Gluten Freestyling With Lisa

The great thing about families is the way everyone pulls together when your hurt. Every weekend our family gathers on Friday and Saturday for dinner, games, and movies. My broken arm might have stopped me from cooking, but it didn't my family from gathering for our special time together.

Lisa, is twelve years and can show you how easy it is to cook gluten free family meals. She of course received a lot of coaching from mom. On Friday Lisa simply made sloppy joes using gluten free ketchup and spices. She then made a simple salad. Twelve is a little young to be doing deep fat frying, so big brother Jared cooked up the French fries.

For Saturday's meal, Lisa first put on a pot of rice to boil. She then chopped vegetables for a roasted vegetables dish. We were going to roast them part of the way in the microwave and then finish in the conventional oven, but once things got busy with the distraction of her older siblings and nephew showing up it, we forgot to move the dish to the oven. So, we needed to just cook them in the microwave to have them done on time. Lisa topped off the meal with steak and gravy. She did a good job. Her cooking was so delicious I think I might be fired. There were no leftovers.

The amounts in this recipe is all to taste and mood. What I give here is what Lisa choose. My daughter-in-law makes this same dish with fresh onions, the steak in it and uses rutabagas instead of celery.

Roasted Vegetables

1 tsp dried chopped Onions

3 small cloves Garlic

2 chopped Parsnips

2 stalks chopped celery

6 skinny Carrots chopped

Roast in conventional oven at 350° for an hour or until vegetable are tender. For microwave, cook on high for 10 minutes, stir, and finish by cooking for 5 minutes more.

Variation: Toss with a tablespoon of olive oil or butter and some spices before roasting.

Steak and Gravy

This is usually done with leftover steak, but since there wouldn't be enough we started out by browning some fresh steak.

1 and ½ pounds of chopped, browned steak. Stir in 2 – 3 tablespoons potato flour. Pour over this enough gluten free broth to more than cover the steak. Simmer on Medium heat until desired thickness. Serve over potatoes or rice.

For my vegetarian needs I tossed some tofu with low sodium Tamari, which is a gluten free soy sauce. I find it both at the health food store and the local grocery store. I tossed the tofu with my roasted vegetables.

Gluten Free Family Meals

Family meals can easily be made into gluten-free meals that are also enjoyed by the gluten advantaged. There are little changes that are subtle enough everyone can live with them. The hardest change is the cost. Gluten-free beef broth is more expensive then plain old whatever broth. All the various flours used in gluten-free cooking is so much more expensive than wheat flour that you will cringe when you see it. However, in terms of flavor switching to gluten-free broth thickened with potato flour, no one has complained that my gravy tastes different. If fact my husband insists that my gravy is just as nasty tasting as it has always been.

Well, with the quality of my gravy aside, I thought I would share with you a couple examples of family meals that are easily converted to gluten-free and the family will still love them. My first examples is your basic baked ham meal. Old Kentucky Ham is gluten-free. Potatoes are gluten-free and any fresh vegetables, or straight forward frozen vegetables, are gluten-free. Let's cover the menu one dish at a time.

Old Kentucky Ham cooked as you always had before. If you covered it in pineapples before read the label on the can of pineapples to make sure that it is Gluten-free and use it just as before. The only change here is perhaps your brand of ham and/or your brand of pineapples. If you poked it all over with cloves before, check the label to be sure, but most likely whole cloves are whole cloves. If you used oven bags before, you can still use oven bags. The directions call for the dusting of the bag with flour. I e-mailed Reynolds and they e-mailed back within 5 minutes. The e-mail included a detailed explanation about the purpose of dusting the bag with flour. The bag could burst (it has to do with layers of water and fat in the bag turning to steam and boiling fat,) and how to reduce the possibility of it happening. How cool was that! The up shot of it is, you can use any GF flour or starch to dust the bags.

Mashed potatoes and gravy are done about to the same as before. If you do not have a dairy allergy then you can mash butter and milk into your potatoes without any change. If, as in our case, with dairy allergies, and one with a soy milk allergy we have found it best to mash the potatoes with just salt and pepper added to it. We don't add the pepper when the relatives who have a pepper allergy comes over. Each person at the table has to add what they want and mix it on their own plate. I have a nightshade allergy. The nightshade family of plants include, potatoes, tomatoes, bell peppers, and eggplant. I either skip this dish for myself, or warm some rice from the batch of cooked rice I keep in the refrigerator.

When I make the gravy I brown up bits of ham and throw it in with onions, carrots, celery, and two quarts of water. I simmer this, while I bake the ham, bringing the two quarts of water down to one quart of stock. After removing the ham from the roasting pan I strain the stock into the pan and bring it to a boil. This is to capture more of the browning flavor. The recommended method for making gravy with potato flour is to mix the flour with water, just as you would with regular flour, and pour this into the boiling broth. I'm a bit lazy on this point and just sprinkle it on top while whisking it into the broth. This allows me to adjust the thickness of the gravy to suit my family. Usually two to three tablespoons does the job for this much liquid.

Salad vegetables are gluten free and are easily made into many different versions. My quick and simple favorite is spinach, romaine lettuce, with shredded carrots. Since I don't eat meat I sprinkle cooled, cooked beans on my serving of salad. Garbanzo beans go best with spinach. Salad dressing is easy to make. Since mayonnaise is gluten, and dairy free, I whip it up with dill weed and lemon juice for my daughter. For a low fat dressing for me I sprinkle dill weed and lemon juice or apple juice on my salad. For the 'regular' folks I still serve regular store-bought dressing.

Corn from the freezer is just corn. It's gluten free. If you have a corn allergy, just substitute this with any cooked vegetable of your choice. Since we have corn allergies it isn't unusual for me to cook green beans, as well. Or just serve the salad as our vegetable.

Bread is a nice addition, but it will be at least a week before I post my 'learning to make gluten-free bread' experience. Tomorrow, I hope to post my chili and corn bread recipes.