Christmas fudge alternative

One of my challenges this Christmas is changing the way I do traditional Christmas baking when I am gluten-allergic, and have also changed my diet to reflect much less processed, refined food and more food that God made. I have made a pan of fudge (no flour!), but the amount of sugar in the recipe alarmed me, really, and I started looking for alternatives.

This weekend I dipped dried fruit in melted chocolate, laid it on waxed paper on a cookie sheet, and refrigerated it until cold, when it can be transferred to a candy tin.

I used pineapple slices, apricots, dates, turkish figs (yum! My favorite so far), and mango and papaya slices. I dip half the fruit in melted Green & Blacks organic dark chocolate, or Green & Blacks organic Maya Gold dark chocolate, the best chocolate ever made in my opinion. I imagine pecan and walnut halves dipped in chocolate would be good, too, although I didn't do that this year. If you could find good fresh strawberries this time of year, that would also be great; and I wonder how fresh clementine orange slices would be? Hmmm, ideas for next year.

The chocolate fruit is really yummy (Zane has pronounced it wonderful by scarfing his chocolate pineapple down when he tried a piece), it is food that God made, and naturally gluten-free!

My Saturday

My sweet dh is out hunting the Christmas goose this morning. We have lots of lots of wild Canadian geese along the Front Range of the Rockies, and my husband hopes to get one for our Christmas dinner. He has been stalking the wild goose for the past several weekends in a row, but the weather has been too sunny and nice. Apparantly goose hunting is easier when the weather is cloudy or stormy, because the geese stay closer to the ground. Today fits the bill; it is snowing like a winter wonderland outside right now!

Meanwhile, I will be working on my Christmas baking the rest of the day. I hope to have the house roasty toasty and smelling Christmasy by the time my dh comes in, cold and wet. I hope to post some pictures of our decorations later, if I can get any to come out. Then we have church this evening, and crock pot pepper steak (from the last of last year’s elk; my dh is such an awesome provider) for supper after that.

Chicken marenga soup

I made chicken marenga soup last night for supper; it is soooo cold here right now, and soup is so good on a bitter cold night. Usually I make chicken marenga soup out of leftover chicken marenga and leftover New Orleans dirty rice, but I didn’t have that this time, so I made it from scratch. It was pronounced better than the leftover kind by my husband, so here is what I did:

Bring 2 c beef broth to a boil ; add 1 c brown rice, stir (I use my dutch oven for the rice so I can finish the soup in it and have less pots to wash); turn heat down to simmer and cover, cook for 30-40 minutes until the liquid is absorbed. Take off heat (if the rice is not yet completely tender, that is okay.)

While the rice is cooking, saute 1 c each chopped onion, celery, green pepper, and mushrooms in a little olive oil with 1-2 cloves minced garlic.

When the rice is done, add the tender vegetables to the rice with 1 14 oz can crushed or diced tomatoes, 1/8 t cayenne (or less; 1/8 t makes a very spicy soup), 2 bay leaves, a sprinkling of tarragon, and salt and pepper. Stir in 8 oz clam juice with 1 quart chicken broth and several cups chunked cooked chicken.

(We buy whole chickens on sale; my husband skins and bones them, and I cook the meat in a stock pot covered with water until it is done. I strain the broth; chunk the chicken, and freeze it together: one chicken chunked with 1 quart chicken broth. It is the base for most of my chicken soups and casseroles.)

Simmer the soup until the rice has absorbed some of the liquid and is completely tender; add more water if necessary while cooking; salt and pepper to taste.

Usually New Orleans dirty rice is thickened with flour, but I left the flour out. If you want a thicker soup, stir a few tablespoons of flour into the vegetables when they are done cooking and before they are added to the rice. This recipe makes almost a full dutch oven of soup.

Pumpkin cheesecake

I made a pumpkin cheesecake to take tonight to dinner. Normally I make the crust out of 1 1/4 c gingersnap cookie crumbs and 3 T butter, melted, but I did something different this time to avoid the gluten. I used 1 1/4 c almond meal, mixed with 1/2 t cinnamon, 1/4 t cloves, 3/4 t ginger, and 2 T brown sugar, then combined with the 3 T butter. 

After pressing the crust into a 10 inch springform pan, bake at 350 for 10 minutes. While the crust is baking, make the cheesecake filling:

4 8-oz packages cream cheese, softened
1 c honey
3/4 t vanilla
4 eggs
1 c canned pumpkin
2 1/2 t pumpkin pie spice (1 1/2 t cinnamon, 1/2 t each nutmeg, ginger, allspice, and cloves; combine and measure out 2 1/2 t; stir the remaining 1 t into 1 c honey butter for toast or biscuits)

Blend together; reduce oven temperature to 300. Pour into cooled crust and bake for 1 hour or until the center is firm. Cool to room temperature, then chill.

***
Update (Tuesday December 6): I adjusted the proportions of the ingredients to use a 10 inch springform pan rather than a 9 inch; and also the spices and brown sugar in the crust, to make it more like the gingersnap crust I remember.

Christmas preparations

Our son finished decorating the outside of the house with lights last weekend. He loves doing it. It reminds me a little bit of Snoopy’s dog house in A Charlie Brown Christmas, LOL. I'll have to see if I can get a picture of it to post.

Last night we picked out our Christmas tree. This will be our last year with a natural tree -- they are getting too expensive around here. Next year, we are budgeting for a fake tree. I am a little sad; we have always had a real tree at Christmas since I was a baby. I told my husband I would agree to a fake tree only if we could budget for one that really looked real. Those are a little more expensive, but there are a few places around that sell nice ones. We will decorate it this weekend, along with the inside of the house.

I have really cut back on Christmas baking since the children started moving out. This year, because of the gluten allergy, I will make some fudge and coconut joys, and I might try my husband's favorite Christmas cookie with rice flour, and see if I can fiddle with the recipe enough to get it to turn out. His favorite is what I grew up calling Russian teacakes -- the little cookie balls of flour, sugar, butter, and pecans, rolled in powdered sugar. I know they have different names in different parts of the country. My favorites are gingerbread men, and my Grandma's sour cream sugar cookies. I might experiment a bit with those too, with rice flour, and see if a cut out cookie is possible.

I always made two desserts for Christmas day; one the traditional Christmas day dessert for my husband's family, a pineapple upside down cake (I have a very elegant version from Country Living magazine years ago) and one the traditional Christmas day dessert for my family, a ginger honey Christmas cake. This year I am also making a mincemeat pie in memory of my Grandma. So I have a few weeks to experiment with rice flour substituting for wheat flour in cake recipes.

Leftover turkey

My favorite recipe for leftover turkey is Turkey Chipotle Salad:

leftover diced turkey
chopped red onion
sliced black olives
snipped cilantro
softened cream cheese
mayonnaise
chipotle sauce to taste
salt and pepper to taste

Combine turkey and vegetables. Use the same proportion of cream cheese to mayonnaise, and stir together till smooth. Stir the cream cheese /mayonnaise into the turkey salad to moisten. Add the chipotle sauce and salt and pepper to taste. Serve in sandwiches or on salad greens. Yum!

My mother’s pumpkin pie

I have finally got the last of the pies in the oven. Yay!! This is the best pumpkin pie I have ever had:

Mom’s Pumpkin Pie

1 1/2 cup canned pumpkin
1 2/3 cup evaporated milk
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp allspice
1 unbaked pie shell

Mix filling ingredients until smooth. Pour into unbaked pie shell. Bake at 425 for 15 minutes. Lower temperature to 350 and bake another 35 minutes or until knife inserted in filling comes out clean. Cool.

Pies for tomorrow

I am making the pies for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow at my sister’s house. I usually make the pies; I have a wonderful pastry recipe for the high altitude here in Colorado, and I use my grandmother's pecan pie recipe, my mother's pumpkin pie recipe, and my apple pie recipe. My grandmother's pecan pie is wonderful, and I have never seen the recipe anywhere else.

Grandma’s Pecan Pie

1 1/2 cups real maple syrup
1 cup chopped pecans
3 T butter, soft
1/4 cup sugar
2 T flour
1/4 tsp salt
3 eggs, well beaten
1 tsp vanilla
1 unbaked pie shell

Bring syrup to a boil; boil gently, uncovered, 8 minutes. Cool (about 15 minutes). Sprinkle nuts in bottom of pie shell. Cream butter with sugar, flour, and salt. Add eggs, cooled syrup, and vanilla, mix well. Pour into shell. Bake at 375 for 40-45 minutes, or until pie is completely puffed across top and browned. Cool.

My grandmother always made a mincemeat pie at the holidays too; I have her recipe but have never made it. I have never tried mincemeat pie to be honest. I am missing my Grandma; I always do this time of year. I think I will make her mincemeat pie this year for Christmas.

Roasted beet salad

The day we were at Epcot, I had this great salad for lunch at one of the pavalions. It was a roasted beet salad; I had never heard of anything like it before. The beets were cold, sliced, some yellow, some red, on a bed of greens, with feta cheese and spiced pecans, and grilled chicken. I don’t know what kind of dressing was on it, but it was sooooo good. I have a bag of beets (I put the greens in my salads) that I need to use. I was thinking of roasting the beets, slicing them, and freezing them in little single-serving packets. Anyone know how to roast beets? I have only peeled, sliced, and sauted them in butter before. Is it just like roasting other root vegetables?

Green v-8 juice

A few days ago I asked for help with fixing leafy greens. Joanna suggested juicing them, and I found a recipe and tried it today. The juice was thick; I thinned it with water until I could drink it. It tasted pretty good, if you like v-8 juice. The color was problematic: it was a very deep green (a beautiful shade) which clashed with my mental or cultural taboo on drinking deep green liquids, LOL. It was a lot easier to get my leafy greens for the day in juice form, though, than putting them in salad. Here is the recipe:

Combine in a powerful blender or Vita-Mix:

1 cup leafy greens (any combination of kale, watercress, chard, cilantro, beet greens, collards, escarole, dandelion, or mustard greens)
4 sprigs parsley
1 tomato
1 scallion (next time I will increase to two)
2 slices red bell pepper (more would work)
1/2 cucumber
1/2 garlic clove, minced (next time I will increase to 1)
juice of 1/2 lemon or 1/2 lime

Blend until liquefied; drink immediately.

It makes about 8 ounces of juice, and that is with me adding a few ounces of water to thin it to juice consistency. Also, after tasting it, I added a little salt, which I thought helped bring out the flavors.

My friend Nancy also suggesting cooking leafy greens like wilted lettuce on the stove; I am going to try that with the collards this weekend.

This was my fifth day on the seven-day preparatory diet; I was miserable for four days with caffeine withdrawal, but feel great today. (I am drinking Celestial Seasonings Bengal Spice tea in the morning instead of coffee and like it a lot; other teas I discovered I like are Stash Licorice Spice and Tazo Wild Sweet Orange. Yes, I like the sweet teas; I had to put cream and sugar in my coffee too.) I find that after I get in all the veggies and fruits I am supposed to have to support my liver, I am usually full. So avoiding the liver stressors like sugar hasn't been too hard; I haven't been hungry. Even though I am not on the diet to lose weight, and I gather most people lose weight on the one-day juice fast, I have already lost three pounds. Yay! A little detoxification bonus.

Help with leafy greens!

I need to eat leafy greens every day on the detox diet I am on. But not just lettuce and spinach, which I can handle. These leafy greens must be parsley, kale, watercress, chard, cilantro, beet greens, collards, escarole, dandelion, or mustard greens (1/2 cup cooked or 1 cup raw). Just the leafy greens neither my mother nor I ever fixed! Except parsley as a garnish.

I love beet greens, but we didn’t grow beets this year, and I haven’t been able to find them anywhere for sale. I haven’t found kale, watercress, escarole, or mustard greens anywhere. I assume by dandelion greens, they mean go pick dandelions from your back yard. (Eewwwwww! Though we actually have enough dandelions in the back yard to stay on this diet indefinitely!)

I found chard and collards at the organic supermarket. The chard I have been putting into salad. I don’t know how much longer I can eat it that way, LOL. The poor collards are just sitting in my fridge, looking a little more forlorn every day, LOL. I have been staring at them every day, wondering what on God’s green earth to do with them. I have no idea how to fix these kinds of greens. If anyone can help me with recipes, I would so appreciate it! Please post in the comments, or you can e-mail me at alittleperspective [at] gmail [dot] com. Thank you!

My husband’s day off

I had blamed the heat for the recent missing news updates. God bless my sweet dh. Yesterday was his day off, and he spent it installing two air conditioners in our house, one on each floor. I can sit at my computer and work without melting now! Thank you, honey. I so much love and appreciate the whole husbanding thing that our men do. It makes me all warm and melty inside to think of it.

Dad Miller’s lighthouse

My father-in-law is an amazing builder. He just finished a working lighthouse for his home town, Lockport in New York on the Erie Canal. The lighthouse is nine feet tall and is on the shore of Widewater’s. Click on the thumbnails to enlarge.

1. The lighthouse at Widewater’s with my father-in-law.
2. Closeup of “the little house” - the lighthouse keeper’s house - next to the lighthouse.

Summer thunderstorm

We had quite a thunderstorm this afternoon with hail the size of marbles. All that white stuff on the deck and around the flowers? Yeah, that’s hail. The picnic table is really stained a dark redwood. Click on the thumbnails to enlarge.

My poor pansies. It has been 90 degrees for the past couple of weeks, and the heat has been a little much for them. They were looking a little straggly. Now they are covered with slushy ice!

Embroiderers of the carpet earth