Cheap, Lazy, Picky Cooks

My holy grail of gluten-free living has been to find good pizza. It was a favorite food before, and locating edible experiences of it now consumes a good part of the food lobe of my brain. And let me tell you, friends, about a fabulous ready-made pizza crust.

The brand is Kinnikinnick (www.kinnikinnick.com). This is the first and only product of theirs that I’ve found (at Whole Foods). Here’s the box:

The crust is square, and is about 8″x7″. It has a yummy corn meal spread across the bottom:

With your favorite ingredients on the frozen crust, bake it in a preheated oven at 375 degrees, for 10-15 minutes. It gives a good crunch around the edges, with a chewy texture in the middle. The taste is… well, Gabe and I both agree it’s the best frozen pizza crust we’ve ever eaten, gluten or not.

This year, we had two Thanksgiving dinners that couldn't be beat, and an anniversary day of cooking and eating shortly thereafter. Here's a rundown of what worked!

For the Thursday lunch with Gabe's family, we made this nommy Mushroom and Lentil Stew (seen here last Thanksgiving), because we knew others in the family liked it. This year, he and I decided that the stew was nommy enough that we need to make it more than once a year.

Thursday night, we got the unexpected treat of a friend joining us, and so we looked for something a) big, b) nommy, and c) easy to make. We settled on chili and cornbread! Hey, I’m from Texas, and chili makes perfect sense as a Thanksgiving meal. We had this chili (also seen here before), and used Bob’s Red Mill Cornbread Mix for our cornbread. To the dry mix we added the recommended wet ingredients (oil, eggs and milk, I believe) along with a couple teaspoons of sugar and some jalapeno pieces. Be aware, though, that using a pan smaller than 8×8 makes for a very thick cornbread that does not properly cook through.

Friday was our second anniversary, and our celebration included trying two new recipes! The first came from this very intriguing supper loaf generator: The Magical Loaf Studio. While the maker of the recipe generator can’t vouch for every recipe, we can tell you ours was fantastic.

Lentil Supper Loaf

1/2 cup pine nuts, ground or chopped finely
2 TB olive oil
One onion, diced
One large garlic clove, minced
One large carrot, peeled and grated
2 cups cooked lentils
1 cup cooked brown rice
1/4 to 1/2 cup vegetable broth, as needed (or one cube veggie bouillon and ½ water)
2 TB all-purpose gluten-free flour
1/4 tsp. dried thyme
1 tsp. dried basil
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 tsp. Tony Chachere’s

1. Preheat the oven to 350º. Spray a loaf pan or 8×8 square baking pan with nonstick spray (an 8×8 pan makes a crisper loaf).
2. Sauté onion, garlic and carrot in the olive oil until soft. Add to all remaining ingredients in large mixing bowl.
3. Mix and mash together well, adding only as much liquid as needed to create a soft, moist loaf that holds together and is not runny (you may not need to add any liquid if the grains and protein are very moist). Add more binder/carbohydrate as needed if the loaf seems too wet.
4. Press mixture into the prepared pan and bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until cooked through.

The original recipe called for letting the loaf cool in the pan for 10 to 15 minutes, then turning it out onto a plate or platter and slicing. We took one bite, and couldn’t wait that long. Ours had about 50% loaf-staying-together power – we didn’t need a spoon, but it wasn’t really a ’slice’. Perhaps it would have been firmer had we followed directions. Gabe did manage a tasty sloppy joe-style sammich of it. Sorry, it didn’t survive long enough for pictures.

By now, you’ve seen the pie. The pie… was challenging business. Our chocolate pie recipe began its life as one of the easiest desserts there is, which is the only reason why my dad tried making it. He loved it, and we all loved it, and he passed it on to me when I wanted it. But alas, that version of the recipe was filled with both gluten and gelatin, two no-no’s for Gabe and I today. So, I had a lot of adaptation work to do. Thankfully, the chocolate gods smiled that day, and it went very very well. The final adapted recipe is still a relatively easy dessert. We ended up making two pies, and took one to a party Saturday night, where it was a big hit with folks that don’t share our wacky dietary restrictions.

I’ll share with the following asterisks:
*this is the recipe as we made it, creating two pies, but I have a feeling it could easily be halved to make one pie.
*I baked this crust. I debated that decision a lot before doing it, and I don’t know how the crust would behave if not baked. I’m tempted to try, just to see, though it was super nommy this way. It made for a nice solid base after baking.
* Yes, the pudding is made of tofu. Yes, I know, I didn’t beleive it would work either. Really. Have I mentioned I’m picky about my chocolate? And, well, tofu??? Turns out, it’s amazingly good, and very similar to Jello chocolate pudding, only slightly milder in taste.

(Gluten-Free Gelatin-Free) Chocolate Pie

2 boxes Pamela’s Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies
One stick melted butter
4 oz cream cheese
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp milk
One 8 oz package cool whip
2 12-oz packages Silken Tofu, Extra Firm
2 packages Mori-Nu Mates Chocolate Pudding Mix (found at Whole Foods)

Crust:
Crumble all the cookies into very small pieces (the smaller the better). Add in the butter until you have a good paste. Coat bottom of two pie plates with it (if you’re baking it, side crust will not stay up). Bake at 350 degrees for about 8 minutes, or until a bit bubbly at the edges.

Bottom Layer- White:
Mix cream cheese, sugar and milk until relatively smooth. Stir in half of cool whip (about 4 ounces). Spoon into pie crusts.

Top Layer – Chocolate:
Blend tofu in food processor until smooth. Add in mix and blend thoroughly. Pour into pie crusts.

Add additional cool whip on top. Enjoy! Dad says, “Serves 8 (or 2 chocoholics 4 times)”.

D’you like… bread?

I’ve now tried six different gluten-free sandwich breads… not counting some traumatic ones from last year, that put me off sandwich bread for ages and whose name I’ve blocked out of memory. Yes, I’ll share those as a warning, should I recall the name. But in the meantime, here are some much more pleasant reviews.

All of these loaves come pre-sliced, and are found in the freezer section. I get 2-4 loaves at a time, and store them frozen except for the “current” loaf I’m using. I got all of them at Whole Foods. And of course, all of them work better toasted than not-toasted, regardless of what quality toasting capabilities I give them.

Glutino Flax Seed Bread

Taste: Has a sweet-savory taste that can work well as a all-purpose bread. It’s slightly reminiscent of the seedy flavor of Whole Foods Seeduction bread.

Texture: It’s a bit like whole wheat, but lighter-colored, drier and with chewy-crispy seeds. It crumbles a bit easily compared to gluten bread, but is one of the sturdier gluten-free loaves I’ve found. The seeds can get messy though.

Toasted: It toasts a bit, getting crispier around the edges. It works much better toasted than the cakier loaves do. This has been my standby all-purpose loaf for months.

Glutino Fiber Bread

Taste: I found the taste bland – some whole wheat type bitterness, but without the rounded flavor of wheat.

Texture: It looks and feels a lot like whole wheat, and is similar to the flax seed without the seeds.

Toasted: It toasts about as well as the flax seed, but without the crunchy seeds to make it interesting. Though if you have any OCD tendencies, you may prefer this seedless bread to the flax seed (teh seedz, they go evreewar!).

Glutino Harvest Corn Bread

Taste: This is not ‘cornbread’ in the usual sense. There’s a very mild corn flavor that can sometimes be detected, but otherwise the taste is that of a very unobtrusive sandwich bread.

Texture: Very light, white bread-y.

Toasted: This is the best gluten-free toast I’ve ever had. If you want a light piece of old-school toast that is crunchy all the way through, this is what you want (and as a bonus, it actually turns from white to brown in the toaster). It’s done well with peanut butter, jelly and cheese on it (in separate events!), and has held up well even in thick wet sandwiches. This is my new all-purpose stand-by loaf, though I return to the flax seed occasionally for variety.

Glutino Cinnamon Raisin Bread

Taste: Cinnamon! Raisin! Nom!

Texture: Bready, very slightly crumbly, with raisins of course. This has the dense sweetbread texture I remember from gluten cinnamon raisin bread.

Toasted: Toasts a considerable amount, for GF bread. Keeps some crunch with butter melted in.

365 (Whole Foods) Prairie Bread

Taste: This loaf looked a lot like Seeduction, and I got my hopes up. But this is too many tastes, too many sweets and savories and salties all fighting each other. For bread intended to have at least one other taste added, it doesn’t work at all. I didn’t finish the loaf.

Texture: Mealy and heavy. Rather muffiny. Not terrible for a muffin, but doesn’t work as a sandwich bread texture for me.

Toasted: Doesn’t toast.

365 (Whole Foods) Sandwich Bread

Taste: Quite buttery sweet, and worked fairly well with jelly on it. I found it didn’t quite mix well on most savory sandwiches though.

Texture: This loaf’s texture reminds me a lot of pound cake, and feels about as heavy.

Toasted: Browns a bit around the edges, but doesn’t manage any real crunch.