food

We belong to a bulk-food co-op and one of our recent purchases has been a bag of bulk cheese powder. A friend had mentioned that they use it to make mac-and-cheese and I thought we could give it a try. I used to buy Annie’s Homegrown brand mac-and-cheese that came in individual sized packs but we had to change to a family-size pack because of the corn starch in the smaller packs. Because I can’t have the dairy in mac-and-cheese, we would end up wasting so much; the leftovers weren’t always eaten. So now I boil a half cup of dry macaroni, put 2 tablespoons of cheese powder and 3 tablespoons of milk in a bowl and mix it all up after the macaroni is cooked and drained. It’s just the right amount. The cheese sauce in this ratio is really thick and I’m sure you could double or even triple the amount of dry macaroni and still have enough.

Fiona loves Nutella but it’s been off the menu since I’ve suspected she has trouble with peanuts and tree nuts. I’m still trying to figure out the fine points of which nuts she has trouble digesting and in which form but, in the mean time, I found Cook & Eat’s recipe (and beautiful photos) for homemade Nutella. I modified it, swapping out sunflower seed butter for the hazelnuts, and we made it yesterday. It’s wonderful and she loves it!

1/2 – 3/4 c sunflower butter
4 oz chocolate chips
2 oz butter, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/2 t salt

We followed Cook & Eat’s recipe with those substitutions. The only trouble I had was upon adding the powdered sugar, the spread–which had been very smooth–seemed to seize up a bit. I have it in a jar in the refrigerator and when we used it this morning I warmed it up a little. It softened and I was able to spread it with a spoon. It has that sunflower seed tang and I used some nice Japanese sea salt which really adds bright points of flavor. I’m confident one could substitute other nut or seed butters for variations.

I’ve been doing some more food experimentation here on two staples for the bee. Since her palette has narrowed lately and we have changed the food we buy to avoid her sensitivity to corn, I’ve been trying hard to make sure she has choices that will make her happy. Peanut butter balls were always a good thing to have on hand but they’re made with milk powder. Now, I don’t think she’s sensitive to dairy but I am. I find that if there is something in the kitchen that I should avoid, it’s too tempting to think that one little bite won’t hurt me. I’m looking at you, Jar of Nutella.

I searched the Internet for some ideas on replacing the milk powder and came across soy milk powder and almond powder. I’m not eating much soy right now so that was out and nut powder sounded like a boutique item. Fortunately, we made a trip near the Super H Mart a few weeks ago and stopped in. I found several things I thought might work in the peanut butter balls and bought them all: rice powder, potato powder, acorn starch, and green bean starch. I still don’t know what the difference between starch and powder is.

I made a little batch using each ingredient and taste tested them. Here are my notes: Rice powder had the nicest flavor and the best consistency but it was a bit too sweet; the flavor of the honey was very prominent. Potato powder had a mild flavor but it was oddly smooshy; it kind of grossed me out. Acorn starch had a nutty flavor, was not very sweet, and required much more peanut butter and honey. Green bean starch was very silky and made squishy balls, and had the sweetest flavor.

For my final recipe, I combined acorn starch and rice powder. The balls are a little dry but not too sweet and have a slight nutty flavor. Plus, Fiona likes them! I imagine you can easily substitute another nut powder for the acorn starch.

Dairy-free Peanut Butter Balls

3 T acorn starch
.75 c rice powder
.5 c peanut butter
.5 c honey
3 T wheat germ

Combine the acorn starch, rice powder, peanut butter and honey. Mix until combined. Form into balls. Roll balls in wheat germ. Refrigerate until firm.

Addendum: almond meal works well in place of the acorn starch. Plus, you could use the almond meal to roll the balls in so they would be gluten-free, too.

Fiona also used to eat lots of chicken nugget dinosaurs but I can’t find them without corn ingredients. I have kind of a problem making chicken nuggets. First you cut up the chicken, then roll it in flour, then dip it in egg, then roll it in bread crumbs, then you start to freak out as your hands get more and more covered in layers of flour, egg and bread crumbs. I don’t mind a little messiness but I confess the glove-tip effect of gunk on my hands from making nuggets is a bit too much for me. Therefore, I am working on an elaborate plan for nugget production involving trays and skewers. I did a test run at lunch and the process is working pretty well!

We have been wrestling with food sensitivities within the family for quite some time here and a couple weeks ago I finally decided to seriously change our diet. I was putting it off because I thought it would be hard and, you know what? It’s hard. We are cutting out dairy and corn products which means there are only a few processed foods we can purchase. On one hand, it is nice that, overall, most organic processed food uses cane sugar instead of corn syrup. On the other hand, it is pretty weird to try to think like a carnivorous vegan. To be honest, I haven’t yet started to eliminate the ingredients that contain corn or milk but don’t look like they do (like ascorbic acid and baking powder or whey and casein) but I have started to wonder if we should only eat beef if the cow it was only ate grass. It’s my new, special form of insanity. I guess the hardest part is cooking more from scratch and relying less on processed foods.

Coincidentally, I recently bought Alice Water’s new cookbook The Art of Simple Food. I have been reading it like a book; it is wonderful and enjoyable. She makes me feel excited about food. Of course, it is not a cookbook about cooking for people with allergies but it has dovetailed with our new food ways pretty nicely. It is about cooking simple, uncomplicated food and that’s what I need right now. I can work in substitutions as I go.

Recently, the bee and I made some popovers with rice milk instead of cow’s milk and they were good! Now I need to find a substitute for the milk powder in the peanut butter balls we like to eat.

Meanwhile, Fiona’s list of Food She Will Eat has been dwindling. Really, really dwindling. It’s pushing all kinds of awful buttons with me because all she will eat is candy, dried fruit, and ice cream. So I squawk and flap my arms and try to remind her that people need lots of different kinds of food but she fills up a bowl with dried strawberries and ignores the chicken and green beans. Then she comes to bed with us and declares she is hungry. Is it because she is three-and-a-half? Is it because I squawk? Is it because I am taking corn out of her diet? What happens when she won’t eat pancakes anymore? We’re pretty much down to pancakes.

Today, I made some applesauce from the bag of apples Mary Beth Grandma gave us. While the apples were cooking in the crock pot, Fiona and I went outside in the garden and I hacked down a weed tree. I noticed again that there are lots of squash blossoms and it’s so late in the season, they are not likely to fruit. So I’d like to try deep-frying them; in fact, I came across a nice recipe yesterday.

I also came across three recipes I had clipped out for hand pies. I am crazy for hand pies this fall and I hope to make lots of them. Of course, by ‘lots of them’ I mean any. I might be impeded by my inability to make worthwhile pie dough but it might be worth figuring out how. Oh! And chestnuts! When we were at the County Fair at the Garfield Park Conservatory a week ago we found some chestnuts then I found a whole slew of chestnut recipes I had saved and Johnny and I are curious as to how they taste. We also read the sad story of how the imported European chestnut trees early settlers brought and planted infected all the native North American chestnut trees and wiped them out. We have plans to plant native chestnut trees if ever we get some land.