I'm not going to lie: gluten makes me smile.
In February, Michael suggested we go on a raw diet. I complied but found it difficult to come up with new recipes. This healthy kick however inspired me to give more healthy treats and entrees to our kids. I made raw pizza, but it was too healthy for us in that, as Michael put it, "the crust makes me want to puke." We were losing weight in that we didn't want to eat our raw / vegetarian cuisine. I thought that a medium between decadent and raw would be a great kind of pizza crust for us. Gluten-free baking seemed like it might be our new lifestyle!
Well, it lasted for a short while in that even gluten-free crust was not savory to either Michael or the kids. So on my pantry shelf sat mason jars of exotic flours and powders - garbanzo and flava bean flour, egg replacer, xanthum gum, etc.
This past week we visited a friend about 1 hour away and I wanted to bring her something that the kids and I made. Not having enough flour for cookies, I looked to my ingredients and decided to make her something semi-healthy. Gluten-free muffins with chocolate chips!
I messed them up when I pulled them out 2/3rds of the way to insert the chips on top. This caused the middle to not be fully cooked. But after a taste test, Michael assured me that it wouldn't have mattered because the tasted awful. I was not offended; I was in agreement! And in this batch I had snuck in some regular flour to offset the strange slightly-bitter taste that the unusual ingredients had.
This was the moment I swore off gluten-free baking and cooking. I think the key is just to not eat a lot whether it be Raw, Vegetarian, Carnivore, or Glutenless cuisine.
I made some gluten free cupcakes for William's Birthday party for relatives that are gluten free. They actually were not horrible, but they were much more dense, almost like a scone, than a cupcake. Maybe the lemon frosting covered it up. :)
ReplyDelete"Not horrible" doesn't fly in the kids' and Michael's taste standards. Although I will eat anything, the effort it took to gather the ingredients and then make the stuff for even a mediocre turnout was not worth it. If we ever get celiac disease, I'll return to the notion, but until then, we are just going to cut down on portions rather than change the food itself.
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