Although we are not a “gluten-free” household per se, we are a “wheat-free” household, and as such are always looking for delicious alternatives to favorite wheat products. We’ve tried a number of wheat-free/gluten-free frozen pizza crusts in our quest to keep the joys of eating pizza in our lives. So far, this one has become a favorite.
With just two ingredients, potatoes and rice, Nature’s Hilights Brown Rice Pizza Crust is allergy-friendly for a lot of people, not just the gluten-intolerant, but those avoiding yeast, dairy, eggs, corn, and tapioca, too.
Find this pizza crust in the frozen pizza section of your natural foods store. Be sure to follow the instructions for preparing the crust exactly as written to get the best crust with the right ratio of chewiness to crunchiness. It should be thawed (about 10 min.), then painted with olive oil (or another oil you can tolerate) and baked for a few minutes before being topped.
We top ours with some jarred organic marinara sauce or pesto, shredded mozzarella and monterey jack cheese (we use goat cheese because we tolerate it better than cow’s milk products), and sliced mushrooms. Slide it back into the oven for 8-10 minutes and voila! A delicious pizza made with ingredients my family can digest and enjoy!
Since one of my goals in life is to help my 8-year old heal from multiple food sensitivities, I’m always trying new ways to recreate his favorite foods with ingredients that are safe for him. This is what I do with my food sensitivity and nutritional consulting clients, too – help them design customized menus using foods that we know won’t cause them to have an inflammatory reaction. I don’t believe you have to feel deprived even if your digestion is less than perfect!
If you’re interested in looking at food sensitivities to solve your chronic distress, now is a great time! Through Dec. 23, get $100 off of testing 150 common foods and additives. Included is overnight FedEx shipments of blood and results, 4-6 hours of personalized dietary counseling, and custom-designed menus and recipes.
Use coupon code: SIGNETHOLIDAY at checkout, and be sure to select the large shipping option if you cannot pick up the collection kit in northeast Denver.
*Your blood must be drawn by December 29, 2010, to take advantage of this offer!*
Last month I was lucky enough to meet Moosewood Cookbook author Mollie Katzen when she was the keynote speaker at an Alzheimer’s Women’s Auxillary for Research and Education (AWARE) Memories “Lost and Found” luncheon.
I swapped cookbooks with Mollie Katzen!
In case you missed it, here is a snapshot of me and Mollie Katzen together – it’s always a special thrill when I get to meet someone whose work has influenced me so profoundly! That she was nice enough to chat with me about healthy food for a little while, sign my worn copy of her seminal cookbook, accept a gift of my cookbook, and even snap a picture with me, just cemented her status as one of my idols in the food world. It was a great day.
The take-home gift from the event was a small bundle of recipe cards featuring a few recipes from Mollie’s latest book: Get Cooking: 150 Simple Recipes to Get You Started in the Kitchen, and tied sweetly with an orange bow. What a nice goodie for foodies like me! I should suggest this touch to the sponsors when I perform my keynote speeches at events.
Roasted Butternut Squash and Apple Soup
The recipe that caught my eye first was this butternut squash and apple soup.
While I’ve loved Mollie’s recipe for Curried Squash and Mushroom Soup from the original Moosewood Cookbook, and have made it many times, my go-to recipe for butternut squash is usually my version of a Dairy-free Creamy Squash Soup, which always brings applause whenever I serve it.
To be honest, the idea of pairing apples with butternut squash didn’t sound appealing at first, particularly because my family likes vegetables more on the savory side than the sweet side. But we were delightfully impressed with this addictive soup and found it to be creamy and mouth-friendly with a hint of sassiness. Even my husband ate two bowls, and he usually shuns foods cooked with fruit.
As an added bonus, the herbs in this soup, thyme and sage, are two that winter-over in my herb garden, allowing me to step outside and pick fresh herbs on a blustery December day, which always makes me happy. They were delicious in the soup, too.
Thanks once again, Mollie, for another fabulous recipe to add to my repetoir!
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Mollie Katzen’s Roasted Butternut Squash and Apple Soup
Yield: 4-5 servings
1 Tbsp. olive oil
2 med. (about 4 lbs.) butternut squash
2 Tbsp. butter
1 med. red or yellow onion, chopped
1 1/2 tsp. salt
2 med. Granny Smith apples, peeled and thinly sliced
1/2 tsp. crumbled dried (or rubbed) sage
1/2 tsp. dried thyme
4 cups water
Up to 1 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice, as needed
Up to 1 Tbsp. brown sugar (light or dark), as needed
Adjust the oven rack to the center position and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Line a baking tray with foil and drizzle it with the olive oil.
Use a sharp heavy knife to cut the squash in halve lengthwise. (Do this very carefully. Safest technique: Insert the point of the knife first, and use a gentle sawing motion to initiate the cutting.) Use scissors to cut loose the strands of pulp around the seeds, ad then scrape the seeds away with a spoon. Discard the seeds or reserve them to toast. Use a sturdy vegetable peeler to peel the squash halves. Then cut the flesh into 1-inch pieces, once again being careful with your knife because the squash can be both very hard and very slippery. (The shape and uniformity of the churnks do not matter since it will all get pureed.)
Arrange the squash chunks in a single layer on the prepared tray, and roast in the center of the oven for 20-30 minutes, or until the pieces are fork tender and turning brown around the edges. (Shake the tray a few times during the roasting to keep the pieces from sticking.) Removed from the oven and set aside.
While the squash is roasting, melt the butter in a soup pot or Dutch oven over medium heat. When the butter foams, swirl to coat the pan, and then add the onion and salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes, or until the onion begins to soften.
Add the apple slices, along with the sage and thyme, and continue to cook, stirring occasionally. For about 10 minutes, or until the apples are very tender.
Add the roasted squash and the water to the onion-apple mixture. Turn up the heat and bring the soup to a boil, then turn the heat all the way down to the lowest possible setting. Cover, and simmer gently for 10 minutes.
Remove the pot from the heat, uncover and let it sit until the soup cools down to a comfortable pureeing temperature. Use a blender or immersion blender to puree the soup until it is smooth.
Time for the taste test: if the soup tastes good, you’re there. If it seems too sweet, add some or all of the lemon juice. If it’s tarter than you like, add brown sugar to taste.
If necessary, reheat the soup gently over medium-low heat, being careful not to let it boil. Serve hot.
If you’re interested, here is where I deviated from the written recipe, mostly out of laziness:
Instead of peeling the squash before roasting, I simply halved and gutted the squash, then cut those pieces in half and rubbed them all over with olive oil before roasting them in the oven as Mollie suggests. After they were tender and had cooled a bit, it was easy to loosen the peels with the tip of a knife to where they just peeled right off.
Also, I didn’t peel my apples, nor did I use Granny Smith’s, because that would have required a trip to the store and I had a few apples in my kitchen that were maybe a little past their prime but were still good for a soup. I scrubbed them well with a veggie soap first, of course, and cut off any bad spots. I used my immersion blender to blend everything together. If I had peeled the apples, by the way, they would no longer be a “whole” food, and whole foods are more nutritionally desirable for your body.
We did not add any brown sugar, but perhaps the red apples I used were sweeter than the Granny Smiths she recommends.
Hard to believe that Hannukah begins so early this year, but those who are lighting menorahs and playing with dreidels tonight will likely be frying up a round of traditional potato latkes.
Zucchini and Carrot latkes topped with sour cream and caviar
Now, I enjoy fried potato pancakes, or latkes, as much as the next person – really, what’s not to love about grated potatoes and onions shaped into a patty and fried? But, there are eight nights of celebration, after all, and some variation is welcomed. That’s a great time to pull out this Zucchini-and-Carrot Latke recipe.
The reason fried pancakes are eaten on Hannukah is because of the significance of the oil, not the potatoes. The cooking oil symbolizes the oil found in the ransacked Temple that miraculously kept the lamp lit for eight days when there was only enough for one.
While I love to eat these zucchini and carrot latkas all year round, they put a colorful spin on a wintertime plate with vegetables that are available in the supermarket all year round. For fun, I topped these pictured with sour cream and caviar, but they’re just a good dipped in ketchup, barbecue sauce, or plain.
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Zucchini and Carrot Latkes
6 servings
4 large zucchini
4 large carrots
1/2 cup chopped green onions
4 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup flour (try using whole wheat flour for a healthier version)
1 heaping teaspoon baking powder
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/8 tsp. cardamom
1/2 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. ground pepper (I used white ground pepper — my current fave)
vegetable cooking oil spray
peanut oil for frying
Using the shredding blade in a processor, shred the carrots and zucchini. Transfer to a large bowl and add the green onions and beaten eggs. Blend well. Add the flour, baking powder, nutmeg, cardamom, salt and pepper.
Spray a large frying pan with a vegetable spray. Add a little peanut oil and with a large oval mixing spoon, drop by spoonfuls into the hot oil. Allow the pancakes to set before turning. When crisp, remove and place on paper toweling to remove any excess oil.
These can be made in advance. Place on a cookie sheet and heat in a 400-degree oven when ready to serve.
Reader question: wonderful book – I found it in the library. Can I use the dutch oven in an electric oven? – Michelle A., Pennsylvania
Of course you can use an electric oven to cook in a cast iron Dutch oven. In fact, I often prepare my GOPMs in an electric toaster oven because the smaller oven space preheats faster and uses less energy to keep hot during cooking. Best of all, it’s portable, so in the summer I can plug it in on my front porch and keep the heat out of the kitchen while still enjoying a quick and easy hot meal.
Glorious One-Pot Meal recipes layered in cast iron Dutch ovens have been successfully prepared in gas and electric ovens, conventional and convection ovens, buried in campfires coals, inside barbecue grills, in roasters, and even on stovetop burners. Someone once mentioned that they were going to use a solar oven to make these dinners, but I never heard what happened of that experiment. If you know more about solar ovens, by all means please leave a comment and enlighten us all.
The patented Glorious One-Pot Meals infusion cooking method only needs two elements to work perfectly: a cast iron Dutch oven and 450 degrees F heat. The heat source does not seem to matter much, though when possible it is good to control for exactly 450 F with an oven thermometer. When controlling the heat is not possible (in a campfire, for instance), you may want to stick with recipes that do not contain dry goods like rice or pasta for better results.
The only type of oven I know that you should NOT use with a cast iron Dutch oven is a microwave oven.
Happy cooking, and please pass along a thank you to your library for stocking my book!
Welcome to Effortless Eating, your resource for healthy recipes, natural health solutions, and general healthy lifestyle advice. Some recent posts that might interest you are:
As a thank you for visiting me here today, I’d like to offer you an e-book, Glorious One-Pot Kids Meals, a $9.97 value, for FREE! You get 11 wholesome meals proven to be crowd-pleasers for kids and adults alike and an introduction to my patented cooking technique. Simply enter the coupon code BLOGJOG at checkout and you’ll get immediate access to your .pdf download. This coupon is only good for November 21st, 2010, so act quickly!
I’ve got another goodie available on my other blog, Recipes For Publicity, for those looking to get exposure for their book or business.
A Blog Jog is an opportunity to visit other blogs that you never would have found and discover some new information and new voices to tickle your fancy. Follow the Blog Jog path and as you hop from here to there keep an eye out for all the goodies bloggers are offering up today until midnight!
A Blog Jog is an opportunity to visit other blogs that you never would have found and discover some new information and new voices to tickle your fancy. Follow the Blog Jog path and as you hop from here to there keep an eye out for all the goodies bloggers are offering up today until midnight!