Saturday, April 2, 2011

The Cooking Channel My Life in Food

Ironically, since I was diagnosed with food allergies, I have become a bit addicted to watching The Food Network and The Cooking Channel; I watch things like Cupcake Wars and Iron Chef and the occasional Ina Garten show. Sometimes I even pick up tips on the side - for instance, watching Iron Chef Morimoto and Bobby Flay in the big old kitchen stadium taught me techniques like tempura battering, no joke! This weekend I chanced in a viewing of a show called "My Life in Food," and this particular episode dealt with celiac disease and food allergies. Jennifer Esposito, an actress, talks about her celiac diagnosis, and Sloane Miller, whose "Allergic Girl" blog Please Don't Pass the Nuts was one of the first to try to raise awareness for food allergies, talks about going to restaurants and dealing with food allergies there. It was really nice to have something like this on a food network, giving some guidance as to shopping, eating out, etc. I wished they had regular programming that addressed needs like wheat-free eating and allergy-free recipes!

Monday, March 28, 2011

Snacks! What do you eat?

One of the toughest things when I went to my current diet is figuring out what to eat when I want a snack. A lot of my go-to snacking stuff used to be wheat-based: crackers, cookies, cereal with milk. I can't drink milk any more, most gluten-free cereals have something in them that bother me, and I haven't been happy with many gluten-free ready-made products such as cookies and crackers (that's a nice way of saying they're mostly really bad.)
My husband is a bit of a kitchen wizard, and he's started to whip up simple things in the kitchen to help my snack attacks.
Here are some of the things I snack on now, and I'd love to hear from you on the "quick snack" solutions you've come up with.
--grapes cut in half, broiled, and drizzled with honey
--banana slices frozen and then whipped in the food processor to become ice-cream-like in texture. (Thanks to friend Michaela Eaves for that tip!)
--gluten-free cereals: Nature's Path Crispy Rice and the Nature's Path Honey'd Corn Flakes are the two best-tasting with the simplest ingredient lists
--Glenn's homemade vanilla marshmallows (Sometimes dipped in melted Sharffenberger chocolate, dairy and gluten-free) (occasionally combined with that crispy rice cereal!) Glenn says he uses Thomas Keller's marshmallow recipe, which was reproduced here. Try it out!
--Glenn's vanilla meringue cookies. He doesn't even use tartaric acid, he just whips egg whites with confectioner's sugar and a little salt in the food processor and then uses a pastry bag to pipe them onto parchment paper. 2 hours at 200 degrees.
It's not as tricky as you think to make your own food. That's what I keep realizing. Well, especially when your husband does the hard parts and the cleaning up!