. By the time I got the antibiotics, I was bed-ridden with brain swelling, a 24-hour migraine, whole body joint pain, dehydration, and a deep brain fog that was more like a trance. I was out of work 22 days, and the next school year wasn't much better. With the best of intentions, I went to work only to succumb to long periods of fatigue, whole-body pain, and the feeling of having the flu twenty-four-hours a day. I used all my sick days and then some, lost money and time. I have an eight-year-old who was six at the time I got sick. When I was ten, my dad got lung cancer and spent his days on the couch. The couch swallowed up his life, and now, it seemed, it was my turn. To make matters worse, my former doctor refused to refer me to any specialist in Lyme or any other area. I changed doctors to a man who is, quite honestly, the best doctor in town. He recommended me to an infectious disease specialist and a rheumatologist; however, all this accomplished was ruling out arthritis and Lupus. To complicate matters, my old doctor sent an entire medical file to the infectious disease doc but left out the results of the Lyme test. In fact, she did not send any documentation to show that a Lyme test had been done at all. This left me in the position of arguing that I had experienced Lyme with no evidence to support it. In other words, I looked like one of those self=diagnosing hypochondriacs looking for attention and running up medical bills until she gets it. I had one piece of info, the Walgreens record of her order for doxycycline, commonly given for bacterial infections; even so, each doctor in turn seemed suspicious of any attempts to mark the March 2012 tick bite as the start of all my symptoms. Was all of this cloak and dagger so my former doctor could avoid a Lyme diagnosis? I would soon learn that there is a stigma for doctors who dare to treat Lyme beyond the original antibiotic round. My next stop is the neurologist. The only confirmation of a diagnosis is "Undetermined neurological disorder causing fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome." I have read enough research and patient blogs to understand that Lyme is a political disease. I keep telling myself to be thankful it's not cancer. A lot depends on how I spend my days. Avoiding stress, eating a gluten-free diet, using food as a pathway to healing, and doing yoga are all part of my plan. I have many friends in my home state with diagnosed Lyme, but supposedly, There are no Lyme ticks in Tennessee. I have heard a lot of stupid claims. "Lyme ticks are in North Carolina but not in Tennessee." "Lyme ticks only hitch a ride on deer, so there's little chance that they've migrated here," even though the CDC website shows tick migrations via bird, rodent, deer, and other small creatures from Maine to Florida and from Maryland to California. There's even a map to track migrations! The CDC recognizes "severe Lyme" and "neuro-lyme," but I've had plenty of doctors tell me there's no such thing. A year of gluten-free meals is, for me, a needful journey. To prove living gluten-free is possible without sacrificing taste and decadence; to keep my mind occupied in good times and bad; and to pass on a legacy to my children that may prolong or even save their lives. I also like to write, so it's all good. |
Author
Mother, writer, reformed culinary disaster, Andrea Mosier shortlisted for the Dundee International Book Award for Fire Eater and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award for prose in 2014. "The Illuminated Man" will appear in the first edition of Serendipity. Her legendary potato salad recipe appears here on the June 5 entry. Archives
February 2019
|