Wheat Free Chex Mix and Eggless Nog!!

On with the holiday traditions! Since around Thanksgiving, I had been craving a salty snack, but it didn't occur to me that it was Chex Mix until we were grocery shopping the week before Christmas. Usually there's an endcap of sale Chex to remind me, but there never was this year.

Turns out it was an easy one to convert, though you may have to do a tiny bit more work if you are completely gluten-free, as the corn Chex has barley in it. I never really liked the wheat Chex anyways. But Rice Chex is advertising that it's gluten-free! See www.chex.com for more details.

Here is my family's cereal-snack mix recipe, now wheat-free. It's a little spicier than the recipe on the box, and not as intense and salty as the pre-made kind.

Wheat Free Cereal Snack Mix
(I hear one can't call it "Chex Mix" since that name's trademarked, but I assure you my recipe book doesn't read "cereal snack mix".)

1 box Rice Chex
1 box Corn Chex or GF alternative
1 box GF O-shaped oat cereal (we used a generic organic called "Natural Directions")
1 bag GF pretzels (we used Ener-G Wyld pretzels, but even better are the Glutino pretzels, I like those better than wheat pretzels!)
1 10 oz can mixed nuts
about 8 oz peanuts
a couple of handfuls of raw pecans

2 sticks butter
1/2 C vegetable oil
4 T Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp Tabasco
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp celery seed
1 tsp garlic powder

Preheat oven to 250 degrees F. Mix the top group of ingredients in a gigantic roasting pan or a couple of big EZ-foil pans. Melt the butter, add the oil and the rest of the spice ingredients and mix well. Pour into a glass measuring cup and drizzle a little over the top of the cereals, mix it up, drizzle some more, mix some more, until it's all on the cereal and the cereal all has a light coating of the butter/spice mixture. Bake for 3 hours, stirring every half hour. Keeps for a couple of weeks in a tightly closed jar.

Bonus recipe:
Eggless Nog
Put 1 banana in your blender jar. Fill to the 1 C mark with whole milk. Add 1/4-1/2 tsp vanilla and a few grinds or shakes of nutmeg. Blend until creamy. Yum! This was for my little one, but it would also be good with rum or whiskey. Previously I tried whipping cream and then mixing it with milk and nutmeg, but the whipped cream kind of floated to the top. No banana flavor, though.

Wheat-free, egg-free Pfefernuts (pfeffernusse, pepper nuts, pfefferneuse, whatever)

More holiday traditions- this time, my husband's side of the family. I've been making these little nutty cookies for a couple of years at his request, and since he washes all the dishes, who am I to refuse? They are a little addictive. Since we're (well, they are) wheat-free now, I had to adapt...

Just from looking at the original recipe, I ascertained that the only thing keeping these cookies from being rocks was the eggs. Hmm. So I scoured the Internet for an egg-free version, using "vegan" as my convenient search term, and I discovered that an egg-free pfeffernusse recipe was included in a book called, "My Sweet Vegan" but no one was kind enough or copyright-brazen enough to reprint it. In my search, though, I discovered that these mysterious pfeffernusse are as traditional at Christmas for Germans as dios is for Hungarians, and that like dios, the recipes definitely vary. No others I found were tiny like the recipe from my mother in law, though all were very similar. Interestingly, our recipe does not call for pepper. Maybe someday I'll try that.

I ended up just doing a straight substitution into her recipe with Bob's Red Mill GF flour for the flour and egg replacer and water for the eggs, and you know what? They're great. Light and crisp- possibly nicer than the wheat version! I mixed up a small batch of those, too, so we'll get to do a taste-test, unless they all get eaten first. I baked the wheat-free, egg-free version tonight.

Pfefernuts
(this makes A LOT. I made 1/3 of the recipe and filled two one-quart containers)

Cream together:
3 C sugar
1 1/2 C butter
1 C sour cream
3 T egg replacer and 3 T water, mixed first (originally 3 eggs)

Add and mix:
1/2 tsp soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp each: mace, anise oil, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, allspice

Add:
6 C Bob's Red Mill All Purpose GF flour to make stiff dough (originally 10 C flour)

Refrigerate overnight (or longer). Make into rolls as round as a penny. Cut into thin slices (or blobs) . Bake in 350 degree oven on a parchment-lined baking sheet until brown. Yum! Eat by the handful!

Perfect!

This dios was the best I've made in years. The pic's a little blurry, but it was delicious! I froze half so I'll still have some on Christmas. Oh, and in case you're wondering, it's DEE-osh. Something about God- you know, Christmas and all.

Wheat Dios (see previous post for wheat-free egg-free)

So here's my recipe for dios, Hungarian Christmas bread. I'm told it is traditionally made with either poppyseed or walnut filling; my family has only ever made it with walnuts. My mom wrote this recipe down after watching my Italian grandma on my dad's side make it for her Hungarian husband, my grandpa. It is a living recipe, and although it has history, I have adapted it over time as well and I no longer know exactly who contributed what portion.



Dios

Mix and set aside:
1 T yeast
1/4 C lukewarm water

Stir together, cool to lukewarm, & put in mixer bowl:
1 C scalded milk
1/4 C butter
1/2 C sugar
1 tsp salt

Add:
2 beaten eggs
2 C flour (roughly 1:4 whole wheat to white flour)
yeast mixture

and mix with paddle attachemnt to make batter. Switch to dough hook, and add
2 1/2 C flour (same ratio) to make a soft dough. Knead until satiny (really). let rise covered until doubled.

While dough is rising, make the filling:
3/4 lb raw walnuts, ground in a meat grinder (best), pulsed in a blender or food processor (areful not ot make walntut butter), or crushed with a rolling pin in a bag.
1 grated orange rind
2 beaten eggs
1/2 C sugar
a handful or two of raisins
orange juice ot moisten (about the juice from the zested orange)

Punch down, divide in 2 or 3 and roll out about 1/4" thick. Spread on the filling, leaving a litle margin around 3 sides, roll up, moisten & pinch to SEAL WELL, let rise again. Bake at 350 degrees about 35 minutes, till richly browned and hollow-sounding.

Wheat-free, Egg-free Dios (Hungarian Christmas bread)

So it's our first wheat-free, egg-free Christmas, and I couldn't bear the thought of going without dios for the holidays. I never haven't had dios for breakfast every morning the week up to and after Christmas, and I knew if I was going to make the wheat version, I'd have to figure out a wheat and egg free version for Esther and Phil. And I did! What a lovely success it was! I'll post the wheat-egg-free recipe here first, with photos, and follow it with my version of my mother's version of my dad's mother's version of dios. Enjoy, fellow Hungarians!

Wheat-free, Egg-free Dios
adapted from the "Cinnamon Swirl Bread" in Bette Hagman's The Gluten-Free Gourmaet Bakes Bread.


First, make the filling by mixing he following:
3/8 lb raw walnuts (6 oz, this is half the recipe I made, but I did wheat and wheatless at the same time), ground in a meat grinder (best) or pulsed in a blender (carful not to make walnut butter) or crushed in a bag with a rolling pin
the zest of 1/2 organic orange
the juice of 1/2 orange
1/4 C sugar
1 T egg replacer
a small handful of raisins

If it isn't moist enough to stick together, you can add a little more orange juice, but it shouldn't be too wet. Set aside.

Whisk together the dry ingredients in the bowl of your stand mixer or a large mixing bowl:

2 C Four Flour Bean Mix*
1 1/2 tsp xanthan gum
2T plus 1 tsp egg replacer
1 tsp unflavored gelatin
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 C sugar
2 T almond meal
2 1/2 tsp dry yeast

*Four Flour Bean Mix = 1 part tapioca flour, 1 part cornstarch, 1/3 part sorghum flour and 2/3 part Garbanzo/Fava Flour, Bob's Red Mill is fine or Hagman has her preferred brand

Scald (bring just to boiling, remove any skin that forms & discard) 1 C milk and add
3 T butter
1 T vanilla
let cool

Separately, mix 1/4 C water and 1/2 tsp vinegar

Put your bowl in the mixer with the paddle attachment. Turn the mixer to the lowest setting and slowly pour in the milk/butter mixture, then the water/vinegar & mix until well blended, like a batter. Add more water if it's too thick. Turn mixer to high and beat for 3 1/2 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare 3 mini loaf pans by lining with parchment paper.

When the dough is finished, it will be sticky and look like this -->






Now scoop approximately 1/9 of the batter into each of the three mini pans- just enough to spread it in a layer on the bottom



Then scoop about 1/6 of the filing out and roughly crumble it over the layer of dough. Pat it as flat as possible with a spatula. Repeat the dough layer on top, then another filling layer, finishing with a dough layer. Smooth the dough on top! Your final loaf will have the same basic shape you give it here! Make sure all the filling is covered, as well.



Let the loaves rise until approximately doubled, about an hour or more if your house is cold.










Fully risen loaf












Bake in a preheated 400 degree oven for about half an hour, covering loosely with foil after about 10 minutes. The loaf should be a nice golden brown when it's done.






Let the loaves cool completely before cutting them! I was especially impressed by the fine crumb and soft texture of this bread, just as it should be. And the flavor is terrific! It's not the traditional swirl of dios, but it will do. Next post, I'll put the wheat recipe up, but my gluten free girl is demanding my attention!

I just saw that IKEA has a clay covered baking dish much like the Romertopf I used to cook that lovely loaf of Thanksgiving bread. Here's the link: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/80087711. They also have an enamelware dutch oven that would work. The original no-knead bread calls to be cooked in a dutch oven, but I didn't have one so I used my Romertopf instead.

GF CF egg-free, soy-free Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I love hosting it, planning it, cooking it, everything. It helps that my lovely husband Phil is in charge of clean-up. I think what I like about it is that it's fun the short week before, doing the planning and shopping, and then I plan it enough that it's an easy pace on Thanksgiving itself, we eat early so guests are gone by 7pm usually, and clean up is done by 9:00. Then we have 3 more days off with leftovers, so we hardly have to cook! I usually need a break by then in the fall, and Thanksgiving is perfect for that. And I love to spend time with my friends-as-family-- so many of us are far from our born families, we make our own with friends, and it's all the love of family with none of the baggage and drama. I love it.

This year was our first GF, egg-free Thanksgiving. I probably would have just let E eat wheat and eggs, but we had a guest who was gluten-free, casein-free, egg-free, and soy-free, so that motivated me to do a little extra work and keep my family healthy and comfortable, too. I did both wheat and non-wheat versions of most items, and all turned out very well, though we have LOTS of wheat stuffing leftover for me!

The real savior of this year's Thanksgiving was Bette Hagman's "The Gluten-Free Gourmet Bakes Bread". I accidentally opened the package from Amazon containing this book as a Christmas gift for me, and once it was in my house and I knew it... I realized it was on my Christmas list because I wanted it for the holidays, so I decided it was appropriate to use it early- a present to my wheat-free family, in fact.


First, off, I will say, don't get sucked in by the picture on the front. I did, and I'm sure the publisher just put a picture of wheat bread on the cover. I was hoping to find some non-pan breads like in the picture, and there aren't really any. But after this initial disappointment, I am cautiously optimistic about the recipes. First I tried some rolls with her Pizza/French bread mix the week before Thanksgiving, and they were not very tasty. I think I do not care for the flavor of lots of tapioca flour. Her pizza crust based on it is fine, because the toppings cover the flavor, but it was not good for rolls. So those became the base for my GF stuffing (or dressing, as many call it). The the weekend before Thanksgiving, I tried her egg-free four-bean flour mix bread, with sesame seeds in it and sprinkled on top, and it was by far the best wheat-free bread we've ever had. It has a great texture and the flavor is very mild. A couple of slices of that rounded out the stuffing, which is a mushroom stuffing recipe from Food & Wine years ago. It is incredibly flavorful, and the bread held together nicely and crisped up just fine for a lovely side dish. I even made it the night before, refrigerated it, and baked it on Thanksgiving. Because my guest was CF and soy free, I replaced the butter with palm shortening and olive oil (there is no soy-free margarine in my town), and although it is tastier with butter, it was really just fine this way, too.

I made that same bread for Thanksgiving, using the medium loaf and taking a clue from the no-knead wheat bread recipe from the NY Times, which is a wet dough baked in a covered dish, like a Dutch oven, or in my case, a terra cotta Romertopf dish. It was BEAUTIFUL! I should have baked it another 10 minutes or so, because it did collapse a bit as it cooled, but it didn't get gummy and sticky or anything (see photo above). My other GF guest was VERY impressed and asked for the recipe!



Finally, I rounded out dinner with a vegan GF pumpkin pie. Truthfully, it was just OK. Without eggs, it was a little pasty, and it definitely needed more spice- Next time, I'd add 1 tsp ginger, 1/4 tsp cloves, and 1/4 tsp allspice to what's in the recipe. If I were not an egg-eater, I'd probably have liked it, and it was nice and firm and didn't have any off tastes. Overall, it was a very successful holiday for the dietary-restricted and the rest of us as well. I only wish I had taken a picture of the table laden with tons and tons of food!

Elimination Diet: One down, two to go

We tried sprouted wheat English muffins and tortillas and the eczema came back in force. I think it's wheat and not gluten- E was eating rye the whole time we "eliminated" because we didn't know it had gluten. Next to try, egg whites and egg yolks separately. Too bad we didn't do that in time for Thanksgiving, but we're having a GF, CF, soy-free, egg-free guest anyways.

Blogs I Read-- that you might like, too

http://connorsjourneywithautism.blogspot.com/2008/09/gluten-free-cinnamon-crackers-with-pear.html
Has good GF recipes, and she does the Daring Bakers GF!

http://www.tastespotting.com/
Takes the photos from all the best food blogs and puts them on one page...

http://www.creampuffsinvenice.ca/
baking with wheat and eggs, but some lovely things

Wheat-Free Batter Fried Fish & Onion Rings

Now, I am not normally one to fry my food, but once in a while, it's a nice treat! Interestingly, I've been dinking around for years trying to make just the right batter for onion rings, and it took my family going wheat-and-egg-free for me to happen upon the perfect batter for both onion rings, ands it turns out, fish. And it's ridiculously simple. It's not gluten-free, though, for those who are truly sensitive, due to the beer. I hear you can substitute club soda quite nicely for beer in recipes such as these, though.

1 bottle good beer, I suggest IPA or whatever you have around
Bob's Red Mill All-Purpose GF Baking flour
1 lb or so white fish such as halibut, rockfish, or cod
1 large onion
salt & pepper & garlic powder
a whole bunch of high-temp oil such as canola or safflower

Mix beer and enough flour to make a thin batter, somewhat thinner than what you would use to make pancakes with. Be aware that this flour seems to absorb liquid as it sits, so maybe don't put the whole bottle in at first. You could always thin the batter with water if necessary. Add as much salt as you think is reasonable, and then a little more, some pepper, and just a dash of garlic powder. Slice onion into rings and fish into fingers, about 8 pieces out of the pound.

Preheat oven to 365 degrees and turn your vent fan on if you have one. Heat an inch or two of oil in a cast-iron skillet until it is also 365 degrees- I have no better method than using a candy/deep-fry thermometer to know you are hot enough. I think a spoonful of the batter would float and turn golden brown in 5 minutes or so if it as right, though, if you don't have a thermometer that goes up that high (warning: many digital meat thermometers will fry their innards at this temp).

Using a long fork, dip the fish into the batter and slide into the oil and fry until golden on the bottom, 3-5 minutes or so; turn over and fry another minute or two on the other side. Fish will be done in the middle when the outside is golden unless you cut the pieces really big. Line a cookie sheet with paper towels or a brown paper bag and drain the fish on the bag, sticking the sheet in the hot oven while you cook the rest of the fish, and then the onion rings. The onion rings don't take as long as the fish to cook. Yum!

Galushka (not baking, just yummy)

Galushka is a mixture of cottage cheese, potato dumplings, and bacon. Everyone I have ever served this to has said, "eeeewww, gross!" when I described it, and then when they tasted it, become an immediate convert. It is strangely delicious, a delight of textures, and easily adapted to be wheat-free, I've found.

My Italian grandmother made galushka for my Hungarian grandfather; I understand it's a Hungarian dish, though when I've looked it up on the Internet, it has never been exactly what my family called galushka. The my mom made it for our family growing up, having learned the recipe from her mother-in-law. And now my family loves it, too.

Galushka
1 large russet potato
about 4 tsp potato starch
about 2 tsp tapioca flour
(if you were eating wheat, it would be about 2 T white flour)
salt & pepper
1 32-oz container cottage cheese
2 slices crisp-cooked bacon

Peel the potato and grate it on the small side of a box grater, or do what I do: shred it in the food processor, then pulse it with the blade till it's small but not pureed. Put the potato onto a paper towel and fold the towel closed, then wrap the paper towel in two or more dish towels and squeeze out as much moisture as you can. This step is essential! My mom even wrings it out till it drips. Unwrap the potato and put it in a bowl and add the flours and a generous amount of salt and pepper. My rule is to add what I think should be enough and then add a little more. Mix it all together, and then using your hands squeeze it together. You have enough starch in there if it forms balls when you squeeze it together and doesn't feel wet. Make the dumplings by squeezing about a teaspoon of the potato mixture in the palm of your hand. it should hold together. Make a plateful and then dump them one at a time into gently boiling salted water, only as many as make one layer in the bottom of the pan. Boil them for around 5 minutes-- they are done about 2 minutes after they float. You can take one out and cut it in half and try it to see if it's done. It should be chewy but not at all crunchy, but if you cook them too long they get soggy. If they fall apart in the water, your potato was too wet and/or you didn't add enough starch.

Drain the dumplings and immediately mix them into the cottage cheese. Crumble the bacon and mix that in, too, and you're done. It's best right away when it's lukewarm and the bacon is still crunchy. Beware of adding too much bacon- you just need enough to give flavor and crunch without overpowering the dumplings and cheese. Yum! I took a photo when I made it today, hopefully I'll post it soon.

The Go-To wheat-free egg-free dessert: Fruit crisp

Fill your 8x8 square pan not quite full with fruit of your choice: I like 1/2 apples and 1/2 fresh or frozen mixed berries. In a small bowl, mix together 1/3 C sugar, 1/4 tapioca flour, a tiny pinch of salt, and a teaspoon or more cinnamon. Other spices like nutmeg and cloves and ginger are also good. Sprinkle this mixture over the fruit and toss to mix. In the now-empty small bowl, mix 1 C oats, 1/3 C brown sugar, another tsp or so cinnamon, 1/3 C rice flour, another tiny pinch of salt, and then add 1/4 C (half a stick) melted butter. Mix the butter around till it moistens everything a little. Sprinkle this mixture on top of the fruit mixture, and bake at 350 degrees until bubbling and thick- an hour or more if your berries are frozen when you start, more like 40 minutes if there's only fresh berries & no apples. Let cool somewhat before eating or it will still be runny. Delicious with unsweetened whipped fresh cream!

Homemade Starch Based Egg Replacer

I mix up a big batch of this and keep it on hand, using 1 T replacer plus 1/2 tsp. oil plus 1/4 C water to substitute for one egg.

http://www.goodbaker.com/qa11.html

Amazing and Easy GF Chocolate Cake

All right. Here's the wheat & egg free version, and I'll follow up with the wheat & egg substitutions, because it's easy & great (and bonus, it's low-fat! but high sugar. It is cake, after all.).

1 C. Water
1/2 C unsweetened cocoa, I prefer Dutched
1 T. butter
1 C. sugar
1/3 C. brown rice flour
2/3 C. Bob's Red Mill GF All Purpose Baking Flour
1 T. starch-based egg replacer plus 1/4 C water
1/2 t. salt
1 t. vanilla
a couple of drops of almond extract
1 t. baking SODA
1 T. vinegar (really)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F, and grease and line with parchment paper an 8x8 square or an 8" round cake pan, or line cupcake tins with papers. You must do this now, as you will not have time to do it after you mix up the batter.

Mix the cocoa & water in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and add each ingredient one at a time, EXCEPT the vinegar, stirring after each addition. Whisk until it is lump-free, then add the vinegar, stir just a couple of times (it won't be all the way mixed but that's OK) and QUICKLY pour into pans and stick in the oven. The batter will be quite liquidy. Bake 40-45 minutes (cake pan) or 20-30 minutes for cupcakes, until the top is rounded & not soft to the touch. If you remember the elementary-school baking soda and vinegar volcano, you'll know why you have to do these last steps quickly.

I like to just dust the tops with powdered sugar, or frost them. It's also good if you leave out the almond extract and use a teaspoon or so of instant espresso.

For the wheat version, substitute an egg for the egg replace & water, and 1 C white or whole wheat pastry flour or a combination thereof for the Bob's & rice flour.

Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free All Purpose Baking Flour

When I started baking wheat-free, I got frustrated because all the recipes I found required one particular brand or another of gluten-free flour mix, none of which I had access to, living on a small island in Alaska. I did some research and discovered that the content of the different flours varied drastically, so it would not be easy to substitute one for another. I tried to use only recipes calling for single flours, and so I bought (luckily our local grocery stores carry almost all of these) tapioca, potato, garbanzo, fava, arrowroot, white rice, brown rice, sticky rice, amaranth, millet, and probably a few other flours. And of course, xanthan gum, largely to replace the eggs. I used different combinations of these in tons of different bread recipes, and I pretty much universally ended up with a brick. I finally found a rice bread recipe that basically worked, but it tasted like white bread. Good for some people I guess, but we were used to hearty whole-grain bread, and it was just sort of sticky and boring.

And then I picked up a bag of Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free All Purpose Baking Flour. I think the first thing I tried with it was chocolate cupcakes, substituting it right in for regular flour in my favorite easy chocolate cake recipe, which I will post shortly. And truthfully, it was amazing. It was good enough that I ate a bunch of the cupcakes. It was great. And so I became a convert to the one brand of GF flour available to me in this town.

I do find it has a somewhat bitter flavor, and I even keep it in the freezer so I don't think it's rancid. I usually end up cutting it by one-third to a half with brown rice flour. I started doing that because I bought a big bag of brown rice flour before I discovered the Bob's, and I wanted to use it up, but I have found most things taste better with it. It is the base of my chocolate cake, my bread (along with Bob's 8-grain WF cereal), and my muffins and pancakes and waffles. I still haven't figured out how to make a good vanilla or yellow cake from scratch yet. But recipes will be forthcoming...

Elimination Diet: We're not done yet

So soon I think we will embark on the next step of the elimination diet: to see if it's egg whites or egg yolks she's sensitive to, and to see if sprouted wheat (as in Ezekiel Bread) also causes eczema. My husband reports that sprouted wheat doesn't affect his asthma the same way wheat flour does, so I think it's worth a try. I'll keep you posted.

Blueberry Muffins

For all of you who live not on an island in Southeast Alaska, blueberries are probably long gone. But our berries go well into September, because our summers are typically temperate and rainy (much like our winters). I'm sure this recipe would be delicious with frozen berries, but the fresh ones were pretty great this morning. Phil (husband) is out of town, and what I really wanted for breakfast was a doughnut, but I knew it would be too hard to get away with it with just me and Esther, so I made muffins instead- which truly were as good as wheat-egg ones!

Blueberry-Banana Muffins

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

Whisk together:
1 C Bob's Red Mill All Purpose GF Baking Flour (I'll post on this sometime)
1/2 C brown rice flour
1 tsp xanthan gum
scant 1/4 tsp salt
1 T baking powder
1 T starch-based egg replacer (found the recipe on the Internet, you could use Ener-G)
1/2 C sugar

In a 2-C measure,
mash 1 very ripe banana and mix with
1/4 C melted butter
3/4-1 C milk
1 tsp vanilla

Mix the wet into the dry until just combined, adding more milk if it seems thick.
Fold in quickly, 1 C or so fresh blueberries

Spoon into paper lined muffin/cupcake tins. It made 12 regular muffins and 7 mini-muffins.
Bake until they're done on top. Sorry, bad advice, but I didn't time it. It was probably 20-30 minutes, I took the mini ones out before the bigger ones, and they were a lovely brown on top.

Remove from muffin tins immediately and cool on a wire rack. Really. Well, we ate them hot with butter (mmmm) but they really stuck to the paper liners that way. I was wondering if they make silicone-impregnated baking cups, like parchment paper, they might not stick so much. The paper-peeling went much better once they were cool.

Next time I'll probably try 2 bananas, because these were not very banana-y, but I wanted to avoid the density that sometimes comes with too much banana.

Curing Eczema: the elimination diet

Pretty much from birth, my now 5-year old daughter suffered from eczema. It wasn't terrible, or it didn't seem it at the time-- it got worse in winter, it itched but never cracked and bled, sometimes it stung in the saltwater pool, but that was about it. But it was constant, for years. We took her to the doctor, who said to use Cetaphil lotion and there was nothing we could do about it, but that eczema is more common in children of parents with allergies and asthma. Well, her dad has asthma and allergies, so we figured there was an association with that. We knew a little bit about food sensitivities, because a complete elimination diet had been suggested to Phil to address his asthma, but he never really followed through with it. But now we had two people in the family with possibly connected health issues, and so the time came to figure out if this even was a food sensitivity.

But I had no idea really where to start. I did some research on elimination diets, and they all seemed so daunting-- eat only rice and vegetables for three months, stuff like that. But I came across a book on Amazon.com, that looked promising (thank goodness for the "search in this book" option). I prefer my local bookseller and so should you, but the fact is I live on a small island in Alaska, and my choices are limited. The book is called Superimmunity for Kids: What to Feed Your Children to Keep Them Healthy Now, and Prevent Disease in Their Future, by Leo Galland and Dian Dincin Buchman. Plus I got it used for $5 and have since passed it on o my husband's father, who also has sever asthma.

What I got from this book, mainly, was an easy way to determine if your health problem is even a food sensitivity or not. It's a simple, but short, hard-core elimination. So for (only) five days, we ate nothing but meat (except pork), rice, squash, potatoes, and... there was fifth thing, but I forget what now. I guess you'll have to buy the book to find out. It was tough, it didn't agree with me as I tend towards high-vegetable-low-meat diets, but THE ECZEMA WENT AWAY COMPLETELY!! Remember, Esther had had constant eczema for four years, and it was magically gone. So bingo, we knew it was caused by something in her diet; now we just had to figure out what.

So then I found a great article on on Ask Dr Sears with two lists: the top nine allergenic foods, and the top 20 allergenic foods. My plan was to add everything back in but the so-called Nasty Nine, and see if the eczema came back. If it did, then we would try eliminating all of the top twenty allergens. My husband was convinced her reaction was to something weird on the list, though, so we just went ahead and started with the top twenty. I think we were so glad to be rid of the eczema that we just didn't want it to come back! Turns out we would have saved ourselves a lot of headache if we had just tried the nine, so I recommend starting with the nine to anyone trying this.

We eliminated the top twenty allergens, and still she had no eczema, so that was good. Then every four days, we added in a new food, usually in a very significant quantity, to see if it provoked a reaction (food allergies are often dosage-based, I think Dr. Sears said). Adding in 20 foods, every four days should take just under three months, right? No problem, or so we thought. The major hitch in this all is that if you are four, in preschool, and very social, you get invited to a birthday party about every week. With so many foods eliminated, there wasn't much we could do to adequately substitute for birthday cake and ice cream, and we didn't want to warp her, so we let her eat cake. But then it took 2 days for the eczema to surface after exposure and 3 more days for it to clear up enough for us to even consider trying a new food, so all in all the re-introduction phase took about 6 months.

We did learn some things about our old diet for sure. I was always a little holier-than-thou, I eat a whole foods healthy diet kind of person, but when we got serious about eliminating, we realized how much junk we did eat. A lot of it was in condiments and various seasonings, especially Asian, since preservatives were eliminated, and sugars, because they're in anything processed, even when it's all-natural. We chose to let sugar and preservatives be last on the list of things to re-introduce, since we figured it would be better for us in the long run, and it got me to learn which bottle of fish sauce or curry paste has sodium benzoate and which one didn't. We even made our own ketchup just by starting with tomato paste and vinegar, and then looking on the label of Annie's organic ketchup (which lists the spices instead of just saying "spices") and using honey instead of sugar, and tasting it till it was close enough.

To be honest, I personally never followed the diet very well. I am a grain-based diet person, it's in the eat for my blood type and everything, and I didn't do well without wheat, and I had no personal motivation other than solidarity to do it. Luckily, my husband has been with Esther all the way, and while he'll eat bread occasionally out of her sight, he realizes how much it has helped his asthma, too, so he sticks with it pretty well. He's a meat-eater in the eat right for your blood type thing, and while I don't usually go for that sort of hocus-pocus health stuff, it is uncannily accurate (like when I got my palm read in India). I would bet a dollar that Esther is his blood type (O-) rather than mine (A-), because she too is a meat-eater.

But I digress. Both wheat and eggs caused Esther to have eczema, although interestingly, each one individually caused a much slighter reaction than had been her chronic condition. We re-eliminated them and continued on with re-introducing, and those were the only two that did anything. So then it changed from a diet to a lifestyle change, which I do think was a little hard for Esther. I think she had imagined it would come to an end and she would be able to eat everything again, and ultimately, that just wasn't the case. But she was AMAZING through it all. She had to bring her own snack to preschool instead of eating whatever anyone brought, and I have a friend who volunteered there regularly, and she said she'd never seen a kid show such responsibility and restraint. And Esther loves food, she loves to eat, but I think deep inside she's happy to not have eczema. She doesn't verbalize it very much, and she always says, "oh, I wish I could have bread!" in the saddest way, but she doesn't do it. I guess when she does, it will be her choice; we can only control our kids so much and for so long.

Which reminds me- one of the motivators for doing this diet when we did was that we realized she'd be going to school the following year, and we'd have even less control over her diet than we already did. We sort of figured it was now or never. One of the teachers at her preschool can't eat wheat, so that was helpful, too, and it was a treat for the teacher when I'd bring snack that everyone could eat. We've gotten into the habit of bringing food wherever we go, and Esther sure does eat more healthily because of it, it's a very pleasant outcome.

People really feed their kids junk, and look at you funny when you say no she can't have "juice" and a "fruit" snack. Now we have a great excuse to bring our own food! We did run into one problem this summer when she took a little day camp Spanish class, and after the first day the teacher told her not to bring her own snack. My husband was dealing with it, and I don't know if the teacher was made fully aware that Esther couldn't have wheat and eggs, but she did end up eating whatever snack was provided (some sort of chip with which Esther was unfamiliar, we're thinking Sun Chips) and getting eczema.

So that's how we discovered Esther's sensitivity. Hopefully, the rest of this blog will be helpful and concrete ways of dealing with it- if you like to cook and bake that is!

Here I am, how I got here

Hey there. Chances are if you're looking at this, it's because you or a family member for whom you cook has a wheat or egg allergy or sensitivity. Yep, that's my raison d'etre out here in cyberspace, too. I'm not much of a blogger by nature, but since we discovered my daughter's wheat and egg sensitivity, I've been on the constant lookout for recipes that are both wheat and egg free. Now, there's TONS of gluten free info out here, and there's quite a few egg-free recipes in the world, but both is a little harder to come by.

The other trick is that I am a semi-professional baker. By that I mean I love to bake, and I have even baked for pay once or twice, and out of the goodness of my heart for someone's special occasion countless times besides that. And as a baker, everything I know depends on wheat and eggs (and butter, but we're good on that). Furthermore, I am not sensitive to wheat or eggs, so anything I make for Esther that I'm going to eat has to be as good as the wheat-egg version. She loves the things I reject, probably because it has been so long since she's had wheat or eggs, but I can tell. And in my experience, "it tastes just as good as the real thing!" from someone who hasn't had the real thing for a while, just isn't true. So here we have it, I'll share only my very best wheat and egg-free recipes, most of which will be baked goods. Enjoy, feel free to drop me a line if you have a suggestion, a recipe to share, or a comment. Enjoy!

P.S. To all you folks who are SERIOUSLY allergic/sensitive to wheat, you should know that I do not depend on certified gluten-free goods. My daughter's reaction to wheat and eggs is eczema, which is painful and difficult, but not life-threatening. So as always, use your best judgment in using my recipes.