Notice: Function _load_textdomain_just_in_time was called incorrectly. Translation loading for the wp-ultimate-recipe domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home/maryzahc/public_html/adultfoodallergies.com/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6121 denisedaniel – Page 17 – surviving the food allergy apocalypse (archive)
Meatball Sub Meatballs in Marinara Sauce over Penne
As I stated a week ago in my Quick-ish Marinara Sauce post, I really miss meatball subs. Although I don’t have a safe bread or cheese, this meatball recipe gets me at least part way there.
Meatball Sub Meatballs
Makes about 24 large meatballs, about the size of golf balls or ping pong balls.
1 pound of 80/20 ground pork
1 pound of ground beef (I prefer a higher fat content for the beef as well, but that’s up to you)
1 Tablespoon of ground chia seed
3 Tablespoons of water
1 Tablespoon of olive oil
1 medium onion minced very finely
1 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon of oregano
1/2 teaspoon of basil
1/2 teaspoon of thyme
1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder
3/4 cup of gluten-free bread crumbs
a small amount of olive oil for greasing the baking sheet.
Preheat oven to 375°F.
Take ground pork and ground beef and crumble it into a large mixing bowl.
In a small bowl, mix chia seed, water, and olive oil together to make a chia egg. Set it aside.
Mince onion and add it to the bowl with the ground pork and ground beef.
Add the salt, ground black pepper, oregano, basil, thyme, and garlic power to the bowl, sprinkling them evenly over the beef and pork (it’ll be easier to mix it in).
Add your bread crumbs and the chia egg, and use your hands to knead the mixture until it is thoroughly combined.
Meatball mix after all ingredients combined
Grease your baking sheet. Form meatballs about the size golf balls. I used a large scoop from Pampered Chef to form my meatballs, but you can use your hands instead. Place them on the baking sheet, spaced out evenly, and put them in the oven.
Meatballs before cooking
Bake them for 30 minutes. Once they are done (internal temp of 161°F) you can add them to sauce, or you can freeze some of them to use later.
Meatballs after cooking
Enjoy, and if you’ve got ideas for dairy-free, egg-free, gluten-free, corn-free bread recipes, I want to hear about them!
Quick-ish Marinara with Meatballs and Gluten Free Penne
One of the things I really miss is a great meatball sub with gobs of cheese. Since I’m allergic to dairy, wheat, and eggs (in addition to what feels like 50 million other things) that’s a little hard. I haven’t totally figured it out yet, because there isn’t a vegan cheese that works for me because of my coconut, almond, and corn allergies. I’m also missing a sub roll, as I’m still trying to figure out gluten-free, corn-free, dairy-free, and egg-free bread, but I’ve gotten two steps on the way. This week I’ll be posting a marinara sauce you can use for meatball subs, pasta, or for anything else that you need tomato sauce. In two weeks, I’ll be posting a recipe for meatballs. For those of you that have a safe bread and a safe cheese you can use, you’ll have everything you need for a meatball sub. I’m totally jealous of all of you, and while I’m working on it, I’m just going to eat the meatballs and sauce over pasta, which isn’t bad either.
The reason that this is a quick-ish marinara sauce is that I’m using crushed canned tomatoes and canned tomato paste (Cento brand – no citric acid in crushed, tomato puree or paste, but watch out as other Cento canned tomato varieties do have citric acid, which can be corn derived), rather than starting from tomatoes. It still takes some time to simmer, making it a weekend dish, but you can freeze the leftovers and use it for a meal or two during the week with little to no prep.
Quick-ish Marinara Sauce
1 large onion, diced very finely
3 stalks of celery, diced finely
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 carrot (use a vegetable peeler or a micro planer to peel or zest until the carrot’s just a pile of peels or zest)
1 Tablespoon of olive oil
1 – 8 ounce can of tomato paste
2 – 28 cans of crushed tomatoes or tomato puree
1 cup of vegetable stock or water
1/2 cup of white or red wine (your preference, I used white becuse my tomatoes needed brightening) or use additional vegetable stock or water
1/4 teaspoon of oregano
1/4 teaspoon of marjoram
1/4 teaspoon of thyme
1/4 teaspoon of dried basil (if not using fresh basil below, double the amount)
1/4 teaspoon of rosemary
1/4 teaspoon of black pepper
10 fresh leaves of basil, chopped
salt to taste (I used about a teaspoon this time to get it where I like it)
Dice your onions and celery, mince your garlic, and zest or peel your carrot.
Diced OnionsDiced Celery
In a large stock pot, heat the olive oil over medium heat and add your onions, celery, garlic and carrots. Saute them until the onions and celery are somewhat translucent.
Onions, celery, garlic, and carrots being sauted
Add the contents of the can of tomato paste and stir it into the vegetables so it is equally distributed throughout. Then add your cans of crushed tomatoes, the vegetable stock, and the white wine. Stir thoroughly. Reduce the heat to medium low (about 3-4 on my burner dial).
Add your oregano, marjoram, thyme, dried basil, rosemary and black pepper to the sauce and stir to incorporate the spices into the sauce. Chop your basil if you have not already, and add it to the sauce, again stirring thoroughly.
Marinara simmering
Continue to simmer your sauce on medium low until the carrot has dissolved completely into the sauce and the sauce is the consistency you prefer (for me, this is about an hour or so). Once you have reached that point, taste your sauce to see if it needs any salt and add it at that time. I found that I needed about 1/2 of a teaspoon. If you find that your sauce is too acidic, sometimes I will add about a teaspoon of brown sugar and that helps.
Stay tuned for the meatball recipe to be posted in two weeks!
So one of the more recent traumatic events (okay, not really traumatic, but annoying certainly) was the purging of my spice cabinet of things I can’t use any more as a result of the corn and wheat allergies. If you know me in real life, I’m a tad obsessive about my spices. I have a four-shelf stand-alone cabinet in the kitchen that contains nothing but spices, spice mixes, and vinegar and oils. There may or may not be an inventory spreadsheet on my Google drive with 157 items on it so that I can get to it on my phone while I am grocery shopping. I’m also frankly surprised and disappointed that I haven’t made it on some platinum frequent order program with Penzey’s spices, given my order volume (tongue firmly in cheek, I love them). But in any case, I had to get rid of a few of my favorite mixes, Penzey’s or otherwise, mostly because they contained citric acid or other problematic ingredients for me. So I played around, did some Google-fu, and experimented and came up with the following mixes that make me happy.
DIY Montreal Steak Seasoning
4 Tablespoons of Kosher Salt
1 Tablespoon of black peppercorns
1 Tablespoon of dried minced onion
1 Tablespoon of dried thyme
1 Tablespoon of dried rosemary
½ Tablespoon of dried minced garlic
½ Tablespoon of crushed red pepper flakes
2 teaspoons of fennel seed
1 teaspoon of dill seed
1 teaspoon of paprika
Put this in a blender or spice/coffee grinder, or use my trick where you take a pint mason canning jar, put all the spices in the jar and screw the blender blade assembly to the jar and put it on blender. Using any and all methods, blend until fairly well ground as shown below and put in a spice jar and store. I use this as a rub for beef, pork and chicken.
DIY Montreal Steak Seasoning
DIY Creamy Peppercorn Dressing Mix
¼ cup of black peppercorns ground coarsely (in a blender or spice/coffee grinder, or use my trick where you take a pint mason canning jar, put the spices in the jar and screw the blender blade assembly to the jar and put it on blender)
⅛ cup of sugar
⅛ cup of dried minced garlic
⅛ cup of dried thyme
⅛ cup of dried parsley.
2 ½ Tablespoons of salt
DIY Creamy Peppercorn Dressing Mix
Put all ingredients in a bowl spices in a bowl and whisk together thoroughly. Put in a spice jar to store. To use, mix 1 Tablespoon of Creamy Peppercorn Dressing Mix in 2 Tablespoons of water and let stand five minutes. Mix in ½ cup Earth Balance Mindful Mayo and enjoy. If you can have dairy and eggs, use 1/4 cup of mayo and 1/4 cup of sour cream 🙂
Creamy Peppercorn Dressing using Earth Balance Mindful Mayo
DIY Singapore Seasoning
2 Tablespoons of lemon peel powder (you can get this from Penzey’s or grind up dried lemon peel in your spice/coffee grinder)
½ Tablespoon of black pepper
1 teaspoon of garlic powder
1 teaspoon of onion powder
1 teaspoon of tumeric
½ teaspoon of ground coriander
½ teaspoon of ground cumin
½ teaspoon of ground ginger
¼ teaspoon of ground nutmeg
¼ teaspoon of ground fennel
¼ teaspoon of ground cinnamon
⅛ teaspoon of ground fenugreek
⅛ teaspoon of ground white pepper
⅛ teaspoon of ground cardamom
⅛ teaspoon of ground cloves
⅛ teaspoon of ground cayenne red pepper
Put all ingredients in a bowl spices in a bowl and whisk together thoroughly. Put in a spice jar to store. You can use this as a spice rub for chicken or pork or to flavor rice noodles.
DIY Singapore Seasoning
Full of Flavor Herb Mix
Penzey’s has a Mural of Flavor spice mix that I love, but it has citric acid (corn) in it, so it’s out for me now. I came up with the following mix to replace it.
1 ½ Tablespoons of dried minced shallots
1 teaspoon of thyme
1 teaspoon of rosemary
1 teaspoon of basil
1 teaspoon of chives
½ teaspoon of onion powder
½ teaspoon of garlic powder
½ teaspoon of lemon peel
¼ teaspoon of ground coriander
½ teaspoon of green peppercorns
½ teaspoon of dill weed
¼ teaspoon of lemon peel powder (you can get this from Penzey’s or grind up dried lemon peel in your spice/coffee grinder)
¼ teaspoon of black pepper
¼ teaspoon of orange peel
Put this in a blender or spice/coffee grinder, or use my trick where you take a pint mason canning jar, put all the spices in the jar and screw the blender blade assembly to the jar and put it on blender. Using any and all method, blend until it is ground to a coarse consistency (not powder) as shown below and put in a spice jar and store. I use this on vegetables, in soups, on beef, pork, chicken and fish. It’s a great all-purpose spice blend.
Full of Flavor Herb Mix
Hope you guys enjoy these spice mixes. If you’ve got some of your own, please share!
So most of you know by now, since I’ve (Denise) complained mightily, the whole corn allergy thing sucks. And some of you might have wondered why we haven’t added a corn-free tag to the recipes we’ve posted since the corn thing went down. The short answer is, it’s just too hard, and there’s too much cross-contamination for those who are super sensitive, and I can’t be responsible for that. The longer answer is a bit more complicated than that.
Since I got the positive scratch test, I’ve been researching how to deal with a corn allergy. And I’ve been in overdrive since I failed the corn challenge. Here’s the thing, corn is in everything and it’s not required to be labeled at all, and some people have reactions just to the cross contamination of other ingredients being processed in the same factory or mill, what it’s waxed or gassed or sprayed or washed with, or any other number of things. Here’s the list of corn derivatives. Check out this page Where’s the Corn in Foods? from the Corn Allergy Girl, where corn can be hiding in daily life in New to Corn Allergy from Corn Free Lifestyle, and a post about how corn gets into meat during processing and otherwise, Corn-tamination Series: Avoiding Corn in Meat again from the Corn Allergy Girl. I’m not even going to get into the medications, household products, personal care products or cleaning products issues. Furthermore, the cross contamination issues are huge for super sensitives and many people can’t handle products that I am still using at this point. Like fresh vegetables from the grocery store, because they’re waxed with a corn derived wax, or sprayed with ethylene gas. Also, many people have difficulty finding safe flours and oils even if there is no corn contained in the product, like sorghum flour or olive oil because of cross contamination in processing. And everyone seems to have a different level of sensitivity, with some people falling on the corn-lite side of the spectrum meaning they can tolerate more than most, and the super sensitives who may have only a few safe foods they can eat. If you’ve got a corn allergy, you might want to check out the Corn Allergy and Intolerance group on Facebook and/or Delphi Avoiding Corn forums to get advice about products and what others have had reactions to.
At this point, I’m simply not comfortable labeling a recipe corn-free unless it really is truly corn-free, and honestly, in our food supply at this current time, that’s damn near impossible. So basically that’s why you aren’t going to see a corn-free tag on our blog. My (Denise’s) recipes will not have any obvious corn ingredients, but since I can’t guarantee that the ingredients I’m using are safe for everyone with a corn allergy, we’re not going to tag recipes as corn-free. Also, since Mary Kate can eat corn, and her diet is limited enough, her recipes may still contain corn. So I guess what I’m saying is, do what’s right for you, and use safe ingredients you can tolerate. Be careful out there.
It’s summer still, although there’s been a fall-like chill in the air lately. So there’s still opportunities for cookouts and potlucks and all sorts of communal eating, and sometimes you need coleslaw. And with a dairy and egg allergy that can be challenging. Especially if one is anti-coleslaw with vinegar and oil dressing. As far as I’m concerned, coleslaw with vinegar and oil dressing is a salad with cabbage, it’s not coleslaw. Am I the only one with deeply held beliefs on coleslaw? (Yeah, probably.) In any case, my mom used to make this coleslaw dressing with Miracle Whip with a bit of milk, orange juice, and sugar that was the right sort of tangy, creamy and sweet all at the same time. And my mom doesn’t really cook, but seriously this dressing was perfect. I could eat buckets of this coleslaw back in the day before food allergies reared their ugly heads.
Now that Earth Balance has a vegan mayo that’s really good, I’ve been able to recreate my mom’s coleslaw dressing (see our review here). And it’s good and pretty close to the original.
3 Tablespoons of orange juice (or lemon or lime if you like your dressing more tart)
1 teaspoon of sugar
Chop your cabbage however you like cabbage to be in coleslaw, but I like mine to be diced, about a half inch by a half inch.
Chopped cabbage
Once you have six cups of chopped cabbage, peel your carrots and use a large grater to grate them.
Grated Carrot and Chopped Cabbage
Then place your Earth Balance Mindful Mayo Original, the orange juice and the sugar into a small bowl and whisk the ingredients together until smooth.
Dressing after whisking
Combine cabbage, carrots and dressing in a large bowl and mix together well. The orange color to the dressing doesn’t actually come from the orange juice, it comes from the grated carrots.
My apologies in advance to those of you with fish and shellfish allergies, but I’m from Maine originally, and I love, love seafood. Although I have three confirmed shellfish allergies (crab, scallops, and clams), and one additional positive scratch test in the elimination/challenge confirmation process (lobster, I better not be allergic), I only appear to be anaphylactic with respect to soft-shell crab. I still avoid the other confirmed seafood allergies, because you never know (past reactions don’t predict future reactions) and because the symptoms I do get are bad enough, but I’m stubborn enough to continue eating fish or shellfish that aren’t on my confirmed or positive scratch test list. However, if a medical professional or your symptoms have made it clear that you can’t eat any shellfish or fish, don’t follow my lead because I can be an idiot when it comes to doing what I’m supposed to do for my own personal health, as we’ve previously established on this blog.
With that said, let’s move on to the dish of the day. I’m a shellfish girl primarily, meaning I like(d) crabs, scallops, clams, shrimp, and lobster. For me seafood really doesn’t mean fish, but I don’t mind a good piece of haddock. Haddock has to be cooked right or you get this dried out, tasteless piece of mushy cardboard. Since most of my shellfish favs are off limits these days, and the only way I can have haddock cooked at a restaurant is broiled with some lemon (since I’m allergic to dairy, wheat, and eggs) which tends to result in cardboard, I started buying some and cooking it at home. Haddock is also a standard offering in most fish departments in New England grocery stores.
Haddock can be a tricky thing to cook because it’s really easy to overcook, and over-cooked haddock is, as stated above, a dried-out piece of mushy cardboard. I’ll do my best to explain, but it’s sort of a continuing learning process/practice makes perfect kind of thing.
Pan-Fried Haddock
Serves 4 adults
2 pounds of fresh haddock (you can get previously frozen, but it won’t stay together as well and may fall apart as you’re frying it)
1 cup of whole grain gluten-free flour mix (see recipe below or use what you like that you have already, or if you can have wheat this works with all-purpose flour as well, as I used to make this before the wheat thing)
spice mixture for flour (see below)
2 Tablespoons of canola oil (or other oil safe for you and suitable for frying)
Canola oil (or other oil safe for you and suitable for frying), enough to fill the bottom of your skillet to the depth of a quarter of an inch
Whole Grain Gluten-Free Flour Mix
This makes several cups of a whole grain gluten-free flour mix, but you only need a cup for this recipe. If you want, save it for another use, or cut back the amounts proportionately so that you make less. Place the following ingredients in a large bowl and whisk them together thoroughly. Take out one cup for the recipe, and put the rest into an airtight container to store to use for anything that calls for gluten-free flour.
100 grams of millet flour
125 grams of white sorghum flour
125 grams of oat flour
75 grams of sweet or glutinous rice flour
75 grams of tapioca starch
Spice Mixture for flour
Mix the following ingredients in a little bowl:
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/8 teaspoon of paprika
1/8 teaspoon of ground chipotle pepper
1/8 teaspoon of ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon of rosemary (you might want to crunch it up into smaller pieces)
1/8 teaspoon of cayenne pepper
1/8 teaspoon of garlic
1/8 teaspoon of thyme
Spice Mixture for Flour
Take a large gallon ziploc bag, or a large bowl and mix the cup of whole grain gluten free flour and the spice mixture together. I use a ziploc bag because I can just seal and shake after putting the fish in it without having to handle the fish (I use tongs) or get my hands all covered in flour. Put the bag or the bowl aside for now.
Put your skillet on the burned and pour enough oil in it so that there is about a quarter of an inch of oil in the bottom. If you use a thick pan like my cast iron skillet and it’ll take a while to heat up, turn the heat on now to medium (about 5 or 6 on the dial).
Take your haddock fillets, and cut them into pieces about 3-4 inches long. I find that pan-frying a whole fillet is messy, somewhat dangerous (think splashing oil), and doesn’t work well because of the variable thicknesses of the fillet, resulting in either under-cooked fish in some parts or overcooked fish in others. I choose where to cut based on the thickness trying to get pieces that are a consistent thickness. Then I can fry the thinner pieces for less time and the thicker pieces longer so that hopefully nothing gets overcooked.
Place your haddock pieces in a large bowl with the 2 Tablespoons of oil and toss them carefully to coat the haddock pieces with oil.
You can test your oil to see if it’s hot enough by taking a tiny piece of the fish and putting it in the oil to see if it bubbles and sizzles (see the picture below for bubbling and sizzling around the edges of the fish). If your oil is hot and ready to fry, take 3 pieces of the haddock, and put them in the ziploc, and shake it to coat the pieces. (Or put them in the bowl if that’s what you’re using and cover them with flour.) Take the pieces and shake off the excess flour (I use tongs) and place the pieces of fish in the skillet.
Haddock pieces frying in skillet
You should fry them, turning them once, until they are golden brown on each side, and so that the fish is just barely opaque, like this:
Haddock after frying
It should no longer be translucent, but it should not be a bright solid white either, and the haddock should just flake away in layers at a touch as shown above. If it’s overcooked, it won’t do that, it’ll be stiff at the touch and you’ll have to put effort into breaking off pieces with a fork. I’d tell you how many minutes per side, but that’s dependent on how thick your haddock piece is, so I can’t really do that. So again, it’s a practice makes perfect thing. Once the pieces are cooked, put them on a plate or cookie sheet lined with paper towels (this works best, I used paper lunch bags in the photo because I was out of paper towels), and let the oil drain off. (Also, you can take a tip from Alton Brown, as offered by Mary Kate, and put a cookie rack upside down on the paper towels, because it keeps the food off of the oil-soaked paper towels but it still drains the oil. I’ll definitely try this next time.)
Once all your haddock is fried, you can serve it with a little tartar sauce, which I make by mixing some Earth Balance Mindful Mayo, some relish, and a couple of drops of hot sauce. Enjoy!
Since I also cannot buy salsa during this whole elimination torture thing (most have celery and onion, which are two no-no’s at the moment), I whipped this up so I’d have something to eat at my book group, since I’d gotten “regular” allergen-filled food for everyone else. I wasn’t going for culinary genius, but just something incredibly quick that wouldn’t be awful, based on what I had in the fridge and cupboards. And when it was done, I was surprised that it came out so well, and Mary Kate suggested I write it up on the blog. If you are not avoiding onion, you can add an small onion to this and I’m sure it would be lovely. You need a food processor to do this one. I tried it in a blender, but I just didn’t get the result I wanted. This is also a fast one, the fifteen minutes includes washing the food processor (if you have the jar of taco seasoning made up ahead of time).
15 Minute Salsa
1 red bell pepper, de-stemmed and de-seeded, and cut into large chunks.
1 jalapeno pepper, de-stemmed and de-seeded, and cut into large chunks.
4-5 cloves of garlic, peeled with the stem end trimmed
5 tomatoes, stem end trimmed, and cut into eighths (I don’t seed my tomatoes because I don’t mind seeds, but if you do, feel free to take them out, but you might want to add another tomato)
De-stem, de-seed and cut red bell pepper and the jalapeno pepper into chunks. Trim stem ends of garlic.
Red bell pepper, jalapeno pepper and garlic
Core tomatoes and cut them into eighths.
Tomatoes, showing cored and cut into eighths
Put peppers, garlic and tomatoes into your food processor. You may need to do this in batches, I have to because my food processor is on the small size. Have a large bowl read to dump your batches in. Pulse until you get the consistency you like. I prefer it a little more processed.
Salsa in food processor
Once you have all your processing batches in the large bowl, stir it well so that all the peppers, garlic and tomatoes are well mixed through out the salsa. Your veggies may look a little frothy, but that’ll sort out once you add the remaining ingredients. Add the taco seasoning, red wine vinegar, and olive oil.
Salsa before seasoning, vinegar and oil are mixed in.
Mix all the ingredients together with a spatula making sure that all the spice mixture gets evenly distributed. This makes about 5-6 cups of salsa so it’s a great recipe for a party. Enjoy!
So I was going totally nutty because I’ve not been eating much except rice, salad, steamed or roasted vegetables and broiled beef and pork during this whole food elimination torture thing. I’m not good at eating the same thing all the time. And I love spice. I wanted something different to eat. Something that had taste! So I was dubbing around my Pinterest boards and realized that I could make homemade taco seasoning and leave out any onion powder (still waiting to challenge onions to see if I am truly allergic to them). I double checked my chili powder to make sure it didn’t have any onion and I went to town. I made up a large batch of it so I could use it again easily, and you’ll see me use it to make a quick salsa in a couple of weeks.
First, we have to make up the taco seasoning:
Taco Seasoning – Onion Free Version (for a version with onion, see a recipe here)
1/4 cup and 1 Tablespoon of chili powder (I used Hot Chili Powder from Penzey’s, has no onion)
1 and 1/2 teaspoons of garlic powder
1 and 1/2 teaspoons of red pepper flakes
1 and 1/2 teaspoons of oregano
1 and 1/2 teaspoons of paprika
1/8 cup and 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of cumin
1/8 cup of salt (less or more to your taste)
1/8 cup of finely ground pepper
Mix the ingredients in a bowl and store in a glass jar.
Taco Seasoning saved in re-purposed Earth Balance Mindful Mayo Jar
Taco Beef
1 pound of ground beef
2-3 Tablespoons of Taco Seasoning
Brown one pound of ground beef in a skillet. Drain off any excess fat. Mix 2 to 3 Tablespoons of Taco Seasoning and 1/2 cup of water into the ground beef until it’s well combined, and then simmer it over medium heat until there is little liquid left in the skillet.
Taco Meat simmering in skillet
You can now use your taco meat for tacos, nachos, or salads. Enjoy!
