Imaginary Mom Strikes Again: Allergic-to-Monday Waffles

I believe I’ve mentioned Imaginary Mom in previous posts about breakfast, and what I generally think about Imaginary Mom and where she can go and what she can do with herself there. Don’t get me wrong – she’s a great lady. I aspire to be more like her. But it’s just not happening most days, and it’s easier to be mad at my imaginary alter ego than to unpack all the complicated reasons why I sometimes think my own priorities are misplaced.

But every once in a while Imaginary Mom makes her sweet, patient, overachieving presence felt in ways that make everyone’s day a little bit better. The onset of the Fall Allergy Season is one of those times. Yes, I am sending my little disease vectors to school with runny noses and coughs. And yes thank you very much I have, in fact, noticed that they appear to be sick despite the fact that I work outside of the home. I am also 100% POSITIVE that this is the same onset of allergies that we have experienced every single September since the kids were born, and American Academy of Pediatrics agrees that I am using appropriate judgment in packing them off to school (yes, I’m feeling a little sensitive).

Monday morning, Imaginary Mom surprised the heck out of all of us. She got up and went for a 2-mile walk before Actual Husband left for work, then did a load of laundry, emptied the dishwasher, and whipped up these waffles before the first cup of coffee was done. My children – whose allergies always seem especially dire on Monday mornings – would like Imaginary Mom to visit us more often because these are really especially fantastic GF waffles. 

The cookbook that this recipe came from (Recipes for Gluten-Free Kids) lists the mysterious consortium "Editors of Favorite Brand-Name Recipes" instead of an actual author, which is perplexing and a little disappointing. Who wouldn't want to take credit for these waffles? They're excellent. 

Allergic-to-Monday Waffles 

2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup almond milk (you can use regular milk but this is what I had on hand)
1 cup all-purpose GF flour blend, below
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablepoons butter (under no circumstances should you skip this ingredient)

Melt the butter in a small bowl in the microwave. Pre-heat the waffle iron and spray with non-stick cooking spray (don't skip this. Seriously.)

Combine the eggs, yogurt, and milk (if you use a 2-cup measuring Pyrex measuring cup and add the eggs last, this will keep you from having to wash an extra dish).

Combine the dry ingredients in a medium bowl, then add the egg mixture and whisk until combined. Stir in the melted butter.

The amount of batter you use will depend on the size of your waffle iron; 1/3 cup was just about right and we got 6 waffles from this recipe (which you could easily double or triple). Ignore the indicator light on your waffle iron and wait until it's almost completely done steaming before you try to lift up the lid; waffles that stick to the iron and get pulled apart are still delicious, however.

If you mix the dry ingredients the night before, this batter will be ready in the time it takes the waffle iron to heat up. Your kids will think you're a superhero and forget to wheeze and sniffle ostentatiously during breakfast.

Basic GF flour blend

1 part white rice flour
1 part sorghum flour
1 part tapioca flour
1 part cornstarch
1 part almond flour or coconut flour

Huzzah! Pizza Night is Saved! (or made deeply weird, depending on your perspective)

One of our favorite dinners is Make Your Own Pizza Night. We typically buy crust, chop up a bunch of toppings, and everyone goes nuts making whatever bizarre concoction suits their fancy. Our gluten-free, dairy-free, nightshade-free life has made this a lot less fun.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles agree that life without pizza is less fun.

We went through the make-your-own-gluten-free-pizza-dough stage, which turned it from a fun and easy Friday night dinner to a big production that dirtied up all the bowls and called for the KitchenAid mixer to get hauled out of the basement (I'm usually on dish detail so this version of pizza night sucked). We tried every revolting, inadequate "cheese" substitute out there, which left David picking sullenly at his sauce-less, rubbery pizza while the rest of us ate (less fun for everyone, but mostly David). We tried making our own pesto as a sauce substitute, but pesto without Parmesan is a two-note symphony, plus finding that much good basil in mid-winter is expensive (not, I don't have a garden, I don't think ahead, get over it); and it overwhelms the flavor of the toppings so it's not worth it anyway. We went through a we'll-eat-pizza-and-David-can-eat-leftovers stage, which was unsatisfactory all the way around.

When you can't eat crust, sauce, cheese, or pepperoni, traditional pizza night is just plain out. I'm firmly set against eating food that pretends to be other food, and the substitutes we tried (pumpkin-based sauce, anyone?) just made David notice what he was missing out on. Time to change the game.

He's been tinkering with a very successful GF pita bread recipe lately, which got us to thinking that we could try a riff on lahmacun, which is like a Turkish variation on pizza. I found a potato-free version of GF pizza dough at the grocery store last week (which is a very convincing argument for trying different stores every once in a while) so he didn't have to bother with making pita on a weeknight. He improvised this topping while I tried to figure out how to cut up olives without actually touching them, which is much trickier than it sounds. The kids made their own versions (cheese, pepperoni, ham, onion, green pepper, and olive for Anna; sauce, pepperoni, and carrot for John); we all sat down happily together; and the kids were so intrigued by ours that they had to try it, and agreed that it was much tastier than the regular kind and we should all eat this all the time from now on. Yay! Pizza Night is saved! TMNT will be happy.

Lamb Pizza 

1 gluten-free pizza crust (the pre-cooked kind in the freezer section, unless you're ambitious and already made your own). You could obviously use a regular pizza crust here as well, but make sure you get the thin-and-crispy variety that's more like a flatbread.
1/2 lb. ground lamb
1 small onion, chopped small
1 tsp cumin, or to taste
1 tsp ground coriander, or to taste
1/2 tsp allspice
1/4 cup pine nuts
2 eggs
Garlic salt

Preheat the oven to whatever temperature is indicated on the pizza crust package.

In a large skillet, brown the lamb with the spices; check the seasoning and adjust it however you want. Spread the lamb over the pizza crust, sprinkle with the pine nuts, and crack the eggs over the top (we used 2 because we were sharing it; if you have a smaller crust, feel free to just use one. Or skip it entirely if this is too far-out for you, or you don't like eggs).

Bake for whatever amount of time the pizza crust calls for; the egg white should be set and not at all runny, but the yolks should be cooked through. Ours baked at 425 for 5-7 minutes and that was just about right. If your crust calls for a longer baking you could put it in without the egg, then add it halfway through or thereabouts.

Serve as-is. We smushed the egg up into the lamb and sprinkled it with garlic salt, which I personally would have put in the topping in the first place. This would also be excellent with a dollop of plain yogurt or tzatziki, or some cold garlicky greens, or chopped tomatoes. We're going to be eating this a lot so I'll be sure to report on how all these variations turn out.

Sunday Soup: Ignored Vegetable Soup

You know your day is probably going to be a little rough when you can't figure out how to operate a paper clip. 

In my defense, it's not the ordinary kind of paper clip - oh, no. It's a fancy-schmancy Klix, which claims to be "beyond paper clips." Certainly it was beyond me, and I ended up tearing those few pages I actually managed to get a Klix onto as soon as I tried to remove it, which completely defeats the purpose (which was to keep the pages nice and neat instead of folding them down to mark a spot).  

Given this sort of competence with a simple everyday task, this might not have been the very best day to start a new cooking adventure with my sister, who is getting settled into new digs and is looking for ways to make weeknight dinners easier given a busy schedule. I have a binder (several whole entire large binders, in fact) full of quick, easy, healthy weeknight dinners made from actual ingredients, complete with shopping list and do-ahead tips, so I offered to help. (This is actually a nice idea that she and I came up with. My sister and I get to spend time together, our kids get to spend time together, she gets some new recipes and cooking tips, I get to cook foods that are off-limits in my own house, our uncle gets healthy home-cooked meals, and weeknights are less stressful. What's not to love?) 

We were only slightly derailed by the discovery that there was only one knife in the house; with a little re-arranging and a lot of rewashing, we still managed to get a heck of a lot of prep work done. The real problem was the can opener. 

I've certainly gotten in the habit of cooking from ingredients but I still should be able to operate a can opener, right? Nope. The paper clip thing wasn't an aggravation, it was a sign - stay away from anything that resembles a tool, because you're going to look stupid when you can't use it. Turns out that canned tomatoes aren't that much of a time-saver when three college-educated adults (including The Resident Engineer) can't open the can, and you realize all over again that there's just no substitute for a can opener no matter what those survivalist websites say. 

Suffice to say that this soup with tolerate whatever you do to it and however much you ignore it, it will still turn out very tasty and make your uncle happy. I've left all the can-opener shenanigans out of the instructions, but feel free to use your imagination. 

Vegetable Soup 

Large splash of olive oil

1 large onion, diced

1 large carrot, peeled and diced

1/2 cup minced ham (in theory, this is optional)

4-5 cups assorted vegetables, diced if needed. I used a large potato, a handful of peas, some corn, and a couple of stalks of celery. You can use whatever you have laying around the house or cluttering up the fridge.)

6 cups chicken stock

Handful of fresh parsley

1 can diced tomatoes, or the equivalent amount of fresh tomatoes seeded and chopped 

Heat the oil in a large pot or casserole dish over medium heat. Add the onion and carrot and cook, stirring occasionally, about 5 minutes or until the onion softens. Add the ham and cook another 3 minutes.

Add the rest of the ingredients, seasoning with salt and pepper to taste. Turn the heat to medium-low and ignore on a back burner of the stove while you do something else for at least 30 minutes or until the vegetables are very soft but not mushy. 

This soup is fantastic with a drizzle of olive oil and a grating of Parmesan cheese just before serving. It freezes well, keeps nicely in the fridge until you're sick of eating it, scales up to feed a crowd, and gives you a way to use up that leftover potato or random bits of veggies in the fridge.