So, as I mentioned, I've been making cookies. Gluten-free, sugar-free, vegan, soy-free, nut-free cookies to be precise. This is no mean feat, as evidenced by many years now that we have been cookie-free. First my friend Miriam made up a cookie recipe a few months ago, right out of her own head on the spur of the moment- which I find totally awe inspiring. Here it is:
Miriam's cookies1 cups ground sunflower seeds
1.5 cups ground quick oats
1 cup mix of corn flour, brown rice flour, flax, and garbanzo flour
1 cup buckwheat flour
1 t. baking soda
1 t. nutmeg
1 cup canned pumpkin
around 1/2 cup brown rice syrup (or agave, or maple syrup, etc.)
1 t. vanilla extract
2/3 cup canola oil
Grind sunflower seeds and oats in food processor, add dry ingredients, mix with wet ingredients. Shape into cookies on cookie sheet and bake at 350 for... um, I don't remember - until they seem done.
Miriam's cookies, variationI tweaked this one a little bit to remove the oats (we rarely spring for the gluten-free oats) and the sweetener. Here's how it goes:
1 cup ground sunflower seeds
1 cup chopped raisins
1 cup mixed gluten-free flours
1 cup buckwheat flour
1 t. baking soda
1 t.
xanthan gum
1 t. nutmeg
1 cup canned sweet potato
2 bananas, mashed
1 t. vanilla extract
2/3 cup canola oil
Grind the sunflower seeds and then add the raisins and pulse in the food processor until chopped, add dry ingredients, mix with wet. Make cookies and bake.
Then, when we were in
Maine, I wanted to make cookies but only had the ingredients for pancakes on hand... and thus were born banana pancake cookies. These are made from a thicker version of my
banana pancake batter and I like to make them into jam drop cookies (see the picture above) using fruit juice sweetened jam.
Banana Pancake Cookies1 banana, mashed
3/4 cup
masa (corn) flour
1/4 cup
teff or buckwheat flour
2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
cinnamon
1/2 t. vanilla
2 T. oil
1 cups milk or water
Mash the banana with the flour, add the other dry ingredients and mix, add the wet and mix thoroughly. Spoon onto cookie sheet and make a hollow with the back of the spoon, fill the hollow with jam. Bake for 15-20 minutes at 350.
Last, but certainly not least, is the cookie recipe posted recently by the fabulous Friendly Kitchen for
Banana-Chia Chocolate Chip Cookies. It took me an embarrassingly long time to make these as I kept thinking I had all the ingredients and only realizing at the last minute that I still needed to get one more thing! Using
chia seeds for the first time was exciting though. I followed Rachel's suggestion for substituting out the almond flour and used a combination of
masa, rice and
teff flours (although I regret the
masa in retrospect, the flavor came through too strong), I also left out the chips, much to my regret, since I can't find chocolate or carob chips without soy. They were delicious!
Hot summer nights have also been inspiring lots of salads around here. My favorites are grated raw beets (stripey beets are so pretty this way!) with toasted sunflower seeds, olive oil, salt and lemon juice...
and my other favorite is chopped tomatoes and cucumber with feta, balsamic
vinegar, garlic, oil and salt. And for the glutinous among us, nice crusty bread to sop up the extra juice.
Other things I've been making?
While papa bean was away we went a little crazy with the wheat and made:
blueberry pancakes,
applesauce muffins,
pretzels (the finished products were gone to fast for a photograph!),
play dough,
and tortillas!
The play dough,
tortilla and
pretzel recipes are all from the inspiring
Lex of
Totally Smitten Mama.
And this week, we put up four and a half gallons of tomato products (crushed tomatoes and sauce) and this in a still torn apart kitchen. This is what happens when you have a farming housemate who calls home at 6:30 one Monday asking how many boxes of tomatoes to rescue from the compost... two totes, sure, we can
totally handle that much. Ha! But I'm sure I'll
appreciate it greatly in a few months when the memory of the 2 am canning has faded.
I did realize however, that the early steps of tomato processing are super kid friendly. Little bean was a big help bringing me tomatoes from the totes for me to core. Then, after nap, he loved helping with the peeling/seeding operation. I would put the tomatoes in the boiling water and move them to the cold water, then he would pull the skins off, put them in the compost, squeeze the seeds out and
smoosh the tomatoes into the pot. By the time we were done, we were both covered head to toe in tomato - here's to the outdoor kitchen with the camp stove on the picnic table!
Now we just have to finish the kitchen before apple season gets away from us!
