Category — Kitchen Life

My kitchen life last week was pretty much consumed by the making of two birthday cakes—each made not only with a particular birthday boy or girl in mind, but also with some food-allergy considerations and real-food parameters in place. While I met with some success, I also had to make a few concessions along the way to accomplishing my goals. As always, I learned a lot through each process.

For the first cake—a Cars-themed chocolate race track for 2-year-old Keillor—I was looking to try a new recipe for a basic chocolate cake that would be gluten-, dairy- and egg-free. (Keillor doesn’t exhibit signs of an allergy to any of those ingredients, but his oldest brother, Kellen, can’t eat them, and I wanted the whole family to be able to partake.) I turned to a recipe titled Classic Chocolate Layer Cake in Cybele Pascal’s The Whole Food Allergy Cookbook. I appreciate Pascal’s omission of refined sugars (she calls for honey instead in both the cake recipe and the accompanying Chocolate Fudge Frosting and Vanilla Frosting recipes), as well as her suggestion in most instances for healthy oils (I chose to use coconut oil). The only change I made to the recipe as it was written was to use a gluten-free flour blend in place of the recipe-recommended spelt flour. (Although I have experimented with sprouted spelt flour, it does contain gluten, and Kellen still experiences stomach discomfort after eating it.) This flour substitution was undoubtedly a crucial factor in the final result, which was a cake that didn’t rise well (not surprising for a gluten-free cake without eggs), and that was dense and fudge-like instead of fluffy and, well, cake-like. It wasn’t a big enough disappointment to deter any of us from eating it, however; it disappeared almost as quickly as Keillor was able to make a wish and blow out the candles poked into its center.

For the second cake—in honor of 4-year-old Kennah—I decided to go the real-food route as much as possible and not worry so much about the food-allergy issues. (And Kellen was a good sport about sitting this one out.) This decision led me to a recipe in Janie Quinn’s Sprouted Baking for Yellow Cupcakes (which easily converted to a cake recipe). Some advance preparation was required for this cake, including sprouting enough soft white wheat to grind into flour, and draining the whey from yogurt to make a cream-cheese-like base for the frosting. I had borrowed a special baking pan from a friend to shape the cake into the skirt of a ball gown to fit a Cinderella doll. The only hitch here was ensuring that I had enough batter to fill the pan—and as it turned out, I had to double the recipe to do so. And now to confess the concessions I had to make in order to turn out my daughter’s dream cake:
• I used sugar (albeit organic and slightly less refined) in both the cake and the frosting.
• I used regular blue food coloring to tint the frosting (although I did try some alternatives first—including blueberry juice and the steeping liquid that resulted from boiling water poured over chopped red cabbage, both of which yielded a pretty pink instead of Cinderella’s trademark blue).
Of course, any misgivings I had about not quite reaching my real-food goals were pretty much assuaged by the look of total surprise and delight on Kennah’s face when we unveiled the cake and she caught her first glimpse—and by the delicious flavor and terrific texture of the cake. As I recently read—just in the nick of time, actually—on the blog of a friend who’s further along on this journey than I am, “Sometimes Real Life trumps Real Food.”

This post is part of the Tuesday Twister blog carnival hosted by www.gnowfglins.com. To link to today’s Tuesday Twister on that site, click here.

My Kitchen Life lately hasn’t featured too much that’s new—except I did bake two batches of Sweet Cornbread (using sprouted soft white wheat flour) from Janie Quinn’s Sprouted Baking for a Harvest/Halloween gathering last weekend. (I was so busy preparing that I forgot to photograph the results!) Only a few pieces came back home with me, so I’m guessing it was a good compliment to the four kinds of chili that were also part of the festivities.

Up next on my agenda are birthday cakes for my two littlest Littles: Keillor, who turns 2 on Nov. 9, and Kennah, who will be 4 on Nov. 12. I’m determined to employ real-food ideas (and incorporate the food-allergy considerations we need to make, as well) so that we can not only have our cake, but feel good about eating it, too. For ideas on how to accomplish all of that, I’ll be turning once again to Sprouted Baking, and also to The Whole Foods Allergy Cookbook, by Cybele Pascal, which has terrific ideas for using natural sweeteners and contains recipes that are not only allergen-free but nutrition-packed (a concept that is not as common as you might think). The biggest challenge for me might actually lie in decorating the cakes: Keillor’s will be a round racetrack (think chocolate frosting for the track) topped with a toy Lightning McQueen from Cars; and Kennah’s will include an actual Cinderella doll with the cake and frosting serving as her dress. Wish me luck!

This post is part of the Tuesday Twister blog carnival hosted by www.gnowfglins.com. To link to today’s Tuesday Twister on that site, click here.

Please note: It is my goal to provide a top-quality, content-driven, ad-free blog. That said, I do occasionally include affiliate links in some of my posts. For example, if you click on the book covers above, you will link to Amazon.com, where you will have an opportunity to purchase the books—and if you do buy them after clicking through from my site, I will receive a small commission to support my work here, as well as my own book-buying habit. Seriously, though, I’d be just as happy if my recommendation inspired you to check out the titles from your local library or borrow them from a friend.

After experimenting with making sprouted-grain tortillas this week, I decided to serve them with soup for dinner one night. I suppose it’s no surprise—and not much of a creative stretch, either—that the variety that first came to mind was tortilla soup! But after the idea occurred to me, the creativity kicked in. I already had homemade chicken stock on hand, and I figured I could improvise with enough other ingredients to develop my own recipe without having to consult a cookbook. You might find it surprising, for example, to see that I included coconut milk. My hope there was to add a bit of creaminess to the soup, as well as to benefit from the antiviral, antifungal and antimicrobial properties of lauric acid, the principle fatty acid in coconut milk. I was a little concerned that the coconut flavor would throw off the taste, but I could only detect the slightest hint of it in the finished product, which we topped with raw cheddar, sour cream and tortilla chips.  Click here to get the complete recipe.

I contributed the recipe for Tortilla Soup—along with recipes for Cream of Chicken, Coconut and Mushroom Soup and Roasted Vegetable Soup—to the Gallery of Soups at www.gnowfglins.com. To link to the complete lineup, click here.

Latest edition: this week's sprouted soft white wheat/spelt tortillas.

Tortillas are a big dietary staple in our house. They figure into many of our favorite meals—from burritos and wraps to tacos and enchiladas to cheese crisps and quesadillas. It’s hard to imagine what our menu would look like if we had to give them up. So you might be surprised to read that that’s exactly what we’ve gradually done—at least when it comes to the store-bought varieties.

Now, I’ve been making my own corn tortillas—the smaller, sturdier kind that are best suited for tacos and enchiladas—for several years. The ingredient list couldn’t be shorter (organic masa flour, sea salt and water), and the process couldn’t be easier (with the help, of course, of a food processor and tortilla press). But even if I had to mix the ingredients by hand and roll them out with a rolling pin (a likely prospect as I look to wean my self away from my Teflon-coated tortilla press to either a stainless-steel one or none at all), the taste and texture of homemade corn tortillas is so much better that even the convenience factor of buying the ready-made kind would be no temptation.

I’ll admit, though, that I’ve struggled to come up with a suitable substitute for the prepackaged flour tortillas that, until earlier this year, had been a bit more challenging to eliminate from my grocery list. In case you’re wondering why I’ve deemed it necessary to do so, I’ll share a bit of what went into my decision. First of all, their main ingredients are definitely on the list of things I’m working so diligently to keep out of my kitchen—refined white flour, hydrogenated oils and preservatives, to name the biggest culprits. The research I’ve done (which includes reading Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon, and Real Food, by Nina Planck) has convinced me that these industrial foods have no place in a truly healthy diet. (A side note: I think it is incredibly ironic that almost every brand of flour tortillas in both my neighborhood supermarket and the nearby Whole Foods boasts—usually in large bold print—that they contain “no lard.” After what I’ve read so far about the right kinds of fats versus the industrial oils we’ve been led to believe are “healthy,” I say, “Bring back true lard—rendered animal fat—and leave out the toxic, chemically produced substances that have taken its place!”) Second, in an effort to increase the digestibility and nutritional value of the foods we eat—as well as to possibly find a way for my gluten-sensitive son to tolerate grains that contain that protein—I’ve tried to incorporate sprouted spelt and wheat into as many of our breads and baked goods as I can—including tortillas.

My first few attempts were complete failures. At that point, I was using sprouted spelt flour exclusively, and experimenting with the ratio of desirable fats—coconut oil, olive oil, palm oil—to water. No matter what I tried (more water, less oil or vice versa), I ended up with tortillas that tasted fine but were way too fragile. They fell apart during the cooking process as I flipped them over on my cast-iron griddle, and my kids were less than impressed when a few survived intact long enough to make it onto their plates—held together, no doubt, by the melted raw cheddar I sandwiched in between to create what I hoped was a reasonable facsimile of their beloved cheese crisps. (By the way, I saved all of the tortilla fragments from my failed batches in my freezer, and I’ve gradually been grinding them up to use as breadcrumbs in meatballs and other recipes that call for breading. So they haven’t gone to waste!)

Last week, I decided to experiment with sprouted soft white wheat, with just a little bit of sprouted spelt thrown in. I played some more with the oil-to-water ratio, too, and I had considerably more successful results! The tortillas cracked slightly as they cooked, but they held together much better. I was even able to roll them up around various fillings without them falling completely apart. It was a big breakthrough, but I’m still far from mastering either a recipe or a technique that will give me consistent, quality results. But given my family’s love of tortillas, I’m determined to get there! And when I do, I’ll share more of what I’ve learned along the way.

This post is part of the Tuesday Twister blog carnival hosted by www.gnowfglins.com. To link to today’s Tuesday Twister on that site, click here.

Please note: It is my goal to provide a top-quality, content-driven, ad-free blog. That said, I do occasionally include affiliate links in some of my posts. For example, if you click on the book covers above, you will link to Amazon.com, where you will have an opportunity to purchase the books—and if you do buy them after clicking through from my site, I will receive a small commission to support my work here, as well as my own book-buying habit. Seriously, though, I’d be just as happy if my recommendation inspired you to check out the titles from your local library or borrow them from a friend.

Autumn is finally in the air—or, at least as much of that season as we can seem to muster here in the desert Southwest. While we haven’t yet packed away our shorts or pulled out the flannel sheets, we find ourselves gravitating toward the warmer, more substantial meals we typically turn to when the weather cools off.

This week, I sprouted some more pinto beans and then cooked them for just about an hour before using them in a hearty crockpot chili that—along with a batch of gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free cornbread—really hit the spot after a busy homeschool co-op day. (On Wednesdays, we usually have piano lessons in the morning, and then meet with friends in the afternoon to study chemistry, art and Spanish together.) Along with the sprouted beans and some of their cooking liquid, the chili included one pound of grass-fed beef, a diced onion, a 12-ounce can of tomato paste, and a mixture of herbs and spices that I threw in, unmeasured, until I liked the taste—such as chili powder, garlic powder, cumin, oregano, crushed red chili flakes, cayenne pepper and sea salt. We topped it with grated raw cheddar and sour cream. The cornbread recipe I use is an adaptation of one I received via e-mail from Living Without magazine’s free Recipe of the Week newsletter. (Click here to sign up for the newsletter and to view the recipes posted on the publication’s Web site.)

In addition to beans, I sprouted some organic soft white wheat I’d ordered from Azure Standard, dehydrated it in the oven, ground it into flour in my Vita-Mix and used it to make chocolate-chip cookies—adapting a recipe in Janie Quinn’s book Sprouted Baking. (Her recipe calls for maple sugar and carob chips, which I didn’t have on hand, so I used Rapadura—unrefined cane sugar—and Enjoy Life chocolate chips—dairy-free and gluten-free—instead.) I really watched the grains during the sprouting process to determine whether I was achieving the goal of truly sprouting (and not drowning) the grain, as I expressed concern about last week. After soaking the grain overnight, I did observe that the endosperm had emerged from each grain (whether because it was swollen or not), but I also observed definite growing shoots that could only be considered true sprouts. I’m calling it a success! The cookies I made with the sprouted wheat flour were delicious, and while I didn’t test them out on Kellen (they included dairy and eggs), I did manage to convince my sister-in-law, an officially diagnosed celiac (and a very brave one, I might add!), to try one. It’s been less than 24 hours since she ate it, and so far she is symptom-free. I’ll keep checking in with her over the next few days to see what, if any effects she experiences. At the request of my editor at Living Without, I’m on the lookout for a medical doctor specializing in celiac disease to interview about whether sprouting gluten-containing grains might make them tolerable and safe for those who are gluten-sensitive. It’s controversial, and so far I haven’t had much luck.

This post is part of the Tuesday Twister blog carnival hosted by www.gnowfglins.com. To link to today’s Tuesday Twister on that site, click here.

Last week, I interviewed not only real-food guru Sally Fallon (author of Nourishing Traditions) but also Janie Quinn, author of several other books that are worth reading for those who want to dig deep into nutrition ideas that are both old and new. Quinn’s book Sprouted Baking, released in 2008, offers a fascinating look at the benefits of sprouting grains before they are milled into flour and used to make everything from sandwich bread to birthday cake. Sprouting grains, she says, fulfills their destiny and converts them into living plants, which are more easily digested and offer increased nutrient absorption.

Because I spoke to her primarily for an article I’m working on for Living Without magazine (a publication for people with food allergies, intolerances and sensitivities), we spent a lot of time talking about how her work fits into what she calls “gluten-free land.” (More on that in the article to come.) But we ventured off that topic a bit to discuss sprouting methods, and I must say that that part of the conversation left me a little discouraged about my own recent efforts in the area of sprouting. Quinn, a self-proclaimed former “home sprouter” of grains, says she is convinced now that she has overseen operations at the small mill that produces her line of sprouted flours (spring wheat and spelt) that there is just no way to achieve the desired quality of both flour and finished baked goods by sprouting, dehydrating and grinding grains in our own homes. Here are her reasons:

• Improper or infrequent soaking and rinsing equipment and techniques lead to grain that might look sprouted but not truly be sprouted, she says. “Grain may appear to the naked eye to be sprouted when it has actually been drowned, resulting in the swollen endosperm pushing through the bran coat,” she writes in Sprouted Baking. “In short, drowned grain does not possess the benefits derived from sprouting. Sprouted products made from a mash are much coarser in texture and can have a distinctive fermented taste.”
• A home sprouter has no way of conducting a “falling number test,” which is used to determine peak levels of sprouting action and enzyme activity.
• While home sprouters can grind sprouted, dehydrated grains into flour, they have no way to sift out the foreign matter that inevitably finds its way into any grain.

All of which has left me with some uncertainties: Am I truly sprouting my grain, or drowning it? I have noticed a hint of a fermented taste and smell—though not unpleasant—to my sprouted spelt, but I just figured that was the way it was supposed to be. I admit that I’m not equipped to conduct a falling number test—nor do I particularly want to be. And I’m sure some foreign matter has made it’s way into the flour I’ve ground. How unsafe might that be?

I also have noticed a few other things about working with sprouted spelt, in particular. For one thing, it is very thirsty flour, soaking up way more liquid than most recipes I’ve used it in even call for. I almost always end up having to add more liquid just to incorporate all of the ingredients and create a dough or batter than can be properly mixed. And baking times or temperatures seem off when I’m working with sprouted spelt in a recipe that calls for regular flour. The two breads I’ve made with it were slightly burned on the crust, or exterior, while the crumb, or interior was OK.

Now I realize that it is in Quinn’s interest to steer consumers toward her own products—the Essential Eating Sprouted Flours her mill produces. But I have to say that despite the flours’ high price (they’re available at health-food stores and online at www.shilohfarms.com), I’m tempted to try some just to compare them to the fledgling flour I’ve made on my own. Then again, I also know that sprouting, as a traditional food-preparation method, has been around a long time, and people have somehow managed—without owning their own grain mill—to reap at least some benefit from their own home-sprouting/dehydrating/grinding efforts. If you’re a more experienced sprouter, I’d love it if you would weigh in on this topic and offer some wisdom for newbies like me!

Because I’ve been reading about and writing about food, I haven’t been doing anything really new with food in the kitchen this past week. I am sprouting more pinto beans this week to use in chili, and I’m pondering some things I want to try soon (sourdough bread and water kefir, to name a few).

This post is part of the Tuesday Twister blog carnival hosted by www.gnowfglins.com. To link to today’s Tuesday Twister on that site, click here.

Please note: It is my goal to provide a top-quality, content-driven, ad-free blog. That said, I do occasionally include affiliate links in some of my posts. For example, if you click on the book cover above, you will link to Amazon.com, where you will have an opportunity to purchase the book—and if you do buy it after clicking through from my site, I will receive a small commission to support my work here, as well as my own book-buying habit. Seriously, though, I’d be just as happy if my recommendation inspired you to check out the title from your local library or borrow it from a friend.

On Saturday, I had the pleasure of interviewing Nourishing Traditions author Sally Fallon for an article I’m working on for Living Without magazine. Having read her entire book—a weighty tome of 680 pages, packed with more than 700 recipes and a wealth of nutrition knowledge—earlier this year, I was eager (and a bit intimidated, I might add!) to speak to her specifically about how traditional methods of food preparation (including sprouting, soaking, culturing and fermenting) might help those with food allergies, intolerances and sensitivities to overcome their symptoms. As you might imagine, it was incredibly inspiring to speak with her. Not only did she provide what I pray will be a fresh perspective for the readers who will eventually read the article, but she also graciously answered many questions I couldn’t help asking about my son Kellen’s specific situation. What’s more, she offered hope that he might actually be able to eliminate some of his food-allergy symptoms, and she suggested several things to try to help him eventually get to that point.

Nourishing Traditions isn’t a new book. The second edition was published 10 years ago. But the information and ideas it contains are new to me, and I’m so grateful to the community of bloggers I stumbled onto (especially Wardeh Harmon of www.gnowfglins.com) who first introduced them to me and who continue to inspire me with their own innovations based on the principles and techniques outlined in the book. They, too, have patiently answered questions and shared recipes as I’ve worked to convert my kitchen to meet real-food ideals.

With renewed zeal, I tackled a few tasks this week that were foremost on my mind:
• Homemade chicken stock. Sally Fallon writes extensively in Nourishing Traditions about the healing properties of homemade meat stocks—in particular, the natural gelatin they contain, which aids digestion and allows proteins to be more fully utilized. (Store-bought stocks are not a good substitute, as they don’t contain the beneficial gelatin, and often do contain undesirable preservatives). She suggested that I give Kellen lots of meat stocks and broths to help heal his gut. I’d like to have enough on hand that he (and the rest of us, too!) can eat a little with each meal.

• Sprouted pinto beans. Living in the Southwest, we tend to eat a lot of beans. But although I’d heard about the added benefits of sprouting beans before cooking them (especially that sprouting increases enzymes that help aid digestion), I’d never tried it before. I started sprouting several quart-size jars’ worth on Sunday, and they should be ready to cook today. I’ve been told that sprouted beans cook in about half the time that it usually takes for regular dried beans, so I’m looking forward to keeping the stovetop heated for just an hour or two instead of half a day.

• Salvaging our squash. We came home from a trip to my in-laws’ home in northern Arizona a couple of weeks ago loaded with produce from their garden—especially the ever-prolific zucchini and yellow squash. Not wanting to waste one bit, I’ve been working it into as many meals as possible. After last night’s feast of stuffed zucchini (a Nourishing Traditions recipe that calls for a filling of whole-grain breadcrumbs, eggs, Parmesan cheese, onions and, of course, the scooped out flesh of several large zucchinis—to which I added ground beef), I have just enough left to make a soaked version of zucchini spice bread (another NT recipe). The yellow squash will go into the roasting pan with some other veggies as a side dish later this week.

This post is part of the Tuesday Twister blog carnival hosted by www.gnowfglins.com. To link to today’s Tuesday Twister on that site, click here.

Please note: It is my goal to provide a top-quality, content-driven, ad-free blog. That said, I do occasionally include affiliate links in some of my posts. For example, if you click on the book cover above, you will link to Amazon.com, where you will have an opportunity to purchase the book—and if you do buy it after clicking through from my site, I will receive a small commission to support my work here, as well as my own book-buying habit. Seriously, though, I’d be just as happy if my recommendation inspired you to check out the title from your local library or borrow it from a friend.

So what if the high temperatures around here are still hovering at the upper end of the 90s? I know it just has to be feeling like fall somewhere, and I’m in the mood for soup. And that—among other things—is what I made this week.

I was motivated (by a recipe for enchiladas that I wanted to try) to make a healthier, dairy- and gluten-free version of cream of chicken soup. I played around with substitutions for the usual ingredients and came up with a concoction that was delicious enough to eat straight from the bowl—never mind getting it into the baking dish with the enchiladas! I’m calling it Cream of Chicken, Coconut and Mushroom Soup, and you can see my recipe by clicking here. (Don’t let the ‘Coconut’ part of the title throw you. I replaced the heavy cream called for in the original recipe with a can of coconut milk, but not much, if any, actual coconut flavor comes through.)

Happy harvesters: Kerrick and Kellen load up on lemon cucumbers.

After a visit to my in-laws’ home in northern Arizona, we brought back boxes and bags full of good stuff from their garden—bell peppers, carrots, garlic, green beans, green onions, lemon cucumbers, tomatoes, yellow squash and zucchini. All of which (except the green onions, tomatoes and lemon cucumbers) factored into the versatile Roasted Vegetable Soup—really, it’s more of a hearty, thick puree—that’s one of my absolute favorite fall and winter dishes. Click here for the recipe.

Inspired by the fabulous food blog Edible Aria, I also tried my hand at separating whey from yogurt—transforming the remaining yogurt cheese into an herb spread similar to one featured on that site (click here for the link), and using the whey to create lacto-fermented salsa (click here to go there). The herb spread was delicious in wraps with slices of my in-laws’ lemon cucumbers, and the salsa made good use of their tomatoes and green onions.

I’m glad soup season has arrived at our house, even if the right kind of weather hasn’t accompanied it. (And even if it makes us feel a little schizophrenic to cool our soup-warmed palates with an equally soothing—but decidedly chillier—comfort food: Wardeh Harmon’s recipe for Dark Chocolate Ice Cream—Non-Dairy, Naturally Sweetened (click here to indulge your own indecisiveness).

This post is part of the Tuesday Twister blog carnival hosted by www.gnowfglins.com. To link to today’s Tuesday Twister on that site, click here.

When my son Kerrick requested mint chocolate chip ice cream for his 7th birthday a week and a half ago, I knew I had a challenge on my hands to come up with a dairy-free version that his older brother, Kellen, could enjoy—and a “healthy” version that I could feed to the rest of the family in good conscience. To accomplish both of those goals, I combined recipes and techniques from three different sources:

• For the ice cream “base,” I used the ingredients and methods outlined in many of the ice cream recipes my friend Wardeh Harmon has posted on her site, www.gnowfglins.com—including coconut milk and agave nectar.

• I also consulted the book Vice Cream (a nickname for vegan ice cream), by Jeff Rogers. This author’s recipes typically call for a base of homemade cashew milk, which I have made and used before. But on this occasion, I simply wanted a guideline for imparting the right amount of mint flavor. Rogers’s recipe for mint chocolate chip vice cream suggests 2 teaspoons of peppermint extract, but I thought that might be overpowering. So I opted to cut the amount in half for a milder hint of mint. I’m glad I did, as the flavor was just right—not too strong.
• Finally, I borrowed an idea from Missy Chase Lapine’s The Sneaky Chef to tint the ice cream a pale but pretty shade of green by incorporating 1/2 cup of her recipe for Green Juice—a puree made from steamed spinach. (Yes, I really did add spinach to my family’s ice cream. And no, I did not tell them. But only because they didn’t ask. If they had, I would have been honest, but as it happened, they were too busy devouring the ice cream to be suspicious about its ingredients. They got to enjoy a sweet treat—really, it tasted terrific!—and I got to feel good about it being a bit more nutritious than the average dessert.)

For the complete recipe, click here.

This post is part of the Tuesday Twister blog carnival hosted by www.gnowfglins.com. To link to today’s Tuesday Twister on that site, click here.

Please note: It is my goal to provide a top-quality, content-driven, ad-free blog. That said, I do occasionally include affiliate links in some of my posts. For example, if you click on either of the book covers above, you will link to Amazon.com, where you will have an opportunity to purchase the book—and if you do buy it after clicking through from my site, I will receive a small commission to support my work here, as well as my own book-buying habit. Seriously, though, I’d be just as happy if my recommendation inspired you to check out the title from your local library or borrow it from a friend.

My 9-year-old son, Kellen, let me know this past summer that he wanted to learn how to cook. So, being the “capture-the-teachable-moment” kind of homeschooling mom that I am, I said, “No problem. We’ll make it part of your curriculum this year.” (Hey, it’s good reinforcement for working on fractions—and it’s kind of related to chemistry, which also happens to be on his current list of study subjects. And I figure it’s a skill that will serve him well if he happens never to outgrow those pesky food allergies.) I decided we’d start with something absolutely essential: his gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free bread. It’s tough to keep enough of it on hand for him. He easily polishes off a loaf a week—and there are weeks when I just can’t get around to the job of baking it. He’s a good sport when he has to go without it for a little while, and he’s so grateful when he gets some. (I’ve never known another kid to be quite so thrilled about the possibility of having a turkey sandwich for lunch!)

For awhile now, his favorite bread has been one I make from a modified version of a recipe for Potato Sandwich Bread published by Rebecca Reilly in the August/September 2008 issue of Living Without, a magazine for people with food allergies and sensitivities. For his first loaf, I mostly just introduced Kellen to the ingredients and let him add them to the mixing bowl. I talked him through the techniques of measuring accurately, outlined the steps involved in following a recipe, allowed him to operate the mixer and preheat the oven, and explained some of the safety precautions required for working in the kitchen. I think it will take a lot of practice for all of those things to really sink in—not to mention a lot more time for us both to be comfortable with him flying solo on this or any other cooking endeavor. But we’re off to a good start!

While we were at it, we mixed up just the dry ingredients for several more batches of the bread and stored them in plastic zipper bags so that we’d have a head start on making future loaves—both for Kellen and for friends who have similar food allergies. It’s a goal of mine to have our pantry stocked with such mixes for the staple items we bake. And I think I know just the student whose lesson plan will include that particular line item from now on.

This post is part of the Tuesday Twister blog carnival hosted by www.gnowfglins.com. To link to today’s Tuesday Twister on that site, click here.