Work snacks by GB

I was very worried what I will eat at work; being gluten free and my fear from stomach issues.

I eat more than ever now!

I started slowly, but now, 4 months later, I am quite happy with my rhythm!

I eat cereal for breakfast, to start my mornings with something warm, and prepare “lunch” to take with me; we have a fridge at work where I can store the food. My “lunch” are usually two sandwiches; with either some sort of meat and cheese and tomatoes, if possible, or cheese and tomatoes, OR a salad and sandwiches. I would love to prepare y salads more often, but they do take so much time in the mornings, even if I prepare a lot beforehand! What I call a salad is leafed greens, shredded carrot, a tomatoe, and some cheese, all seasoned with oil and vinegar (we are very boring people when it comes to seasonings the salads, here. It’s oil and vinegar, maybe pumpkin seed oil & vinegar, and maybe balsamic vinegar instead of usual apple one…

Now, to snacks; I like those cardboard-y rise waffles, or corn waffles, the crunchy thingies. I love them if they are coated with chocolate or yogurt !

Than there is nuts and dried fruit; I have a container where I mix dried bananas (sweet but cheap as hell, most others I find terrible expensive, so I use them moderately) and a mixture of dried nuts. Love that!

I often bring a yogurt or some similar thingy in a container; nothing very healthy, like low-sugar-low-fat things. I like creamy ones with delicious flavors.

I sometimes bake a desert from my “plum torte” recipe – mostly with any other fruit but plums – rhubarb, apples, pears, peaches…And have a few peaches of that during the day.

I try to bring more fruit and eat it. But it’s messy. And I am convinced fruit helps your digestion, and I do not need any further help there. Now that it’s summer and there will be more fruit around, I’ll try to be better!!

Chocolate. In any form.

I drink about a litter of water or fruit juice during my 8 hour shift.

All I can say is, my eating habits got turned 180 degrees around! So far, so god!

I glazed oranges!

So, I made this yesterday.

 

I have eaten what they call rice pudding many, many times. Not made this way; we do it by cooking the ice, than mixing it with cream cheese and baking it in the oven. But, we had oranges that we needed to use, AND heavy cream that was already over the date, but I tried it and saw it’s still good, so I made this.

 

First, the orange peel stayed bitter. Or maybe I am naive and it was not supposed to be eaten. Anyway, not edible, I removed the peel before mixing it with the rice the second time.

Second, the heavy cream is completely useless in his recipe. You don’t need it at all. It doesn’t ruin the dish, but imho, it doesn’t contribute a thing!!

 

Third, when glazing, you’ll probably get more use from the sirup than from the fruit, so don’t think you need to wait untill there is only a little liquid left! I used the same water the oranges were boiling in, to conserve the taste.

 

So, my verdict; rice pudding is a super easy desert to make, and you can do it with things you most probably have in your pantry (rice and milk!). We add raisins, and por over syrup for making juice, or add some powdered cocoa and mix. Yummy 🙂

And ideas for GF work snack?

I will have to completely change my eating habits now. Completely.

So far, my scedual was; a yogurt, or milk with cornflakes, a piece of fruit half an hour after  waking up. 1, 5 liters of tea until lunch. At 12, start cooking lunch, and it took about an hour to do it. In the afternoons, about 3 pieces of bread with something on,  something sweet, something more to drink, but not as much as in the morning. That’s it.

Now; I’ll have the same breakfast, than between 10 and 12, we get 30 minutes for a lunch break. We can go out and get something, or bring something with us. I think I’ll be bringing something with me.

My list so far; a fruit/milk shake ( a banana or two, and maybe some other fruit in there, but no idea what. A fruit salad. A wrap; a chicken wrap sounds the most appealing so far. A pasta salad, or a rice salad. See, the thing is, I am afraid of food because of my GF sensitivity, and because my anxiety disorder showed itself in the lovely way of me running for the bathroom, aka a toilet room. So my way of handling with it was if you don’t eat, nothing is in, nothing will come out, and you’ll fare easier. That sounds suspiciously like an eating disorder, and I do believe I was on a brink of it; but I knew that if I do not eat, I will be even weaker, and I had enough stuff to deal with to also be weak. So i made myself eat.  I love eating, but I am still afraid of it, and I don’t have a hunger feeling in the mornings. So until my body gets used to eat, my lunches will be light, like I described them.I’ll start light, and see what happens. I just know I won’t be able to survive to eat at 6.30, and nothing until 3.30 when I’ll be home.

Maybe I’ll eat half of what I bring in the morning, and then after a few hours, the other half. That way, I won’t starve, but I won’t get the full feeling that scares me. So, that is my plan so far 🙂 Any ideas??

Potato hot dog stew, a GB easy recipe

It’s what I’ll name it, it’s more like a fake potato goulash, I guess.

 

You just need:

potatoes

carrots

onion

hot dogs (or some other sausage)

 

Chop a little of onion, peel the potatoes(about two medium ones per person), peel and chop a carrot or two – depends on how much you like them. The size of chopping depends on you preference,too.

I put some oil in a normal sized soup pot, let the onions sizzle, add carrots and potatoes, let them stew there for a few minutes – don’t forget to mix them, so they won’t burn. Add water. enough so all is covered. Let boil and cook for about 10 minutes, until the potatoes are soft. now, you can either mush this all a bit with the potato masher, or just let it like that. Add hot dogs cut into wheels. Let it cook for a few minutes, serve.

 

Oh, and salt and pepper and red paprika and other stuff you like.

Also, you can add a splash of vinegar just before you serve.

It might just be I have written this recipe here before. No idea. Too lazy to check:)

Used that jelly trick

I didn’t have any fruit to do that plum torte recipe, so I just mixed in half of the jelly (marmalade)  I made in the summer.

 

It came out dryer than it does when I use fruit (duh!!) but not half as bad as it could! Very useful, imho!

Bell peppers ala my granny

I have only eaten this with red bell peppers.

You cleaned and dry them. Than you take  a large flat pan, no need to oil it, and turn it on medium heat.

Place whole peppers on it. Let it burn slightly, than turn them. They are supposed to get softer. When you poke them and they are soft, and they are nicely charred, turn the heat off and cover them – I guess you are letting them sweat 🙂

Than you peel them; the charring is supposed to help to peel them  easier.

Than you take a dish that you can cover tightly (like Tupperware) and pour some oil in it; chop some garlic and add,; salt. Place the peeled peppers in, as much as you can, and cover. Shake.

Let them in there so they soak up and get bathed in all that goodness…

Eat with a sandwich or alike. Enjoy 🙂

Drying tomatoes and canning them in oil; my first time!

Because so many tomato plants grew by their own this year, we had a good tomato year. That meant all of the sudden, we had more of them than we could eat or give to others. So i decided to preserve them.

I used two techniques.

First time, I dried them in the food drier. My problem with it is the thickness of the slices. because the trays in ym dryer are one on top of the other, you have to make thin slices. And because tomatoes are mostly water, if they are thin before you dry them, nothing is left.

So i did the second round in the oven. The plan was to just leave it on the lowest setting  – 30 Celsius – but I saw that it’s too low very soon. So I think the whole process took about three days, with about 6 hours of temp being at +/- 70 Celsius, and than half a day of just slowly drying in the closed oven, in that heath.

 

Than I took glass jars, cleaned them.

Peeled garlic and roasted it a bit in olive oil, let it cool down.

Went to the garden, picked some thyme, oregano and basil leaves and washed and dried them.

Than I sorted the dried tomatoes to dark and light colored ones; some dried to the almost burned condition 🙂

 

Next I just layered them in the glass jars; a layer of tomatoes, a clove of garlic, enough olive oil to cover; another layer of tomatoes, a basil leaf, oil; tomatoes, oil; tomatoes, garlic, oil, tomatoes, oregano, oil…etc, all the way to the top

 

Than I closed it and let it for a week. Because I read some very conflicting statements about how long this keeps, I started eating the first jar after one week of soaking. Delicious!!! The one I started is from the oven drying, so I can’t say if there is any difference, I chose this one because it was the biggest jar and it didn’t fill to the top.

 

All i can say is, this is delicious! I read how you can use this oil for other dishes, like pasta, and it makes sence…

From about 2 kilos of tomatoes, I got two 3 deciliter jars. here, I would go with the smaller jars the better logic, if you are not a large family. You can’t eat a lot of it at once, but its’ better to eat it soon after opening, like everything, I guess.

 

The drying of tomatoes is called a lot of things, like sun drying them, dehydrating them, etc. I just called it drying.

 

I find it a great way of playing with tomatoes!

 

 

 

Just what you wanted – cleaning tip!

I could be in Venice right now…But I said no to the offer.

It came too late; it wasn’t a problem that I didn’t know anybody else going, everything was paid for, but…I needed a few hours to prepare and get my head in that space.

So I am here, telling you the easiest way to clean a microwave. Mix hot/boiling water and apple cider vinegar 50/50, put it in a bowl with the biggest rim, and put a rag into it – it its soaking and of not fully submerged, turn it around in the middle. That is because a) I read it can explode if there is not something in it b) it cleans out this rag and c) you can use it for cleaning. Turn it on for 4 minutes. Be prepared, it will smell.

Leave it into cool down a bit and that wipe the inside of the oven. Everything just slides off. It really does work!!

You can also squeeze and put a lemon in hot water, I read it this way too.

But you want to know where my head went? If just putting a wet rag in the microwave and “cook” it kills the germs (there is loads and loads of this type of info all around he web) , what does it do to the food we put in there??? Nothing healthy, that’s for sure… Good thing we don’t use it much, maybe 3 times a week…

I’ll go and do another plum and apple torte now 🙂

A tip for GF food

We all know that GF food is expensive. Very, very expensive.

My way to dealing with this is to mostly bake my own sweets, so I only shell money for bread. And as for bread I regularly check the “it will go over due date soon” table/shelves in local stores. See, they have a GF area, but not a lot of people buy it, so food is often left there for a long time. But the stores have a policy that if the food will go over due date soon, they have to put it on discount area. I buy flours, bread, pizza dough, xanthan gum,  all sorts of things that way! Sometimes its 30, usually 50% off!

Just because it will go over due date soon, it doesn’t mean it will go over in a few days. And since there is so much crap in them anyway, a day or two over that day won’t (well, probably,:) ) kill you!

 

Happy shopping!

 

 

Plum torte (with rhubarb or apple)

I’ve made this, and it’s great!!

Recipe here, and it’s also very easy to memorize!

We had ripe plums in the garden, and I wanted to bake with them, because I like that much better than to eat them. So I found this recipe.

You start with 3/4 cup sugar, 113grams butter, and 2 eggs. You mix that. You add 1 cup of GF mix of flour, about one third of that should be starch, 1 1/4 ts baking powder and 1/2 ts xanthan gum, a pinch of salt, mix all that and voila, you have it! What I love best is that it rises! I took a smalish baking dish, lined it with baking paper, and poured about 2/3 of the “dough” in; I placed plums and rhubarb/apple in, just tossed it in so it was layered, than poured the remaining batter over, and some more fruit over that. The recipe says to sprinkle that with sugar too, but I just think that is too much sugar for no really big difference. I baked it for slightly less than an hour at 160 degrees Celsius.

Again, it rises, and it’s nice and spongy texture…LOVE this recipe!!!