Terry picked fresh blackcurrants this morning

So I found a recipe here on Gluten Free in South Africa and modified it:

GF Blackcurrant Muffins
for 6 large muffins or 12 standard size
100g butter, melted and cooled
2 eggs
3/4 cup vanilla sugar
1 cup soy milk with 1 tsp cider vinegar
1+ 3/4 cups gluten free flour [I used a mix I keep made up in a jar of approx 3 parts brown rice, 1.5 parts tapioca, 1 part soy, 1 part LSA, 1 part buckwheat]
1 tsp guar gum
1 tbsp baking powder
2 cups fresh blackcurrants
A couple of tablespoons of quinoa flakes and 1-2 tbsp sliced almonds + more for sprinkling


Preheat the oven to 180 degrees

In a bowl, whisk the wet ingredients
in another bowl mix the dry ingredients thoroughly
gently add wet to dry
Fold in the blackcurrants.
Fill a tray of 6 silicon muffin moulds.
Sprinkle some sliced almonds over the top
Bake for 35 - 45 minutes until the tops are springy when pressed
Cool 10 minutes before turning out.

These are wonderfully tart and a beautiful tender cake texture.

More gluten free food

I know I've been blogging more about food than about quilting lately, that's because I have not had much time to quilt, but no matter how busy I am we still have to eat. And because the food is better for us if I make it all from scratch, that's mostly what I do.

Terry spent today at a International Plant Propagators Field Trip and I spent most of the day in the kitchen. Tomorrow we are having friends to dinner and Terry will be cooking his 'famous creme brulee' again. So it was decided that the meal would be a French dinner - with me to cook the coq au vin. So I started that today. I also cooked four trays of the gluten free flatbread I make most weeks - that's double that recipe.

I've been looking for a good low carb, high protein muffin. I found this recipe and adapted it as below to test:

Breakfast Muffins

Ingredients

1 cup pumpkin
1 cup apple
3 bananas
4 extra large eggs
1/4 cup oil or butter, melted
1 teaspoon cinamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup almond flour
1/4 cup flax seed meal
1 cup soy flour
1 cup raisins

Directions:

Mix first five ingredients together. In another bowl, mix the remaining dry ingredients together. Mix wet ingredients with dry. Spoon into 18 muffin cups. Bake at 210 deg C for 25 minutes. per muffin: 172 Cal, 10 gm fat (1 gm saturated fat, 3 gm poly, 4 gm mono) 18 gm carbohydrate,
3 gm dietary fibre, 6 gm protein)

Not a light muffin, not a sweet muffin but flavoursome and not too solid. More a carrot cake texture. Would be yummy with cheese if your diet allows. I ate two and froze the rest for future breakfasts.

I did a couple of hours office work this afternoon and then started to wonder about dinner. I fancied something with eggs and maybe chickpeas so i put those two together into google with the word recipe and found this. Again, I adapted it to suit what I have on hand (and can eat) and I've just eaten this yummy salad.

Chickpea & Quinoa Salad with Soft Boiled Egg & Croutons

Serves 2

For the Dressing:
4 tsp olive oil
4 tsp. lemon juice pinch salt freshly ground chilli flakes

For the salad:
1/2 cup cooked quinoa
2 eggs
1 cup chickpeas, drained and rinsed
2 cup chopped baby spinach
2 spring onion, chopped
2 slices bread made into croutons with 2 tsp butter

First, make the quinoa. Make a big batch so there will be some to put in the fridge for future meals. Put 1 cup quinoa in a pot with 2 cups water. Bring to the boil and boil for 5 min. Turn the heat off and leave for the grain to absorb all the water. Fluff up with a fork. While the quinoa is cooking, boil the eggs. I like them medium hard, not really hard but cook them they way you like them. Spread the butter on the bread and cut into tiny squares. (I used the gf flatbread I made this morning.) Place on a plate and microwave for 2-3 min, checking and stirring after 1.5 min then every 30 sec. When they start to brown stop cooking. Now mash about half of the chickpeas with a big spoon or fork and mix with the remaining chickpeas. Stir in the quinoa. Make the salad dressing by whisking the ingredients together. Add half the sald dressing to the quinoa and chickpeas and stir. Assemble the salad on individual plates. First the baby spinach and spring onion, with the rest of the salad dressing over it. Then the chickpea mixture. Top with a soft boiled egg and sprinkle with croutons.

More about Quinoa Porridge

Quite a while ago I posted a recipe for Quinoa Porridge cooked in a crockpot (or slow cooker). I still eat a version of that most mornings. Most mornings its there in the crockpot all cooked and warm and yummy. But if I've forgotten or not put it on to cook for some reason the night before, I can still cook a pretty good version in the microwave, provided the mixture has some quick cooking cereal in it. For instance, the mix I am using at the moment has some quick cooking, quinoa cereal in it or sometimes I have quinoa flakes. The microwave method doesn't work if you only have the rice flakes and the whole grains, you need something that will absorb the liquid fairly quickly so that it doesn't boil over.

To make a yummy very nutritious breakfast porridge for two mix: 6 tbsp whole grains (quinoa, brown rice flakes, amaranth) with 2 tbls quick cooking cereal (rice, quinoa), 1 tbsp LSA, 1 tbsp rice bran, some raisins or other dried fruit or nuts with 2 cups liquid (milk, soy milk, water) and cook in covered dish on high for 5 min, then on low for 10 min. Serve with milk, cream, yoghurt, honey, jam, syrup, stewed fruit....

To make this even easier, I make the mix up in large batches and keep it in an airtight container. Then for each person I just measure out 1/3 cup mix and 1 cup liquid.

Gluten Free Recipes

The thing I've missed most since I've stopped eating cheese, potato, corn and wheat are savoury treats. I've tried a number of cracker recipes and this adaptation of this recipe is the best I've made. It has a nice nutty flavour and it makes about 70-100 crackers depending on how big you cut them. I think you could increase the LSA meal and use less brown rice flour if you wanted to.

LSA Crackers

Ingredients:
1 2/3 cups gluten free flour blend (I use 1 1/3 cup brown rice flour, 1/3 cup tapioca flour)
1/3 cup LSA meal
1 tsp salt (can use herb salt if liked)
1/4 cup oil
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup sour milk (I use soy milk and lemon juice)
1 large egg

Directions:
Sift dry ingredients into a bowl. Add milk, oil, and egg and mix thoroughly to make a stiff dough. Roll the dough very thin (it will completely cover two oven trays). You will need lots of flour on your rolling pin as its a sticky dough. Cut into squares. Bake at 200 deg C for 10 min. Remove the lightly browned crackers and bake remainder for further 5-10 min until all lightly browned. Let cool and store in airtight container.

When I made the crackers in the picture I used ground linseed instead of flour on the rolling pin, that's what has given the grainy look to the crackers.

And here are my favourite apple muffins - not too sweet but lovely and moist. An excellent breakfast food.

Apple Muffins

Wet Ingredients - mix together in one bowl:
1/2 large tin apple slices
1/4 cup soy milk with a squeeze of lemon juice
2 eggs
1/3 cup oil

Dry ingredients - mix together in another bowl:
1 1/4 cup brown rice flour
1/4 cup LSA
1/4 cup tapioca flour
1/2 cup vanilla sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp mixed spice
1 cup raisins or chocolate chips or walnuts

Add wet ingredients to dry and mix just enough to combine, do not overmix. This is a very moist mixture. Spoon into 12 large paper cases in a muffin tray and bake 25 min at 175 deg C.

All I need now is a good recipe for brown rice tortillas - anybody know of one?

My Kitchen Window

This is one of my favourite views - which is a very good thing when you consider how much time I spend in my kitchen at the moment. I love the view beyond the window but I also enjoy the pretty jugs and pots of flowers on the sill. You can't see the garden or the cherry trees in this photo as I have just this minute taken it and its starting to get dark.

Terry has mentioned in his blog that his excellent vegetable garden is producing a lot of lovely tomatoes and more courgettes than we can use and I have been turning them into ratatouille and tomato soup to stock our freezer. I have frozen 6 single serves and one 3 person punnet of Roast Tomato Soup today. I used The Gluten-Free Goddess' recipe (more or less) from her blog and it turned out to be very very good.

As well as preserving goodness from our vegetable garden there have been apples and nectarines to freeze from the orchard and the peaches are nearly ready to pick. I have also been doing a lot of baking in my kitchen lately as we both prefer to eat gluten-free biscuits and bread - and they are much nicer made at home. I've regularly been making Gluten Free Flatbread and I'll give you the recipe for that shortly. Its much the nicest Gluten Free bread I've had, homemade or bought and it freshens up nicely in the toaster after its been frozen.

Do you remember back in very early January we had a visit from two of our favourite people from France? Caroline and Bruno gave me the large red gerbera on my window sill and it has had between 2 and 5 flowers on it ever since. Which is why Terry bought the little orange one the other day to keep it company. Don't they look nice in front of my little group of orange and red jugs? I bought the middle sized one in Lyon and Caroline's mother gave me the matching plate. I'm looking forward to our kitchen extension which should give me some room to display the plate too - although I will lose my lovely kitchen window!

Here is my adaptation of this Gluten Free Flatbread recipe:

Gluten Free Flatbread
· Heat 1.5 cup water to blood temperature (40 sec on high in microwave)

Add:

• 2 tsp sugar
• 2 Tablespoons instant yeast

Leave to froth while you mix together in a bowl:

• 2 cup fine brown rice flour
• 1 cup tapioca starch
• 2 teaspoons xantham or guar gum
• 1 teaspoon salt

Mix in food processor

• 2 teaspoons cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup oil
• 4 eggs

Then

1. Add yeast mixture to wet ingredients
2. Slowly add dry ingredients to wet ingredients.
3. Beat well.
4. Spread mixture thinly with spatula to cover two non stick biscuit trays
5. Place dough in a warm spot, allow to rise for 35-40 minutes.
6. Preheat oven to 375 deg C Bake.
7. Bake for 20 minutes or until the top is slightly browned.
8. It will come out of the oven with a slight crust that will go away as the bread cools. Allow the bread to cool 15-30 minutes before using. It will become flexible and soft.
9. Cut into large pieces to use as a folded sandwich bread

Breakfast in a Biscuit

A nice easy breakfast - not too sweet.

(Gluten Free) Breakfast in a Biscuit

Wet ingredients:
3 bananas
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tbsp honey
1/4 cup milk

Mix in a food processor or with beater until fluffy

Now add the dry ingredients:
2 cups quick cooking grain flakes (oat, rice, quinoa, amaranth, anything you'd use for instant porridge, etc - I've even successfully used a muesli mix)
1/2-3/4 cup mixed nuts and dried fruit
and 1 tsp cinnamon.

Mix well and leave for a few minutes while the oven heats and the dried grain flakes get nice and moist. Use a tablespoon to drop onto biscuit trays and flatten slightly. Bake 20 min at 175 deg C. swapping trays top to bottom after 10 min. Makes 24.

1 biscuit - 111 calories, 3 gm fat (0 gm saturated fat), 20 gm carbohydrate, 2 gm dietary fibre, 3 gm protein

Gluten Free Banana & Quinoa Biscuits

I've just made these for a friend's birthday present but I don't think he'll be getting all four dozen! I've adapted an old recipe, both the ingredients and method.

Dry Ingredients:

½ cup brown rice flour
½ cup buckwheat flour
½ cup tapioca flour
1½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
Pinch salt
1 tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp nutmeg
1 cup sugar (I used my vanilla sugar made by storing vanilla pods in the sugar jar)
1½ cups quinoa flakes

Wet Ingredients:

2/3^rd cup (165 gm) butter or margarine
2 eggs
2 bananas

Put all dry ingredients EXCEPT quinoa flakes in a bowl and use a hand held whisk to gently blend together and remove any lumps. Beat wet ingredients in a food processor until smooth and creamy. Add mixed dry ingredients slowly through the tube while beating. Scrape batter from food processor into a bowl and mix in quinoa flakes gently. Drop from a teaspoon, widely spaced, onto three oven trays lined with baking paper - about 16 per tray. Bake 190 deg C for about 15 minutes. Cool on wire racks.

Update: Terry had one of these after breakfast this morning. I asked him if he liked it and at first he said "yes, they're great". Then he realised I was asking for a considered reaction, not an automatic one, and he looked at it and said "well, i'd prefer it to have more flavour". So while I was sitting there thinking, ok, i could substitute some brown sugar for some of the white sugar, or I could add more spice, maybe some ginger, or I could add some chopped walnuts or sultantas, while I was thinking all this he ate another four biscuits - looking for that elusive flavour I guess!

These are tasty

Janice's Rice Cakes:
3 cups cooked brown rice
3 eggs
1/3 cup grated tasty cheese (romano, parmesan, etc)
4 shallot cloves
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 tbsp oil (olive or rice bran)
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp hot pepper sauce

Mix the last 5 ingredients together to a paste in a small kitchen whizz or blender. Stir all ingredients together. Mixture should be sloppy. Spoon into paper muffin cases set into muffin trays. Cook 20-30 min at 160 deg C on fan bake. Yummy for lunch. Can be frozen and reheated.

A Settlers of Catan Dinner

Terry had a fraught day fighting off alligators as he tried to drain the swamp up at the nursery so I suggested we had a game of Knights & Cities and a finger food dinner before he spent the evening catching up on the office work that hadn't got done during the day. The picture shows our dinner table set ready.

The rose in the vase (and ribbon) was one of four that Terry presented to the four ladies (Judith, Jennifer, Val and I) who attended Fries on Friday last week - just because he had been walking past the flower shop.

The Settlers of Catan (3d version) is on a board made from two layers of corrugated card laid at right angles to each other for strength, covered with quilt batting - its supposed to be a temporary board until I get a perspex one cut - or until I cover it with fabric. We've been using it for a couple of years now I guess...

The plate is from France. Christine, Caroline's mother, bought it for me in Lyon. On the plate are: venison gluten free sausage from our local market, sprouted blue peas, grilled chicken breast, plum sauce from plums from our tree, carrot sticks, hummus mixed with garlic mayo, roasted almonds, tomato, kiwifruit. On the side plates are gluten free rice flour waffles which I make without sugar so they can be used as crackers with savoury foods.

Rice Flour Waffles
Put the following ingredients into a blender in this order:
2 eggs, 1/2 cup oil (I use rice bran or light olive oil), 1 & 3/4 cups soy milk, 1 cup white rice flour, 3/4 cup brown rice flour, 1 tbsp gluten free baking powder, 1/4 tsp salt.
Blend all ingredients, scrape sides and blend again. Leave to sit while waffle iron heats. Cook each waffle for 5 min. Makes 10-12 large waffles. These freeze well and can be defrosted and crisped either in the toaster or 5-6 min in a hot oven.

Finished is Good!

Here is the first quilt done with the SwiftQuilter: front, back and back closeup. I know some of you eagled-eyed quilters will see birds nests on the back. And do you know what? I don't care! Weeeeeeell..... ok, that's not strictly true, I didn't used to care. Up until recently I've been more focused on the design on the front than the finish on the back. And since I've learnt to care I have still to learn to pull my back thread through to the front and hold it out of the way when I make a new start. And there were more than a few new starts. But that's ok, that was a practice quilt :-) - and finished is good!

Have you tried quinoa? Its yummy. If you need to eat a gluten free diet you should try this. Before you go to bed, put 1/4 cup quinoa grain, 1/4 cup wholewheat rice flakes, 1/4 cup raisins, 1 cup milk (soy if that's what you use), 1 cup water, 2 tblsp rice bran (or not if you don't need the extra bran), 1 tblsp LSA meal (or ground almonds) and a pinch of salt in a bowl. Stir. Cover the bowl with a plate or tin foil. Place the bowl on an upturned saucer in your slow cooker. Fill the slow cooker to half way up the bowl with cold water. Turn the slow cooker on low. In the morning your porridge is hot and delicious! Serves 2.