Gluten Free Recipes

He had this lump going on in his belly, and he had a terrible time moving his bowels. Sometimes he was moody & weepy, others he was just a terror. At first we put it down to terrible twos, but then he got really sick.

We spent a few days trying everything we could to help him go. He's two, and he had a speech impairment so discussing his issue took massive patience.

We went out for dinner and he was so weak and ill he wouldn't eat anything. Finally he threw up at the table and we went to the hospital immediately.

He was admitted and he and I stayed there for four days. They ran tests, did a biopsy of his colon and cleared his lower intestine out.

They couldn't decide if it was Hirschsprung's disease or just blocked bowel.

We were beside ourselves, because his problems continued. We took him to a gastro doctor and got "It's not serious, it's not Hirschsprung's. Give him enemas & laxatives."

It wasn't until he was five that we hit upon a possible answer for his problems.

I took his symptoms and ran a search. I hit upon a theory - celiac disease, also called celiac sprue. It's a condition where the body cannot process gliadin, an amino acid commonly found in wheat and wheat products. It causes the body to see it as an infection and reject it.

This rejection creates antibodies that attack the villi, the little fingers in the small intestine that pick all the goodness out of your food after your stomach has done its work.

This attack causes the villi to become stunted, which prevents them from grabbing the nutrients from the food passing through.

It also affects the liver and the colon, and in some cases causes blotchy skin lesions.

Steele's problem wasn't that severe. His is a lighter form of celiac known as gluten intolerance. In his case, he just wasn't getting the nourishment he should and his body wasn't processing what was left well. It wasn't that he wouldn't go, he couldn't. He had a blob as big as a cantaloupe in him, and an understandable aversion to going potty.

We started cutting wheat in any form we could spot out of his diet. We found an astonishing amount of gluten in everything from ketchup to shampoo to toothpaste to over the counter meds. We've always watched labels and stayed away from certain additives, but now we became obsessive. Wheat can hide in the weirdest places, and we can always tell when Steele's has been "glutened". He gets weepy again and has bowel issues that usually require a few days to clear up.

The difficulty is the glutening could have happened anytime within about a week before the problems show up, or it could have happened within five minutes. There's no sure way to gauge until the symptoms present.

Shopping GF (gluten-free) became an expensive undertaking. A small loaf of non-wheat bread can run 3-5 dollars and it doesn't keep as well as "normal" bread.

We were already a "from scratch" household. So we expanded that to include GF from scratch. Steele has learned how to make his own bread, cookies, pizza dough, dumplings, meatloaf, and muffins.

It's been a long road and it's far from over. He'll have to eat carefully for the rest of his life to keep his condition under control. Together, we've discovered a great many recipes that come out just as good -if not better- than the wheat products he's allergic to. Try them out and don't be afraid to experiment. Our first attempt at GF birthday cake was such an enormous disaster we had to put the candles on a Hershey bar.

Not that the kid was complaining, mind you...

Note: All recipes (unless otherwise indicated) are the original creation of my partner Diva & our GF son Steele (with assist from his baby sister). See The Trials & Trevails of Gluten Free Living for more info or with any questions or suggestions.

Gluten Free Breakfast Muffins

This makes nine cupcake sized muffins.

1/4c Nut Flour or Coconut Flour (or regular bagged coconut ground in a food processor)
1/4c Tapioca Flour or Banana Flour
1/4c Sweet Rice Flour
1/8c Sweet Potato Flour or Oat Bran or Soy Flour
1t Baking Powder
1/2t Xanthan Gum
1/8c Brown Sugar
1T Sugar
1/2t Salt
Pour all dry ingredients into a mixer and combine.
Or use a large bowl and whisk by hand.
1/4c Jelly (I'm all about the apricot preserves right now)
2T Melted butter
1 Egg
3oz Milk (or Soy Milk)
1t vanilla or your favorite extract... black walnut, almond, orange
Mix all wet ingredients in a small bowl until combined.
Add to dry and mix well.
Fill cupcake liners or grease muffin tin.
Bake at 350 for 18 minutes.

Additions:
Dried any fruit: raisins, cranberries, chopped orange essence prune bits, blueberries.
One small mashed banana (add 2 minutes to the bake cycle)
Chopped nuts
Chocolate chips
A dash of cinnamon or nutmeg or both.
This is also a great fast breakfast.
If you mix the dry ingredients and put em into a ziplock bag or three, you can dump the bag right into the mixer and throw in the wet while your oven is heating up. If you want to just put it in a canister, it's 2c + 2T dry mix per batch.

Gluten Free Hummus

My partner makes this for Steele's lunches. He eats in on tortilla chips and digs it big-time.

1 can Garbanzo beans
1 1/2t Lemon juice
1t minced Garlic
1/4t salt
2T Olive juice
10 olives
1 cup Tahini (Sesame Seed Paste, I find mine at Publix)

Dump beans and the juice from the can, lemon juice, garlic, salt, olives and juice into a pan and simmer until garbonzos are soft.

Let this sit for about 10 minutes.
Toss into food processor or use heavy duty mixer stick. (The thunder stick, I love ours!) Puree.
When your bean base has become smooth add the tahini and puree again.
Tahini thickens when put into hot stuff, so this will thick up on you.
Taste it. More salt? More garlic? More lemon? More tahini?

Steele likes it when it's about the same consistency as peanut butter, maybe a little thinner. The thickness is dependent on the amount of liquid in the bean base and the amount of tahini you use.
I've tried it without the green olives because our other children profess an undue hatred of green olives. However, they don't like the hummus as much unless I sneak olives into it. Once it's pureed they'll never know. Unless you get busted.

Optional additions:
Sun dried tomatoes
Fresh basil and rosemary (if you're into the herb-y thing)

Gluten Free Sweet Flour Mix

This is the flour mix used for sweet baked goods, like muffins or cupcakes.

1/3c Maseca (Corn Flour)
1/3c Nut Flour or Coconut Flour
(You can get regular coconut and shred it to death in a food processor)
1/3c Brown Rice Whole Grain Flour
1/3c Potato Starch (NOT Potato Flour)
1/3c Amaranth Flour or Banana Flour
2/3c Sweet Rice Flour
2/3c Corn Starch

I have a large tupperware container that I throw the ingredients in and then shake the bejeebers out of. My son likes that part best!

Gluten Free Standard Flour Mix

This is the flour mix used for baked non sweet goods, such as bread and pizza dough.

1/3c Maseca (Corn flour)
1/3c Soy Flour
1/3c Potato Starch (NOT Potato Flour)
2/3c Tapioca Flour
2/3c Brown Rice Whole Grain Flour
2/3c Corn Starch

If you're anti-soy, you can switch it for another GF Flour like amaranth, millet or teff.

Gluten Free Meatloaf

We make a pretty mean meatloaf around here. Good enough for sandwiches, not that there's usually any left.

Since I'm making a gluten and a gluten free meatloaf, I set it up as a double cook.
Do everything that doesn't have gluten, make the GF version and start it cooking then make the gluten version and cook that after. I'll make this one as if we all were going to eat GF tonight.

**Cheapskate alert**
I wait until there's a sale on chuck roast or sirloin tip and it's like $2 a pound, then have the grocery store grind it for me. They'll do it, you just have to ask the Meat Man. When I get home, I weigh it out into parcels and ziplock n freeze it. Good quality freshly ground beef for less than standard decent ground beef prices. Darn tootin!

3lbs Ground Beef
3 Eggs
3t Minced Garlic
2t Onion Powder
2t Cumin
2t Seasoning Salt
1t Pepper
1c GF Bread Crumbs (see Bread ideas for recipe) or 3/4c Oat Bran

Toss everything except the bread crumbs or oat bran into a bowl.
Mush between your fingers until well mixed.
Add bread crumbs or oat bran until your meat starts to toughen up.
You'll feel it. It will start to get harder to mush. Not too hard, though.

Toss in a pan and bake at 350 for 45mins.

The oat bran will make your meatloaf springy but it's still tasty.

And finally:

Gluten Free Barbecue Sauce

I'm a fan of the tomato based bbq sauces that run more towards the sweet than the tangy or the spicy.

This one is tangy and a little spicy and if you're not into tomato based sauce you can cut the tomato sauce halfway or none at all.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I put a million things in it.
Get out a medium sized pot.

Throw in:
1c Water
24oz Bottle Catsup
1/2 med Onion (minced)
1/3c Dark Brown Sugar
1/3c Honey or Molasses
1T Raisins
1T Yellow Mustard
1T Minced Garlic
1t Lemon Juice or Lime Juice
1t Black Pepper
1/2t Seasoning Salt
1/2t Cayenne Pepper
1/2t Chili Powder
1/2t Ginger Powder
1/2t Cumin
1/4t Onion Powder
1/4t Garlic Powder

Simmer on low-med for about 30 minutes, stirring often but not constantly.
Watch for the onions to turn clear. Once that happens, the simmering is to cook it down to almost your desired thickness.
Let the sauce cool for about 20 minutes and pour it into a food processor and puree.
Pour it into a bottle and go daddy go.
Notes:
Once you've made this and tasted it, if there's anything you want...add.
More spicy? Add cayenne.
More tangy? Add lemon.
More sweet? Add brown sugar.
Just needs something? Add adobo criollo or garlic powder.

Enjoy!