Gluten Free Garden Girl!

Yum yum!  More cookies.  I'm cooking these for myself and my boyfriend tonight, along with yet another batch of bread.  The coconut flour is really helping my digestive health, so I keep trying to do more things with it.

Last week I intended to make cheesy buscuits, but alas, I grated all the cheese, even added garlic, but then... well, it just sat in the fridge, because I was so busy with Pittsburgh getting cold so early in October.  I was winterizing my house and harvesting the last of the peppers and tomatoes all at once, in a panic.  I ended up adding the garlic cheese to a stir fry, instead.  It was also very yummy atop my split pea soup.

I will attempt the cheesy biscuit endeavor again in the near future.  I promise.

Okay, so now for some slightly different cookies, instead.

(makes approx 25-30 cookies)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

Cream together the following ingredients:
1 stick soft butter (1/2 cup any butter substitute, soft)
1/2 cup splenda or sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
(1 full cup splenda is also ok, if you can't have sugar)

Add:
3 eggs
1/8 teaspoon Guar or Xanthan Gum
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup milk
1/4 tsp cinnamon powder

Mix together well.

SIFT in coconut flour, use 1/4 cup flour, stirring as you add

Add 1 full bag of chocolate chips, blend together.

Spoon onto greased or parchment covered cookie sheet.

Bake for 8-10 minutes, let cool for 5 minutes.
To store: let cool at least 1 hour, place in sealed plastic bags, and keep in refrigerator.

I would really like to get some cleaning done first today, but I have in my head what ought to turn out as some very nice cheese drop biscuits.

More to follow, be healthy and eat safe.

No, no recipes or garden notes today, I simply would like to write down all the events from yesterday while they are still fresh in my mind.

I work in the Pittsburgh area, in Oakland, right where the most damage to windows occurred on the night of Thursday, September 24th 2009.  Thursday I took a vacation day, on Friday I worked.  This is because I have was on the skeleton crew that day.  Thursday I spent the day scoping out where I would park, and also saw the riot police setup for the Lawrenceville riots - no,  mind you, not on purpose.

I'm the kind of person who does not care to see, I only care to ensure that I am as safe as I possibly can be.  Never the less, due to my location yesterday, I still saw what seems like a lot to me.

I caught the bus from about 10 miles outside of the city, parking in a public park that was far enough away that it was not going to be a staging ground for any protestors.  While waiting for the bus I could hear a police radio, which was very close by, but I could not see anyone.  That was a bit eerie, especially since everything else was so amazingly quiet.  My bus came and I was the only one on the bus for the first 20 minutes.  My bus driver was talking to me about his experiences he'd had already that morning.  At 7am that morning he had already needed to have the secret service come collect a person who was handing out fliers for a protest that had no permit.  This is illegal because the bus is government property, apparently.  Nine secret service agents arrived, he told me, within moments of his radioing in to traffic command reporting the problem.  The man was arrested.  My bus driver was a bit shaken up, I could tell, and I was just talking to him about staying safe.  He told me also that he had to go through two military check points every time he ran his round that day.

Then we got to 5th and Craig, we all noticed a riot police formation organizing at the corner.  Our bus driver stopped, got out, crossed the street in the middle of the block through traffic, and talked to an officer on the other side.  After about 3-5 minutes he got back on the bus and kind of murmured "I just got commandeered for police transport."  He sat back in his seat and began to drive again.  I asked him quietly whether he needed us to get off.  It would not have been very inconvenient, since this bus comes past very frequently and was running ahead of schedule.  He explained that he would take each of us to our destinations and comes straight back after that.  As I exited the bus I felt a bit badly for him, so I pointed out to him that he would be much safer today with a bus full of police officers than possible protesters.  He agreed, and maybe looked a little less stunned in response to that.  As I walked from the bus stop, I was noticing the official vehicles.  Remembering the look of the FBI vehicles that arrived in response to a bank robbery that I was working at the bank at the time, I noticed more of them, I think.  Black Cadillac sedans and SUVs were everywhere.  As I walked down the street that had all the broken windows, it was not the boarded windows I noticed, but the Australian secret service sedan that pulled up next to me to park.  They are marked with a sticker in the windshield with the  national flag.  They were all in black suits with the ear-bud feed, I was actually surprised the windows weren't darker, but if they were darker the car would not blend in as well, I guess.  Will all these things just on the way in, I was glad to see that my main lobby doors still had glass, and that the doors were locked so I had to use my key card.  When I arrived upstairs, I arranged to have all but the door by me (I'm receptionist) remain locked, by placing scotch tape over the key holes.  Only two coworkers even bothered asking why, each of whom readily accepted my answer that it was so I could keep a better eye on the security of our suite and quickly secure our floor if needed.  The lobby doors automatically unlock for access to our building in the morning, then lock again at night.

Most of the morning was very quiet, though the nervousness of my coworkers was evident from how much everyone was gravitating toward telling stories of what they'd seen or experienced related to the G-20.  Things were no longer quiet shortly before 11:30, the scheduled start time of the protest.  Outside our building I heard the barking of many many dogs.  We looked out the windows to see that the K-9 squads had just arrived, well over 30 k-9 units of Shepherd and Malinios breeds were barking quite angrily on the street below, just outside our front door.  Then three public transit buses arrived and around 150 riot gear police piled out and went into formation.  Just across the street a small group of protesters were dancing, and then some of them threw poo-burgers (human fecal matter carried in a hamburger bun) at a store front.  The police group just got out the bullhorn and announced "Clear the sidewalk now or you will be arrested."  The group dispersed immediately into all directions, and the sidewalk was cleaned and hosed off, literally within 3 minutes, I've never seen a sight get cleaned up so quickly.  It was like it never happened.  The k-9 and riot police units then deployed to their stations where the protesters march was to take place one block up from my building.  I felt bad that the k-9s were mostly really going nuts.  I imagine that the dogs could smell drugs and were doing exactly as they were trained to do when they smell illegal substances, which is pull against their leash and bark a lot.  A very intimidating sight.  Once again, this whole group came and went so quickly it was as though they had never been there. 

Several officers were stationed on our corner for the rest of the day, and soon we could see the marchers going by on the street they had a permit for, just a half block up from us.  Several of my coworkers left to go take a look then after a while came back reporting that they had stopped the march just before the birmingham bridge and they felt concerned that there may be stand-off.  Turns out the stop was only temporary, seems something had to be cleared from the scheduled parade route.  Soon after I got a notification from our public transit that they were halting all bus service into downtown outside of city limits on federal orders.  That was repealed around 4:30pm.  Between about 2 and 5pm everything was pretty quiet. 

I left work at 5, and proceeded to head toward my bus stop, which I had double checked on our public transit's twitter feed to make sure my bus would not be re-routed in any way.  At that time, every bus stop on 5th and Forbes, going in both directions, from Craft to Craig, all had 2-5 riot gear police stationed within 10 feet of the stop sign.  One young girl at my bus stop was trying to engage an officer in a conversation about some cause she supported, and he was just laughing quietly about it and letting her talk from about 7 feet away from him.  The other two officers there were looking quite purposed.

As we drove out of oakland I saw many people who had obviously been demonstrating earlier just hanging around.  Some had their banners still, some had their faces painted up, some just otherwise looked the part.  I was glad I was leaving, because while it was generally an atmosphere of celebrating a sucessful day, and there were joyful lawn games and people playing music, I also felt there was some lingering tension that was probably going to build into another potential problem once the evening carried on a bit longer.

I got a call and a text message from my employer's emergency notification system later that night stating that conditions may be deteriorating in the Oakland area.  At around midnight I was still at an all-night diner in a town near my house, the diner is about 4 miles outside the city, and 6 miles from Oakland.  My friend and I left around then because a group of young people arrived who were acting very strangely, some still wearing face paint, they started practicing gulf putting, clapping, cheering a bit, and otherwise loitering in the parking lot.

I believe this covers everything I witnessed yesterday.  I just wanted to write it down while I still remember it all pretty clearly.

In parting, a picture my co-worker took while going to check out what was going on outside:

I wonder if that was my commandeered bus from the morning?  ^_^

It is my feeling that if I am going to heat up my kitchen and do baking, I want to have cookies when I'm done, too.

I love chocolate chip cookies.  That are so delicious, and chocolaty.  They were the first thing I tried to make, and I'll just say that the outcome has improved significantly since that first attempt.

Want to make cookies?  Conveniently, the heat level is the same as the bread, so you can just make them in the same bowl you mixed the bread in, and you'll only have to do those dishes once!  (For the asterisk marks, scroll to the bottom for my tips.)

GF Chocolate Chip Cookies (makes approx 10-15 cookies)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

Cream** together the following ingredients:
1 stick soft butter* (1/2 cup any butter substitute, soft)
1/2 cup splenda or sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
(1 full cup splenda is also ok, if you can't have sugar)

Add:
3 eggs
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon Guar or Xanthan Gum

Mix together well.

Sift in coconut flour in the following quantities.
For thin, soft cookies, use 1/4 cup flour
For thick, chewy cookies, use 1/2 cup flour

Add 1/2 bag of chocolate chips, blend together.

I recommend using parchment paper on your cookie sheet, which is available right next to the wax paper and foil at any store. If you don't use parchment paper , make sure you grease your cookie sheet.
Spoon onto cookie sheet, and press flat with spoon.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, let cool for 5-10 minutes.
To store: let cool at least 1 hour, place in sealed plastic bags, and keep in refrigerator.

NOTES:
Since some may be relatively new to baking, here is some tips, tricks and explanations.

* To soften butter that you just took out of the fridge, just put the stick in a bowl, and microwave for 20-25 seconds on high.  It comes out perfectly soft.

** Definition and instruction for creaming butter and sugar together:
Put the softened (not melted) butter into the bottom of the bowl and put the sugar on top of it.  Using either a pastry blender or a potato masher blend them together until the color of the two combined turns almost white, and it has a creamy texture.  Do this before you add any other ingredients.

Many of you know that I've recently been diagnosed with Celiac Disease(October 2008) which is a digestive disorder that makes it impossible for me to digest wheat products.  My quality of life has improved dramatically as I no longer feel ill, however my hassle factor when it comes to eating is also significantly up.

I discovered coconut flour!  I LOVE coconut flour so much.

Why is it so great?  Well, it's easy - that's the best part.  It's cheeper than a lot of methods, too.  Not because the bag of flour is less expensive but because you USE so much less.  That's the great part.  Each recipe requires approximately 3x more eggs than with normal flour, and approximately 1/4 as much flour.  This is great because eggs are cheep.  The flour apparently has such an open fibrous structure that it just sops up all the extra moisture.  Do expect your flour to be a little looser, but the moisture cooks off and the end product is exactly the way you want it.

Getting coconut flour is easy, just click here.   I even did the shopping around for you.
You'll also need some gum.  Yes, that's what helps you avoid crumbly useless bread.  Also easy, just go here.  Yes, that's a little pricer, but you get three for that price.  You might be better off at first to look for Guar or Xanthan Gum at your grocer, or a health food store, since it's available only in bulk online.  You CAN skip the gum in the recipes, but your bread will be crumblier.
You WILL need a flour sifter. (One of these.)  Otherwise your dough with be impossibly lumpy and your bread will have crusty lumps in it.

Nothing else in the recipe is unusual, you can find it at any grocer.

The first think everyone on a gluten-free diet misses is bread.  Bread that can be used for sandwiches is a particularly coveted item in my life, so so many of these breads just crumble when put to that test. 

So here is my sandwich bread recipe for you.

Preheat oven to 350
In a large bowl, mix together:  (If you don't have a blender, us a potato ricer, it's better)
12 grade A large eggs (see above or explanation)
1/2 cup half and half creamer
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup sugar or splenda
1 tsp guar or xanthan gum
pinch salt
optional: 2 tbs milled flax seed
Mix until relatively smooth.

Put 1 and 1/4 cup flour in your flour sifter.  Gradually sift it in, stirring as you go.  Use your fingers to smash lumps, if that's a problem.

The resulting dough should be approximately the consistency of soft playdough.

Oil a bread pan sized 9x3x5 inches or smaller with olive oil.  I use pyrex.  If you have rice flour, you can dust the bottom of the pan with that.  Otherwise, skip it, don't dust with coconut flour.
Press the dough into the pan (it will be sticky) and cut a 1/4 inch deep slice down the center, long ways (a split top loaf keeps its shape better).

Bake at 350 for 55-60 minutes, until toothpick comes out clean.
Let cool, store in gallon size zip lock bag in the fridge, and it will keep well all week, or longer.

Oh, I made cookies while I was at it, and I'll have the recipe for you pretty soon, also.

I'll also put together a "kitchen guide" for you to reference.  This is how I keep my kitchen, the products I use a lot, and how to order, keep fresh, and maintain these products.