I Have Perfected My Cheesecake

It's true. I used to make that jello cheesecake mix before gluten free came along. I missed cheesecake (who wouldn't?), so I started making my own. After finding some recipes on the internet and tweaking them I've got the best one down so I think I should record it here (you know, for posterity) so I don't forget what made it so good. Yes, it will have gluten free crust, of course. But if you wanted to try the recipe you could just substitute your standard graham cracker crust or whatever you like. I have to give credit to this blog.
This crust is so awesome! It's good for cheesecake, the layer bars I used to make (you know, the bars with the graham cracker crust and chocolate chips/butterscotch ships, coconut and sweetened condensed milk) and I tried it without the sugar and used it for my quiche and it turned out pretty good too. It's not a super rich, dense sort of cheesecake but it's the way I like it.

Cheesecake

Crust:
1 cup Pamela’s Gluten Free Baking Mix

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup cold butter (or Smart Balance spread like I use), cut into pieces

1/2 cup finely chopped pecans

Mix it all together and press into the pan

Cheesecake:
 3-8 oz bars of cream cheese, softened
1-8 oz bar of  neufchatel cheese ('cause it cuts the fat a wee bit)
1 cup of granulated sugar
2 egg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon gluten free vanilla

Mix it all together well and pour in pan. I don't use a cheesecake pan because, well I don't have one. So I just use an 8x8ish glass dish.
Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Then, turn off the oven and leave it in there for another 45 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for a while then refrigerate overnight. Top with whatever you like, I like cherry pie filling or just plain is good too.

*no picture right now but maybe I'll use that as an excuse to make it again so I can add a picture.

Frustration

I'm frustrated. Hence the title. Isabella had a six months post diagnosis of celiac disease check up and she has gained weight and is feeling healthier, she isn't anemic anymore, but she's still getting unacceptable levels of gluten. So what do I do? Should I only buy whole foods and products from gluten free companies? I thought I was getting things down. I read labels but there is so much cross contamination that can be done in a food manufacturing plant. She wants to go to girls camp and youth conference for church this summer and I intend to let her go, but how much of a pain is this going to be? How risky is it going to be?

The other day we ate lunch at the only exclusively gluten free establishment I know of, Eleanor's Bakery. It was good, albeit expensive. We had these sandwiches on this cornmeal bread called arepas. We also had chips: Cheetos for Isabella and Doritos for me and Brent. These chips do not have gluten in them (I am becoming increasingly wary of food additives like MSG, however. Not because they contain gluten but because I think we should get away from artificial ingredients. We have a long way to go though.) These chips have also recently been changed  on the Frito Lay website. They are produced in facilities that produce other products that contain gluten (like Sun Chips). They aren't on the much smaller list of products that have been tested to have less than 20 part per million (the acceptable level of gluten). I buy quite a few products that say gluten free on the label or have no gluten in the ingredients but also say they are produced in a facility that makes wheat containing ingredients or just says "may contain wheat". Like Heartland Gluten Free Pasta or Reese's Puffs cereal. I do that because it makes life easier and Isabella can have more options. But I guess I can't do that anymore. I realize I sound very whiny here. But this is my blog and I need to complain about how this is a pain in the butt once in a while. Especially when I have confirmation that while we are making progress, it's not good enough.

How's It?

You're wondering how the gluten free cooking is going aren't you? Not bad, not bad at all. Isabella is up about ten pounds since she cut out the gluten four months ago. I'm such a proud momma! I still worry there is too much cross contamination going on and hidden gluten in foods that are supposed to be gluten free. But you can't argue with results. And she hasn't gotten sick since then either. I've got the cooking down pretty good. I've learned to cook some new things too. I dare say I make some pretty good stir fry and fried rice. And my chicken enchiladas are quite tasty. Have you ever tried rice crispy treats with rice chex instead of rice crispies? (Rice crispies have malt which contains gluten. You'd think RICE crispies would be safe.) They are better than the rice crispy kind.

I'm finding all sorts of places that sell gluten free stuff. Unfortunately they are all in the city on the other side of the mountain. But I get out there frequently enough. I walked into a Harmon's grocery store and nearly cried from happiness last week. They have a huge natural foods section with tons of gluten free stuff. It even has it's own freezer section. And every gluten free item in the store (many that are throughout the store too) has a label on the shelf that says gluten free. So convenient. It's all expensive of course, but that's just the way the gluten free stuff rolls. Maybe someday it will all come down in price. Hopefully by the time Isabella is an adult. Really, more and more people are discovering they have celiac disease. Bad for them but good for the consumer.

So what else have we been making? I found this awesome gluten free baking mix called Pamela's that is so handy for baked goods. We've made mint brownies, chocolate chip cookies, banana nut bread, muffins, it even worked well for our Christmas sugar cookies. It's so much easier than trying to work with a million weird ingredients and has taken out a lot of trial and error. And the price is about the same as mixing a bunch of stuff together so I may as well save myself some stress. I sound like an advertisement here now, don't I?

Still making homemade bread too. I found a simplified recipe off the Gluten Free Goddess blog that I'm liking a lot. I usually change out some ingredients to find a combination Isabella likes (and Brent, he likes to eat the bread too). She complains about a lot of it that it has "that weird taste". I've narrowed down "that weird taste" to either sorghum or rice flour or tapioca starch. Someday I'll figure out which one bugs her but until then we've found teff, millet, amaranth and potato and corn starch make up a pretty good bread.

Yesterday I made up some gluten free energy bars. Kind of like granola bars. They were so good! You should try them. Your kids will like them. Well, mine all did anyway.

Gluten Free Energy Bars

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup peanut butter
• 3/4 cup honey
• 3/4 c almond pieces (or other nuts you like)
• 1 cup dried fruit (I used dried cherries and cherry flavored craisins)
• 4 cups GF brown rice crispie cereal
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preparation:

Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper

Mix dry ingredients

In a large saucepan melt peanut butter with honey over medium low heat. Stir and watch carefully to prevent scorching. When the mixture is smooth and bubbling cook for about 1 minute. Remove from heat. Add salt and vanilla and stir to combine. Use a large spatula to stir in nuts, dried fruit and cereal. Stir until all ingredients are coated with nut butter mixture. Spread out on parchment paper. Let cool and cut.

I also added mini M&Ms. Next time I might add some ground flax seed to make it healthier. If you wanted to try them and didn't need gluten free you could use regular rice crispy cereal instead of the gf brown rice variety.

We Have Bread!

And it doesn't have any rice in it. I made my first loaf of gluten free bread today. My first loaf of bread ever, really. I know, I'm lame. I'm still getting over that bread making debacle from foods class in 11th grade. The bread is pretty good too. Tastes a little like wheat and a little like something else. I guess that something else would be buckwheat flour, sorghum flour and teff flour. Whatever they taste like. It's healthier than wheat bread too. Take that wheat! I guess teff is the grain that makes Ethiopean marathon runners run super fast and win all the gold medals at the olympics. Good to know, 'cause I could use an energy boost. So the bread didn't rise quite as good as it should have...I think. But other than that it turned out good. I have to give credit to this cool gluten free blogger where I found this recipe.I guess she's spent hours perfecting her bread. The internet is pretty awesome.

I'm guessing it's not supposed to be bumpy on top, but not bad for a first attempt.

Gl, Gl

I'm debating whether I should start a new blog or not. This one will stay around, although it is quite dead in the water at times. I'm going to be rambling on about gluten free cooking a lot so it may be a good idea to make a new blog-call it "The Incompetent Gluten Free Chef". Now you're all gonna want to steal that name. Or maybe I will ramble on about my new adventure here. Who knows for sure today.

I will say this: I am wary of baking with a flour that has garbanzo beans and fava beans in it. Beans in your cookies are just not natural. But the oatmeal raisin cookies did turn out pretty good. So maybe I'll give it another try. A side note, I don't know all the rules on oats yet. You can ONLY use oats that come from dedicated fields (not contaminated by those evil grains). And I've read some stuff that says you should only eat oats after you've been off gluten for a while and healed up. Something about oats, they don't have gluten but their genetic composition is slightly similar to wheat. Or something like that. I don't know. I could be wrong there. In other good baking news: I bought a Namaste gluten free spice cake mix. Ten thumbs up from everyone here (two per person, not ten, we don't have fifty thumbs collectively). A little denser than regular cake but good still. Almost brownie like but not quite. Makes me think their brownie and blondie mixes must be pretty good. They also don't have a hundred ingredients like a regular cake mix. Only the basic stuff so it's probably healthier.

The other good news is my recurring dream with the words "gluten free" floating around freely has stopped. I was probably mumbling "gluten free" in my sleep. Then there was the worst dream. Gluten Free and Glen Beck. It must have been some sort of "GL" theme. Very disturbing. I really want to go order pizza now. (Nothing to do with my weird dreams, I just don't want to cook dinner.) No? Then tostadas it is. I wish I would have remembered the guacamole.

Answers

I knew I wasn't crazy! Or paranoid. Or overreactive. Is that a word? This has been a while coming. Let me explain a little. It's been at least a couple of years, maybe more like three. We began to notice that one of my kids was slowing way down on her growth. She started out at a solid average height, some even said slightly above average. Then we noticed the shorter kids were catching up with her. Then they were passing her. Did I need to worry? Some said, well kids grow at different rates, she'll grow when her body is ready. No, it just didn't feel right. I know my being 5'9" and Brent being 6' tall is no guarantee of tall children. I don't need tall children. Although the pediatrician did do that prediction thing when she was 2 1/2 and predicted 5'8". But I also know you can't believe everything a doctor says. Especially when she has more than a dozen years to be proven wrong. But come on, I come from tall people. We don't do short. Brent's got mostly tall people in his family too. But maybe she takes after her grandma? Well sure, nothing wrong with that. But it just didn't feel right. So we waited for the growth spurt some said would happen. There was an inch here and there but it didn't seem right. So I took her to the doctor. This was Spring of '09. She was a little concerned. She ordered blood tests and x-rays. Everything was pretty okay. The x-rays showed her bone age was on the young side. That meant she would probably finish growing later than average. A late bloomer. So we moved forward. She grew almost two inches that years! But it looked like everyone else grew four.

I kept saying, well everything must be okay. She's just taking her time. Then why is she still throwing up? Did I not mention the recurring vomiting? But the doctor didn't seem overly concerned and her health seemed fine in general, besides the throwing up, so I tried a wait and see approach. This summer I took her back to the doctor for some immunizations. The doctor was now concerned about her weight. More blood tests were administered. Symptoms were beginning to be added on to this mystery: anemia, vitamin D deficiency. She wasn't absorbing nutrients properly. That would explain why she wasn't growing. I looked for answers on the internet. The doctor prescribed vitamins and ordered more blood tests. Finally, she contacted a pediatric G.I. specialist. So this past Tuesday we went into the hospital and she had an endoscopy. Celiac Disease. You know, the no gluten disease. We finally had an answer. My daughter is happy to have answers. Yes, she has to give up all gluten containing foods (anything with wheat, barley or rye). Forever. We may all try this new diet too. It runs in families and maybe in general it will get us eating more healthy. Get us off so much processed foods. But the best thing is we know what the problem is. We know what we need to do. It's going to be a big change. But it's nothing super scary. We are grateful for that. I love this girl, I'm so happy to know how to help her now. We finally have our answers.