Blondies (Homemade and Corn-free)

Blondies are our favorite easy dessert that all of us can make from scratch without a recipe. Blondies are just brownies sans chocolate, but they are truly delicious. My daughter can't eat any of the brands of chocolate or cocoa that we have tried so we all eschew chocolate in the name of solidarity. You may even find that you don't miss the cocoa if you give these blondies a chance.

Blondies:

• 3 sticks organic butter (melted)
• 3 cups organic cane sugar
• 3 organic free range eggs
• 3 cups organic all purpose flour
• 3 tsp. homemade baking powder (or 1 TBSP)
• 1 tsp. ground vanilla beans
• 1/2 tsp. sea salt

Preheat oven to 325°F. Mix melted butter and sugar. Add eggs and stir until mixed well. Add flour, baking powder, ground vanilla beans and salt and mix well. Pour into buttered 9" x 13" dish (I love my glass bakeware) and bake for 42 - 45 minutes. Let cool before cutting (or just be careful not to burn your mouth with the molten lava temperature of the inside of hot blondies).

This recipe is very easy to remember because of all the threes. Both of my teenagers and I can whip up a batch of these so quickly, it hardly takes any effort. This is just a bar cookie and tastes a lot like really thick chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips. This dessert has been very popular with everyone that tried it and was even on the menu at our latest birthday party. Brenda requested (three times) that I put this recipe on my blog since tasting them at my house, so I knew I had to get it done.

Pizza (Homemade and Corn-free)

Sometimes we just want sausage pizza. It isn't as easy as having one brought to your door, but my recipe is pretty easy. I can't believe we haven't taken pictures of our pizza yet, but I will post some next time we make it. There are several things that I do ahead of time that make it much quicker. First, I always shred my cheese when I buy it. I buy Kerrygold cheese when I am going to make pizza or Mexican so I shred all of it at once and put it in a Ziploc bag in the fridge. We prefer Dubliner for pizzas and it happens to be the cheapest, too. Woohoo!

I brown my meat with diced onions and garlic (you can just puree these in the food processor if you have a son like mine who doesn't like pieces of onion in his food but likes the flavor) and Italian seasonings for the Italian sausage. I can't find safe pork so I make mine from 75/25 pastured beef (some people consider this ratio too fatty but fat is good for you). It is delicious and easy - I could mix all the herbs into it and form it into patties while raw, but I prefer to just add the herbs to the meat while it is browning. I can't tell you specific amounts of herbs because I never measure. Just add the following to taste: fennel seed, rosemary, red pepper flakes, sage, sea salt. Add a little touch of organic sugar if you think it needs it - most commercial Italian sausage has some sweetener but we generally leave that out.

While my meat is browning, I chop my veggies and make my pizza sauce. I always add fresh basil, garlic, onions and red bell peppers (loaded with Vitamin C) on my pizza, but  you can add whatever you like. If you like broccoli on your pizza, go for it! Just beware of mushrooms since they can be grown on a corny medium. The sauce is very simple, too. You can mix this up and it will keep in the fridge for several days and it even freezes well (use it like pizza quick sauce). To a can of safe tomato paste, I add the following: basil, oregano, organic sugar, sea salt, touch of extra virgin olive oil and water. Stir it until it is smooth but still pretty thick (the only way to screw this up is to add to much water - err on the side of too thick rather than too thin). Then I turn my attention to the pizza crust.


Pizza crust for 2 round pizza pans:

4 cups flour (organic wheat is the only ingredient)
1 1/2 tbsp. baking powder
1 1/2 tsp. sea salt
2 - 3 cups of water (may need more)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Mix all dry ingredients in bowl and make a well in the middle (just an indention for the water). Add some of the water to the middle of the bowl and stir in the flour as you need it. When it gets all incorporated and you have flour left, add more water and stir more flour in. Do this until all the flour is mixed and you have a dough. Pour a handful of extra virgin olive oil into your palm and rub your hands together to coat them both. Pull the dough in half and put each half on a pizza pan. Making sure your hands are well coated, use them to push the dough to the edges of the pan. Don't worry about getting it perfect, you want it to look home-made, don't you? Bake at 425F for about 8 - 12 minutes. Take from the oven and cover with toppings. Bake for another 12 - 15 minutes and enjoy.

Taco Bread and Other Quick Breads (Homemade and Corn-free)

I have a quick bread recipe that I make a lot (with subtle variations to suit the kind of bread needed). Using this quickbread, I am basically making Mexican Cornbread without the corn. I mix up the quickbread and layer taco meat, onions, peppers and grated cheese in the middle. We like to call it:

Taco Bread

Ingredients:
1 lb. taco meat*
2 small onions (diced)
1 red bell pepper (diced)
3 jalapeno peppers (diced) optional - substitute peppers of your choice or omit
1 block Kerrygold cheddar cheese (grated)
1 batch of quick bread batter (see below)
1/2 stick butter

Put a half stick butter in a 9x13 pan in a 375F oven to melt.

Chop onions and peppers. Grate one block of Kerrygold cheddar cheese (8 oz., I think). Prepare one pound of taco meat* and mix up one batch of quick bread batter.

Place 1/3 of bread batter into pan. Spread meat mixture, onions, peppers, cheese all across the top of the batter evenly. Pour the remaining bread batter over filling and put in oven to bake. Bake for 45 minutes or until golden brown on top and bread is done in center.

We eat this all the time because we have no uncorny flour tortillas available here and this is much faster than making tortillas. I have a great from-scratch recipe for red sauce so I may have to break down and make homemade flour tortillas for enchiladas one day.

*browned ground beef seasoned with paprika, cumin, garlic, onion, sea salt and ground cayenne pepper and/or ground chipotle pepper, add a touch of sugar if desired.

Quickbread:

3 c. flour (I use Naturally Preferred Organic Unbleached)
1 tbsp. baking powder (homemade)
1 tsp. salt
1 c. sour cream (Daisy full fat)
~1-2 c. water (enough to make a good batter)

Mix all ingredients until a thick batter is formed. It should be much thicker than pancake batter, but not quite dry enough to be dough.

 I use that basic bread recipe for pizza crust, too. I can't buy red star yeast packets here so we never have yeast bread. I would like to perfect sourdough bread from scratch one day, but don't have time for it now.

That basic bread recipe is biscuits if you cut in half a stick of butter before you add the sour cream/water and mix it into a dough instead of a batter (be careful not to overwork it - that makes biscuits tough). I pour the dough into a buttered pan and score it into biscuit size pieces instead of rolling out and cutting biscuits. They taste exactly the same and it is much quicker. The same dough is waffles if I cut in virgin coconut oil instead of butter (virgin coconut oil is my shortening substitute) and add eggs and ground vanilla beans. It's pizza dough or bread sticks if I use extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) and all water with no sour cream. You can make the batch as big as you need. I just figure about 1 tsp. baking powder per cup of flour. I never measure anything except the flour. I made two baking sheet size pizzas using a 4 c. flour pizza crust variation. Bake it for 10 minutes before topping it with homemade pizza sauce (tomato paste, basil, garlic powder, salt, sugar, water) and then bake for another 10-15 minutes with toppings. You can mix sausage seasonings into ground beef as easy as ground pork for sausage topping, you can hardly taste the difference.

The bread recipe is a variation of a basic choux pastry. If I rolled out a batter with cold butter cut in. and kept doubling it over itself, it would be a choux pastry. It goes without saying that you can vary the type of flour, add seasonings or herbs (breadsticks are great with diced onion and garlic and herbs of your choice). Just experiment with it and vary the liquid and pan sizes to see how it cooks with each variation. It is a life saver because quickbreads do not require precision like yeast breads do. Have you ever tried a waffle variation as a substitute for sandwich bread? It is pretty easy to do. I am thinking about a cinnamon roll variation using brown sugar and cinnamon......

Fermented Onion Relish (Homemade and Corn-free)

I just had to share my new favorite fermented veggie combination. I accidentally bought too many onions even for me to use before they went bad. I needed to find something to do with them because I refuse to waste food. I have since read another excellent idea but I will go into that later. Right now I want to share the secret to the best relish you will ever eat. It is super simple, too.

I sliced a lot of onions (I don't remember how many but probably close to a bag) into quarters and then turned them and sliced thin slices from each quarter. I put them into the dishpan then sliced several red bell peppers so that the slices were approximately the same size. I didn't measure anything (as usual) but used about a 3 to 1 ratio of onions to peppers (mainly motivated by the high price of organic red peppers). Feel free to adjust according to your taste. I salted them and stirred them. I added quite a bit of hot red pepper flakes (one of my favorite seasonings) and let them sit undisturbed for about 30 minutes. When I came back to it, it was pretty juicy so I packed it into mason jars and waited for four days. This is my favorite vegetable ferment so far. We can't get enough of this onion relish, the first quart was gone in three days!

I am about to start frequenting garage sales in search of a food dehydrator. I have been reading a lot about preservation methods in preparation for spring and summer. I am determined not to be in the same dire straits next winter that we were in this one. Having to depend on the grocery store is not a very pleasant option when you are corn allergic. The average local produce department is atrocious and there are very few frozen or canned options available that are corn-free.

I have some excellent tips I picked up from one of ladies at the Avoiding Corn Delphi Forum about dehydrating and preserving foods. Here is an excerpt from her post:

I also have excalibur dehydrators, they are pretty much the Cadillac of dehydrators. I love mine, I highly recommend them to anyone that thinks they will dehydrate very much food. It has a nice range of heat settings and allows me to dehydrate almost anything! I do fruits and veggies, I caramelize onions in the crockpot then, dehydrate them and use them for flavor in so many dishes. I dehydrate leftovers (sometimes planned overs) and use that food when I travel away from home, just add water! I make croutons, "instant" rice, the list goes on and on.  (tomatoes dehydrate very nicely)

You can probably see what caught my attention in that paragraph. I can't wait to try the caramelized onions even though I don't have a slow cooker or a dehydrator. I do spend a bit of time every day slicing onions. It is appealing to think that I could instead spend an afternoon slicing and caramelizing and dehydrating and be done with it for a while.

Corn-free soft drinks

My children wanted to try a recipe I found on the Avoiding Corn Delphi Forum for a ginger simple syrup. We tried it and tweaked it and were rewarded with ginger ale and a batch of crystallized ginger rolled in vanilla sugar. Then my daughter had the idea of making vanilla simple syrup. Genius! Now after a year of drinking only water and ginger tea, we were treated to ginger ale and cream soda in the same week. We are so happy.

Ginger Ale (Corn-free and Home-made)

1 - 2 ginger roots (peeled and sliced)
10 cups sugar
5 cups water
Big K sparkling water (or perrier)

I mixed all ingredients in a large saucepan and cooked on low for at least two hours. I suppose you could do this in a crockpot as well. Do not allow to boil rapidly. You don't want to make hard candy and you want the ginger tender and sweet for crystallized ginger. I waited for mine to reduce and we just taste tested it. When a couple of teaspoons added to a glass of sparkling water tasted like ginger ale, it was finished. We were rewarded with almost two quarts of ginger syrup.

Once the syrup was ready, I took the ginger out with a slotted spoon and placed on foil to dry. After allowing it to dry for an hour or so, I rolled in vanilla sugar and placed it in an airtight container.

Vanilla Sugar

To make vanilla sugar: add (at least) three supple, moist 12 Madagascar Vanilla Beansinto a quart mason jar and cover with organic sugar of your choice. After about a month, you will have the most fragrant and smooth vanilla sugar to be used for making ice cream or to sweeten tea or bake sweet treats. We keep several mason jars full at all times and replace the sugar that we have used and rotate that jar to the back. Once the beans are no longer supple, you can grind them in a spice grinder (or dedicated coffee grinder) for ground vanilla beans. We also buy 3 oz Madagascar Pure Ground Vanilla to use in place of vanilla extract since corn-free vanilla extract is hard to find. (You can also use some of your whole vanilla beans to make the best vanilla extract using potato vodka.)

Vanilla Syrup (Corn-free and Home-made)

Now, for the vanilla syrup, the process was exactly the same using one or two tsp. ground vanilla beans instead of ginger slices. If I had any extra vanilla beans on hand, I probably would have split one or two and scraped the insides into the sugar/water mixture and then placed the entire bean into the syrup. I only had ground vanilla beans and a few less than supple whole beans (I need to re-order) so I used ground vanilla beans. We don't mind the tiny particles of vanilla that end up in our cream soda, but if you think it will bother you, simply use whole beans instead. The resulting two quarts of vanilla syrup makes the best cream soda we have ever tasted.

To make any of these syrups into a soft drink:

Just add 1 to 2 tbsp. syrup to a tall glass and fill the rest of the way with safe sparkling water. I believe that LaCroix is corn-free as well as Perrier. I am looking into one of the counter top carbonation machines like this one to make sure they are corn-free. It might make a nice family Xmas present. It would certainly make me feel better about soft drinks since I hate buying anything in plastic containers. 

<3

Corn-free Ketchup Recipe

I've had a request for a corn-free ketchup recipe and I just happen to have one. This recipe is not Nourishing Traditions friendly or GAPS friendly, but just a quick, easy ketchup. The ingredients should be easy to find and you may even  have them in your pantry. This recipe uses canned tomato paste (which I hate to buy), but it is winter so there are no safe corn-free tomatoes for sale

Corn-free Ketchup

Ingredients:
2 small onions (diced)
1 clove elephant garlic or 2 small cloves (diced)
2 TBSP butter
1/2 tsp. salt
1 large can tomato paste
1 tsp ground cloves (fresh ground is best)
1 1/2 to 2 cans organic sugar (use the tomato paste can for measuring)
2/3 can Bragg's Organic Apple Cider Vinegar (use the tomato paste can for measuring)
1 can water (fill the tomato paste can with water)


Saute the onions and garlic in the butter over low heat until transparent. Add the tomato paste, ACV, water, sugar, cloves and salt. Cook over medium low heat until heated through. Use an immersion blender (stick blender) to puree the onions and garlic. Cook over medium low heat until desired thickness (it will be slightly thicker when cooled) is reached. This makes about 1 1/2 quarts. If this is too much for your family at once, you can scale down the ingredients to fit a small can of tomato paste. Longer cooking times will result in a thicker, richer ketchup.

I used the can for the measurements so it is possible to scale it to any size can of tomato paste you may be able to find. Plus, it means less dirty dishes to wash. My kids love this ketchup and I am betting yours will, too. Once the summer starts, I will make a recipe with fresh tomatoes from my backyard. I can't wait!

Roasted Onion Dip (Homemade and Corn-Free)

I have always loved onion dip. You know, open the french onion soup mix packet and stir it into the sour cream and chill. Now that I know corn is a problem for us, I needed to come up with a new way of making onion dip. This is what I came up with and it is delicious. By the way, I was able to find all the ingredients at Kroger which is quickly becoming my go-to store for corn-free shopping. My local Kroger has more corn-free items than all the other stores in my area combined (including my tiny local food co-op). The store brands Naturally Preferred and Private Selection are proving to be very good brands for corn avoiders like us, too.

Roasted Onion Dip - Homemade and Corn Free

2 medium onions
1Tbsp. Pure Indian Foods ghee or Organic Valley butter
2 cups Daisy full fat sour cream
1 Tbsp. McCormick Organic onion powder

Dice and roast the onions. Coat the onions with the ghee and spread them in a pan. Roast in a 350 degree oven. I roasted them for 20 minutes, then stirred and roasted for 20 minutes. Continue until all are roasted but not burned. Let cool.

Stir roasted onions and onion powder into the sour cream. Chill. Enjoy.

You can serve this dip with Carr's Water Crackers or Kettle brand Lightly Salted Chips. Both are corn-free and available at Kroger. It's also nice with Bunny Luv carrot sticks, red pepper strips, broccoli or cauliflower florets, jicama, or homemade crispy crackers of your choice.

I would love to try this with mushrooms or roasted red peppers (maybe some cayenne pepper added in) or maybe a combination of several roasted vegetables for a brand new Roasted Vegetable Dip.

Take a look at Real Food Wednesdays for more great tips and recipes.

Fermented Vegetables are easy and fun

Trying to live life without corn required polishing my cooking skills and broadening my repertoire. If I didn't get into healing foods and the GAPS diet, I might never have discovered fermented vegetables. Fermented vegetables are another favorite new thing that I might never have discovered if not for evil corn. I've made pickles at home before but as vinegar causes a reaction for me and it is the main ingredient of all pickle recipes, I thought I had no choice but to live pickle-free. Then I found fermented veggies and I knew I had to master this process. I was shocked to find that it is a very forgiving process and quite easy to master. It is also addictive and exciting and hard to put down.

I've already told you the wonderful healing qualities of ginger root, but ginger is only one of many powerful healing foods. My first fermented vegetable recipe combines several of these: ginger, garlic, onion, carrots, and sea salt. I read Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods by Sandor Katz from cover to cover and it was very inspiring. After reading this book, I was so excited to get started and actually modified the very first recipe I tried. This man will make you fearless in fermenting, which makes the whole experience that much more satisfying.

Lacto-fermented (sometimes called cultured) vegetables also contain powerful probiotics for a healthy digestive system. This is especially good news for people that can't tolerate yogurt or other dairy ferments. Besides adding zest and interest to any dish, these homemade pickles actually help protect you from intestinal upsets and side effects of antibiotics. One spoonful of fermented veggies will also cure heartburn and derail sugar cravings. Vegetables that have undergone lacto-fermentation have been proven to contain more vitamins and minerals than the same vegetables in either raw or cooked states. They also help stimulate stomach acid aiding digestion hence the age-old tradition of serving vegetable or fruit relishes with high protein meals (cranberry sauce with turkey, sauerkraut with sausages, chutney with lamb, etc.). All condiments, salsas, chutneys, and jellies started out as fermented products and I intend to work up to one day eating only homemade fermented condiments. Just imagine getting beneficial probiotics into your children every time they use ketchup or mustard.

My favorite recipe is adapted from one in Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon and I tend to use her method for small ferments minus the whey (we have problems with dairy). Her recipe calls for exact amounts of ginger, carrots, sea salt and whey. I am a "wing-it" kind of cook so I start with about the same amount of grated carrots (4 cups) and then add a small amount of ginger, garlic, and about twice those of onions. I put all the shredded veggies in a bowl with one tablespoon of celtic sea salt and then I squeeze it and mix it by hand. (I put on disposable gloves for this because the sea salt can be abrasive and drying to my hands) The juice will start to flow and then you can pack it into a wide mouth quart mason jar. Put a 2 inch layer of veggies, pack it down with a large wooden spoon, then repeat until jar is full. Leave one inch headspace in the jar then cover tightly and check it after two days. If you keep it cooler in your house like we do, just place it near a lamp and cover it. I always set mine inside a 9 x 13 plastic container to catch any overflow (that does sometimes happen but it is no big deal). When you get ready to open it (and you won't be able to leave the first batch alone) make sure to open over the sink. The fermentation process can cause it to fizz over when you open it. Taste it after 3 days or so and put it into the fridge if you like the taste. (It should smell like pickles, not rotten cabbage.)

This is just the first ferment that I tried and I have loved every one I've made except for plain sauerkraut (and it was OK). The varieties are endless and you should make combos that sound good to you. I had only one failure so far and that was because I used a plastic lid. Some of my favorites so far:

• beets and daikon radish (about half and half)
• turnips and onions and caraway seeds
  
• cabbage with carrots, onions, red pepper and hot pepper flakes
• turnips and carrots (onions optional)
  
• brussells sprouts, dill weed, garlic and onion
• squash and zucchini with pink peppercorns
  

As you can see, the combinations are only limited by your store selection and imagination. Fresh herbs are a great addition, but sadly hard to find in my area. I intend to grow a wide variety of herbs and aromatics next spring. In fact, I am planning my garden around fermented vegetable combinations that I want to make. I didn't even get to make any cucumber pickles this year because I couldn't find any decent cucumbers and I can't let that happen again. Click here for more of my fermented veggie recipes.

A few uses for leftover juice from your fermented vegetables:

• use it in place of vinegar in salad dressings
• mix it with mayonnaise or sour cream (another ferment) for dip
• use a couple of TBSP to "inoculate" your next batch of veggies
• feed it to your pets to boost their intestinal health
• use it to rev up your compost pile (another ferment)
• feed it diluted to your houseplants 
• add it to broths or soups to kick up the flavor
• drink it to prevent dehydration when active

Further reading:
Small Footprint Family: Speed Pickles
Get Cultured: Probiotic Recipes from The Nourished Kitchen
Wild Fermentation Message Board
Natural Bias: A Great Source of Natural Probiotics

I'd love to hear any new fermented veggie recipes or combinations. As usual, this post is part of Real Food Wednesday where you are guaranteed to learn something new.

Ginger tea is an elixir of health

Image via Wikipedia

I mentioned in my last post a new series: Favorite things I never would have learned if not for evil corn. Removing corn derivatives and food additives from our lives was a major upheaval and quite a learning experience. GMO corn and soy are ubiquitous in our modern food and pharmaceutical industries and it takes dramatic changes in shopping, cleaning and cooking methods to banish them. It was a long, hard road but it was not without its benefits. I would like to start a series to share some of the best things about our new way of life.

Ginger tea truly is an elixir of health. In our quest for flu medicine alternatives we discovered ginger tea sweetened with raw honey. What a discovery! It is now our favorite drink that just happens to be chock full of healthy benefits. We were able to treat head and chest congestion, nausea, sore throat, and cough using only ginger tea. We also found that it is delicious hot or cold. Even if you are lucky enough to survive cold and flu season unscathed, you simply must try some ginger tea. Our recipe is below.

Before making ginger tea, you will need to buy a fresh ginger root. I found fresh ginger root even in backwoods Alabama grocery stores so locating it should be no problem. If you have never tried fresh ginger, you may not know how wonderful it is. Growing up my mother only bought dried ground ginger from the spice section. As a result, I grew up secure in the knowledge that I hated ginger. The first time you cut into a fresh ginger root you will be rewarded with a heavenly fruity, spicy smell that is like nothing else. The next step is to peel the root which is much easier that it may seem at first glance. The easiest way to peel ginger is to use a spoon or the back edge of your favorite knife. If you are a visual learner you will appreciate this video from the Test Kitchen at Gourmet.com. If you are a new cook, you can find many instructional videos at the Test Kitchen to broaden your kitchen knowledge.


Hot Ginger Tea

• 2 Tbsp. fresh ginger root (finely diced)
• raw organic honey
• tea ball
• saucepan or boiler
• 4 cups filtered water

Peel and dice the ginger. Place it inside the tea ball and put the tea ball in the saucepan of water. Bring the water to a boil and then take off the heat. Allow the ginger tea to steep for at least 15 minutes. For stronger tea allow the tea to simmer on low for 15 minutes before removing from heat. While waiting for the tea to steep, put up to 1 Tbsp. of raw honey in each mug (to taste). Pour the steeped tea over the honey in each mug and stir to mix. Enjoy!


Iced Ginger Tea

• hot ginger tea (brewed strong)
• 4 Tbsp. of raw honey added directly to tea in saucepan and allowed to cool
• Glass pitcher of ice

Pour the cooled, sweetened ginger tea into the pitcher of ice. Allow to chill, then pour into individual  glasses filled with ice. Enjoy!

Ginger is a world-renowned digestive and treatment for nausea. A cup of ginger tea will help with morning sickness or even motion sickness. It's much easier to coax children into drinking a cup of hot ginger tea than to take cough medicine laden with dangerous ingredients. It is soothing to sore or dry throats and makes a great allergy medication with no side effects. Iced ginger tea makes a great alternative to carbonated sodas and everyone knows raw honey is infinitely better for you than high fructose corn syrup. Now you see why we are such die-hard fans of ginger tea. It truly is a health elixir.

This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays hosted this week by Kelly the Kitchen Kop. Next post I will fill you in on another use of ginger when I share another item in "My new favorites" series: Fermented Vegetables.

Further reading about genetically modified foods:
Sugar Beets Spur County to Reconsider Biotech Food
Why I Still Oppose Genetically Modified Crops
Genetically Modified (GM) Crops Increase Pesticide Use and Fail to Alleviate Poverty, Reveals New Report
Shoppers Guide to Avoiding GE Foods

Sources for Raw Honey:
Really Raw Honey
Tropical Traditions