Sweet Potato Breakfast Hash

We usually make eggs and bacon for breakfast if we have time (if not, it’s Glutenfreeda Instant Oatmeal for me). But I’m on winter break from law school at the moment, and I wanted to try making something different. This is the product!

Makes 2 Servings

Ingredients:
1 Ruby Sweet Potato
3 strips turkey bacon (we buy Applegate), cooked until fairly crispy
2 cups broccoli spears
1/4 sweet yellow onion, cut into approximate 1 inch pieces.
3 eggs to scramble
Garlic, salt, and pepper for seasoning

Instructions:
Place a skillet on medium-high (6/10) heat. With a sharp, large chef’s knife (preferably one with grooves to prevent a vacuum from forming) cube the sweet potato. If you can find your skinning tool, you can remove the skin from the potato. I couldn’t, so I didn’t! I’d recommend chunks somewhat smaller than the ones pictured here. 1/2 inch cubes would probably work. Place chunks in hot pan, cover with olive oil, and cover pan to allow chunks to cook evenly. These take the longest to cook, so you’ll want to start them first. While those chunks are cooking, Place strips of bacon into a separate skillet to cook. While both pans are cooking, cut the 1/4 onion pieces. Add them to the sweet potato pan, add enough oil so that there is some (but not much) visible at the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle with garlic, salt, and pepper (it’d probably be tastier if you used fresh garlic. I used powdered garlic, but now that I’m thinking of it I should have used fresh).

When the bacon is done, tear it into pieces with your fingers and add to the sweet potato skillet. In the now empty skillet where you were cooking the bacon, add broccoli. Add about a tablespoon of olive oil to cookie the broccoli. Once the broccoli is roasted (you can see parts of the spear beginning to brown), transfer to the sweet potato skillet.

By now the sweet potato skillet should be finished. After removing the sweet potato mix from heat and placing in serving bowls, I decided to cook scrambled eggs (not pictured here). I placed the eggs on top of the sweet potato mix, and served in a bowl. It was quite good!

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

It seems to take about a dozen attempts to correctly convert a conventional recipe to a gluten free recipe. It’s a tough job to eat batch after batch of gluten free cookies, but someone has to do it!

I have finally perfected a GF oatmeal cookie recipe. Enjoy!

Ingredients:
1/2 cup shortening
3/4 cups light brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla (for pete’s sake don’t buy mckormick…switching made a huge difference).
1 cup certified gluten free oats
2 cups oat flour
A little less than 1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp arrowroot starch (tapioca starch works, but not as well)
Between 1/2 and 1 tsp salt
1 cup raisins (and whatever else you’d like to add)

Instructions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare 2 cookie pans (makes about 12 cookies).

1) Use a hand held electric mixer to mix the shortening, the light brown sugar, and the granulated sugar. Add in the vanilla and the eggs, and continue to mix until evenly mixed.
2) In a separate bowl, combine oat flour, baking soda, arrowroot starch, and salt.
3) Combine the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients. Beat with the mixer until well mixed.
4) Pour in the raisins and the oats, mix by hand.
5) Take table spoon sized heaps of dough, place them on the cookie sheets, and flatten them slightly (gluten free cookies don’t spread out as well as normal cookies).
6) Bake for 14-16 minutes. Remove from oven, allow to sit for at least 5 minutes. Then move to a plate to cool, but you should be able to sneak one while it’s still warm!

Long Time No Post!

Hello! Well, I’ve been very busy. I went to law school (well I’m still in law school). It is difficult, but not impossible. It does take up a lot of my time. But, when I have a minute to myself (like now), I tend to cook or work on recipes for treats! So I am restarting my blog. Here goes!

To bring everyone up to date on my health, I am now allergic to/intolerant of:
gluten
corn
potato, tomato, eggplant, nutmeg, bell peppers, hot peppers
dairy
strawberries, cherries, apricots, maybe apples?
almonds

Point is, things were bad, then they were good. My hives went away completely, and now they are rarely a problem. A more common issue is digestive trouble. I am beginning to suspect my main problem flows from FODMAPS. These are short-chain sugars found in many foods. Some people have difficulty digesting these sugars, and researchers are beginning to theorize that FODMAP intolerance is a factor in many mysterious digestive disorders. Oddly, I seem to do fine with some high FODMAP foods (like avocados) and poorly with others (like apples). Since things became busy, I have been bad about keeping to an elimination diet when I develop symptoms. Hopefully this blog will help me stay on track.

Here is an article about FODMAPS. It should be fairly digestible (a pun!), even for readers who (like me) did not pay much attention in biology class: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/06/when-gluten-sensitivity-isnt-celiac-disease/?_r=0 (forgive the headline, it irked me too).

I can no longer eat many of the recipes on this site. I will likely archive them and simply start the blog anew. I apologize to anyone who relies on those messages. I will try to come up with some solution.

I have learned many things about xanthan gum and other additives, making your own gluten free flours, and other tips and tricks. I will be happy to share them with you. Thanks for sticking around, and please share my story with anyone you think it might help. I am always happy to send and receive any messages!

Anyway sorry for the lack of upbeat news. Just follow along for recipes!