by Camela Thompson

I realize that the content on my blog is pretty random. I talk about writing, marketing, my dogs, my book, and the list goes on. It's not a best practice. I should be more consistent. But life is random. I like a lot of different things, and one of them happens to be food.

I have a bunch of gluten free chocolate chip recipes because there are so many different kinds - crunchy, gooey, soft, etc. The easy recipe delivers a crunchy cookie with a gooey center, but it's not vegan - I'm actually allergic to it, but it's my husband's favorite. The second recipe is vegan, a lot of work, and delivers the key fundamentals I look for in a cookie. I like some crunch with a decadent texture in the middle.

Gluten free baking is not at all like normal baking. Here are some handy things I learned the hard way:

• Let your baked goods cool completely before touching them. The cracks in the picture below would not have happened if I let them sit another 5 minutes (they hardened that way and were splendid).
• Use baking/parchment paper when baking. Because you have to let the baked goods sit and cool, this will remove the frustration of trying to chip the cookies off the pan with a spatula. I like the If You Care brand because it isn't bleached.
• For a percentage of the population, amaranth tastes like freshly mowed grass. The rest of us can't tell the difference between amaranth and rice flour. Odds that you can taste the difference go up if you smoke. (I don't know why this is, just that it's consistent through the taste testings I've held.)
• If you make it vegan, you can eat the batter without risk of dying. How cool is that?
• Most vanilla extract has gluten because of the alcohol used with the vanilla bean. The Costco vanilla extract I have is labeled gluten free.
• Be cautious about which brand of baking powder you buy if you are allergic to corn.

1 c palm oil (white shortening)
1 c white sugar
1 c brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2 c white rice flour
1 c brown rice flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 package Enjoy Life chocolate chips

If the palm oil is brick hard, you can add a couple teaspoons of hot water (if you can get it out of the container easily, you don't need the water). With a hand mixer, soften the palm oil, then add the sugar, eggs, and vanilla. In another bowl, combine the dry ingredients (flours, baking soda, salt). Slowly add in the flour until combined. Once the batter is smooth and there aren't pockets of dry flour, use a spoon to fold in the chocolate chips.

Bake at 350 degrees F for 12-15 minutes.

12 oz palm oil (white shortening)
1 c sugar
9 dates, pitted (Medjool works well)
1/2 c water
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 T chia, ground
3.6 oz arrowroot powder or tapioca starch
7.4 oz brown rice flour
2.4 oz white rice flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 package Enjoy Life chocolate chips

Soak the pitted dates in water for at least 30 minutes. Once they have softened, put them in the blender with the soak water and blend until smooth. If the palm oil is very difficult to get out of its container, you can add a couple teaspoons of hot water to get it pliable. Otherwise, use a hand mixer to soften the oil. Add the sugar, vanilla root, and date paste. Combine the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, and slowly add to the palm oil mixture. Once the batter has been combined, use a spoon to fold in the chocolate chips.

Bake at 350 degrees F for 12-15 minutes.

Enjoy!

Summer conjures up fond memories of vacations, camping, outdoor activities, and hours spent in the sunshine. I didn’t always spend my summers slinking from patches of shade to the indoors. Now I prefer to sparkle with an eerie luminescence, but a mild sun allergy and life in Seattle will do that to you. When summer is upon me, I think of all of these things followed by, "When are peaches in season?"

Peaches are my favorite fruit and I have to wait until the end of summer to have them. This would be a tragedy... if cherries and raspberries didn't exist.

I am fortunate to live in the state of Washington. After June, small canopies and card tables stacked with boxes full of bright red, dark purplish red, and yellow cherries dot the roadsides. Quite simply: we're spoiled.

This year, Lance signed us up for a fruit and vegetable delivery service through his place of work. It has been great! We have spent much less on the groceries, and we are forced to eat a variety instead of just falling back on the items we know we can prepare quickly. Because we can have upwards of five pounds of cherries in a single delivery and there are only two of us to eat them, we have discovered that a crumble is a great way to make sure they don't go to waste.

Cherry Cobbler Filling
3.5 pounds cherries, pitted
3 apples, peeled and diced into 1/2" pieces
4 T tapioca starch
3/4 c sugar
1/2 tsp salt

Step one should really be purchasing a cherry pitter. These handheld little wonders help minimize the amount of time that goes into pitting cherries, which helps cut down on the amount of staining on your fingers. My poor mother-in-law helped me manually pit ten pounds of cherries when she came to visit one year. I received a cherry pitter in the mail a few weeks later. The hint wasn't subtle, but the gift is very appreciated.

I halve the cherries, dice the apples, and leave them in a large mixing bowl. Combine the dry ingredients and evenly distribute over the fruit, then stir to make sure it is mixed evenly. Pour the mixture into a 9X13 pan and heat the oven to 350 degrees. 

Cherry Cobbler Crust
1 c brown rice flour
1/2 c teff flour
1/2 c sorghum flour
2 T tapioca starch
1/2 t salt
1/2 t cinnamon
1 c sugar
1 c palm oil

Teff is an Ethiopian grain that has a very mild taste and is great to bake with, particularly with cake and cupcake recipes. If you can't find it locally, just use sorghum flour. I prefer to use Turbinado sugar or evaporated cane juice in both steps because of the texture and less processing is required to manufacture the product.

Combine the dry ingredients thoroughly. Add the palm oil and either use a pastry cutter or a fork to combine the ingredients until they are mixed well. It's okay to have the texture of fine gravel, although I'll use my hands to combine the ingredients at the end to get a smooth texture. Pour this mixture evenly over the fruit in the pan to form a crumble crust.

Bake for 30-45 minutes or until the crust is very slightly browned and the filling is bubbling.

Comments or questions? Leave a comment below.

I promised myself I would be good and not turn this into a food blog. This website would be focused and revolve around my writing. I would stay on topic. It has been a little over a month, and I am posting a recipe. Oh, it's a good one. The recipe should feed a house full of hungry young men, but it disappears in a small crowd. Potato salad gremlins sneak into the party to empty the bowl, leaving partygoers disgruntled because they did not eat their fill. If I have to fall off the wagon, this is the right way to do it. This recipe is so bad for people that I only prepare it once a year - on the 4th of July. It will probably be the most unhealthy thing I unleash upon the interwebs.

Freedom (BBQ Potato) Salad
5 pounds red potatoes
3.5 cups cheddar cheese, shredded
20 oz bacon
8 oz sour cream
1.5 cups BBQ Sauce (we prefer Stubbs because it is certified Gluten Free)
1.5 bunches green onions, chopped (about a cup)
1.5 tsp salt
pepper to taste

Cook the potatoes by putting them (skins still on) in a large pot with enough water to cover and 1 tsp of salt. Bring the water to a boil and then turn down the burner to simmer. This will take 45 or more minutes. Let them boil until they are fork tender and the skins begin to split, and remove them with a slotted spoon to a bowl to cool. Once they have cooled, peel the skins and chop them into bite size pieces.

Cook the bacon to a crisp in the method you normally use, let it cool completely (cool bacon is easier to chop), then chop into small pieces (think a few sizes bigger than Bacos). Shred the cheddar cheese - I think the quantity is a little under 8oz before shredding. Chop the green onions. Mix the BBQ sauce with the sour cream in a separate bowl. Sprinkle half the bacon, cheese, and green onions over the potatoes, add some salt and pepper, and then spoon half of the BBQ/sour cream sauce over the top. Gently mix the ingredients together until they are mostly combined and then put the rest of the ingredients over the potatoes except for 2 tablespoons of the green onions. Mix the ingredients until they are combined (without mashing the potatoes!) and then sprinkle the green onions over the top for garnish.

How is this a Salad??

The green onions qualify as a vegetable, which is the only thing that makes this a salad, plus it sounds better than "Heart Attack in a Bowl."  I could argue the potatoes are a vegetable as well since the top of the plant (that is poisonous) is green, but my husband would use this blog post as an excuse to only eat meat and potatoes for the rest of his life. I can hear him now. "According to your blog post it is a vegetable. Therefore, I do not need green stuff."

I love food, which is weird. My allergies are abundant and diverse; the list of foods I cannot eat are longer than the list of foods I can consume. It has forced me to adopt a very healthy diet. Despite my restrictions or perhaps because of them I can cook really well. It's not really bragging - I literally have to cook every meal (it's too dangerous to eat out). My brother's girlfriend compared me to Beethoven when she took a bite because I can't actually eat the salad, but still manage to knock it out of the park. I've learned how to interpret my husband's shrugs and "it's okay" to get the seasoning right - and it helps to have a freakishly strong sense of smell. 

The vast majority of my recipes reflect how I choose to eat. I am a health nut. We don't have processed food in the house - everything is made from scratch. I am allergic to all grains and sugar makes some health issues flare, so I stick to lots of vegetables with some meat and fruit (for some reason fruit sugars don't bother me in moderation). It seems fitting that my first recipe is something that I cannot eat. If I'm going to deviate from my blog plan, I might as well do it with gusto!

Follow me on Twitter: @CamelaThompson I'd love to hear from you! And of course, feel free to leave a comment below.