A Challenge, Flours and Yeast

A challenge. I like challenges. I am a person who gets bored very easily. On the one hand, that makes my life very chaotic. On the other hand, my kids are used to change and relish the idea. They are very persistent and adapt well. They especially enjoy being guinea pigs to my ever changing cooking whims.

Who among you, dear readers, gets sucked into StumbleUpon? I feel your pain if you are one of those. I am using the distraction to my advantage. From now on, I will make a minimum of one recipe that I found on Stumble every week. I will post the first of those tomorrow.

In the meantime, I want to say a few words about GF flours and a new lesson learned.

I personally like my flour blend for pretty much everything. It can be substituted straight across for regular flour in nearly everything. I tried a LOT of different blends before deciding on this one, and I like it the best for not only texture, but taste as well. Yesterday I tried a new pancake recipe. My flour thickens to much it turns out. At least in this recipe. I am going to play with it and see what I can do but I want to say, don't necessarily trust just me when it comes to this kind of thing. While I have a lot of experience playing with flours, everyone has different taste buds. If everyone in the world hated bean flours they way my family does, they wouldn't still be sold.

Today I went to the store in order to find an ingredient for dinner. I went to three stores in fact. I will have to special order said ingredient or wait until I go out of town next. While checking the ingredients list on a vast array of products and brands I found something.

Pom and I keep getting mild reactions, though I am VIGILANT with ingredient checking. I had my suspicions that it was yeast. Now, from what I have read, and what my allergist and Pom's dietitian said, yeast is one of those thing that some people with Celiac's or Gluten issue have a problem with while others don't. NOT SO. The ingredients list on one product said: Autolyzed yeast extract (from barley). Um....barley equals a BIG no no but this is one thing that I have been avoiding thinking it was just one of those things that was in addition the gluten response. Not a part of it!

So here's my final word. AVOID autolyzed yeast extract.

Cheesy No Bake Pasta

I am always so confused with Diva. This graceful dancer is the most uncoordinated little thing when she isn't dancing. I mean walking into signs, walls, fences, people, displays in stores and falling over her feet, or anything else on the ground, like dirt. She constantly has some sort of bruise from falling, tripping or running into something. When she is on that stage though she becomes this totally different creature. Graceful, coordinated, balanced. A little star! Sadly for her, though, she doesn't get to dance for a week or so.

This has been a hard week for the little one. Her not so graceful self fell earlier in the week, fracturing her tailbone. Then she had surgery to remove her tonsils and adenoids. We chose to give her full control over the dinner menu the night before her surgery since she was having such a bad week. I was impressed by part of her decision.

I wanted to make a particular recipe out of a Giada DeLaurentis cookbook for years but never got around to it. That night, however, it made it out of the book and into the pot. Not without a few alterations though of course. So here is my altered version of a great recipe. Good enough, apparently, for a seven year old's "last meal".

Shells and Cheese with Arugula

• 1 pkg gluten free shells (Tinkyada)
• 2 cups finely grated Pecorino Romano cheese
• 1 cup finely grated Parmesan (I really like Parmesano Reggiano but it's spendy)
• 1 cup sliced mushrooms
• 1 TBSP EVOO
• 1/2 TBSP garlic powder
• 1/2 TBSP onion powder
• 1/4 cup half and half
• 1 handful of arugula leaves
• salt and pepper to taste

Boil noodles in lightly salted water. In the mean time, saute the mushrooms in EVOO. Place the cheeses, mushrooms and seasonings in a large serving bowl.

Drain the noodles and put them in the bowl. Add the arugula and half & half. Stir well to melt the cheeses. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve!

I recommend serving this with a nice Mediterranean salad but my child stuck with peas and corn for accompaniments. Enjoy!