Black lentils are more substantial and earthier than their green cousins, and they hold their shape and texture throughout. Astound your friends with your "discovery"! I find them at the Indian grocery store or health food store. Or use regular lentils (pictured with regular lentils and without greens) – they'll work fine too. My younger son knows of my love of lentils and presented me with a variation of this recipe for my birthday. I don’t know its original source and I’ve made substantial changes, but I thank the person who inspired it. It was a great birthday present. Nutrition Info Calories: 193.7 · Fat: 9.6g · Carbohydrates: 22.4g · Protein: 8.1g Ingredients 1 cup Black Lentils 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 clove of garlic, chopped 1 medium onion, chopped 1 medium carrot, chopped 16 oz vegetable broth (I use G Washington Brand gluten-free seasoning and broth mix) 1 cup of water 4 cups chopped fresh kale, spinach or greens of your choice 1 teaspoon of black pepper 1 pound of interesting mushrooms, chopped 1-2 tablespoons of gf tamari sauce Directions If you remember to, soak the black lentils overnight to reduce the cooking time. In a medium pot, sauté the garlic, onions and carrot until tender, about 5 minutes. Add broth, water, lentils and peppers. Heat to boil then reduce and simmer uncovered, for 20 minutes. Add the greens and continue to simmer for 10 more minutes. During the last 10 minutes of simmering, sauté the mushrooms in olive oil and gf tamari sauce. If you forgo the mushroom topping, taste the lentils and greens before serving and salt and pepper to taste. Dish up the lentils and greens and top with mushrooms. Serves 4. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Join me on my free, fun and interactive happy gluten-free webinar to get the facts about who benefits by going gluten-free, strategies to avoid it, and how to get the support you need. September 27, 9 pm Register here. Can't make that time? Register anyway and I'll let you know how to get access to the replay. I love salad. And I love unadorned sautéed or roasted vegetables. I do have to admit that I have gotten bored with zucchini, which seems to propagate at a preternatural rate from the two zuke plants in our garden. When I got home from work one recent Friday I decided I was tired of all the chopping. And I wanted something more filling but still in keeping with my eating approach which is rich in veggies, beans and lentils. I didn’t want to spend a bunch of time in the kitchen. Enter the split mung bean and collard greens soup! The mung beans break down to a consistency that is very much like the cream of mushroom or cream of chicken soups of my youth. I suppose for some folks that isn’t a ringing endorsement, but it was filling and comforting and a nice departure from naked vegetables. AND it was totally Eat to Live-worthy, It made a lot of food and it was better as leftovers. I recommend it when a low-labor healthy and hearty soup is called for. Split Mung Beans and Collards Ingredients 1 cup uncooked split mung beans, rinsed and drained (mung beans don’t need to be soaked) 6 cups veggie broth (I used 6 cups water and 4 packs of G Washington’s Golden Seasoning and Broth) 6 to 8 ounces of frozen greens – I used collards Salt and pepper to taste Directions Place beans and broth in a saucepan and bring to full boil. Stir well. Reduce heat, cover with lid and simmer 60 minutes (or 90 if you have the time) or until beans are soft (and falling apart). Add frozen greens and cook an additional 15 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste. Makes 6 servings (at least!) Happy, Healthy, Gluten-Free Webinar Are you recently diagnosed with celiac disease or gluten intolerance? Do you have a health issue that you think may be improved by eliminating wheat from your diet? Have you heard about health benefits of going gluten-free and want to check it out for yourself? Then you'll want to join this free webinar! During this fun and interactive 60-minute session, Claire Baker will give you the facts and practical tips for eating gluten-free safely and well. Date: Thursday, September 27, 2012 Time: 9:00 Eastern Register here: Free Happy Healthy Gluten-free Webinar Can't make this time? No worries! The webinar will be recorded and you'll be able to watch at a time that is convenient for you. Register to get the replay information: Free Happy Healthy Gluten-free Webinar This recipe is from my ecookbooklet: So What CAN You Eat? Gluten-free Paleo Vegan (mostly) recipes for health and Weigh Loss, also available for Kindle at Amazon. These eggs so fast and easy it'll make your head spin. As written, the recipe is delicious and filling and chock full of protein and healthy goodness. If you've got room in your calorie budget, serve it with additional cheese, a high quality gf corn tortilla or chips, and/or sour cream or plain yogurt to taste. But it's really very satisfying as-is. Promise! Nutrition Info · Calories: 242.6 · Fat: 7.1g · Carbohydrates: 29.1g · Protein: 17.0g Ingredients 1/2 can Mexican-seasoned diced tomatoes (or plain if you prefer) 8 oz of your favorite salsa 1/2 bag of frozen chopped spinach 1 can black beans, drained and rinsed 1 Tablespoon shredded Monterey jack cheese 4 eggs Salt and pepper to taste Directions Combine the tomatoes, salsa, frozen spinach and black beans in a skillet. Heat on high until everything is hot and bubbly. Reduce heat to medium. Make four wells in the bean mixture and carefully break an egg into each one. Cover and cook on medium for 3 to 5 minutes depending on how runny you like your yolks. Season the top of the eggs with a little salt and ground pepper and sprinkle lightly with shredded cheese. Divide among plates and serve with chips or tortillas and sour cream or plain yogurt if you must. Serves 4 Sign up for the mailing list to get my new ebook Gluten Free: Practical Advice for a Happy Healthy Gluten-Free Life and other updates, offerings, tips and more! (I never sell or share my mailing list.) I recently bought a three-pack of romaine lettuce from Ocean Mist Farms. They clearly label their lettuce as gluten free, lactose free, vegan, and heart healthy. I'm still trying to decide if this is a good thing or just really insulting. It's sort of like proclaiming that air has oxygen or that water has hydrating properties. I checked out Ocean Mist's website at www.oceanmist.com. They don't mention gluten-free properties of vegetables at all on their site, so I'm thinking that an over-zealous marketing person slapped all the pro-health properties on the label. In fact, they seem very sincere about providing quality produce, especially artichokes, which I admit I've eaten occasionally (mostly at restaurants) and never prepared myself.
I don't want to act like a big know-it-all. Maybe some people ARE unaware that all vegetables are gluten, lactose and animal product free. Maybe it's a public service to point it out. Maybe there is someone out there who is so unfamiliar with the property of vegetables that they don't know that they are inherently vegan. (Of course, there ARE carniverous plants. My brother, upon learning of my vegetarianism nearly 20 years ago, asked if as a vegetarian I would I eat a venus flytrap. But I digress.) On the other hand, I am a bit offended. Just as I am happy for Miley Cyrus that she found better health eating gluten free as a lifestyle choice, I am annoyed with her for gumming up the message that there are those of us with celiac and gulten intolerance that HAVE to eat gluten-free. Does displaying the health properties of lettuce on the package actually prompt people to buy more? Can you imagine this conversation at the store? "Look Honey! Lettuce is GOOD for you! Let's get six heads." "Why no, Dear. I had no idea it had all of the properties of a green leafy vegetable! Let's get nine heads!" Wait til they find out that spinach has all those properties AND is fat free... (Sign up for the mailing list and get my "QuickStart Guide to going Gluten-free." I never share or sell my list.) There are a couple of problems with the whole idea of using zucchini in baked goods. 1) It's a vegetable, and it freaks my partner out that they would be a key ingredient in a cake-like product. 2) Zucchinis are a summer thing, and baking is NOT a summer thing. No one likes a kitchen that is all hot. Still, we were recently faced with the challenge of how to use a rogue zucchini from the garden that somehow grew to be 2 feet long without us noticing. One person advised that we just chuck it into the compost. A number of folks advised savory dishes. More people suggested zucchini bread. Frankly the zucchini is big enough for multiple uses. I decided to start with a sweet baked option. My criteria: 1) I needed it to be muffinable and to have paper muffin cups on hand, since we don't have dedicated gluten-free bread baking pans. (Not that they can't get clean enough to use for gluten-free baking, but you never know. Plus I hate to wash dishes and the baking cups method reduces the labor.) 2) I needed to have all the ingredients already 3) I needed to be able to believe that it had some redeeming nutritional qualities. Zucchini IS a vegetable, and I entered all the ingredients into a website to determine that there are only 115 calories per muffin, so I guess that qualifies. As just about everyone else in the world does, I found a couple of recipes on line, then mashed together the characteristics I liked to come up with the recipe. It had eggs and raisins and cinnamon, 3 1/2 cups of grated zucchini, and I used sunflower seeds because I didn't have any other suitable nuts. I think I've revealed in the past that I am not much of a baker. I should also confess that I did something a little devil-may-care: I used Bob's Red Mill Gluten-free flour blend AND xanthan gum AND coconut oil for the first time ever in a baking project while making up the recipe as I went along. My sciency brain knows not to confound with too many variables, but what the heck. I was hopeful when the batter came out pretty tasty, though more coconutty than I expected. (duh, right?). Jenn DOES NOT like coconut, but it's a texture thing more than a taste thing. But all that zucchini might do a good coconut imitation, so I'm thinking it would not be to her liking. I mixed it up. What I'm assuming was an effect of the xanthan gum was a weird gluey texture, sort of what I imagine would happen if I put Elmers glue into the mix. I glopped it into the baking cups. I put it in the oven at 350 degrees for half an hour. Out came what appeared to be a perfectly normal-looking tin of muffins. Sadly, however, the xanthan glue had firmly attached the muffin to the paper, making it impossible to peal a muffin and have it retain a muffin shape. At least a third of the muffin stuck and stayed with the paper. Not to be deterred, I ate what I could with my fingers, then took a fork to the paper to scrape off what more I could. Jenn tried one, knowing that it had zucchini but not coconut oil. Her report? "It tastes like a muffin." Can't argue, right? But still, I can't in good conscience share my recipe amalgamation since the outcome were seriously-stuck-to-the-paper muffins. Here are links to the three main recipes I referred to when putting it together: http://www.bobsredmill.com/recipes_detail.php?rid=754 http://blog.cleanprogram.com/a-clean-gluten-free-girls-zucchini-muffins/ http://www.hautappetit.com/2012/03/best-gluten-free-zucchini-muffins.html Any advice for the stuck-to-the-paper problem? |
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