Cheese crisps

I have finally perfected this snack! I have tried variations that use alterntive flours, but have found 100% cheese comes out best.


Sliced cheddar, monteray jack, pepperjack

Make sure they are fairly evenly sliced. Put them on baking sheets covered with parchment (very important. They become absolutely welded to the sheets themselves or to aluminum foil.)
Bake at 350 F until done. Monterey/pepper jack (left) will turn brown when done, cheddar (right) will not. But basically they are done when the cheese is no longer gooey. Remove from sheets, cool, eat! They are perfectly crisp!

I have experimented with a few cheeses. Some work, some don't. Mozzerella definitely doesn't work.

Shrimp curry with noodles.

So these kelp noodles have turned out to be trickier than I originally thought. For starters, they have this faint smell that I really dislike. Once they're all sauced up, you can't tell, but when I'm cleaning and cooking them, the smell affects me like I'm pregnant, and I want nothing to do with them. Bummer. But again, it's really faint.


Second, they have a really bizarre texture that can be cooked off, but though I have prepared some 5 or 6 batches now, I still can't figure out how I get it right when I do! At first I doused them in oil and cooked them with a bunch of other stuff and no problem. So I thought it was the liquid. So I boiled them in water first the next time. Didn't work. No matter how long I boiled, they still kept they're crunchy, rubbery texture. Even tried adding a bunch of oil and nothing, that is, until I added the sauce. So the next time I cooked them in the sauce, which really didn't work. So now I cook them in water first (with some oil) and then drain and cook in sauce. Works fine, but I am not sure if there are steps I could be eliminating or should be adding.


On to the shrimp curry...


I found a Thai curry paste at the grocery store that doesn't have any sweetener (yay!), and basically you just add it to coconut milk which I always have on hand now since I use it a lot in my cooking. So for this dish I add the coconut milk and paste to the noodles, mix around, add whatever vegetables I want (here I've been adding frozen, whole spinach, and canned, roasted tomatoes), plus whatever cooked meat I want (in this case shrimp). Some xylitol for sweetness, which I could skip if I'd cooked some onions down in the pot first. Then season as needed, add a little turmeric for color, and it's done! For added crunch and freshness I add julienned cucumbers, zucchini, or toss some bean sprouts on top. Some sort of chopped nuts would be good too.


It's pretty good, though a little bitter. Is it the paste? The noodles? I don't know! The second time I added some lemon juice to counteract the bitterness, which worked, but then my dish was sour which is not very 'curry'. But both times I made this, the leftovers were way tastier, though also mushier.


So, these noodles aren't exactly simple to work with. I guess I have to just keep experimenting, because it's great to have noodles again!


By the way, they also do fine with pasta sauce and cheese, maybe some sausage. Mmmmmm...

A Hypoglycemic/Organic Meal

Wild Buffalo Burgers, Baked Curry-Seasoned Broccoli, Butternut "Fries", and home-made ketchup:

Cucumber-Tomato Salad with Lemon-Olive-Oil Dressing:

Banana-Coconut Flour Cake Topped with Apple Butter and Whipped Cream

That last one is super iffy for a lot of hypoglycemics, including me. But I have it only on occasion. It's made with 100% coconut flour, bananas, a small amount of honey, and eggs. It's topped with home-made whipped cream with no added sweeteners.
I got the recipe for the cake from this muffin recipe and modified it a bit. I reduced the honey, put it in a cake pan, and extended the cooking time. I've made this cake three times now (this first time pictured here as well as two layered versions for birthdays), and I've since made a lemon cake from coconut flour. I've found it important to put a piece of parchment paper down and thoroughly grease the pan before the pouring batter. I added a thin smear of apple butter on top (under the cream) and it gives it a nice little acidic kick. I also put it between layers on the layered versions. The apple butter I used is not sweetened, other than with apples.

YUM!

NOODLES!!!

One of the things I never get to have that I really love?  Noodles.  Being grain free pretty much makes them impossible.  I've tried some substitutes:  spaghetti squash, enoki mushrooms.  I have read about others: cooked bean sprouts.  Well today I received another box of food goodies in the mail: kelp noodles!

OK, I also thought they sounded kind of gross; they're raw and ready to eat and made from kelp.  I imagined dark green twisty strips that were about linguine size and tasted like fishy shoe leather (I had a bad experience with a seaweed snack once).  But the promise of noodles made me order a batch anyway.  What I received was something that was virtually indistinguishable from fine rice noodles (think ramen but translucent and of a more angel-hair gauge.)

I know you're probably thinking, "yes, but what about the icky taste?"  Well, I have a higher tolerance for odd flavors now with my odd diet, and I had put fishy shoe leather out of my mind, so I was still excited and quickly dreamed up a quick stir fry recipe.  I threw in eggs, spinach, tomatoes, chunks of leftover meat, oil, soy sauce, etc., and ended up with this:

I suppose I should have highlighted the noodles more in the photo,
but if you look at the pale, translucent strings in the center
and the bottom center of the picture, those are they!

Turns out... the noodles are perfectly noodley.  They are white, fine, and have no weird seaweedy flavor!  They barely have any flavor.  They bathe themselves in the flavors that surround them, just as they should.  I did have to put a whole lot of oil on them for them to not stick together in one massive clump, and I had to cook them for ages to convert that weird chewy/crunchy/rubbery texture to a more palatable consistency.  But I did it, and it was good, and hubby went back for seconds and thirds, so it must have been OK.  Actually it was better than OK.  It was a bowl of stir-fried noodles!

These noodles have lots of good qualities beyond being noodley.  They have zero grams of carbs (or protein or fat for that matter!!!), very little salt, and are only six flipping calories per serving!  WHAT?!?!?  They're mostly made up of water and fiber I guess.  And of course they contain the nutrients of the sea.

If you're wondering where you can get you're own kelp noodles, wonder no more!  You naturally just set a course for kelpnoodles.com in your address bar and you will arrive at the site of the Sea Tangle Noodle Company.  You'll know what to do when you get there.

The miracle of bread

I have a lot of catch up and photo editing to do before I can resume Penang and Thailand posts, but in the meantime I thought I'd another awesome food moment I had today.

The fun thing about hypoglycemia (if there can be a fun thing) is that suddenly food becomes miraculous.  Every newly accomplished recipe is a great victory and every new food I can eat is a gift from the gods.  I'm getting fat again because I have rediscovered junk food.  I don't have potato chips, but I have super-high-calorie seaweed crisps.  And now, in addition to almond flour bread, pancakes, and yes, crepes, I have flax foccacia!  And for the first time, I can have real sandwiches again thanks to this recipe!

It didn't look all that pretty in the pan.  I definitely have some not-so-nice visual comparisons to make.  But beggars can't be choosers, right?  I figured it would taste about how it looked, but I was already excited about how springy it was when I touched it.  It was like real bread!  Then I broke off a corner and ate it warm with butter.  It tasted like real bread!  And it's fairly fluffy too!  I'd actually prefer it to be a little denser, it's so fluffy!

Cut it up into 12 servings.  I was so excited to see how "bready" it looked.  See what I mean about miracles?  Are any of you ever this excited about bread?

George started craving brownies when he saw this photo.  Too bad.  I had a bad reaction to the Stevia I got from my mom, so I won't even be making carob brownies until I can try some natural stevia to see if it's better for me.

Very thick and fluffy.  Too thick for a sandwich. Maybe a bun?  George suggested I slice each piece in half for sandwiches.

Ta da!  I'm going to go out and buy some meat to put on this now!  Maybe some prosciutto!  MMMmmmm...

For those of you who don't need to make flax foccacia, you may want to try it anyway.  The taste is mild, even Regin and George liked it, and the health benefits of flax are tremendous.  Not to mention that this is one of the easiest recipes I have ever tried.  And fast!  I had bread (BREAD!) in half an hour (including prep time!)  Is all foccacia that easy and fast?

It was much less expensive than almond bread too.  I mean, I get 12 sandwiches from one batch, from one small bag of flax (two cups of meal).  I think the bag was a couple of bucks.  Whereas one canister of almond powder (that I get here in Penang) is $15 and that gets me a single loaf and that bread isn't at all sandwich-friendly.

Tips for flax:  always grind it yourself, a coffee grinder worked great for me; if it tastes strong or bitter, the flax is bad.  Fresh flax has a mild taste.  Also, it calls for sweetener, but I went without and it tasted fine.  If you are one of those who needs a hint of sweet in their breads (like American breads have) then I'm sure a little pinch of whatever would work fine.

If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands! [UPDATED]

I'm absolutely THRILLED to have found a copy of this book at one of the local book stores.

It has lots of almond-flour based recipes in it.  It also has lots of honey in it, which is a shame, but I'm hoping most of the recipes will still work either without honey or with Stevia instead.  Here's hoping!  Wish me luck!

I think I'm going to try and make almond-flour crepes for lunch today.  I have some sandwich makings to go inside as a wrap.  Wahoo!

I'm also excited to try this flax bread recipe.  I just have to get my hands on some flax that hasn't gone off.  Did you know that flax is bitter if it has started to go rancid?  That's why my pizza kept coming out bitter!

[UPDATE:  I made the crepes and had an almost normal lunch!  They were good, but they broke apart a little easily.  Maybe because there was no honey/sugar?]

Penang -- Week 30 -- Staving Off Anger

MONDAY - THURSDAY, October 6th - 9th
George is back to work after almost a week at home.  Ouch!  Not used to this.  Parenting alone again is rough!  Regin and I have a rough couple of days at the beginning of the week as we readjust.  I seriously need a day off from mothering.  It's so hard sometimes and when people tell you that you don't get breaks, it's so true.  But I never realized how hard that would be psychologically.  It's obviously seriously compounded by my hypoglycemia which gives me the heavy grumpies from time to time (read: almost every day). 

The hypoglycemia is really frustrating me.  I thought I was doing better.  My big weight loss tells me I'm doing better (improper diet causes hypoglycemics to store more fat).  But I'm still having daily symptoms.  They're not as extreme as they were, but they're still there and they make me feel pretty sorry for my little boy.  I did feel better after I gave up breastfeeding, but I must confess... I fell off the wagon.  I stopped for three days and then I nursed Regin again (just to see if I still could).  We took another two-day break after that and now we're back to nursing almost every day.  I had no idea how hard it would be to stop! 

I'm also feeling better since I gave up grains last week.  Baby steps I guess.

Thursday I am trying to pull myself out of those dumps and enjoy something from my culture.  It's one thing you're supposed to do to keep the homesickness at bay.  So I'm making stuff for Halloween.  I haven't seen any Halloween decor for sale here, and I don't expect to (heck, I haven't even seen a place to buy party supplies!), so I'm making everything from scratch with my limited craft stash -- I still haven't been to a craft store here.  It's fun to make the decorations, but I wish I had all my stuff here to go all-out.

I'm learning to bake almond bread and I'm SUPER excited about that.  Even though I'm not a sweet tooth, and I don't really miss the foods I've had to give up, the struggle makes me bitter.  When I go out to eat and struggle to find something on the menu and someone at the table next to us is pouring syrup over their ice cream I get really angry at my illness.  The idea that I can eat baked goods of any kind is such a relief!  Maybe no more anger now - and no slip ups with grains. 

By the way, I have a cereal substitute:  chopped raw pecans (sometimes other nuts seeds too) with milk.  Yum.

Another bright spot in my week:  Regin learned how to climb on his rocker by himself.  Sometimes he ended up sitting side-saddle, sometimes he fell off, sometimes he sat in it backwards, but he can get on it by himself and he is pretty excited about it!

 

 

PANCAKES! PANCAKES! PANCAKES!

I used this recipe, and made these almond-flour pancakes this morning!

You have NO IDEA how exciting it was for me to have pancakes!  Yay almond flour and yay stevia!  Thanks so much Mamma for sending the stevia, and yes please on some more!

Recent Adventures in Food

We know that my diet is difficult with my hypoglycemia, but Regin also has his own set of peculiarities when it comes to food.  And though I know he doesn't mind the taste, I have a heckuva time trying to get his daily veggies in due to texture and other issues.   So I'm forever trying to find ways to make veggies more appetizing to him.  One solution I found was to make veggie smoothies.  He usually likes them, some versions more than others, but I'm not happy about the fruit juice/banana I have to use to make the smoothie sweet. 

Another solution I found was to cut steamed veggies with cookie cutters.

My first try was with sweet potato flowers.  Each had a dab of butter as the flower's center.  Regin loved them!

He went straight for the ones that still had visible centers first.  So... when I went to make veggie shapes again, and didn't have butter (or cream to make butter with), I dabbed ketchup for the centers.

He likes to explore the feeling of ketchup, but does not like to eat it.  Maybe that's why he's giving me the finger.

Another new thing we've tried is almond butter and jelly sandwiches.  I'm still too influenced my American fears to give him peanut butter even though it's probably fine.  But he's had almonds before, so I gave him almond butter (which is up to about $10 a teeny jar here!)  Another example of his texture issues...  It was all touch and no taste.

One important thing I've learned from all my research is that you can't assume that kids don't like something because they turn their noses up at it a couple of times.  Apparently you have to give it to them at least ten times before they'll start to accept and eat some things.  So I'm staying on with the veggies.  I refuse to be one of those mothers who feeds their kids crap because that's all they'll eat.  I know that can't be true.  It's not like kids in other cultures starve themselves rather than eating whatever rice and vegetables their mothers have prepared. 

As far as cooking for me.  I'm absolutely extatic, since having given up grain, to have discovered almond flour!  I have been making myself almond bread once or twice a week.  I've mostly used almonds I grind myself with a coffee grinder.  But those come out dense, heavy, and wet.  I've also tried store-bought almond powder which I have found in a couple of the tiny organic stores here.  That came out fluffy, almost like cake (using the same recipe)!  All I need is some stevia and I can have something baked AND sweet!  Haven't found stevia yet though, and no, I cannot eat artificial sweeteners.  They give an insulin response.  Besides, keep those yucky chemicals away from me! 

I've also tried combos of the almond flour with coconut flour, and some variations ended up like cornbread.  Yum!  But none of them will really hold as a piece of bread or cake.  Everything crumbles.  Time to try a new recipe perhaps.

Here's my cakey almond bread baking away in my tiny oven...

Ooh, I think I might make some more tonight.

About Making Butter...

So in case you guys missed it, Stacey posted this comment on my butter making post:

O.K. So I used to be a domestic goddess - apparently not so much anymore. Too much time sittin' on my bum in front of a computer screen full of numbers. I shook & shook & shook but no butter. I was SO disappointed!! Then I put the cream in the stand mixer and whipped away FOREVER!! Still, no butter. So, what's the trick? I used one cup - how much did you use? What kind of cream did you use - was it from cow's milk or some magic Malaysian goat cream? ; ) Certainly didn't need any cheesecloth, that's for sure...

So I have to ask, what kind of cream did you use?  Maybe it wasn't a heavy enough cream?  I used whipping cream.  Yes, cow's milk.  But I did buy it from someone who was selling some crazy magic beans that are supposed to grow really tall.  Don't know if that makes any difference.  When you whipped it, did it become whipped cream? I assume you've done that from scratch before.  I don't have a stand, but when I whip cream too long with my electric hand mixer it goes really stiff like it's going to become butter.

I didn't measure quantities, but I made sure my shaking containers were half full.  And the harder you shake them (they should whack the sides of the container, not just slosh around) the better.  But there isn't anything too complicated about it because I've read suggestions that you can have kids do this for fun.  It's just that if your cream doesn't hit hard, it will take much longer.

What kind of container are you using?  Is it soft on the sides?  I'm using a wide-mouthed glass jar.  But again, I really have to wonder about the cream itself since it didn't harden after excess whipping.  Either that or maybe stand mixers don't beat that hard?

I made the butter again and this time it came out firmer, don't know why, and I was able to squeeze it pretty well in the strainer without losing much at all, but I got a little impatient and a lot of the buttermilk was left in the butter, so every time I spread some on bread, there were little globules of liquid.  No biggie for me.  I didn't even salt it this time, and I still could get enough of it.  Now I'm deciding that the main benefit to not making your own butter is the benefit to your waistline and the fact that the homemade butter gets eaten too quickly.

By the way, when I said homemade butter was cheaper, it was something I read without actually researching, and it was referring to the cost of organic butter vs. organic cream.

P.S.  Why is a vegan making butter from scratch?  You don't even get to taste its yummy goodness!

DIY morning

I still haven't finished those Father's Day photos -- got side-tracked with scanning old family photo negatives, which is just too fun -- so the Penang journal is on hold for another couple of days.  In the meantime, I have other topics to discuss, believe it or not!

Today I stepped away from the computer.  (It happens on occasion.)  I decided to do a couple of 5-minute DIY projects I've been meaning to try.  First, I made a 1-step baby sling/wrap.  Instructions:

1. Cut a 4.25 meter piece of fabric in half width-wise (about 25 inches or so).

Unless you're worried about frayed edges, that's it!  Now I can try this backpack style of babywearing I've been dying to do:

What I've learned:  It's better to have a lightweight piece of fabric, mine is too heavy/bulky.  

Then on to my next project.  While Regin and I were having lunch, I decided to work out my arms a little and make some butter!  I got the idea from Crunchy Chicken, one of the eco/green-living blogs I subscribe to.  It's the easiest, funnest science experiment I have ever done!  Instructions:

1. Fill a jar with leftover cream (I used whipping cream).
2. Cover and sing the following disco song with me:  Shake, shake, shake!  Shake, shake, shake!  Shake your cream!  Shake your cream!
3. Eventually the butter starts to separate from the buttermilk and you shake some more until there is a big old lump in the jar.
4. Drain the butter, lightly squeezing the buttermilk out of it.
5. Add salt if desired.
6. Eat!

Woah!  So fun!  First it went thick, then grainy after a few minutes, then seconds later it separated and the lump and thin liquid appeared.  Here are some pics of my experiment.

The draining lump of butter.

Sampling the results.  Yum!

What I learned:  Make sure the jar is half empty so you have lots of air to shake up the cream, otherwise you'll be shaking much longer.  I still have to figure out how to drain/squeeze off the buttermilk without losing the butter through the strainer.

I've been thinking more and more lately that we've been scammed into believing that we can't make things for ourselves, that it's too difficult and we need to buy things in the store instead.  These two projects are part of my proof that it's all BS!  The babycarrier industry is sucking you dry for no reason!  Those slings and carriers are SO expensive, but you can just tie a piece of $5 fabric around you and that's all you need!  And why do I need to buy butter, when I could just buy cream cheaper, and make butter with the leftovers.  It could be part of my workout!  (Though it doesn't really take long enough to be a workout.)  And by the way, it's the tastiest butter you've ever had.