Diabetic Friendly

The Gluten Free Husband puts his Spin on Steak & Eggs

March 29, 2011
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Hi again! Since I became gluten free, my restaurant experiences have been rather hit or miss. Sometimes, I find myself in a conversation for 15 minutes with the waitress explaining that no, croutons are not OK because they are bread and bread is not ok. In more than one instance, I’ve gotten rolled eyes from wait staff at various restaurants who are “inconvenienced” by my limitations, or they have thought I’m just making it up because I don’t like something and then don’t take it seriously. I find myself weighing if it’s worth being “glutened” because I am the hassle for wanting to eat out, or if I should just go hungry watching my friends around me eat, or stick up for myself to try to be accommodated. And I only have one food issue. So many have multiple dietary restrictions.

Sometimes, following a gluten free diet can feel a little claustrophobic. You feel like you are stuck in a cage and unable to break out and try new foods/places to eat. A constant omnipresent fear is always in your head stopping you from trying that new restaurant or making your own bread or eating anything not made from scratch. I had this fear for a long time (before I met Jenn, of course). Rice, meat and potatoes were the staples in my diet and I dared not stray from this regime or I would react and feel awful for the next week or so (at least this is what I thought in my head). This constant fear plagued me for a very long time, and as a result most of the time when I went out to eat with friends and family, I would only get a grilled steak with a plain baked potato.

Now I love a good steak, don’t get me wrong. But sometimes, it would be nice to feel comfortable eating something else. And that is why I get so excited about enterprises that DO accommodate the gluten free crowd, and have options that are exciting. Not just serving a hamburger without a bun, but a real entrée that I can enjoy to its full capacity. Such places with their dedication to understanding what it is like with dietary restrictions have really helped change my perspective on eating gluten free, and have let me feel like a newly released convict from my food prison.

22 comments

Homemade Chipotle Mayonnaise for Artichokes: Naturally Gluten and Dairy Free

March 27, 2011
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My mom grew up in California. My grandmother grew up in California, and her mother before her and hers before her. Even though I grew up in chilly New England, California runs in my blood – and thanks to my mother’s cooking during my childhood, also my tastebuds. She is the reason why I love apricots and fresh figs and avocados and artichokes. And she and my dad together both taught me to love beautiful fresh produce. When I was home with my parents a few years ago as we were making some wedding preparations, I remember driving for a full hour down to a market on the shore – one that specialized in certain miniature apple pies we were going to purchase as favors for our guests – and there we stumbled upon the most perfect artichokes I have ever seen – she said they reminded her of California, and that was it, we went home with apple pies, and a giant bag full of fresh beautiful artichokes :)

29 comments

Daring Cooks do Ceviche – Grapefruit and mint ceviche salad

March 14, 2011
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This month’s Daring Cooks challenge is all about Peruvian classics – there were actually two challenges this month – ceviche and papas rellenas. Feeling in the need for some lighter fare, I decided to choose the ceviche for this month. This was a fun challenge because I got to do something new. I’ve marinated seafood in acid before in a ceviche-inspired salad, but never ever actually started with raw fish. So here is to another daring first!

64 comments

Eggplant and Red Pepper Caponata

November 18, 2010
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I can’t believe that I was actually wishing for snow to fall today. It seems silly, right? I mean Summer just ended and Fall is upon us, and yet the thought of Thanksgiving and the upcoming holidays finds me yearning for a few crystals to float in the air, sparkling in the low sunlight. To get our Winter-time “fix” we took a little train ride to Swiss-German-speaking land in the Alps to get up and close with our favorite mountain range.

Fate led us to the end of the SBB line in the little resort town of Grindelwald, just south of Interlaken in the canton of Bern, a post-card perfect village nestled right up next to some of the most famous giants of the Alps – the Wetterhorn, Schrekhorn, and the Eiger. Much to our surprise, it’s not Winter in the Alps yet either! The sun was shining throughout the valley, cresting ever so slightly over the wall of the Eiger, releasing a soft yellow glow over the entire landscape for most of the day.

31 comments

Moitié-Moitié “Swiss Fondue” Soufflé

November 13, 2010
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Many people think the process of making soufflés is all about the stress and timing of getting them to come out at that perfect moment. You work out a plan, get your ingredients together, prep your ramekins, fill them up and into the oven they go. Then you watch this glorious symphony happen as they bake. Everything the soufflé was ever meant to be starts with a small puff, growing larger and larger reaching for higher and higher heights until it transforms itself into a vertiable masterpiece of art right before your very eyes. This is the moment that everyone wants to preserve when they serve them – it’s why after this moment everything is an insane rush to get them out on the table. If you want to get a picture of your perfect soufflé, there’s even more adrenaline flowing throughout the room, and I, the photographer, start running all over the place like a lost chicken every time I have to tweak something, unable to turn back the clock as I slowly watch the soufflé tragically fall as I tried to nail the focus. Its life work now completed entire minutes ago, the comparatively cool air of the room rushes over the dish as it lets out a long and weary sigh, until it has at last crumpled to a mere shell of its former self.

62 comments

Daring Cooks #18: Rolled & Stuffed (Canh Bap Cai Cuon Thit)

October 13, 2010
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Wow can you believe Daring Cooks is on to their 18th challenge already?? It doesn’t seem that long ago that we were all attempting ricotta gnocchi for the first time… Well here we are, one and a half years in. So far I’ve had a lot of fun with this group. Some challenges have been better than others, but you’ll have that with just about any blogging group. My favorite challenges so far up to this point have been the paella and sushi challenges. Our October 2010 hostess, Lori of Lori’s Lipsmacking Goodness, has challenged The Daring Cooks to stuff grape leaves. Lori chose a recipe from Aromas of Aleppo and a recipe from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food. If you can’t tell from the photo above, I didn’t stuff grape leaves. In fact, neither grape leaves nor Middle Eastern cuisine were anywhere related to what I chose to do. But I did stuff and roll leaves. Instead I made Vietnamese cabbage roll soup, also known as Canh Bap Cai Cuon Thit.

43 comments

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