Gapey's Grub

German Rouladen

2012-01-30T20:13:00.000-08:00

Have you ever bought something at the grocery store, thinking it looks good but had no idea what you are going to do with it? I had one of those moments this week. I've been eating a lot of meat lately and thought I'd get something different so I picked up some really thin cut top round steaks. I'm talking super thin. I had no plans for this meat or really any idea what to do with it. So what did I do? I did a Google search of course. I searched for something like "thin cut round steak recipe". I ended up coming across a discussion on chowhound posing the same question and there were lots of ideas. For some reason rouladen jumped out at me. Probably because I had no idea what it was and I was curious. So I did a search and it actually looked pretty good and I happen to have all the ingredients for it, depending which recipe I looked at.

I pulled up a couple of recipes and decided to make my own version of it taking some ideas from both recipes to make my own. The two recipes I used to inspire my dish were from bavariankitchen.com and food.com. One of the recipes had pickles in it which just seemed strange to me but apparently that is the traditional way of making it. I didn't happen to have pickles but I did have some pickle relish and I considered spooning some of that on them but decided against it since I had plenty of filling already. The steaks I got were probably not the best size for this dish but it worked out ok. Some of them came open during the cooking but the filling managed to mostly stay inside.

I would like to try making these again sometime using larger sized steaks and maybe even some pickles. They came out pretty tender, not chewy at all but they did seem a little bit dry. Maybe I should have added a little extra sauce on them. Other than that, I thought they turned out pretty good and Mark liked them too. I served them with some rainbow chard braised with onions and bacon which were left over filling from the rouladens.

Below is the version that I made:

Ingredients:
7 thinly cut round steaks
1/4 cup stone ground mustard
salt & pepper, to taste
7 slices of bacon, chopped
1 onion, diced
1 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp coconut oil
3 cups pork stock
1 celery, diced
2 tsp corn starch

Directions:

Saute onion and bacon until onion is tender. Add parsley.
While onion and bacon are sauteing, tenderize steaks with a meat tenderizer on both sides
Spread mustard on one side of steak and sprinkle with salt and pepper
Spoon the bacon/onion mixture onto the mustard
Fold in the sides and roll up the meat tightly like a burrito. Secure seam with toothpicks.
Heat butter and coconut oil in a pan or dutch oven. When hot, add the rolled meat and brown on all sides if possible, drain.
Add stock and celery to pan and simmer covered for 1.5 hours.
Remove rolls from the pot and cover with foil to keep warm.
Continue to simmer the broth uncovered to reduce if needed.
In a small bowl mix the corn starch with a tablespoon or two of cold water, mix together and add to the broth to thicken into a sauce.
Pour sauce over rouladens and serve.

Wedding with an Olympus E-PM1

2012-01-08T18:59:00.000-08:00

I'm not a wedding photographer by any means but I go to a wedding every now and then and when I do I usually take quite a few pictures. I had just received the E-PM1 from Olympus for the Pen Ready project and decided I would take it to the wedding of Mario Santos and Aimee Cabrera. I used the E-PM1 for pretty much everything but the ceremony itself though I did sneak in a couple during the ceremony. I brought along my E-5 too and used that for the ceremony and the E-PM1 for the post ceremony activities.

I gotta say I was impressed by the little E-PM1. I'm willing to bet if you looked at my E-5 and E-PM1 pics from the wedding you wouldn't be able to tell which camera was used for each photo. There were a couple pics from the reception I didn't like the colors on for some people shots but I converted them to B&W and they looked fine. I even did a video of the surprise Dirty Dancing re-enactment by the bridge and groom. I didn't have the best angle for it but I thought the video turned out pretty well. I didn't use a tripod but there was very little camera shake so the image stabilization seemed to do a good job with the video.

Below are a few photos from the wedding. The rest of the photos, including those taken with the E-5, can be found here: Mario & Aimee

Allergy & Candida Cooking Made Easy Review

2012-01-02T21:09:00.000-08:00

My fourth cookbook project has come to a close. Allergy & Candida Cooking Made Easy was a cookbook recommended to me by my Environmental Illness doctor to give me some ideas of things to cook to help my battle with candida. I have to admit I wasn't all that thrilled with the cookbook as a whole and there were only a couple of recipes I might consider making again.

The cookbook is based on a 4 day rotational diet plan which I started following based on my doctor's recommendations. It was after I found Bee's program that I stopped that diet and started following that one which doesn't allow grains of any kind, including gluten free grains. Below is my list of likes and dislikes about the cookbook. As I write this I realize there are a lot more things I liked about the cookbook than I originally thought.

Likes:

I was quite pleased with the baking section. Most of those turned out very well.
Each of the baking recipes had multiple variations of the recipe using different types of flours and oils.
Each recipe had nutritional info provided.
Most of the recipes were very easy and didn't take a lot of time to make.
Not just a cookbook, it also contains a lot of information on Candida and allergies as well as a section on food properties, history and uses.

Dislikes:

Most of the main dish meals were not very flavorful, very few spices are used besides salt and pepper.
No pictures of any of the dishes.
The price. It's not a cheap cookbook. The new price on Amazon ranges from $60-$296 which is just crazy. The price on the back of the book is $29.95 I was not going to pay that much so I bought it used for about $20.

Cereals and Basic Grains/Nongrains
Cream of Buckwheat

Breads, Muffins & Pancakes
Amaranth Crackers
Blueberry Buckwheat Muffins
Quinoa Tortillas
Quinoa Applesauce Muffins
Rice Oat Pancakes

Main Dishes - Poultry
Oven Fried Chicken
Easy Chicken Soup

Main Dishes - Red Meats
Buckwheat Lamb Enchiladas

Main Dishes - Italian
Gluten Free Vegan Lasagna

Main Dishes - Seafood
Tuna Rice Casserole

Main Dishes - Egg Cookery
Breakfast Brunch Squares

Salads and Dressings
Cashew Mayo
Coleslaw

Desserts
Zuchinni Amaranth Cookies
Pear Custard

Pear Custard

2011-12-29T12:20:00.000-08:00

It's been a while, but this is my final recipe from the Allergy and Candida Cooking Made Easy cookbook. The new diet I'm on is even more strict than this cookbook so it's harder to find recipes I can use, especially in the dessert category as the only sweetener I'm allowed to have is green leaf stevia powder. Pears have a lower sugar content than most fruits so I thought this would be a good recipe to try.

I used my juicer which I haven't used for quite a while to make the pear juice for the custard. The juicer strips out the pulp so what comes out should be pure juice. The juice seemed to separate though, leaving a clear liquid on the bottom and a layer of cloudy, foamy juice on top. I suppose I could have tried filtering it to get rid of that but decided to just leave it in.

There isn't much to the recipe just pear juice, eggs, homemade almond milk and a few spices. It tastes similar to my morning egg drink which I sometimes put a little pear in. I thought it turned out pretty well compared to most of the recipes from the cookbook. This weekend I may try sprinkling some sugar on one of them and torching it to make a brulee. Not for me of course since I can't have the sugar, it'll be for Mark.

Capture Thanksgiving Memories

2011-11-21T14:42:00.001-08:00

Thanksgiving is almost here! Do you spend yours with family, friends or stay at home by yourself? I've spent my Thanksgivings over the years in many different ways. Most of them have been with family but there have been years where it was spent with friends and other times have just had a quiet day at home. Whether with family or friends one thing you can usually count on is an obscene amount of food.

Last year I had the privilege of having two Thanksgiving feasts. I took part in a pottery/cooking class with Chef Robin Leventhal and one of the classes centered around Thanksgiving dishes. The class assisted as Chef Robin showed us how to make everything for a Thanksgiving feast including turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, gravy, salad, salad dressing and even brussel sprouts. How we were able to make all of this in one class session I have no idea. I enjoyed photographing this unique way of celebrating the holiday. The photos at the end of the blog post were all taken during that class using an Olympus E-P1 and no flash.

One thing to keep in mind when photographing the holiday is to capture not only the food but the people too. Try getting some photos of the cook in action. Take photos of the turkey being basted, potatoes being mashed, the table being set and most importantly the carving of the turkey.

If you have any control over the food presentation, make the turkey platter the star and really stand out by dressing it up with fresh herbs and vegetables. Sage, rosemary and/or thyme are great herbs to use as a garnish. Grapes and/or cherry tomatoes, fresh or roasted, also make good garnishes that contrast well with turkey and photograph well.

I like to like shooting Thanksgiving food from over head, however the most important thing to remember is to shoot at different angles. A lot of people tend to shoot things at the same angle all the time. Don't be afraid to try shooting different angles. From above, at a 45 degrees and at eye level are the three main angles. You might be pleasantly surprised with what you get when you experiment with angles.

After the table is set with food, you'll want to get some photos of the dining table with your family/friends in the shot. This shot should be done with a wide angle lens to fit everything and everyone in the frame. Set the turkey platter close to you, on one end of the table and make that the main focus with everyone sitting beyond it. To get everyone in the frame you will need to shoot just above the turkey. If you don't use a flash it will be difficult to get both the turkey and everyone at the table in focus since you will probably need to shoot at a large aperture (low F-Stop value) if there is not a lot of available light. Using a flash is recommended for this shot, ideally an external flash on your hot shoe, bounced off the ceiling at close to full power. This will allow you to use a small aperture to make more of the scene in focus. If you don't have a flash, try taking a few different photos focusing some on the turkey and some on the people behind the turkey. Also, the further away you are from the subjects the more in focus they will be. So you can try that and then do some cropping in post processing. Try taking some photos standing up for a higher perspective. Take one or two with everyone looking at you and some candids of people in conversation, smiling and laughing.

Most people serve Thanksgiving family style and pass around plates of food for you to dish onto your own plate. Try to capture some close up photos of people passing food to each other or dishing food onto their plates. Don't forget to serve some food for yourself! You'll want to get a photo of your plate full of food. Try to get at least a little bit of everything on your plate. Think of it as a family photo, you don't want any food left out of the shot. This is the one I like most to photograph from above so you can see everything on the plate easily. Between bites of food, take a few photos of people enjoying themselves.

Lastly, try to get everyone together for a group shot after dinner. Use a tripod and bring a remote or use your camera's timer so you can be in the shot too.

SpiceCare by Table Fare

2011-11-15T14:29:00.001-08:00

I do a lot of restaurant and recipe reviews but it's not very often I do a product review. No one asked me to do one and I didn't get any freebies either. I've been thinking about getting some new containers for my spices for a while now but have been pushing it off. A couple of people mentioned the SpiceCare system via Facebook comments to a post I made many months ago and I have kept those in mind since then.

What finally pushed me to get these is my switch to all organic spices. I bought them in bulk from Mountain Rose Herbs. I don't know why I didn't do this before. The prices for spices at Mountain Rose can't be beat. Gone are the days of spending $5 for a little bottle of spices. You can get 4 oz packages of just about any organic spice you can imagine and most of them are between $2 and $4 a bag. One of these bags would probably fill up a grocery sized jar at least 4 times. They also carry teas, oils and other goodies.

I bought a couple of 6 container SpiceCare starter kits and some singles. I've managed to fill them all up with spices and could use a few more. I also bought the label pack which has pre-printed spice labels. There's only one spice I wasn't able to find a pre-printed label for and that is for the curry leaves. The label fits behind a metal plate that slides over the front of the spice container. The smallest sized ones are more difficult to slide on and off. It's also hard to figure out which is the top and which is the bottom of the metal plate on the small ones.

The containers are three-sided and made of a hard plastic. Two of the sides are clear so you can see the contents and one side has the metal plate with label on it. All the containers can stack on top of each other and come with flip top lids. One of the things I like most about these contains is the lid which has a leveler built into it so you can use it to level off your measuring spoon. You can also buy the optional shaker screens, which come in three different sizes, but I chose not to. I prefer to be able to stick my measuring spoon in the container without having to fuss with removing the screen.

These containers are a real space saver. My old spices were organized alphabetically in store bought glass containers of all different shapes and sizes in my cupboard. Now I have them organized more conveniently by types of spices in the SpiceCare containers. I have all my whole seed type spices in one column, two columns of powdered spices, two columns of leaf spices and I have one column with what I would categorize as pumpkin spices (allspice, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg).

If you're looking for a new way to organize your spices I would highly recommend these SpiceCare containers by Table Fare. They save space, look great and are convenient and easy to use.

Cashew Mayo Cole Slaw

2011-11-07T21:01:00.000-08:00

I was looking through my Allergy & Candida Cookbook trying to find what I should make next. I ended up skipping a couple of the categories because I'm on a new candida diet that is more strict than my previous one. So I skipped the beans and sandwich category and went on to the salads and dressings section. And honestly cashews or any nuts really aren't on my diet either. Shh don't tell anyone. I looked through the rest of the cookbook but there isn't much else I can eat. I may do just one more, from the dessert section.

I actually covered two different recipes tonight. I made a cashew mayo dressing which I used in the cole slaw. The cookbook gives you so many different variations of mayo's the combinations are limitless. You can choose from almonds, sunflower seeds, filberts, macdamia and cashews. There's also a long list of optional herbs to choose from as well. I went with a bit of dry mustard with the cashews. The texture was surprisingly close to mayo but I don't think it tasted a lot like mayo. It basically tasted like a thick almond milk. It wasn't too bad mixed in with the cabbage and celery though.

Ham, Cabbage and Squash Soup

2011-11-03T18:36:00.000-07:00

Summer is over and fall is here, it's the perfect time of the year for soup. I usually make a squash soup every fall, typically a butternut squash soup. I honestly was never very knowledgeable about winter squashes. Pumpkin and butternut are the only two I have any experience cooking with, but there are so many other good ones that I never thought about using. I've used a couple of new ones this year and learning the names of some of the winter squashes that I've seen every year but never knew their names. I used spaghetti squash for my fake pumpkin pie and used delicata, the long one with green stripes, for this soup recipe.

I'm on a low carb/low sugar diet which is why I have been trying out other squashes. The two squashes I normally use, butternut and pumpkin, are both high in carbs while delicata and spaghetti squash are lower. Some other popular winter squashes are acorn, ambercup, autumn cup, banana, buttercup, carnival, golden nugget, hubbard, kabocha, sweet dumpling and turban. In addition to all those there are over a dozen different varieties of pumpkins. Allaboutpumpkins.com has a pretty comprehensive list of the different varieties of winter squashes and pumpkins. I haven't done my research yet to determine the ones that have the least amount of carbs. In general winter squashes have more carbs than summer squash.

I found this recipe for ham hock and cabbage soup on Caveman Food's blog. There is also another version of it using potatoes instead of squash by Emeril Lagasse. I didn't stray too far away from the recipe he posted but I did alter it slightly:

made a bigger batch by adding some additional water
used delicata rather than pumpkin
added 3 sprigs of fresh rosemary
used 3 fresh sage leaves rather than 2
used 5 cloves of garlic rather than 3
used ham shanks rather than ham hocks

I'm pretty thrilled with how it turned out and it didn't take as long as I thought it would. It took about 2 hours of cooking and the prep work took a while, especially for the squash. I wasn't sure what the best way to peel a delicata squash was but I ended up using a potato peeler which seemed to work out pretty well. The squash was a lot harder inside than I thought it would be, making spooning out the seeds a little more difficult. The squash turned out pretty mushy, I was hoping for a little more texture in them so I might recommend adding the squash maybe 15 minutes later so it cooks for 45 mins instead of 60, I updated that in the recipe below.

Ingredients:

4 Tbsp bacon grease

1.5-2 lbs ham shank or hock

1 medium onion, chopped

3 celery stalks, chopped

small head of green cabbage, chopped

5 garlic cloves, minced

3 bay leaves

1/2 tsp ground black pepper

1 1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cayenne

4 cups chicken stock, homemade recommended

3-4 cups water

4 cups delicata or other winter squash

Directions:

Heat bacon grease in a large stock pot over medium high heat. Add celery and onions and cook about 10 minutes. Add the ham shank/hock.
Add cabbage, garlic, bay leaves, pepper, salt and cayenne. Stir and cook until cabbage is slightly wilted, about 5 minutes.
Add chicken stock and desired amount of water. Bring to a boil and simmer uncovered for 45 minutes.
Add the squash, cover and simmer 45 more minutes.
Remove the ham from the pot and let cool for a few minutes. Remove bay leaves from the pot, if you can find them. Remove the meat from the bone and chop into small bite sized pieces, add back to the pot and serve.

Fake Pumpkin Pie with Gluten Free Crust

2011-10-20T19:56:00.000-07:00

Why spaghetti squash you ask? Spaghetti squash has a lot less carbs and sugar content than pumpkin so it's more healthy for you. I made a few updates to the original recipe including making a gluten free crust. The original recipe does not call for making a crust at all but I like my pie crust. This is the first time I've tried making a gluten free pie crust and I thought it turned out pretty well. Be warned, if you don't get the texture of the dough just right it is very difficult to roll out. Mine was a little too wet and I had to keep adding some flour to it while I rolled it out.

The pie recipe below makes enough for one pie while the crust recipe makes enough for two crusts. One spaghetti squash should be enough for two pies so what I did was just made two batches of the pie filling. While the first pie was cooking I rolled out the dough and kept it in the fridge until the first pie was done. By the time I finished the second batch of pie filling and cleaned up the mess I made the first pie was done. I took the crust out of the fridge, filled it and put it in the oven to bake.

Instead of topping it with whipped cream you can try this fake cream recipe made with eggs, beef gelatin, butter and sweetened with stevia. It's much healthier than whipped cream. It's not bad tasting either but the texture is a little weird.

Sugar Free Fake Pumpkin Pie (modified from Bee's Recipe)
Ingredients:

2 cups spaghetti squash, cooked (see below)
1/4 cup melted butter
2 tbsp melted unrefined coconut oil
4 whole eggs
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg, or to taste
1 tsp ground cinnamon, or to taste
1/8 tsp ground clove, or to taste
1/4 tsp ground stevia leaf, or to taste

Directions:

To cook spaghetti squash, cut in half, remove seeds and membrane with a spoon. Put cut side down on a cookie sheet and bake at 350°F for 45-60 minutes. squash should be tender when poked with a fork. Let cool and shred out inside of squash with a fork.
Preheat oven to 350°F.

Put all ingredients in a blender or food processor, and blend until thoroughly mixed.

Add to prepared pie crust (see gf crust recipe below) or a greased glass pie pan.

Put it in the preheated oven, and bake it for 30-40 minutes, or until it doesn't jiggle when you reach in and shake it. Let cool on wire rack.

Gluten Free Pie Crust Recipe (modified from verybestbaking.com):

Ingredients:

2 cups all purpose gluten free flour
1/4 tsp salt
6 tbsp cold butter, cut into small pieces
1 large egg, beaten
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
3-4 tbsp ice water

Directions:

combine dry ingredients in medium bowl. Cut in butter with pastry blender or two knives until mixture is crumbly. Form well in center. Add egg and vinegar; stir gently with a fork until just blended. Sprinkle with water; blend together with a fork and clean hands until mixture just holds together and forms a ball. (Don't add too much water as dough will be hard to roll).
Shape dough into ball and divide in half. Cover one half with plastic wrap; set aside. Place remaining half on lightly floured sheet of wax paper. Flatten dough with hand and dust top with flour and cover with additional piece of wax paper. Roll out dough to 1/8 inch thickness. Remove top sheet of wax paper and invert dough into 9-inch deep-dish pie plate. Slowly peel away wax paper. Trim excess crust. Turn edge under; crimp as desired.

Breakfast Brunch Squares

2011-10-18T22:02:00.000-07:00

This was another recipe in the Allergy & Candida Cooking Made Easy Cookbook from the Main Dishes - Egg Cookery section. I'm getting a little tired of the bland recipes in this cookbook so I decided to add a few things to the recipe for some flavor. I adde diced onions, a diced jalapeno and some fresh ground pepper. Even with the added onion and jalapeno it still seemed a little bland but the jalapeno did help. I served it with some crispy bacon which went pretty well together. Crumbling the bacon over the egg probably would have been even better.

Cauliflower and Leek Soup

2011-10-14T16:33:00.000-07:00

I've probably made this recipe 3 or 4 times in the last few months so I figure I should share it. It's my new favorite soup. I think I like it so much because it tastes a lot like potato soup and I can't eat potatoes on the diet that I'm on so this was a nice treat. The recipe is so simple and only has a couple of ingredients. The recipe I used is based on one I found on Earthbound Farm's site. I left out several ingredients from the recipe and it was still tasty. Below is my version of the soup.

Ingredients:
1 head of cauliflower, cut into 1" pieces or less
1 small head of garlic
3 Tbsp olive oil
Course sea salt and black pepper to taste
1 leek, thinly sliced
4 cups chicken stock
2 tsp chopped fresh thyme

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Put cauliflower pieces in a large bowl and drizzle with 2 Tbsp olive oil, salt and pepper and toss to evenly coat. Cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil and put cauliflower on the sheet.

Cut top off of garlic, just enough to display the inside of the garlic. Drizzle a small amount of olive oil on the open end of the garlic. Wrap garlic in aluminum foil and put on baking sheet with the cauliflower.

Transfer baking sheet to the oven and bake for 25-35 minutes, turning cauliflower every 10 minutes until evenly browned. Check more often after 25 minutes to make sure cauliflower doesn't burn. Remove baking sheet from oven and set aside.

While cauliflower and garlic are baking, heat remaining Tbsp of olive oil (I actually used coconut oil here) over medium heat in a large sauce pan. Add leeks and saute for about 10 minutes, until leeks are softened but not brown. Add cauliflower and chicken stock to the pan. Raise heat to medium-high and bring to a simmer.

Remove the foil from the garlic and squeeze the garlic cloves into the pot. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and cool for 10 minutes.

Transfer soup to a blender or food processor and puree until smooth. You may need to blend in two batches depending on the size of your blender. Return puree to sauce pan and add thyme and additional chicken stock if too thick. Reheat slowly until desired temperature. Serve.

Makes about 4 good sized servings.

Chaco Canyon Organic Cafe

2011-10-11T19:11:00.001-07:00

I haven't been doing much eating out since I've been diagnosed with candidiasis. It's important that I eat healthy which means avoiding eating out and eating processed foods so I've been doing a lot more cooking lately. There are occasions when eating out is unavoidable so I try to find good healthy places to eat if I do need to go out.

Mark and I went to the Seattle Smug Meetup group to see Rod Mar's presentation on sports photography and needed to find a place to eat nearby. I did a quick search for organic restaurants Seattle and came across Chaco Canyon Organic Cafe which is located in the University District. That's less than a mile from where our meeting was so it worked out perfectly. They also have a new location in West Seattle.

I walked in and had a seat near the counter to wait for Mark to arrive which was only a couple of minutes. I looked at the online menu before picking the place so I already knew what I wanted to get but they have the menu displayed up on the wall behind the ordering counter. They also have regular menus if you don't want to read the wall. They have a wide range of sandwiches, soups, salads and drinks. It's all vegetarian, serve breakfast all day and even have a happy hour. Beer, wine, smoothies, juices and a couple of food items are on the happy hour menu.

I ended up ordering the green coconut curry and a green goddess juice (cucumber, celery, kale, fennel and ginger). You can also make up your own juice combination using any of their many fruits and vegetables. Most of their juices contained apple or pear as a base which I can't have right now because of the large amounts of sugar they contain. Mark ordered the basic bowl and a beer. After we ordered we got our colorful number and took a seat. After 10 or so minutes our food came out but our drinks did not. We looked around for a couple of minutes and Mark was just about to get up to see if they forgot the drinks and then our drinks arrived. It would have been nice if they said be right back with your drinks or something after the food was served. It would make more sense if they had brought the drinks out first.

The green goddess was pretty good though. The green coconut curry wasn't bad. It was all raw vegetables so it takes a while to eat, lots of crunchy chewing involved. I might have eaten half of it but got a box and had the rest for lunch the next day. The basic bowl was as you might expect, basic. It was simply brown rice and beans. I had a couple bites of it but not sure I could eat it as a meal, it seemed more something you would eat as a side dish.

Overall I thought it was a nice place for a healthy bite to eat and wouldn't mind going back again.

Sugar Free and Natural Toothpaste Reviews

2011-09-28T18:25:00.000-07:00

This was going to be a review of natural toothpastes but one of the toothpastes is not natural as I first thought and probably the reason I liked it best since it seemed more like regular toothpaste than the others. So I've changed this to a sugar free and natural toothpaste review and will continue to update as I try different brands.

Most toothpastes contain toxic chemicals like sulfates, petroleum dyes and artificial flavors and sweeteners. I have been trying different mostly natural toothpastes to find one that I like the best. Some toothpastes also have the option of fluoride or not. I was getting fluoride at first until I read how that too can be harmful so I have avoided it with my last couple tubes of toothpaste. There are reports that show an increase risk of bone cancer and other diseases and health issues related to fluoride. Here's one good article I came across about the subject: http://www.viewzone.com/fluoride.html The last couple times I've gone to the dentist they haven't given me fluoride treatments like they used to and I didn't bother to ask why. I figured they just forgot cuz I never liked getting them anyway. Now if they try to give me one I will request they don't.

** Tom's of Maine (clean & gentle) - Most of the Tom's of Maine toothpastes contain SLS. The Clean & Gentle one doesn't. Be sure to always read the ingredient listings of things you buy. Even if it's something you've bought before. Companies have been known to change their recipes. This one seemed to have pretty good reviews but it was my least favorite. I'm used to having a tooth paste that has some body but it just got flat when brushing with it. It was like brushing with water. The taste wasn't bad though.

*** Burt's Bees (Multicare Peppermint) - This one was a little better than Tom's. My problem with this one is that it was messy. Every time you put it on your brush it leaves a stringy trail of toothpaste when you pull away from the brush. The taste was good though and it provided good body during brushing. Also it seemed like the there wasn't a lot of toothpaste in the tube, it ran out faster than I thought it should. Burt's claims to be 99.2% natural so it isn't 100%.

*** Jason (Powerful Peppermint) -The texture of this one is similar to Burt's Bees and it's hard to spread on a toothbrush. The tip of the tube is small unlike the Burt's Bees so this one is easier to keep the tip clean. There is a bit of a weird slimy kind of texture coating my teeth and tongue after using it.

**** Spry (Cool Mint) - It has pretty good body, the taste is good and it easily spreads on a toothbrush without making a mess. I didn't have any complaints with this one other than it not being natural like the others. It contains several chemicals that most likely aren't good for you. However it doesn't contain Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS) and Sodium Laureth Sulfate like so many others do. But it does contain the following: Sodium Methyl Cocoyl Taurate, Sodium Lauroyl Sarcosinate, Calcium Glycerophosphate, Calcium Lactate Gluconate, Carum Petroselinate, Sodium Benzoate and Titanium Dioxide. So if you're trying to avoid possible harmful chemicals this probably wouldn't be a good choice.

Of these I did like spry the best but knowing it has all those chemicals I probably will avoid it in the future. Of the 3 natural ones I would say Burt's is probably the better of them. I only wish the tube tip was smaller like the others so it's easier to keep clean. Desert Essence, Kiss My Face, Dr Ken's and Auremere are a few other natural toothpaste options I have yet to try.

Tuna Rice Casserole

2011-09-27T20:31:00.000-07:00

This is another one from the Allergy and Candida Cooking Made Easy cookbook. It's been a few weeks since I've made a recipe from the cookbook. I haven't been too impressed so far with the main dishes section of the cookbook. Most of the recipes don't have much flavor. The recipes don't have any spices other than salt and pepper so they are a little bland ok maybe a lot bland including this tuna rice casserole.

I did like that it gives you different options of vegetables to use. I used brown rice with cauliflower and celery as my choice of vegetables. Even though it was cooked i the oven for an hour the cauliflower stayed crunchy and gave the casserole a nice texture. It would have been a good dish with a little extra seasonings. Actually this recipe didn't even call for pepper, only salt but I added some pepper anyway.

More Allergies

2011-09-22T16:46:00.000-07:00

I've been on the candida diet now for about 3 months and have had some improvements with my dermatitis. At first It would go away for a little while then slowly come back for a while then go away and come back. It did this a few times over the first month or two but the cycle seems to have stopped and now it's always there but is mild and you can't really see it unless you look really close. It's most noticeable when I get up in the morning. A little moisturizer helps to hide it.

So I've been drinking smoothies every morning and usually put some kind of berries in them. I've been alternating between blueberry, strawberry, blackberry and occasionally raspberry. I don't usually mix the berries and try not to eat the same berry two days in a row and usually space them out 3 or 4 days. My doc says eating the same things every day could develop allergies. I know there are some that disagree with that theory. I'd rather be safe than sorry.

Since my dermatitis hasn't been going away I was thinking there might be something else I've been eating that is causing it. I suspected blueberries and citrus, specifically lemon, since I've been eating a more than usual amount of those recently. I was previously tested for a bunch of food and other allergies which I posted the results to here. I decided to make an appt with my allergist to get tested for those and sure enough I tested positive for orange, lemon and blueberries. I reacted more to blueberries than any other allergy test I've had to date so my suspicions were right. So now I have to avoid eating blueberries, lemons and oranges for the next three weeks and my food allergy antigens were modified to include those foods. We'll see if my dermatitis improves over the next 3 weeks and then start introducing those foods back into my diet and see if I have any reactions.

At least it is mild enough that I don't have to use any prescriptions anymore. The diet isn't all that difficult and even though I'm eating a lot more than I used to I'm still losing weight. I was about 115 lbs three months ago and am now down to 98. Most of my clothes are too big and I had to do some shopping to get some smaller sizes. I've also changed my diet a bit starting last week and am eating more good fats, mainly coconut oil and cod liver oil. The cod liver oil is not very tasty and I may switch to cod liver oil gel caps instead. Hopefully eating more fats will help me gain some weight.

Gluten Free Zucchini Muffins

2011-09-15T20:41:00.000-07:00

Just like every year I have so much zucchini I don't know what to do with it all. I've already given some away to my neighbor and to Mark. I keep thinking I should keep track of how many I get in a year but always forget. This year I planted one yellow and one green zucchini along with some pattypan squash. For some reason the green zucchini isn't doing as well and I have only picked a couple off of it but the yellow on is going gang busters and I'm sure I've picked at least 20 and there's more on the way.

I hadn't made any zucchini bread this year yet so I figured it was about time I make some. I searched for a gluten free and sugar free recipe and came across this one on mindoverbooty.com. It took me a while to find one that I had all the ingredients for. I have some garbonzo bean flour that I haven't tried yet so I searched for a recipe that uses it and that's how I came across this recipe.

I pretty much followed the recipe as written but instead of making two loaves of bread I made one loaf of bread and a dozen muffins. I added walnuts to the bread but not to the muffins. It called for agave nectar or honey but I used both. For the past three months, I've been avoiding all forms of sugar including agave and honey. I recently bought some to try out thinking it may be ok to start introducing a little sweetness back into my diet. Maybe it will help me gain some of my weight back. The recipe also gave a choice between chia and flax seeds which I had both. I decided instead of using the whole seeds to use ground flax seeds. It's supposed to be easier to digest than the whole seeds so I try to always use them ground.

I've made some pretty awesome zucchini breads over the years, but this one just might be my new fav. Hard to believe a gluten free, sugar free bread could be so good but it is. I had to stop myself from eating more than two muffins. The batter was pretty tasty too. Yes, I'm guilty of licking the spatula clean. Here's the version of the recipe I made.

Ingredients:

1 + 1/2 cup garbanzo bean flour
1 + 1/2 cup oat flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt
2 Tbs. ground flax seeds
1/2 cup unsweetened apple sauce
3 egg whites at room temperature
1/2 cup agave nectar
1/2 cup honey
2 tsp. vanilla
3 cups shredded zucchini (about 1 medium zuc)
1 cup walnuts (optional)

1. Grease two loaf pans or two muffin pans and preheat oven to 350 F or 325 F if using convection. Combine all the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Set aside.

2. Mix all wet ingredients, except shredded zucchini until texture is consistent. Add the zucchini, followed by the dry mixture, one third at a time. Add walnuts and stir lightly just until uniform.

3. Split batter evenly between two loaf pans or two muffin tins and place in the oven. If using muffin tins you should have enough batter left over for another two muffin tins or one loaf. Make muffins first since they cook faster. Muffins should take 15-20 minutes and bread should take 40-50 minutes. Check with a toothpick for doneness. May take slightly longer if not using convection.

4. Remove from the oven and allow to sit for 10 minutes. Then remove from pan and cool on a drying rack for at least an additional 30 minutes. If making muffins, use remaining batter to fill another two muffin tins or a loaf pan and bake as instructed above. Recipe makes 2 loaves, 24 muffins or 1 loaf and 12 muffins.

Green Chile (Chile Verde) Recipe

2011-09-14T09:23:00.000-07:00

I recently saw a show on Food Network called All American Festivals. This episode featured the Hatch Chile Festival in New Mexico. They are pretty famous chiles, so famous that they showed up recently at Whole Foods. They had a big chile roaster set up and everything. They were selling for $2.99/lb roasted when I got them a few weeks ago. I was just in a Whole Foods in downtown Seattle over the weekend and they had them on sale for $1.99/lb. I was tempted to get more but didn't. I bought a couple containers of them a few weeks back and used one in a batch of green chile and the other is hiding away in my freezer. I'm not sure if I will make more green chile or find something else to do with them.

Chile Roaster at Whole Foods in Redmond, WA

Surprisingly, I had never made green chile before which I'm sure my family is thinking "it's about time". My mom makes it every year and sometimes sends me some from Montana. I even got her a chile roaster for her birthday this year because I know she's been wanting one. She has a decent sized garden and plants lots of chiles. She has already used it a few times and loves it.

I did some searching online for a recipe and found this Colorado Green Chile one on my favorite recipe site, allrecipes. It got 4.5 star review and sounded pretty good. I did make a few changes to the recipe. I modified a couple of the measurements and used beef instead of pork. I had planned on getting pork but accidentally bought beef stew meat instead but either one is fine to use for green chile, but I usually prefer pork to beef in my soups and stews. I added extra jalapenos and a few chiles I had growing in my garden that I thought were jalapenos but look more like serranos to the Roasted Tomatillo and Garlic Salsa that I also made from scratch using another recipe from allrecipes. I won't post that recipe here since the only modification I made was adding more chiles. I like my chile spicy and the green chiles are pretty mild. Here is my modified recipe.

Ingredients:
* 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
* 1 pound cubed pork or beef stew meat
* salt and pepper to taste
* 1 large yellow onion, diced
* 5 cloves garlic, minced
* 3 cups chopped, roasted green chiles (Anaheim/New Mexico)
* 1 (14.5 ounce) can diced tomatoes with juice
* 1 1/2 cups tomatillo salsa (store bought or homemade)
* 3 cups chicken broth
* 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
* 1 pinch ground cloves
* cilantro for garnish

1. Heat the oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Season the meat with salt and pepper to taste, then place into the hot oil. Cook until golden brown on all sides, about 7 minutes. Once browned, remove the meat and set aside. Reduce heat to medium, and stir in the onion and garlic. Cook and stir until the onion has softened and turned translucent, about 5 minutes.
2. Return the meat to the pot, and stir in the green chiles, diced tomatoes with juice, tomatillo salsa, and chicken broth. Season with oregano and clove. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat, then reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer 20 minutes.
3. After 20 minutes, remove 2 cups of the soup (ensure there is no meat in it), and pour into a blender. Hold down the lid of the blender with a folded kitchen towel, and carefully start the blender, using a few quick pulses to get the soup moving before leaving it on to puree. Puree until smooth, then pour back into the cooking pot. This will create a thicker texture for your chili and will eliminate some of the chunky bits of chiles. Continue to simmer, stirring occasionally until the meat is very tender, at least 40 minutes more.
4. Serve as a soup in a bowl garnished with a few cilantro leaves or it can be used as a sauce over enchiladas, tamales or burritos. It's even better on the second day but if you don't plan on eating within a few days it freezes well.

Roasted Hatch (New Mexico) Chiles

Peeled Tomatillos, jalapenos and cilantro

Tomatillo Salsa and a Garlic Braid

Green Chile (Chile Verde)

Olympus E-PL2

2011-09-12T18:08:00.000-07:00

I was recently given the opportunity to try out some Olympus gear for a couple of weeks. The Olympus PEN E-PL2, 75-300mm F4.8-6.7 and the VF-2 all pictured above. I'm no stranger to the Olympus PEN, I have the E-P1 and use it quite often however I haven't used many of the micro four thirds lenses since I have a four thirds adapter so I can use all my other lenses on it. I only have the kit zoom and the Panasonic 20mm F1.7 pancake in the micro four thirds line. The cameras are pretty similar so it didn't take much time to get used to.

I've never used an electronic viewfinder before and was curious how well it worked. Everyone I know that has tried it swears by it and they seem to not be able to live without it. I've used my E-P1 just fine without one so I wasn't sure what I was missing. Now that I've seen it I want one too. It fits into the hotshoe on top of the camera and also plugs into an accessory port just below the hot shoe. Unfortunately the E-P1 doesn't have this accessory port so the VF-2 can't be used on it but there is a VF-1 but I doubt it would be as good as the VF-2. You get a digital display in the viewfinder which is basically a copy of what you would see on the LCD screen. So you're not just seeing what you are shooting but you also view the menu system, settings and it even flashes the photo you capture after hitting the shutter. I love that because you can chimp your photos without people knowing you're chimping. I have a bad habit of chimping my photos and it took me a long time to stop looking at the back of the LCD when using the viewfinder after taking a picture. Another neat thing it does is you can tilt the viewfinder. You might wonder why you would ever want to do that. I found it very helpful when shooting directly above a subject, like a plate of food, shown below. If you have a PEN camera that can use the VF-2 I would highly recommend it. The only downfall is that it is a pretty expensive accessory, currently $226 on Amazon. There's also a slightly cheaper VF-3 that was just recently released and is priced at $180.

20mm ~ F4.5 ~ 1/60 ~ ISO 640

The 75-300mm is an amazingly wonderful range and is only the size of a pop can. I don't know of any other camera manufacturer that can produce something that small in that range. The down side is the lens has a very slow F Stop range of only 4.8-6.7. So if you want to take a photo at 300mm the fastest you can shoot at is going to be F6.7. I found that to be too slow for my liking. The majority of photos I took with this lens ended up being at 1600 ISO when shooting in Aperature priority and Auto ISO. I took the camera/lens combo on a couple of photostrolls with the Seattle Flickr Meetup group.

The first stroll I went on was at Alki Beach on a nice, bright sunny day so using the 75-300 was no problem since there was plenty of available light and I was able to get close up people shots without them even knowing I was there. I shot people having fun in the sun. I even captured a few action shots of a beach volleyball match. The lens was surprisingly sharp and had good depth of field.

75mm ~ F4.8 ~ 1/2500 ~ ISO 200

117mm ~ F5.3 ~ 1/1600 ~ ISO 200

300mm ~ F6.7 ~ 1/1250 ~ ISO 200

75mm ~ F4.8 ~ 1/2000 ~ ISO 200

The following weekend I brought both the E-PL2 and my E-5 to Northwest Trek Wildlife Park. This was my second time to the park and decided to bring two camera bodies this time so I could keep the 75-300mm telephoto on the E-PL2 and a wider lens, the 12-60mm on my E-5 so I wouldn't have to switch lenses which I remember doing a lot of last time I went. Since the E-PL2 and 75-300mm are so light it was no problem to carry around both camera systems. I kept the E-PL2 mounted to my tripod and kept the E-5 around my neck. Even though it was a bright sunny day, most of the animals were out of the sun and in the shade which meant almost all of my photos were shot at 1600mm. I admit I did do a bit of noise reduction in post processing on some of the photos since it was too much noise for my liking. Below is a photo of my E-PL2 set up and a few photos and a series of videos shot with the E-PL2 in less than ideal conditions.

E-5 ~ 12-60mm
21mm ~ F4.5 ~ 1600 ISO

300mm ~ F6.7 ~ 1/40 ~ ISO 1600

75mm ~ F5.0 ~ 1/160 ~ ISO 1000

252mm ~ F6.5 ~ 1/60 ~ ISO 1600

Even at such high ISO the shots are pretty reasonable. The 75-300mm is an amazing lens and I think worth the $750 price. If you are wanting to shoot weddings or indoor events you best look for a different lens. You need a decent amount of light in order to get good shots from it. I didn't take too many photos at full 300mm. I found it to be a little too close and most of my shots were 200mm or less. Panasonic also offers a similar ranged lens, 100-300mm F4.0-5.6. I would be curious to see how it compares. It is slightly faster but I'm willing to bet the photos aren't as sharp. The only other micro four thirds telephoto option at this time for Olympus is a 40-150mm F4.0-5.6 however Panasonic has a slightly longer lens, a 45-200mm F4-5.6 that is priced at only $265. My longest Four Thirds lens is a 50-200mm and if I really need the length I will use that with the adapter but having one of the lighter micro four thirds telephotos is pretty tempting. It would be great to take on hikes or while traveling.

If you don't already own an Olympus PEN, I would definitely recommend the E-PL2. If you already own a PEN I don't know if the additional features are enough to switch. There are a few additional art filters but I honestly rarely ever use them. Being able to use the VF-2 is the only real big advantage to me. The E-PL2 has a built in flash that the E-P1 doesn't have but I never use the on camera flash anyway. If I use a flash I will use my external flash in the hot shoe or trigger it off camera. I'm still waiting for Olympus to come out with a splash proof PEN then maybe I will consider getting a newer model. For now, the E-P1 is good enough for me.

More of my photos from these two photo strolls along with a few other photos I've taken with the E-PL2 can be found in my E-PL2 Flickr set. I also put together a how to video on removing cilantro leaves from the stems using the 14-42mm kit lens which can be viewed on Youtube.

Gluten Free Pancakes

2011-09-08T21:19:00.000-07:00

I've been playing around with various gluten free flours and grains lately. You would think I work for Bob's Redmill if you looked in my fridge and cabinets. I'm sure I easily have at least a dozen bags of their flours and grains. I haven't had pancakes in months so thought I would try one of the pancake recipes in the Allergy & Candida Cooking Made Easy cookbook.

One thing I like about this cookbook is they give multiple recipes using different flours/grains. There's 6 cracker, 5 biscuit, 5 muffin and 5 pancake recipes to choose from. I decided to go with the Rice-Oat Pancakes which is made with a combination of brown rice flour and oat flour. It's also got a bit of ground flax seed which I ground myself.

I didn't use the recommended toppings in the cookbook for the pancakes but instead made my own syrup using water, blackberries and blueberries. I heated the berries and water in a saucepan for about 10-15 minutes and mashed them and the result was a nice berry syrup. I thought it was great but Mark would have preferred something sweeter like good old maple syrup. He can have his maple syrup next time and I'll stick with the berries. There's also a recipe for teff pancakes which sounds interesting. I will have to try those next time.

Gluten Free Vegan Lasagna

2011-09-07T19:12:00.000-07:00

This was my first time making gluten free pasta as well as my first time making pasta with herbs mixed into the dough. This pasta was made with soy flour and the herbs were basil and oregano.

The recipe in the Allergy & Candida Cooking Made Easy cookbook did not mention using a pasta maker but I tried it out anyway. Turns out it didn't work very well. The dough was just too sticky even though I added a lot more flour than the recipe had called for so I rolled it out by hand using a rolling pin which took for ever, much longer than I had planned so dinner ended up being a bit late. I had to flour the dough after each roll of the pin. At least there were only 4 5x10 sheets that I had to roll out.

Once the dough was done it didn't take long to put the dish together, layering the sauce, tofu, noodles and spinach. The sauce was made from scratch too and had lots of chunks of green peppers and zucchini. Again the recipe called for eggplant but since I have so much zucchini I used it as a substitute. The sauce turned out very runny and wished I had more time to let it reduce some. The recipe called for letting the sauce simmer for an hour covered but with it covered the liquid didn't have any room to evaporate. Despite the runny sauce I thought the lasagna turned out pretty good considering it had no cheese or meat.

Fiber Shake Recipe

2011-09-04T12:29:00.000-07:00

For the past few months I've been drinking fiber shakes every morning for breakfast. I change up what I put in it each day but I thought I would share one of my favorites along with some of the benefits of the ingredients I use.

For the base liquid ingredient I will use water (coconut or distilled) or a milk (usually almond or hemp). You can add more or less to get to the consistency you like. My shakes are usually a little on the thicker side and usually need to use a spoon.

I use some kind of "green" component, currently chlorophyll or Sun Chlorella but will be trying HealthForce's Vitamineral Green, an organic green superfood powder, starting next week. It contains Chlorophyll, spirulina, grasses, kelp, green vegetable juices, enzymes, probiotics and a bunch of other stuff. It sounds like pretty great stuff. It supports blood sugar, detoxification, the immune system, liver, kidneys, blood, bones, colon, regularity, circulation and longevity. I am also going to try HealthForce's Earth, a "healing food". Earth contains sprouted flax and chia seeds, milk thistle seeds, vegetable roots, barks, blossoms, herbs and spices. Earth is said to soothe colon, support blood sugar, colon health detoxification, immune system and longevity.

I will alternate between using flax seeds and chia seeds. Since these are both contained in HealthForce's Earth I will probably discontinue adding these to my shake. Flax and chia are a great source of Omega 3. They are good for your heart and are said to reduce your risk of hearth disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes. They also contain antioxidants (more than blueberries), increase brain function and make you feel more energized.

I will also add hemp protein. There are a lot of other proteins you can choose. I avoid soy, rice, egg and dairy proteins since I have a mild sensitivity to those. Both whey and casein are dairy products so that left me with hemp protein. Yes it does come from the cannabis plant, the seeds, but it doesn't contain any psychoactive compounds. Not only is it the only one I'm not sensitive to, it also contains a lot of health benefits. It contains all 8 essential amino acids, it's easier to digest and has a more balanced ratio of essential fatty acids than other types of protein. It's said to be the only food that is capable of sustaining life in the absence of any other food sources.

I recently started adding a bit of coconut oil to my shakes. Yes it is a fat but it's a good fat and it won't make you fat. It's good for your hair, skin, stress relief, cholesterol levels, weight loss, increased immunity, digestion and metabolism, bone strength, relief from kidney problems, heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. I have also been cooking with it more instead of using vegetable oils.

I always add a couple of tablespoons of yogurt. You are probably aware that yogurt is good for you but are you aware of all of it's benefits? It has many. One that I recently became aware of is that it may help to prevent osteoporosis which happens to run in my family so gives me even more incentive to eat it. It also may reduce the risk of high blood pressure, helps gastrointestinal conditions and may discourage vaginal infections. One important thing to check before purchasing a yogurt is to make sure it contains active live cultures. Check the ingredient label and it will tell you if it does or not. I've been using Stonyfield Organic Plain yogurt, which contains 6 active live cultures. I bought a yogurt maker so I can make some of my own yogurt but I've yet to try it out. To make your own yogurt all you need is milk and a little bit of yogurt with active cultures.

I add a bit of psyllium husk which is most well known for reducing constipation. But it actually has a lot of other health benefits. It helps lower blood sugar levels and not only does it help with constipation it also helps with diarrhea. It also reduces pain and discomfort from hemorrhoids, lowers cholesterol and aids in weight loss.

One last thing I consistently use in my shakes is Vitamin C. I have been using ascorbic acid crystals. I'm a little confused at this point on what the best type of Vitamin C to take is. I originally thought this was the best form but after some research I'm finding it may not be. For one thing it appears much of it is not absorbed and just goes right through you and if you take too much of it you will get diarrhea. HealthForce has a Vitamin C powder in the form of acerola berries. It's non-toxic in low or high doses and is highly absorbable. The benefits of Vitamin C are also many. It protects your body from infections, bacteria and viruses, lowers blood pressure, lowers blood lead level, increases blood flow which also helps to fight cataracts.

Then the last thing I add to my shakes is a mix of fruits/berries. I usually add frozen berries either strawberries, raspberries, blackberries or blueberries. I will usually only choose to add one at a time and not use the same one two days in a row to decrease the risk of developing an allergy to them. They say eating the same foods every day could cause you to develop an allergy. Berries are good sources of antioxidants, especially blueberries. Antioxidants promote health and protects cells from premature or abnormal aging. I also will occasionally add a green apple or avocado. Avocado gives the shake a very smooth texture. I will also occasionally add a bit of almond butter.

Below is one of my favorite recipes that I put together and had for breakfast this morning. This is enough for 2 servings.

Ingredients:
10 oz. water or milk
1 tbsp chlorophyll
1 tsp Vitamin C crystals
2 tbsp hemp or other protein
2 tsp psyllium husk powder
1 tbsp flax seeds
1 tbsp coconut oil
2 tbsp yogurt
1 tbsp almond butter
handful frozen berries

Directions:
Add all ingredients to blender, liquid ingredients first and frozen berries last. I use the smoothie button on my Blendetc. If you are using a different blender, start out on low speed and slowly increase to highest speed until smooth. Makes 28 ounces.

I didn't mention the Zeoforce Zeolite, pictured on the right, before because I'm only using that temporarily for 3 weeks while doing a heavy metal detox. I've only got a couple more days left of using it along with cilantro pesto. I went through two of these bottles in three weeks. It is good for removing heavy metals and toxins.

Buckwheat Lamb Enchiladas

2011-08-23T20:01:00.000-07:00

This is another recipe I tried in the Allergy and Candida Cooking Made Easy cookbook. I have to admit I made a few substitutions, three to be exact. The recipe called for using Day 2 tortillas which are amaranth tortillas. I decided to make buckwheat tortillas instead. They turned out a little better than my quinoa tortillas I made a few weeks ago. The edges were a little more smooth and rounded. It was hard to keep the dough from sticking to the board though. I had to use a lot of flour. Some of them bubbled a bit while they were cooking like normal tortillas do. I made 7 tortillas which turned out to be just right for the amount of filling I made.

The filling is where I made another couple of substitutions. The recipe called for eggplant but I've got so much zucchini coming out of my ears and I thought zucchini and eggplant have similar textures so I went with it and think it turned out just fine. For the meat, ground beef or buffalo was the recommended meat but I had bought some ground lamb that I needed to use up so I used that. I also used a different brand of tomato puree than what was recommended in the recipe but I don't really count that as a substitute. I'm not sure why they specify brands. I just got the only organic puree I could find at PCC.

The enchiladas ended up getting a little crispy on top while in the oven so I spooned over some of the extra sauce that was in the side of the pan to soften them up a bit and that seemed to do the trick. After al the sauce and filling on the tortillas they broke easily while trying to get them out of the pan which also happens with regular corn tortillas but not as much as these. They tasted good though and that's the important thing.

Gluten Free Baking

2011-08-22T20:36:00.000-07:00

I've been on a baking kick lately since it's been a while since I've baked anything. There are quite a few baked goods recipes in the Allergy and Candida Cooking Cookbook. I made two of them last Thursday.

I liked how well the buckwheat muffins came out, I decided to try a different muffin recipe from the cookbook. This time I went with quinoa applesauce muffins. I made some more quinoa flour for the recipe. The batter was a lot more stiff than the buckwheat muffins. They didn't seem to rise as much as the others. I couldn't really taste the applesauce in them and they turned out a little dry. I ate a couple of them and put the rest in the freezer. I plan on bringing some to work in the morning and see how well they hold up after being frozen.

My zucchini plants are going crazy again this year. My yellow zucchini plant is producing a lot more than the green one for some reason. This is my first year planting the yellow variety. I think it is a lot prettier but I can't really taste the difference. Since I have so much of it I decided to look for a zucchini recipe and came across zucchini amaranth cookies. These cookies also have kiwi puree in them. Besides the oil this was the only other liquid ingredient unless you count the zucchini which does have a lot of moisture in it. I ended up baking this for longer than called for because they just didn't seem to want to get done in the middle even though the outside was pretty browned. I had a couple while they were warm and they tasted ok and the inside still didn't seem to be completely done. They are a little hard since I had cooked them so long. I wouldn't call this a great recipe but I didn't expect too much from a sugar free cookie. It is good enough for a snack.

Heavy Metal Detox

2011-08-17T18:18:00.000-07:00

There are lots of different ways to rid your body of heavy metals. Probably the most popular method is eating cilantro in the form of a pesto. I did one of these a few years ago and decided I should do another one due to having a silver filling removed. There's a big debate going on about silver fillings and if they really are bad for you or not and I'd rather be safe than sorry so I decided to have the only one I had removed by a wholistic dentist in Bellevue. The word is regular dentists don't take the necessary precautions when removing silver fillings, also known as amalgams. Wholistic dentists give you oxygen during the procedure and they too wear masks so they don't inhale any of the mercury vapors that are released.

One thing that surprised me by this particular dentist is no dental dam was used when they removed it which seems to me like a no no because fragments could easily have been swallowed while they were drilling it out. Even my regular dentists at least does that when working on fillings so I'm not sure I would recommend this particular dentist for that. The only reason I picked this one is because it was only one of two wholistic (mercury safe) dentists I could find near me that my insurance covered and he had pretty good reviews on Yelp.

There have been studies done showing mercury gases are released from these fillings. This is one video I came across that talks about one such study: Smoking Teeth = Poison Gas There's no doubt it happens the real debate is whether or not it's bad for you. They also did animal testing by giving sheep and monkeys silver fillings and found that their kidney function decreased and other problems were found. Watching it is enough to make you want to get them removed.

So to get rid of all that mercury and any other metals that might be in my system is a priority now that I'm done with my Ultimate Colon Cleanse which went pretty well. I was able to get rid of a lot of gunk that's been sitting in my intestines for who knows how long. I've decided to continue drinking fiber shakes in the mornings just to keep me regular. Enough about that, let's get back to the subject. This time for my heavy metal cleanse I've again decided to eat a couple of tsps of cilantro pesto twice a day but in addition to that I'm also taking Zeoforce Zeolite Powder for some extra detoxing power. Zeolite is a clay, kind of like Bentonite. It doesn't really have a taste but the smell is awful. I try not to breath while I'm drinking it mixed with water. In the mornings I blend it in with my smoothie so it's not so bad but when I take it in the evening it's just mixed with water. It's hard to describe. I've been taking 2 heaping tbsp's of it twice a day. You can also add it to your bath water for detoxifying or create a face mask with it. I've used bentonite clay in my bath water a few times but haven't tried it with this stuff. I haven't tried using either as a face mask yet but I was planning on it.

Below is the recipe I used for my cilantro pesto and is the same recipe I used before. I used flax seed last time and this time decided to use olive oil. You can modify it to your liking. I used 3 bunches of cilantro. Several people wondered how I was able to remove the stems from so much cilantro. I used to do it the hard way, pulling the leaves off each stem one by one. There was no way I was going to do that with 3 bunches of cilantro. So I basically did 2 or 3 chops of the cilantro starting at the leafy end going down to near where the leaves stopped then I sifted through what I chopped off and picked out any large loose stems and picked out some of the larger stems and pulled the leaves off. It didn't really take that long doing it that way. I probably blended up a few stems but a few didn't hurt any. I may do a video of how I do it next time I make some.

Ingredients:

4 cloves garlic

1/4 cup raw Brazil nuts (selenium)

1/4 cup raw sunflower seeds (cysteine)

1/4 cup raw pumpkin seeds (zinc, magnesium)

2 cups packed fresh organic cilantro, stems removed (coriander, Chinese parsley) (vitamin A)

2/3 cup flaxseed or olive oil (cold-pressed)

4 tablespoons lemon juice (vitamin C)

Directions:

Add all ingredients to blender or food processor add additional oil or some water to thin if needed.

As you can see from the photo below, I don't always just eat the pesto by the spoonful, I will occasionally mix it with some pasta or with chicken. The other night I mixed it in with some chopped chicken breast and brown rice fusilli pasta.

Easy Chicken Soup

2011-08-16T19:40:00.000-07:00

I decided to make one more recipe from the Allergy & Candida Cooking Made Easy cookbook's poultry section before moving on to the next section. As the title entails it was an easy recipe, something you can just throw in a crock pot for 4 hours.

Again, the recipe didn't specify what type of chicken pieces to use so I decided to use boneless chicken thighs this time. The recipe gave an option of making this a soup or not and I decided to do the soup option so I cut the chicken up into bite sized pieces rather than leaving them whole. I had some cabbage and celery from my Full Circle box to use so that was another reason I chose to make this recipe. There aren't too many ingredients in this recipe. I think it could have been even better if there were some herbs added to it, but it wasn't a bad meal. I served it with a green salad and some red and white quinoa. It was the first time I mixed the red and white quinoa together. It turned out rather pretty.

Radish and Carrot Salad

2011-08-11T20:00:00.000-07:00

This salad turned out better than I thought it would. I received some purple radishes in my Full Circle box last week. I usually just slice them and put them on a salad but thought I would do something a little different this time by making the radish the star of the salad. This salad has a lot of crunch and as you can see, very colorful. The best part is that it's so easy to make, especially if you have a mandoline. I have one of these Japanese Mandolines. I have to admit I don't use it that often since I don't usually slice large amounts of things but if you occasionally have a lot of slicing to do it is well worth having one. I sliced the carrots, radishes and shallot with it and it took no time at all.

Ingredients:

1 bunch of baby carrots, sliced

1 bunch of large radishes, sliced

1 small shallot, diced

1 lime

1 Tbsp olive or your fav oil (I used hemp oil)

1 tsp salt

1/4 cup cilantro, chopped

Directions:

Add sliced carrots, radishes and diced shallot to a medium sized bowl and set aside. Zest and juice the lime and add to a small bowl with the oil and salt. Wisk until well combined. Pour the lime mixture over the carrots, radishes and shallot and toss until well coated. Stir in the cilantro and chill in fridge to let the flavors meld for at least 15 minutes.

It's best eaten within a few hours of making. The longer it sits the more juice will drain out of the vegetables and you will end up with a puddle of juice at the bottom of the bowl.

Oven Fried Chicken

2011-08-10T18:38:00.000-07:00

This dish looks a lot better than it tasted. It's another recipe from the Allergy & Candida Cooking Made Easy cookbook. I should have known it wouldn't be that tasty looking at the ingredients. Maybe it was my choice of using breast for it. It didn't really say which chicken pieces to use it only said 8 pieces of chicken with skin removed. I made 3 breasts and coated them with brown rice flour, salt and cumin as directed and baked in the oven. It says something about it being crispier on all sides if you cook it on a wire rack. Well there was no crispiness at all and I don't see how there could be given how it was prepared. It was a bit dry and just didn't have any taste. The star of the meal was actually the salad which warrants a blog post of it's own.

I had one breast leftover and chopped it up the next day and tossed it with some cooked pasta and garlic scape pesto and it was much better. All it needed was a little sauce, something to give it some taste.

Table 219 Restaurant

2011-08-06T12:26:00.000-07:00

This was my first time at Table 219 on Broadway on Capitol Hill in Seattle. I haven't been out to many restaurants lately due to my candida diet. We needed to find a healthy place to eat before going to Jeremy "Ogalthorpe"'s going away party.

I did some googling for organic restaurants in Seattle and came across this page on Urbanspoon for The Best Organic Restaurants in Seattle. I've been an Urbanspoon contributor for a while and now prefer it over Yelp. I recognized a few of the restaurants in this top 10 list. Most of which I knew were very expensive and wasn't what I was looking for. A few I didn't know much about and looked at their websites for menus and more info. When I came to Table 219's menu I knew this was the place for us. The prices were reasonable (entrees between $12-15) and the menu wasn't huge but looked good and healthy. The menu also indicated which foods were gluten free. Though I'm not gluten free I am limiting my gluten intake as part of my candida diet.

We made reservations and showed up a little early. It was a nice day and decided to eat outside for the best light for taking photos. They brought out a small bowl of truffle popcorn which I couldn't eat so Mark got to have it all to himself.

It wasn't difficult to choose what to order. It was between the salmon and steak dishes so we got both of those and shared. I ordered the steak medium but it seemed closer to medium-well to us. Medium-well is actually what I normally order so it was fine with me. It was nice and tender. It was served with stuffed potatoes and bone marrow butter. The stuffed potatoes were creatively in the shape of a piece of bone. The potatoes had a little bit of crunch to it. The salmon dish was served over swiss chard and a purple potato puree. The potato puree seemed more like a mashed potato than a puree but it was great. I'm not sure I've ever had purple potatoes before. I haven't really eaten many potatoes since being on this candida diet and potatoes are one of my fav foods so it was a treat to have them two ways. The salmon however was just a little overcooked but I still enjoyed it. I would order either dish again.

During our meal we were interrupted by a drunk guy that wanted to tell us some stories. It wasn't long before our waiter came out and shooed him away. Overall it was a great meal, the prices were reasonable and the service was outstanding. I would recommend it if you haven't tried it.

Quinoa Tortillas

2011-08-03T20:14:00.000-07:00

This was another recipe from the Allergy and Candida Cooking Made Easy cookbook. The cookbook provides a recipe table with a variety of different flours you can use and different types of oils. I chose to go with quinoa and sesame oil. While looking at the different flours I noticed quinoa flour is quite a bit pricier than the other flours so I didn't buy any. Instead I decided to make my own quinoa flour using whole quinoa grains I already had. This was my first time making flour from whole grains and it was pretty simple. 1 cup of grain is supposed to yield 3/4 cup of flour but for some reason I'm sure I used 1 cup of grain and ended up with 1.5 cups of flour.

How to make quinoa flour:

Rinse quinoa in cold water until water runs clear. I've noticed even pre-washes quinoa may have some dirt and grit in it so I always wash it first.
Toast quinoa in pre-heated non stick pan (I used a cast iron pan) until quinoa starts to brown and pop.
Set aside toasted quinoa to cool.
Put quinoa in blender, coffee grinder or food processor. Turn on to highest speed and grind until flour consistency. I have a Blendtec blender and use a full cycle on speed 9 which is 50 seconds

Once the flour is made it doesn't take much to make the tortilla's. It's just a combination of water, oil, flour and salt. A couple of the recipes used guar gum as well, depending on the flour used. Seems simple enough right? I thought so but the cookbook goes on and on for 6 pages about tortillas giving all kinds of tips for mixing, kneading, rolling, cooking and cooling and other things. I honestly didn't read all that stuff since I'm pretty familiar with the art of tortilla making.

Unfortunately the tortillas didn't turn out all that pretty and were a little tough and didn't roll out very well. I'm thinking the dough may have been a little too dry. All the recipes in this cookbook make small portions. The tortilla recipes only make 4 tortillas so it was really only enough for 1 or 2 meals. Next time I'll probably just use my own judgement on the amounts and consistency of the dough the way my mom does it. I'll probably also try one of the other flours.

Green Smoothie

2011-08-02T19:01:00.001-07:00

Since I've been doing the Ultimate Colon Cleanse for the past couple of weeks, I have been drinking fiber shakes every morning. If I'm lazy I will just mix the fiber with distilled water and 1/4 tsp of Vitamin C crystals. If I'm not lazy I'll get out the Blendtec and make a smoothie. I usually alternate between strawberry, blueberry, raspberry and green apple smoothies. With the candida diet there aren't very many fruits you can eat since they contain sugars. Berries are apparently ok and green apples supposedly have less sugar than other types.

I thought I'd share one of my favorite smoothie recipes that I make at least once a week or some variation of it. I have both chia seeds and flax seeds and will alternate between the two. I also have some stuff called Super Seed by Garden of Life that is a ground up mix of various high fiber seeds, sprouted grains and legumes. If you're not familiar with Sun Chlorella, it is a green algae superfood that helps to detoxify your body. I'm not too fond of the taste of it but it's not so bad when mixed with a smoothie like this.

Ingredients:

16 oz water

3 Tbsp yogurt

1 Tbsp flax seeds

1 green apple, cored and cut into chunks

1 packet Sun Chlorella

1/2 tsp Vitamin C Crystals

Instructions:

Add ingredients to a blender and blend until smooth.

Makes 2 servings of smoothies

Stuffed Collard Greens

2011-08-01T20:33:00.000-07:00

Full Circle has been blogging some great recipes lately. This is the second one I've tried in the past week and it was good enough that I had to blog about it too.

I'm always looking for different recipes to try with my Full Circle greens and this one looked too good to pass up. Michelle, the author of Daily Waffle, had her recipe reposted on Full Circle's blog for Cajun Inspired Stuffed Collard Rolls. Her recipe was inspired by Sunny Anderson's Pork-Stuffed Collard Greens recipe. I gotta say Michelle's version of these rolls looked much more appetizing than Sunny's based on the photo. So, I figured I'd continue the chain and share my own version of this recipe. I pretty much followed Michelle's recipe and didn't even look at Sunny's but I swapped out a few ingredients and omitted some and I couldn't have been happier with the results.

My changes to Michelle's recipe inclue using brown rice instead of white (I guess she doesn't really say what type of rice but I assumed white), using ground turkey rather than pork and omitting the tomato and cider vinegar. I also increased the amounts of collard greens, bell pepper, garlic, cayenne, thyme, rice and broth which produced 9 rolls instead of 6 with some stuffing left over which I put in the freezer.

Ingredients:

1 bunch of collard greens (I used 9 leaves)

4 strips of bacon, chopped

1 lb ground turkey

1 red bell pepper, diced

1/2 medium onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

1 tsp dried thyme

1 tsp sweet paprika

1 c cooked brown rice

salt & pepper

3/4 c chicken broth

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 375F. Rinse collard greens and remove stems. Blanch the leaves in lightly salted boiling water for 2-3 minutes until softened. Drain and cover with cold water and ice to stop them from cooking.

In a large skillet, render the bacon over low-medium heat. Add the peppers, onion and garlic and saute until softened. With a slotted spoon, transfer mixture to a bowl and set aside.

In the same pan, brown the ground turkey over medium heat. Drain off excess fat. Add back the bacon and pepper mixture. Mix in cayenne, thyme, paprika and rice and cook for 5-7 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Depending on the size of your collards, put 1/2 to 3/4 cup of filling near the top of the leaf, tuck in the sides and roll it like a burrito. set the rolls into a baking dish, seam side down. Repeat until all collard leaves are filled.

Add 3/4 cup chicken broth to the baking dish and cover with foil. Bake for 30 minutes.

Raw Kale and Strawberry Salad

2011-07-27T21:41:00.001-07:00

I've been eating a lot of kale lately. It's so good for you! I was looking for something different to try and came across this recipe for Raw Kale and Strawberry Salad on Full Circle's blog. I usually cook my kale but this recipe was for raw kale so thought I would give it a try. The recipe calls for red and green kale but I only had one bunch of red on hand so that is what I used and I halved the recipe. It made a few servings so I put the rest in the fridge and took it to work for lunch the next day. The kale seemed fine but the strawberries started to get a little mushy so this salad doesn't work too well for leftovers.

I used my strawberry corer on the strawberries. This isn't a tool I probably would have ever thought about buying but I got it in my swag bag from IFBC (International Food Blogger Conference) last year. I rarely use it, it just seems like it's not worth the trouble for a couple of strawberries but since I had a lot of strawberries to do it saved a lot of time. Below is the recipe I used which is halved from the recipe on Full Circle's blog linked above.

Ingredients:
1 bunch red kale
1 large lemon
½ tsp salt
½ tsp fresh ground black pepper
2 tbsp olive oil
½ cup ripe strawberries, sliced
¼ cup toasted pumpkin seeds

Directions:
Wash kale and remove stems and cut into bite sized pieces.

Squeeze the juice of the lemon over the kale, add the salt and, with clean hands, massage the kale until it just begins to break down and become tender, about 2 minutes (this process helps break down the starches in the kale that can be a bit tough and harder to digest).

Add the pepper, olive oil, strawberries and toasted pumpkin seeds. Toss to combine and serve immediately.

Blueberry Buckwheat Muffins

2011-07-26T19:27:00.000-07:00

More baking was done this weekend even though it was in the 80's. I made blueberry buckwheat muffins from the Allergy and Candida Cooking Made Easy. These muffins are dairy free, egg free, gluten free and oh sugar free too. They don't get any healthier than that.

Some of the other recipes in the cookbook called for eggs but not this one. I was a little worried about the outcome given the ingredients. My first thought was that they would be dense and dry.

I followed the directions exactly with the exception of the oil. It called for safflower oil but I substituted sesame oil since I didn't have any safflower. Some of the other recipes used sesame oil so I hoped that the substitution would be ok. The batter was very dark, almost black.

I put them in the oven on convection and checked them after 20 minutes. I noticed they all cracked a bit on the top but they did rise quite a bit. The cracking made me think they might be over cooked and dry. I let them cool for a few minutes before taking them out of the muffin tin which was no problem. I cut into one while it was still warm and slathered some coconut butter on it and it was actually moist and pretty tasty. I ate another and had to stop myself from eating more.

I made a dozen so I put the rest of them in the freezer. The test would be how they taste after being frozen. I brought a couple of frozen muffins to work and just let them thaw at room temperature. By the time I was ready for a snack they were thawed. I again smothered them with coconut butter and again was surprised they weren't dry. The cookbook recommends thawing in the microwave but I haven't tried that yet. Thawing at room temperature seemed to work pretty well.

Amaranth Crackers

2011-07-19T19:06:00.001-07:00

I've always wanted to try making crackers so was excited to see several different cracker recipes in the Allergy & Candida Cooking Made Easy cookbook. On the candida diet you are supposed to stay away from white flour so there are a lot of recipes using alternative flours. Some say on the candida diet you shouldn't have any gluten but I have found several recipes that contain kamut and/or spelt which are glutenous. From what I've found, there is quite an array of gluten free flours options: almond, amaranth, arrowroot, barley, brown rice, buckwheat, chestnut, chickpea, coconut, corn, garbanzo bean, guar gum, millet, oat, potato, quinoa, rye, sorghum, soy, tapioca, teff, white rice and xanthan gum.

So far I have purchased amaranth, arrowroot, buckwheat, guar gum, oat and tapioca flours. I haven't used them all yet. I've also purchased whole buckwheat, guar gum, oat, quinoa and teff to make hot cereal for breakfast but I could make flour out of them using a blender and probably will make some eventually. I've also got kamut but I'm not eating that one very often since it is gluten.

For this cracker recipe amaranth and arrowroot flours are used as well as ground up sunflower seeds. I thought my first attempt at making crackers went pretty well. It's the first thing I've baked since going on this diet so I was excited to have something to snack on besides fresh nuts, seeds and vegetables.

The only problem I had with the recipe is rolling out the dough on the baking sheet. My rolling pin has handles that get caught on the sides of the baking sheet so I couldn't use it to roll out the sides. Instead I used a glass jar to get the sides. Next time I think I will roll it out on a Silpat first and then put it on the sheet. I might also roll it out a little thinner next time. I've already got a recipe picked out for next week and I'll be doing some more baking, this time with buckwheat flour and guar gum.

Daily Routine

2011-07-14T21:47:00.000-07:00

I've made it 2 weeks so far on this candida diet and it's been 7 weeks since I've had wine or any kind of alcohol. I'm not sure how long I'll need to stay on this diet. I have seen some improvements since I eliminated all processed foods and coffee 3 weeks ago. I think though what has made the biggest difference is when I started drinking more water every day. Since then I've started having more energy and waking up in the morning not feeling like a zombie. I'm sure the diet and other things I'm taking have also helped.

I started the Ulitimate Colon Cleanse program this week which also includes a parasite cleanse. It lasts 30 days and looks to be a pretty easy program. I drink a fiber shake in the mornings, take 2 parasite pills, a probiotic which I was already taking and drink some tea before bed. I'm also taking other vitamins and supplements throughout the day. It's so much to remember that I have had to create a schedule so I don't forget to take something.

This is what my day currently looks like and will continue for the next 28 days.
5:00 Antigens + B12
5:05 parasite pills + 8 oz water
5:25 Fiber Shake + enzyme + Vitamin C
7:00 Nystatin
8:00 hot cereal (alternating between brown rice, amaranth, buckwheat, 7 grain, oat) + enzyme + Vitamin D + 2 multivitamins
12:00 Nystatin
5:00 B12
5:30 Nystatin
6:00 Probiotic
6:30 Dinner + enzyme + Multivitamin + Biotin
8:30 Detox Tea
9:30 Sleep

I made an appointment with a mercury free/safe dentist in Bellevue to have my silver fillings removed since it is most likely leaching mercury into my system and could be another cause for candida. There are a couple of other things that are more likely to have caused it like the 15 years I was on birth control or the multiple antibiotics I took for recurring UTI's and all the prescriptions I tried for my dermatitis I'm sure didn't help. After having that removed I'll be doing a heavy metal detox though I'm not sure which it will be. The dentist has one they recommend and my doc wants to see me to discuss his recommendations.

It's been about 3 weeks now since I've used my prescription Protopic for my dermatitis which is pretty impressive considering I used to not be able to go more than 7 days without needing it to reduce the red, flaky itchiness. My dermatitis isn't completely gone but it is doing a bit better. I'm hoping it will be completely gone within the next month or two.

Candida Cookbook Project - Cream of Buckwheat

2011-07-10T10:45:00.000-07:00

I took a little break from my cookbook projects while I deal with some food allergy issues. I went through an elimination diet for 6 weeks, not being able to eat corn, soy, milk, yeast, tomato, potato, egg and rice. After the diet I found that corn tends to make me very tired after eating it but the others didn't seem to have much of an effect on me. So for now, I'll avoid eating corn for a few more weeks and then try it again to see if the reaction continues.

Towards the end of this diet I found out I have candida which is an overgrowth of yeast in my intestines so have started following a candida diet which is to avoid all sugar and yeast to starve the candida. I'm also taking prescription Nystatin. I've purchased 3 cookbooks online and was thinking of doing the project on The Candida Albican's Yeast Free Cookbook or Healthful Eating cookbook. Both cookbooks look pretty similar. I flipped through the pages and wasn't all that impressed with what I saw. Then I looked at the 3rd cookbook I got, Allergy & Candida Cooking Made Easy. It was the cookbook my doc recommended and I can see why. It is full of great information and really concentrates and encourages a rotational diet to avoid food sensitivities. It contains a lot of other helpful information and not just a list of recipes. It's not a very cheap cookbook though. It's currently $63 new on Amazon but I got my copy used for $40. I will go into more detail on some of the other info that's in this cookbook when I do my review after I finish the project.

For the first recipe I chose to do the Buckwheat Cereal II recipe. The recipe is no secret, just a combination of water and buckwheat. However, I added a few more ingredients to it to make it a little more interesting and tasty so I will share that with you all here. The cookbook provides both a stove top recipe as well as a slow cooker recipe. I followed the stove top recipe and doubled it to serve 2. It turned out too runny for my taste and ended up adding an additional tablespoon of buckwheat.

Ingredients:

2 1/2 Cups Water

1/2 Cup Unsweetened Almond Milk

1/4 tsp sea salt

7 Tbsp Buckwheat (ie. Bob's Red Mill)

1 packet of Stevia

1 scoop of Super Seed

handful of blueberries

Directions:

Bring water, almond milk and salt to a boil. Add buckwheat, stir and reduce heat to a simmer.
Cover and let simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally towards end of cooking time. Add more water if needed.
Stir in Stevia and Super Seed.
Serve in a bowl and top with blueberries.

Teff Porridge

2011-06-30T07:13:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've posted any food pics. After finishing up my last cookbook project I had to go on a crazy diet and just wasn't up for taking pics of the boring food I was eating. I've been doing a lot of shopping at PCC and Whole Foods lately. During my last visit to PCC I picked up some Teff grains. I didn't really know what they were but they sounded like something healthy that I could eat and I am up for trying new things.

After Googling Teff I found that teff is the smallest grain in the world and a staple grain in Ethiopia. It's used to make injera, a yeast-risen flatbread. I searched for some recipes to see what I could make with it. I found several recipes for porridge and polenta and they were all about the same. All it takes is a combination of teff grains and water and you have porridge. You can add other spices and things to give it more flavor. I added some cinnamon and topped it with blueberries.

Ingredients:
1 Cup teff grains
4 cups water
1 Tbsp cinnamon
handful of blueberries or other fruit

Toast the teff grains in a saucepan for a few minutes over medium heat. Add water and bring to a boil. Cover and reduce heat to simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. If too thick add more water until it reaches the desired consistency. Add cinnamon and top with berries.

This makes quite a bit so you can refrigerate the leftovers and reheat it later, just add more water before popping it in the microwave or reheating on the stove.

Candida Diet

2011-06-27T20:54:00.000-07:00

I went in for a doc appointment last week to go over the GI and blood test results I had done. They had called me requesting an appt to go over them and to discuss a treatment plan. It sounded to me that my test results may have shown something out of the ordinary if they wanted to discuss a treatment plan; I was right.

My copper and Vitamin D levels came back normal. However my GI test showed my intestines were inflamed due to high levels of yeast. Looking up the causes of this I wasn't too surprised. Antibiotics was one of the possible causes and a few years ago I had my fair share of them due to recurring bladder infections. I looked up the signs and symptoms of this type of yeast infection and it didn't sound like it was all that easy to diagnose and some doctors don't even acknowledge it. One thing this yeast does is breaks down your immune system and could cause you to start having food and chemical allergies. Other symptoms which I have had are fatigue, mood swings, acne, eczema, poor memory, sensitivity to chemicals. This would explain why I was testing positive for practically every food test I took even though I hardly ever eat some of the foods I tested for. They say the more you eat something the more likely you will develop an allergy to it yet I had allergies to foods I rarely eat.

So the treatment plan consists of:

1. anti-fungal cream
My doc seems to think that this may be causing my dermatitis and suggested I try an anti-fungal cream for it even though my previous doc checked my skin for fungus and didn't see any. My previous doc was also an idiot so I wouldn't trust anything he says. I looked online for some anti fungal cream and found Derma E - Tea Tree & E Antiseptic Creme so ordered some of that off Amazon and it should be here on Wednesday.

2. Nystatin powder
Nystatin is an antifungal drug taken with water a few times a day for several months. Starting with small doses for the first week and each week increasing the dosage a little. This should get rid of the yeast in my intestines. I should have my prescription on Tuesday.

3. Supplements - Probiotic and Multivitamins
I've been taking a probiotic already for several months and am almost out so I thought I would ask if they recommended any in particular. The one I was using was a non-refrigerated variety and the doc said the ones you keep refrigerated are generally better. I've also been taking Vitamin D but no multivitamin. He recommended I take a multivitamin and they sold both the probiotic and multivitamins there so I picked some up. The probiotic they gave me is Klaire Labs Ther-Biotic Complete and the multivitamin is Thorne Research Aspartate Formula Basic Nutrients I.

3. Candida Diet
The doc didn't really say I had to go on a candida diet but said I should be fine if I just avoid the sweets. Of course I did some research on yeast and Nystatin powder after my appointment and it sounds like a good idea that I go on one of these diets and it was also mentioned in a handout he gave me but didn't think it was necessary. I am planning on doing it anyway since the yeast feeds on certain foods and makes sense that those foods should be avoided to have the best chance of getting rid of it. The diet isn't as bad as the one I'm on now to avoid the 8 foods I tested positive for so I don't think it will be too bad. I've got another 2 weeks left of that diet. Looking forward mostly to eating eggs and cheese again.

Some of the foods I'll need to avoid are fruits (I guess citrus fruits are ok), cheeses aged for more than 6 months, preservatives, alcohol, caffeine, pre-cracked nuts, condiments, sugar, vinegar, glutinous foods. So what can I eat? Lots of organic vegetables and meats, herbs and spices, cold processed oils.

I've found http://www.thecandidadiet.com to be a really good resource. They have a nice list of foods to eat and not to eat on their site which is very helpful. I will try to stick to the diet as much as possible. I've already given up coffee and alcohol for several weeks so I think I can handle that for a few months. I've been trying out Teeccino's Herbal Coffee which is actually not too bad. I've also been trying for the past week to drink more water. I've always had problems with drinking enough water. It wasn't uncommon for me to go all day with just one glass of water or even less. I started drinking a minimum of 5 glasses a day last week and I don't know if that has helped or if something else has but the day after I started drinking more water I have had a bit more energy and don't feel as tired as usual. Today though I was a bit tired again and am thinking it may be due to the corn I had this morning for my elimination diet test.

So, hopefully in a few months I will be feeling better and can get this dermatitis and all these food allergies kicked to the curb and life will be back to normal or maybe even better than normal. This yeast issue has probably been going on for years and I just didn't know it and who knows how long I would have gone on before realizing there was an issue. In a way I guess it is a good thing I got dermatitis from epoxy or things may have gotten much worse.

Sulfite Sensitivity

2011-06-08T21:01:00.001-07:00

I've discovered within the last few weeks that red and even more so white wines may be one of the causes of my dermatitis. I had come to the conclusion that red wine might be causing me some trouble so decided to switch to a white wine which we normally don't drink much of to see if that was any better. Boy was that a mistake. The next morning full blown dermatitis back on my face and it was worse than ever. The right side of my face looked like a dry lake bed. I read there are more sulfites in white than red wine so that is the conclusion I have come to. I decided to take a break from our Friday night tradition of sharing a bottle of wine last weekend to see if the dermatitis would stay away. I made it through the weekend and things were looking promising until Monday morning a small dry patch appeared on my right cheek. *sigh* I had my hopes up that wine was the only thing causing this but it turns out not to be the case. By Tuesday my whole right side of my face was scaly, itchy and red. I've been putting on Protopic and after a couple days it's still slightly itchy but starting to get better. It should be completely gone by Friday. Time will tell if it comes back over the weekend. I'm trying to be really careful with what I eat.

It could be any number of things. Some possibilities is from the vinegar I used to marinate the chicken or that I put on the eggplant or my salad. I don't think vinegar has as much sulfites as wine but maybe it has enough to bother me. Another possibility is my SPF30 facial lotion which contains Sodium Cetearyl Sulfate which I did use on one occasion over the weekend or my face cleanser that contains Sodium Laureth Sulfate that I use on a daily basis or even my fragrance free shampoo/conditioner which contain Sodium Myreth Sulfate, or could it be my Colgate toothpaste that contains Sodium Lauryl Sulfate. The list goes on. There are sulfates and sulfites in almost everything. I bagged up every product I could find that I had with sulfates or sulfites in them and went to PCC and got all new stuff.

Once the dermatitis appears it usually takes about 5 days of using Protopic twice a day for it to disappear and I usually end up with huge zits as a result of using it. The dermatitis usually starts out as a small spot of dryness on my right cheek and within a day it spreads to my whole right side of my face and for the last few months it has become very itchy which it didn't used to before. It seems to be progressively getting worse each time I get it. My eyes also get dry and my eyelid also gets dry and scaly. I sometimes also get these little bubbles on the edge of my eyelid near my eyelashes. I used to get them for a long time but it was not often. It is much more often now. I get them on both of my eyes. Occasionally some dryness will appear on my left cheek but it typically is centralized to the right side which is the area I had contact with epoxy and is when this all started. I no longer have contact to epoxy so that contact must have triggered some other allergies or made my skin weak and sensitive to everything.

I don't know what to think about all the food allergies I was diagnosed with. I've been on an elimination diet for the past two weeks and haven't really seen any improvement in my health from it. I will be much happier when I can eat corn, soy, egg, dairy, rice, yeast, tomatoes and potatoes again in a few weeks. I need to really watch what I eat that has sulfites in it though and see if there is any improvement. That is going to be a hard one too because sulfites are in all kinds of foods. I found this extensive list of foods that are associated with sulfites. That site also has a recipe database which looks to be pretty neat. You can mark off what food allergies you have and it will show you recipes that don't contain those foods or will have some kind of mark next to it indicating it contains something you noted as being allergic to.

I have read that Vitamin B12 or Vitamin B Complex is helpful for some with sulfite sensitivities. One site I ran into suggested getting blood tested for serum copper because if it is high it could cause molybdenum levels to go down which may be responsible for sulfite sensitivity. I talked to my allergist about what I found online and they've sent me a request to get my blood tested for that. I needed to get blood drawn anyway to test my Vitamin D levels so will do them both. I still need to make an appointment for that. She said they could do Vitamin B injections which I guess are more efficient than the sublingual or pill form. I am not sure I want to stick myself with a needle every week so I'm going with the sublingual form which is still good but she wants me to get it in prescription form from a pharmacy so should be getting that soon. I'm crossing my fingers and toes that it will help.

Hopefully one day I will kick this thing in the butt and get some relief.

Adam's Bistro and Brewery

2011-05-19T18:38:00.000-07:00

I drive by the place multiple times a week and I never even noticed the old Sailfish restaurant was now Adam's Bistro. I only went to Sailfish once and wasn't all that impressed. I thought it was a little overpriced. Monroe isn't really known for it's "nice" restaurants. Sockeye is probably the only one, that is until Adam's opened.

We stopped at Adam's on the way home from a photo shoot a few weeks ago. I've been wanting to check it out ever since I saw an article about it online. The chef, Adam Hoffman, took over the building which was the Sailfish for as long as I've lived here. What caught my eye in the article was that he used to work with Thierry Rautureau, "The Chef in the Hat". I had met him during a Lou Manna photography workshop at Rovers in Seattle and was pretty impressed with it. He also competed in Top Chef Masters. Adam's impressive resume includes working at Figaro Bistro, Cafe Juanita and Mauro Golmarvi's Assaggio. He seems a little over-qualified for a restaurant in Monroe but maybe it's just what the town needs.

We arrived around 6:00 just in time for the dinner rush. Mark dropped me off before looking for parking just to see if they had room. I stepped in and they looked fairly busy but not a huge line of people waiting. It took a few minutes for someone to greet me. I asked about the wait and if reservations were required. He seemed a little overwhelmed and confused and finally said it would probably be a half hour. I said I'd be right back and went out to tell Mark what the situation was. We agreed to wait for a table so he went to park down the block and I walked back in. I wasn't seated more than a couple of minutes when he came back and said a table was ready. That was the quickest half hour I've ever seen. A few minutes later Mark walked in, surprised to see me sitting at a table. Apparently they weren't as busy as they thought. I saw at least a couple of tables still open. Maybe they had some reservation cancellations.

A basket of bread and butter arrived to our table, only three pieces though. We were pretty hungry and finished them off quickly but it wasn't long before another basket of bread arrived. The prices were pretty much what I had expected which is pricey for Monroe but typical for what you might find in Seattle for this type of restaurant. The entrees ranged from $12 burgers to a $20 roasted duck breast. They also have a variety of appetizers, soups and salads ranging from $6-9.

We ordered some drinks, a glass of wine for me and a beer for Mark. Mark couldn't decide what to get so I ordered for the both of us which I think confused the waitress. I decided on the fish of the day which was Alaskan King Salmon and lemon couscous with fennel and the roasted chicken with curry spiced farro and mushrooms. We shared the meals though I let Mark keep the mushrooms. It was all tasty, the salmon was cooked perfectly and the chicken tasted like it had been marinated for days. It had a lot of flavor all the way through. We took home leftovers and as usual didn't leave room for dessert.

We asked about a happy hour but they currently don't have one but may be starting one in the summer. I hear they have really good burgers there too so would like to go back again to give those a try.

Allergy Test Results

2011-05-19T17:14:00.001-07:00

I decided to create a separate blog post for my allergy test results rather than tacking them onto an already crazy long blog post on health issues I posted the other day. I've been tested for 9 foods and 29 other non-food tests.

FOOD RESULTS (5/16/11)
positive: corn, soy, dairy, egg
negative: wheat

FOOD RESULTS (5/23/11)
positive: rice, tomato, potato, bakers yeast
negative: none

POLLEN RESULTS (5/19/11)
postive: Alder and Atriplex X (pines)
negative: Coast Tree Mix, Coast Weed Mix, Coast Grass Mix, Inland Tree X, Inland Weed X, Inland Grass, Chenopodium X, Scotchbroom, Cedar

FUNGI RESULTS (5/19/11)
positive: Alternaria, Aspergillus, Hormodendrum, Penicillium, Pullaria, Trichophyton achoenleinii
negative: Curvularia, Mucor, Stachybotrys

OTHER RESULTS (5/19/11)
positive: House Dust, American Mite, European Mite, Claudosporium Fulvum, Cat, Dog, Cockroach
negative: Candida, Feather

I took a pic of my arm after the 2nd round of tests today. I was mostly allergic to mites and molds and not too much with pollen. She was most surprised that I wasn't allergic to Candida. I was given two vials of sublingual antigen to take on a daily basis for the mold/pollen allergies which is supposed to help relieve any symptoms I may be having from them. It's hard to tell if my dermatitis is due to food or one of these other allergies or something else altogether. I will be shopping for an air cleaner and dust/mite proof pillow and mattress covers. They say these are cyclic allergies and not fixed so hopefully in time I won't have them anymore.

Next steps are to eliminate all my food allergies from my diet for the next 3 weeks while taking antigen drops daily. After the three weeks I'll get to eat one of the foods I'm allergic to and see if there is any reaction to it. Every couple of days I'll try another food. With any luck I'll not have any reaction to them and I'll be able to keep eating them but if there is a bad reaction to any I'll have to remove it from my diet for a long period of time. Probably a couple of months. Only time will tell if this will eliminate my dermatitis issue.

I've already done a lot of work to take care of some of these allergies I have. I just bought a Honeywell air purifier from Costco today and I've ordered some mite proof pillow and mattres covers, new furnace filter, mold/mildew cleaner, de-mite for laundry so I don't have to use extra hot water to get rid of the mites, new shower curtain, and some cat/dog dander removal stuff. That should give me a good start on cleaning up some of the bad stuff.

Authentic Mexican Cookbook Review

2011-05-16T21:14:00.001-07:00

I've completed my Authentic Mexican Cookbook review project after 15 blog posts and 16 recipes, not counting sauces, condiments and marinades. I have to admit I'm pretty glad it's over. This project has been the most difficult of the cookbook projects I've done so far. The recipes weren't really hard but almost every one was very time consuming, taking many hours to prepare. I got this cookbook from my mom for Christmas which was on my Amazon wishlist. Her side of my family is Mexican so I dedicate this project to my mom. Maybe one day I will get a Danish or Scandinavian cookbook for my dad's side of the family.

I made at least one recipe from each category of the cookbook for the project. I didn't think I would have too much trouble finding ingredients since there are several Mexican stores nearby that I thought would have everything I might need. Unfortunately I was wrong. There were several peppers that were difficult to find, some of them being seasonal peppers that were no where to be found. He did a pretty good job at suggesting alternate ingredients but sometimes even the alternate ingredients couldn't be found. Google came in handy to look up a few things that I couldn't find to get some ideas of other things I could use as a substitute. There was one ingredient called ashoshoco leaves called for in the pozole recipe that I have no idea what it is and Google wasn't even helpful. I'm not sure if it's spelled wrong or what but I couldn't find any info on it.

I also found some of the recipes difficult to follow because they referenced other recipes in the cookbook in order to complete. Mainly for sauces and marinades but sometimes several steps within the recipe were referred to like in the mole rojo con pollo recipe which turned out to be most confusing because peanuts were used in the referred to recipe but almonds were in the ingredient list of the mole rojo con pollo recipe. I ended up not using peanuts or almonds in the dish because I wasn't sure where to use them since none of the instructions said to add the almonds. There were a couple of times where I completely forgot an ingredient, usually it was in the garnish so it wasn't too big of a deal. It's pretty easy to miss something when the recipe directions are so long. You really have to read through them a couple times before you even start to make sure you understand and are prepared for it.

I did find the Cook's notes sections of the recipes very helpful. There he lists some alternate ingredients as well as some ingredient descriptions. There are notes on the timing and how long the recipes take but I found the timing to be off. Most of the time they took longer than what was listed there so if you make any of these recipes make sure you start them early.

To summarize:

Pros:
Tasty food
"Cook's Notes" very helpful (timing, techniques, recipe variations, and more info on some ingredients)
alternate ingredients sometimes provided
Glossary of Mexican ingredients and equipment helpful

Cons:
time consuming and long recipes, easy to forget something
hard to find ingredients
recipes refer to other recipes
some pictures but could use more

Basic Meat Preparations, Flavorings and Broths - Chorizos, Carnes Saladas, Caldos y Recados
Tolucan Chile Flavored Sausage - Chorizo Toluqueno

Tortillas
Flour Tortillas
Corn Tortillas

Appetizers and Salads - Entremeses y Ensaladas
Shredded Beef Salad with Avocado and Chile Chipotle - Salpicon de Res Poblano

Light and Hearty Soups - Sopas, Caldos, Pozoles y Menudos
Pork, Chicken and Hominy soup with Ground Pumpkinseeds - Pozole Verde

Eggs - Huevos
Scrambled Eggs with Mexican Sausage - Huevos con Chorizo

Snacks Made of Corn Masa - Antojitos
Green Chile Enchiladas - Enchiladas Verdes
Nuevo Leon Style Tamales - Tamales Estilo Nuevo Leon

Moles - Moles
Rich Red Mole with Chicken - Mole Rojo con Pollo

Fish and Shellfish - Pescados y Mariscos
Cod Marinated in Mexican Adobo Sauce - Pescado Adobado en Hojas de Maiz

Poultry - Aves
Chicken Thighs with Vinegar, Oil and Aromatic Spices - Pollo en Escabeche
Grilled Chicken - Sinaloa Style - Pollo a las Brasas

Meat - Carnes
Pork Stuffed Chiles in Savory Tomato Sauce - Chiles Rellenos de Picadillo

Rice, Beans and Vegetables - Arroz, Frijoles y Verduras
Beans with Bacon, Roasted Chile and Fresh Coriander - Frijoles Charros

Desserts - Postres
Sweet Fresh Cheese Pie - Pay de Queso

Drinks - Bebidas
Tequila Lime Cocktail - Margarita

Tequila Lime Cocktail

2011-05-11T19:25:00.000-07:00

The last section of the Authentic Mexican Cookbook brings drinks (bebidas). I chose to make the most well known Mexican cocktail, a margarita.

Even the drinks in this cookbook are time consuming. It's a pretty simple recipe but it does take 2 hours to make. It takes time to make the lime base and zesting a bunch of limes. I got Mark to help me with that job.

I'm not sure if it's traditional to put egg white in a margarita. I can't recall ever having had one like that before. It was listed as an optional ingredient but I went ahead and used one anyway and we didn't die. I've had drinks with egg white in them before, well maybe one. A pisco sour, a traditional Peruvian cocktail has egg white in it which I had many times while traveling through Peru and also had one at Zig Zag, a local Seattle bar. The foam on top of the margarita reminded me a lot of a pisco sour.

Dermatitis and Allergies

2011-05-05T21:57:00.000-07:00

I debated whether or not to post this on my blog but decided to do it in case someone might have some answers or maybe it will help others and venting on here might make me feel better. I'll also use it to keep track of my progress and will be updating it.

This all started in September of 2009. The symptoms seemed to start shortly after Mark and I epoxied my garage floor. I got a bit of it on my arms and face but didn't think too much of it. After wiping it off I was left with a small red mark where the epoxy was and it seemed to disappear after a few hours. A few days later I noticed a dry scaly spot, kinda like a sun burn peeling, on my right cheek around where the epoxy was, but my arms seemed fine. I put moisturizer on a couple times a day but it wasn't going away.

After a couple of months I decided I should probably see a dermatologist to get a prescription for it so I go to yelp and search for the best rated dermatologist in the area and went to see them. Saw them a few times and tried a few different prescriptions but nothing was working. Some of them would get rid of it but it would just come back as soon as I stopped using them. My last visit to them I found out the person I normally see no longer worked there and she left to start her own business so I saw someone else and they referred me to another dermatologist that specializes in contact dermatology.

So off I go to see the new dermatologist at the Polyclinic which is not convenient for me to get to and paying for parking sucked. They gave me an allergy patch test on about 30 different chemicals which was not a fun thing to do. I had to spend a week with patches and tape all over my back. This was in November, 2010. After getting the patches taken off I had to come back in a few days later to see if there was any reactions. However on the day of my appointment it decided to snow and I couldn't make my appointment and ended up taking a picture of my back myself and sending it to the doc. I waited patiently for weeks for a phone call with the results and never got one. I ended up having to call them twice before I got an answer saying I'm not allergic to anything. I thought for sure I would have come up allergic to epoxy. In the photos I noticed two light spots that I thought might be possible allergies but they said I had none. I am not convinced.

After the failed allergy test I decided I was tired of trying different prescriptions and wanted answers so I got a biopsy done. The results were kinda scary actually. They showed signs of Discoid Lupus (DLE) which the doc said would explain why the other medications weren't working. I did a lot of Googling on it and it didn't sound too good but I was glad to finally have some answers. So I got a new prescription for Protopic that is apparently stronger than the previous medications I used and I used it for an entire month. After a couple of days of stopping I saw the doc on 4/18 and things seemed to clear up. I also had a blood test done during this visit to confirm if Lupus was the culprit. They said it's only a 10-15% chance it would come out positive. I got a call back with the results that Friday and it ended up being negative so apparently I don't have lupus. I guess that's good news. The symptoms still hadn't returned so things were still looking good for Protopic.

I was just thinking I was in the clear because previous medications cleared it up and after a few days of not using them it came right back. It had been 6 days and still no symptoms. Day 7 my face started itching and getting red. For the first time, I even started seeing some drying/flaking skin on my left cheek. Ugh! The itching was probably the worst it's been and had never really had a problem with itching before, it was just the dry/scaliness I was dealing with so things have not improved and have only gotten worse. I haven't even been able to use foundation or any makeup on my right side since this started. The affected area has grown significantly over time as well. I've also started getting scaliness on my eye lid and just under my eye.

I was so bummed it had returned. I started using the Protopic again just to get the itching to stop. I called my dermatologist first thing Monday morning and had to leave a message, hoping for a new prescription. I don't think he has ever actually called me himself. He always has his assistant call me. She called me back late Monday afternoon just before I was leaving work and said the doc told me to use the Protopic again to clear it up, as needed. That's it? No new prescription? no additional appointments? I tried to explain to her that I used the stuff for a month and it's not fixing it up and that I was hoping to get a different prescription that might work. So she said she would have to talk to the doc and call me back. I get a call back while in my vanpool heading home and she basically said the same thing, to keep taking the Protopic as needed and to start using it on the other side of my cheek since I started having symptoms there. She said there wasn't anything stronger that they could prescribe. Really? Is stronger what I asked for? It's obvious this stuff isn't working if it's starting to spread to the other side of my face while using it you think?

Besides the Protopic I've also tried Mometasone Furoate Cream, Tetrix/CeraVe, Elidel, and Hydrocortisone Butyrate. There's got to be something out there that will get rid of this permanently. I can't keep taking Protopic. It's not meant for long term use from what I have read. So this guy basically gave up on finding a solution to my problem.

A friend suggested I search for an environmental illness doctor so I Googled for one of those and found someone near where I work so I might give them a call to see if they have any suggestions. I haven't been too happy with my dermatologist's recommendations or their customer service or the inconvenience of going to appointments there. It would be nice to have a doc closer to work.

My search for an environmental illness doctor closer to work came up with Dr. Buscher in Redmond which is a mere mile from where I work. How convenient!

5/5/11 - My first appointment with Dr. Buscher lasted a little over an hour. The only thing with this place is they do not submit any insurance paperwork. That is something I will have to take care of myself. I'm hoping insurance will cover it. I sent in my first claim form last week so we'll see what happens. He asked lots of questions, lots more than the dermatologist. He decided the next step would be for some additional allergy testing for foods, pollen and molds. At least I was able to do that from home and mail in the specimen. I didn't think I was allergic to anything like that but made appointments to take the tests anyway to rule that out. He also wanted me to do a GI test which I won't go into detail on what that involves. He noticed a coating on my tongue and thought there may be issues there. So I sent that stuff in on Monday. Not sure how long it will take to get the results back from that.

5/16/11 - I went in for the first half of my food allergy tests. The results of those tests were pretty surprising to me and a little surprising to the person doing them too. I ended up showing allergic reactions to soy, corn, dairy and egg but negative to wheat. She found it odd that wheat was not an issue as that one seems more common than the others. Of the allergies I have soy was the most mild. I was thinking I would have to stop eating all of that stuff but these appear to be cyclical allergies and not fixed allergies. I didn't know the difference so have been doing a lot of reading on food allergies. Fixed allergies you basically have for life and can never eat them. Cyclical allergies you only have to stop eating for a minimum of 3 weeks and then after that time reintroduce them into your diet and check for reactions. If no reaction you can continue to eat them but if there is you should stop eating it for 3 months or so and then try again and just keep doing that until you are able to eat them again. There should be a time where you may be able to eat them without side effects.

This place is strictly a fragrance free place you can't wear any fragrance into the office at all that includes using fragrance free everything; hair products, deodorant, clothing detergent, etc. I mentioned some of my history to the food tester and also mentioned that I made soaps/lotions with fragrances and have been doing that since the summer of 2006. She seemed to think it was likely that could be the cause of my issues as I used to keep all my fragrances in the living room. I've since moved them all in the garage and threw out most of my fragrance oils and have only kept the essential oils. It's possible the cause of the dermatitis started with the epoxy contact and either the fragrances and/or food allergies have prolonged it and are not allowing it to heal. Or the continued contact with the fragrances may also have caused the food allergies. They said I neutralize quickly between injections of food they tested which I guess is a sign that I haven't had the allergies for very long and is also a good sign.

They didn't do a great job of explaining how they were going to do the food testing but after the first 4 I pretty much figured it out. They don't tell you which foods they are testing you on till after the test is done. They use glycerine based injections and first test is a baseline to see what kind of reaction I have to just glycerine. Then they inject the food into the skin and wait 10 minutes and record the result of the reaction then I get an injection of something that neutralizes it to bring down the reaction wait 10 minutes and then move on two the next food. So I did 5 foods Monday morning and am supposed to do 4 more next Monday but am not sure which ones they will be testing. yeast for sure but not sure about the others. I was going to give them a call to ask since I am supposed to eat those foods before the test.

Also during the testing she read off a list of possible side affects from food allergies. I was very surprised by the long list of possible symptoms. I had no idea there were so many. When I think of food allergy symptoms I always think of hives, puffy face, itchy/tight throat which are symptoms of fixed allergies but not really for cyclic allergies. I do actually get a tight throat when I sometimes eat certain foods. Something in some baked goods and pancakes seem to cause that but I haven't figured out what it is. There is also certain Italian dishes that make me nauseous, usually Olive Garden does that to me so I try to avoid that place. I'm not sure what it is, maybe a certain type of cheese. Cyclic allergies however are more delayed and not usually an instant reaction. It could take up to 72 hours for a reaction. But those symptoms could range from depression, asthma, gas, migraines, memory impairment, the list goes on and on.

5/17/11 - Found out I have what is called Catathrenia. It's a sleep disorder I've suffered with since high school. It doesn't really have any affect on me but does affect the sleep of anyone that sleeps near me. I don't even realize I'm doing it. I've been to sleep doctors and they just say I have mild sleep apnea and prescribed a CPAP but I didn't find that it really helped much so I didn't use it for much more than a year. I had Googled before about my sleep moaning problems but never really came up with much info on it. I moan like a motorcycle for an extended period of time (15-20 seconds) during each exhale and I do this every night, actually I think it usually occurs early morning. It turns out it is a pretty rare disorder but probably more people out there have it than they realized. It wasn't even given a name until 1983. I just happened to come across on article on CNN last night titled "Get Some Sleep: Groaning at night, and not the sexy kind". It caught my attention right away and so I read on and found it described my symptoms to the T. It is so rare apparently my sleep doctor had never heard of it. Unfortunately there's not really any known cures or treatment for it yet but I have found there are support groups for it. It helps to know I'm not the only one suffering from this strange disorder. It's nothing new for me as I've been dealing with it for the past 20 years.

I've created a new blog post with more details on my allergy test results.

Pay de Queso

2011-04-26T19:10:00.000-07:00

Pay de Queso is basically a Mexican cheesecake. Rick Bayless refers to it as a "Sweet Fresh-Cheese Pie" in his Authentic Mexican Cookbook. I always thought a cheesecake closer resembles a pie than a cake anyway.

I've never had Mexican cheesecake before so I'm not sure what makes it Mexican. I can say that in this particular recipe, the texture is the biggest difference to traditional cheesecakes I've had. It has an airy almost foamy texture which is created from the whipped egg whites that are folded into the batter just before baking. I discovered a large KitchenAid stand mixer is not the best way to beat two egg whites. I had it running for several minutes without making much progress. The wisk just doesn't get down far enough into the bowl to whip them very well. I ended up getting out my hand mixer to do the egg whipping. It didn't take long to get some nice stiff peaks formed. I did have a little trouble folding the egg whites into the batter because the whites were so stiff and the batter was so thin. I had to fold it in longer than I think should have been to get out all the egg white lumps. it didn't seem to affect the outcome of the pie though.

The other main difference besides texture was the type of cheese used. Traditionally cheesecake is made with cream cheese. A mild goat cheese or German Quark were a couple of the recommended cheeses to use. I had never heard of Quark cheese and wasn't sure how easy it would be to find. I figured my best bet would be Whole Foods. I figure if they didn't have Quark, I should at least be able to find a mild goat cheese. They just happened to have Quark though it wasn't imported from Germany, it was made in Vermont. It was around $4 for 8 ounces of it, much more expensive than cream cheese.

The crust for the pie was a little unusual. It was simply food processed white bread and sugar pressed into the bottom of a pie pan. So it wasn't really a very crispy crust like most pie crusts but it still worked and was a little surprised it came out as good as it did.

There aren't a lot of spices in this cheese pie recipe and no berries or sauces on it like you would normally find on a cheesecake. I had few strawberries in the fridge I was tempted to put on top but decided to stick with the recipe and not add anything to it. Vanilla and cinnamon were pretty much all that flavored this pie. Even though there weren't a lot of ingredients/flavors in the pie, it worked and I didn't even miss the berries.

I did look at a few Pay de Queso recipes online to see if I could find any similarities and they all were pretty different. They didn't all use the same crust or all use the same cheese or all use whipped egg whites. Maybe this is a more traditional or authentic version of Mexican cheese pie.

Pollo a las Brasas y Frijoles Charros

2011-04-19T18:49:00.000-07:00

I had originally planned on just making the Frijoles Charros (beans with bacon and roasted chiles) but I wasn't sure what to make with them since it's more a side dish than main dish so I looked through Authentic Mexican for another recipe that didn't look too time consuming to go with it. I came across the recipe for Pollo a las Brasas, Estilo Sinaloense (Grilled Chicken, Sinaloa Style). It actually wasn't too hard to find, it was actually suggested as a "perfect Match" in the beans recipe and it looked pretty simple so I went with it.

I started on the chicken first, making the orange juice marinade using fresh orange juice. I used my new juicer attachment for my KitchenAid Mixer. The recipe called for 1 1/3 Cups of juice and it took about 5 oranges to get that amount. I had a little leftover which I served over ice to Mark after I had a taste. I blended the juice with lots of garlic and some other spices in the new Blendtec and coated the chicken I quartered myself with my new cleaver. I decided to get a cleaver for butchering chickens because I didn't want to ruin my Shun knives. I got the cleaver at Bed Bath & Beyond for $45 minus 20% with the coupon I had. I guess I've been getting a lot of new kitchen gadgets lately. At least I am putting them to use!

While the chicken was marinating I got the beans soaking in water. I've been meaning to make some beans for a while. I even had a bag in my cabinet. However I had them so long that I'm pretty sure they were no longer good. I think the bag said 2006 on it. So I got a new bag of pinto beans to be on the safe side. I only ended up using half of the 2 lb bag and it made a lot. I started this stuff early cuz I knew it would take a few hours of soaking and cooking. There were a lot of tasty ingredients in these beans including roasted poblanos, roasted tomatoes, bacon, and pork shoulder.

I used my BBQ for the first time this year for the chicken. The recipe actually called for using a charcoal grill but I used my gas grill and it turned out fine except for burning the skin of the legs which I think Mark rather enjoyed. I thought the two dishes complimented each other well. I'll have to start making my own beans more often and not buy the canned stuff all the time.

Chile Relleno de Picadillo

2011-04-12T19:12:00.000-07:00

Chile rellenos are simply stuffed chiles, usually poblanos. They are commonly stuffed with either a cheese or meat mixture. This one in particular that I made from the Authentic Mexican Cookbook was a meat mixture made with pork on a bed of red spicy tomato sauce. Chef Rick Bayless' translation is "Pork-Stuffed Chiles in Savory Tomato Sauce".

This isn't a dish I've ever made before and was yet again another long cooking project. Instead of attempting to do it all in one day I decided to break it up a little and prepared the pork filling using the Picadillo Oaxaqueno recipe referenced in the "Snacks Made of Corn Masa" section of the cookbook on Saturday. It took about an hour and a half to prepare. I opted to roast my own tomatoes rather than using canned tomatoes but I did go with canned tomatoes for the tomato sauce. I made a little extra filling since I had more meat than needed and have been using the leftovers for other things. I made tacos for dinner that night with it and also had burritos last night and still have a bit leftover.

I prepared the rest of the dish on Sunday. First I made the Quick-Cooked Tomato Chile Sauce referenced from the Sauces and Condiments section which only took about a half hour and just set that aside. I again got to roast some chiles. The recipe called for 8 poblanos but since there were just two of us eating, I figured 4 would be plenty. It didn't seem like chile rellenos would be that great as leftovers so I made just enough for dinner.

It had been a long time since I've had chile rellenos. I prefer them crispy but restaurants just don't seem to make them that way so I don't usually get them. I was thinking these might turn out crispy but they didn't. They were still pretty tasty though. I did have trouble keeping the rellenos closed while frying them. Some of them wouldn't stay closed so a lot of oil got inside and I thought they would be too greasy, but they didn't seem to be but I didn't think they looked all that pretty.

I decided to look up some youtube videos to see how you're supposed to make these properly which I probably should have done before making them. This video was one of the best ones I found on how to make them. Unfortunately it's in Spanish but you get the idea by watching it. After watching the video I realized my rellenos looked pretty similar to the finished product on the video so that made me feel better. However I also realized my batter didn't look as thick as the one in the video. He used the batter to basically close up the relleno so it didn't open up. I think my main problem was that I may not have beaten the eggs quite enough. In the video he stirred the egg yolks and flour into the egg whites with a fork while I beat them in with the mixer. I think I also used a little too much oil in the pan. The chiles were almost completely submerged in the oil rather than just half of it. If I ever make these again I'll have a better idea of how thick the batter should be and know how to keep the relleno closed. At least it tasted good!

Baked Kale Chips

2011-04-11T16:52:00.001-07:00

I first saw these while watching Gardening with Cisco a few weeks ago. They always have a little cooking segment with PCC chef, Lynne Vea, on the show and this one caught my eye and decided I would give it a try. You may know that kale is one of the most nutritious veggies around. 1 Cup of boiled Kale has the following Daily Values 1327% Vitamin K, 192% Vitamin A, 89% Vitamin C and less than 100% of several other nutrients. You can see the full nutrient chart here. I'm not sure how boiled kale differs from baked kale but it must be pretty good for you too. Maybe even better since some of the nutrients might come out in the boiling water.

They are surprisingly easy to make and don't take long at all. You just need to keep an eye on them to make sure they don't burn. I just put sea salt on the chips I made but you can put some herbs on them for more flavor. I saw one recipe online that had vinegar on them which I might try doing the next time I make some. They were surprisingly crispy and tasty. Below is the easy recipe I used.

Ingredients:
1 bunch of kale
1 tbsp olive oil
salt to taste

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Remove the center stem from each kale leaf. Cut kale pieces into desired size. (I cut them in 1-2" pieces.)
Wash and thoroughly dry the kale. (I used a salad spinner)
Put the kale in a ziplock bag or bowl and drizzle with the olive oil. Shake the bag or toss them in the bowl to evenly coat the kale with the oil.
Spread the kale in a single layer on baking sheets and bake for 10-15 minutes, until they start to brown on the edges. (I used 2 sheets) Check on them frequently after 10 minutes to make sure they don't burn.
Remove from the oven and sprinkle with salt and/or herbs

Pollo en Escabeche

2011-04-04T20:03:00.000-07:00

Rick Bayless' English translation of this dish is Chicken Thighs with Vinegar, Oil and Aromatic Spices. This was a recipe from the Poultry section of his Authentic Mexican Cookbook. This was my 10th recipe from the cookbook and I'm just a few weeks (categories) away from completing this project.

The only ingredient I had trouble locating in this recipe was the Xcatiques or banana peppers. I called around to several locations that I thought might have them and it seems they are not in season and it would be tough to find any until summer time. I did some Googling to see what kind of peppers I could substitute since there were no other options mentioned in this recipe. I ended up going with Anaheims which I was able to find at Whole Foods in Redmond. I also ran out of Oregano. I knew I was getting low and meant to get some during my last grocery trip but forgot to put it on my list so I ran out. I had some Italian Seasoning that I used as a substitute. It had oregano in it so why not? It seemed to work out fine. The only other ingredient I had to buy was the chicken. It seems like every cookbook I go through there's one or two ingredients that is used a lot. The ones I've used most with this cookbook are bay leaves and ancho chiles. I don't use bay leaves too often normally but I've gone through a jar of them that I've had in my cupboard for a while and had to buy more.

It was my first time roasting chiles and the smell brought back memories of when my mom used to roast them when I was a kid. Rick gave a few options for how to roast them. I first tried his favorite method which is roasting them over an open flame (my gas burner). It was taking longer than I would have liked so I decided to skip that method and go with what my mom does and just stick them in the oven on broil until they turn black. It was much easier and faster than standing over the stove roasting them one by one.

One thing I found a little odd is that the chicken was cooked before being marinated. Most marinades I've used are used on raw meat. I used skinless, boneless chicken thighs but the recipe was geared more toward chicken with the skin because the marinade was to be put on the skin side of the chicken. I just put it on the side the skin would have been.,

As the English name implies, this recipe has a vinegar base so it is somewhat similar to the adobo I made previously. I liked the flavor the roasted chiles added to the dish. It gave it a little heat but not too much. It goes pretty well with rice as I found out with some of the leftovers I had for dinner tonight. The rice soaked up the tasty broth.

Pescado Adobado en Hojas de Maiz

2011-03-28T16:28:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I moved onto the Fish & Shellfish section of the Authentic Mexican Cookbook. I made Cod marinated in a Mexican Adobo sauce and broiled in cornhusks. This is the first time I've used cornhusks for something other than tamales. I think it's the first time I've had Mexican Adobo too. I've had Filipino Adobo a few times and the only thing similar is that they both contain vinegar.

This recipe references the red chile marinade (Adobo) recipe from the Meat Preparations section of the cookbook. This can be made ahead of time and can actually sit in your fridge for many months because it contains vinegar, chiles and salt which are all used as natural preservatives. It says it takes a half hour to make but I disagree. It takes a while to remove seeds and toast all the peppers or maybe I'm just slow at doing that. The recipe contained 3 steps however I noticed the first step was not numbered. There is more than one edition of this cookbook, one would think mistakes like this would be fixed. It's not the first mistake I've found in the cookbook either.

I do like that most of the recipes have variations listed in the Cook's Notes section and decided to use the traditional variation listed for the Adobo. Instead of soaking the chiles in hot water after toasting them I ground them with the spices to make a chile powder. This makes a darker/stronger/spicier paste since none of the flavor is soaked out. There were also options of different chiles you could use. I had a couple of New Mexico Chiles leftover from another recipe so I put a few of those in along with some Anchos and Guajillos. I actually found the Guajillos at Mazatlan, a Mexican store in Monroe. I couldn't find these chiles at the regular grocery store. They seemed to have a pretty large selection of chiles at this place.

The prep time was listed as an hour if the Adobo was already made which I thought to be a pretty accurate time. I was glad for once I wasn't going to spend all day cooking like I have the past few weekends. It didn't take long for the fish to cook. There were two options for cooking, using a griddle or broiling. I went with the broiling option. The husks burned a little but the recipe mentioned they would. It really dried the husks out and made them brittle so they broke a little when I turned them so a couple had some of the juices come out but not too much. I garnished them with cilantro and fresh chopped onion and was supposed to serve them with lime wedges but just realized I forgot to include those. They were good but I'm thinking they would have been even better with a little fresh lime juice squeezed over the top.

Mole Rojo con Pollo

2011-03-24T18:04:00.000-07:00

Rich red mole with chicken is the English translation of this dish from Rick Bayless' Authentic Mexican Cookbook. This was yet another time consuming recipe. This time I started really early so not to chance eating at 9:00 at night again. I got the mole sauce done by around 3:00. All that was left to do was cook the chicken in the sauce for 25 minutes and it was done. Making the sauce did take several hours though. In case you aren't familiar with mole, it is a Mexican sauce containing chocolate and chiles. The most common brands of Mexican chocolate are Nestle Abuelita and the more traditional, Ibarra. I had some Ibarra in my cupboard though I've had it for a while and wasn't sure if it was still good. I didn't see an expiration date on it so I decided to use it. It didn't smell bad and I didn't get sick so it must be ok right? The chocolate comes in round disks which have indents that make 8 wedges like a pie. Each disk is individually wrapped so they probably last a long time that way.

There are a total of 25 ingredients in this recipe. I made a few substitutions and omissions. Three different peppers were recommended but there was an alternate version of the sauce that only uses one type of chile, the easy to find ancho, and is what I ended up making. I was not very successful in finding mulatos and pasillas. I checked out Mazatlan, one of the other Mexican stores in downtown Monroe, today and they seemed to have a bigger selection of dried chiles, I saw some pasillas there but don't remember seeing mulatos. I even found the chiles I was looking for to make adobo for next weekend's recipe. I used craisins instead of raisins just because I always have those on hand and didn't want to buy raisins. The plantain was optional so I omitted that thinking it would be hard to find but I saw some of those at the Mexican store today too.

The recipes in this cookbook seem to refer to other recipes quite often. They don't just refer to various sauces but actual steps within the recipe. Like if there are two mole recipes it will refer back to a previous mole recipe and says to follow steps 6-8 on page 243 for example. I find myself flipping through pages a lot and makes things more confusing. What is even more confusing is when an ingredient is mentioned in the instructions that isn't even listed in the ingredient list. This recipe called for peanuts but in the description they are referred to as almonds. In the recipe that is referred to, almonds were used. In my state of confusion I ended up forgetting all about the peanuts and ended up not using them. By the time I realized the recipe probably meant peanuts and not almonds it was too late to add them in. Other than that the recipe was followed pretty closely.

This is my 2nd or 3rd time quartering a whole chicken. It's really not too difficult though it would be a little easier if I had the proper knife for it. I really hate using my Shun knives for that. I need to get a butcher knife or something. Whole chickens are a lot less expensive than buying them already quartered so watch some youtube videos and do it yourself and save some money.

The mole sauced turned out a little more runny than I would like even though I simmered it longer than suggested to try and thicken it up more. The flavor was good though and I had a lot left over so I put it in a zip lock bag and have been using it on leftovers. Tonight I cut up some chicken and cooked it in the mole sauce and made chicken mole tacos. Don't think I've ever had those before but they were good.

Ting Momo Sneak Peak

2011-03-22T18:28:00.000-07:00

Three new Tom Douglas restaurants will be opening in Seattle very soon. I had the privilege of finding out about a sneak peak preview dinner shortly after it was announced and was able to get a reservation for me and Mark at one of them. The reservations seemed to fill up pretty fast. For $25 each we got to try 5 sample menu items from the new restaurant along with a glass of wine. The restaurant choices were Cuoco, an Italian pasta kitchen, Brave Horse Tavern, a bar with 26 taps and a pretzel oven and Ting Momo, a Tibetan dumpling cafe. It wasn't too difficult to choose between the three. Italian food doesn't always agree with me and a tavern didn't really sound all that exciting. So I chose the one that sounded most interesting and adventurous. I've had dumplings many times and have even made them a few times but have never had Tibetan dumplings or any kind of Tibetan food so wasn't sure what to expect. Chinese/Japanese dumplings are the only type I've ever had.

So we headed out to the Ballroom on Saturday and were about 10 minutes early. We walk in and it doesn't appear we are in the right place, looking at the crowd of beer guzzlers. It took a good couple of minutes to realize we should be at the Palace Ballroom in Belltown and not The Ballroom in Fremont. Oops. We hustle back to the car and fly down Aurora towards The Palace Ballroom. I jumped out of the car right at 6:00 to get seated while Mark finds parking. I walk in and the scenery isn't all too different than what we saw at The Ballroom. I ask about the Tom Douglas dinner and the girl confusedly walks away to ask someone. She comes back and points across the street to the Ballroom. It turns out I was in the Palace Kitchen. I forgot my phone in the car so I couldn't warn Mark but he figured it out.

It was only a few minutes after 6 by the time I got seated at one of the communal tables and found there were a lot of people that didn't show up on time. Shortly after sitting down, I was treated with a small cup of hot chai tea that was close to the size of a sake cup. The only chai tea I've really had has been at Tully's/Starbucks and is usually overly sweet. This chai tea was just the opposite and wasn't sweet at all. I'm guessing that's the way they drink it in Tibet but I could have used a little sugar in it.

Each seat had a menu with a 1-4 rating listed under each item as well as some lines to write your comments. I found it kind of hard to rate food from a culture I've never eaten before. Also at each chair was a plate with squares of some kind of pastry and 3 cups of different sauces. Nothing had been explained to us yet so I wasn't sure if we were supposed to be doing something with them like dipping the pastries in the sauce or what. I decided to leave everything alone and hope we would be given some direction on what to do with this stuff. I saw some people dipping fingers in the sauces to taste so I decided to do the same. The sauces were very flavorful. The one on the left was very spicy, the middle was very sweet and the right one salty. I could tell bland is not something that would be used to describe Tibetan food.

Tom eventually came to the front of the room and introduced the head chef of Ting Momo, Deyki Thonden, her husband, and several other people that have been instrumental in getting the restaurant up and running. Deyki talked a bit about her story, how she and her family had walked for months to get out of Tibet. It sounded like she had a very difficult childhood but since moving to Seattle she has been working for Tom though not cooking much Tibetan food. She will be living her dream when Ting Momo opens and she is able to cook nothing but Tibetan food.

We soon discovered what the plate of pastry dough in front of us was for. We would be making dumplings ourselves. I'm not sure if the other two restaurant sneak peaks got to do any hands on stuff like this so we got a little cooking lesson in how to make Tibetan dumplings. Deyki showed us how to make several different shaped dumplings. I never knew there were so many different ways to make them. It was a little difficult to make t hem because the pastry dough was starting to harden and kept cracking. A little cup of water was provided to moisten the dough which did help. We didn't get to eat the dumplings we made but were served 5 different types of dumplings. Momo - made with yak, Samo - one made with pork and one with potato, Tingmo - made with eggplant, and Ghasel - made with lamb and potato. We were also served a soup with hand pulled noodles. The sauces weren't the only things that had such strong spicy flavors. Everything we ate seemed to have a lot of spices in it and enjoyed most everything we were served. It wasn't a large meal; I didn't walk away stuffed, but it was enough.

Not only were we served wine but we also got a bottle of Tibetan beer. Unfortunately I'm not a beer drinker but I did have a sip just to try it. Mark ended up drinking my bottle and I had some of his wine.

Ting Momo will be opening in April in South Lake Union on Terry Ave between Thomas and Harrison. It will be more a to go type place than a sit down place but there will be a few tables. It's only supposed to be open for a few hours during lunch but they will occasionally be offering a Tibetan dinner by reservation only. Also note this is believed to be the only traditional Tibetan restaurant in Seattle. Didn't realize how rare/hard to find Tibetan food is.

Nuevo Leon Style Tamales

2011-03-15T18:05:00.000-07:00

These tamales were made from a recipe in Rick Bayless' Authentic Mexican Cookbook and based on Velázquez de León's Cocina de Nuevo León, located in Northeastern Mexico. I'm not sure what makes these tamales different than any other.

As suggested, I substituted New Mexico chiles in place of cascabeles norteños since I couldn't find those. These also have ancho chiles as well which are probably the easiest dried chiles to find. This is probably only the second time I've made tamales from scratch with no help from my mom though I've helped her make them many times growing up.

I had originally planned on making a double batch but I forgot how long these take to make even though the cookbook timing says it only takes 2 3/4 hours. It must have taken about 3.5 hours just to prepare them and an 1.5 hours of steaming. I used my vegetable steamer which is the perfect size for making tamales. I think my mom always used a pressure cooker to make hers. I had a little sauce leftover too since I only ended up making one batch of masa dough and added some over the top of the tamales for a little more spice. We ended up having a late dinner, not eating till about 9:00 and I only ended up making one batch but had some meat leftover that I'll probably use to make pork tacos.

I was a little disappointed at the lack of spice in the meat. I was expecting a lot more spice than there was. I can only guess that soaking the chiles in hot water probably drained a lot of flavor out of the chiles. I much preferred the chipotle pork tamales I made last year. I just realized it was March of last year that I made tamales too. Maybe I'll make this into an annual tradition. There are a couple of other tamale recipes in the cookbook that I may give a try but I probably won't be going back to this one.

Enchiladas Verdes

2011-03-09T16:19:00.001-08:00

I've made enchiladas several times but can't remember ever making green chile (verde) enchiladas before now. I've never even bought a tomatillo before starting this Authentic Mexican cookbook project. It seems to be a main ingredient in any green chile recipe along with either seranos or jalapenos. I've use jalapenos a lot and have even grown them in my garden but have not had much experience with seranos. Most of the recipe I've come across in the cookbook have given the option of using one or the other so I've been using serranos for the past couple. I like spicy so I used one more serrano than the recipe called for and boy was it spicy. It wasn't so spicy that it was inedible but it was getting close.

I had so many saucepans and frying pans going, I think all my burners were covered. One for the poached chicken, one for the chile sauce, one for the shredded chicken and one for the oil for frying the tortillas. There were a lot of dirty dishes to clean after this meal.

I didn't use homemade corn tortillas for the enchiladas and the recipe recommend store bought anyway. I'm not sure why. Maybe homemade ones are too fragile and tear easier. That's the only reason I could think of. I was happy with the way they turned out though. Just a tad spicier than I'd like but still happy with it. Luckily Mark likes spicy too. He was happy to have some of the leftovers to take home.

Chaquehue Recipe

2011-03-07T19:03:00.000-08:00

It had probably been over 10 years since I've had or made Chaquehue. It's eaten as a hot cereal, similar to cream of wheat, made with blue cornmeal. I always liked the color of it, a pastel purple. How could you not like eating something purple? I grew up on this stuff and always had a hard time finding blue corn meal locally and never really thought of getting it online. There's a few Mexican stores near me and none of them seem to carry it. My Grandma came to my rescue this past Christmas and sent me some from Colorado where you can find it pretty easily at most grocery stores.

I had no idea how to spell it and still don't really. When I Googled what I thought it might be there weren't very many results and I saw a few other spellings for it too so who knows how it's really spelled. I've also seen it spelled Chaquewe and Sakewe. It's pronounced shaw que weh

I was later informed via Flickr and Facebook that Bob's Red Mill has a blue cornmeal that you can probably find at Whole Foods and other grocery stores around town. I've only ever made it using the kind pictured below that's usually found in Mexican stores. So after I run out, I may give Red Mill brand a try and see if it tastes the same. Several people were curious about the recipe so I decided to measure out the ingredients over the weekend so I can post a recipe. I've never measured the ingredients before, I usually just throw it all together.

Ingredients:
4 cups Cold Water
1 cup blue cornmeal
1 cup milk
1/2 cup sugar
Salt to taste

Serving Size: 3-4 servings

Insructions:
1. Add cold water and blue cornmeal to a sauce pan.
2. Stir together with a wisk until boiling. (The mixture will thicken as it comes to a boil.)
3. Add milk, sugar, and a pinch of salt and wisk until combined and serve hot.

You can use less sugar and/or milk if you like but these are the measurements I used last weekend and I wouldn't use much more sugar or milk than what I have above. You can add a little at a time until it's the thickness and sweetness you like.

Huevos con Chorizo

2011-03-03T17:45:00.000-08:00

Huevos = eggs and chorizo = Mexican sausage. I made the sausage the previous weekend and it's been sitting in my fridge waiting to be used. I picked up some sausage casings on Friday from Bill the Butcher in Redmond. Casing the sausage is optional but I got a sausage stuffing attachment so I wanted to try it out. Stuffing sausage isn't something I've ever done before. It wasn't difficult but it would have been if I didn't have Mark assisting. He pushed the sausage into the machine while I took care of filling the casings as the sausage came out. We let them hang for a couple of days to dry downstairs in the laundry room and they were all ready for us to eat by Sunday morning for breakfast.

The Huevos con Chorizo recipe I chose was from the eggs section of the Authentic Mexican cookbook. There weren't too many recipes to choose from in this section but I chose this one because I wanted to try my hand at making some chorizo so it actually took two weekends to prepare for making the recipe since the chorizo was homemade.The recipe requires uncased sausage so I had to remove the casings anyway. I haven't really seen any recipes that call for chorizo with the casing on. I guess it's just a way of keeping it all together since it is rather mushy. Even though the course grinder attachment was used, the mix of spices and vinegar must really break down the meat quite a bit. I got to say chorizo isn't the most attractive meat but it certainly doesn't lack in flavor. There's almost more spices in it than there is meat. Still have a little bit of chorizo left over but haven't decided what to make with it yet.

Chorizo

2011-02-23T15:22:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I made chorizo using Rick Bayless' recipe in Authentic Mexican. There are tons of spices in chorizo, 10 of them in this recipe, and luckily I had them all and didn't have to buy any. The only thing I really had to buy was the pork. Safeway had a buy one get one free sale so I got a couple of pork roasts and put one in the freezer. I'm making some pulled pork in the slow cooker as I type with what's left of the roast I didn't use for the chorizo.

I didn't have a meat grinder for this but have a Kitchen Aid mixer so I ordered the grinder and sausage stuffing attachment from Amazon and is even what Rick uses for grinding meat too. I have a recipe picked out from the Huevos (eggs) section of the cookbook that I will be making this weekend.

Stuffing the sausage in casings is optional and actually not needed for the recipe I'm going to make but I'm going to stuff some of it just for fun. I had to go to a butcher shop in order to find the casings. I checked at a few grocery stores and they didn't have any available. I got a couple of yards for less than $2 so I'll be doing some sausage stuffing this weekend too.

I will say, chorizo isn't the most attractive thing to look at.

Pozole Verde

2011-02-15T20:31:00.000-08:00

I was going to put the English name in the title of my blog posts and the Spanish version here but it just seemed wrong in this case. I've had pozole many times and calling it soup just didn't seem right plus the name is long. Pork, Chicken and Hominy soup with Ground Pumpkinseeds is the actual title of the recipe in the Authentic Mexican Cookbook. I've actually never had the verde (green) version of this soup before though. I've always had red which is also in the cookbook but I wanted to try something different so I went with this one.

The main ingredient in any pozole is the hominy which is made from dried corn kernels which are soaked and cooked for a long time to make them soft. You can use canned hominy which makes this much quicker to make and probably easier to find than dried corn, but I always opt to use the dried corn and make my own hominy. There's a few Mexican stores nearby making it pretty easy to find. Rick Bayless says to cook the dried corn with cal, a lime mixture; I've never done it before and wasn't really sure where to find it or what the purpose was, so I skipped that part. I later found out the reasoning for doing this is to easily remove the hard corn kernels. Since I didn't do this the kernels stayed on the corn and the hominy wasn't as pleasant to eat.

There were two other ingredients in the recipe I wasn't very successful in finding but some easy to find alternatives were provided. One was ashoshoco leaves which I couldn't even find in a Google search so am not sure it's even spelled correctly in the recipe. Hoja Santa was one possible alternative that can be used in it's place but couldn't find that either so I used the third alternative which was fennel which I love and am looking forward to braising the bulb for dinner later this week. The other ingredient I couldn't find was epazote; I used parsley for a substitute.

I made a big batch since I had extra meat and corn and a 23 quart pot. Unfortunately, I didn't get extra tomatillos and peppers so it didn't come out as green and spicy as I would have liked, it was very mild but still good. Rick provided several condiment options that you can add to the soup when it's served but I didn't use all of them. I chose to use red onion, oregano, avocados and limes.

Pozole takes pretty much all day to make, especially if you don't use the canned hominy so it was a late dinner. Luckily there were lots of leftovers. It freezes well so I put some away for bringing to work and for heating up when I'm too lazy and don't feel like making anything for dinner.

Clean Start

2011-02-10T20:13:00.000-08:00

I had the privilege of meeting Terry Walters, author of CLEAN FOOD and her newest book, CLEAN START. Bonnevivante hosted an event and many foodies from around the Seattle area came to chat with Terry and learn more about her philosophy of food. I recognized a few faces from other events I've been to and got to meet a lot of new ones too.

She's all about healthy eating and has put together these cookbooks with lots of tasty recipes. We got to sample three of her gluten free dips: carrot cashew miso spread, shallot fig spread, and spicy black bean dip. All three were great but my fav was the shallot fig spread. I'm hoping my new fig tree will produce some fruit this year to try making some of this spread. We also snacked on brownies that were unlike any brownie I've ever had before. I never imagine brownies as being something healthy and good for you but these are and they taste good too! Maple syrup is used as the sweetener as well as various fruits. Brown teff flour is used instead of AP flour. I won't give away all the secret ingredients but they were surprisingly good.

Terry talked about food sensitivities and how her daughter was sensitive to almost everything when she was little and it was tough to adjust at first and after a while was even able to reintroduce many of the foods she was sensitive to without a problem after a year or so. I asked more about how you find out what foods you are sensitive to and it turns out all it takes is a blood test. I'm kind of curious what foods I might have a sensitivity to. I know there is at least one or two things but I haven't been able to pin down what they are. I'm not sure how much this test costs but I am curious about it. I might have to look more into it and see about getting that done so I can avoid those foods. She says there isn't any one diet that will work for everyone, everyone's body is different and each one may have different needs and I agree with that 100%. There are vitamins and things that everyone needs but as far as what type of foods is right for each person may be different and it seems a good place to start would be to get one of these food sensitivity tests done.

She talked a bit about her first cookbook that she self published which was mostly a collection of recipes that she used for teaching cooking classes. She spent more time talking about her new cookbook, CLEAN START. I really like how it's organized. The recipes are categorized by the four seasons: spring, summer, fall and winter. The pictures in the cookbook are fabulous and there are a lot of them. They were done by Gentl & Hyers with available light, not with studio lighting and the pages are nice and thick. I can't wait to start trying some of the recipes. I just started my Authentic Mexican Cookbook project but as soon as I'm done going through that cookbook there's a good chance this will be my next project. I might not be able to wait that long to try out a couple of the recipes though.

Shredded Beef Salad with Avocado and Chile Chipotle

2011-02-07T18:10:00.000-08:00

I'm past the tortilla making section of the Authentic Mexican cookbook and am now getting into the meat of the cookbook. This section is appetizers and salads (entremeses y ensaladas). It's a relatively short section of only 8 recipes so will probably only do one recipe from this section for this project. It didn't take me long to decide on which recipe to try. Beef, avocado and chipotle sounded like a winner to me. In Spanish, this recipe is called Salpicón de Res Poblano.

This was one recipe I wish had a picture to go along with it so I knew how the presentation is supposed to look. I'm not sure I did it quite right. Some of the ingredients were a little difficult to find and had to improvise. Crap, just as I am typing this I just realized I forgot one of the ingredients. I got feta as a substitute for queso fresco which I couldn't find but forgot to even put it on the salad. Luckily I still have a bit left over so I'll have to try it on some leftovers. the recipe also called for canned chipotles and all I could find were canned chipotles in adobo sauce.

The beef was cooked with some vegetables and herbs. The recipe said to discard the liquid the beef was cooked in and I gasped. I wouldn't think of throwing away that beautiful broth so I put it in the freezer to use later with soup or something. I garnished the plates with lime wedges for squeezing over the salad which I thought was a nice addition that wasn't in the recipe.

Even though I'm not sure I plated it quite right and forgot the cheese, it was still tasty and I'm glad I made a little extra so I have leftovers for tonight!

Tortillas - Corn

2011-02-01T22:07:00.000-08:00

After making flour tortillas last week, I thought I'd go ahead and make some corn tortillas this week. Despite having made flour tortillas countless times growing up, I have never made corn tortillas nor has my mom which is surprising. Corn tortillas are best made with a tortilla press. Most are made of cast iron and are relatively inexpensive. I ordered one off Amazon for $18.99.

The dough or masa is made with only two ingredients, corn masa flour and warm water. It doesn't get any easier than that. They only thing is getting the consistency right. If it's too wet it will be sticky and if it's too dry the tortillas will crack so you want the dough to be pretty wet but just dry enough that it won't stick to your hands when you kneed it.

It might take a few tries to get the size of the ball just right, kind of like a waffle iron. Put too much and it will spill out the sides. You also have to be careful how hard you press the dough because if you press too hard the tortilla will be thinner on one side.

I didn't realize you need two griddle pans (low heat and high heat) to make these. I'm not sure if it's a trick Rick Bayless uses to make them or if this is a common way but I followed his instructions in the Authentic Mexican Cookbook. I used a cast iron one on the higher heat and a nonstick one on low heat. You first need to cook one side on the low heat and then transfer to the high heat and cook both sides. I cooked them long enough so they started to brown which I'm not sure was right or not. You don't see any browning on the store bought corn tortillas. They ended up turning out just fine and tasted great with the enchiladas I made so I guess the browning was fine. I didn't use any particular recipe for the enchiladas. I basically stuffed them with taco meat mixed with some tomato sauce and then covered them in red enchilada sauce, topped with cheese and baked them for about 25 minutes. Mark enjoyed them so much he had seconds.

Tortillas - Flour

2011-01-24T22:25:00.000-08:00

Over the next several months I will be working my way through Rick Bayless' Authentic Mexican Cookbook. I got this cookbook for Christmas from my mom. She's been asking when am I going to make some Mexican dishes so I told her if she got this for me for Christmas I would use it for my next cookbook project. In case you didn't know, I'm half Mexican and that is why she was asking.

The first section of the cookbook is actually for sauces and condiments. I decided to skip that chapter since I wasn't sure what to use the sauces and condiments for. I am thinking some of the recipes later in the cookbook might reference one of them and I'll make it at that time. I decided to skip over to the tortillas section and start with something simple at least to me. I'm not new to making flour tortillas. I helped my mom make them many times growing up but she would always make the dough (masa) and I would usually help with the cooking and eating part. There's nothing like fresh flour tortillas smothered in melted butter.

There's really not much to making flour tortillas. Flour, water, salt, and shortening is all you need and every recipe is pretty much the same. I used a mix of lard and vegetable shortening as recommended in the cookbook since I had both in my cupboard but Rick says you can really use either one. There's a bit of a trick to getting the balls of dough nice and round which Rick doesn't explain in his cookbook but I know from experience and it's a bit hard to explain without the use of video so I won't but I may take a video later when I make these again.

I always liked watching tortillas cook. You never know what kind of bubbles will surface while they're cooking. If you're lucky you will get a huge bubble that covers the entire surface of the tortilla. It doesn't happen very often but I managed to get one of those which is pictured below. Rick doesn't mention it but you should pop any large bubbles that appear mainly so you don't accidentally burst it while you flip or remove the tortilla from the pan because you're sure to get burned.

I ended up making a dozen tortillas and made bean and cheese burritos for dinner. I'm not sure yet what I'll do with the rest of them, maybe just eat them with butter and/or make some breakfast burritos next weekend.

Newlywed Kitchen Cookbook Review

2011-01-11T13:42:00.000-08:00

This was my second cookbook project, the first being The Herbfarm Cookbook. I made two recipes from each section with the exception of two sections: The meat, poultry and seafood section was much larger than the others so I made four from it and the brunch section, not because the section was so large but because there were so many good looking recipes in it and couldn't decide on just two. I tried 17 recipes in all, a few more than I did in my previous cookbook project. All of the recipes turned out pretty good, some better than others. I followed the recipes pretty closely and only made substitutions and omissions in a couple of them. My top three favorites were the zucchini fritters, kale soup, and berry tart. Mark's favs were the fried chicken, mac & cheese and the berry tart. As you can see, the berry tart was a favorite of both of ours and was our overall favorite. It was the most recent one I made and there's not much left of it!

Mixed in with the recipes are short stories from various married couples in the food industry from authors to chefs and restaurant owners. I recognized a few of the names of people I've met over the past couple of years like Kathy Casey, Shauna James Ahern (Gluten Free Girl), Thierry Rautureau (Chef in the Hat), and Kate McDermott. At the end of each story, the couples give advice for newlyweds and say what their favorite things are in the kitchen. Having these little stories makes this more that just a cookbook and are fun to read. The end of each section contained a sample menu that included three to five recipes from the book with page numbers. I didn't do any of these menu lists and didn't really find it very helpful. Seemed like doing that many recipes at one time would be a little too much work for one meal but others may find it helpful.

I was glad to see at least some of the recipes had photos which always helps to see what the dish is supposed to look like though a few of mine didn't look quite the same but were still tasty. I've met the author, Lorna Yee, a few times in person and also follower her on Twitter and Facebook so I felt comfortable asking for suggestions or clarifications on the recipes. I emailed her before I began the project to let her know I was doing it. I asked for a list of her favs and if there were any recipes that were ok to post on my blog. She replied with a lengthy list of her favorites which I made a few of but there were so many that I didn't make them all. She also sent a short list of recipes that can be found online and ok to post on my blog. I only made one of those and it's noted below.

I almost forgot to mention that Lorna must really like bacon because several of the recipes I made had bacon in them. I am sure I ate more bacon over the past couple of months than I have eaten since I was born. I have never been a big bacon fan and always choose sausage over bacon for breakfast. But it went well with all the recipes I made with it.

Pros:
- Great photos
- Entertaining stories
- Fun section titles
- All the recipes sounded good and weren't too complicated

Cons:
- Some instructions weren't descriptive enough
- Some of the serving numbers seemed to be a little off on some of the recipes

Carry me over the threshold - Starters & Snacks
Zucchini Fritters with Tangy Yogurt Sauce
Chicken and Chorizo Empanadas

For better or for worse - Budget-Friendly Soups, Salads & Sandwiches
Kale, White Bean, and Sausage Soup
Roasted Tomato Soup with Rosemary Croutons

The morning after - Scones, Biscuits & Other Brunch Goodies
Smoked Salmon Frittata
Cheddar, Ham and Dill Biscuits
Pina Colada Pancakes

Who gets the remote? - Comforting Meals for Lazy Nights
My Award-Winning Four-Cheese Mac-and-Cheese
Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup *includes recipe*

Losing the newlywed - Healthful Vegetable Side Dishes
Roasted Parmesan Broccoli with Toasted Bread Crumbs
Maple-Roasted Root Vegetables with Sherry Vinegar

Something bold, something new - Meat, Poultry & Seafood Dishes
The Ultimate Roasted Chicken
Ultra-Crispy Secret Fried Chicken
Paprika-Spiced Hungarian Beef Goulash
Chicken Potpies with Cheddar-Thyme Crusts

Happily ever after - Desserts & Sweets
Dad's Favorite Carrot Cake with Whiskey Praline Cream Filling
~~Marionberry~~ Blueberry Tart with Honeyed Creme Fraiche

Blueberry Tart with Honeyed Creme Fraiche

2011-01-10T16:52:00.000-08:00

This will be my last recipe to blog from The Newlywed Kitchen Cookbook. I've completed at least 2 recipes from each section and it's time to move onto another cookbook, but I will write another post later this week summarizing this project.

This last recipe was one of our favorites. The recipe is actually for a Marionberry tart but says any berries would work; so I went with blueberries because I still have a bunch of blueberries we picked last year at Life Mountain Blueberries in the freezer. This was my first time making a tart other than the tart in Chef Robin Leventhal's class I took last month. I had just got a tart pan for Christmas so it arrived just in time for this recipe.

The honey creme fraiche that was drizzled on top was actually made with sour cream because I couldn't find creme fraiche and couldn't seem to get it to thicken so instead of putting a spoon of it on the tart, I drizzled it on instead. I'm surprised how difficult creme fraiche is to find. I guess sour cream is used pretty often as a substitute. I'm not sure I've ever actually had creme fraiche so I don't know how close sour cream is in taste but it tasted great mixed with honey and drizzled over the top of the tart.

This is one recipe that is pictured in the cookbook and I found the topping of my tart didn't come out like that in the picture. Most likely because I used more berries and also because I didn't use all of the custard on one tart but saved some for a small tart that I made with the leftover crust dough. Even though it didn't look the same, it tasted great.

I also got to use my new pie weights that I got for Christmas for the first time. I did have a little trouble with the wax paper sticking to the top of the crust but it turned out just fine since the berries covered it up. The recipe didn't say to bake the tart crust or the filled tart on a cookie sheet but I did anyway and am glad I did because some butter, probably from the crust, leaked out and onto the cookie sheet. It would have been all over my oven if I hadn't so I was glad I did that. Maybe it was supposed to be assumed but I am used to recipes saying to do that.

Mark and I are not fans of super sweet desserts and this one was just the right amount of sweet. I had to hold him back from eating the whole tart in one night. I think it was probably his favorite recipe I've made from the cookbook and might be mine too.

Linzer Cookies with Spiced Jam

2011-01-01T12:43:00.000-08:00

I received several foodie magazines recently with lots of holiday cookie recipes. One in particular from the December issue of Food & Wine magazine jumped out at me for Linzer cookies. I've never made or even had these cookies before but they looked and sounded wonderful so I decided to make some to bring to a New Years Eve/Birthday party. They were a huge success. Several people complemented me on them and a few asked for the recipe so I decided to post it here.

I had never even heard of Linzer cookies before so I Googled them to get more info on where they came from. They have kind of a German sounding name. Linzer is made as a torte for the holidays in Austrian, Hungarian, Swiss, German and Tirolean traditions and the cookie version is more traditionally made in North America.

I followed the recipe from the magazine for the most part. I substituted orange zest for lemon zest and used a different jam than the recipe specified. Seedless raspberry jam was the suggested preserve but I used my homemade fig jam on some as well as my mom's homemade blackberry jam for the rest. I think any jam would probably work well for these cookies.

The cookie dough was pretty tasty raw too. It reminded me a lot of a dough that was used for frangipane tart in my cooking class with Chef Robin Leventhal except we used almonds in that crust instead of hazelnuts. I might try making a tart using this cookie dough and see how that comes out. Just not sure what to fill it with yet.

Ingredients:

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3 large egg yolks

1 tsp finely grated lemon (or orange) zest

1 1/4 cups hazelnuts with skin

1 1/2 cups bread flour

2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground cloves

confectioners sugar for dusting

3/4 cup jam/preserves

1/4 tsp anise seeds, ground in spice grinder

1/4 tsp ground coriander

Directions:

In a standing electric mixer fitted with the paddle, beat the butter with the granulated sugar at medium speed until creamy. Add the egg yolks and zest and beat until smooth. In a food processor, combine the hazelnuts with the bread flour and process until the nuts are finely ground. Add the cinnamon and cloves and pulse to combine. Add the dry ingredients to the mixing bowl and beat on low speed until smooth. Pat the dough into 2 disks, wrap in plastic and refrigerate until chilled, about 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 350° and line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or Silpats. Working in batches if necessary, roll out the dough 1/4 inch thick on a lightly floured surface. Using a 2 inch round cutter stamp out cookies as close together as possible. Using a small decorative cookie cutter or smaller round cutter, stamp out the centers of half of the cookies. Transfer the whole cookies to 1 prepared baking sheet and the cut-out cookies to another.

Bake the cookies in the upper and middle thirds of the oven for about 15 minutes, until lightly browned around the edges. Let cool on the baking sheets. Meanwhile, refrigerate the scraps until chilled and reroll, stamp out more cookies and bake.

Dust the tops of the cut-out cookies with confectioners sugar. In a small bowl, whisk the preserves with the ground anise seeds and coriander. Spoon the preserves onto the whole cookies, cover with sugar dusted cookies and serve.

Dad's Favorite Carrot Cake with Whiskey Praline Cream Filling

2010-12-24T13:05:00.000-08:00

I've cooked my way to the last section of The Newlywed Kitchen Cookbook. The section is titled "Happily Ever After Desserts and Sweets". I think this is the secion Mark has been waiting for. He doesn't eat chocolate but loves desserts. The first several recipes contained chocolate but there are a few non-chocolate items too. One of our favorite cakes is carrot cake so that recipe was at the top of my list. Since I have some time off work for the holidays, I decided to not wait until the weekend to make this one.

The recipe called for making the cake in 2 9" pie pans but I only had 8" ones. It turned out well because I was able to use some of the leftover batter to make 5 cupcakes. Luckily I have convection on my new oven which came in pretty handy to bake the two cakes and cupcakes all at once and they cooked nice and evenly. The cupcakes were done a little quicker so I was sure to keep an eye on them and take them out earlier.

I thought the recipe had an over abundance of walnuts, calling for walnuts in the cake, in the filling and also covering the frosting. I opted to not use so much and only put walnuts in the praline cream filling. Other than that, I pretty much stuck to the recipe. There is a lot of butter in this recipe in all 3 parts: cake, filling, and frosting. Luckily I had a box of butter in the freezer. Since it was frozen, I was able to use a new found feature of my microwave that is for softening butter. It worked like a charm. It softened it up nicely and it didn't even melt.

The filling for the cake was a whiskey praline cream which requires making a caramel which I have never done before. I tried to follow the instructions but was very unsuccessful, the carmale turned into what looked like snow and didn't darken at all. I guess this is what happens when it crystallizes. I decided to look on the internet for instructions on making caramel and came across a seemingly easy way to do it via a video of Gordon Ramsay. I followed his instructions and viola! I had caramel. It was very easy to do. I think where I went wrong the first time is over stirring the sugar.

The cake had a few ingredients you don't normally find in carrot cake that make it a bit more than just your regular carrot cake. It turned out great and the caramel and cream cheese frosting went with it beautifully. It seemed to be a big hit with Mark too as I've seen him sneak some bites of it several times throughout the day.

Paprika Spiced Hungarian Beef Goulash

2010-12-20T18:26:00.000-08:00

This is the fourth dish I've made from the extremely large section of The Newlywed Kitchen's meat, poultry and Seafood recipes. This will be my last recipe from this section before proceeding to the final section of desserts next weekend.

I've never made goulash before but it is basically a stew. It was very flavorful, the sweet paprika gave it a nice kick. I was surprised at how difficult it was to find canned crushed tomatoes at Fred Meyer. They had the large 28 ounce cans of it but not the smaller size. I ended up getting the large size and used a little more than half of it. Still need to figure out what I'm going to do with the rest. I got the beef at the small grocery store in my home town. They didn't have any packaged stew meat so I ended up getting a chuck steak and chopped it myself. We noticed the package date no the meat was a day later. I'm not sure how they could get away with putting future dates on their meats. It wasn't a sell by date either is said specifically it was the packaged date. I almost said something to the checkout lady but I didn't. I did take a picture of it and post it on twitter though.

The only disappointment with this recipe was the meat. Even after stewing for about 3 hours there was still quite a bit of fat on the meat. I'm sure it had a lot to do with the poor quality of meat. I did do one thing different from the recipe and that was deglaze the frying pan with the beef broth after frying the beef to pick up all the extra beef bits and flavor from the pan. It would be a shame to let all that beefy goodness go to waste.

Ultra Crispy Secret Fried Chicken

2010-12-15T19:11:00.000-08:00

I used another recipe from the big meat, poultry & seafood dishes section of The Newlywed Kitchen cookbook. I won't spoil the secret to this crispy fried chicken, you'll just have to buy the cookbook to see what it is. There was an unexpected ingredient used in the batter for this one. If it was really the key to the crispiness, I don't know, but it sure turned out spicy and crispy, the best kind of fried chicken.

I meant to buy a combination of drum sticks and thighs but I somehow accidentally bought the package of all thighs. I admit I did miss the drumsticks, they're my fav, but it was all good. The first couple pieces I thought came out the most crispy. Next time I will do the batter and flour coating as I fry them rather than all at once. I did each piece one at a time and as suggested kept them in the oven to keep them warm which was a good idea. I think they crisped up even more by putting them in the oven at a low temp

Ultimate Roast Chicken

2010-12-06T14:33:00.000-08:00

I've had a whole chicken in my freezer for quite some time so when I saw this recipe in The Newlywed Kitchen I knew I had to try it. This is the first cookbook recipe I've made in a long time where I didn't have to go to the store to buy specific ingredients to make it. It was nice to be able to make it using ingredients I already had.

Giving the herbs a couple of days to soak into the bird is what makes the chicken so moist. It really was some of the most tender and juice roast chicken I've ever had. Even the breast was fork tender and full of flavor. The recipe gave a few options for herbs to use and I went with rosemary since I already had some on hand. Mark and I are both not fans of eating the skin off of chicken but the skin on this bird was hard to resist since it was nice and crispy and tasted like garlic and rosemary.

To go with the chicken, I made a green salad with oil and vinegar dressing. I also made my favorite rice dish that I normally use as a stuffing in my cornish hens. It's made with onions and almonds sauteed in butter and cooked in chicken broth and a bit of lemon juice.

The only minor problem I had with the recipe is the garlic burning on the outside of the bird. I ended up scraping most of it off before serving and it was fine and didn't taste of burnt garlic but it might be better to have put the garlic in the cavity before putting it in the oven.

Chicken Potpies with Cheddar Thyme Crust

2010-12-01T12:18:00.000-08:00

I am now on the largest section of The Newlywed Kitchen Cookbook, with 23 recipes. The section is called Something Bold, Something New: Meat, Poultry & Seafood Dishes. I've decided since this section has so many great looking recipes I will be doing more than 2. I might do as many as 4.

the first recipe I wanted to try is the potpie recipe. I've never made potpies before and is something that has been on my todo list for a long time so was looking forward to giving this one a try. The serving size of the recipe is 2, but I wanted to make extra so I doubled the recipe. I'm glad I did because I don't think there would have been enough to fill us up if I hadn't. There was barely one serving left over. I was expecting it to make a bit more than it did. The recipe calls for using two large ramekins or a small casserole dish but doesn't specify how large. I misjudged the size and used too large of a ramekin (32 ounces). As you can tell from the photo below, there wasn't enough to fill it so the crust drooped quite a bit. I also wanted to make some potpies using my smaller 10 oz ramekins but only made one due to the limited amount of filling.

The filling was nice and flavorful and I liked the slight crunch of the bacon bits. I probably could have added a bit more stock to increase the amount. It was plenty thick, maybe slightly too thick. I did use a bit less flour when I doubled the recipe but could have used even less. The only thing I wasn't too happy with is the crust. I was looking forward to a crispy flaky crust but the puff pastry just didn't work out for me. The middle just wouldn't crisp up and turned into a gooey mess. It was impossible to break apart. Sticking your spoon into it just pushed the crust to the bottom of the dish. I'm not sure if it was from the melted cheese or too much egg wash or if it was because there wasn't enough filling in the pie. Usually the potpie crust is my favorite part of the potpie but not this time unfortunately. I may try this recipe again later using a different type of crust.

If there's one thing I've noticed from these recipes, it's that Lorna Yee likes bacon. I think I've bought more bacon in the last two months than I have ever bought in my lifetime. Bacon just isn't one of those things I normally eat. I prefer sausage to bacon when it comes to breakfast and I just never used it for anything else.

Maple-Roasted Root Vegetables

2010-11-24T10:35:00.000-08:00

This was my second recipe from the veggie section of The Newlywed Kitchen Cookbook. I have to be honest, I have actually never bought or used sweet potatoes before even though I am a huge potato fan. The three root veggies used in this recipe were carrots, sweet potatoes, and parsnips. They were coated in oil and herbs and tossed in the oven to roast. I used two cookie sheets and set the oven to convection for even roasting. Unfortunately, some got a little toastier than others anyway.

I'm starting to think I need to plant another rosemary plant in my herb garden, I have been using it a ton this year and my poor plant is just about bare. I didn't use as much of it as I would have liked in this dish. The recipe called for sherry vinegar though I couldn't find any at the grocery store so I ended up using red wine vinegar that I already had instead.

The serving size was 8 to 10 for this recipe, much larger than past recipes I've made from the cookbook. There were plenty of leftovers. Other than some getting a little over-roasted, they turned out great. The little bit of sweetness from the maple syrup made me think this would be a good breakfast or brunch side dish.

Coconut Snowballs with DIY Cupcake Liners

2010-11-17T19:12:00.000-08:00

I finally made some cupcakes out of the cookbook I won off of twitter, Cupcakes! from the Cake Doctor. I had a bunch of leftover coconut from the Pina Colada Pancakes I made last month and already had some coconut milk so I had everything I needed for this recipe except the cake mix which is an ingredient in all the cupcake recipes in this cookbook. I thought this was a little strange, and still do. It's not a cookbook I would have ever bought. But I have it, so I might as well try a few recipes. The cookbook is all about turning ordinary cake mix into something different.

It turned out, cake mix wasn't the only thing I was missing. I was also missing cupcake liners. I could have sworn I still had some but I couldn't find any anywhere. I had planned to hold off on the recipe another week and get the liners the next time I went to the store but @slowdumbshow suggested I make my own using parchment paper. I gave it a whirl and they turned out just fine and they gave the cupcakes a little more character. The frosting was a simple whipped cream frosting with a bit of confectioners sugar. I shared them with Mark and brought some to work and the vanpool and everyone enjoyed them.

Loaded Otsu Noodles (Sesame Soba Noodle Salad)

2010-11-16T19:18:00.000-08:00

I had the privilege of testing out one of Michael Natkin's (Herbivoracious) recipes. He is working on a cookbook and had sent a request for recipe testers over twitter. I was one of many that volunteered. I told him I was interested in cooking with new ingredients. I haven't done a lot of Asian cooking so this was a good one for me to try. I got most of the Asian ingredients at Uwajimaya in Bellevue. The only thing I couldn't find was an optional ingredient called "long pepper", primarily grown in Indonesia but can be found at some specialty spice stores. It kind of looks like an elongated pine cone. It was my first time cooking with eggplant and tofu. The recipe calls for frying the tofu in oil. Luckily I had a splatter screen. Even though I patted down the tofu to get rid of excess water, it still splattered oil like crazy.

Overall I was happy with the recipe and how it turned out. Since it's a cold salad dish, it would be perfect for potlucks. If you'd like to try the recipe yourself, he has it posted over on his blog. If you'd like to test one of the recipes before his cookbook is published, send him an email and he'll send you a recipe to try out. You could win a cookbook from the Harvard Common Press cookbook catalog for testing a recipe.

Roasted Parmesan Broccoli with Toasted Bread Crumbs

2010-11-15T14:59:00.000-08:00

This was my first recipe from Losing the Newlywed 15, Healthful Vegetable Side Dishes section of The Newlywed Kitchen Cookbook. I'm not really sure what is meant by that title and what the significance of 15 is. I didn't find any explanations and even Googled "Newlywed 15" and wasn't very successful in finding anything.

This was a pretty simple recipe compared to most others I've made from the cookbook so far. It makes for a great side dish. I prepared it with some panko breaded fish fillets. There was also toasted panko crumbs that topped the broccoli but I didn't find the addition of the topping to add much to the dish. There wasn't as big of a contract in textures as there was with the creamy mac & cheese dish. Instead of drizzling the oil over the broccoli I tossed the florets with the olive oil in a bowl to get more coverage and then sprinkled the toppings on before baking. It's a quick and easy side dish that I will probably make again.

Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup

2010-11-09T19:17:00.000-08:00

This was another recipe from the Comfort Food section of The Newlywed Kitchen Cookbook. This recipe contained lots of Asian ingredients that are most likely only found in Asian food stores. Mark and I took a trip to the Uwajimaya in Bellevue last Friday to shop for ingredients. We found almost everything needed for the recipe. I'm not all that familiar with Asian ingredients which made it a little difficult to find some things. The only thing I had to leave out of the recipe was the Szechuan peppercorns which I wasn't able to find. There was also some confusion on the soy sauce. Who knew there were so many different varieties? This recipe called for dark and light soy sauce. All soy sauce looks dark to me so figured. I made a bad assumption that everyday soy sauce was dark soy sauce. I could only find one soy sauce labeled as "light" and figured the soy sauce I had already was dark. I didn't find out until later it was the other way around. I picked up a few other soy sauces for another recipe I'm making for next weekend so I now have 4 different kinds. For the Chinese rice wine, I bought a bottle of cheap sake.

I made some beef broth the night before to use in this recipe. I didn't have any bones on hand so I went to Fred Meyer and asked if they had any beef bone scraps I could have and they packaged some up for me. I think I paid around $2.50 for a package. So I get everything all done for the soup and I take my pictures and am just about to sit down and eat and I smack my head realizing I forgot to add the noodles. How could I forget the main ingredient? The recipe calls for "Asian noodles" which is pretty broad. There are so many different varieties. I asked Lorna what she recommended and she mentioned some noodles at Uwajimaya that come in a refrigerated green package and are labeled as vermicelli. The noodles aren't dried so they only take a couple of minutes to cook. So I had some noodles ready to add to the soup in a jiffy and took a few more pictures before we dug in.

The soup was rather spicy, I'm guessing it was from the chile black bean sauce. I even added an extra cup of water to make it a little less spicy but that apparently wasn't enough. There were plenty of leftovers and I added more water to the leftovers to turn down the heat which made it just right.

I normally don't post recipes from cookbooks but I was given permission to post this one since it's posted on the internet already. So enjoy!

Ingredients:
3 whole star anise, or 1/2 tsp ground star anise
1 1/2 tsp whole Szechuan peppercorns
2 to 4 small fres red chilies, seeded
2 Tbsp vegetable or peanut oil
3 lbs bone-in beef shank or short rib
8 cloves garlic, lightly smashed
5 slices peeled fresh ginger, cut 1/4 inch thick
5 green onions, cut into 4-inch pieces
3/4 tsp Chinese five-spice powder
3 Tbsp Chinese chili black bean sauce
1/4 Cup Chinese rice wine
1 small piece Chinese rock sgar
1/3 Cup light soy sauce
2 Tbsp dark soy sauce
6 Cups low-sodium beef broth
2 Cups water
1 bunch or more baby bok choy
3/4 lb Asian noodles, cooked and drained
2 Tbsp chopped fresh cilantro, for garnish
Chinese chili oil, for garnish (optional)

1. In a cheesecloth, combine the star anise, peppercorns, and red chilies, and tie the bundle with a piece of string.

2. In a large heavy-bottomed pot or dutch oven, heat the oil over high heat until it is smoking. Brown the beef on both sides, 2 to 3 minutes per side. Add the garlic, ginger, and green onions to the oil and stir until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add the five-spice powder, chili black bean sauce, rice wine, rock sugar, light and dark soy sauces, broth, and water, as well as the spices bundled in the cheesecloth. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to medium-low and cover. Simmer for 3 1/2 to 4 hours, until the meat is very tender and falling off of the bone.

3. Remove the meat from the pot and discard the bones. Cut the meat into bite-sized pieces. Strain the broth and discard the cheesecloth bundle, ginger, green onions, and garlic.

4. Cook the bok choy directly in the hot broth for 3 to 4 minutes, until tender. To serve, put a portion of the cooked noodles in each bowl and ladle the soup over the noodles. Add some of the beef and bok choy to the bowl, and garnish with a bit of cilantro and a dash of hot chili oil.

Four Cheese Mac and Cheese

2010-11-03T21:42:00.001-07:00

This is the recipe I've been waiting for. I've seen several people tweet about how good this dish is and I knew I had to try it. It was my first selection from the "Who Gets the Remote?" Comforting Meals for Lazy Nights section of The Newlywed Kitchen Cookbook. I've only made homemade mac and cheese a couple of times. LizzyDishes Stilton Mac and Cheese is my favorite and would be a hard one to beat.

The four cheeses used in this recipe are blue cheese, gruyere, parmigiano-reggiano, and mozzarella. I was able to find all four of them at Fred Meyer. I was thinking I might need to go to Whole Foods to pick some up, but I didn't. I am kind of wishing I had though. The quality of the cheeses there are so much better. The Stilton I got just did not smell right to me. I almost didn't use it at all but it tasted ok so I went ahead and used it anyway and it turned out fine. I think it would have been even better if I had used better quality cheeses though.

I almost made a double batch because I was hoping for lots of leftovers and the serving size listed on the recipe was 2-4. I ended up not since I didn't buy enough cheese for that. Probably a good thing because the recipe made just the right amount and we had lots of leftovers. One of my favorite elements was the topping of toasted panko bread crumbs. It added just the right amount of crunchy texture to each bite. I even brought the bowl of panko crumbs to the table so we could add more as we ate. I garnished it with a bit of varigated marjoram from my garden. I would have used chives but the chives in my garden aren't good for picking right now. I might have a new favorite mac and cheese. I'd like to try it again with some better quality cheeses though.

Ranch Deviled Eggs

2010-11-03T13:47:00.000-07:00

I found this recipe in the November, 2010 issue of Better Homes and Gardens. This recipe by Susan Asanovic won the Easy Appetizer Challenge. It puts a ranch flavored twist on the traditional deviled egg.

Have you ever made deviled eggs and not had enough filling to fill all the eggs? I know I have. This recipe has you add 4 of the egg white halves to the filling. I never even thought of doing that before, but it's a great idea and it worked well. There was plenty of filling left to also fill some tomato and jalapeno pepper halves. This recipe called for fresh tomatoes but I decided to roast mine in the oven for a little while before filling and they were my favorite of the three. I think the ranch dressing was a little too strong for my taste and I didn't even put the entire packet in the filling. I think half of a packet would probably be enough. I thought it was a fun recipe though and liked using the filling in the other vegetables. You can also find a printable recipe here.

Ingredients:
4 jalapeno peppers
4 small roma tomatoes, halved
8 hard-cooked eggs, peeled & halved
1/2 Cup plain Greek yogurt
2 Tbsp snipped fresh cilantro
1/4 Cup thinly sliced green onions
1 1oz pkg ranch salad dressing
3 Tbsp olive oil
4 garlic-stuffed green olives, sliced (optional)

Directions:
1. Coat a small skillet with vegetable oil; heat over medium heat. Cook peppers for 5 minute, turning occasionally, until lightly charred. Cool.

2. Halve peppers; remove seeds and membranes. Scoop out tomato halves. Set halves aside.

3. Remove yolks from eggs and place in a medium bowl. Add 4 of the egg white halves to bowl; mash with a fork. Stir in yogurt, cilantro, green onions, dressing mix, and oil. Spoon mixture into halved jalapeno, tomatoes, and egg whites.

4. Cover and chill up to 8 hours. Top with olive slices, if you like. Makes 14 (2-appetizer) servings.

Pina Colada Pancakes

2010-10-25T18:29:00.000-07:00

This is my third recipe from the brunch section of The Newlywed Kitchen. There are still a few more I'd like to try from this section like the blueberry cinnamon streusel muffins, orange blackberry scones, and the chunky monkey banana bread, but I must stay on track and move onto the next section next weekend. I'm sure I will revisit these other recipes after this project.

Mark is usually the pancake maker. He's helping me pick out recipes and this was one of his selections. I had a feeling it was the one he was going to pick, but it was a tougher decision than I thought it would be.

This recipe is said to yield the softest, most tender pancakes and well, I would have to agree. I'm sure it had something to do with the combination of buttermilk, baking powder and baking soda. The addition of pineapple to the batter made the texture a little chunky but in a good and tasty way. The pancakes were topped with buttered coconut rum syrup which was quite easy to make using the recipe in the cookbook. They were also topped with toasted coconut which I'm not sure you can buy. I ended up buying the coconut flakes and toasting it myself in the oven for about 7 minutes at 325 degrees. The final topping was a couple of dollops of whipped cream.

Instead of making 6 pancakes, I made 4 large, plate sized pancakes and it was more than enough to feed the two of us. We were able to eat about 3/4ths of it along with a couple of strips of bacon and saved the leftovers for breakfast the next morning. They were just as good the next morning as they were the day before.

Salmon Frittata

2010-10-19T12:57:00.000-07:00

This was the second recipe made over the weekend from the brunch section of The Newlywed Kitchen Cookbook. It was my first time making a frittata and it really wasn't very difficult. I decided to use a large cast iron pan for it even though the recipe said to use a medium sized pan. I was thinking 6 eggs and all the other ingredients wouldn't fit in a medium pan. It turned out to be pretty thin and am thinking it might have fit in the smaller pan. It was a little difficult to slice the smoked salmon without it falling apart so I ended up crumbling the salmon over the top instead. We had some of the biscuits leftover from Saturday along with the frittata and it made for a good Sunday breakfast. Next time will try to fit it all into a medium sized pan as suggested.

Bluemoon Burgers Fries

2010-10-18T21:59:00.000-07:00

I've been to Bluemoon Burgers a couple of times and always get the black and blue burger. If there's a burger on the menu with either blue cheese or gorganzola that's what I'll get, cuz it's the best! I would have liked to get a burger this time, but I had sushi making plans with Robin Leventhal's Handbuilt Feast class so I didn't want to get too stuffed before class. I was really only there for one thing this time and that was to eat the special fries that are supposed to be available for this month only. This month, Bluemoon Burgers are topping their fries with some of my favorite salt, chorizo sea salt from Secret Stash Salts. I pretty much always eat ketchup with my fries but these were so good, dipping them in ketchup didn't even cross my mind. I had my fries with a glass of red wine. Walking a block in the rain for these tasty fries was worth it! If you haven't had their fries this month, you better go and get some.

Ham, Cheddar and Dill Biscuits

2010-10-18T18:27:00.000-07:00

This is another recipe from The Newlywed Kitchen Cookbook. Last weekend, I started on "The Morning After" section which consists of scones, biscuits & other brunch goodies. I got to say it was really hard deciding which recipes to make out of this section. So hard, that I am doing three instead of two which I had planned. There are still a couple more I would like to go back and try. I usually do one recipe a weekend but since I'm doing three, I decided to do two of them over the weekend. I will save the other one for tomorrow's blog post.

I don't think I've ever made homemade biscuits before. I have decided that I really should get a pastry blender. It would have been a lot easier. Instead I used a fork to cut the butter into the flour. Using two knives was the alternative given in the recipe but I found it to be too awkward and seems like it would have taken a long time. I suppose I could have used a food processor but didn't really think about it at the time so a fork worked out ok.

I wasn't really sure what the consistency of the dough should be but when all the ingredients were mixed together I knew it was to dry because it just wouldn't even form a ball or stick together so I added a bit more buttermilk until the dough would come together and form a ball. I didn't use a circle cutter to form the biscuits but instead just loosely formed balls with my hands and flatted them on the cookie sheet which is why the biscuits ended up not coming out perfectly round like the ones pictured in the cookbook. I also just realized there is a photo of the dough which looks a lot more moist than the dough I ended up with so I probably could have added even more buttermilk.

I think this is the first recipe I've done that had a photo of it in the cookbook and I think it is very helpful, especially for this recipe so you know what the dough should look like. It may have been helpful to mention in the recipe to either add more milk or flour if needed. It was obvious to me to do that but may not be to others.

The biscuits ended up coming out pretty well however, I didn't really taste the dill much. I probably could have used a bit more of it. Since mine were a bit more dry, eating them with some butter made them just right. We had some eggs with some of the left over diced ham with them for breakfast.

Kale, White Bean and Sausage Soup

2010-10-12T10:47:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I made Kale, White Bean and Sausage Soup from The Newlywed Kitchen Cookbook. Mark is helping me pick out recipes from the cookbook this time and this was one of his picks. It was a good choice.

I've never bought kale before and don't think I've ever eaten it either; I wasn't sure what to expect. I also didn't know how difficult or easy it would be to find since I don't remember seeing it at the grocery store. I decided to go to Whole Foods to look for some. If anyone had it, they would and boy was I right. Not only did they have it, but they had three different varieties. I ended up asking someone about the different varieties and he helped me decide on the curly kale. It has a stronger flavor than the other two and since it was going into a soup, it seemed to be a good choice. They also had a purple one and a lighter green one. Kale has a bitter taste, kind of reminds me a bit of dandelion leaves. I'm not a fan of bitter greens like that but in the soup the bitterness is not noticeable so it turned out to be a good choice. I'm not sure I would like it much in a salad. Maybe the milder varieties would be better in a salad.

During checkout, they commented on my choice of veg and how healthy and good it is for you. So, I did a quick Google search on kale and found it really is one of the healthiest vegetables you can eat. It's said to be useful for detoxifying your body, lowering your cholesterol, decreasing your risk of cancer, and more. You can read more about Kale and it's benefits on whfoods.org. So I might start eating kale more often!

We both enjoyed it were happy there were more leftovers than we had with last week's tomato soup. Both of the recipes listed the serving size as 2 but there seemed to be twice the amount of soup in this one. The more the better!

Roasted Tomato Soup with Rosemary Croutons

2010-10-04T08:19:00.000-07:00

I made another recipe from The Newlywed Kitchen Cookbook. This recipe came from the category called "For Better or For Worse: Budget-Friendly Soups, Salads & Sandwiches". It's good timing for this section since Fall is here and I love making soups this time of year.

Tomato soup was never one of my favorite soups. I had my fair share of Campbell's Tomato Soup growing up, which to me was like eating watered down tomato sauce. I've never bought canned tomato soup since then and never made my own until last weekend. I have however had it in restaurants a couple of times and enjoyed it. It is one of Lorna's favorite recipes in the cookbook so I thought I would give it a try. Turns out, it's my favorite recipe from the cookbook so far!

I usually don't like putting bread or crackers in my soups but decided to try the croutons in it and it was the perfect combination. We also had the croutons on some salad with our meal and ate what croutons were left with our fingers from the bowl. By the end of dinner, the croutons were gone. I even ate the rosemary pieces from the bottom of the crouton bowl. They were that good! I was glad the recipe made extra croutons for nibbling on and wished there were even more. I have a little bit of the baguette left, so I may make some more.

My only complaint about the recipe is that it didn't make more. It only made 2-3 servings. Normally when I make soups, it makes a fair amount and there is plenty of leftovers to eat for lunch throughout the week, but not this time. There was only about a half serving left after we were finished. I'm sure I will be making this recipe again and when I do, I will be sure to make a double or even triple batch of it so I have plenty of leftovers.

Chicken Chorizo Empanadas

2010-09-27T14:44:00.001-07:00

I've made empanadas before and mom used to make them once in a while when I was a kid, but I've never had them quite like this. It's been a long time since I've made them but I keep telling myself I should make some so I found this empanada recipe in the Newlywed Kitchen Cookbook the perfect opportunity.

The only ingredient I didn't use from the recipe was the raisins. I'm just not a very big raisin fan. There were quite a few differences in this recipe than what I'm used to, from the filling to the crust. The beer in the crust added an interesting flavor and the filling had a lot of interesting ingredients I would never think of using.

There was one thing about the recipe that confused me. The ingredients listed chopped chorizo. I'm not sure how you can chop chorizo, it's like asking for chopped ground beef. I haven't used chorizo a whole lot, despite being half Mexican, but the times I have used it, it's the consistence of squishy ground beef and when cooked it turns to complete mush. I know there are many brands and maybe there are some that you can chop, but not the ones I've used.

I spent a lot of time helping my mom make tortillas when growing up so I think I am pretty good with a rolling pin. So, instead of rolling the dough out one sheet of dough and cutting out circles, I cut the dough in half and put the other half in the fridge. I separated the half into 8 balls and rolled each one out into a small tortilla shape and filled and baked that half. While those were baking, I got the other half of dough out of the fridge and rolled those out the same way, filled, and deep fried that batch. Rolling out individual circles eliminates wasting any dough. I was able to fill and fry the 8 empanadas just as the other 8 were finished baking. The empanadas my mom and I made were always fried so I wanted to see which tasted better since the recipe gave the option. I wasn't surprised to find that the fried turned out crispier and flakier, but I was surprised the baked turned out as good as they did. If you don't want to deal with all the oil and babysitting them, baking them is a perfectly good alternative and it's also healthier.

Since we didn't eat them all for dinner I put the leftovers in the freezer and will just bake them.

Zucchini Fritters and Tangy Yogurt Sauce

2010-09-21T18:26:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I began a new cookbook project. After finishing several recipes from the Herbfarm Cookbook, I decided to start another one. Lorna Yee and Ali Basye's Newlywed Kitchen Cookbook is the next cookbook that jumped out at me. The plan is to make 2 recipes from each section. Lorna has given me a nice list of her favorites to help me decide which ones to try. Mark is also going to help me out. There's 7 categories so I should have 14 recipes done by the end of the project and will post a summary and review of the cookbook when I'm finished.

The first section is titled "Carry Me Over the Threshold" and consists of starters and snacks. Since I still have a crap ton of zucchini from my garden, I thought the zucchini fritters would be a good choice and were even one of the recipes Lorna said was a fav of hers. I already had all the ingredients to make the fritters and only had to pick up some yogurt and parsley for the sauce.

The fritter recipe was very simple and easy to follow, just dump everything into a bowl and and stir. The recipe calls for 3 cups of shredded (2 large) zucchini. Well I accidentally let some of my zucchinis get gigantuan and ended up only using half of one zucchini to get 3 cups. It was really insanely huge. Since it was so big the seeds were getting to the rather large point so I scooped out the insides.

The sauce was also just as easy to make and it went well with the fritters. It was even better topped with some of Secret Stash Salt's Vanilla Sea Salt. I wasn't sure how it would taste but I always like to experiment with sprinkling some sea salt on things and it was an amazing combination.

I am looking forward to trying more of the recipes in this cookbook.

Zucchini Pie

2010-09-15T17:22:00.000-07:00

If you ever grow zucchini in your garden you are probably like me and have so much of it you don't know what to do. I'm always keeping my eye out for zucchini recipes and I came across a tweet from Adrienne aka @aBigMouthful for a zucchini pie recipe by @Real_Simple. I faved it instantly and added the ingredients I didn't have to my shopping list. A week or two later I finally got the ingredients for it and when I got home I couldn't think of what recipe the ingredients were for. I knew I had to have saved the recipe somewhere. So I went through my bookmarks, emails, and twitter. Sure enough, I found it in my twitter favs. Whew!

I made a few minor modifications to the recipe which may or may not have been a good idea. I added a couple of chopped jalapenos which I think was a good idea but I also used an extra egg and a little more zucchini. This resulted in it taking longer to cook. It also stuck to the bottom of my glass pie plate. I'm not sure if that was because of the extra egg and zucchini or maybe I didn't let it cool long enough, but it still tasted great. Below is my variation.

Ingredients:
- 3 1/2 Cups grated zucchini
- 1 small onion, chopped
- 2 jalapenos, chopped
- 1 Cup all-purpose flour
- 1 Cup grated porovolone cheese
- 4 eggs, beaten
- 1/4 Cup vegetable oil
- 4 tbsp grated parmesan
- 2 tsp chopped fresh basil
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- 1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°F. Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl.

Spoon the zucchini mixture into a 10-inch round glass or metal pie pan coated with vegetable cooking spray.

Bake for 50-60 minutes or until golden brown. Cool 10 to 15 minutes before slicing.

HerbFarm Cookbook Review

2010-09-14T11:15:00.000-07:00

I've been making recipes every week from the Herbfarm Cookbook over the past 3 months. I enjoy doing photography projects, especially those that include food. My first food photography project was Food A-Z. It was challenging at times as well as fun and also provided me with several photos to submit to my Getty Images Collection and gave me something to blog about. One of those photos has turned out to be one of my best sellers. So far, I have 4 of my images from this cookbook project available for licensing and will hopefully have more soon during the next review.

I have decided to make my cookbook project a series of projects. I have completed my Herbfarm project and plan on starting a new project soon using recipes from The Newlywed Kitchen Cookbook by Lorna Yee and Ali Basye. I plan to have Mark help pick out some recipes to try, but before I start on that I want to conclude my Herbfarm Project by posting my review and giving my thoughts on the cookbook and my experiences with it.

Pros:
- wonderfully tasty recipes
- well written instructions
- herb variations sometimes provided
- opened eyes to new herbs and vegetables
I don't think there was a single recipe I made that didn't turn out tasting good and there were a few recipes that I made more than once because they were so good. My favs were the balsamic potato salad and the lavender shortbread. I also loved the tarragon butter sauce that went with the poached halibut. There were a few recipes I ran into that gave alternative herb combinations to try, not because they were hard to find herbs, but just for different flavor combinations. There were a lot of herbs and vegetables I used for some of the recipes that I had never had before. Because of this cookbook, tarragon has become my new favorite herb and was encouraged to plant some in my herb garden this year, along with chervil and lovage. I cooked with fennel and lavender for the first time and made homemade pasta and a souffle for the first time. I had a lot of fun trying new things.

Cons:
- few pictures (only pics of herbs)
- a lot of hard to find ingredients (herbs mainly)
- more desserts
Many of of the herbs that were in the recipes are impossible to find unless you have them growing in your own yard or know someone who does. ie. lemon verbena, chervil, lovage, black pansies... I couldn't find any of these anywhere so I either ended up not making that recipe or used an alternative that might come close to what the herb tastes like. For hard to find herbs, an alternative herb or combination of herbs should be provided. I was a little disappointed with the dessert section. It was mostly ice creams and there was a whole section dedicated to sorbets which seemed a little unusual. I would have liked to see more baked desserts. This is probably the first cookbook I've ever bought that doesn't have pictures with the recipes. The recipes need to be very well written if pictures aren't included, which they were, but including photos would just make the cookbook all that much better. There have been times I've bought cookbooks just because the photos looked so good. The recipes in this book are so good they really deserve to be photographed.

Below is the list of sections included in the cookbook and links to my blog posts with additional photos of those I tried. I had originally planned on doing one recipe per category but I couldn't resist doing a few more. If you're turned off by cookbooks with no photos like I usually am, maybe this will encourage you to challenge yourself with this photo lacking cookbook.

Soups
Unami Carrot Soup with Mint
Chicken Stock

Salads
Balsamic Potato Salad

Little Bites, First Courses, and Egg Dishes
Individual Crab and Lemon Thyme Soufflés with Chervil Sauce

Pasta and Risotto
Tarragon and Chive Ravioli

Vegetables (can you tell I like potatoes?)
Braised Fennel Bulb
Potatoes with Lavender and Rosemary
Potatoes in Herbed Cream
Coriander Mashed Potatoes

Fish and Shellfish
Poached Halibut with Tarragon Sauce

Poultry and Meat
Chicken Breasts in Tarragon Cream
Maple and Herb Brined Pork Roast

Desserts
Cinnamon Basil Ice Cream
Lavender Shortbread

Sorbets
Grape and Rosemary Sorbet

Condiments and Candies
Plum and Lavender Chutney

Sauces and other Basic Recipes
Blended Herb and Butter Sauce