Twas the night before Christmas…well, actually it was four o’clock in the morning, but technically by the calendar, the night before Christmas. Not a creature was stirring… except Marty and his computer mouse. The children were not all snuggled in their beds; rather, Marty was wide awake talking online to his “Sleepless in Spokane” friend. I woke up, and the lights downstairs were all ablaze, so I sprang from my bed to turn the lamps off. The moon cast long, lavender shadows in the yard below. Tom was wide awake, so I commented on the beauty of the night. With a wink of his eye and a twist of his head, he said, “Let’s go for a walk!” Hearing the word “walk,” Chester sprang to his feet, and down the driveway he flew like the down of a thistle. He would have liked nothing more than to have scared up some reindeer.

Down Ames Hill Road we sauntered in the 16-degree cold, under the light of the moon and crunching snow. Chester barreled ahead, and every so often we gave him a whistle so as not to awaken the neighbors, sound asleep with thoughts of sugar plums and credit card debt in their heads. We turned around at Fox Road and walked back to the top of the porch, through the stone wall. Back inside, we stoked up the fire and had a marvelous early morning breakfast of Against The Grain Dairy Free bagels and eggs. By 9AM, Tom climbed back into bed and shuttered the sash. Although it was Christmas Eve, I’m still a slave to gender stereotypes, so I went down to the basement to put in a new load of wash. In the quiet of the half-sleeping household, I accidentally snapped the dryer door shut with a “pop.” Much to my astonishment,

Best I could deduce was that the dryer door startled Chester, asleep by the tree. He must have jumped up, entangled himself in a dangling LED strand, panicked, and took the tree with him. Alex was upstairs, so I called out to him for help. He came down the stairs and viewed the wreckage.

“I need some help,” I said, mopping up the tree stand water with multiple dish towels.

“Let’s just throw it back in the woods!” Alex said indignantly, referring to the fact that it has been a family tradition since moving to Vermont, to cut our Christmas tree off our land.

As far as he was concerned, the tree was now “damaged goods,” but he reluctantly held it up for me, as I readjusted it in the stand, and wired it to the wall with some floral wire (no way that puppy is going to fall again, I thought, as the crashing tree was already on the verge of ruining Alex’s Christmas.) I picked up the remarkably intact glass ornaments that skidded to a stop across the room, and in no time at all, had the chaos restored to normal. Chester wouldn’t even enter the room for hours, and still won’t venture within five feet of the tree.

Somehow, when we drift off to sleep tonight with visions of dairy free bagels dancing in our heads, it will seem anticlimactic. Christmas Eve 2010 will be the year we took an invigorating walk in the moonlight, and the tree took an invigorating spill, all before the day got started. Okay, so I have a psychotic dog and a lop-sided Charlie Brown tree, but we have so much more to be thankful for.

One of my favorite baked hostess gifts back in our gluten days was a chocolate bark that curiously used saltine crackers as a base. Basically a melted brown sugar-butter mixture was poured over a layer of crackers, baked, and then chocolate chips were melted and then spread. What a crowd-pleaser! When I first tasted this concoction, brought to me as a hostess gift, I (as well as the rest of my guests,) fell in love with it. The baker at first declined to give me the recipe since she thought it embarrassing that she used saltine crackers in such a simple recipe.

When we gave up gluten, this was one of my favorite recipes that just didn’t translate well to the gluten free kitchen. I needed a GF version of a saltine cracker, and it had to be perfectly machine-made square so as to seamlessly cover the bottom of a baking pan. So the idea fell to the bottom of my recipe compost pile.

This holiday season, when looking for a good rolled cookie recipe with Alex to modify, I happened upon a “Chocolate Nut Bark” recipe in an unlikely book: Kids Cookies from the Williams-Sonoma Kitchen Library (1998.) It brought back memories of my favorite chocolate bark, as well as a commercial product sold by Williams-Sonoma.

“How ‘bout we try to make some peppermint bark?’ I said to Alex.
“Bark!,” he exclaimed, “YESSS!”

So now I knew we were on to one of our gluten free baking adventures, modifying and tweaking the recipe into a GF delight. Two weeks have passed, and we have now made four batches as holiday gifts. This recipe is a definite winner. In their product description for peppermint bark, Williams-Sonoma states:

“Our nostalgic peppermint bark is often copied but never matched in quality or flavor.” Well, get ready for this gluten free version. It is sinfully good and every bit the equal. The very best thing about it is that it came from a  kid’s book, and it couldn’t be any easier.

Gluten Free Peppermint Bark

Ingredients:½ C softened butter
½ C packed brown sugar (light or dark)
1 egg yolk, large (or two medium)
2 teaspoons peppermint extract
1 C Gluten free flour blend (without xanthan gum)*
15 oz semisweet chocolate chips
9 regular-sized candy canes (or 4.5 oz of peppermint candies)

*I used a blend of 1/3 C brown rice flour, 1/3 C tapioca starch, 1/3 C arrowroot starch)

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Place the candy canes in a zip-lock bag and whack them with a rolling pin to break them into fine pieces.
3. Put the butter sugar, peppermint extract, and egg yolk in a large mixing bowl and beat until well-blended.

4. Fold in the GF flour mixture until moistened and beat again until well-blended and creamy.
5. Using a spatula, drop the mixture in six parts onto a 10.5 x 15.5 inch baking pan.

6. Using the spatula, spread the mixture evenly from side-to-side, covering the entire pan. Make sure the batter is as even as possible and make sure there are no holes. At first, it will seem like you have way more surface area than dough, but it will eventually cover the pan equally.

Note Chester’s feet in the “Drop Zone” Fat Chance!

9. Remove from oven. Working quickly, spread the chocolate chips until the surface is evenly coated with chocolate. At first, this may seem tricky to make the chocolate adhere to the base, but keep pushing down and spreading—the chocolate chips will cooperate as they meet the base.

10. Sprinkle the top with the crushed peppermint, pat it lightly into the chocolate, and allow to cool fully. Place in freezer and allow to harden. Break into bark-sized pieces and store in cookie tin or any airtight container.

It is trying to snow outside this morning, but it is rapidly turning to rain. It is kind of odd that it is mid-December in Vermont, and the ground here in the southern part of the state is bare. What better thing to do on a damp, rainy day than to bake a traditional favorite that will warm the house with the smells of times past: bread pudding. Bread pudding is an old-fashioned dish that was developed mainly to use up the stale ends of bread, back when bread used to be all-natural and not loaded with anti-molding agents and preservatives.

This bread pudding recipe has a few twists, though. It is gluten free, dairy free, and made from our new gluten and dairy free cinnamon raisin bagels. They’ve been on the market only a few weeks, but boy will you want to seek them out. In our household, where we can choose among all of our bread flavors for breakfast, the cinnamon raisin bagels have risen to the top. For me, a toasted bagel with my homemade rose petal jelly is simply a divine way to begin the day. But I am digressing. For all of you out there who cannot eat dairy, this Cinnamon Raisin Bagel Pudding is the ultimate bread pudding treat.

The following recipe includes an optional ingredient: bourbon. It adds a richness and complexity to the dessert if you want to wow your guests, but it is excellent without it. If you choose to include the bourbon, reduce the coconut milk by ½ C. Move over Paula Deen!

Gluten Free/Dairy Free Cinnamon-Raisin Bagel Pudding

Ingredients:
1 Bag Against The Grain Gourmet GF/DF Cinnamon Raisin Bagels (6)
1 C raisins, pre-softened in boiling water (or soaked overnight in 1 C of bourbon)
3 C unsweetened coconut milk
¾ C brown sugar
2 Tbsp pure VT maple syrup
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp vanilla
6 eggs
1 cup toasted coconut (optional)

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 325.
2. Slice bagels into ½ to ¾ inch cubes. Toss with raisins and cinnamon and cover the bottom of a greased 9 x 13 baking dish.
3. Heat coconut milk, water, and sugar in saucepan until it begins to foam.
4. Remove from heat and stir in maple syrup and vanilla.
5. Wisk eggs into mixture, beating constantly until uniformly blended.
6. Pour mixture over bagels and top with toasted coconut (optional)
7. Cover with foil and bake for 45 minutes.
(To toast coconut, spread in large skillet and cook over medium heat, stirring often until coconut is evenly browned.)

Despite the fact that pies have become the new bakery front fad, replacing all sorts of gourmet cupcake concoctions, I have to admit that I have never been a real fan of pie…except pecan pie. Now that, in my opinion, is PIE. I didn’t even know what pecan pie was until I went away to college in New Orleans, where authentic pecan pie making is considered an art. It didn’t take me long to place pecan pie right up there with boiled crayfish and Oysters Bienville.

There are essentially two kinds of pecan pies: those that use corn syrup and those that use brown sugar. The former comes out a little custardy or gooey, and the latter is more like a praline pie. Once I tasted great pecan pie—the praline kind–I knew I had to find a fool-proof recipe. I found it in the Houston Junior League Cook Book from 1968, given to me by my late mother-in-law over forty years ago. The cook book makes me chuckle for a number of reasons, but it is the pecan pie recipe page that I love. The top billing is for “Southern Pecan Pie” and underneath is a recipe for “Yummy Yankee Pecan Pie.” Guess which one includes white corn syrup as an ingredient? I can only imagine the two recipe authors (probably a native Texan and a “transplanted” Yankee) having a tiff over which was the best pie, so readers are given a choice. The “Yankee” recipe includes maple syrup; I can’t imagine how a) maple syrup could be desecrated by corn syrup, and b) it would taste anything like a real pecan pie. I can just hear my mother-in-law grumbling from her grave about those “damn Yankees thinking they can come down here and improve things.”

We have a Thanksgiving tradition in our household that everyone can pick one food for the dinner, aside from the main course. And yes, we went through a few years when the kids were younger and pizza was on the menu (although I always managed to relegate it to the appetizer category.) I never have to ask Tom his choice. It is always pecan pie, and that hasn’t changed in the six years we have been gluten free. I simply make my no-fail pie crust recipe  http://tinyurl.com/2ffxcyy and fill it with my favorite pecan pie recipe. No gluten free compromises here. And what were the four menu choices for 2010, aside from the pecan pie? Potato, bacon and kale (from our garden) casserole, pumpkin pie, and garlic bread made from Against The Grain Gourmet baguettes. Happy Thanksgiving to your family from ours. An d now you know what I do while the turkey is cooking—catch up on my blogging!

Southern Pecan Pie

Ingredients:
1 unbaked pie shell
1 C light brown sugar
½ C white sugar
1 Tbsp GF flour
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
½ C butter (softened)
2 C pecans (1 C chopped and 1C whole for topping)

Directions:
1. Beat brown sugar, white sugar, and flour with softened butter until creamy.
2. Add eggs and vanilla and beat 2 more minutes on high.
3. Fold in chopped pecans.
4. Pour into unbaked shell.
5. Bake at 375 degrees for 50-55 minutes (until center of pie is set.)
6. Top with whipped cream or serve with ice cream, if desired.

For several years now, we have traveled far and wide to celiac support groups and gluten free fairs. We never tire of the enthusiastic support that our products generate. It has always been troubling, though, to see a person’s face light up when they see our products, and then get so disappointed when they realize that they contain dairy. We never wanted to produce a product that was a compromise in any way from the real thing; the impetus to create a line of dairy-free products was always there but relegated to the back burner.

We’re pleased to announce that we have just introduced our first dairy free offerings, and we owe a lot of that to Emily, a wonderful young woman who has worked for us for two and a half years. Emily is both gluten and dairy free and could never taste the products we produce. Over the years, Emily and I have had conversations about how she might go about making a dairy free version of our products at home. We are a soy free, yeast free, corn free, and peanut and tree nut free facility, so our gluten free palate of wet and dry ingredients was always limited. It was Emily that got me thinking that coconut milk just might be the answer for creating a tasty bread with the same look and texture of our other products.

Coconut milk is a very interesting food indeed. A number of health claims have been made for coconut milk, and some have been substantiated by medical research. Some refer to it as a “miracle food,” but I’m not sure I would go so far as to say that. Although it contains a saturated fat, the fatty acids in coconut milk are medium chain triglycerides, unlike the long chain triglycerides in other fats and oils. As a result, they are more easily metabolized by the body instead of stored as fat. Coconut milk also contains a significant amount of lauric acid, which is thought to have immune-boosting properties.

So, when the time comes to chow down on left-over turkey, you can have a sandwich that will make your non-gluten free friends and family drool. It doesn’t get much better than Turkey with Lettuce and Tomato on a Vermont Country Roll. Pure simple ingredients. No industrial additives, no binders, no enzymes–just delicious ingredients where the roll is greater than the sum of its parts!

Ingredients: Tapioca starch, organic coconut milk, whole eggs, non-GMO canola oil, water, molasses, sesame seeds, flax seeds, salt, cocoa, poppy seeds.

It was almost exactly six years ago that our family of four made the switch to a gluten free diet. For three years Tom’s had a “possibly celiac” diagnosis and had tried to restrict the amount of gluten he ingested. But it wasn’t until our younger son, then 13, was diagnosed with celiac disease, that we made the decision for the whole family to go gluten free. With two of the four of us requiring a gluten free diet, two teenagers, and the risk of contamination, we decided to make our entire household gluten free.

That first Thanksgiving in 2004 was a different one for us. Our younger son wrote up the menu, as he had done every year since he learned to write. The 2004 menu says it all: “Now Gluten Free.” That year, we made a wild-rice and pecan-based stuffing (our menu author didn’t even know what that was!,) since we hadn’t found any gluten free bread we liked. By the next year, we were making stuffing with our Rosemary Baguettes, and what a difference that made. Even our non-gluten free guests always begged for more, and rosemary baguette stuffing has become a tradition. (We also make a tiny slit in the top of each side of the turkey breast and insert a sprig of fresh rosemary. There is nothing like rosemary flavor flowing through with the juices.)

In those six years, some amazing things have happened. We ended up starting Against The Grain Gourmet one year after our son’s diagnosis. And what a ride it has been. With absolutely no experience in the food manufacturing business, I can honestly say that we have built a company that lives up to its name: Against The Grain. Not encumbered by preconceived notions of how to mass produce food at the lowest possible cost, we have created artisan products and sought out the highest quality ingredients. Along the way, we have supported a lot of family farms and independent producers. Since our inception, we’ve been on a mission to make high quality, tasty products that are naturally gluten free.

The other amazing thing that happened is that our older, non-celiac son, who has lived with a life-threatening seizure disorder since 18 months of age, stopped having seizures once on a gluten free diet. He has now been seizure-free for six years. Before going gluten free, he never went for more than six months without having a seizure. I know that critics like to bash Elisabeth Hasselebeck for suggesting that everyone should try a gluten free diet (http://tinyurl.com/33d859c,) but honestly, we never would have figured out how to control our son’s seizure disorder had we not placed him on a gluten free diet.

I get pretty exasperated with those who believe that non-celiacs on a gluten free diet are compromising their nutrition or that it is “bad” for them. Statements like “cutting gluten out can be dangerous ” puzzle me. When celiac expert, Dr. Peter Green is asked, “Are there benefits to adopting a gluten free diet?” He answers, “Not that I’m aware of.” Tell that to my seizure-free son. Tell that to the 60% of children on the autism spectrum that studies have shown have a “leaky gut.”

A gluten free diet is not entirely healthy??  I mean, how hard is it to figure out how to supplement the vitamins, and sprayed on or “fortified” vitamins in many wheat-based products? Fiber concerns? If people are relying on their bread, pasta, and cereal to meet their fiber needs, they don’t have a very balanced diet. One thing that is clear to me is that we know a miniscule amount about the effects of eating highly processed/modified foods on our health. Heck, We don’t even know definitively how our health is related to what we eat. If a gluten free diet makes you feel better or even think you feel better, why not? Your choice is not in any way taking away from the seriousness of the celiac disease that afflicts my husband and son.

As gluten free consumers we have a lot of choices these days when it comes to baked goods, pastas, mixes, and prepared dinner entrees. That is quite an improvement over just five years ago—new products are entering the marketplace nearly every day, produced by both small suppliers and mainstream food giants. And every day, these new products are reviewed by hundreds of celiac sites and food bloggers. Of course, there is no accounting for differences in taste, but the most useful reviews I’ve seen lately are blind taste tests. A great example is “Gluten Free Pancake Mixes: A Blind Review,” on the Breaking Bread Blog http://www.breakingbreadblog.com/2010/10/gluten-free-pancake-mixes-blind-taste.html

This is not some sort of paid review, inside deal, or infomercial. This is a thorough and thoughtful review of nine different mixes (plus a homemade version.) I wouldn’t call it a scientific study, but it was comprehensive with a taster panel of eight adults and ten kids ranging from ages 3-8. Sad thing is, I pretty much knew what the results would be before I read it. I don’t know if anyone else has noticed it, but when it comes to these types of line-ups, products made by the industrial food giants always seem to win (Bisquick was the winner, in case you were wondering.) That makes me wonder whether we, as consumers of prepackaged and processed goods, have developed a taste for industrialized food, and the “real” thing now tastes less authentic or tasty to us. Compare, for instance, the ingredients of Bisquick and Pamela’s Ultimate Baking and Pancake Mix:

Bisquick: Rice Flour, Sugar, Baking Soda, Sodium Aluminum Phosphate, Monocalcium Phosphate, Modified Potato Starch, Salt, Xanthan Gum.

Pamela’s: Brown Rice Flour, White Rice Flour, Cultured Buttermilk, Natural Almond Meal, Tapioca Starch, Sweet Rice Flour, Potato Starch, Grainless and Aluminum-free Baking Powder, Baking Soda, Sea Salt, Xanthan Gum.

Not only does the Bisquick contain modified flours, sugar is the second ingredient. Want to know where the fluffiness in the pancakes comes from? It is the monocalcium phosphate, and one of the major users of this chemical is McDonald’s for their Big Mac hamburger buns. Sodium aluminum phosphate is a chemical leavener and acts as a buffering agent in flour mixes. Similarly, in some mass-produced gluten free sandwich breads these days, enzymes and “natural” mold inhibitors are used to the same effect. The result in all these cases is better texture, and according to a myriad of taste-testers, better taste. Make no mistake, though, these are industrialized ingredients that you won’t find in your health food store or coop’s bulk ingredient bins.

Another case in point: Recently, a reviewer of our new gluten free Three-Cheese Pizza commented that the sauce tasted too sweet to her. That blew me away and really got me wondering what we have inadvertently trained our taste buds to expect. Our tomato sauce is nothing but vine-ripened fresh tomatoes and naturally-derived citric acid. To some, the sauce may seem “sweet” because there is no added salt, no added sugar, no calcium chloride, no chemical citric acid, and no spices. We don’t use inferior tomatoes, and we went to great lengths to find the cleanest, premium, full-bodied flavored tomatoes.

There is no question that taste is just about as individual as fingerprints. One of the hardest things when first going gluten free is that non-wheat-based food just doesn’t seem to taste as good. Or is it that it tastes different? Kind of like natural peanut butter is an acquired taste. After years or a life-time of eating wheat (and often processed foods,) your palate has come to expect certain taste sensations. Industrialized food giants know all about this, and food chemists have developed an arsenal of ingredients to tickle every pallet. Now they are adding them to gluten free foods. They’ve even created taste sensations not found in nature. In the words of one of my co-workers when discussing Halloween candy, “My favorite flavor is purple.” For many on a gluten free diet, changing habits means conscious eating and eating healthier foods. For many, it means getting used to the taste of “real” food again.

“I’m a Freudian dick, I mean slip.”

Work is work, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be fun. Happy Halloween from all the ghouls, goblins, and assorted miscreants from Against The Grain Gourmet!

Okay, since National Celiac Awareness month is almost over, I’ve decided it is the right time for a silly-yak post. So, here’s my sonnet for the gluten free.

Oh chewy, crusty, yeasty loaf of bread
Kneaded flour, webbed proteins, sheared off villi
Glutenous fingers that clasp, rise up high
How could they destroy colons, scramble heads?

The smell of comfort, grandma’s apron… dread?
A world without wheat, barley, oats, and rye.
For celiacs, new and ancient grains to try
Hearty loaves of buckwheat and millet bread.

Nut flours and root flours, and even sunflowers
Bloom in baguettes baked with wheat-free grains.
Ingredients for baking gluten free
Include courage, vision, and extra hours,
A sprinkling of madness, some honesty–
To heal bloated bellies and foggy brains.

October is an important month in the gluten free food business. Not only does it herald the beginning of “food season,” which lasts from about October 1 through January, but it is also National Celiac Awareness Month. Our business goes crazy, and at the same time we find ourselves traveling to lots of vendor fairs, as well as sampling our products at many in-store gluten free tasting events.

Over the past couple of years, more and more local support groups have been organizing gluten free vendor fairs, and the number of attendees is skyrocketing. For us, it has become increasingly more challenging to take enough frozen product with us on a plane to sample for crowds of 800-1000 attendees or more. You know the airline checked bag regulations—a 50-pound limit, two bags, and the length, width, and height must measure 62 inches or less. Pack in 12-18 of our new 24-ounce pizzas, and there is not a lot of room left over.

A couple of weeks ago, I was planning my trip to the Wisconsin Gluten Free Vendor Fair, and I was shopping for a plane-worthy wheeled cooler ( past experience told me that I had better get another one before the winter set in—here in New England, coolers in the winter are about as scarce as batteries in a power outage.) I spied a squarish, wheeled cooler that looked like it would pass the size requirements of a carry-on. Even better, it was the perfect size to fit a dozen pizzas (minus the box) on their side.

So now I had a plan. I would check through a 50-pound cooler of bread, and carry-on a dozen pizzas. The only problem I had was that it would take me over seven hours of travel time to get to the Central Wisconsin Airport, assuming no delays or missed connections. If I put ice packs in the cooler, they would bust me at the Hartford Airport security screening gates, and I would be ice-less for the remainder of the trip. Asking for a soda with ten pounds of ice just wasn’t going to work, and besides it would melt and get very messy.

And then it occurred to me: frozen peas. Ice packs are potential explosives, but food is food. I bought five packages of frozen peas (petite ones in case I ended up eating some of them,) packed my carry-on, cued up to the screening gates, and held my breath. The peas didn’t even get a side-ways glance or a pause at the x-ray machine. The pizzas and I traveled together in the cabin, and I checked through the bread. So, the next time you need to travel with some have-to-have frozen gluten free goodies (e.g., Against The Grain’s awesome Rosemary baguettes,) pack them with frozen peas. And the next time you get impatient with the lady in front of you on the plane struggling to get her overhead baggage down, have heart. It just may be me with a dozen of the world’s best gluten free pizzas.