New Namaste

As you may know, "Namaste" is a greeting that means "I bow to the god within you that is also in me." Well, I bow to Namaste's gluten-free goodness that is in my tummy. Scott has said that he could (almost) be a vegetarian if that meant eating Indian food all the time. We are not gluten free, but I (almost) could be thanks to Namaste. At dessert time, anyway.

We just tried five of Namaste's new products, and we liked four of the five.

First, we used their Chocolate Cake Mix, which makes a two-layer cake or a sheet cake. We frosted it with their new Chocolate Fudge Frosting Mix. It was "make-your-face sweat" good. So rich, so fudgy, so moist. Excellent.

Ingredients: Cake mix: Evaporated cane juice, sweet brown rice flour, tapioca flour, Dutch cocoa, arrowroot flour, rice milk powder, baking soda, salt, cream of tartar, and xanthan gum.
Frosting mix: Brown sugar, Dutch cocoa, rice milk powder, and salt.

We also tried Namaste's new Toffee Vanilla Frosting Mix on top of Alisa's white cake. The frosting's flavor was great--like penuche--but there was a bit of grittyness from the brown sugar. Genius that I am, I decided to solve this problem by spreading the frosting on a still-warm cake. It tasted great, but it looked like the face melt from Indiana Jones. [I realize this is my fault, not theirs.] And you gotta love how short the ingredient list is, especially compared to other store-bought frostings.

Ingredients: Brown sugar, rice milk powder, salt, and pure ground vanilla bean.

I used their Perfect Flour Blend to make Molasses Cake (the recipe is on the back of the bag), and it worked really well. The cake tastes like gingerbread without the ginger, and the texture and moistness was similar to their cake mixes. I'm guessing this flour mixture is similar to what's used in the cake mixes.

Ingredients: Sweet brown rice flour, tapioca flour, arrowroot flour, sorghum flour, and xanthan gum.



And... we tried the Biscuits, Piecrust & More! mix. We really tried. We made biscuits. We made piecrust. No one liked the biscuits: the texture was too firm and the taste was too baking powder-y. The piecrust was similar to other GF piecrusts we've tried. It was better than the biscuits, but still a bit sandy in texture for my taste. This is where it's hard for me to fairly judge GF products, as I am easily able to whip up a batch of biscuits with gluten. But if I weren't, would I like the ease and taste of these? I don't know. The package also has directions for coffee cake, but I think I'd use the Perfect Flour Blend instead.






Rhubarb Pie. Kind of.

Ingredients: Sweet brown rice flour, brown rice flour, tapioca flour, arrowroot flour, sorghum flour, rice milk powder, cream of tartar, xanthan gum, baking soda, and salt.

Overall, we are Namaste fans, especially when it comes to their cake mixes and frostings.

Indian Cookbook Reviews

We love Indian cooking, both traditional and more Americanized. Obviously. Anyway,
we were excited to try two new Indian cookbooks.

Flavors of India is a traditional Indian cookbook with somewhat involved recipes. Yet the author, Shanta Rimbark Sacharoff, also includes simpler variations. For example, after her samosa recipe, she includes directions for putting the samosa filling (potatoes, peas, onions, spices) into a pie crust instead of making the labor-intensive, individual, fried samosas. Of course we had to try her Samosa Pie, and it was delicious. All the flavors of this favorite Indian street food in a hearty pie. She suggests serving wedges of it as an appetizer, but we served it as a main course. And the five of us polished it off in one dinner. Ahem. Throughout the cookbook, Sacharoff provides traditional Indian recipes and simpler variations, which is what I really like about this book.

Indian Vegetarian Cooking, by Sunetra Humbad and Amy Schafer Boger, M.D., is a good "starter" Indian cookbook because most of the recipes fill just one page. As many Indian cookbooks have very long, involved directions, I think this book's layout is less intimidating and easier to follow than most. It also has a few recipes I've never seen in other Indian cookbooks, such as Corn Chapati. Chapati are Indian flatbreads traditionally made with wheat flour. It was fun to try a corn variation for a change. The breads reminded me of Southern corn cakes, with a slightly more bitter flavor.

Flavors of India and Indian Vegetarian Cooking at Your House are published by Book Publishing Company.






These reviews were written for Go Dairy Free.

Oxymoron

Today's review: Meatless Hamburger! Yes, you read that right. Otherwise known as Soy-licious! (TM) Hamburger Mix.



As anyone who has more than a passing acquaintance with us knows, we are not vegans. But we do enjoy trying new things, we want to be healthy, and our dairy-allergic daughter has had so many cross-contamination issues with red meat that she doesn't like to eat it anymore. Besides poultry burgers, is there any other type of burger out there that our entire family will eat?

Soy-licious! is almost the answer for us. The taste and texture is very close to ground beef. Four out of five Hatfields ate it and liked it. (The two-year old didn't, but he's...two.) Even Scott, who is VERY PARTICULAR about burgers, said that he liked this "for a veggie burger." That's high praise.

If you will be serving these burgers to carnivores, keep everyone out of the kitchen while you:


Add water and wait 15 minutes.


Add oil and mix well.


Form into desired shape and cook.


OK, you can come into the kitchen now! Look, burgers!

EDITED TO ADD: I forgot the ingredient list! Duh.
Ingredients: Textured soy protein, soy protein isolate, soy protein concentrate, wheat gluten, methylcellulose gum, garlic and onion powder, maltodextrin, hydrolyzed corn and yeast protein, and hydrolyzed wheat gluten, soy sauce powder, dextrose, cottonseed oil, autolyzed yeast extract, malt extract, spices, natural flavoring, torula yeast, chili powder, caramel color, and malic acid.

Nutritional Designs' Meatless Hamburger Mix is available online at Nutritional Designs or by calling 1-888-2-ND-Labs.

Written for Go Dairy Free.

Dairy-Free Gifts, Part Two

If you're looking for an easy gift to send someone, how about an Ebook? No shipping! Arrives instantly! Environmentally friendly! Inexpensive! Paperless society!

Hannah Kaminsky has two excellent Ebooks available on her site for just $5 each: Mission: Impossible Pies and Lunchbox Bites. They are both full color and have photographs of all of the recipes. Each one is 20+ pages, so recipients could easily print them out if they choose. (Shh!)



Mission: Impossible Pies has recipes for easy, crustless, vegan pies. This means that they are automatically dairy free, but Hannah writes that they can easily be made gluten free and some can be made soy free. The book includes recipes for:
Apple Streusel Pie
Banana Creme Pie
Chocolate Fudge Pie
Coconut Pie
Cookies and Creme Pie
Cran-Cherry Pie
Lemon Curd Pie
Mint Chocolate Chip Pie
Peanut Butter Pie
Pecan Pie
Pumpkin Pie
Sweet Potato Pie

Mmm...pie....



Lunchbox Bites includes recipes for:
Cinnamon-Swirled Banana Sandwich Bread
Best Bran Muffins
Brownie Bites
Chipsters
Coffee-Buzz Energy Bars
Hummus Crackers
Peanut Butter Bomb-Shell Blondies
Peanut Butter and Jelly Toaster Tarts
Pie Cups
Root Beer Pudding
Steel-Cut Oatmeal Cookies
Strawberry Crispy Rice Treats

The Coffee-Buzz Energy Bars are definitely a grown-up treat, but the rest of the recipes are great for anyone in the family. My kids are especially excited about the Strawberry Crispy Rice Treats, and I'm happy to find another use for my steel-cut oats: Steel-Cut Oatmeal Cookies!

***
You could pack some of these lunchbox treats in a Laptop Lunch system for someone because Laptop Lunches (whose lunchbox Katherine uses) is offering 20% off all items until December 16. Just enter the code: holiday2008.

I'm Not Nuts

I just finished watching Kevin J. Lindenmuth's new documentary, "I'm Not Nuts": Living With Food Allergies. Am I allowed to make this required viewing for every childcare worker and educator in the country? Because I'd like to. This film clearly and carefully lays out the basics of what it's like to be food allergic and/or to have a food-allergic child. Visual mediums are so powerful--I think this will touch people who don't know much about food allergies in a way that written stories cannot. The videotape footage of a one-year old, egg-allergic girl scratching her hands at her first birthday party because she was allergic to the eggs in the cake made me weep. (Her parents didn't know about her allergy at the time, of course.)

For those who do live with food allergies, the information here is nothing new, or at least not very much of it. But the feeling is one of a support group meeting and allergist's visit right in your own living room. I found myself nodding my head in agreement and talking to the screen. "Yes! This is what it's like."

Full of interviews with the food allergic and their families, as well as interviews with allergy experts such as Terry Furlong, co-founder of FAAN, Scott Sicherer, M.D., researcher in the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute at Mount Sinai, and Harvey Leo, M.D. and Ben Song, M.D., of Allergy and Immunology Associates of Ann Arbor, MI, I think this documentary is a great resource.


Watch the introduction here:


Kevin Lindenmuth has worked in the video production field for more than 24 years. He is an independent filmmaker who has produced seven documentaries since 1997. You can read more about the documentary here.

Order "I'm Not Nuts": Living With Food Allergies (84 minutes, 2008) at www.lindenmuth.com. The DVD is $29.95, including shipping and handling.

This review was written for Go Dairy Free.

Things That Make Me Happy

1. Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Wasn't that awesome? Yay, Joss Whedon!

2. The discovery of these dairy-free, gluten-free Sipahh straws on sale at our local grocery store. Katherine has been fascinated by these straws for months, which she can't have, of course. Are either of these healthy or necessary? No. But sometimes allergic kids deserve junk, too. There you go, Sipahh marketing department. I just wrote your slogan. And bonus points to you for writing on the package, "You can enjoy Sipahh with any type of cold milk or milk alternative, including soy or rice milk."

3. My tenth anniversary present: a silver ring from Scotland with Celtic knotwork. Pretty.

4. WordGirl. Have you seen this? It's on here at 6:30 am. The kids watch it while I feed Helen. It cracks me up.

5. Philippa Gregory--my new guilty pleasure summertime author.

6. Summer produce. Blueberries!

7. Coming up with titles for books I'll never write. Like the mystery series about a crime-fighting nun. The first book: Force of Habit. The sequel, where her nemesis comes after her? Kicking the Habit.

8. Eli climbing into my lap yesterday and telling me, "I love ooh, Mommio."

Cereal?

We eat a lot of cereal at our house. Hot cereal, cold cereal, just right cereal. Our two-year-old son greets me every morning not with "Good morning," but with "Cereal, Mommy-o? Cereal?" So trying out some cereals for Go Dairy Free seemed a natural fit.


Image courtesy of Cinnabon Cereal

Cinnabon Cinnamon Crunch

With its tiny cinnamon roll shape and lots of sweetener, this is what's known as "dessert cereal" in our house. But the sweeteners are turbinado brown sugar, fruit juice concentrates, and honey. Our son enjoyed it, but our daughter said it was "too spicy." It does pack quite a cinnamon punch that may be more suited to adult palates. (Too bad because these little cinnamon rolls are perfect for dairy-free tea parties.) Both Scott and Alisa will tell you that I am a salt addict (true, that), but Scott agreed with me that this cereal's flavor would definitely benefit from some salt.

Be careful: there is also a Cinnabon Caramel Pecan Crunch that does contain dairy and pecans.

Ingredients: Whole oat flour, whole brown rice flour, turbinado brown sugar, fruit juice concentrate (pineapple, pear, apple, peach), wheat flour, wheat starch, Makara (R) cinnamon, honey, canola oil, natural flavors, calcium carbonate.

This product is processed in a facility that uses dairy, soy, wheat, peanuts, and other nuts and seeds.

Suggested retail price: $3.49/12 oz. box.

This review written for Go Dairy Free.

Stay tuned to hear about Artisan Inspiration Granola!

Chrysalis Cookies

I have a very hard time being critical of allergen-free foods. So many of them are made by small, startup companies, often run by a person with a food allergy or a relative of a food-allergic person. They are trying hard to do a good thing. They are being gutsy and starting their own businesses. So I really, really hate saying, "Nice try, but your product tastes like dirt and has the consistency of sawdust."

It's like when you're teaching your kids to clean the house. Sure, they do a crappy job and there are still crumbs all over the floors they just swept, but they tried. And you want to praise them for the effort, if not the actual result. "Ok, yes, your product tastes bad, but, hey! It's dairy and wheat free, and it's so healthy! Good job, Honey!"

Fortunately, this is not an issue I had to face when reviewing Chrysalis Cookies because they are AWESOME. Twenty cookies were delivered to our house, and they were gone in less than twenty-four hours. The kids and I will eat just about any health-conscious treat, but Scott will not. When eating the Chrysalis Cookies, he said, "You know I don't take cookies lightly. I wouldn't say these were good unless I really liked them. These cookies are good."

We received a sample of each of their five flavors: Unbelievable Chocolate Chip, Old Fashioned Molasses, Granny's Chocolate Crinkles, Very Vanilla Sugar, and Chewy Cranberry Oatmeal. We liked them all. I kid you not. They are all great, with a wonderful, chewy texture, good flavors, and the perfect amount of salt.



The 1.5 ounce frozen cookie dough portions are packed in 36-count bags. You just place them on a baking sheet (the phrase you're looking for to describe mine is "well seasoned"), let them thaw so you can flatten them out a bit, bake, and EAT. I mean, "let cool, then eat."



I would love to see these cookies in every coffee shop, cafeteria, and grocery store in the country.

Chrysalis Cookies are wheat-free, dairy-free, whole-grain, Kosher cookies made with organic oat flour and no trans fats. A full list of ingredients is here. They can be purchased online for $25.99/3 dozen cookies. Food service quantities (216 cookies/case) are also available.

This review is for Go Dairy Free.

Breads From Anna Piecrust Mix

Breads From Anna Piecrust Mix

Gluten and Yeast Free
Corn, Dairy, Soy, and Rice Free

Ingredients: Tapioca Flour, arrowroot, millet, maple sugar, potato starch, Montina(TM) (perennial bunch grass, achnatherum hymonodies), chick pea flour, navy bean flour, pinto bean flour, salt, xanthan gum, cream of tartar, baking soda.

I made our piecrust with plain soy milk, apple cider vinegar, and canola oil. The directions on the package didn't have all of the baking information I needed to make a fruit pie, so I went to their website for additional baking tips.

The crust was very easy to mix up and roll out, even for me, the non-baker in the family. Because of its crumbly consistency, it was a bit tricky to place in the pie pan, and it did crack during baking. (See photo.) One thing I appreciated about this gluten-free piecrust is that it wasn't sweet, so it could be used for savory pies as well as dessert pies. However, most tasters didn't like the bitter aftertaste of the crust.

www.glutenevolution.com
Breads From Anna Piecrust Mix
$4.35/package

This review is for Go Dairy Free.

Review-o-rama

Let's burn off some of this pre-labor energy by writing some overdue reviews for Go Dairy Free before Alisa fires me, shall we?



Authentic Foods Pie Crust Mix (gluten, wheat, and dairy free)

This made-from-almonds crust has a shortbread-y feel and taste that our whole family enjoyed. It is definitely made for sweet, not savory fillings. Scott and I think it works best with a creamy/custard filling. We filled ours with dairy-free pumpkin pie filling and it was lovely. (Yes, I should have covered the crust edges with foil. I forgot. Oops.) As with so many gluten-free products, you can't expect this crust to bake up like a wheat one would. But we really enjoyed the almond flavor and texture, especially with a smooth filling.

Ingredients: rice flour, natural almond meal, evaporated cane juice, tapioca flour, cornstarch, cinnamon, potato starch, vanilla, salt

We mixed in 1 large egg, 2 tablespoons plain soy milk, and 4 oz. of shortening. One package makes one crust.



Kinnikinnick Chocolate Cake Mix (gluten, wheat, and dairy free)

We liked this chocolate cake mix for many reasons, the most important being: it tastes like chocolate. Deep, dark, cocoa-y chocolate. Mmmm. I frosted it with dairy-free chocolate glaze.
I tend to like the texture and moistness of gluten-free mixes like those made by Namaste Foods, whereas Scott prefers a drier texture and finer crumb. This Kinnikinnick cake was just what he likes. Don't get me wrong, it is not a dry cake, nor was it disliked by anyone in our house. It's just a slightly different texture than other gluten-free mixes we have tried, which I think is a good thing. If at first you think you don't like gluten-free mixes, try, try again.

Ingredients: Sugar, potato starch, white rice flour, cocoa powder, sweet rice flour, KinnActive baking powder, guar gum, salt, pea protein, sodium bicarbonate, pea starch, pea fiber.

We made the cake with 4 eggs, 3/4 cup oil, and 3/4 cup cold water. The mix makes two 8x8 cakes or one 9x13 cake.



Kinnikinnick Pancake and Waffle Mix (gluten, wheat, and dairy free) (shown here with mixed berries)

I love this pancake mix. The kids eat it not knowing that it is any different from our usual pancakes. Scott said the only difference he could detect is that this batter is slightly sweeter than other mixes/recipes we've made. He doesn't mind the sweetness; he was just being pressured by his wife to comment on what, if any, differences he detected. I like the pancakes we make with this mix because I don't feel as if I have a lump of dough sitting in my stomach after I eat them. And I feel smug about feeding them to the children. "You're eating pea protein and liking it! Mwaa ha ha."

Ingredients: Pea starch, white rice flour, cornstarch, sugar, tapioca starch, dextrose, defatted soy flour, whole egg powder, KinnActive baking powder, inulin, pea protein, pea fiber, fructose, salt, cream of tartar, sodium bicarbonate, sodium, carboxy methylcellulose, vanillin, guar gum.

We mixed in 1 egg, 3/4 cup plain soy milk, and 1 tablespoon of oil with one cup of mix. One bag makes about 3 batches of pancakes. The mix does contain whole egg powder.