Summertime and the living is....chaotic?

Okay, so I have found myself severely remorseful that I have not maintained my blog properly. But when the spring months hit, life becomes just a little more crazy at work and I tend to take on a little more too or perhaps it is a case that everything that I took on in September finally comes full circle in the Spring months; who knows.  So now I find myself with the month of July nearly gone and I still have not updated with news of all the wonderful gluten free things that I have consumed and/or made.  It is all such an incredible journey but there are just not enough hours in the day to do everything  that I want to do. :(

First things first, before I talk about two incredible meals at fabulous restaurants that I had to celebrate my birthday in May;  Joy McCarthy is coming to Halifax in August for a book signing. If you read my book review post in the winter you will know that she is the author of Joyous Health and a holistic nutritionist. I have, since writing the review of Joyous Health, made some of her recipes including: Chia Black Bean Brownies, Detox Juice, Double Chocolate Gluten Free Cookies, Apple Beet Carrot Slaw with Honey Dressing and Raw Carrot Cake Balls (absolutely fabulous). I have more recipes earmarked to try as I find the time. Anyhow, she will be at the Healthy Bug on August 22nd and Organic Earth Market on August 23rd. You can find a link to her site here. I will definitely be going to one of the signings and hear what she has to say about organic living and healthy eating. Hopefully others will come out and show her some Maritime/ East Coast hospitality.

Secondly, I will be reviewing Chef Michael Smith's newest cookbook, Family Meals. Looking forward to doing this and to see what kind of family friendly recipes he has to offer. My nephew or parents may be the guinea pigs for this food experiment. :) Stay tuned, as the review will be forthcoming in the next two weeks. He will also be in Nova Scotia for an event in September as well.

So for my birthday in May I decided to do something a little different this year. Traditionally I go to the Wooden Monkey, primarily because I know that it is a safe spot for me to eat. However, I had been wanting to try Morris East for quite awhile but never quite got around to it. I knew that they had gluten free options, as Schoolhouse Bakery supplies them with the crust, so I know that it is completely safe. I decided it was time to give it a try. My parents came into the city 2 days before my birthday, on the same day as Open City. The weather was horrible and I only managed to get to Lost Cod Clothing Co. before meeting my parents to treat myself to a couple of new t-shirts, but dinner with Mom and Dad more than made up for it.

Morris East--Kale Sprout Salad

Morris East has two locations, downtown on Morris Street and just off Larry Uteck Blvd in the Bedford area. Mom and I decided that we would be better off going to the Larry Uteck location, as my father does not have patience for driving downtown at the best of times, let alone in the pouring rain while trying to find a parking spot.  The atmosphere at the Larry Uteck location is very modern and Art Deco. Photos that I have seen of the Morris Street location show a more old world pizzeria feel.  There was a lot of light from the floor to ceiling windows but alas it was pouring rain. The menu was still their winter/spring menu, so the menu has now slightly altered for the summertime. I first looked at the wine menu, as I had already determined that I wanted a glass but was dismayed by their lack of Nova Scotia wines on the list. I contented myself with a Pinot Grigio from Mission Hill B.C. and it was light and fruity and crisp but not quite what I had wanted. I ordered the Kale and Brussel Sprout salad to start, while Mom had the Beet Salad with warm goat cheese. I loved the Kale Salad with its big flakes of parmesan cheese, candied hazelnuts and mustard vinaigrette. My Mom did not enjoy her salad as much as the beets were a cold contrast to the warm goat cheese and she had assumed that the beets would also be warm. We ordered separate pizzas, as my parents decided they wanted a regular crust as opposed to my gluten free crust. My parents are supportive of my need to be gluten free, but sometimes they just don't wish to eat it. So they ordered the mushroom and sausage pizza on a whole wheat crust while I ordered the enchilada with blackened chicken on my gluten free one. I loved the fact that you can see the flames in the oven from the dining room and the pizzas coming from said oven did not disappoint. There is something about a pizza from a wood fired oven. It crisps the crust so beautifully and melts and browns the cheese so perfectly that you want to stare at it and savour the woodsy smell before diving in for the first slice. My parents thoroughly enjoyed theirs and I almost regretted not ordering the same but on my crust. I liked mine, as it was what I was in the mood for at the time, but I cannot say with definitiveness that it is something that I would order again. The dessert that we all shared, on the other hand, was this gluten free, chocolate lovers dream. It was a chocolate, cheese mousse confection piled high with white chocolate shavings resting on a chocolate ganache base. It was decadence on a plate and it took the three of us to make quick work of it. I would, without hesitation, order that again if given the chance. All in all I was impressed by Morris East and as long as they have gluten free options, I will make an effort to put it on my safe list and frequent it a little more. They just need to work on that wine list a little ;)

Morris East--Beet Salad

Morris East--Mushroom and Sausage Pizza

Morris East--Dessert, Salad and Enchilada Pizza with Blackened Chicken

2 Doors Down--Grilled Salmon

2 Doors Down--Pot de Crème

The second birthday celebration I had, was a week later and with my friends Michelle and Shawn. I almost opted for the Wooden Monkey with them, but again looked around at my options and really wanted something different. I chose to go to 2 Doors Down with them. This restaurant tries to use as many locally sourced things as possible and gives a variety of vegetarian and gluten free options which is really nice. I had eyed the menu online and kind of knew what I wanted when we got there. The rustic décor surprised me and I felt kind of overdressed once there. I liked the fact that we were served water from a Fox Hill Dairy glass milk bottle. It was a nice touch for a place that prides themselves on locally sourced items. Their wine selection was really good but the minute I placed my order for a glass of Blomidon Baco Noir, I was informed that they were in the process of changing over to the summer wine selections and there was no Baco to be had. I was disappointed to say the least as my wine selection was going to complement my dinner selection. So I settled for a glass of Seyval Blanc and changed my dinner selection consequently. I had wanted the burger with gfo, but opted for the salmon which really is not a bad alternative and when it came out perfectly grilled with perfectly roasted veggies and vinaigrette it truly was a good choice and one that I was extremely satisfied with. Michelle and Shawn respectively enjoyed their burger and poutine/calamari as well. Michelle and I shared a Chocolate Pot de Crème, which was essentially a small Mason Jar of chocolate mousse and we were enamoured by the genial use of the jar. It was another birthday well spent and I honestly cannot wait to go back to 2 Doors Down and finally try their burger for myself and hopefully they will have some lovely Baco Noir to pair with it.


Gluten Free in Search of Joy and Joyous Health

When Penguin Canada contacted me in the New Year about reviewing two books for them, I was a little flattered and more than just a little scared. One of the books, Grain Power by Patricia Green and Carolyn Hemming is a collection of gluten-free, ancient grain recipes and Joyous Health by Joy McCarthy is a lifestyle enhancement book meant to bring peace, balance, harmony and joy back to your life through the use of not only food, but mindfulness of body and spirit as well. It is this book that particularly made me feel beyond my scope. While I may have been an English major at Acadia University back in the day and I have taught my junior high students how to write, I did not feel prepared to write a review on a subject I knew very little about and knew the review would not fit the standard mould of fictional writing reviews; however, as I began reading Joy’s book I knew that it would not matter whether the review fit a mould or not because the book itself does not fit a mould either.

The subtitle of Joyous Health is Eat and Live Well Without Dieting and Joy herself states in her opening of chapter one that, “Diets are not sustainable, period.” (McCarthy, Pg. 1) I found myself smiling at this and began thinking just how much I loathe the term “gluten free diet” like it is some kind of fad meant to be embraced by celebrities and their fan base and then discarded when something comes along that is bigger and better leaving those of us with Celiac’s Disease and Gluten Intolerance looking like we are just picky eaters without a legitimate reason because celebrities and social media have made a mockery of our lifestyle. I tell people straight up that I am gluten free, period. It is not a diet; it is a complete lifestyle overhaul which has left me with a lot of anxiety when it comes to eating out, both in restaurants and in the homes of friends and family. I have managed to bury some of the anxiety, but like all things it eventually makes its way to surface and it is not pretty when it does.

Joy McCarthy is a CNP (Certified Nutritional Practitioner) and an RNCP (Registered Nutritional Consulting Practitioner). She is also the Holistic Nutrition & Health Expert to Global TV’s The Morning Show, and she is co-creator of Eat Well Feel Well, Toronto’s first integrated nutrition and yoga program. She makes herself relatable as an author and as a nutritionist by detailing her own struggles with health and nutrition. I found myself nodding in agreement quite often through chapter one as she gives hints about her philosophy and beliefs surrounding food and nutrition and the fact that it is not just physical nourishment that we need but emotional nourishment in the good sense as well. It is the emotional nourishment that we need in order to make the strong, healthy choices that will guide our physical nourishment throughout our lives.

Joy does not give herself the air of standing on a pulpit, preaching to the masses about how to live their lives. Her approach is more of a genuine, heartfelt, nurturing approach with most of what she talks about in chapter one being more along the lines of old-fashioned common sense; the kind we use to hear and follow before the days of convenience took over our lives in the forms of fast, cheap, and plentiful food that resembles and tastes like the cardboard it comes in. She gently guides us through her reasoning for her suggestions and has the proof to back up her claims. The book is laid out in an orderly fashion and goes step by step for the reader and tackles one problem and suggestion at a time. Joy herself says, “Ideally it should take you six weeks to work through this book. However, you can take as long as you wish. Go at your own comfortable pace.” (McCarthy, Pg.5) She includes numerous recipes to try and I really appreciated the fact that they are colour coded just below the title so that I can quickly scan to see if it is a gluten free recipe and make any adjustments accordingly, by quickly scanning for offending ingredients if it is not.

I am glad that I was given the chance to review this book, as I am not sure that it is one that I would have bothered to peruse or purchase otherwise. I am looking forward to my six week or longer journey, eventually reorganizing my kitchen and discarding any gluten free items that do not serve their purpose or are little better than “healthy” junk. I have been on a journey for the last three plus years and I am looking forward to the one that will lead me on the path to joy and joyous health.

Anyone who wishes to find their way to health or their way back to health then this is the book. With an entire section of recipes, detailed explanations of how to select foods for joy and health and how to practice mindful eating, it is like having a nutritionist on hand, complete with an example of how to keep a food and wellness journal. I think I would much rather have a consultation with Joy herself, but until the day that that dream comes true, this will have to do.

 

Book: Paperback | 210 x 133mm | 224 pages | ISBN 9780143186915 | 07 Jan 2014 | Penguin Canada

 PS: Stay tuned for my review of the aforementioned Grain Power. I am making a couple of the recipes and snapping a few pics for my next blog entry.

Birthday without a cake?

We celebrated my Mom's birthday at the end of August and anyone who is friends with me on Facebook probably got a little tired of seeing my Instagram pictures about the cake I made for her.

The whole idea of the cake started at the beginning of August when we took a trip to Saint John and ended up in the Liquid Gold Store; never mind the fact that we have yet to frequent the one in Halifax. While perusing the titles of oil in the store, my mother happened upon a recipe for a cake which was pinned next to a vat of Meyer Lemon Olive Oil. Needless to say she was intrigued, bought a bottle of the oil, got a copy of the recipe both of which ended up in my possession, because you cannot be expected to make your own cake.

It was not a complicated recipe and I personally gave up using butter in cakes and cookies long before I had to go dairy free. It was an eggless cake though which worried me. I had never attempted a gluten free, eggless cake. I really did not want a disaster on my hands and a birthday without a cake. I looked through my cupboards to see what gluten free flours I had on hand. I thought about using all rice flour with a little bit of coconut flour to absorb any excess liquid, but that would have made for a high carb, low fiber content cake and resembling more of a sponge cake. I had Teff flour in my cupboard and while it is a really good flour for bread and I have used it with other flours to make muffins, it can be a little dense. I had Sorghum flour as well and that is what I normally mix with my Teff flour for my muffins. I like a dense muffin but I didn't want an overly dense cake. Lastly, I had Garbanzo and Fava Bean flour which is also good; but again, I was unsure of how it would react in a cake. I decided to mix Teff flour, Rice flour and Coconut flour together and crossed my fingers that they would work. I also decided that white sugar was not an option. I know my Mom watches her intake and I try to use it sparingly now that I am gluten free, just because it is such an additive in a lot of pre-packaged gluten free options. I opted for coconut palm sugar instead and then pretty much stuck to the rest of the remaining ingredients with the addition of xanthan gum.

 The end result was better than I could have hoped for. The batter did what it was supposed to do when the baking soda reacted with the vinegar as leavening. It wasn't too heavy, nor too light and it wasn't overly starchy. It looked and felt like a cake when I removed them from the pans. I frosted it with a classic vanilla buttercream and you can see the end result below.

 

It ended up being one of the best cakes that I have ever made and I would definitely make it again, with or without the lemon infused olive oil. It had a nice hint of lemon with a touch of vanilla in the frosting and it was very light and moist. My Dad went back for a second piece. I always know I have made something good whenever my Dad goes back for more.

 

Meyer Lemon Olive Oil Cake (Gluten Free Version)

2 1/2 cups Flour ( 1 cup Teff flour*, 1 cup Rice flour, 1/2 cup Coconut flour)

1 3/4 cups Coconut Palm Sugar

2 tsp Salt

2 tsp Gluten Free Baking Soda

2 1/4 tsp Xanthan Gum

1 cup Liquid Gold Meyer Lemon Olive Oil

2 3/4 cups Whole Milk (I used Ran-cher Acres Goat Milk Kefir)

1 tsp Vanilla extract
2 Tbsp Vinegar (I used Cider Vinegar)

* Make sure you use Teff flour, because Teff looks like a small seed in the bag whereas the flour looks ground.

Heat oven to 300F.

Mix dry ingredients together. In a separate bowl mix liquid ingredients and whisk. Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix to incorporate. Pour into two 9" round pans that you have greased with olive oil or lined with parchment paper.

Bake for 45 minutes or until baked through, rotating pans part way through baking.

Gluten Free for 1 and a 1/2 years

I have been toying with the idea to write a blog for some time now. What really sparked my interest was all the good food I had over the summer and the number of gluten free places and items I am beginning to find here in Halifax but also throughout Atlantic Canada. The other reason is to share some of the things that I have learned along my journey, and a few of the recipes I have found and adapted along the way.

Going gluten free for me was not an easy task; nor was it a quick, spur of the moment decision brought on by the desire to follow the latest fad. The journey began two years prior to my going fully gluten free.

In the fall of 2010 I didn't feel like myself, I was tired all the time and I had developed a rash all over my neck. Went to the doctor and all she did for my rash was prescribe hydrocortisone cream. The rash went away somewhat but I was still extremely tired. I slept through most of Christmas that year and I was starting to feel cold all the time. My hands literally felt like blocks of ice and my very core felt like cold water had been poured down it. I went back to the doctor, who ordered bloodwork; which led to the discovery that my ferritin levels were at 15. 5 points above the low end of normal. Most people have anywhere between 45 and 92. I could not be declared anaemic though as my hemoglobin levels had managed to stay in the normal range, which meant that my blood was oxygenated. Doctor told me to take iron supplements. Great! Problem solved! Just one thing was wrong with that curative; iron pills are nasty. I had developed nausea when eating and upper right quadrant pain in the area of the gall bladder. Iron pills were going to compound the problem in my opinion. I tried taking them at night and I tried taking them in the morning, however the lowest dose of iron made me so nauseous and I had a new problem forming.

I was still tired all the time and my fatigue was leading me to bed at 8pm on nights that I wasn't curling; the problem being that I was waking up anywhere between 1am and 2am with upper right quadrant pain and no way of getting back to sleep. So I went back to the doctor. I went through weeks of having different forms of sleeping pills prescribed to me, but my breaking point came when finally I was up to 150mg of Trazadone and I was still waking up, in pain. The doctor suggested an SSRI which really is a fancy title for an anti-depressant. All of my physical symptoms were suggesting to my doctor that I was depressed. It is funny thinking about it now, but it wasn't so funny at the time. I was the least depressed person that I or any of my friends knew and here was my doctor suggesting that I was depressed. I was getting anxious by the fact that they did not know what was wrong with me at this point, extremely frustrated and angry that I was being pigeon-holed into a category because I was not a textbook case of physical symptoms and I was rapidly losing faith in the medical profession as a whole. I was dropping weight like crazy, my hair and skin were an absolute mess by this point and family and friends were starting to worry, and I was still so incredibly tired, and I could not concentrate for more than 10 minutes at a time because I was so exhausted. I refused the SSRI and found a Naturopathic Doctor and made an appointment. At this point I had finally reached the two week break for the Canada Winter Games and I had lunch with two friends. They watched as I ate and then turned 50 shades of white within 15 minutes. The idea of me being depressed was already absolutely absurd to them, more so after that lunch date.

I met with the Naturopath two weeks after that lunch date.  She listened patiently and read all the paperwork that I had filled out and she concluded that I needed to come off dairy, gluten and start taking some supplements because I was clearly lacking nutrients. She put me on a form of iron that did not nauseate me, she gave me B12 shots to give me a little more energy and she wrote letters to my doctor explaining the tests that she wanted me to have done. I am glad of my decision to see her.

Going gluten free was not easy. When I first started I felt like I was in the woods without a map, compass or GPS to guide my way. I was given a few hints of how to get started and I even went so far as to purchase the Complete Idiot's Guide to Gluten Free Cooking. That book was money well spent because it gave me a list of all the things that I needed to have and all the things that I needed to avoid. A co-worker even loaned me Alyce Feindel's Living and Eating Gluten Free cookbook. I made some recipes out of that book but I noticed that my confidence in the kitchen had dwindled a fair bit because I was unfamiliar with the ingredients and it wasn't my normal way of eating and cooking. It took some time for me to realise that it was indeed my new normal but I still had tests that needed to be done, which meant a return to gluten and the sick and nauseous feelings.

I finally had the gastroscopy done in March of 2012 and I went gluten free for good on March 28th, 2012. I have not looked back since. Sure I have had a few setbacks when I have not read ingredients carefully but that goes for anyone really. I have regained a lot of my confidence in my cooking, especially this past summer and I have started to experiment with converting my old recipes into new gluten free creations. My hair and skin are finally beginning to look more nourished and I can actually sleep normally again. I still take some supplements to ensure that I am getting enough nutrients, but I am trying to eat as many of my nutrients as I can. I am beginning to find more and more things here in Halifax that I can have and am focusing more on that, rather than what I have to go without. Hopefully this blog will be helpful to those who are also struggling being gluten free in Halifax.