Colder Weather

Oh my, I can't believe it's been so long since I last did a post. So much for me trying to get something up here every week. We had a lovely Thanksgiving holiday and I perfected gluten-free cornbread and therefore enjoyed a wonderful cornbread dressing with our smoked turkey.

I haven't been knitting all that much new lately. I am working on a few Christmas presents and therefore can't share those quite yet and have finished the square of the month for December, but knitting and baking have not been high on my list of things to do lately. The weather has turned colder of course and so I'm slowly working up to Christmas celebrations and figuring out what the kids can give to classmates while they work diligently to finish up their assignments before they start winter break this Friday. 

I recently spotted a flea on our white cat, who I believe is actually allergic to flea bites, by the bald patches that are appearing on her as a result of her over grooming. I've bought a flea collar for her and even tried a hydrocortisone shampoo bath (which almost killed her, so to speak). I gave her the bath and within about 3 hours she was vomiting violently and was lethargic and uninterested in food for about 24 hours. I'm still not 100% sure what caused this reaction, but I'm not inclined to bathe her again very soon. Her favorite spot right now is, as you can see, curled up to the heater. We find it quite amusing to see how much of herself she manages to fit under the 1" clearance space underneath.

Last evening was the holiday party at my local knitting guild, Snohomish Knitters Guild. There was the gift exchange and a lot of food. With my new food guidelines, I've learned to either eat before I go or take whatever I want to eat all evening, so I don't cheat and eat things that will have consequences later. I found a wonderful recipe for Carrot Fritters that I was able to adapt to be gluten-free and egg & dairy free as well. They seemed to be the hit of the ball and everyone requested the recipe. I didn't take a picture of them, but if you go to the link above, you can get an idea of what they are supposed to look like. I quadrupled the original recipe and had about 40 2" fritters and I guess that was a good quantity, because there were only 2 left on the plate when I packed up to come home. Here is the recipe with my adjustments. I'll formalize it later with an actual picture, but it will get you started.


Carrot Fritters
Adapted from Food.com

7 large carrots (about 8 cups grated)
2 small yellow onions
8 Tbsp Brown Rice Flour
6 Tbsp Tapioca Starch
6 Tbsp Millet Flour
4 Tbsp ground Chia seed
8 Tbsp warm water
4 tsp dried dill weed
1 tsp sugar
2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 tsp baking powder

Grate the carrot and onion together. Stir in brown rice flour, tapioca starch, and millet flour. Mix ground chia seed with water, mix well and pour into carrot mixture. Add remaining seasonings and mix well until all ingredients are well distributed. Shape into small 2" fritters and place on wax paper on a cookie sheet. Chill for minimum of 1 hour, maximum 12 hours. Heat a large fry pan with a shallow amount of oil on medium-high heat. Fry the fritters, in batches, in the oil about 5 - 8 minutes per side or until brown. Drain on paper towels and serve while hot.

Thanksgiving Preparations

Now that Halloween has passed us by and we are surviving on the candy of our children, it is time to start thinking ahead to the next holidays that are swiftly approaching. Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving has always been about those amazing flavors of traditional feasts past and in the past we have enjoyed many dinners at my parents' house and also at my in-laws' house. I'm finding though, that having such an eclectic variety of foods that are on my 'Don't Eat' list, that 95% of the foods that I have come to associate with this holiday are no longer safe for me to eat. Last year was an adventure of new flavors, but without gluten this year, Thanksgiving seems like it just won't be the same. Some adjusting will have to be done.

My mother-in-law is a terrific baker and loves to make the pies for Thanksgiving dessert. Last year, with pumpkin no longer acceptable for me, she took on the challenge and created a delicious butternut squash pie, that tasted just as a pumpkin pie should. This year, she has requested that I provide her with a gluten-free pie crust recipe, so that she can recreate this tasty delight for me. I'm not a pie baker and have only made 1-2 pie crusts from scratch my entire life. I know many people would say that I am missing out, but pie crust remains one of those elusive baking feats that I have yet to master. I know the techniques and mechanics, but have yet to create that flaky, dreamy crust that people beg for. However, that being said, I needed to create something and make sure the flavors worked together, before sending the recipe off to my mother-in-law, for her to perform her magic with, to result in a dreamy pie for my Thanksgiving dessert.

So when I realized this morning that I needed to use the left-over apples that I had sent to school with Little Bigfoot for her Halloween party, I decided that I would try again with pie crust and make some apple tarts. I changed my mind right at the end and instead used my jumbo muffin tins to create mini apple pies, but the crust tastes good and I know my mother-in-law will find the right magic to make it a delight. Here is the recipe I used:


Gluten-Free Pie Crust for Apple Pie
Adapted from GlutenFreeGirl.com
[Printable Recipe]

40 g Coconut Flour
40 g Amaranth Flour
60 g Millet Flour
79 g Oat Flour
79 g Tapioca Flour
65 g Teff Flour
96 g Arrowroot
51 g Sweet Rice Flour
2 tsp Xanthan Gum
¼ tsp Guar Gum
½ tsp kosher salt
5 Tbsp Frozen butter, grated
4 Tbsp Frozen shortening, grated
1 large egg
6 – 8 Tbsp cold water (or enough to bind dough)
   
Combine all dry ingredients thoroughly. Add in frozen butter & shortening and blend with fingers until you achieve a sandy consistency. Mix in egg and then gradually add water until you have a smooth dough. Divide in half and roll out  ¼” thick. Place first crust in an 8" pie pan. Repeat rolling instructions with other half. Make filling below. 

Filling:

6 c Granny Smith apples, cored, peeled & chopped

112 g brown sugar

38 g white sugar

2 Tbsp Arrowroot

1 Tbsp Coconut Oil

½ tsp ground ginger

½ tsp allspice

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl, making sure the coconut oil is well distributed throughout. Pour filling into pie crust, top with remaining crust. Crimp edges and cut several vent holes in the top. Bake 20 minutes or until the filling is bubbling well. Cool, cut and serve.

Yield: 1 Double Crust 8" Pie or 6 Mini Pies

The crust recipe took quite a bit more water than the recipe calls for. I'm not sure if this is due to the different flours (that I substituted) or some other unknown factor. Be sure to use enough water to achieve a smooth dough that does not crack when it is rolled out.

Pre-Halloween with soup

I have been busy at work, the last week and a half, creating a Halloween costume for Little Bigfoot. She loves stretching my creative powers to the maximum every year and this year was no different. In the creation of her costume, I developed a new knitted hat pattern that I am working to finalize and write up for sale. I can't share her costume yet, but promise to post pictures and Halloween excitement next week.

Her school had a Bingo Night on Friday and costumes were encouraged, so I dug around the house to come up with something. In the past I haven't been one for dressing up, a lot of that has to do with the fact that I felt horrible in general and the extra effort of finding a costume and putting up with being uncomfortable in it all evening wasn't something I relished. However, over the last year, I've regained more of my health and have felt better than I've felt in 10 years, so I decided to give it a whirl on Friday and see what I could come up with. Many years ago, I created this hat for The Redneck, as he was fighting the great opossum battle at the time, between them and our garbage cans. We've had many a laugh about it over the years, so I decided to put it to good use this year. I found an old pair of holey jeans, a ratty t-shirt and flannel and wore The Redneck's winter boots. I think I made a passable female redneck for the evening. The suspenders were dyed strips of fabric that just worked to highlight the whole thing. Bingo Night was a success, we had a lot of fun and won some fun prizes as well. Little Bigfoot wasn't quite sure what to make of my costume, but decided it was alright to be seen with me and it was even better when she started winning some at bingo.

On another note, the garden harvest is coming to a close, and we have a lot of Delicata Squash to use up. Since most winter squash are okay for me to eat, I'm trying to think of different ways to eat it, so that I don't get overly tired of the same flavor all of the time. I decided to try to create a creamy soup that would be dairy-free and hearty. Here is what I ended up with:

Creamy Delicata Soup
[Printable Recipe]

2 medium Delicata Squash, cut in half, cleaned and roasted until tender
1 can (14 oz) Great Northern Beans, drained & rinsed
1 can (14 oz) black beans, drained & rinsed
1/2 lb chicken sausage
4 mini bell peppers (orange, yellow and/or red), rough chopped
1/2 medium onion, chopped
4 cups chicken broth or water

Scoop cooled squash out of the skins and process with the northern beans in food processor until smooth, adding chicken stock/water as needed to aid in achieving a smooth consistent puree. Continue in batches, until all of the squash and northern beans have been pureed.

In a medium saucepan or large deep skillet, cook the sausage and onion until done, add the peppers and saute for 5 minutes. Add the black beans and squash puree, adding more chicken broth/water until a thick soup consistency is achieved. Simmer on very low heat until soup is warmed through. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot.


Yield 4 medium servings or 2 large servings


Note: Squash can be cooked and stored in the fridge several days in advance, either in the skins, scooped out, or already pureed with the beans.

Senior Pictures & Knitting

Well, this year is the year that I officially started really feeling my age. I have a senior in high school this year and therefore I must be old enough to have one. One of the things that need to be done for seniors is submitting a 'senior portrait' to the school for the yearbook. Our budget is tight and I wasn't sure how we would swing some of the prices that were being quoted, so I contacted Amanda York at amble imagery. She is the daughter of a dear friend and also a close friend of mine and I know that she does AMAZING work. She worked with us on the price and I just picked up the photos today. Here is one of the many shots she took, when she and DragonNight went out a few weekends ago. It's a great shot that so captures DragonNight's style.

Since Amanda did such an amazing job and helped us out, I wanted to do something a little extra for her and so I created this set (modeled by me this morning), for her. I used the stitch pattern from a pair of legwarmers but since that was the sole use of the other pattern, I am planning to write this one up and sell it on Ravelry. If you are a knitter and would like to test either pattern, give me a holler.



I'll also include another finished project that I finished last month, but haven't shared yet. I knit the Celebration Shawlette that my friend Jane created for a local yarn store's anniversary. I knit it in Handmaiden SeaSilk yarn, since so many natural fibers irritate me. This allows me to wear it and enjoy it. Here it is pictured with one of my Irish Rose Button Closures.

Candy and Knitting

As my blog name suggests, I do knit, usually more than a bit, but there hasn't been much proof of that on here so far. I've been working hard on my daughter's new school bag, but it is a bit monotonous. So while it is progressing very slowly, but I don't really feel like I should work on much of anything else, since I promised her I'd get it done 'quickly'. Luckily I have one other obligation that always takes precedence, to break up the monotony, since it is a time-sensitive project.

I belong to the Snohomish Knitters Guild and last year I designed a square a month for the members (pattern available on Ravelry.com here), which ended as a complete afghan. Even though I have switched roles in the guild, I got the okay to go ahead with another pattern series for the new guild year (October - September). To build on the knit & purl squares that we did last year, I choose to do textured squares using increases and decreases. Sort of building on your skills type of thing. Since the guild meeting is tonight, I had to finish the square, write the pattern and photograph it before tonight. Just finished everything this morning, though it was a possibly close call, since we were without power here until almost 8 am (wasn't sure why or when it would be back on). Here is this month's square, the pattern is available free to guild members or you can also join the knit-a-long on Ravelry for $5.00 (receiving a pattern update every month).

I also tried a new fudge recipe that my knitting friend and guild president shared with me last week. It is an extremely simple recipe with the potential to be dairy-free, egg-free & gluten-free, depending on the ingredients you use. I love to collect shaped silicon ice-cube trays and used them to mold the fudge into pumpkin shapes since it is Halloween this month (though the fudge had no chance of lasting that long). I also made a half batch which perfectly filled two ice-cube trays (another great reason to have a scale in your kitchen). Here is the recipe, such as it is.

Two Ingredient Fudge
related to me by Barb Simonds
[Printable Recipe]

1 - 12 oz package of semi-sweet (or other flavored) chocolate chips
1 - 16 oz can of prepared frosting
butter or vegetable shortening

Butter the molds or a 9" x 9" square pan. Melt chocolate chips in a medium sized bowl in the microwave, using 30 second bursts on medium power, stirring in between each heating cycle. Stir in the frosting, making sure to scrape the sides and bottom to thoroughly incorporate both ingredients. Microwave for 30 seconds on medium power once more (to make fudge pourable). Pour/spoon into molds or pan & smooth out. Place in refrigerator for 30 minutes or until firm. Unmold or cut into squares. Store in refrigerator.

The wonderful thing about this recipe is that you can choose any flavors to mix together, you could also make your frosting with your favorite recipe and use that instead of the store bought brands.

Early Morning Baking

Every weekday morning at my house starts at 5:00 am. My oldest daughter (DragonNight) needs to catch the bus for school at 6:30, my husband (the Redneck) leaves the house before 6:00 am for work and my youngest (Little Bigfoot) must catch the bus by 7:30. This means I'm up organizing and making sure that everyone has what they need, to help them be successful through the day. It is also a time where I often can get some knitting time in, as the kids are eating or between buses. I sometimes use this time to do fresh baking for their lunches. I find I often have more inclination and energy to do this first thing in the morning, than I have in the evenings, which are often full of homework or meetings.


My favorite thing to bake first thing in the morning are my Easy Peanut Butter cookies, but since only one of the girls like those, unless I'm planning on baking 2 different items in the morning, I often need other ideas. It is often difficult to bake one dessert item that both the girls will like; one is addicted to chocolate, but doesn't like anything crunchy, the other one doesn't mind crunchy but isn't that fond of chocolate and doesn't like peanut butter. Neither one is fond of oatmeal cookies and only tolerate sugar cookies in order to decorate them. *Yes, I have very particular children who know what they don't want, seldom do they know what they do want though.* This morning I decided that I was tired of cookies and so scanned my Hershey's Cocoa Cookbook ©1969 for a cake or brownie recipe and found this one (see below). It had a minimal amount of flour, so I decided to try it gluten-free so that I would be able to enjoy a bite or two before the girls eat them all. I'm going to try another batch later today using coconut oil and egg substitutes to see how they turn out to make it a true allergy friendly treat. I'll update you with those results later, for now, here is the recipe for Quick & Easy Brownie Bites.

Quick & Easy Brownie Bites

Adapted by Tandy Imhoff from Hershey’s Cocoa Cookbook

[Printable Recipe]

½ c melted butter or vegetable oil

201 g (1 c) sugar

1 tsp vanilla

2 eggs

20 g Tapioca Starch/Flour

48 g Brown Rice Flour

32 g (⅓ c) cocoa

¾ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

Preheat oven 350°. Grease 24 mini-muffin tins or a 9 x 9 baking pan. Blend butter/oil, sugar and vanilla well, in a medium mixing bowl. Add eggs and beat well with a spoon. In a separate bowl, combine flours, cocoa, baking powder & salt. Gradually add flour mixture to egg mixture, mix until well blended. Gently spoon batter into muffing tin, filling ⅔ full. Bake in pre-heated oven for 15 – 20 minutes or until they start to pull away from the edges or test done (toothpick method). Cool in pan, sprinkle with confectioner's sugar or frost as desired.

Yield: 20 - 24 mini brownie bites/16 cut squares

*You can substitute ½ c of all purpose flour for the Tapioca Starch & Brown Rice Flour if you are not gluten sensitive.

My Baking Bible

Everyone I know has something that they can't do without in the kitchen. Some of us would be lost without their favorite cookbook (handed down through the generations), others couldn't do what they do without this gadget or that, but my number one tool in the kitchen now, is a piece of paper.
 
It isn't a very fancy piece of paper to look at, but I would not be able to bake anything without it. This piece of paper is my Baking Bible, aka Common Ingredient Weight Equivalencies. When I was first working on becoming gluten-free I needed to learn how to replace many of the common ingredients found in gluten-free baking with other ones, due to my extremely long list of foods that I should avoid. I somehow, during this time, found my way to Shauna James Ahern at glutenfreegirl.com. I loved the way she shared her 'secrets' to success and I found a lot of inspiration. She led me to exploring the chemistry of baking and so I borrowed as many books as I could find from the library about these topics. Many of these books had listings of ingredients, but none of them had all of the ones that I needed. So I started compiling my own lists.

I now have this list printed in a plastic sleeve, taped to the inside of my kitchen cabinet door, near where I do all of my mixing. Whenever I am trying a new recipe, I flip open the door and use the measurements to convert and replace the ingredients. The true bonus to this type of baking is that the results are 100% repeatable and if there is something just a bit off (moisture, oil, etc), it is easier to play with just those ingredients while ensuring that the rest of the recipe is consistent.
 
It comes in incredibly handy, when I am trying to convert a traditional recipe to a gluten free recipe, because I now know that I need to make 125 g of gluten-free ingredients to replace every 1 cup of traditional flour. This measurement leaves me a lot of room to play with mixing starches and alternative flours together to achieve the right mix of flavors and textures. If you click on the picture above you will be able to download a PDF of this page to help you become a master of gluten-free cooking.