You'll Crack Your Head Open!

Gluten free potstickers!  I know!  I’m so shocked it worked.  I didn’t even take pictures, other than the end result.  These were the second batch, which I didn’t watch as carefully so they burned a bit on the bottom.  More of a caramelized thing, so it tasted good, but still.  It came across too dark on the camera.

Every once in a while I would think there’s got to be a way to make potstickers gluten free.  Because if you think about it, Chinese food is usually made by hand.  It’s country cooking, just a different country.  I learned how to make fried rice and a few chinese style sauces, but I figured potstickers would be a very long process of trying to figure out what flours worked, what I needed to add as far as gums or maybe a egg yolk to make sure it holds together.  But it was just a thought on the back burner that someday I’d give it a shot.

So I was looking at this month’s Fine Cooking magazine and it had a recipe for potstickers.  I was curious to see what they made the dough out of.  Turns out?  Flour and water.  That’s it.

Hmm… That is very interesting..  It got me thinking that if nothing else it would actually be a really good way to get to know the properties of the different flours.

So I decided to go ahead and make potstickers with the expectation that they weren’t going to work, but I’d play around with making dough with different flours and I’d probably end up cooking the potsticker filling on its own and just throwing it into the fried rice.  No biggie.

So I throw some of the same gluten free flour mix that I use for cookies in a bowl, stir in some hot water until it formed a dough and let it rest at room temperature (I wrapped it in plastic wrap) like the recipe said.  Gavin was late getting home so it probably sat for a couple hours before I got to it.

I made the filling from a recipe by Ming Tsai on FoodNetwork.com.  The recipes in Fine Cooking were more fancy and I just wanted to see if I could even make them.  So I got to work and started rolling out the dough, which was working very well.  I had some dumpling presses that I used to shape them.  They held together really well when I folded them.  I wasn’t too surprised about the potstickers holding together, but I was not expecting them to cook the same as regular potstickers.  I expected the dough to do something weird and I’d end up with a mess in the pan.

But they turned out great.  I just cooked them according to the Ming Tsai recipe.  They look just like potstickers.

Gavin ate five of them.  And he’s picky about gluten free food.  He said they were “excellent.”  They have that kind of chewy/crunchy bottom and the steamed soft/chewy top like regular potstickers.  I was blown away.

To go with it, I made Emeril’s Honey Soy Dipping Sauce.  I use San J wheat free soy sauce in place of regular soy and I just used regular honey.  It was really, really good.

So yea… Wow.  I never would have thought…

I have been gluten free for four years now.  I have never had so many people ask me about gluten free and tell me they have a friend or loved one who has been recently diagnosed as I have in the last three weeks.

This is just in real life.  And let me tell you I don’t get out much.  I’m kind of shy in real life, so it’s not like I’m out there networking or shaking hands.  They’re just other school parents that know I’m gluten free because they know my kids.

The one thing that I’ve heard from just about everybody I’ve talked to about this is how hard it is to find gluten free products and how expensive it is.  This is always a surprise to me because there are really only maybe a dozen specialty products that I buy on a regular basis.  Other than that I shop at the regular grocery store.  I’d say probably 85% of what we eat is the exact same thing everyone else eats.

Talking to these people reminds me of how confusing and time-consuming grocery shopping was at first.

The first thing you should know if you’re new to gluten free is the things that are naturally gluten free.  Fresh unmarinated, unseasoned meats, fresh fruits and vegetables, potatoes and rice.  Milk, cream and butter are also gluten free.

After that, there are three major food brands that I recommend people focus on when they’re learning the gluten free diet.  Kraft, McCormick and Frito Lay.  These companies all practice what we call full disclosure.  You see, legally companies can include gluten within the phrases “natural flavor” or “spices” without telling you what’s in there.  These companies will not do that.  All you have to do is read the labels and the ingredients will be listed in plain English.  There are other companies that also practice full disclosure, but with these three major brands you can go a very long way.  So we’re just going to start with these.

Here is a copy and paste of Kraft’s gluten labeling policy, that you can also view HERE .

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You might be thinking, okay fine, but that’s just Kraft.  Now I can buy cheese and salad dressing.  But actually, Kraft is a large corporation with dozens of brands.  Look on the back of a lot of the products you’ve been buying for years.  There is a good possibility that it’s a Kraft brand.  Here are just a few examples -

Jet Puff Marshmallows, Cool Whip, Grey Poupon Mustards, Kool Aid, Jell-O, Good Seasons, Cheese Whiz, Knudsen, Easy Cheese, Oscar Meyer (mmm… bacon….), Philadelphia Cream Cheese, Planter’s Nuts and Velveeta.

Keep in mind that that just means that Kraft promises to label any gluten in plain English.  You still need to read the label.  Product ingredients can (and do) change at any time.

McCormick’s gluten labeling policy can be viewed at there website by clicking HERE .  Here is a copy and paste -

Do your products contain gluten?

All of our single ingredient spices and herbs are gluten-free and 100% pure, with nothing added to them. All of our extracts, including Pure Vanilla, are also gluten-free. Some of our products do contain gluten, and this will be clearly listed in BOLD type within the ingredient statement. We do not maintain a list of gluten-free products, as our formulas change from time to time.

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McCormick not only has all of those single ingredient spices, but they have spice mixes, seasoning packets, flavor extracts and food coloring.  We use the Original Taco Seasoning packet at least once a week.  Reading the ingredients is very important however, because one type of product may be gluten free, but a very similar product can contain gluten.

Frito Lay is HUGE in our house.  When you feel like you’re always having to tell your family and friends that you can’t eat this or that, or you can’t eat that, or go to that restaurant, grabbing a bag of Cheetos or Fritos is like grabbing a great big bag of NORMAL.  And if you’re just starting this diet, normal is soooo important for you right now.

Frito Lay actually has a HUGE gluten free product list, which can be viewed HERE .  It’s a long list, so I decided not to copy and paste it.  Take note that the regular Nacho flavor of Doritos are NOT gluten free.  Remember to read, read, read the labels.   Frito Lay also says that the products on this list are made on the same equipment as products containing gluten.  They wash the equipment as thoroughly as possible, but can’t guarantee 100% that some gluten residue won’t remain.  To be honest, I was glutened by a bag of Doritos a couple times, but considering the couple dozen bags of Frito Lay products that we go through in a month for the last four years, that’s pretty good for products that are produced on the same line as gluten.  When that did happen, I contacted Frito Lay and let them know (gave them all the codes on the bag).  They were very apologetic and said they’d forward the information to the plant the made the bag.  That was a couple years ago and I haven’t had a problem since.  It was a couple months before I was brave enough to try them again, but after that no problems.

When I first started eating gluten free, I pretty much stuck to McCormick, Frito Lay and Kraft brands, with an occasional email to a company to check on something.  It was a year or more before I started to really expand past that.  So with foods that are naturally gluten free, and these three companies, you can get through that first few months and weeks where you’re still not feeling well and really just need to know what to eat.

I hope that helps everybody.  I’m planning on doing a series of posts highlighting other brands that I use and trust.  I just wanted to be able to get you started on things you can get at any grocery store in the country.

Take care everybody.  And let me know if there’s a brand or type of product you want me to look into, or if you have any questions.  I really like being able to help people who are just getting started.

Yesterday was my son’s 6th birthday.  I told him he could have any kind of cake that he wanted and he chose chocolate and vanilla marble swirled cupcakes with chocolate and vanilla swirled frosting, and superhero cupcake picks.

Ta-Da!

Now, I have to say that this is slightly anticlimactic for Mommy, because this was the cake I made for my daughter’s birthday last summer.

Oh yes.  Yes I did.  I’ll do a post in a few days about how I did that.  Honestly, it’s mostly arts and crafts rather than frosting, and the doll is just one that I pilfered from my daughter’s toybox.  I just made sure that none of the glue, or the doll, actually touched any part of the cake.

Okay… So back to the cupcakes.  This is what I used to make them.

We’ve got Betty Crocker Gluten Free Yellow Cake and Chocolate Cake, Pillsbury Easy Frost frosting in vanilla and chocolate (verified GF through Pillsbury), one of those flavor injectors from the cooking accessories aisle of Target, and a skewer.

I made a package of yellow cake and two packages of chocolate cake according to package directions.  Then I lined a muffin pan with cupcake liners and filled them with chocolate cake batter.  Yellow cake with chocolate marbling would definitely work better, but my son requested chocolate with yellow marbling.

To do the marbling, I filled the flavor injector with yellow cake batter and swirlied it on top.

Then I swirled a skewer through it to mess it up a little so it looks marbly.

After they’re baked, this is what they look like.  The marbling in the middle of the cupcake didn’t really show up, but my son was just happy that it was marbled on the top.

Then all you have to do is frost them.  My absolute favorite part of the Easy Frost frosting, other than the fact that it’s gluten free is that it doesn’t need refrigeration.  After you’re done, the tip screws off so you can rinse it out and then it’s ready to go the next time.  This works great for me because I keep cupcakes in the freezer for those days when there’s a birthday party at school.  I used to keep extra frosting in the freezer, but this is much better.

This is my son with the leftover cupcakes after he came home from school.  He was trying to be patient, but he really just wanted another cupcake.  Looks like a success to me.

(I know this doesn’t look like a Works for Me Wednesday post, but stick with me, it really is.  :)  )

They’re taking over!!!  Okay… They took over years ago.  And really, if I’m gonna be honest, they just took over from whatever the heck used to be MY junk messing up the house.  I can’t even remember what it was that I used to leave lying around the house.  But it was plenty.  Trust me.

I’m actually proud to say that my daughter’s room is right now the messiest spot in the house when it comes to toys.  And other than the fact that there’s no path to the unmade bed, it’s not that bad.

By the way, his room is only clean because I just cleaned it.  Up until then it was about three feet deep from wall to wall.  I’m not kidding.  Up until then it was about three feet deep from wall to wall. There are only four bins in his room, but if I took every one of his toys from everywhere else in the house and garage, he’d easily have more than double that.  Easily.

For most of the time we’ve had kids I’ve used those clear plastic bins like the ones in my son’s room up there.  I even tried to color code them by using different colored duct tape around the edges, but it still wasn’t working because those bins take up a LOT of floor space.  After Christmas, it only got worse and I’ve decided we need to go vertical and do one of those cube bookcases with the fabric drawers.

The problem with that type of setup is that you can’t see what you’ve got because the fabric drawer fills the whole cube.  Not being able to see drives me nuts, which is why I thought those clear plastic bins up there would work.  If I can’t see what I’ve got, it doesn’t work for me at all.  I can’t keep track of what stuff is where, so I would just end up taking out every box to find what I’m looking for.  You’d think that it would be simple after a while, but let’s just say I’ve lived in this house for three years, and I still pull out the wrong kitchen drawer when I’m looking for my spices.

Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m starting to remember what was all over the house.  I like to have things where I can see them so I don’t forget what I have or where I put it.  Which means everything is everywhere.  Not such a good thing.

So anyway, I saw THIS post at We Are THAT Family with one of those cube things (the very last picture), but she used these half-height baskets.  You could see what you had, but it still looked organized.

I think I heard angels singing…

How perfect is that?  I think I can do that.

But you never know with me.  I tend to have a problem with follow through.  So instead of spending a ton of money on the nice wood(esque) bookcase thingy, I stopped by Goodwill to see what they had.  They had one of those wobbly wire ones, but I knew I’d never be able to deal with that.  Then I went down one of the aisles and saw this.

I found some half height baskets at Target and got three of them.  I figure if I can keep three categories of things organized, then I’ll let myself get some more.

That brings me to why this is my Works for Me Wednesday post.  What works for me is blogs and especially other bloggers.  Where else can you get so many great ideas?  There is also something about blogging that makes it so much easier to talk about the things we struggle with, big and small, and look for solutions to our problems and predicaments.  I’ve gotten fun things like recipes and decorating ideas, but I’ve also gotten messages of faith and comfort to help me get through whatever day or season I’m struggling with.  Sometimes all it takes to get through a bad day or a “parenting issue” is just knowing that there’s another woman out there dealing with the exact. same. thing.

And she’s probably got pictures.

So for everyone out there in blogland – Thanks!  You Work for Me!

For more Works for Me Wednesday posts, visit We Are THAT Family.

I use this mix as a 1 to 1 exact replacement in all of my cookie recipes, including my old family recipes.  It’s never let me down. It’s also good if you like to eat some of the cookie dough because it doesn’t have any bean flour. If you’re using a flour mix that has bean flour in it don’t eat it. I know it smells good, but seriously. Don’t. I still have flashbacks from when I did that about four years ago. {shudder…}

Not that I know anything about that.

I found the flour mix on page 6 of Annalise Roberts’ book – Gluten-Free Baking Classics.  Make sure you get the extra fine rice flour.  It is the reason this flour mix works.  It’s very powdery.  Not gritty at all.  I think that one of the many reasons that GF products tend to fall apart is because the gritty rice flour doesn’t stick together well.  With all of the other roadblocks to good GF baked goods, why not take one out of the equation.  :)

For three cups of this flour mix you need:

2 cups Extra Finely Ground Rice Flour (made by Authentic Foods)

2/3 cup Potato Starch (not potato flour)

1/3 cup Tapioca Flour (tapioca starch is the same thing in this case)

3/4 teaspoon xanthan gum

Mix all of this together thoroughly.  I use a whisk to get it all mixed.

Now go make some chocolate chip cookies.  And eat some cookie dough while you’re at it.  :)

Today is the kids’ first day of school after Christmas vacation.  My daughter has to be at school at 8:30.  I was good and made sure she was in bed and going to sleep at 8:30 last night.  She always falls asleep fast.  It’s amazing, actually.  My son on the other hand, not so much.  He’s like me.  But he doesn’t have to be at school until 11:15, so he can sleep in.  As long as Gavin doesn’t have an early meeting he stays home while I run our daughter to school real quick.   Makes my morning a lot easier when our son gets as much sleep as possible.

I went to bed at 11:00 last night.  I didn’t fall asleep until after 3.  I’m not sure if it had more to do with me being stressed about having to get up early, or if it was the kitten laying on me and attacking my feet.  I can’t sleep if Gavin is so much as even touching my arm with his elbow.  I don’t know what it is, but I need space.  Apparently, kittens don’t believe in space.

I spent a lot of years with insomnia.  It’s one of those weird things that went away after I went gluten free.  I learned over the years that once I passed the point where I was going to get less than five hours of sleep, I had to mentally shift to nap mode rather than sleep mode.  If my brain tells my body I’m going to “sleep” and I only get three hours, my body doesn’t want to wake up.  If I tell my body I’m taking a nap and I get three hours, my body just thinks Wow, three hours, awesome nap.

Okay. So after that last post where I told you about one of my husband’s more irritating personality quirks, I decided to tell you some of the good stuff.

He’s very patient with our kids. He has taken over our daughter’s math homework because Momma can’t deal. They get it done in half the time. It’s amazing.

He cooks. I know! And it’s really good too. I know!

He says nice things about me to his friends.

He stands up for me.

If he eats gluten, he brushes his teeth before he kisses me.

He tells me I look gorgeous even when I don’t. (He didn’t start out this way, but he eventually learned that this is one case where I want him to lie if he needs to.)

He doesn’t like saying no to salespeople. Ask me about how we almost got a timeshare at an old rundown ski “resort” sometime. He’s a total soft sell.  I was just there for the free dinner voucher.

One of his best friends is his dad.

Up until his mom had to quit the team because she developed some foot problems, he played on the same weekly recreational soccer team as his mom for almost 10 years.

And he’s pretty cute too.  Yowza!

I love reading blogs where you really get to know the person who is writing it.  Which isn’t what I’ve been doing at all.  I’ve been writing random things rather than writing about what’s really on my mind.  I’m a pretty private person and I’m not used to sharing every aspect of my life with every person in my life.  There are things I tell my husband that I don’t talk to my friends about, and things that I tell one friend, but not my husband or other friends.  Which is pretty average I think.  Telling everyone the same thing can take some getting used to I guess.

You know, I think that’s why I never got into Facebook.  I’m not necessarily comfortable announcing the same status update to every Facebook friend I have.  It’s not that I do anything that exciting, but it feels a little weird.  I don’t know..

I’m also just too long-winded for Facebook.  If I’m going to post that I’m having mexican food for dinner, I’m probably going to want to give you a recipe or a link to a restaurant website.

So there’s that.

The next reason is kind of hard to talk about because I don’t want to make my husband sound bad.  Because he’s not.  This is just one of those areas where we don’t connect.  Basically, Gavin has a habit of turning things into a debate.  If I’ve got an opinion that differs from his, he wants to discuss and debate it.  He’s not trying to be rude or anything.  It’s fun for him.  He enjoys that kind of stuff like some guys like sports.  So if it’s fun for him it must be fun for me right?

Not.

Also, even with the things that aren’t debate fodder, he’s sooooo not interested in the same stuff as I am.  He’s a basic man.  He has no interest in hearing about my ongoing search for a good sandal or what color I want to paint the bathroom.  I remember someone once said that if you want to irritate your husband, talk to him about the things you should be talking to your friends about.  Which I think is smart advice.  But it also just reinforced my whole not sharing thing.

To be honest, I’m not sure Gavin knows the everyday-thoughts me very well.  At least not like my friends know me.  Which is a strange thing to say about the person you’re spending your life with.

If I were to say to Gavin, “I think I need a new hairstyle.”  He would vaguely register that I might have said something.  He would glance over and nod, then go back to doing whatever it was he was doing.  If I said the same thing to my friend Maggie, she would go white as a ghost, and think “Oh Lord.  Not again.”  Because she knows that we will be discussing hairstyles for weeks and I’ll be going through every magazine I can get my hands on to find THE PERFECT hairstyle.  Then after I’ve picked a few choices, I’ll analyze them, maybe make some sketches of my own.  Then I have to find THE PERFECT salon so I have to go find reviews to read so I can find THE PERFECT salon and THE PERFECT stylist.  Then half the time I chicken out and don’t even get the stupid haircut.

So, I’m not entirely sure that my husband is ready to actually know what I’m thinking about.  And I’m not sure if I’m ready to debate about what I’m thinking about.

So we’ll see how this goes.

I have been wanting a cat for a long time now.  As much as I love our big moose of a dog, he’s not exactly a lap dog.  Although I think he wishes he was.  Now I’ve got this little snuggle kitty.

Her name is Jewel and we got her at Petsmart.  She’s 7 months old.  She’s already spayed, has all of her shots and has been checked for all those things you have to check cats for.  Considering that the adoption fee was only $60, it was a bargain.

She’s pretty gentle.  Even when she goes into attack kitty mode, she doesn’t put her claws out much and she doesn’t bite down.  So once she grows out of the crazy kitten phase, she should be an awesome lap cat.  She’s already claimed my hubby for a nap buddy.

I have been wanting a cat for a long time now. As much as I love our big moose of a dog, he’s not exactly a lap dog. Although I think he wishes he was. Now I’ve got this little snuggle kitty.

Her name is Jewel and we got her at Petsmart. She’s 7 months old. She’s already spayed, has all of her shots and has been checked for all those things you have to check cats for. Considering that the adoption fee was only $60, it was a bargain.

She’s pretty gentle. Even when she goes into attack kitty mode, she doesn’t put her claws out much and she doesn’t bite down. So once she grows out of the crazy kitten phase, she should be an awesome lap cat.