Garbanzo Bean Squash Muffins are actually GOOD! (and Gluten Free, too!)

I really love to bake.  And I really really love to eat what I bake.  But this no gluten thing has made my relationship to baked goods a little.... complex.  

In Seattle, you can find many great gluten free cookies, donuts, cupcakes, breads--  but they are expensive!  Mostly very good, but pricey as heck.   

Also-- and maybe this is obvious-- but just because something is gluten free does not mean it is also preservative and chemical free.  I bought these cookies the other days that were made out of peas and chocolate liquor (surprisingly tasty combo) but also contained about a million other non-gluten ingredients, most of which I couldn't pronounce.  They were very good, but honestly good in the way that pop-tarts are good...     

In conclusion, I have decided to venture forward [baby step by baby step] into the world of gluten-free baking.  I like to know what goes into the food I eat, and I love to bake with my kitchen elf and teach her that food doesn't grow in boxes... so here we go.  

Recipe #1:  Garbanzo Bean Squash Muffins  

My parents left to go back to Berkeley at the end of the summer, and filled my pantry with tons of half used food items.  One of those items was a bag of Bob's Red Mill Garbanzo Bean Flour.  

When they first left it, I was kind of feeling like really?  what on earth am I supposed to do with this?? But now that I can't use normal flour, it seems to be coming in handy.  

OK, you guys, I know these muffins sound ridiculous, but I promise you, they are GOOD.  Actually very GOOD!  Violet helped me make them (she was pretty excited; we haven't baked anything in a while), and they made our house smell amazing-- like fall wrapped up in cinnamon.  

Squash is normally the one thing my girl won't eat, and she ate four of these right out of the oven.... so there you go.  

Ingredients: 

2 eggs (or equivalent egg substitute) 

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup olive oil 

2tsp vanilla 

1 1/2 cup yellow squash* 

1 1/2 cup garbanzo bean flour 

1 tsp baking powder 

1 tsp baking soda 

1/4 tsp sea salt 

2 tsp cinnamon 

Preheat oven to 400.  

Mix all ingredients together until smooth (a good task for your kitchen elf).  

Pour into muffin pann lined with muffin wrappers (another good task for your kitchen elf).  

Bake at 400 for 30 minutes.  

Recipe makes 12 muffins .  

*I used delicata squash; precooked until soft.  I think you could also use canned pumpkin for this recipe, or another sweet squash like butternut.  

Always buy two pumpkins.

We bought two pumpkins this year.  We bought one very large round one, and one kind of bulbous lumpy one, with what looked like a pumpkin belly button.

OK-- lesson learned--  never buy a pumpkin with a pumpkin belly button, as cute as it may be.  

One afternoon you will be sitting at your table eating lunch, and you will give the pumpkin a shove to make room for your kid's grape juice, and next thing you know, your thumb is inside this rotten pumpkin cavity.  

We weren't planning on carving pumpkins today, but since belly button pumpkin turned into rotting-spot pumpkin, I tell Violet that yes, finally, (because she has been waiting forever) we can have a pumpkin carving afternoon.  

So she gets all excited and puts her apron on and calls in the cat from outside to help, BUT THEN I start to carve the top off and suddenly the entire pumpkin is caving in on itself in one big black rotting mess, spraying me with pumpkin bile. 

   

I have never seen anything like it.  It was rotting from the inside out.  The entire thing, just a black moldy seedy mess.  So I put it outside.  

But V was so excited to carve a pumpkin.... so we had to have round two with our second pumpkin that I wasn't planning on carving until closer to Halloween (thankfully we had another one!  I felt so bad for her; Why is our pumpkin rotten, mommy??  Why do we have to throw it away??)  

Thankfully, perfect pumpkin number two had no rotting belly button, and supplied us with more than enough pumpkin carving fun.

Violet's cousin, Rose, sent us this detailed illustration of how to turn your pumpkin into a cat which obviously we were thrilled about.  Chowder helped.  

Pictures!  (none of pumpkin 1; sorry)

Dairy and Gluten free

"Choose your food wisely, it becomes your body at a cellular level" --Andrea Beauman 

September, and actually much of the summer, was a bit rough for me.  I think I'll save the story, and just say that I am now feeling great....  but have had to go dairy and gluten free.  I'm not sure if it will be a permanent thing, but it's certainly permanent for now (does that make sense?) :)
Let me just make it crystal clear:  I never thought I would be one of those people with food sensitivities, especially after living in Italy and then India where an adaptable digestive system is the key to so much wonderful food and culture...

But man alive, after having to cut out nearly everything from my diet, and then add things back in one by one by one, I am SO happy to finally feel as though I'm getting on top of this thing.   

Let me go back and tell you-- I have been meaning to write this post for a long time, but something has kept me from doing it.  I'm kind of a private person when it comes to my health, and I think the not knowing what was going on, mixed with the shock of getting a few weird and unexpected test results back, and the general and enormous frustration of dealing with doctors and the medical labyrinth of the UW... it all just felt a bit overwhelming and discouraging.

Also, and this is a big one (and kind of a weird one)-  I know from being a semi-vegetarian that the general public, but also family and friends, can be very put off and unreasonably judgmental toward those who are constantly changing the rules of what can and can't be in their diet.  

It is definitely a popular thing right now to have very complex and unique dietary needs, but I'm starting to learn first hand that if someone is choosing to eliminate something as fabulous as cheese or croissants from their diet, they must have a damn good reason for doing so.  

Anyway, it would be very easy to write pages and pages about how hard it has been to deal with all of this, but really I am starting to see a blazing bright side of this whole thing, which is of course the mere fact that I am feeling better. 

Along with clearing up some of the major things that were going on with me, there have also been a lot of small wonderful side effects I've experienced from cutting out gluten and dairy.  I know a lot of people who suffer from these seemingly minor discomforts, but they definitely add up and can be avoided with a tweak in what you eat. 

1) I was having heartburn, almost daily, that would last hours.  Now that I am gluten and dairy free, heartburn seems to be a thing of the past (knock on wood :) 

2)  My skin has changed.  I don't seem to be breaking out quite as much anymore, and in general I just feel like it's been brighter.  

3) Sleep.  Oh, glorious sleep.  I'm definitely sleeping better these days.  Thank you thank you thank you.  

4) Kind of related to sleep--  I'm just not as lethargic  during the day.  This is partially due to better night sleep, but I feel like my mind has been rid of all this clutter; it feels great and very open.  

5) My mood swings, which had gotten completely out of hand again, have really, for the most part, leveled off.  I think this has been the biggest one for me.  

And there is more-- (too intimate for a blog)-- but I'm happy to talk with anyone about it one on one.  I'm really interested in learning about your experience with diet-shifts too, and how they have changed your day to day life.  Also--  dairy/gluten free winning recipes?  Send then my way!!  

One more thing:   I have one VERY good doctor that I do highly recommend.  She is not affiliated with any major hospital-- she's a bit of an independent.....

Portait Painting

I've never painted a portrait before--  well I've painted portraits of flowers, animals, bugs.... but never a human portrait.
But I've been in a bit of an artistic rut, and I needed something to bend my mind in a new direction, so I thought I would give it a go.
Guess what!  It's HARD.
Well, hard for me.  I know several extraordinarily talented portrait artists, who make it look so easy.
I really didn't think it would be that different from painting anything else... but I have to say, painting this portrait absolutely has been one of the most tormenting stressful artistic experiences I've ever undertaken.  A very good challenge....
but this picture of my daughter with her giraffe literally had me swearing at the paint.

Here's the thing about painting people:  You sit and chip away at this thing, and then you walk away to go to the bathroom.  When you come back, somehow the mouth is in completely the wrong spot, and the nose is far too small, and the eyes are staring in two different directions.  So you fix it.  You fix it all until it's perfect.
Then after dinner you come back and stand aghast as you stare this painting that looks like someone else's child-- not yours-- it looks absolutely nothing like yours.  So you attempt to put some shadows near her eyes because you decide that what it needs is eye work, and then realize that you've just aged her by 20 years.
Then, you think finally you are finished with the awful thing, so you do the trick that artists do where you hold it up to the mirror and see how it looks flipped around... and now her cheeks are full of marbles.

Anyway, a good exercise.  And fun to get out my [anciently old and rusty] oils.   I might do a little more work; maybe a glaze in a couple of weeks, and I still haven't decided if I want to leave the hair and background thinned and sketchy or if I should fill it in...I've always sort of liked the half and half look of an "unfinished" painting....  but anyway, here it is in it's current state:  Violet and G-Raff.