Last night I made a family
favorite, Cheesy Ham and Potato Soup. It turned out great! With no dairy, of course.
"Cheesy" Ham and Potato Soup
about 8 peeled and cubed potatoes
1 onion, cut as small as your family requires
2 cups cubed ham
Dump all the chunky stuff in a large pan.
I had most of a can of chicken broth in the fridge left over from some delish fried rice I made earlier in the week, so I started by dumping that over. Then in the blender, combine about 2 cups cold water and 1/4 c. white bean flour (I made my own by running cheap white dried beans through my wheat grinder on its finest setting). Buzz the mixture up so there will be no lumps. Pour into the pan and begin to heat. Put another 2 - 4 cups water in the blender and add 1 tsp. xanthan gum (can be found at the health food store) and buzz it up again. Pour into the pot. I also have some coconut milk creamer on hand (from Sunflower Market). It is quite rich but not particularly coconutty. I poured in about 1/2 cup. (Note: NOT regular coconut milk, this was in the dairy section and is intended to be a non-soy, non-dairy creamer). Let boil gently or simmer until the potatoes are tender. Add salt and pepper to taste. Ladle out a cup or two of soup (chunks and all) and dump it back into the handy blender. Buzz it until it's smooth. Pour back to the soup pot. Mine still seemed a little thin at this point so I let it simmer down for about 15 minutes. When I served this up I grated a little "cheap cow cheese" for everyone else and sprinkled it over their servings. For me I sprinkled on a little rice cheese. Green onions or bacon crumbles would be tasty on top too. Very satisfying!
(This picture is of my bowl. I only had mozzarella type rice cheese so that's the gooey white strings you can see. YUM! And yes, I used one of my girls' plastic IKEA spoons to eat dinner. What can I say? I need to find where the rest of my cutlery is lost and do some dishes :P )
Chocolate Chip Cookies
I "needed" a little sugary "pick-me-up" last night. I was really depressed because my esophageal symptoms are not getting better yet. In fact right now they're pretty horribly flared up. I took my pills very carefully last night, one at a time with LOTS of water. And after 20 minutes I could still feel obstructions. So I made chocolate chip cookies. Obviously ;)
The recipe I used calls for using all butter. Some recipes use butter, some use shortening, some use a combination. Butter in cookies tends to spread more, shortening tends to mound more, and a combination gives a middle ground. Differences in dry ingredients makes a difference in whether it really needs extra spreading power, mounding power, etc. Basically, it's not a great idea to substitute butter and shortening out willy-nilly in baking.
Since I didn't want to use 1 cup of my costly Earth Balance spread, I used 1/2 cup of shortening and 1/2 c. coconut oil. Coconut oil got a really bad rep many years ago because it is all saturated fat. However, coconut oil has shorter something or others so it does something less evil and isn't supposed to be as bad as all that. Sorry, you can do your own research, LOL, I don't feel like looking it all up again right now to get the jargon right. I've read the health fanatics view of it, the scientist's view of it, and some in-between views and decided that it wouldn't be an evil sub for butter in things. However, it can be VERY expensive too! I happened to find some on an awesome sale (nearly 1/2 off!) so I got some to try.
I used at least half oat flour in these cookies instead of all white flour. Again, my oat flour was made by running cheap oats through my wheat grinder on the finest setting. I know in a couple of weeks when wheat goes I'll have to modify that too, but I was only willing to make so many concessions last night ;)
Most chocolate chips have diary in them. However, at my local health food store they do carry specialty chocolate chips in their bulk section. (They have them pre-packaged too, for more money of course). They're "naturally sweetened" dark chocolate. The ingredients are simple and don't contain any dairy at all. They do have a very dark chocolate flavor which just makes them that much better in my opinion :D I also tossed in some chopped pecans. The cookies turned out great. I put most of them in bags in the freezer. I discovered last summer that throwing cookies in freezer bags in the freezer is an ideal way to keep them. If I want it warm I can put it in the microwave for a few seconds, or I can just leave it out a bit to thaw, or even eat it frozen! It makes it easier to eat only one or two cookies instead of being "obligated" to eat two dozen before they go stale.
One dietary issue I'm currently researching is
sugar. I know normal sugar can cause a lot of issue (besides just tubb-esity) so I'm looking into reasonable alternatives for when I'm not willing to concede sweetness. I'm sorry, but I'm
not going to completely give up cookies, cakes, brownies, chewy spree, sour patch kids... you get the idea ;) So I'm looking at ways to improve what I love so it does less
damage to my body when I do eat it. I have a couple of items on my list of "experimental foods" for when I get another few dollars to try something out. I'm sure I'll let you know how it goes: good, bad, or ugly :D
Last night the girls got to go to a sleep-over at their Aunt Jan and Aunt Jenn's house (Michael's twin sisters). It was for all the nieces in the family (10, I believe)! While they were gone Michael and I got to go on a date and sleep all the way through the night with no girls climbing in to shove us off the bed. Most unusual ;) Each of the girls came home with their very own journal. They are so excited to write in their journal. Jan and Jenn both write in journals regularly and (in Jenn's case at least) copiously. The first page in each notebook has information on the girls. Among other things (what i do during the day, my favorite color, my family, etc.) they were all weighed and measured. I had an idea of how my girls compare, but it was funny to look it up on a growth chart calculator.
