I never really considered myself a “healthy” cook.  In truth, because I don’t feel I am qualified to know what the word “healthy” means.  My Ph.D. is not in anything related to food or nutrition, nor anything that could even be remotely construed as such. To me, what seem like obviously healthy foods may not be the case for everyone – for example a banana is a pretty natural food, but to a diabetic the carb load in most bananas usually makes them off limits.  So who am I to make blanket statements about which foods or meals are healthy and which are not?  Everyone has different requirements and needs based on their individual situations, and I could not presume to guess what would be suitable for all.  I don’t even like associating the term “gluten free” with “healthy”, because we all know that gluten free foods and products come in several different forms – and gluten free junk food is still just that – junk food.  There are healthy and unhealthy items in every diet.  So the best I can do is make food that accommodates the specific dietary needs of our household and share my experience with you all.  I leave it to you to make your own decisions about the suitability of the food I make.

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Eggplant is one of those vegetables.  I see it in the market, know I should be eating more of it, and yet, am usually stumped as to ideas of what to actually do with it.  It’s never a fast cooking vegetable, so I know I will need to put in some time and effort for whatever comes of it.  My favorite way to eat it is battered and pan-fried, but I can’t be enjoying that too regularly as I have no willpower for such deliciousness  Luckily, the beauty of eggplant is also its versatility.  I know I can do more with it and will enjoy it, if I just think a bit and dare to try something new.

But trying something new is easier said than done, no? Stepping into the unknown, not knowing where it will lead…  As a scientist, I live and find comfort in control.  When everything is kept the same except for that one part I want to investigate, I know exactly where the different results arise from.  In science, if you know the right questions to ask and can find a well controlled approach to solve those problems, you’re generally on track to gaining new insights.  And it all stems from being able to control everything else.  When too much is out of your control, you really have no idea where to begin to find those answers.

Being in control tells me I am in charge and can lead the direction.  When I cook, especially gluten free, I take that same mindset from the lab and apply that approach to the kitchen.  I have notebooks of ingredients and measurements that I’ve tried, and when something doesn’t work out perfectly, I systematically alter the ratios of ingredients to find the best combinations.  When I cook, I find comfort in knowing how certain ingredients play together – for example basil and tomatoes will always be a fantastic marriage, no matter what dish they are combined in.  There are rules to cooking because in the end, cooking is just an extension of chemistry.  Ingredients behave according to their relative amounts of each other, just like molecules in a chemical reaction (it really is all about ratios).  I like knowing that rules exist for the kitchen –  the more I learn what those rules are, the more I can use them to achieve what I want on our dinner plate.  To me, the process of discovery while cooking is really not all that different from the same process that I use in my day to day life at work.

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I have very little experience with Indian food.  A couple of times I’ve gone out to eat at an Indian restaurant, but even then I can count those experiences on just one hand.  Why? I’m not really sure.  Every time I’ve had a chance to taste Indian food I’ve enjoyed it, and much of it is naturally gluten free – another bonus.  Maybe I just never got enough exposure to feel confident enough in what I was doing to try to cook it.  But really, when has that ever stopped me? I mean, most of the things I’ve made for this blog have been a bit of an adventure in the totally new and unfamiliar – whether it be new flavors, new ingredients (jerusalem artichokes anyone?), or even new techniques to experiment with.

So when Barbara, Prerna, and Kathy decided to host #IndianFoodPalooza in order to encourage more people to try making Indian food, I knew this was the perfect opportunity to take advantage of and get me out of my comfort zone a bit.  But wow, India has such varied culture and cuisine, where and how to choose what to make?  I decided to go for more southern recipes, as I knew they would have more chance of being naturally gluten free, and I didn’t want to try to focus on figuring out substitutions as well as new cuisine.  I gravitated towards recipes with coconut flavors because, well, I love coconut – did a little searching online and came across a shrimp dish with coconut curry that I just knew I had to try!

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I have hit the ground running with my expedition into the land of root vegetables.  This week I have eaten celery root, parsnips, jerusalem artichokes, and there are even carrots sitting in my fridge.   My first foray of the year into root vegetables was to try them simply – I wanted to taste their flavor, with mere accents to the palate rather than covering them up by drowning them in butter or cheese (as tempting and always tasty as that may be).

I believe in understanding the true flavor of an ingredient before getting too inventive with it – after all, what is the point of a food that cannot be tasted?  How do you ever really know if you will like it or not if you cannot identify its inherent flavor?  I think roasting vegetables is a great way to try new ones, because it’s an easy cooking process and yet still preserves the texture unlike boiling something forever. I grew up with enough over-boiled veggies (well, at least I consider them over-boiled) in my day to know that boiling is not my preferred method for cooking vegetables – well except maybe beans.  So when I have no idea what I am going to do with something, oven-roasting is usually the route I tend to go.

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Today marks another fantastic gluten free ratio rally day – this month, the theme is cookies hosted by the lovely Caroline of The G-Spot Revolution! Cookies, which have been my gluten free baking nemesis for years (along with puff pastry).  Be it complicated macarons or simple chocolate chip, I can never seem to get them right.  In fact, I have an entire category on this blog devoted to stories of my gluten free baking flops, and quite of few of them are taken up by cookie trials.

So when the theme was announced, a bit of anxiety overcame me – must I really face my long-standing baking foe?  What if I can’t figure out a working version in time?  Will cookies forever be my GF baking downfall?

But we all know where worry and negativity gets us in the kitchen.  Nowhere.  I think I need to come to terms with the fact that you are never going to see a chocolate chip cookie recipe on this blog, nor a beautiful macaron either.  If you are ok with that, then I am too.  Let’s just cut our losses and move on.

Thankfully, there is a whole wide world of cookies beyond macarons and “Tollhouse” style chocolate chip.  So I started looking to other cookie traditions to see what other types of options there were – afterall, if there were only macarons and chocolate chip cookies in the world, then we would all be sorely missing out on a number of delicious treats in life.  There are flourless cookies made from nut butters, bar cookies like these colorful seven layer venetians, and let us not forget the macaron’s totally unrelated but similarly named cousin, the macaroon, made with coconut and often dipped in chocolate, and much much easier to execute.

As it turns out, Switzerland loves cookies at Christmastime, and there are myriad lovely varieties that seem to turn up in stores and the markets about as soon as the roasted chestnut stands appear outside.  Basler brunsli, zimtsterne, mailänderli, chräbeli, spitzbuben, berner haselnusslebkuchen, berner honiglebkuchen, and tirggel to name a few (and I am sure I am missing others).

I was looking through the various Swiss cookies, and noticed that a few are actually mostly made of nut meals which seemed like they would be very amenable to making gluten free – and nothing complicated like the infamous macaronage!  So I decided this month, rather than continue to beat my head against the wall with failed cookie after another, I would try something completely new.  Different.  Let’s move on from chocolate chip cookies and macarons, shall we? :)

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It’s amazing how I can go visit my family for two weeks and come back to find that there has been an abrupt yet complete transformation into Winter.  No snow here yet, but that nip is in the air and the wind blows with a chill that makes anyone want to bundle themselves up in a hat and scarf, maybe thinking twice before venturing outside.

Most would consider this the official season for warm Wintery comfort foods – baked potatoes, fondue, stews, and the like.  However while it may not be so pleasant outside, inside our apartment is a sweltering sauna – we have yet to ever activate our heating, and most of the time often crack a window to help relieve us a bit – maybe our neighbors love the warmth too much and so their heat finds its way to our place? I don’t know – but when home, the last thing I want to eat is a thick hot meal.

So instead I have been stocking up our kitchen with my favorite fruits – mangoes, clementines, pomegranates, avocados, whatever looks refreshing when we go shopping.  Dinners have been salads – something light to enjoy the fun tropical flavors that come out in Winter, that aren’t going to heat up our apartment so much (well more than it already is).  On top of that, most salads that my husband and I make are naturally gluten free – that is, we don’t add in croutons or complicated dressings that require substitutions, we simply prepare fresh ingredients and dress with simple dressings for something easy that doesn’t require much thought.

This mango avocado salad is one such salad, and after making it more than a few times in the past month alone we have yet to tire of it:)

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The end of Summer is upon us – some people I’m sure will be reminiscing about times at the beach or picnics and bbqs in the sun with friends, fruits and vegetables from their gardens and holidays.    I am reminiscing about my travels to Germany, Spain, France, and great hikes in the Alps, along with some gorgeous produce in our local markets. This was for sure the year of apricots and berries en Suisse, and we enjoyed all of it that we could.  But I’m not thinking back on Summer with too much sadness, for there is so much to look forward to in the coming Fall – the produce is far from done yet, instead there is just a new set of gorgeous food to enjoy – pruneaux, grapes and mushrooms, chestnuts, squash – I love seeing how all the foods cycle throughout the seasons.  The markets provide endless fascination of inspiration and flavor.

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I never knew what all the hype was about fresh apricots until I moved to Switzerland. My grandmother used to talk about apricots that she would eat when she was growing up in California, and I never quite understood her fascination with them because well, New England (where I grew up) just isn’t known for its stone fruit – so any time I had them I just wasn’t that thrilled – probably because whatever apricots we did have available were old, from far away, and beaten up from the long journey to the Northeast.  But now I live en Suisse-Romande, the French speaking side of Switzerland, and in the Summer apricots are all the rage, especially those from the canton of Valais.  To me it seems Valais is quite well-known for several specialties – les abricots, la raclette, la petite arvine, la brisolée, la viande sechée… so many culinary treasures that I had never really appreciated or known much about until our hop “across the pond”.

Valais also happens to be one of my favorite cantons for hiking around – because seriously what can top a place that has such gorgeous mountains and views like this?

But then, I didn’t know about a lot of features of Swiss life & culture (let alone of certain cantons!) until I moved here, and I’ve found so many great foods (and places) that I now love because of being en Suisse.

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Why do we need a special occasion to eat tasty food?

My husband and I don’t eat fancy food very often.  We hardly ever go out to eat, and most dinners at home are vegetarian, consisting of pasta, rice or bean dishes or salad, rather uncomplicated and reasonably affordable.  But from time to time, my husband and I come up with random occasions to celebrate just because we want a nice dinner.  A sudden craving, we both turn to each other one day and say, “Hmm do you want to cook something nice tonight?” And we go to the market, pick out a nice cut of meat and proceed to plan for ourselves a “fancy” dinner – we’ll get out the good wine glasses, actually set the table, and sit down like we’re celebrating a fancy anniversary.

This time, we decided it was “because it was finally a beautiful warm sunny day in Switzerland.”  The last time I had cooked lamb was for my birthday last year, and I don’t really know what prompted us to want lamb that day, but being a beautiful almost Summer-like day seemed as good a reason as any

Maybe making up a reason for a dinner with a pricey cut of meat (well, pricey for us who still have not fully accustomed ourselves to Swiss meat prices) is just a way of being spontaneous, because an impromptu “date” at home makes us feel young again after many days coming home from work tired and not wanting to do anything other than eat dinner, relax a little and then sleep.  Maybe we’ve just been feeling in a bit of a spontaneous mood lately, like yesterday when we decided to walk the famous vineyard trail through the Lavaux region along the coast of Lake Geneva, conveniently ending in the town of Cully, the location of our favorite gluten free chocolaterie/dessert shop.

After all, with such amazing weather, how could one resist being outside to soak up all that rare sunshine?

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Are you a morning person??

I’m a reluctant morning person.  Usually doing my best not to throw my ipod across the room as the purposely annoying ring drags me out of the sweet nothingness that was sleep, leaving me to stumble out of bed and fumble for the buttons on the coffee maker, totally useless until taking a hot espresso down in one giant gulp – only now willing to make myself aware of the world.

But then there are some days that present themselves a bit more pleasantly – sunlight slowly streams into the room as the birds start up their chorus of hymns to greet the day – on these days I find myself full of energy, rushed with the sudden urge to go outside and say good morning to nature and her beauty, even if she decides to hide the sun for a bit once I actually make it outside – no matter, the mornings are still preciously awe-inspiring as soft light kisses the tops of all things green and flowering:

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