Easy Ideas for How to Eat Grain-Free

Over the last two years I have transitioned from a pretty normal Western diet to eating grain-free. I discovered that my body functions better without grains. I did some two week elimination tests in order to come to this conclusion. For me, avoiding wheat is the most important, but I also don't eat oats, barley, rice, and corn. From time to time I eat a bit of rice or corn because they affect me the least.

Many people seem to be coming to the same conclusion as me. If this is you, or you are curious, here are some hints.

Grain-Free Microwave Cinnamon Breakfast Cake

Cake for breakfast! Glee came over my face when this thought went through my mind. This is a recipe with its roots as a mug cake, but I cooked it in a little oval-shaped ramekin. It's grain free since it's made with coconut flour. The "icing" on the cake is whipped cottage cheese--a clever idea that was inspired by Fit Girls Guide.

If you're not a banana and cinnamon fan, try my apple mini cake instead.

Easy Grain-Free Blueberry Muffins

I have noticed that the food I make myself just seems to taste better. I know this is a very selfish thing to say. In fact, this kind of selfishness is quite common. We humans overvalue the things we make for ourselves. For example, that Ikea furniture that we put together. It's not the greatest furniture ever but assembling it adds to its value for us.

I was reading about this in Dan Ariely's book The Upside of Irrationality. "Pride of creation and ownership runs deep in human beings." Ariely says that creating food is a good example of this. Even semi-homemade items taste better to us: steps such as adding some herbs to a bottled pasta sauce, mixing curry paste with chicken pieces, or adding eggs to a cake mix. These at-home adjustments give us a feeling of agency over our food, and hence the food tastes better to us.

But often homemade really does taste better, right? It's not just psychology that fresh from the oven muffins taste better than store bought. Adding fresh chopped parsley to a bottled sauce does, indeed, make it taste more fresh. (Although there is a line beyond which I don't think this is true; adding eggs to a cake mix may not actually taste better than a not-at-all homemade factory cake.)

Roasted Carrot and Garlic Dip

Carrots are my favourite vegetable and I even contemplated photographing this carrot dip with carrot sticks for dipping. Because that is indeed one of the ways I ate it! But for this photo, I made cucumber dippers. My friend Michael showed me how to cut cucumber on a steep diagonal to make perfect chip-sized dippers. I am always looking for more ways to make vegetables feel like a natural part of fun eating. Cucumber dippers and carrot dip are great examples of fun vegetables!

And so there is no need for chips and salsa at your next snack attack or movie night. If you are searching for ways to eat more vegetables, try this easy carrot dip with veggie dippers. It's also good with sweet pepper strips, celery sticks, or even rectangles of the ribs of Chinese cabbage. (I have tried this and it was superb!)

Frozen Grapes: a Refreshing Snack or a Tasty Drink Cooler

When it's hot outside, what's better than a icy snack? Or at the end of a hot day, do you like to enjoy a nice cool glass of white white as the sun goes down? I've discovered that freezing grapes makes them perfect for snacking and for keeping drinks cool.

Baba Ghanoush

The Joy of Cooking taught me a lot about food; I have the 1953 version. But one piece of advice The Joy of Cooking gave no longer applies--there is no need to salt eggplants (aubergines) before cooking. New varieties of eggplant are much less bitter than in our grandmothers' days.

Heartburn by Nora Ephron

Hilarious, true to life writing. That's how I would describe Nora Ephron's novel, Heartburn. Ephron also wrote plays, essays, and screenplays, most notably When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, and Julie & Julia.

Heartburn is a novel that is mostly autobiographical, and it was our Kitchen Reader pick for July. The narrator is a cookbook writer named Rachel whose life falls apart when she discovers her second husband is having an affair. Ephron somehow manages to make this a very funny book, while also being true to the pain of the situation, which mirrored her own life.

Roasted Aubergine Dip

I am a veg-aholic. You may already know that I am in love with vegetables. That's why I started this blog. I think more people should become crazy veg-lovers! My main goal with this blog is to inspire other people to love vegetables - because I think they can be really versatile and delicious.

A lot of the people I meet have had bad experiences with vegetables. For example, have you tasted overcooked, mushy carrots with your school dinners? Or foul smelling boiled cauliflower, blanketed in bland sauce? There are some atrocious vegetable dishes out there!

Apple and Cinnamon Mini Cake

Of course I collect the "MoneyBack" points that my local grocery store offers, since I visit the shop every day or two. Do you collect points? But what do you do with all those points? Well, I was just ridiculously excited when I saw that MoneyBack was doing a Le Creuset promotion. I redeemed all the points I had for two small stoneware bowls and two mini casserole dishes. I didn't really need any new kitchen items, but they were just so beautiful!

Jackfruit and Durian Chips - Snacks from Thailand

I was in Thailand recently accompanying a school trip. One afternoon I tried these dried fruit chips from the hotel shop. I picked up two types: durian chips and jackfruit chips. Each packet cost me THB 40, which is about GBP 0.90 or USD 1.35. As I consumed my snack, I took tasting notes for you. Read on to find out more.

Weekend Links #28

Weekend Links is a way of sharing all the engrossing things I see around the internet. I publish Weekend Links approximately every two weeks. As usual, I welcome your ideas and feedback.

food reading links:
--This lengthy and thorough article (from the New York Times) examines why junk food is so addictive and how it is marketed. Eye-opening.
--Twelve best food movies (chosen by Serious Eats). Which ones have you seen? (The comments on this post are brimming with controversy about which films should have been included.)
--The Guardian explains that sales of horsemeat in restaurants and butchers in the UK has risen dramatically. It's healthy and tasty, too.
--Can you train yourself to love healthy food? The Guardian gives thoughts.

Coconut and Nut Snack Bowl

This simple snack bowl has got me through many sugar cravings. I have found that cinnamon and coconut are both tastes that I find sweet, even when there is no sweetener involved. This lovely little bowl contains almond butter, coconut oil, flaked coconut, and some walnuts, all sprinkled with cinnamon.

It was Sarah Wilson who first put me onto cinnamon and coconut. The added cup of chai tea makes it even better. I have been eating variations of this snack in the afternoons and also as a "dessert"; my main sugar cravings are mid-afternoon and late evening after dinner.

Cranberry and Walnut Muffins

Here are four things that make me feel Christmassy:

1. listening to Christmas carols while cooking
2. singing along to Christmas carols
3. the smell of baking muffins with cranberries and orange
4. my fingers around a mug of steaming spiced tea

How to Write Recipes to Make Cooking Easier - Carrot and Apple Muffins

I was making carrot and apple muffins for my colleagues. Every muffin recipe uses two bowls and the recipe is always much the same. Wet ingredients go in one bowl, dry in another. They are combined with a few strokes, then the batter is dropped into the muffin tins and baked. Muffins are designed to be easy; hence the reason I make them so frequently. But the recipe I was (roughly) following for the muffins was making the process harder.

Simply Cooked's Facebook Page

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8 Strange Potato Chip Flavours That You Might Not Want to Eat

I have been travelling in Bali recently. (More about that in another post, including the Balinese cooking class we went on!) In Asia I have learned that the flavours people consider normal in snack foods vary around the world. For your pleasure, I have been snapping with my phone in grocery stores when I see unusual flavours!

The Language of Baklava, and muhammara

Diana Abu-Jaber bounced like a ping pong ball between Jordan and America as a child. Her father was an exuberant, dashing Jordanian immmigrant to the United States, her mother a quiet but stubborn American. The Language of Baklava is Abu-Jaber's memoir, in which she describes her formative years. Their family connects and reconnects to the people and places around them, leaving Diana a little confused about where she belongs. "Am I still an American?" she asks, after her re-entry to Jordan. "And it confuses me, because it seems like a kind of unbecoming or rebecoming--to turn into this other Diana--pronounced Dee-ahna, a Jordanian girl who has forgotten the taste of fluffernutter sandwhiches or Hersey's bars."

Wherever they are in the world, the family is grounded by Diana's father's cooking--his Middle Eastern food is as lively as he is. The book is full of family vignettes, focused on the relationships, the loud or quiet talk, and the flavours on the table. Abu-Jaber includes several recipes with each one, which are connected to the stories with funny titles or whimsical headnotes. I found the methods and ingredients of the recipes to be simple and accessible. I have made two recipes already and I am eagerly anticipating more creations.

banana-chocolate chip squares (whole grain baking)

A late afternoon quiet moment: hot, milky tea that steams up my glasses. My fingers are wrapped around the mug. I am sitting on the couch leaning back against the red pillow and my knees are bent to the side, with my toes tucked under. Next to me on the couch are the open pages of my book, the rows of black letters are getting blurry in the fading light. And a little white plate with a chocolate and seed-topped square--one bite out of it.

applesauce muffins

My main reasons for eating? It tastes good! And it's healthy! That is to say, it can be healthy when I make good choices. Taste is most important for me, though. And you?

But I'm interested in whole grain baking because it is good for me and so I've been learning a lot about it lately. You can expect to read more about baking with whole wheat flour and other healthy stuff over the next few months.

But is whole grain baking tasty? If not, why bother? May I present Exhibit A, these applesauce muffins.

morning glory muffins

How can I help a group of twelve-year-olds learn to use algebraic symbols to describe a matchstick pattern? What activity would help a group of fifteen-year-olds who have already been labelled as "bad at maths" experience some success (and enjoyment!)? Can I develop an interactive way of teaching the standard normal distribution?