Gluten-free dinners – the easiest meal of the day!

I know, I know, you’re thinking I’m a madwoman! But actually, eating a gluten-free dinner just isn’t that hard, especially at home.

Entertaining at home in summer is great because of the humble barbecue. I was never a huge fan of barbecues until I started to eat gluten-free food. Just think about it – meat, salads, potato salads. How easy is that? Yes, there are still pasta salads and bread for the sausages, and you do have to be careful of cross-contamination from others using soy sauce or gluten-containing products in their marinades, or salad dressings. But if you’re the one making the potato salad, you can make sure the mayonnaise is gluten-free, and then you’ve got a lovely meal! Here’s a tip about making a potato salad a little healthier – use half mayonnaise and half light sour cream or natural yoghurt. It tastes divine, and is a lighter option. Another great secret? Gluten-free sausages are actually FAR nicer than normal ones, and there is now a huge range readily available at the supermarket. The great thing about barbecues is they’re so quick and easy that you can do them often. I especially like a roast vege salad done on the barbecue – courgettes, eggplant, capsicum and in spring, asparagus with some fresh herbs and a light dressing of oil and lemon juice.

Of course, it’s winter at the moment, so if you’re entertaining at home, another great idea is the roast dinner. This doesn’t need to be an unhealthy option. I think we all know that meat doesn’t need additional fat to roast in – you can use water with a dash of wine and seasonings like garlic and herbs. Kumara and potatoes roast well with oven spray, and you can do a roast vegetable salad (pumpkin, kumara, carrot, parsnip, beetroot) rather than traditional separate roast vegetables. Gravy is very easy to make from scratch. Remove the meat from the roasting dish and place the roasting dish on an element on the stove top (of course, the roasting dish needs to be metal!). To the meat scrapings, add a couple of tablespoons of cornflour or glutinous rice flour and stir through. Use some of the water from any green vegetables you cook and blend all together. Add additional herbs, salt and pepper, or a dash of wine for extra flavour.

A real staple for us, especially in winter, is the use of our crockpot. This is great for casseroles, which we eat with baked or mashed potatoes or rice. This works really well for those evenings when we have people going in multiple directions at once. I often assemble everything in the crockpot the night before and then just turn it on in the morning before work. It’s great coming home to the smell of a casserole! We also use the crockpot to make a very tender corned beef. Add a tablespoon of brown sugar, a tablespoon of white vinegar, a few peppercorns, an onion chopped into quarters and a couple of carrots to the crockpot as well, and cover the beef with water. We eat the corned beef as is with mashed potato, or if we have time, make a corned beef hash with mashed potato and cabbage or spinach and dry-fry it to make a nice crispy top or bottom.

Some other options are nachos, chilli beef and my personal favourite, a curry! Served with rice and poppadums (not all are gluten-free, so check the ingredients, but a lot of them are), this is a great and warming dinner. I also have a nice Moroccan beef (or chicken) recipe which is a staple in our house that we serve on brown rice or quinoa.

I’ve been on the Coeliac Society website a bit recently, and they have added a gluten-free dining out guide. You can choose your region, the type of food you’re looking for and the type of establishment you’re interested in (café, restaurant etc). They’re still building the database at the moment, but it’s going to be a very useful tool for all of us! See the Dining Guide here.

What are your options for easy dinners for the family? I’m always keen to try new things!

Weight-loss update

Well, I’ve had a bit of a breakthrough this last week! I’m down 10.5kg, have lost 15cm off my waist and 10cm off my hips and bust. I’m certainly starting to notice the difference in terms of my clothes (back into my smaller jeans!) and my knees are feeling a lot better. It’s only taking one person to zip me into my waterpolo togs, which is a nice change from having two daughters squidge me in! I’m about half way to my goal weight, and am finding that it is not too arduous. The whole family is benefiting as well, I think. We’ve always eaten reasonably healthily at home, but I think our portions have been a bit large. Remembering the whole dividing the plate into quarters – one half vegetables, one quarter carbohydrates and one quarter protein – is really helpful!

Lisa

For those wanting more information on coeliac disease, check out the NZ Coeliac Society website www.coeliac.org.nz.

This blog is the opinion and experiences of its author and should not be taken as medical or dietetic advice. Healthy Food Guide has not verified the content and cannot endorse any advice given. Healthy Food Guide recommends seeking professional health advice for specific complaints or symptoms.

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The wonders of modern technology for the gluten-free cook

I am an old-fashioned kind of person. I like to do things the manual way when it comes to cooking. The proper way. I don’t really like packet mixes and jar sauces. I like to make things from scratch.

For a long time, I have resisted the lure of too many mechanical devices in the kitchen. Of course, I’ve had a microwave and a dishwasher is an essential with the number of children in our house, and I do use a blender especially for soup. Several years ago I gave in and acquired a hand mixer for meringues, but I still whisked cream by hand and used a wooden spoon for cakes.

Then I was told to stop eating gluten, and a whole new world of cooking opened up. It was much harder! I did the Gluten Free Made Easy cooking course in February and it was fantastic. But mixing a stiff gluten-free bread batter by hand for six minutes is a whole lot harder than it sounds. Gluten-free cooking is different, and whilst it was doing the world of good to my biceps, it was very, very hard work. And the way that Neville and Judy used their bench mixer did give me a little bit of machine envy. Some of you may remember my earlier post about the course and my comments then. I should note that when I am talking about Judy and Neville’s mixer, it is a 1500 watt stand-on-the-bench mixer with a 6.7 litre bowl and an assortment of attachments which would make a robot jealous. Still, I struggled on in the old-fashioned way.

Then my blender died. Hummus and soup suddenly got much harder. And so, after much deliberation, and saving, I am now the proud owner of a very shiny Kenwood KMM770, which has a mincer AND a blender attachment. We are very keen on the idea of mincing our own meat and getting a better quality of mince with lower fat for a better price than we pay at the supermarket. And I’m keen to get back to making my own hummus– again, partly because of the cost, but also because I can control the ingredients.

Watch this space for great recipes and results from the new mixer! If you have any recipes which work best with a mixer, share them below.

As I was looking at my gleaming, shiny new glorious piece of machinery, an email came into my inbox and made me realise how shallow and materialistic I am. The email was from a blog I follow from Steve Wiens because I find it challenging and thought provoking. This weekend, he’s running from one end of the Grand Canyon to the other. Rim to rim. In one day. Why is he doing this? Because he heard about the plight of Ethiopian teenage girls who were being sold into the sex trade and decided he wanted to make a difference. He intends to raise $50,000 dollars to free 50 of these young women and provide them with job training so they never have to return to the life they’ve been living.

I’ve kept my beautiful new machine, because I think even though I am a little shallow and materialistic, it is something that we will get a lot of use out of, and I worked hard for it. But I have donated to Steve’s amazing cause, and am passing his message on here – maybe partly to assuage my conscience. Here’s the link to his blog.

Weight loss update

It’s been just over three months since I decided it was time to change my eating habits and lifestyle so I would still be able to run around with my youngest children the way I do with my older ones. I’ve lost 12.2kg and am about halfway there. It’s getting much slower on the weight-loss front, but it has become much more of a habit to eat smaller portions and generally consume healthier food. Luckily for me, my workplace has just begun a Health Challenge which includes giving us pedometers for eight weeks and setting us all a 10,000 Steps Challenge. This is coming at just the right time for me, as the extra exercise will hopefully take the weight-loss back up a bit. I’ve done a couple of days with the pedometer to get a baseline, and with my normal amount of walking around, I do about 5,000 steps. So I need to work out how to DOUBLE that, and help my team be the first to virtually walk from Cape Reinga to Bluff, and back again. I’ll keep you updated with that project as well!

Until next time.

Lisa

This blog is the opinion and experiences of its author and should not be taken as medical or dietetic advice. Healthy Food Guide has not verified the content and cannot endorse any advice given. Healthy Food Guide recommends seeking professional health advice for specific complaints or symptoms.

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Cuisines of the world

Being gluten-free doesn’t mean that you have to restrict the types of cuisines you eat.

When I was newly diagnosed as gluten-intolerant, I immediately retreated into a very safe food place with a very narrow range of ingredients. That lasted about, oh, three days until I got bored. Then I started thinking about what sort of foods I could eat. At first, I was very discouraged. Standard European cuisine was a bust, unless I did a lot of conversion. But there was a light on the horizon – ethnic foods. Let’s review some of the really, really good ones!

Indian

This is top of my list. Apart from naan bread, you can eat almost anything at an Indian restaurant and because very little of it contains gluten, the environment in the kitchen is reasonably gluten-free. Think about it for a minute – pakora are normally made of chickpea flour, poppadums are pea flour. Most of the sauces are thickened with almonds or cashews, or simply by long, slow cooking. And they’re served with rice. Yes, they’re sometimes a high-fat option, but you can choose a saag – spinach – based curry rather than a richer dish like butter chicken or chicken tikka masala.

What to watch out for

Poppadums aren’t always made with pea flour, so do check the ingredients list. Ditto pakora – always ask what flour they’ve used. And as always, double-check the ingredients.

Mexican

Healthy, flavourful and often gluten-free. Obviously flour tortillas are no good. But corn tortilla are generally fine, and it’s becoming easier to find soft corn tortilla – although nothing rivalling the 50 white corn tortilla I found in the US for $2.95! Mexican is fresh and colourful and the coriander and cumin flavours which are most prevalent sit nicely on the tongue. Nachos, tacos, even enchiladas. Fresh salsa, guacamole – yum, yum, yum and as we come into summer, even more yum.

What to watch out for

Flavoured corn chips! Nachos looks like a safe enough dish, but even checking with the kitchen staff that the chips are plain does not always guarantee they are. Most flavoured corn chips use a flour-based flavour.

Japanese

Sushi, donburi and a variety of stir fries. Especially if you’re making this at home, Japanese is a great idea. If you’re eating out, it can also be a pretty good option.

What to watch out for

Soy sauce is the biggest thing. Most soy sauce contains wheat, although it is relatively easy to find brands which don’t. Teriyaki sauces generally have a large soy component. Also, sometimes in sushi the vinegar contains gluten. If they’ve used rice wine, you’re normally fine.

Middle Eastern

Okay, so I know we say Middle Eastern and the first thing most of us think of is couscous. I’ve had restaurants try and serve me a dish with couscous in it and say that it is gluten-free. For the record, couscous is made from crushed durum WHEAT, so is absolutely not gluten-free! However, I’ve found that you can substitute quinoa very successfully for couscous with little change in taste or texture. Some wonderful Middle Eastern options include falafels, which again you can make at home very easily or buy. There are some commercial falafel mixes available from the local supermarket. Sweet and savoury are the keynotes of Middle Eastern food, so cinnamon combined with chilli, prunes combined with almonds and chicken, and lots of fresh tastes. And the kebabs on rice with salad are normally fine too. Kofte (meatballs), kebabs on skewers and lovely fresh salads as we come into summer. Yum.

What to watch out for

Falafels are easily made without flour. However, some mixes do contain wheat and some commercially available ones do too. As with anything you buy, always ask. Check what marinade is used on the big meat kebabs in case it includes soy.

These are some of my favourites, which are very accessible both eating out and making at home. And who said gluten-free had to be tasteless?
What are your favourites?

Weight loss update

I’m sitting on 13kg lost to date, and people are starting to notice that I’m looking skinnier. I look at my ID badge photo at work which was taken in early May and there is a noticeable difference. I now have a whole new wardrobe – those clothes I haven’t been able to wear for the last couple of years. So I’m really seeing a significant change. Another 9kgs to go, but I feel I can make that. In the last couple of weeks I have successfully given up chocolate bars, largely because they take up so much of my daily food allowance if I eat them. I feel I should stand up here and say, “Hi. My name is Lisa and it’s been 23 days since I ate a chocolate bar”. I really feel like I’m getting the hang of how to eat the right amount, and I’m not as resentful of the restrictions because I’m choosing what those restrictions are.

The 10,000 Steps Challenge at work is really helping with this. I’ve worn a pedometer before and was always interested to see how many steps I did. But now that I’m part of a team and they’re relying on me to do my 10,000 steps, I feel a real impetus. So much so that I am getting up most mornings at 6am to go walking. Yep. In the cold and dark. And I am not a morning person. The upshot of this is that I can eat a little more because I’m exercising more. Week 3 of the Step Challenge, and it’s going well. The knock on benefit is that the other day I could see I was a long way from my target, so took my smallest boys to the park. We played cops and robbers, ambled around, looked at the Waterview tunnel works, came home the long way and bought them an ice cream. The boys were really proud of themselves for helping me do another 3,000 steps, and wanted to do it again. Have any of you worn a pedometer, and did it help you to exercise regularly?

Lisa

For those wanting more information on coeliac disease, check out the NZ Coeliac Society website www.coeliac.org.nz.

This blog is the opinion and experiences of its author and should not be taken as medical or dietetic advice. Healthy Food Guide has not verified the content and cannot endorse any advice given. Healthy Food Guide recommends seeking professional health advice for specific complaints or symptoms.

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Gluten-free summer – the joy of barbecues

Before I was diagnosed as gluten-intolerant, I wasn’t very fond of barbecues. Now, however, the longer days and warmer weather herald the upcoming barbecue season, and I am delighted!

Prior to the last few years, I have thought of a barbecue as a burnt sausage and a piece of bread, a boring salad and steak either raw or dry. Once I was diagnosed as gluten-intolerant, I greeted barbecues with relief because they were an easy ‘eat out’ meal at other people’s houses – and gluten-free sausages are especially nice. But I grew quickly tired of the sausages, steak and boring salads, so have developed a variety of dishes which make barbecues a very tasty meal. Here are my suggestions!

Chicken and prunes wrapped with bacon

4 boneless chicken breasts
prunes or dried apricots
cacon – strips rather than rashers
skewers
lemon juice
1/2 cup white wine
salt and pepper

Step 1 Cut chicken breasts into strips. Place a prune into the chicken and wrap the chicken around the prune. Take a rasher of bacon and wrap it tightly around the prune and chicken and form into a ball. Place onto a skewer. Repeat with all the chicken, prunes and bacon.

Step 2 Pour lemon juice and a little white wine over the chicken. Cook on the barbecue until the bacon is crispy. Do make sure to check that the chicken is cooked through.

Obviously this isn’t a low-fat option with the bacon, but every now and again it is lovely and a nice change.

Lisa’s warm potato salad

boiled new potatoes (still firm)
spring onions, sliced (or red onions, finely diced)
red and green capsicum, finely diced
radish, diced
1/2 cup natural yoghurt or mayonnaise
1/2 cup light sour cream
2 teaspoons seed mustard
salt and pepper
1/2 cup fresh herbs, chopped (I normally use a good amount of mint, oregano and thyme)

Step 1 Put the potatoes in a glass bowl. Mix the remaining ingredients together, pour over the potatoes while they are still warm.

Step 2 Garnish with an additional sprig of mint and serve.

Roast vegetable salad

2-3 capsicums, seeded, cut into big pieces
4-6 courgettes, sliced in long ovals
6-8 small vine-ripened tomatoes, still on the vine
2 egg plants, sliced in rounds
6 field mushrooms, sliced
2 red onions, sliced
2 tablespoons balsalmic vinegar
2 tablespoon oil
salt and pepper
fresh coriander
baby spinach leaves

Step 1 Cook all the vegetables (except the spinach) on the barbecue grill and mix into a large bowl.

Step 2 Pour over oil, vinegar, salt and pepper and mix through coriander and baby spinach leaves. Serve warm or cold.

This salad is also very nice the next day!

Other favourite ideas are fish, chicken and beef kebabs, with vegetables; fish wrapped in tinfoil with lemon, garlic and lime leaves; a slightly fancier salad using spinach, feta, cherry tomatoes, nuts and dried fruit with a light lemon juice and sesame oil dressing; or field mushrooms cooked on the grill plate with garlic butter in them.

What are your favourites for the barbecue? Leave your comments below.

Gluten-free Grocer update

Many of you may use the Gluten-free Grocer, based at the top end of Mt Eden Road (Auckland). I received their recent newsletter and they are closing down their physical store. They will still have an online presence, but you won’t be able to pop into the shop any more.

Weight-loss update

I am down 14kgs over the last four and a bit months and still going down. Our work 10,000 steps challenge has been a great help and I am now getting up earlier most mornings to walk. I got all the way up to 15,000 steps one day and was very tired by the end of the day! The same things are still holding true – I need to keep tracking my food, watching my portion sizes and being active. I’m still 8kgs from my goal weight, but it seems I will get there! By Christmas may be a little ambitious, but I do think it will happen, which is exciting!

Lisa

For those wanting more information on coeliac disease, check out the NZ Coeliac Society website www.coeliac.org.nz.

This blog is the opinion and experiences of its author and should not be taken as medical or dietetic advice. Healthy Food Guide has not verified the content and cannot endorse any advice given. Healthy Food Guide recommends seeking professional health advice for specific complaints or symptoms.

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Gluten-free blueberry crumble cake

This is a favourite Healthy Food Guide recipe that Niki Bezzant asked me to have a go at converting to gluten free.

It’s taken me several attempts, but I think I have finally come up with an alternative that works as well as the original. My children were very appreciative of the need to trial the actual recipe and then trial the gluten-free versions!

Ingredients

Crumble topping

30g gluten-free flour
35g rice flakes
25g reduced-fat spread
1 tablespoon soft brown sugar
1 tablespoon LSA
10g ground almonds

Cake

125g sugar
125g reduced-fat spread
2 eggs, beaten (or the equivalent in egg replacer)
1 1/2 cups gluten-free flour
2 teaspoons gluten-free baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons gluten-free ground cinnamon
150ml trim milk
1 cup blueberries, fresh or frozen

Method

Step 1 Heat oven to 180°C. Lightly grease and line a 21cm-round springform cake tin with baking paper.

Step 2 To make crumble, place flour and rice flakes in bowl. Rub in spread with fingers until thoroughly combined. Stir through sugar, LSA and ground almonds.

Step 3 To make cake, in a separate bowl, beat together the sugar and spread until light and fluffy. Slowly add eggs (or egg replacer), then remaining dry ingredients. Stir in milk and mix well. Pour into cake tin. Note that this is more a batter than a firm mix, so don’t be worried if it looks a little runny.

Step 4 Sprinkle with blueberries and crumble topping. Bake for 45-60 minutes or until top is golden brown and cake is springy to the touch.

Tips

• Always check that ground spices are gluten-free.
• I placed baking paper over the top of the crumble for the first 30 minutes as I found this gluten-free version took longer to cook and the top was prone to burning. Remove the baking paper for the last half of the cooking to allow the topping to brown up. Remove from oven and leave to cool before removing from the tin.
• The topping on this cake is also crunchier than the original oat crumble, so if you don’t like the extra crunchiness, simply use 60g of gluten-free flour rather than including the rice flakes as well.
• I’ve added in the LSA and almonds for a little more texture and a slightly higher fibre content.
• The gluten-free flour I used was a mixture of rice, glutinous rice, sorghum and tapioca starch, however any standard mix should work well.
• I’ve made this cake using both eggs and egg replacer and it works well with either.
• I used raspberries on a later attempt (as I’d used up all my blueberries) and that was extremely nice as well!
• This is quite a dense cake, and makes a very nice pudding served warm with yoghurt, or eaten cold the next day (we’ve tried it both ways and it has our seal of approval).

Weight-loss update

I’ve struggled to 15kgs lost now, and quite a number of centimetres. People are definitely noticing the difference which is nice, although I do seem to be slowing down on the weight-loss front, with my weekly totals being a couple of hundred grams rather than a kilogram. I’ve been doing so much walking with the 10,000 steps health challenge that I’ve been eating a little more, but still seem to be losing the weight. I guess it’s that balance of output versus input when it comes to calories. It’s getting easier now the weather is warmer and I feel like I want to eat salads and fruit again. It’s about week 20 for me, and I’m getting a little bored with tracking my food, even though I know it really works.

What are your suggestions for keeping me motivated and on track and stopping the boredom seeping in?

Lisa

For those wanting more information on coeliac disease, check out the NZ Coeliac Society website www.coeliac.org.nz.

This blog is the opinion and experiences of its author and should not be taken as medical or dietetic advice. Healthy Food Guide has not verified the content and cannot endorse any advice given. Healthy Food Guide recommends seeking professional health advice for specific complaints or symptoms.

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Gluten-free cookbooks and websites

There’s a wealth of websites, blogs and cookbooks out there for gluten-free people. But how do you know which is a good one? Fret not, I’m here to help navigate!

One of the reasons I started my gluten-free blog was because I was really, really frustrated about not being able to find one place which could give me the information I wanted. Where to buy food, what to buy, how to mix flours properly, how to successfully convert recipes and whether somewhere was a good place to eat or one which made me feel like a freak or poisoned me. I spent a lot of time trawling through websites and trying to sort out which were good ones. Here are a few I ran across which I found some good information from!

If you’re a serious foodie, Gluten-free girl and the chef is a must-visit. They use a variety of unusual ingredients and combinations to produce some amazing dishes. They do videos, have cookbooks and are really interesting in what they do with food. They have two current cookbooks. Their first, Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef: A Love Story with 100 Tempting Recipes, is a more complex book with difficult and exotic recipes (and some straightforward plain ones too). Their second book, Gluten-Free Girl Every Day, is more aimed at busy families. Although they are American and use a lot of the American measurements, they are also about eating naturally, so their recipes translate better for people like me who like to cook from scratch. As a bonus, Shauna James Ahern, the titular ‘Gluten-free Girl’, writes beautifully. www.glutenfreegirl.com

Also a cookbook author and coeliac, with a coeliac child as well, is April Peveteaux at GIMB. She is very funny, and because she is a busy writer, mother and coeliac, her recipes tend to be a little more on the convenience side and less on the make from scratch one. However, she also does great reviews of eateries she visits all over the USA (very useful if you’re travelling there), and she is also unflinchingly honest about the effects of being “glutened”. She uses strong language from time to time, and is very frank, so is probably an R13 website. Her book, Gluten is my Bitch; Rants, Recipes, and Ridiculousness for the Gluten-Free, has recipes and experiences throughout. glutenismybitch.wordpress.com

If you travel, Travel Gluten Free is a good place to visit. Mike, who runs this website, trolls the internet for people’s reviews of gluten-free eateries around the world. He then emails the writers to see if he can use their content to add to his ever-growing list. There are a few of my reviews from New Zealand, USA and Ireland in there, but it’s great if you’re going to a new area. www.travelglutenfree.co.uk

Locally, there are a couple of chefs who have websites and this is really excellent because they use local ingredients and local measurements. I’ve talked before about Neville and Judy Green at Gluten Free Made Easy (GFME). They offer a recipe club with online tutorials, some excellent face-to-face teaching, and relationships with stockists. They know everyone in the business it seems and can share anecdotes and tips and tricks. They love to make people’s lives easier, and this really shows. www.gfme.co.nz

Another New Zealand chef who is gaining some prominence is Jimmy Boswell. He has a cookbook out in print, The New Zealand Gluten-Free Cookbook, and at least one e-cookbook. Like Neville, he does speaking engagements and tutorials. www.jimmyboswell.com

About the same time I began blogging, so did another New Zealander. Bev, the blogger at Coeliac diagnosis – Gluten Free OMG!, has a number of dietary issues aside from being coeliac, but has continued to go out and eat and find new places which are good for coeliacs. She and I have never met, although we do seem to follow each other around quite regularly, so I am sure that if we ever do meet, we’ll say “Oh, you were that person at the…” She eats out a lot more than me, so her suggestions for places to eat are far more extensive than mine. She has also experimented with a lot of recipes, so you can find good local information on her blog. sleepinghorse.wordpress.com

So there are a few online resources. I do tend to find that if I Google a recipe or ingredients, I can find something online, but often I get frustrated by having to convert sticks of butter and look for substitutes to cans of ingredients. I also have a big problem with many gluten-free cookbooks which as far as I am concerned are cheats. They give recipes for things which are already gluten-free. They’re not conversions of normal recipes. This drives me crazy! By all means provide a list of meals which are gluten-free as standard. But if you’re going to write a gluten-free cookbook, convert recipes for goodness sake!

Here are some which do give alternatives, flour mixes and great conversions.

First up, a local offering. Alison Holst and Simon Holst have actually written two books about gluten-free cooking – Gluten-free baking and Gluten-free desserts and baking. Like most of Alison Holst’s books, the recipes are simple and easy to follow. She gives a good bread flour mix and several other offerings. I’ve made a number of things from these books, and they are pretty fool-proof. www.holst.co.nz/Shop/Books.aspx

Next up is Phil Vickery’s Seriously Good! Gluten-free Cooking for Kids. This one’s not local, but it is good because it provides recipes for babies, through toddlers and school age. The recipes are simple enough for children to help with and although it is an English cookbook, the ingredients are typical and available for us here in NZ as well. He also has an informative section on flour mixes and gluten-free foods, as well as a party section! This is endorsed by Coeliac UK.

If you like entertaining or have a sweet tooth (or both!), Sharing Sweet Secrets – Gluten & Wheat Free by Pamela Moriarty may be the cookbook for you. This does have a selection of naturally gluten-free recipes, but it also has a good selection of tarts, cakes, sweet breads and desserts. The writer is Australian, and so the recipes feel local.

One of my favourite cookbooks is Quick-Fix Gluten Free by Robert Landolphi. A friend sent this over from the US, and of course this does mean that I need to do some conversion from American measurements and the like. This is a follow-up to the Gluten Free Every Day Cookbook, with the difference that these are recipes which can be made in 30 minutes. These books were written because Landolphi’s wife was diagnosed as coeliac and he immediately decided to cook delicious and normal food for her. This is not all healthy food, but the recipes work really well. His Buttery Flaky Pie Crust has become a staple for me and his tutorials and anecdotes are very entertaining.

I’m keen to hear any of your cookbook or website recommendations. Do you have one that you use all the time?

Weight-loss update

I’m on week three of not tracking everything I eat. I’m still losing weight, but I suspect I’m going to have to go back to the tracking if I want to get to goal weight. I’m just trying to free wheel and see if I can still be losing weight while not thinking about every bite of food I’m eating. Our 10,000 steps challenge at work has finished. If you’re interested in reading my blog post about my experiences, you can find it here. I’m keeping up the 10,000 steps programme, although I’ve cut back on the steps I’m doing, and haven’t approached the 114,000 steps I managed to finish on in the last week!

Lisa

For those wanting more information on coeliac disease, check out the NZ Coeliac Society website www.coeliac.org.nz.

This blog is the opinion and experiences of its author and should not be taken as medical or dietetic advice. Healthy Food Guide has not verified the content and cannot endorse any advice given. Healthy Food Guide recommends seeking professional health advice for specific complaints or symptoms.

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How to make a gluten-free Christmas cake

It’s December again. Christmas sales, decorations, carol singing at bedtime. End of the year madness with every week full of festivities. Then there’s the cooking –with the added challenge of making everything gluten-free.

My last years Christmas blog had some ideas for Christmas day menus and let you know it wasn’t that difficult to have an easy and very tasty gluten-free Christmas Day. This year, I thought I’d share my foolproof gluten-free Christmas cake with you.

I’ve been making this cake for nearly 20 years. My best friends and I got together and had a massive fruit soaking session , and a month later, I made my first ever Christmas cake. It just so happened that it was the first year of my married life, and I decided to make it a family tradition. I’ve made a Christmas cake every year since then, based on the same recipe. One year we used it as a christening cake for my eldest daughter.

I’ve tweaked the alcohol (often dependent on what was in the cupboard!) and have now successfully converted it to a gluten-free version. I give small cakes away every year and no-one can tell that they are gluten-free. I have scribbled notes year to year of the different variations and have taken out all the things that I don’t like and substituted them with things I do. So I guess what I’m saying about this cake is it’s a very flexible one! And that you too can substitute what you like to make it your own. Having said that, if you don’t like alcohol in your cakes, this may not be the one for you. Here it is.

Gluten-free Christmas cake

Preparation time: five weeks or so! (Even though I say to soak the fruit for a week and leave the cake for a month, I have made the cake right before Christmas and it’s been absolutely fine. So use the times as guidelines, rather than an absolute. It’s one of the things I like best about this cake – it’s very adaptable!)

3 tablespoons whiskey
3 tablespoons cognac or brandy
3 tablespoons port or peach schnapps
3 tablespoons drambuie
3 tablespoons water
1.5 teaspoons angostura bitters

The key is to combine some heavier, sweeter alcohol like a liqueur (so in this case, the port and drambuie) with some plainer spirits. The above is my favourite combination, but this also works well with rum, brandy, port and cherry brandy. One year I even used vodka and peach schnapps and that was very good, although not quite such a dark cake.

Step 1 Put all the alcohol into a saucepan – do not inhale! Then add:

1 teaspoon each cinnamon, ginger, ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
1 tablespoon molasses sugar
450g sultanas
225g currants
110g prunes, chopped into small pieces
80g candied peel
50g crystallised ginger, finely chopped
100g dried apricots, finely chopped

Step 2 Stir and bring mixture to the simmering point, then simmer for 15 minutes.

Step 3 Allow to cool completely then pour into an airtight container. Leave in the fridge for at least a week (longer is fine!) shaking or stirring daily.

To make the cake

250g butter, softened
250g brown sugar (demerara is best)
250g gluten-free flour
2 teaspoons xanthan or guar gum
2 teaspoons gluten-free baking powder
5 eggs, or egg replacer, thoroughly beaten

Step 1 Preheat oven to 140°C. Grease and line cake tin.

Step 2 Cream butter and sugar.Add eggs and mix thoroughly. Mix in dry ingredients and stir until combined. Lastly, fold in the fruit mixture, including all the leftover alcohol!

Step 3 Cook cake in the centre of the oven for 3 hours without opening the door, then cover the cake with greaseproof paper and cook for a further hour.

Step 4 Cool for 45 minutes in the tin, then on a wire rack. Wrap in layers of greaseproof paper and store in an airtight container for a month or so.

If you are making smaller cakes, adjust the cooking time accordingly – until a skewer or knife comes out clean. This cake is fine eaten as is, but I normally ice it with almond and white icing – gluten-free of course!

Other options include substituting the ginger and apricots for glacé cherries and chopped almonds. If you didn’t want to use alcohol, I would use a combination of fruit juice and fruit nectar – you want some slightly heavier, stickier component which a nectar would address very well.

The cake keeps really well in an airtight tin. There’s only a couple of us in my house who like fruit cake, so my Christmas cake normally lasts through to the end of January, and is happily eaten with many cups of tea.

Do you have a favourite Christmas recipe you’d like to share?

Weight-loss update

I’ve had a bit of a breakthrough and have now lost 17.6kg, so I am only 4.4kg from my goal weight. I’ve kept up the walking (not quite so many steps as I was doing during our challenge, but am doing some exercise every day), swimming and water polo. I’m not tracking my food as consistently as I was, but I am still very much keeping an eye on portion sizes. If for some reason I don’t manage to do some exercise, there are no treats. I’m keeping any alcohol drinking to the weekends and keeping it to a small amount. We’ll see how Christmas goes – we’re having one dinner at our place on the day, and another a couple of days later at my parents.

Do you have any tips for making sure that you eat properly over the holidays? I’d be keen to hear them.

Lisa

For those wanting more information on coeliac disease, check out the NZ Coeliac Society website www.coeliac.org.nz.

This blog is the opinion and experiences of its author and should not be taken as medical or dietetic advice. Healthy Food Guide has not verified the content and cannot endorse any advice given. Healthy Food Guide recommends seeking professional health advice for specific complaints or symptoms.

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