Photo Friday: Lentil Burger with Chive Polenta

lentil burger • chive polenta • creamy tomato

A note: I would much rather leave the Photo Friday post wordless but I have a quick question: What are your opinions on the editing of food photos? I have edited the last two photos in this series and while I like the effect, I am leery of playing around with the colours and compositions of the foods. I think I'd like to remain true to the food but I am not sure. I included an unedited version (the top) for a point of comparison.

A Lament for Gluten

A lament for all the food I will never have, a sigh for all the recipes that will remain locked in between the tattered pages of my beloved cookbooks. It is in these moments of sorrow that I second-guess my decision to divorce gluten. Chewy dinner rolls that tear under the weight of butter will no longer patiently sit at my table, their yeasty scent enticing my diners. It is into this self doubting hell that I descend and it is precipitated by only one thing or perhaps many: I remember that my dream to live in France and attend cooking school is probably a bad idea. My kids are away for the night, my hubby is at work and I am left to my own devices to cook for myself (I am unabashedly lazy about cooking for myself). I start flipping through my stack of cookbooks and realize that I can't just walk into my kitchen and whip up any given recipe, I'll have to do some math, use a million flours and hope for the best. Why?

Why does it matter if I don't eat gluten? In a very small voice I will sometimes ask Mr., "Do you think it matters, I mean, really? What if we went out for brunch tomorrow and I had toast. Real toast with crevices for pools of butter, so sweet and milky and just the perfect size for a fairy to swim in, or enough to make me sigh with pleasure ...." and Mr. doesn't say anything. He just smiles because my eyes are going to fill with tears and he knows I won't do it.

I sometimes feel like my gluten intolerance has gotten out of hand, as if it is no longer in my control. A few months ago I went off my medication for bipolar disorder. I was tired of feeling sick all the time, the horrid headaches, the hand tremors and the brain fuzz. I am a writer and I couldn't always spell or tie together complex ideas. That is not exactly helpful to a Literature and Women's Studies student. Instead, I started doing research into alternative treatments for my disorder and one of them is to forgo gluten because gluten has been linked with mood swings. Let me just say, I do not, in any way, ever, at all recommend going off of psychiatric medication. It will lead to The Incident.

Whenever I have my big doubting moments about living gluten free, the times where I lay on the floor and sigh dramatically Mr. will gently remind me that the digestive problems I have dealt with my entire life are finally gone. The debilitating leg pain and headaches have faded away. If all of this isn't enough, Mr. will take me down to Pete's and buy a bundle of cheese, gluten free crackers and a lovely bottle of wine which we will eat in the sun on our balcony. That makes gluten-free life a little easier, doesn't it?

Lamb Chowder ... or is it Stew? Soup?

I cook without formal training. I will often hold two herbs up to my nose and sniff to see if they match. That's my big secret. Sometimes I line up three bunches of herbs and drift my nose back and forth, attempting to isolate the perfect pitch of flavour. I rely on my sense of smell as much as I do my sense of taste, perhaps even more so. I believe cooking is instinctual, I dream about the flavour combination I plan on making, I text myself kitchen missives when out and my favourite store is a gorgeous grocer that specializes in local produce and imported and specialty items. I love playing with food and sometimes dinner is a learning experience and sometimes it really, really works.

The original platter of deliciousness.

This dish is not easily classifiable. Mr. thinks it was more of a chowder but I was channeling stew as I diced the onions, chopped the carrots and stirred in the hearty hunks of lamb. The lamb was from dinner the night before, a lovely meal of beets, sweet potatoes and the most tender and delicious lamb I have ever eaten. Mr. slowly roasted the lamb in red wine, fennel and onions. At least, these are the main spices (and root vegetable) I am aware of; I've been dealing with my own cold as well as the babies' collective stuffy noses. The beans and meat give this meal a stew-like consistency but the milk throws it off entirely and transforms it into the chowder. This is Mr.'s reasoning and he's not relenting so we'll go with chowder. I think chowder stew thing of yumminess is more apt.

The Recipe

one onion, diced

3 carrots

2 cups beans (I used soldier and red kidney beans)

8 oz. cooked lamb (fennel, rosemary, rhubarb, red wine, pink and black peppercorns*)

3-4 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 cup red wine

8 cubes pre-made stock (these are ice cubes, not those powder things)

one cup almond milk**

decent handful of spinach

S&P to taste

1. Sweat the onions in butter that has been slowed with olive oil.

2. Add the carrots and beans. At this point add the red wine and 3-4 cubes of stock. I always use this for stock. Cover and let it simmer to cook the carrots. I had to leave mine for a bit because my beans were half-cooked. If your beans are in better shape, use your own discretion.

3. Chop the lamb into one centimetre square pieces and add to the pot. Basically a good (big people-sized) spoonful of the chowder will have a bite of lamb, at least one bean and a carrot.

4. Add the last of the soup stock and the almond milk. Lower the heat to about medium low so that the almond milk doesn't scald.

5. Chop the spinach into strips and add to the pot just a few minutes before serving. Don't forget to salt and pepper to your taste!

*Mr. gave up his spice mix! You would definitely have to change the order in which you add/cook the ingredients of this stew but with this spice mix you could emulate it! Yum! Plus, if you are vegetarian (uh, not sure why you'd be reading this post all the way to this point, but if you are, thanks!) you could forgo the lamb and fake the flavour. Score.

**Usually I would have used goat milk because soy milk is a total pain when it is cooked because it curdles, not in a make you sick way but in a really, really annoying way. The almond milk seemed able to hold its own and the only adjustment I needed to overcome its sweetness

Mr. does almost all my plating because I am not very good at the balancing and pretty-fying aspect of food. He topped our stew with Roquefort and the kiddies and my mom had Drunken Goat (a hard goat cheese). The stew wasn't overly heavy so it's really perfect as a spring chowder and it will cure the common cold. Really.*

*This isn't true. That's why the common cold is so damn awful.

Fun with Leftovers: A Take on Chicken "Alfredo"

I have a habit of packing up leftovers with the best of intentions and then never using them. This habit is much different than my penchant for freezing raw ingredients like egg whites, bananas on the turn and filling the stock container because I have absolutely no problem using the raw ingredients. In our house, we rarely eat the same thing twice and leftovers somehow get left in the cold and I really hate wasting food. To be fair, we rarely have leftovers but every once in a while there is a container tucked in the fridge. This dinner was borne out of a container of beautiful barbecued chicken drumsticks and beets and Miss N.'s request for spaghetti.

I am also unable to make a decent "white sauce" for pasta. I'm serious, the delicate creaminess combined with a great flavour always escapes me. I can only achieve one aspect of a North American cream sauce. I don't know why and if I want something more traditional-like I have to rely on Mr. ... I am sure you have noticed that I am dancing around calling this sauce "alfredo". That is because that heavy white sauce all gluten-intolerant people fear is not actually alfredo. In my trusty and very old "Mama Leone's Italian Cookbook" has a beautiful recipe for Fettucini al'Alfredo of Rome and the sauce is simply 3/4 cup fresh creamer butter and 6 tablespoons freshly grated parmesan. How simple is that?

All of that ramibling aside, I didn't follow my own strict food rules. This is totally the North American version of alfredo. Ahem. In a way. Remember how I have to cheat when it comes to creamy sauce? Here's how:

The Sauce

one sweet onion

3 gloves garlic

1/2 block medium tofu

splash of soy milk

S&P to taste

1. In a pan on medium heat add the diced onion. Sweat the onion to release its juices and begin the caramelization. You are not actually going to brown the onions, just cook until translucent.

2. Add the garlic.

3. The tofu (the secret ingredient!): blend it until smooth in the blender. I use a medium tofu and with just a splash of milk it is efficiently turned into a really thick "heavy cream". Yeah, that's right. Add it to your onions and garlic. Stir until heated through.

When you pasta is cooked al dente, don't you dare rinse it. I'll be very unhappy with you. Why? All that starch on the pasta (yes, it is on gluten-free pasta) binds the sauce to the pasta and that's how you get flava! Really. To prevent the pasta from sticking together put it back in the empty pot and spoon some of the sauce over the pasta and stir. When ready, plate your pasta then pour the rest of the sauce over the pasta. Ta da! Fancy pants pasta at this point it is completely vegan. For the next part you can nix the chicken if you want to keep it vegetarian.

We're not done.

The Chicken and Beets

3 cooked chicken drumsticks (mine were barbecued by Mr. the night before.)

barbecued beets (again, barbecued by Mr. Barbecue)

a handful of herbs from the garden*

1. Dice the chicken (obviously once it is off the bone!) and quarter the beets. I used striped candy beets from Ted Hutton at the Halifax Farmer's Market.

2. Sauté in a hot pan with olive oil.

3. In your pestle and mortar mash up your herbs with coarse salt (the roughness of the salt helps break up the herbs) and a dash of olive oil.

4. Add to the chicken and beets. Stir for a minute then add this to your plated pasta. If you read this recipe the timing is off, obviously don't plate the pasta then do the chicken. I'm sure you can all multi task!

*The herbs: It's up to you. The sauce on the pasta is a lovely base that supports your preferences. I used a generous handful of garlic chives, minette basil and purple basil.

Top the chicken with slices of parmesan, obviously I used a goat parmesan from Rancher's Acres and it was perfectly firm and crumbly with just a great punch of saltiness. There you have it, perfectly gluten free, full of protein and you can use up some leftovers! Feel free to mix up the veggies, I always see a recipe as a loose guide. In fact, I was sewing the other day when I realized I rarely follow directions to anything... sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't but I follow my own vision. You should do the same.

Photo Friday: Toasted Quinoa and Honeyed Sweet Potatoes

• toasted quinoa • honeyed sweet potatoes • spinach roll-up

Rhubarb Banana Gluten-Free Muffins

Bubs is sure he wants the muffin in front.

I am in the throes of a full-fledged rhubarb obsession. I was so easy to dismiss this beautiful fruit? vegetable? stalk of deliciousness? when I was a teenager that now I feel like I need to seriously make up for my prior dismissive attitude. What gets me the most is that my mom has enough rhubarb to build a house out of it and I always turned my snooty little teenage nose up at it and now I live a couple of provinces away. Teenagers are such brats, but then again, if they weren't I'd have to share the world's rhubarb and I can be territorial.

No, no. He thinks he wants this one.

Another recent obsession of mine has been figuring out how to make a decent gluten-free crumble. I love(d) crumbles but since oats are off-limits, even though there are gluten-free oats in the world I'm still leery, so I'm left to figure it out myself. Lauren at Celiac Teen has something that I think is definitely coming close (good call on the tapioca pearls!) with a crumb mix which I've filed away in my little brain with all the other half-recipes I have floating around in there. My make-shift "crumb" is alright but I'm not completely satisfied with it. The reason why I'm adding it here is so that perhaps someone will have a suggestion and also because in this form it's still pretty yummy! Ideally I would add coconut flour and brown sugar to the amaranth and shredded coconut to really bring out that crumbly mix but unfortunately I did have any brown sugar. As for the coconut flour, I'm still a bit annoyed with coconut flour after the macarons fiasco and it's keeping it's tropical little butt out of here, i.e. I haven't bought any more.

This recipe yields about 6 giant muffins but I'm sure that I could have expanded on that if I had added a touch more liquid. I'm finding that gluten-free baking has completely ruined

re-worked my baking confidence and everything I thought I knew about baking. Mr. and I used to have a farmer's market based baking business and all that experience is kind of out the window. I'm getting there but it's a process. The properties I always took for granted when working with wheat flour have fled like the cat when Bubby is stomping around and pretending to be a monster.

Here I am, editing and finishing this post a few days after I started writing it. What that means is that the original recipe has been completely transformed and only good things have come with that time. This recipe is perfect for a morning batch of muffins because it is packed full of protein (that means energy!) without the fat but it still full of flavour. My whole family loved them, Bubby actually tried to con us into letting him eat two at breakfast yesterday! If you wanted to save time you could always throw together your dry ingredients the night before and just stick it in the fridge. If you do this, do not (I mean it!) mix your dry with wet: Baking powder has a lifespan of about 30 minutes once it comes in contact with moisture. You'll have very yummy pucks if you do this, how do I know this? Mr. and I tried to save time one week for the baking business by pre-mixing a bunch of the recipes. Come Friday morning (the day before market) we were out of ingredients and full of little disks. Not cool.

Secret deliciousness.

The Recipe

65 g white rice flour

45 g teff flour

45 g quinoa flour

45 g soy flour

20 g arrowroot flour

6 g guar gum*

3 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

2 tbsp. cinnamon

2 eggs

100 g sugar

1/2 cup yogurt (I used a rich, plain goat yogurt.)

3 bananas

4 tbsp. soy milk/horchata

2 tsp. vanilla

reserve: rhubarb mint jam and quark - or another creamy, tangy cheese. I get my quark from Ranchers Acres, a goat farm in the Annapolis Valley. Their products are simply beautiful. If you do not have rhubarb jam you could aways stew a couple of stalks of rhubarb and use that, have fun with it!

1. In one bowl mix all your dry ingredients. I like to use a whisk it until it is very fine and you can't see where one flour begins and the other ends.

2. In a separate bowl mix the wet ingredients, except the milk. This will be used later if you find the batter is too thick.

3. Make a well in the dry ingredients, pour in the mix of wet ingredients and stir.

4. If needed (I certainly did!) add the milk and until a smooth batter.

5. Ladle into greased muffin sheets. Only fill the cups halfway because this is where you add the secret delicious part. Spoon about a dessert spoon each of rhubarb jam and quark (you could use any soft, tangy cheese). Cover completely with more batter. Sprinkle the crumb mix on top.

6. Bake at 350F for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick in the centre comes out clear.

My muffin pans are quite large, if yours are not so big adjust the time down. The first time I made this recipe I set the time for 20 minutes and then judged from there, you should no doubt do the same thing if you are concerned about over-baking.

The Crumb Mix

Oh, this baby came about after great trial and error, and most of my amaranth. I also made about 8 million cups too many.

In a non-stick pan combine equal parts shredded coconut and amaranth. Toast on medium heat for about 5-10 minutes. After it has started popping a bit (it really does sound like popcorn!), sprinkle approximately a tablespoon of white sugar on top. Toss a couple of times and remove from heat.

I store the extra in a tupperware container in the fridge. It keeps really well and it is a fantastic coating for chicken (thank you hubby!). It's pretty versatile so you can definitely keep it around for a bit.

I am not much of a breakfast person, though I do love my brunch! That being said written, I could definitely eat these muffins every morning! I always end up using soy flour, despite my reservations about soy ... does anyone have an alternative they like? I am still fairly new to gluten-free baking and I'm still testing all my options.

Horchata Fortified: A New Spin on "Rice Milk"

My kitchen table isn't really that dirty. This a yard sale find in need of refinishing!

This past Sunday morning I was absentmindedly watching the Food Network and playing on the computer when a little something piqued my interest: rice milk, more specifically horchata.

Horchata is a sweet rice milk, originating from Mexico; there is a Spanish link but I am not exactly an expert in Mexican food history. What had me truly interested, enough to ignore the host's exuberance on my quiet Sunday morning, was that this horchata had the potential to be a replacement for soy milk. I tend to use goat milk in my cooking so the majority of soy in the children's lives comes from soy milk but it does have me a bit concerned. Bubby (a.k.a. the Boy) won't drink goat milk, unlike his sister who would possibly (and I hope only temporarily) sell her brother for goat milk, that's how much she loves it. If you are unfamiliar with goat milk .. well, let's just say that the muskiness of some goat's cheese isn't for nothing.

My sweet babies are trained to be skeptical of any new food they may encounter and there is nothing cuter than a 2 year old asking, "dis have cow milk in it?". I think I have found success with this horchata: Miss N. (a.k.a. Girly) and my mom were immediate fans, Bubby needed a bit of coaxing and Mr. seems to like it. I am excited about the potential of this recipe: For the first batch I used vanilla and cinnamon to break us into it (I despise wasting food), just in case the texture was off it would still be palatable. I didn't have anything worry about, this is fantastic! There is a slight earthiness from the quinoa and all the starch from the rice lends a beautiful silkiness that I absolutely love about our favourite soy milk.

I wasn't overly worried about timing when I made the original batch because the kiddies were off at their grandparent's for the week-end. As soon as we get through this batch (which won't take long at the current rate!) I plan on tweaking it a little in order to do a stove-top version. The Food Network show I was watching was with a host named Sunny and she prepared her's very quickly on the stove, also, she added peaches for a sweet, spring flavour. I think this recipe is a great base for further experimentation. After all, that's what we're all doing in the kitchen, right? Playing around and experimenting. Now that we're all adults, ignore mom's advice: Play with your food!

The Recipe

1 cup white rice

1 cup quinoa

4.5 cups water (plus and addition 2-3 for later)

3 cinnamon sticks

sugar to taste (I think I used about 1.5 cups)

tablespoon vanilla, if you are so inclined

1. Grind the quinoa and rice into a fine grit. I used our very old and very cheaply made kitchen wizard blender thing and though it smoked and growled at me, it got the job done.

2. In a bowl combine the 4.5 cups water, cinnamon sticks, quinoa and rice. Cover and stick it in the fridge.

3. Find something that will keep you busy for the next day or two, hence the need to adapt this recipe to the stove top!

4. After staring at your fridge for almost two days, remove the bowl. Strain through a metal sieve. The water should be a really creamy white and it is gorgeous! I wanted to drink it but restrained myself: Keep in mind that it is starchy water. Yuck.

5. Blend all the leftover grit of rice and quinoa, get it as mushy as you can.

6. Strain the muck (appetizing!) through your metal sieve and cheesecloth. Squeeze the heck out of it. I put a ceramic cereal bowl on top of the cheesecloth and press down like I have Arnold Schwarzenegger muscles. I'm not sure if you need to be this enthusiastic.

7. Add your sugar and another 2-2.5 cups water. Refrigerate.

I don't know about your family but we spend an atrocious amount of money on soy milk, I am sure it's the equivalent of a family who drinks cow's milk, even though soy rarely goes on sale; nor is it sold at Costco or in bulk. I am really excited at the possibility that we could effectively reduce our reliance on soy milk, the amount of waste it generates (the not being sold in bulk thing is a pain), and the associated health concerns. Before anyone freaks out about soy being healthy: I am fully aware that many of the issues surrounding soy milk comes from it being once of the most genetically modified vegetables on the planet. Scientists have been playing around with soy beans for a very long time. The soy milk our family uses comes from a company that has made a commitment to organic and sustainable practices and our tofu comes from a local farmer and producer (Acadiana Soy!) that has made the same commitment. That being said, soy still sometimes freaks me out and I'd rather err on the side of caution.

Just a note: This is very much gluten-free! Drink up, my gluten-intolerant/allergic friends!