Post-Kid Kitchen: Spectacular Cookies of Awesomeness

The one thing that made this weekend not suck entirely was baking cookies with my guys. It started like this: Westley wanted to ride in Rob's car, but the car seat was in my car and Rob didn't feel like moving it. I told Rob that if he moved the car seat, I'd make cookies for him. Oatmeal-raisin cookies. His favorite cookie.

(Does "oatmeal-raisin" get a hyphen? I think it does. Unless you're making raisin cookies with oatmeal. Those would be "oatmeal raisin" cookies.)

When you have lots of restrictions to deal with, it's always a special treat to have a recipe that meets your needs right from the get-go, no modifications necessary. And this recipe from Gluten-Free Goddess fit the bill perfectly. Unfortunately, I was missing a few of the ingredients (which I realized after I'd preheated the oven and started mixing things). Here's what I used:

Spectacular Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies

Wet ingredients:
2/3 cup Spectrum Organic Shortening
1 1/2 cups demerara sugar

1 Tbsp molasses
1 small Fuji apple, peeled, chopped, microwaved with a little water until soft and mushy, and blended (This involves more work than just using applesauce, but it works just as well.)
2 tsp bourbon vanilla extract
2 Tbsp agave

Dry ingredients:
1/2 cup sorghum flour
3/4 cup gluten-free oat flour
1/2 cup tapioca starch
1 tsp xanthan gum
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
2 cups gluten-free rolled oats
1/2 cup raisins

Zip over to Gluten-Free Goddess for mixing and baking instructions. Rob and I used a cookie scoop and ended up with 36 cookies. Ours needed to bake for 14 minutes, and while they do come out of the oven very soft, they're perfectly crispy-chewy by the time they cool. If you can wait that long.

If you don't have a cookie scoop, get one. We use ours every day to dish out peanut butter, measure a tablespoon of margarine or tahini, and serve Westley-sized portions of dinner entrees. Plus, perfectly round, (almost) perfectly uniform cookies! Every time!

Also, always get your partner to help with the cookies you promised to make for him.

I find gluten-free baked goods to be kind of hit or miss. But these beauties? Taste like cookies, baby. Make them for everybody you know.

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Post-Kid Kitchen: Making Up With Food

After several weeks of on-again, off-again nausea, I'm starting to feel like a person again. A very hungry person. And while I still feel a little edgy around protein-rich foods, carbohydrates have been sounding wonderful.

At first, I practically lived off fruit: three pears and a giant grapefruit for breakfast, a pound of grapes for lunch, that sort of thing. Then, out of nowhere, my pregnant nose caught a whiff of French fries cooking somewhere, and I had a flash of, ohmygod that sounds SO good right now!

Unfortunately, fried food and I no longer see eye to eye. I love it, but it wants to date other people. People whose stomachs are not quite so sensitive to fat (and the likely gluten-by-proxy that happens to potatoes when a restaurant cooks all of its fried offerings together).

Because the real appeal of French fries (for me) is that warm, salty, potato-y flavor, I decided to whip up some potato soup. It scratched my food-itch and then some, coming together quickly and turning out much more satisfying than I'd expected. The secret ingredient is the potatoes themselves, half of which get blended with vegetable broth to give the soup a creamy base with no cream, dairy or otherwise.

Creamy Potato Soup

Serves 4 generously

3 lbs potatoes

4 cups vegetable broth

2 tbsp olive oil

1 large onion

1 large red bell pepper

2 medium carrots

2 cups water

2 tbsp nutritional yeast

You're going to need two pots for this.

Peel your potatoes and dice them fine. Place vegetable broth and half the diced potatoes in pot #1 over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil and cook 10 minutes or so, until potatoes are very tender.

Meanwhile, dice the onion. Heat olive oil in pot #2 over medium-high heat and add onion. Dice bell pepper and carrots, adding each vegetable to the onion as you finish dicing and stirring occasionally. When the onion looks nice and translucent, add water and remaining potatoes. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to medium and cook, covered, 7-10 minutes, until potatoes are tender.

When your potato-broth mixture is thoroughly cooked, blend with an immersion blender until smooth. (You can also transfer the mixture to a blender or food processor to blend.) Add the blended potato mixture to pot #2, and stir to combine. Right before serving, stir in nutritional yeast.

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P.S. Rob suggested that this soup could be garnished with roasted chickpeas for some nice crunch (not to mention protein). While that sounds delicious to me in theory, legumes and I are not currently on speaking terms.

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Post-Kid(s) Kitchen: Eating for Nausea

Food and I broke up this week. Between my kidney-bean-sized passenger and a cold that Westley was nice enough to share with me, I've been balancing nausea, loss of appetite, and post-nasal drip that makes everything taste "off." The thought of eating makes me feel like a contestant on Fear Factor. And cooking? Pretty much out of the question.

My wonderful doctor (who is also a licensed midwife, and was the student midwife who saved my life present at Westley's birth) said, "The first three months are just about surviving." But I feel like I should at least make an effort to consume more than pickles and lemonade, the only two foods that sound good - if anything could be said to "sound good" right now.

So far, I haven't come up with very much. Pasta puttanesca has been going down pretty easily, but I don't feel like I can eat it for breakfast. Enter blended fruit.

Take Your Iron Supplement with This Smoothie

Makes a lot, probably 2 or 3 servings, but I just drink the whole thing myself

1 cup pineapple juice

3 Clementines, peeled and broken into sections

1/2 cup unsweetened frozen raspberries

4 strawberries (fresh or frozen)

Combine everything in a blender and blend until smooth. Serve immediately. That's it! Lots of fiber and 296% of your RDA for vitamin C.

Unless you count boiling gluten-free pasta, practically the only thing I've been able to cook this week has been a super-simple soup, based very loosely on Chinese Corn Soup. I say "very loosely" because it's not much more than corn and vegetable broth - but it's been the perfect thing for my cold symptoms.

Almost Instant Corn Soup

Serves 2 - or 1 sick person who doesn't feel like eating much else

1 1/2 cups super-flavorful vegetable broth (I use a powdered broth concentrate, and just make the broth a little stronger than usual)

1 1/2 cups corn kernals

1 Tbsp cornstarch

2 Tbsp water

Combine vegetable broth and corn in a pot over medium-high heat and bring to a boil. In a small bowl, whisk together cornstarch and water until well-combined. Add the cornstarch-water mixture to the boiling soup and stir. Continue to stir for about 2 minutes, until the soup has thickened slightly. Serve immediately, garnished with baby corn (pickled or not) and chopped scallions.

I'm hoping that as my cold disappears, I'll start to feel less like cooking and eating are things I have to force myself to do before I lose the nerve to do them. I was feeling really tired (unbelievably tired) but otherwise awesome before the cold reared its ugly, mucousy head. In the meantime, I'll be racking my brain for things to eat when I don't feel like eating.

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Post-Kid Kitchen: Cookbook Love & Muffins

I've said it before, but I couldn't cut it as an all-day every day food blogger. I enjoy planning meals, grocery shopping, trying new ingredients and combinations. I think about food often enough that I even find myself doing it even in my sleep. (Did I actually make those spicy peanut noodles, or was that a dream?)

While I do cook from scratch constantly daily, I'm no good at developing recipes. I can get pretty creative with substitutions, and I love throwing together a casserole from a fridge full of nothing. But building a recipe from the ground up isn't a strength of mine (yet).

Enter cookbooks. I love cookbooks. While I haven't read one from cover to cover in a while, I would much rather curl up with a cookbook than with a novel. And one of the most curl-up-with-able (curl-up-able-with?) cookbook I've met recently is Joanna Vaught's Yellow Rose Recipes.

[Image via Yellow Rose Recipes]

I'm completely ashamed to admit that I didn't own Yellow Rose Recipes until very recently, when I received a copy for my birthday (thanks, Rob!). I feel like I'm totally late to the party and dressed inappropriately. Joanna's blog is one my favorites, and her recipes are always spot-on. If I could borrow someone's recipe-crafting mojo, I'd borrow Joanna's.

Everything I've cooked from Yellow Rose Recipes has been fantastic. The Almond Milk Gravy was perfect over potatoes for Sunday breakfast. I substituted rice flour for the all-purpose, and used Sunshine Burgers' breakfast patties as my vegetarian sausage and the results were lick-your-plate good. I've already made the Wild Rice Salad twice, with some chickpeas thrown in for extra protein, and Rob has declared Mom's Lentil Soup the best lentil soup he's ever tasted. And my husband knows his lentils!

My favorite YRR creation has been the Very Berry Muffins. My copy of the book already falls open to that page after just over one month's use. Of course, I needed to gluten- and soy-free them up. And the first time I went to make them, I realized half-way through that I didn't have any applesauce. I thought briefly about coring, peeling, and cooking a single apple right there, but I wanted muffins sooner than that. I ended up using mashed banana. And I didn't have enough blueberries, but I had some walnuts, and...

This is the closest I get to developing recipes. I purposefully and not-so-purposefully muck with someone else's recipe until I have something that isn't quite the original recipe. Of course, I never think of the end result as "my" recipe. In my mind, it's always a play on someone else's creativity.

Out of focus, but so delicious.

Go-to Blueberry Muffins

(based on Very Berry Muffins, Yellow Rose Recipes, p. 24)

Makes 12 huge, dense muffins

1/2 cup coconut flour
2/3 cup white rice flour
2/3 cup millet flour
1/4 cup + 2 tbsp tapioca flour
2 Tbsp flaxseed meal
1 Tbsp egg replacer powder
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
3/4 cup almond milk
3/4 cup So Delicious coconut milk beverage (or more almond milk)
1 cup water

1/2 cup sugar
1 large banana
2 Tbsp canola oil
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
1 cup fresh blueberries
1/2 cup walnut pieces

Preheat oven to 350 F. Spray muffin pan with cooking spray.

In a large bowl, sift together flours, flaxseed meal, egg replacer, baking powder, salt and xanthan gum. In a blender combine milks, water, sugar, banana, canola oil, and vanilla extract. Blend until very smooth. Stir wet mixture into the dry, and mix thoroughly. (No gluten means no need to worry about over-mixing! Yay!) Fold in the blueberries and walnuts.

Divide batter evenly among 12 muffin cups. Bake 25 minutes. Allow to cool completely before removing from pan. Seriously. If you try to eat these right away, they won't seem done in the middle, and you'll burn your mouth on molten blueberry juice. Don't do it.

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If you'd like a copy of Yellow Rose Recipes, the book is still available here, but quantities are very limited, so don't wait!

And let me know what some of your favorite cookbooks are (vegetarian or not). The more kitchen inspiration, the better - and tastier!

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Post-Kid Kitchen: Cake for No Reason

Before Westley was born, I almost never baked anything. Rob enjoys baking, and was our resident baker. I, on the other hand, am a little freaked out by anything - like baking - that requires precise measuring. Still, the charm of fresh, home-baked desserts is hard to resist. I made a "half-year anniversary" cake when Rob and I had been married six months, and I baked for each of our birthdays, but that was about it. Certainly no random afternoon baking projects in the middle of the week. Lately however, I sometimes just want to wish Westley "Happy Thursday," and find myself breaking out the cookie sheets and cake pans.

Of course, gluten- and soy-freeing everything has made baking even more of a challenge. When I follow a recipe, I usually get pretty good results, but sometimes I'm tempted to experiment and work with what I have. The following No-Reason Cake was one of those experiments. It turned out tasty, but very, very crumbly. I didn't use any xanthan gum, and this cake probably would've benefitted from it. However, I think the xanthan gum-less version would work brilliantly as cupcakes, where structural integrity is somewhat less of an issue.


Chocolate Chip Cake for No Reason

1 cup almond milk
1/3 cup canola oil
3/4 cup sugar
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup tapioca flour
2 Tbsp flax seed meal
1/3 cup peanut flour
1/2 cup white rice flour
1/2 cup millet flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup chocolate chips (I use Enjoy Life brand)

Preheat oven to 350 F and spray 8"x8" square baking pan with canola oil.

In a large mixing bowl combine almond milk, oil, sugar, and vanilla extract. Mix with an electric mixer to combine. Add tapioca flour and flax seed meal and mix until everything is nicely emulsified. Add the remaining flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and mix really, really throughly (a couple minutes should do it). Fold in chocolate chips. Bake 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted through the center comes out clean. Cool completely before frosting.


I covered the cake with a batch of Rich Chocolate Ganache Frosting from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, substituting almond milk for the soy. I'm not sure this cake needed anything on top of it, though! The end result was very rich (and so not good for you!). The strangest thing was that the peanut flour made the cake batter smell super peanut-buttery, but the end result just tasted like rich, delicious vanilla cake!

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Post-Kid Kitchen: The Protein (Powder) Problem

Today, unfortunately, I have no recipe to share. What I have is a plea. I need some help. Some nutritional advice. Not the "eat this, don't eat that" type. I need hands-on, "swallow this without gagging" advice. (That's what she said.)

Since going gluten-free and swearing off the soy, I've become quite the vegan cliche. The old "Where do you get your protein?" cliche.

The answer is: Beans. Lots and lots of beans. (Yes, I know practically everything has a leetle bit of protein in it, broccoli is mostly protein, whole grains, nuts, sea vegetables, and on and on and on. But I'm thinking specifically about stuff that packs some serious protein punch.) Except that I can only eat so many beans.

According to my naturopath, I need at least 50 grams of protein every day. When she said it, I thought, "That's not so much." But when I actually started tracking my food intake and really looking at what I was getting, nutrition-wise, I realized that my soy-free, gluten-free vegan diet wasn't cutting it on the protein intake.

So I bought myself some soy-free vegan protein powder thinking, "Hey, I like smoothies, and I have a freezer full of bananas with one, Westley-sized bite out of them. Let's make protein shakes! Yeah!"

It seemed like such a simple idea. A simple idea that would get me at least 21 grams of protein per smoothie. But it turns out that this stuff? Is foul.

It claims to have a "neutral taste." I'd describe it more as bitter, and vaguely "planty." Rather than hiding in fruit smoothies, it makes the fruit taste like it. I'm sure enough chocolate, peanut butter, and sugar would hide the taste, but the idea here is to make something healthful. Preferably something healthful that I don't have to choke down.

This is not the only soy-free, vegan-friendly protein powder on the market. But I'd like to use up what I've got before trying something else. Any ideas or suggestions would be more than welcome! And while you're at it, tell me where you get your protein.

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Post-Kid Kitchen: Fungi to Be With

Criminis, shiitakes, and chanterelles (oh my!)

Before I started cooking all vegetarian all the time, I didn't give mushrooms much thought. While I detested them raw (and still do), they were fine in soups and sauces. But that was all: fine. However, somewhere on the vegetarian/vegan journey, I developed a passion for mushrooms. Yesterday, I ate a big bowl of stir-fried shiitakes for breakfast.

Now, stir-frying mushrooms is not difficult, and doesn't really require a recipe. But, as the name implies, it does involve stirring, and sometimes I'm too lazy for even that level of simplicity. So last weekend, I sprayed a bunch of mushrooms with canola oil and threw 'em on my George Foreman grill. And Lazy Sunday Mushroom Sauce was born.

Lazy Sunday Mushroom Sauce

(This recipe requires that you have ye olde Lean, Mean, Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine. The sloped cooking surface and drip tray are important here.)

a very generous handful of mushrooms (I'm partial to chanterelles)

spray bottle of canola oil or olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Spray grill with oil and plug it in. When the grill is warm, add your mushrooms and give 'em a generous spritz of oil. Start checking for doneness around 3 minutes. You want the mushrooms to be cooked, obviously, but what you're really looking for is the "run-off" (there has to be a better word for this). All the oil and delicious mushroom juices that collect in the drip tray are the secret of this sauce. When the mushrooms are cooked through, add them to your favorite pasta or whole grain, and pour the contents of the drip tray over everything. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Crazy delicious!

Lazy Sunday Mushroom Sauce over steamed veggies and quinoa

My only complaint with the Foreman grill is that, at least on my little model, there's not enough room to make a meal for three or more in one go. I was planning to make Lazy sauce for my parents when they came over for dinner and tree-trimming last night, and then I realized that there would be a lot of waiting around with tummies rumbling and pasta getting cold as I grilled one serving of mushrooms at a time. Fortunately, I came up with something (almost) equally easy, and way more tasty. Not to mention fancy-looking.*

Spaghetti with Oyster Mushrooms and Swiss Chard

8 oz. brown rice spaghetti

1/4 cup soy-free Earth Balance (or olive oil)

1 large onion, diced

1/2 pound oyster mushrooms, sliced

1 bunch Swiss chard, washed and cut into bite-size pieces

salt and pepper to taste

Cook pasta according to package directions. I had a big pot of boiling water ready, and started the pasta cooking right after adding the mushrooms to the pan.

In a large pan, melt Earth Balance over medium heat. Add onion and cook for a good 10 minutes at least, stirring occasionally. You want the onions to be thoroughly cooked before you start adding things to them.

When the onions are very translucent, add the mushrooms and give everything a good stir to coat mushrooms with the Earth Balance-onion mixture. Cover and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring every now and then. If things start looking a little dry, add a splash of water (or vegetable broth, or white wine).

When the mushrooms are cooked, remove turn off the heat. Add the Swiss chard to the pan, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Stir everything together cover for 5 minutes. Serve over pasta and marvel over your seven-ingredient(-if-you-count-salt-and-pepper) supper.

Note: I made this with my mom in mind. She has experienced incredible health benefits from following a low-salt diet. The dish tasted a little under-seasoned to those of us who are used to eating a little more salt, but a little salt and pepper at the table did the trick nicely. And following Westley's lead, everyone but me elected to sprinkle this with nutritional yeast flakes. (I'm probably the only vegan alive who can't get behind the whole nutritional yeast thing.)

*I got so caught up in cooking - and being hungry - that I forgot to take a picture. But I promise this really is fancy-looking!

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You'll probably be seeing lots of mushroom recipes here in the coming weeks. I've put myself on an anti-inflammatory diet, and mushrooms like shiitake and oyster contain compounds that support the immune system. Fungus power!

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Post-Kid Kitchen: That's How I Casserole

Somehow, miraculously, the Thanksgiving leftovers were basically gone by Sunday afternoon. I had a fridge full of odds and ends - leftovers from dinners throughout the week - and no idea what to make. And when I have no idea what to make, I make a casserole.

I don't think I ever made a casserole before going vegan. My only explanation is that I was a strict recipe-follower back then. As I move more and more in the direction of forming my own one-woman kitchen-improv troupe, I make more spur-of-the-moment dishes. And casseroles are great spur-of-the-moment food.

I have a casserole "formula" that I follow, and it goes like this:

Start with a cooked carbohydrate (rice, pasta, potatoes...). Add cooked beans (white, black, garbanzo...) and cooked vegetables (carrot, celery, peas, green beans...). Choose something to give it some flavor (onion, garlic, nuts, seeds, sun-dried tomatoes, olives...), especially if your starting ingredients were pretty plain, and moisten (with vegetable broth, tomato sauce, gravy, cheezy sauce...) as needed. This is one of my favorite ways to use up leftover soup! Season with dried herbs and spices (my general rule is that if they smell good together, they'll probably taste good together).

Preheat your oven to 350 F to 400 F. Cover and bake for 30 minutes if the ingredients were room temperature or warmer, or 1 hour if the ingredients were cold.

Here's what I had:

3 1/2 large baked potatoes

1 1/2 cups plain black beans

2/3 large white onion

about 1 cup samosa-filling-inspired seasoned veggies (inspired by Veganomicon's Samosa-Stuffed Baked Potatoes)

Here's what I did:

Sliced the potatoes into, well, slices. Diced onion. Layered potatoes in an oiled casserole dish. Sprinkled beans and vegetables over the top. Whipped up a batch of the sauce for Susan's Creamy Scalloped Potatoes (using unsweetened almond milk and omitting the miso), and poured that over the whole shebang. Sprinkled with seasoned salt. Wrote a note for Rob, and left to spend the afternoon with my mom.

I don't know what possessed me to top curry-flavored vegetables with cheeze-flavored sauce, but it worked out pretty well. Even if it wasn't pretty.

I'm blaming some of the unappetizing hue on the lighting in my kitchen, but with casserole, beauty really is in the eye (er, mouth?) of the beholder.

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Post-Kid Kitchen: Share the Loaf!

I loaf sandwiches.

Every Thanksgiving since Rob and I went vegan, I've fantasized about making a delicious celebratory vegan roast thing. I get in this weird headspace that says it's not Thanksgiving without a proteiny, turkey-replacing entree. The truth is that my husband would gladly eat a big bowl of stuffing and nothing else.

Yes, I know it's not technically "stuffing" if it's not stuffed inside anything. But to me, "dressing" will always be what goes on salad, so I call it stuffing. Also, since the ultimate goal is to stuff it inside ourselves, I'm pretty sure I'm still at least partially right.

Anyway, every year, in my quest for an entree, I've ended up making a Tofurkey. Which is fine, unless you're gluten- and soy-free. Or if you'd prefer something a little less "from a box."

Despite its unappetizing name, loaf seemed like an obvious contender for homemade Thanksgiving protein goodness. It's totally easy to put together, can be made ahead of time, and is made even more delicious when smothered with mushroom gravy. My favorite loaf recipe is Sarah Kramer's "Tip Top Tofu Loaf" (from La Dolce Vegan via Vegan a Go-Go). It's delicious, but so not soy-free.

I put my own spin on this favorite from my pre-soy-free days. The results left me with more than a week's worth of delicious loaf sandwich lunches, and answered my Thanksgiving prayers!

Kick-ass Chickpea Loaf

4 tbsp canola oil, divided
2 cups cooked chickpeas
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup coconut aminos (or veggie broth)
1 medium onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1/4 cup ketchup (I used agave-sweetened)
1/4 cup dijon mustard
1/2 cup fresh parsley, chopped
1 cup gluten-free rolled oats (or gluten-free breadcrumbs)
2 tbsp tahini

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Oil two loaf pans with 2 tbsp canola oil each. Leave remaining oil in pans. If, like me, you don't usually cook with a lot of oil, this will look sick and wrong. But the oil is what gives the loaf its beautiful crispy outside.

Combine remaining ingredients in food processor. Process until smooth. Divide evenly between loaf pans. (The oil will kind of ooze up around the sides of the loaf "batter." It's all good. You totally want this to happen.) Bake 50 minutes. Allow to cool at least 10 minutes before removing from loaf pans and serving. Serves 6.

Leftover loaf makes a delicious sandwich filling - hot, cold, or at any in-between temperature of your choosing!

It's a CLLT!

1/2 slice Chickpea Loaf + Lettuce + Tomato (+ mustard, on rice bread) = YUM!

I'm looking forward to my first Tofurkey-less vegan Thanksgiving! (And as for stuffing, I'm going to gluten-free up Joanna Vaught's Mushroom Dressing with the cunning use of rice bread.)

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What are you making for Thanksgiving? And are you Team Stuffing or Team Dressing?

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Post-Kid Kitchen: Hippie, Dippy, Trippy, Crunchy...

Here it is! The first installment of my (I hope) weekly round up of soy-free, gluten-free vegan goodness. And I'm totally pumped! Woo!

It's the "Post-Kid Kitchen" for two reasons: As you know (or maybe you don't), my food sensitivities showed up after my son was born. Perhaps because I spent my entire pregnancy eating whole wheat everything. Post-kid, I've had to learn a whole new way of cooking and eating, not only because I have a tiny vegan to feed, but also because a lot of things I used to love now make me sick.* Post-Kid Kitchen is also, of course, an homage to Post Punk Kitchen, a major source of vegan inspiration (veganspiration?) for me pre- as well as post-kid. Also, Rob's #1 celebrity crush happens to be a certain cookbook author...

Anyway!

We're starting with breakfast. It's the most important meal of the day, after all. But, for me, often a challenging one. I never know what to eat first thing in the morning. I've always liked the ease of cold cereal: bowl, cereal, milk, done! I'm not so keen on the extra packaging, not-so-healthful ingredients, and expense that come with buying ready-to-eat cereal. Plus, the taste of a lot of that boxed stuff? Meh. So I started making my own.

If you're looking to level up as a hippie, this is the recipe for you. It doesn't get much more granola than making your own granola. For one thing, since most of the time it takes to make granola is inactive - the granola is in the oven, getting crunchy and smelling delicious - you have time to watch a documentary about midwifery or practice yoga or work on whatever DIY project you've got going.

I use rolled oats to make my granola. I like them, and they seem to like me back. I realize that this is not the case for everyone who avoids gluten (and I promise future recipes will not be so oaty). You could always make your homemade cereal with quinoa flakes, but things would get real expensive real fast. The nice thing about oats - if they do jive with your gluten freedom - is that in addition to being highly nutritious, they're fairly inexpensive.

Sunflower Granola Crunch

6 cups rolled oats
1 cup raw sunflower seeds
1/2 cup oat bran
1/3 cup ground flax seeds
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup canola oil
1 Tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla
12 fl oz water
1 1/2 cups raisins

Preheat oven to 300 F. Spray two rimmed baking sheets with oil.

In a large bowl, combine everything except the raisins. Stir to combine. When everything is well-mixed, spread the mixture evenly on baking sheets. Bake 1 hour, stirring half-way through.

Allow granola to cool on baking sheets before stirring in raisins. Store in an airtight container. Makes about 10 cups.

In theory, this recipe will last a good long time. In actuality, it'll get eaten up before you know what happened.

Recently, while experimenting with making a granola that was slightly lower in fat and didn't require as much sweetener, I remembered the existence of muesli. I quickly threw this recipe together using basically the same ingredients I use in granola. Rob still vastly prefers the cooked version, but I like the raw, health-foodiness of muesli.

Minute Muesli

5 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup flaxseed meal
1/2 cup oat bran
1 cup raisins
3/4 cup sunflower seeds

Combine everything and mix well. I do this in two glass canning jars, because I get a lot of satisfaction out of shaking everything to combine it.

Before shaking...

...and After!

Makes 7 generous cups.

Store muesli in an airtight container. Serve topped with almond milk, fresh fruit, and a drizzle of maple syrup. Enjoy!

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*According to my doctor, I don't have celiac disease. But I have most of the symptoms of celiac disease, and when I do eat something wheaty or gluteny now, I'm not a pleasant person to be around. I don't want to be around me, even.

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Married Life, Kitchen Edition

Rob has been sick for almost a week. (He's going to the doctor tomorrow.) We could probably fill the bathtub several times over with all of the tea and soup I've been making. Our whole house smells like onion, garlic, and ginger.

When I asked Rob if I could get him anything from the store this afternoon, I was expecting him to ask for a bottled smoothie, or something equally throat-soothing and overflowing with vitamin C.

His reply? "Something not tea or soup. Maybe a cookie?"

I thought about buying a bag of vegan trail-mix cookies from Trader Joe's. But that would inevitably lead to Westley asking, "Can I have a cookie?" every five minutes. So I racked my brain, wondering where in the area I could get one ABC cookie. When I realized it would be at least a 20-minute drive to acquire said cookie, and it occurred to me that if Rob is going to get a cookie, I should also get a cookie, I gave up.

Fuck it. I'm making cookies from scratch.

(Yes, I realize, this doesn't solve the problem of the "Can I have a cookie?"-at-five-minute-intervals conversation. But at least I can make as many or as few cookies as I want.)

I paid way too much at the local chain grocery store for my "natural" ingredients, but whatever. Westley would be napping when I got home, and he'd get to wake up to the smell of freshly baked cookies.

I gluten- and soy-freed the Big Gigantoid Crunchy Peanut Butter-Oatmeal Cookies from Vegan with a Vengeance. After taking them out of the oven and waiting the recommended 10 minutes before transferring them to cooling racks, I stood back to admire my work.

Me: What is it about homemade cookies?

Rob: The awesomeness?

Me: There's so much love in them.

Rob: You don't make cookies for someone you hate.

And this summed up why I'm starting a gluten-free, soy-free vegan food section here (very soon! I've already taken a bunch of [bad] food pictures, and I have thoughts and recipes and randomness ready to share). Caring is a huge part of feeding my family. I shop and cook the way I do because being hands-on and do-it-yourself in the kitchen is something I believe in very strongly. But I also do it because I just plain love these people I live with, and I want them to eat well.

Unfortunately, way too often, I fall through the cracks in this food-love relationship. I'll make delicious, flaky whole wheat biscuits for Rob and Westley, and nothing for myself. I'll buy an ingredient that makes me sick, or plan a meal I can't eat. Rob's comment about cookies made me realize it's time for a little more self-love in the kitchen. Instead of hating my dietary restrictions, self-imposed and health-imposed alike, I can celebrate them. To paraphrase the great philosopher RuPaul, "If you can't make cookies for yourself, how the hell you gonna make cookies for somebody else?"

I have to start making cookies - and meals and drinks and snacks - for myself. (Can I get a Amen up in here?)

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