Attitude Is Everything

Is it possible to get more cliche than that? Seriously. But as is with many cliches, there was an original moment of profound truth. We just need to clip away the frayed threads that fuzz up and obscure the fundamental principle.

Today, Bug turns eight. Someone commented recently to me that each child's birthday is also a day of celebration for the mother...it is our accomplishment as well. So true. On these birthdays, I sit and reminisce about the uniqueness of each of their births. Bug was my first v-bac after having a cesarean with Dog. Two days of labor and at least four hours of pushing. Big baby. Nine pounds, thirteen ounces and twenty-one inches long. It was a hard-won success, not because the labor and delivery was tough, though it was. It was hard-won because of having to swim upstream against prevailing prejudices within the medical community. Of finding medical professionals who would support me in my choices and assist me in doing it as safely as possible rather than practice defensive medicine. I read, researched, and educated myself. I swamped myself with success stories.

Some of the most useful discoveries that I made had to do with the attitude of the mom in the birthing experience. The moms who floundered or panicked were usually those who felt that the pain was something that was being done to them. The moms who were the most in control weren't the ones who didn't feel the pain. They felt the pain, all right. But they didn't feel as if they were at the mercy of that pain. Each wave of pain, each contraction informed what needed to be done next in order to help the baby emerge.

As I reflected on that birthing experience, I started to draw some connections. I've seen folks inundated with food issues who resisted. Fought against it. Looked for that magic pill. That silver bullet that would let them "get back" to their lives. And I've seen others that dove forward into dealing with the food issues, no holds barred and a can-do attitude. That's the way I want to handle it...that's the attitude I want.

So these days, I'm still working on my attitude. Particularly my attitude about fish. I envy people who love fish. The Hobbits adore it when Tool Guy fries up a mess of fish. Me? Not so much. But I know it's good for me. Again, at the gentle prompting of my gardening mentor, I tried this slap-together fish dish, gluten-free style. It is a delicious way of incorporating the benefits of wild-caught salmon--including the nutrition in all those little bones--painlessly into the menu.

Salmon Croquettes

1 15 oz. can of salmon
1 egg
3 slices of bread
1 tsp. seasoned salt
Lard or oil for frying

In a food processor, reduce bread slices to crumbs. Remove. Drain salmon and process with egg and seasoned salt. Add breadcrumbs and blend until completely mixed. In cast iron dutch oven, heat lard or oil. When ready, spoon salmon mixture into hot oil and fry for 2-3 minutes or until thoroughly brown.

Pain in life is a lot like pain in birth. Fight against it or work with it. Is it being done to me or is it informing me? I count myself lucky in a sense, in that my first birthing experience was a cesarean and I wanted to do everything I could to safely avoid that again. It was a powerful motivation for me to take a much closer look at how I wanted to give birth than I might have done otherwise. I worked harder and put a significantly larger amount of effort into it than I ever did for anything else before. It changed my complacency permanently. And I ended up being much more richly rewarded than I ever dreamed. I look back and see that all of the hard things that have come into my life have really been blessings, because they turned me down paths I never would have chosen but find I would be profoundly bereft had I not followed them. Likewise, with the food issues, the circumstances in life drive our choices and we often end up in unexpected and even better places than we would have chosen for ourselves, had we been left to our own devices. "God bless the broken road..."

Breatharian Revisited

Our foods, like our lives, are works in progress. Nothing is static, at least not for long. And being an inveterate tweaker, I'm constantly playing with the variables. One of the beauties of hanging out on food lists is that there are other food geeks who love to tweak as much as I do. They often come up with ideas that jump start me off in a new direction or affirm the germ of an idea that has been fermenting in the back of my mind.

A few months ago, one of those tweakers mentioned cold ferments in relation to sourdough breads. I had noticed that when I keep my starter in the refrigerator, not only do I not have to feed it as frequently, it also doesn't taste as...well...sour. Don't get me wrong. I like a tangy bread. But then, I have other aesthetics to please. The ones that are shorter than me. What can I say? They outnumber me. Oookay...no sour sourdough. Got it. So I keep my starter in the refrigerator. But TLS was talking about keeping the whole thing in the refrigerator. All the time. It took me a while before I could wrap my brain around it. Sometimes the gluten/gluten-free barrier makes my brain shut down.

Then I decided why not? Let's cook dangerously. I started making up my bread the night before and just shoving it in the refrigerator until the morning. Then I'd pull it out, pop it into the oven at 100* for a couple of hours or until it rose to my satisfaction and baked as usual. Good bread. Really, really good bread.

Then a few weeks ago, she recommended this book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois. And I'd like to recommend it as well. Just let me say up front, it's a bread book. And it isn't gluten-free. But this book has a fine attention to detail. As I read through the book, I found myself nodding in agreement, because my experience in the kitchen confirmed what they were instructing. But they've written it down in such a way that organizes it and explains everything, including how to adjust the bread in order to change the texture in the final product. They talk about "slack" dough making a better crumb than a dough that must be kneaded by hand. And guess what, Breatharian? Gluten free dough is best when it is slack, so this entire idea is well suited to the gluten free bread.

They spend a couple of pages talking about how wetter doughs will yield a "custard" crumb, which is a desirable texture in bread. I can avow and affirm that this is indeed true and, while they attribute this quality to the gluten in the bread, I can also avow and affirm that gluten free bread is able to achieve its own "custard" crumb. Perhaps not to the gluten-oriented palate, but to the Breatharian one, the texture is heavenly. All of the Hobbits, including the tallest one whose palate still bears the memory-taint of gluten, noticed and commented on the marked difference in the quality of the bread after doing a long rise, cold ferment. Bug pulled out a slice of day-old bread and inquired, "Did you bake this today?" Poking an inquiring finger into the slice, I felt it give under my finger, then spring back. "Nope. But it sure feels like I did." He spread ghee on it and devoured it without even considering toasting it. How many gluten free breads can you say that about?

In the past year, since the Glutenator laid the groundwork for the sourdough bread and made me believe gluten-free sourdough was possible, I've been tweaking the basic recipe to improve the texture and longevity of the loaf. The Glutenator once observed that Martha Washington's recipes called for a great deal of eggs...many more eggs than contemporary recipes require. She theorized a couple of reasons for this: 1) everyone raised chickens and eggs were ubiquitous and 2) wheat flour of the day was lower in gluten than current strains of wheat.

Building on the theory that more eggs provides more structure for flours that have less gluten, I've added more egg whites to my recipe. Also, having discovered a much cheaper source for guar gum, I'm adding it with abandon to my recipes. Both of these do wonderful things for improving the texture of the bread.

I'm experimenting with the outer limit of how long a loaf of bread can rise in the refrigerator before the yeast cycle is exhausted. Hertzberg and Francois recommend no longer than five days for a gluten bread and I'm theorizing that a gluten-free bread would probably not sustain itself for that long. Currently, I've allowed bread to ferment for up to 48 hours and still turned out a very successful loaf. I've been trying working toward finding the exhaustion point, but it is difficult to stay that far ahead of the Hobbit appetite. But still I try...

Almost Everything Free Sourdough Bread (v. 2.0)

Starter:

2 cups gluten-free flour
2 cups kefir-fermented apple juice

Mix thoroughly and let stand for 24 hours.

In a bowl, measure out:

1/2 cup tapioca starch flour
1/2 cup potato starch flour
1 teaspoon salt
3-4 teaspoons guar gum

In a mixer, whip up 6 egg whites until frothy.

Into the meringue, pour:

1/3 cup olive oil
3 egg yolks
1 tablespoon maple syrup
2 cups sourdough starter

Mix in dry ingredients. This yields a rather thin batter for a bread. It will be about the consistency of toothpaste, but not spreading out with the ease of pancake batter. Pour into bread pan and return to the refrigerator for a minimum of 8 hours or overnight. Remove to a warm oven to rise. The dough may have a skin on top of it. I judge that the bread has risen sufficiently when the skin has stretched to cracking around the edges and the dough underneath takes on a more liquid appearance. Bake at 350* for 1 hour or until done.

This is a book well worth peeking in to. I've got my eye on a few recipes in it that might just be tweakable for a Breatharian. Tool Guy has been yearning for foccaccia and reminisces about the batches we used to buy at the farmer's market up the road from us. It just might happen, Guy.

It will take an experienced eye to be able to sort out the tips and techniques that the Breatharian can use and those that are specific only to gluten bread, but it is well worth playing around with and doing some of your own cooking dangerously. Let's hear it for the food geeks who sit around and email each other with their latest discoveries and inspirations! Thanks, TLS!

Staying By the Stuff

Is everyone campaigned out yet? I know I am...stuff still manages to leak through despite the fact that I've been on a media blackout since Hurricane Katrina. That experience certainly jaded me about news coverage. It was the one time that I had intimate background knowledge of a hot media topic. And for all of the finger pointing, no one was pointing in the right direction. It made me wonder. If they missed so very much stuff on this, on what other stories are they skimming over details and cherry-picking facts? All of them? Most of them? I decided that it wasn't necessary to hear all of the issues or even current events debated and discussed into the most infinite minutae in order to make my decisions and sort of hunkered down into a kind of bunker attitude. Abandoning my six-hour-a-day talk radio habit, I turned my attention toward smaller matters: my own patch of blue.

It was gratifying to recently discover someone whose work I so respect voicing a similar train of thought. Chris Rice explores the idea that our greater center of power is not with our vote, but in the lives that we touch on a daily basis. Which is a rather exciting thought when we really dig into what that means. Our votes are each a single one in so many millions. So easy to get lost, overwhelmed in the slippery shifts of public opinion. We drop our bottle into the ocean and hope it gets found. And when there isn't much to pick from, then what is that vote really worth anyway? Don't get me wrong...I'm still voting! I know that each vote counts. How much louder our voice speaks, though, on an intimate level. When we're face-to-face and eye-to-eye, our words have more weight and make a surer difference.

Clearly, there is power on a global level and there are people who are called to serve there. Clearly, I'm not one of those. But there's comfort in knowing that being the keeper of the small and insignificant things has just as much value as being a mover and a shaker. "But as his part is who goes down to the battle, so shall his part be who stays by the stuff; they shall share alike."* Chris is right...our power is in the lives that we brush up against--and connect with--every minute between the four year voting cycle.

It's always exciting when connecting in a conversation with someone inspires a train of thought that ends up in a new dish that all of the Hobbits enjoy. Another homeschooling mom and I were recently discussing the satisfactions of good sourdough when she happened to mention offhandedly about using her sourdough to make Pig in a Blanket. That was a dish I'd not heard mentioned in many years and I stood there basking in the glow of the light bulb turning on over my head. I could see the Hobbits cheering over this one...what kid doesn't love Pig in a Blanket? That's got to be worth some serious Most Delicious Mommy points, right?

While gluten free bread dough isn't workable to the degree that wheat flour is, an approximation of Pig in a Blanket is indeed possible. So I played with it and came up with this combination, which is more of a stuffed bread than a wrapped hot dog. But there it is. I even renamed it, since all pork and beef hot dog sausage products at our fingertips have corn in them.

Buffalo in a Blanket

Gluten free bread dough sufficient for one loaf of bread
4 hot dogs or sausages

Line two bread pans with parchment. The dough will be evenly split between the pans. Spread a layer in the bottom of each pan, about an inch or so, using about 1/4 of the total dough for each pan. Lay two hot dogs or sausages side by side in each pan. Using the remaining dough, cover the hot dogs/sausages. Allow to rise the normal amount of time and bake at 350* for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Allow to cool enough to touch, slice, and serve.

This was, as expected, a tremendous hit with the Hobbits...a quintessential comfort food. Turns out I did get extra Most Delicious Mommy points for this. Score, me!

Outside of the voting booth, I plow my energies and focus into making a difference on a molecular level: scraped knees, hornworm caterpillar collections and princess scepters. Laundry lines, vegetable rows, and jars of food lined up in the basement...day by day...staying by the stuff.

*_{I Sam. 30:24}

Egg Hunt

I suppose it is no surprise that most of what I do revolves around food. In addition to gardening, one of my side "hobbies" is coordinating the purchases of our buying club. I inherited the job from the previous coordinator and it has certainly facilitated our Breatharian lifestyle and made it more affordable. It's fun, too. I get to do foodie stuff and spend other people's money. What's not to love? Members ask me my opinion on products and foods and I always have an opinion about something. A former supervisor acerbically informed me once that there is such a thing as an unexpressed thought. Really? Who knew?

We took delivery on our co-op order recently. Part of the shipment were two cases of eggs from an "Amish Farm" (who knows how authentic this is, but I'm taking it on faith). This is the third delivery we've gotten from them and the stuff has been largely satisfactory, at least as far as I'm concerned. In digging through the case to check for breakage, I found a few cartons with an egg missing out of each. And then....

The next carton had an egg missing. In its place was a wad of packing tape.

The next carton had a screw tucked under one of the eggs.

The next carton had a dime tucked under one of the eggs.

The next carton had a business card for an Amish cobbler and horse equipage in Ohio.

The denouement? The egg that was swathed in packing tape. One egg. In the entire carton.

?????

Dog says, "What kind of weird scavenger hunt was that?" Yeah. What he said.

So that farmer and me? Oh, we're gonna talk....

Almost Everything Free French Toast, 'Cha

Several slices of Almost Everything Free Sourdough Bread
14 oz of coconut milk or other dairy replacer
4 eggs
1-2 tsp ghee

Blend up substitute milk with eggs. Sweetener can be added, if desired. Heat cast iron griddle or skillet on medium low, melting ghee until the oil is in motion. Meanwhile, soak bread slices in milk/egg mixture on both sides until saturated. Place as many slices will fit into the heated skillet and cook until browned on both sides and no longer wet in the center.

Can be served plain or with desired topping.

We're Breatharians

Why not?

There are vegetarians. And valetudinarians. I've been accused of being one of these. There are vegans. And raw foodists. Catch "Wife Swap," anyone? Don't get me wrong, I do make my own kefir. I just don't rouse everyone in the middle of the night to partake....especially the kids, since they can't do dairy.

We're Breatharians. We live on air. I call my blog "everything-free eating" because we've had to remove so many food items from our menu that it feels like it is everything-free. And "everything-free" cooking has proven to be the biggest challenge of my life.

Five years ago, we had a positive diagnosis of gluten intolerance in our oldest child. The dietary changes that this positive diagnosis required led to us connecting the dots to the genetic chain, linking at least three generations on Tool Guy's (my dearest husband of twenty-four years, twin of Tim "The Tool Man" Tailor) paternal side of the family and one, possibly two generations on the maternal side. One year after diagnosis, we were slammed by the emergence of a long list of other intolerances, confirmed by IgG testing. Not something you're ready to find out one month before delivering your next baby, you know? Before it all stabilized, we'd lost entire food groups. Clawing our way back to wellness has been a long, gruelling fight, but we're getting there.

Gluten-free living seems almost halcyon by comparison. I read other gluten-free blogs with the avid anticipation I used to reserve for the Sears Wish List Catalog when I was a child. As we've crept forward and added new foods back in, I've begun pulling out old gluten-free (and casein-free) recipe books and pillaging the library for more current ones. In fact, in our family we've started a unique family tradition. Every Thanksgiving, instead of the usual fare, we have a spread containing all of the foods we've successfully added back in, plus a trial food....the food we'd like most to add back in and augers best for successful re-entry. It's added a special facet to the concept of Giving Thanks.

My oldest is contemplating the trial food for this year as I type. It's a toss up between corn and dairy. Corn is looking to be the favorite among the three of them. The middler wants grits in the worst way. What can I say? It's the Southerner coming out in him. We may live in New England, but these Hobbits are three-quarters Southern and blood will out.

The food blog deities have set the standard of posting a delicious and appropriate recipe with each entry. I'll do my best to approach the bar, though I don't know how long I can sustain such a momentum. Oh, the pressure...

My oldest has, in his extensive list, a positive reaction to yeast, which has put bread out of reach, even after we were able to put grains back into the diet. The logical alternative to this would be sourdough bread. Enjoy Life even has this Wonder Bread kind of sourdough. Ignoring the almost $6 price tag on this microscopic loaf of bread, it flopped at our house because we still, apparently, haven't shaken reactivity to seeds and this brand uses sunflower oil. I also had this approach-avoidance relationship with wheat-based sourdough bread recipes, because I couldn't visualize the jump between the differences in gluten and gluten free breads. I did follow Sandor Katz's suggestions for catching wild yeasts in his most excellent book, Wild Fermentation. My ferments must be too wild to be harnessed, because all I got was flat, wet, sour glop.

This is where the combined genius of email lists populated by eccentrics and innovators is so priceless. A Washington-based computer whiz, who has been dubbed The Glutenator, frequently putters in her kitchen, saying "What if...." and making it happen. The Glutenator found a reliable way of capturing wild yeasts by using milk kefir grains in apple juice, the grains carrying the yeasts and the juice being sweet enough and neutral enough in flavor to be a delicious ingredient in bread without torquing the sense of bread-ness. She provided the basic recipe and I, never able to leave any recipe alone and follow it to the letter, tweaked it into what I call Almost Everything Free Sourdough Bread. With further intrepidity, I followed it up with my Almost Everything Free Bagels.

Originally, I'd begun these sourdough experiments with rice flour, because it is the cheapest to waste. When I started succeeding, I started blending in sorghum for a more whole wheat kind of approach. This was not met with raptures by the children. Even celiac children want Wonder Bread. Philistines. More recently, I've been mixing millet in as well, but I've found that too much millet makes the sourdough....well...sour. Now I've got a three grain mix going on that everyone is content with. The littles have each put on three pounds in the last month. Three much needed pounds, I might add. Tool Guy doesn't need his three pounds though.

Almost Everything Free Sourdough Bread
Starter:

2 cups gluten-free flour
2 cups kefir-fermented apple juice

Mix thoroughly and let stand for 24 hours.

In a bowl, measure out:

1/2 cup tapioca starch flour
1/2 cup potato starch flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons guar gum

In a mixer, whip up 4-6 egg whites until frothy.

Into the meringue, pour:

1/3 cup olive oil
1 egg
1 tablespoon maple syrup
2 cups sourdough starter

Mix in dry ingredients. This yields a rather thin batter for a bread. It will be about the consistency of toothpaste, but not spreading out with the ease of pancake batter. Pour into bread pan and let rise until doubled. Bake at 350* for an hour.

When the kidlets can do seeds again, I'm going to add sunflower seeds, garlic, and onion bits to these bagels and call them my Almost Everything Free Everything Bagels in acknowledgement of Thomas' Everything Bagel, of which we no longer mourn the loss.

Almost Everything Free Sourdough Bagels

1 cup sourdough starter
3/4 cup rice flour
3/4 cup potato starch flour
1/2 cup tapioca starch flour
1 T guar gum
2 T olive oil
2 T maple syrup
1 teaspoon salt
1 large egg, slightly beaten
1 egg white, whipped to meringue
1 teaspoon vinegar
Egg whites for finish (optional)
Rice flour

Whip egg into meringue, add oil, syrup, vinegar, and whole egg. Add starter, then dry ingredients. Beat on medium for 2 minutes. Mixture will be stiff and thick. If too crumbly, add more starter/kefir cider. This is one gluten-free recipe that I use my dough hook for.

Divide dough into 8 balls, dusting hands if necessary to prevent sticking. Roll into balls, flatten slightly, punch hole in center and place on cooking sheet.

In warm environment, let rise 4 hours or until desired loft.

Place sheet in cold oven and bake at 325* for 15 minutes. Place bagels into boiling water for 30 seconds on each side, brush surface with egg whites, and bake at 400* for 20-25 minutes or until nicely browned.

Remove and place on wire rack to cool.