Dealing with Milk Soy Protien Intolerance -MPSI

Image by Veganbaking.net via FlickrI'm not vegan but lately it's become my primary adjective when I search for recipes. I find it far easier to locate a good looking, yummy sounding vegan recipe and then add on meat then the other way around.

A few nights ago my husband was quite brave and dug right in to the vegan Alfredo sauce I made to go with our gluten free brown rice pasta and blackened chicken. If you've ever thought about making a white sauce with no cheese, no butter and no milk, then you and I have shared a moment of "I just spent 30 minutes slaving over this and no one is going to eat it" panic.

Over the last five months I have experimented, avoided and substituted to no end. Although I can point you in the direction of a fabulous dairy free, soy free, gluten free chocolate bar, I can hardly remember the taste of real milk. Since I've fielded lots of questions lately on allergy free cooking and getting started I thought I would put together my top ten list of must haves for allergy free cooking and hope it helps someone else down the path to better health.

1. Coconut milk-I was pretty pumped when Jillian Michaels jumped on the coconut milk bandwagon since this is one that really needs to become more mainstream. It tastes fabulous, makes one heck of latte and works in everything from baking to mashed potatoes. I buy the vanilla for baking and unsweetened for everything else. It has no coconut taste or smell whatsoever and they make everything from milk to yogurt to ice cream and coffee creamer from it. My favorite brand is So Delicious and you can usually find at least 2-5 items of it in my fridge.
2. Tinkyada Brown Rice Pasta- We tried a lot of pasta when my husband first went gluten free and if you cooked them just right they didn't turn to mush on your fork. Then along came Tinkyada with their fabulous brown rice pasta in all shapes and it's now back in our weekly rotation.
   
3. Cashews-ground up superfine and cooked into a coconut milk sauce these lend (believe it or not) a cheesy texture and taste. I also through some nutritional yeast in there to increase the "cheesy" texture. The Alfredo sauce I mentioned earlier in this post was made up of olive oil, ground cashews, nutritional yeast and coconut milk, thickened with a tiny bit of arrowroot powder (could use corn if you aren't' corn free like we are).
   
4. Rice flour (white and brown)- buy it in the Asian section or from an Asian supermarket to get the fine flour that works wonders in baked goods. I make my own flour mix up of 1/3 brown rice flour, white rice flour and sorghum flour, and substitute that cup for cup in any regular recipe calling for all purpose flour.
   
5. Sorghum flour-see above. It's a staple in my house and I find it quite cheap at the Indian market. If you don't have something like that in your area try amazon.com.
   
6. Starbucks Via-I love coffee and since Starbucks only offers soy or dairy milk I suffered for weeks before grabbing a pack of the VIA and trying it out. IT'S AMAZING! I use an inch of water, micro it, add my via, top it off with vanilla coconut milk, stir and micro that and there's my latte!
   
7. Gluten free rolled oats- I'm a dessert fiend and most of my favorites went out the window with the milk soy protein intolerance diagnosis. My new favorite (healthier) replacement is a small corningware dish filled with frozen strawberries and mangoes (no sugar added, just plain frozen fruit), sprinkle with cinnamon. Then in a separate bowl melt a little Earth Balance dairy/soy free butter spread and mix in a few tablespoons of gluten free quick cooking oats and brown sugar. Top the fruit and bake for 30 minutes until cobbler like.
   
8. Frozen fruit-I buy the big bags from Sam's Club and use it for everything from the recipe above to smoothies. Lot's of smoothies.
   
9. Oatmeal (Quaker makes packets of instant with whole grain rolled oats) I use instant for a quick breakfast or make up a batch of oatmeal pudding (recipe to come soon) and eat on it all week.
   
10. Google-There is so much information out on the web from people who walked this path before me. I am grateful for Google and all the help, recipes and suggestions it has brought my way!

I hope this information helps you or someone you know who is dealing with elimination diets for Milk Soy Protein Intolerance and be sure to email me or comment with any questions or suggestions.

Reflux and Colic Elimination Diet

So Liv has awful reflux. You can hear it all day long, and the poor thing will be perfectly happy and then hiccup and scream. After a week and a half on the prevacid, gripe water and gas drops I decided my sanity and my poor little munchkin deserved more drastic action.

Dr. Sears has a reccomended elimination diet to help determine what is causing your infants reflux/colic so you can avoid it. Instead of dropping one food at a time to determine the trigger, you drop all but a few basic foods for two weeks and then add back foods slowly. This way generally shows faster improvement since the baby gets instant relief from whatever is causing their pain.

So I'm am eating a bland diet of turkey (breast, sausage and ground lean turkey), rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash and zuchinni and pears. For two weeks! I love food, I love cooking and my husband will back me up when I say I hate eating the same thing over and over. I don't even eat leftovers. So now I'm trying to find out how many ways/dishes I can prepare these limited ingredients with only salt and pepper for seasoning.

Day 1:
Breakfast-Turkey sausage and diced small red potatoes, sauteed in a skillet and seasoned with salt and pepper
Lunch- I ate the breakfast leftovers since we were having a crazy day and I didn't have time to cook.
Dinner- Red Himalayan rice and grilled turkey breast.

Day 2:
Breakfast-Turkey breast and rice
Lunch-Ground turkey sauteed with new potatoes
Dinner- Grilled Turkey breast with sauteed squash and roasted new and sweet potatoes

We're on to day 3 now. So far so good. I'm down 3 lbs and Liv slept 5 hours last night and only had minimal fussing. Here's hoping it keeps up since sleep and a happy baby will make the next 11 days much easier.

Yummy Monte Cristo Sandwiches...Gluten free to boot~

I came across this recipe from Pamela's Products past recipe competitions. It's delish!

Easy Monte Cristo Sandwiches

2 cups Pamela's Baking & Pancake Mix (same as for the gluten free doughnuts) a BIG bag is $15 but lasts a while
1/2 cup butter
2/3 cup plus 2 Tablespoon milk

2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
12 slices gluten-free thinly sliced ham
12 slices gluten-free thinly sliced turkey
2/3 cup strawberry fruit spread
powdered sugar for sprinkling on top

Yield: 6 servings

Instructions:
Heat oven to 375º.

Lightly grease an 8-inch x 8-inch square baking dish. Mix the Pamela's Baking & Pancake Mix and the butter with a fork until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs, add the milk, and stir with a fork. Put half the mixture in the bottom of your baking pan, then sprinkle on 1 cup mozzarella, 1/2 of the thinly sliced ham, then 1/2 of the thinly sliced turkey. Spread strawberry fruit spread on top spreading to within 1/2 inch of the edge, then layer the last half of the ham, then the last half of the turkey, then sprinkle on 1 cup mozzarella. Spread the rest of the baking mix on top, and bake for 30 minutes. When nicely browned remove from the oven and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Allow to sit for 5 to 10 minutes before cutting and serving. Cut into wedges and enjoy.

I think this would make great lunches / cute tea party sandwiches if you made mini versions in a muffin tin.

Gluten Free Donuts--Amazing!

It's official! We have a new family favorite recipe for breakfast. It's been years since we did a family donut run (although Alex and I have snuck off a few times). A few days ago I was playing on the Pioneer Woman's website and hopped over to www.TastyKitchen.com. They have a whole section of Gluten free recipes and this one caught my eye.

I have to admit, I've made them twice and they are FABULOUS! No eggs, no corn, no gluten and easy to substitute the dairy if you need to (I used Almond Milk this morning). These are baked, cake like donuts and are absolutely delicious.

Ingredients:

* 100 grams Cream Cheese
* 60 grams Sugar
* 4 Tablespoons Canola Oil
* 8 Tablespoons Milk
* 5 milliliters Vanilla
* ¼ teaspoons Salt
* 200 grams Gluten Free Baking Mix

To make:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease doughnut pan well with oil or butter or margarine. I didn't have a doughnut pan so I used my mini bundt pan and it worked perfectly.

Mix cream cheese, sugar, oil, milk, vanilla and salt together until well blended. Add baking mix and mix until well incorporated. I used Pamela's baking mix.

Place mixture into a ziptop bag and snip off one corner. Pipe into the doughnut molds. Bake in the middle section of your oven for approximately 25 minutes. When they are done, the doughnuts will pull away from sides of pan and spring back when touched, just like a cake.

Remove from pan and either frost, glaze, or sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve. I made a variety by melting a little left over chocolate frosting in the microwave and dipping the tops in that. I covered the chocolate in sprinkles for my kiddo. Eric prefers the ones dipped lightly in melted butter and then sprinkled with cinnamon sugar and I love the with chocolate and a light dusting of powdered sugar. These were great warm, but they are just as good cold. Enjoy.

Catching Up

So it's been a crazy whirlwind for weeks and I have sorely neglected my blog and journaling. :( I have about 10 minutes before we have to dash off to my 25 week appointment so let's see what all I can catch up on.

Baby Watch: For those that haven't heard (so sorry Nicole, I forget sometimes the whole world isn't on Facebook) we're having a Girl! Her name will be Olivia Faith and my sister has already nicknamed her Little Liv which seems to be sticking. :) Alex is so cute about the baby and is asking the funniest questions like how the baby will get here, if she can see him and why she kicks me. I would have loved to have kids closer in age but I wouldn't trade these precious moments for anything. :)

Gluten Free: In an effort to streamline our grocery shopping and make cooking easier :) I've decided to try gluten free with Eric. So far so good although I have to admit I'm not above a cheat day for a really good Chocolate cake.

Speaking of chocolate cake, check this baby out! I had a blast recently at two cousins baby showers and had fun making all kinds of cakes, decorations, favors, etc. Probably my favorite piece of the bunch was the bumblebee chocolate cake I made for my new Cuz in law's shower! :)



There's lots more to come, the gorgeous corsages my sister made for the shower (Love having a floral designer in the family!), crazy telecommuting work stuff and updates on my tyrant toddler but my ten minutes are up and we're out the door! :)

Great Gluten Free Maize Free Site

Image by Marcin Wichary via Flickr

In my never ending search for more information on cooking for someone with allergies, I came across this Gluten and Corn-Free Getting Started Guide.

I found the information very helpful and if you cook for or live with someone with food allergies, or have food allergies yourself, it's a great place to start.

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Gluten Free Chicken Broccoli Rice Casserole

Just saw a yummy GF chicken-broccoli-rice casserole and decided to try it out! Stay tuned for results :). Here's a link to the recipe!

Gluten Free Boston Cream Pie Cupcakes

I love to bake, but have seriously tried to cut back lately. Sometimes though I just can't help myself! My Mother in Law's birthday was a few weeks ago and I took the opportunity to try out a few things that had caught my eye.

1. The Betty Crocker Gluten Free Cake Mixes (thank you, thank you, thank you Betty Crocker)
2. The Boston Cream Pie Cupcake recipes that are flooding the foodie blogs

The results...FABULOUS!

The Betty Crocker cake mix got mixed reviews on several of the blogs I checked out so I used some easy suggestions like adding pudding mix and orange juice to dress it up. I added some custard cream I found of google and drizzled some chocolate ganache on top. So easy and delicious...hubby at 3 before I got them put away for the night.

Betty Crocker Cake Mix
Boston Cream Pie Custard filling recipe from Annie's Eats
Chocolate Ganache Recipe

and a close up of the goodness...

Gluten Free Goodness

Going gluten free had a lot of positive health benefits for our family, but man does it make shopping, cooking, and snacking a whole lot tougher. A few weeks ago I got an email from a great company called GoPicnic asking if I would be interested in reviewing some of their specialty snack boxes. They have vegetarian, kosher, and best of all GLUTEN FREE (GF) boxes full of great tasting treats. I immediately shot off a response offering to taste test anything they could send that was GF. Eric is also avoiding corn, but even then, 4 out of the 5 boxes they sent me were perfect for a quick after work snack, travel food, or best of all since he flies all the time, food to eat at the airport.

If you are looking to try these meals out I HIGHLY recommend the family pack of gluten free snack packs. Here are a few of my favorites. My son, husband and myself all took samples and tasted items in the boxes. We all loved the cookies, the trail mixes, and the beef jerky. My three year old didn’t care for the sunflower crunch, but I loved it. None of us liked the cheese in the boxes, but we’re all a bit spoiled with nice, fresh deli cheese. Outside of the cheese we devoured the boxes.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. The great people at GoPicnic have teamed up with us to give one lucky reader a sample pack.

Read how to enter below and spread the word about this great gluten free giveaway!

Contest Rules: VISIT www.gopicnic.com, and then come back and tell me how you could use some of their boxes! Camp, back to school, travel, how could these meals make gluten free, or dealing with allergies, more convenient for you.

EXTRA ENTRIES:
To receive these extra opportunities for entries, you must fulfill the first REQUIRED entry. But for extra entries, you can:
* Tell your own story about how going gluten free has turned your life upside down.
* Tweet the contest with the following text “Traveling the Tightrope Gluten Free Giveaway—GoPicnic Makes Gluten Free Life Convenient: http://su.pr/42dSBp”. Leave the Twitterlink in your comment.
* Blog about the contest - add a link to Traveling the Tightrope and the Sponsor GoPicnic
* Add Traveling the Tightrope widget (on the right under the blogroll) to your site OR add Traveling the Tightrope to your blog roll.
*Become a Traveling the Tightrope follower.


One person will be randomly chosen when the contest ends on Friday, 21st at midnight CST. I will contact the winner directly through email or the blog link that you leave when commenting.

My Kind of Weekend

(Warning: this is a long post since it contains two full recipes)

The holiday weekend has been absolutely wonderful. It was jam-packed full of projects and anyone who knows me knows that is just the way I like it. We did a lot of laying around, unfortunately a lot of cleaning up after sick dogs and a partly potty trained toddler, and best of all I spent a ton of time in the kitchen. Now that may not be every ones idea of a great weekend but when I have the time, there are few places I would rather be. Eric’s recent need to go gluten free has driven me to new creative heights and I have been quite upset when a new experiment went bad. Luckily this weekend was smooth sailing as I tried out a few new recipes that are bound to join our family favorites.

This weekend’s project line up:

Gluten Free Cinnamon Rolls
Gluten Free Buttermilk Bread
Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies
Barber family recipe Strawberry Icebox Cake
Custom designed vellum wrapped votives
Apple Pie Popscicles

Gluten Free Cinnamon Rolls
Serves 8 or 9

INGREDIENTS
2 tablespoons shortening
1/4 cup sugar
2/3 cup of milk, room temperature
1 packet yeast (about 1 tablespoon)
1 egg
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 cup potato starch
1 cup corn starch (I used tapioca starch successfully)
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 1/2 teaspoons xantham gum
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

TO SPRINKLE ON BOARD COVERED WITH PLASTIC WRAP
1 - 2 tablespoons sugar

FILLING (*see Ellen's note at end of post)
1 cup brown sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons cinnamon
1/3 cup chopped nuts - optional

GLAZE
¾ cup powdered or confectionary sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
milk to thicken (I used soymilk)

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In medium bowl, combine shortening and sugar. Mix well. Measure warm milk and add yeast to milk. Whisk well to fully dissolve (**see Ellen’s note).

Add milk/yeast to sugar mixture. Add remaining ingredients. Mix very well, being sure to remove all lumps. Dough will be quite soft (***see Ellen’s note).

Take a piece of plastic wrap and lay it out so it covers a 13 1/2" x 13 1/2" square. Sprinkle sugar on the wrap. Lay ball of dough on top of that. Then pull out another sheet of wrap and gently lay over the dough. Pat the dough down into a roughly squarish pancake. Lift the top wrap up and then reposition it. Use a rolling pin to roll out the dough in between the two layers of wrap. Occasionally you'll have to lift and reposition the wrap because it gets "stuck" under the edges. You might have to occasionally flip the whole thing over. Make sure that when you're done you've got ABOUT a 13 1/2" x 13 1/2" square of dough.

Remove top piece of wrap. Combine filling ingredients. Spread evenly across dough's surface. (Original recipe poster suggested leaving about a 1 1/2" sugar free edge because when you roll the dough all the sugar shifts and fills this in; otherwise all the sugar spills out).Use the bottom piece of wrap to lift the edge of the dough and start to roll it up forming a long cylinder. Start with the sugary edge, which will be the center of your roll and roll toward the sugarless edge. Cut off or trim up the irregular ends of your "log". Then cut into 8 or 9 slices of similar size, about 1 1/2" wide. Place rolls into a greased round glass pie pan.

Bake approximately 20 minutes, until tops are lightly browned.

Combine powdered sugar, vanilla, and milk to make glaze. The amount of milk you use will depend on how thick you want the glaze to be. Stir until all lumps are dissolved. Drizzle over warm rolls if desired.

Gluten Free Buttermilk Bread

Liquid Ingredients:
3 Large eggs, lightly beaten
1/4 cup Oil
1 1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon milk into which 4 tablespoons dry buttermilk has been dissolved.
Heat milk such that liquid mixture will end up at room temperature.

Dry Ingredients:
2 cups Brown rice flour
1/2 cup Potato starch flour
1/2 cup Tapioca flour
3 1/2 teaspoons Xanthan gum
1/4 cup Sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons Salt
2 1/4 teaspoons Active dry yeast

Preparation
Mix all liquid ingredients together and pour into breadmaker. Mix all dry ingredients, except yeast, together and spoon over top of liquid ingredients in breadmaker. Sprinkle yeast over dry ingredients, and avoid letting it touch the sides of the pan. On the Welbilt ABM3300, the settings are 'Basic', 'Light'. I beleive this corresponds to your basic loaf settings on most machines. After bread is done, do not remove from pan until any 'Stay Warm' cycle is finished and the bread has cooled down.
Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

Check out Ginger Lemon Girl’s blog for detailed recipe and instructions. These cookies were amazing; definitely not something you could identify as gluten free. I had to hide them away today in a cookie jar to keep from over-indulging.
Barber Family Strawberry Icebox Cake

Sorry the recipe is a closely guarded secret! ☺ But here’s a picture of the yummy goodness.


And probably my favorite project of the weekend…

Custom vellum wrapped votives for a wedding reception at the zoo.

Works for Me Wednesdays-Meal Planning

What works for me and makes life easier along the way? There are a lot of tools I use to make my life run a little smoother, but very close to the top of the list is the Menu Planning service I use. Now I have enough cookbooks to build Alex a fort, but I run short on the time it takes to pull good reciepes and shopping lists together.

A few years ago I stumbled across FlyLady and her reccomended menu planning service Saving Dinner. I was in alpha organizing mode and Fly Lady is a great site for decluttering and setting some great cleaning routines. I digress :). I loved getting an email each week that had already compiled yummy, healthy meals, and used the service until my 6 month subscription ran out.

Unfortunately it was at this point that my crazy do it yourselfness got the best of me. I didn't renew my subscriptions, since I was so sure I could manage the time to do it on my own. And for the next several months our family was blessed with a stressed out mommy who was trying to throw together a healthy meal. Several months later I found e-mealz.com. By now I had come back around to the idea of paying less than $5 a month to have someone else do all the dirty work (and e-mealz even gave me an estimated price for the weeks groceries). I subscribed and we were back on track...until Eric had to cut gluten from his diet. Luckily about this time I had become obsessed with twitter and a fellow gluten free twitterette :) mentioned that Saving Dinner now has a gluten free option with thier menus.

I subscribed that day and haven't looked back since. It's so nice to print a weeks worth of menus, take a premade grocery list and run to the store on Saturday afternoon. As much as I love cooking, the prep work is not my forte. I would much rather be taking Alex to the park, or working in the garden then combing reciepes for ingredients to build a shopping list. So if any of you find yourself doing the glazed over pantry staredown hoping that inspiration for dinner is going to jump out at you, take a few minutes and check out Saving Dinner.

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