Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Gluten Free Pizza Dough

Oh my goodness!! Trying to find a decent GF pizza dough that isn't full of corn or soy flour is ridiculous! Peaches and I have tried so many different kinds that I think we are sick of pizza right now.. BUT, I just happened to make one up the other day.. and it was pretty good! So good that she took some dough to a mutual event where they were making pizzas so that the other GF people could have some pizza too. AND THEY LIKED IT!!!!!

It's so simple it's crazy! I roll my dough out thin between pieces of parchment paper.

GF Pizza Dough

2 1/2 cups flour *
1 tsp instant yeast
1 tsp salt
1 TBS + 2 tsp olive oil
1 cup + 1 TBS warm water

Put oil in measuring cup first!! Then add enough warm water to equal 1 cup + 1 TBS total liquid.

Combine dry ingredients. Add water mix. Stir well to combine all. Cover and let rest in warm spot for 2 hours. Then refrigerate at least 3 hours.

When you are ready to make your pizza, use a little flour on top and cut dough  in half. Place dough on flour dusted parchment paper. Cover with another piece of parchment. Roll out thin, I usually roll it out to 1/8-inch thickness, but Peaches rolled hers out to 1/4 inch at mutual and said it was cooked through. 
Heat oven to 450 - 500 degrees with cast iron pan in oven. After topping dough with sauce etc.. place on HOT cast iron pan and bake for 8 - 12 minutes or until desired doneness..

* I mixed up flour: 1 cup white rice flour, 1/2 cup millet flour, 1/2 cup potato starch, 1/2 cup tapioca starch and 1/4 tsp. xanthum gum

**NEVER eat raw GF dough. Not sure why, but that is a warning label on most GF flours.

Milks

There are so many milks to choose from now. It is wonderful! Back when my brother was a baby he couldn't have milk. But the only milk alternative was Mocha Mix (YUCK!). He always had a yucky runny nose. He also couldn't have eggs, although he loved them. When DD#2 was born, she broke out with horrible eczema all over her face and ears. My midwife had me take milk and wheat out of my diet for a month. It cleared up. She then said I could try either milk or wheat, but not both, at one meal and see how she did.  I tried a piece of toast.

She did not do well! The rash came back with in 6 hours, and it was worse than ever. I had to wait another 30 days to try milk. When I did, she broke out again. She was a year old when I could finally have some dairy. She stopped nursing just before she turned two, because her sister was born and she said it was the baby's milk. So DD#2 got rice milk.. ugh.. not my favorite, but she loved it.

DD#2 would throw up if she got dairy, and break out in eczema. Poor thing. She would do ok with a single piece of cheese for the week. Or a single scoop of icecream, but more than that and she would get dark circles under her eyes, then throw up violently.

Fast forward 12 years, and wow so many dairy free options! and of those most are soy FREE!!!  Woo hoo!  yes there is Rice Dream rice milk but there is also: Coconut Dream, coconut/almond/chia dream, almond dream, SILK almond milk, Almond Breeze, Oat milk, Hemp milk, .. wow!!

Current baby is just like DD#2 and can not have dairy.  He also, it looks like, will be going gluten free.. Poor guy. He still prefers breastmilk, and if he sees it is milk of any kind in the glass with the straw, then he pushes it away. He wants water..

What's your favorite dairy free milk?

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

The GLUTEN FREE dilemna

Going gluten free is not the easiest thing to do. It is just unimaginable where you will find wheat and gluten! We are also corn free here, so we have already been avoiding that (and that is also unreal!).

At first when you have to eliminate something from your diet, all you can think of is that which you can no longer have. With corn you think of all those "wonderful" processed foods like cookies, chips, frozen junk etc.. Well with gluten/wheat it's bread. Candy. Cookies. Gravy. Some sausages. Donuts. Muffins. Bread. Buns. Croissants. Spaghetti. Mac and cheese. Bread. Gravy. Pizza. Sauces. Bread. Vanilla extract. Gravy. Some alcohols like beer, some rum, some vodka, some whiskey (IF you drink or make your own tinctures, medicines, or Vanilla).

Do you see what I mean? Do you see what you are missing? I used to make bread almost everyday. But since our last blessing was born I have had to be very dutiful in being GF. Why? Because not only do I react to it, but so does the baby. What am I missing? Nausea, stomach cramps, debilitating migraines, vomiting, acid reflux, itchy skin, abdominal pain that made me double over. Am I really missing anything? I think not.

I am learning to make things GF. Muffins come out reasonably good. Cookies, no problem. pizza..um.. not quite yet. Which is a bummer because Christmas 2013 I perfected my pizza crust recipe and it was AMAZING! So now I am working on perfecting a GF pizza dough recipe.

As for pasta, well, I am not really missing it. I use rice pasta. We tried buckwheat pasta, but it has a very strong distinct flavor. Quinoa pasta is hard to find not mixed with corn or soy. But to replace pasta, I just use rice pasta. Peaches likes hers with quite a bit of chew to it, so we don't cook it as long as directed. But really, I only miss lasagna and spaghetti.. but not really because I can use rice pasta or spaghetti squash.

If you look for what you CAN eat when on a special diet, the whole food world opens up. Here in Washington, so many people are gluten free it is awesome! Restaurants are being more and more accommodating. One of our favorite places to go will wrap your burger in lettuce or use a GF bun. They also inform you that their fries are NOT GF, AND neither is their guacamole :(  Which means their guacamole comes premade (yuck), honestly it isn't that hard to make!

So what can a GF person eat? Well for starters pretty much all of the produce department is GF. Same with most of the meat department, minus some sausages and seasoned meats. Some of the dairy department is also GF.

A great way to have organic free produce is to grow it yourself. Lettuce grows easily, so do snap peas, zucchini, cucumber, strawberries, onions, garlic, tomatoes (if you have a very sunny warm place), pumpkins, butternut squash, spaghetti squash, beets, spinach, kale, chard, collards... really you pay a little for some seed or starts and you have a plethora of veg and fruit for summer.. and you can freeze the extras! Or can them. Or dehydrate them..

So going with out.. You aren't really going with out. Feeling better is so worth it!

Friday, March 21, 2014

March is Madness!

Oh my heck! It's March! Wait, it's almost over? Where have my days gone? I have absolutely no idea! I have been busy for the last 10 months dealing with our little mexican jumping bean. Things got off to rough rough start. My thyroid was too low so I wasn't making enough milk, on top of that even though he has a great suck, the roof of his mouth is severly arched and so stuff wasn't positioned correctly to get milk. I could put my finger in his mouth behind where his front teeth were, and go up and up and up!! All the way up to my middle knuckle!!! That is a high palate! Not a good thing.

Bugga has never ever stopped moving. Even while pregnant he was always moving. He would never relax while nursing. Something always moving, a foot kicking, and hand squeezing. He would scream unless he was on the breast. Pediatrician says reflux... meds.. the meds were terrible!!! I smelled them, and they gave me an asthma attack! Couldn't get them down the baby, so we saw a different ped and she ordered meds through a compounding pharmacy woo hoo grape flavor. OK, this took a week to start working... kind of.. not.. eventually he went off this medication because his reflux was gone.

He only slept through the night for a week!!  No naps, unless being held.. let me tell you.. I love the snuggles, but I do need to get stuff done ... still not napping in his bed.. YET..But he sleeps in his crib at night.. See, when we went on a trip, I started giving him formula. Ya know, trying to wean him a little. Plus he ate veggies, fruit, oatmeal, yogurt.. yup. and he loved it. BUT, something was not right. He was struggling to poo, he was up most of the night screaming, he was biting like crazy!!

I got online and did a search for "how to get my 10 month old to take naps"... an article came up about how dairy and gluten cause reflux and the symptoms are: irritability, asthma (yup he was a wheezing monster), constipation, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, arching and more.. he has all but one symptom !  AHH HAAA   I feel like an idiot. No one told me! My poor baby boy was in pain! We immediately took him off formula and gluten. No more dairy for him or I, as he is still nursing.

So yup, Bugga and I are gluten free (gf) and dairy free(df), our house is also sf and cf (corn and soy free). It took 5 days, but last night was the first time he slept almost the entire night! He woke for a dream feed at 11pm, but then slept until 6 am..amazing! BUT, still napped in arms. Hey, I am not complaining! He was so much happier and nicer today.. well until he got hungry and started biting my leg. No I am not exaggerating, he was biting me. So into the high chair he went to have some rice, peas, bananas and mango. yummy.. then some blueberry coconut milk yogurt. YUM!

Since being gf my migraines are gone. I had a headache yesterday, all day, but it is normal the first week or two to have headaches from withdrawal of gluten. Other symptoms of withdrawal include nausea (which I get when eating gluten!!), skin eruptions, stomach cramps... and more. 

I also found while researching  gluten.. People diagnosed with gluten allergy or celiacs usually are diagnosed with thyroid problems with in 5 years of diagnosis. AND people diagnosed with thyroid issues usually are diagnosed with celiacs within 5 years of diagnosis!  AND people with these conditions are also usually diagnosed as diabetic with in 10 years!!! HOLY CRAP!!! Most diabetics have thyroid issues.. Do you see the vicious circle here?

My symptoms for gluten allergy were: dizziness, nausea, stomach cramps, dry skin, exhaustion, irritability, joint pain, muscle pain, the bottoms of my feet felt like I was walking on needles!, diarrhea and constipation..  Guess what the most dangerous of those was???
The dizzy part. Why? Because it means my body was attacking my cerebellum. Yup, my brain was under attack, and if not caught soon enough, the damage is permanent! I started getting dizzy 13 years ago! Fortunately it would get bad then better. Why? Because when I was dizzy I was so nauseous that I was vomiting, and so I wouldn't eat anything except chicken broth (no gluten there!!).

So, my daughter was getting dizzy too. Glad I found out about the gluten thing. She has been sneaking gluten, and well.. paid for it.

Out of 10 people in our home, 6 of us are gluten free now. The rashes, cramps, dizzy, and more are disappearing!!  hurrah!!!

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Happy Valentines Day!

Ok, I am not sure how I truly feel about this day. Saint Valentine was beaten with clubs, stoned and then finally beheaded. Why? He was caught marrying Christian couples.. this was illegal at the time. His captor, Claudius II liked Valentine... Valentine made the mistake of trying to convert Claudius.. Valentine was a martyr for the Christian faith.
His tortuous murder was on February 14, 269 A.D.
Valentines Day was brought about by a Pope to remember all the martyred priests.

I once read that Valentines day is the day you tell people how you truly feel about them. hmm... Now I am not to sure about that.. But, I will enjoy that part of telling people you care about them.

I hope everyone looks at the true meaning of Valentine's Day, and not just expect the commercialized side of the day (expensive dinners, jewelry, chocolate).

Life is crazy here on the little farm. Chickens are eating eggs. We have been raising meat rabbits, but with the baby allergic to rabbit fur, we will be selling all the rabbits and bunnies. I sold some of the chickens, but we still have an egg eater ... I need to catch her in the act, then return the favor by serving fried chicken for dinner the next day.

Stay WARM!!!