Beehive’s Barely Buzzed Cheese Paired With Gluten-Free Lemon Avocado Oil Cake: Yum.

Gluten-Free Lemon Avocado Oil Cake with Barely Buzzed Cheddar Cheese

Cheese is a wonderful human discovery. As delicious as it is nutritious, it also acts as a vehicle for human creativity. Although the exact origin of cheese isn’t known, historians say that as a food, cheese dates back several thousand years. In fact, cheese making vessels recently discovered in Poland provide evidence that people made cheese as long as 7,500 years ago. Apparently, humans started making cheese as a way to preserve and prolong the nutritional value of milk: a very efficient way to conserve a source of food. The variety of types of cheese available today is due to the geographical resources and climate particular to the various societies that make cheese. Although traditionally cheeses from particular regions draw their characteristics from those particular regions, reflecting the creative use of resources by the people who develop those cheeses, contemporary cheese makers are freed from geographical and other ancient restrictions to create new cheeses by combining traditional cheese making with ingredients they can gather from all over the world. I recently tried one such new cheese: Barely Buzzed, a coffee-lavender rubbed cheese created by the folks over at Beehive Cheese. This cheddar cheese is made in Utah, with coffee roasted in Colorado. What can be more interesting and creative than a cheese hand-rubbed with coffee and lavender?

Deglutenized, Delicious, and Definitely Healthy Slow Cooker Meals

The Healthy Slow Cooker 135 Gluten-Free Recipes for Health and Wellness, Second Edition (Robert Rose Inc, 2014)

Courtesy of The Healthy Slow Cooker, Second Edition by Judith Finlayson © 2014 http://www.robertrose.ca Reprinted with publisher permission.

Judith Finlayson
ISBN: 978-0-7788-0479-6
352 pages, 135 recipes

Recently I read about the possibility of cartilage regeneration in a column by Mark Sisson, on his website Mark’s Daily Apple. In this particular article, Sisson recommends drinking home-made bone broth as a possible aid to the regeneration of cartilage. This information was still fresh in my mind when I first explored the pages of the second edition of The Healthy Slow Cooker: 135 Gluten-Free Recipes for Health and Wellness (Judith Finlayson, 2014), I happened upon a recipe for slow cooker hearty beef stock; in a box entitled Natural Wonders (115), opposite the hearty beef stock recipe (114), author Judith Finlayson has written detailed information about the health properties of home-made beef broth. She mentions the nutrients and the healing properties of gelatin, the beneficial ingredient in well-made bone broth. The recipe for beef stock sounds delicious; its presence in a cookbook is, though, unsurprising. The nutritional information about bone broth that appears on the opposing page is, however, an unexpected find in a book devoted to slow cooker recipes. Many such nuggets of nutritional information appear throughout this book, all under the headings of either Natural Wonders or Mindful Morsels. One Natural Wonder’s note even explains the dangers of hidden gluten to people with Celiac and details ways to identify and avoid these hidden dangers. This type of information is an exciting addition to a cookbook; with it, one can easily relate the nutritional value of the ingredients she uses to the healthy meal she serves her family when she prepares slow cooker recipes from this cookbook.

Marvelous, Wonderful Lavender / Coffee Rubbed Cheese

Oh, yes I did. I really did. I just paid $33.93 (including shipping and handling) for a pound of cheese. Not just any cheese, however; Barely Buzzed lavender / coffee rubbed cheddar from Beehive Cheese Company.I really want to be properly penitent for being so indulgent, and for paying so much for a pound of cheese (especially doing so during Lent), but I confess that instead of regret, I feel just super excited receiving my cheese and experiencing the first luxurious bite. Living life without gluten is difficult at times, but it’s made bearable in that many acceptable substitutes for gluten-containing grains exist. Since my diagnosis for Celiac, in fact, I’ve often been grateful that if I am destined to have a forced dietary restriction, that restriction involves gluten and not dairy. Nothing, but nothing, can substitute for cheese. My diet is more than 50% cheese (as it was before my Celiac diagnosis). Wheat I can live without: cheese, not so much! I’ve not tasted this cheese before, but after reading the description on the company’s website (and having read some comments on the cheese in other places) I am absolutely positive that it tastes marvelously, wonderfully delicious. I will be sure to share my thoughts on the cheese after I immerse myself in it’s promising flavor.

Mi-Del Gluten-Free Candy Cane Cremes, Gluten-Free Cashew Spinach Fontina Cheese Pancakes, and Such

Today I have two things to say to anyone who wants to listen: Mi-Del’s Gluten-Free Limited Edition Candy Cane Cremes and Trader Joe’s cashew meal / flour. I’ll try to cover these topics quickly: the temperature is supposed to reach a whopping high of 40 degrees within the hour, the ice is melting, and I HAVE to get out and run before the temperature drops and darkness falls.

I’ll begin with Mi-Del gluten-free Candy Cane Cremes. These cookies are chocolate sandwich cookies filled with a peppermint cream filling. DO NOT BUY THESE COOKIES, unless you have will-power of steel. Oh, one cannot stop at just one of these chocolate peppermint cremes, or two, or a few! Considering that these cookies are store-bought, as well as gluten-free, they are exceptionally delicious. Mi-Del released this flavor just before Christmas; however, on a recent trip to Whole Foods (at The Quarry in San Antonio) I found some still in stock and picked up a box or two (Ok! Three boxes! But don’t judge me until you’ve tried the cookies . . . . ). Not one to habitually purchase cookies off the store shelf, I am relieved that these cookies are seasonal. I fear I lack the will power to resist buying boxes of these cookies often were they on store shelves all year long. I’m thinking of using these cookies for a Christmas-y dessert; perhaps I’ll develop a recipe for gluten-free peppermint bark cheesecake and use Mi-Del Candy Cane Cremes for the crust. I’m working it out in my mind right now. Of course, I’ll have to buy more boxes of the cookies for research and development purposes. Um, yeah. I’ll need a few more boxes for experimentation, and for no other reason. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.

Finding Comfort in Gluten-Free Beer Macaroni and Cheese

What chefs can do when it comes to getting the word out is have people understand food differently. If food is well sourced and well prepared, I don’t think the word healthy needs to be brought into it. It’s healthy because it’s wholesome. That’s what we should focus on. You can buy a box of low-fat macaroni and cheese made with powdered nonsense. I’m not worried if I’m using four different cheeses and it’s high in fat. It’s real food. That’s what’s more important. (Chef Tom Colicchio, qtd by Tara Parker Pope, “Even Top Chefs Have Picky Kids,” N Y Times, 9 February 2009)

MACROWS [1]. XX.IIII. XII.

Take and make a thynne foyle of dowh. and kerve it on peces, and cast hem on boillyng water & seeþ it wele. take chese and grate it and butter cast bynethen and above as losyns. and serue forth. (Samuel Pegge, The Forme of Cury: A Roll of Ancient English Cookery (1780) “Compiled about A D 1390, by the Master-Cooks of King Richard II,” Project Gutenberg generated HTML e-book)

The dog in the picture below is our 91 lb Great Pyrenees – Anatolian shepherd mix Cleo.

Cleo is perhaps the world’s best watch dog. She’s so devotedly protective that (to the dismay of many) she sometimes tries to protect me even from people of whom I am rather fond, such as relatives and friends who visit our home. Perhaps because of this strong genetic protective characteristic common to her mix of breeds, Cleo dislikes loud noises and quick, sudden movements; she responds unhappily to the excited or emotional tones of voice and dramatic hand gestures that sometimes accompany human conversation and interactions. For this reason, Cleo vehemently dislikes being in the same room with us when we watch Longhorn football games on television. Our emotional responses, aroused by the twists and turns as the games progress, simply make her too nervous.

Luckily for Cleo, Phillip and I watched the recent Alamo Bowl pigskin contest between the Texas Longhorns and the Oregon Ducks at my mom’s house. Thus, our beloved, giant hyper-vigilant pet was spared the anguished cries of disbelief and the stream of blue language that erupted and over-flowed deep from the diaphragms of those who gathered to watch what they had hoped would be their beloved Longhorns’ triumphant and redeeming finish to a disappointing 2013 football season. Fan loyalty and collective team player and coaching talent aside, one would just naturally expect a team called the Longhorns to easily defeat a team called the Ducks; alas, the obvious escaped reality this past December 30th, as the Ducks annihilated the Longhorns in a 30 to 7 win in the 2014 Alamo Bowl competition.

At disheartening moments such as this, people turn to comfort food for real solace, indeed. Delicious football-watching type food was plentiful in my mom’s living room that fateful evening on which once again, Texans lost an epic battle at a location in San Antonio named the Alamo. Food and beer flowed freely that evening, and even the horrendous Longhorn defeat failed to curb appetites (though admittedly the drinking surpassed the eating in quantity the latter part of the game). My contribution to the football-watching fare was one of my own favorite comfort foods: gluten-free beer macaroni and cheese. Although I am not fond of beer as a beverage, and therefore never drink it, I absolutely love and enjoy beer-flavored foods (such as beer mac and cheese, beer bread, beer-cheese soup, etc).

Simple Gluten-free Summer Salads

X.
So, on I went. I think I never saw
Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:
For flowers—as well expect a cedar grove!
But cockle, spurge, according to their law
Might propagate their kind, with none to awe,
You’d think; a burr had been a treasure-trove.

XI.
No! penury, inertness and grimace,
In some strange sort, were the land’s portion. “See
“Or shut your eyes,” said nature peevishly,
“It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:
“’Tis the Last judgment’s fire must cure this place,
“Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.”

XII.
If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents
Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents
In the dock’s harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk
All hope of greenness?’tis a brute must walk
Pashing their life out, with a brute’s intents.
(Robert Browning, “Childe Roland To The Dark Tower Came”)

South Texas is a capricious region. She seduces us with her sunny, mild winters and colorfully floral, sometimes delightfully cooling springs, so that we think we live in paradise and wonder who would ever choose to live elsewhere? Oh, but then: suddenly summer. Overnight, without warning, late spring turns to something akin to Hell. Death steals the blooms from the wild flowers that just the day before had abundantly crowded any patch of grass visible in every field and pasture, alongside every path and trail, and parallel to every back-road and highway. The air heats up to triple digits, so that even morning runs are Hellish as the insensitive sunshine aggressively pours itself out on the land, assaulting anyone caught without shade or shelter, making it seem much as desolate and hopeless as the wasteland described by the hapless speaker in Browning’s unsettling poem. When sunset arrives and the outside temperature falls from 102 at 7:00 pm to 95 at 8:00 pm, the condition finally seems cool enough to get in a decent run for the evening. Though still hot, with the humidity rising at this point, the slight twilight breeze that often accompanies the setting of the sun creates an environment more conducive to running or biking.

Of Peaches and the Sweet Taste of Summer: A Light, Naturally Gluten-Free Lunch

“Talking of Pleasure, this moment I was writing with one hand, and with the other holding to my Mouth a Nectarine good God how fine. It went down soft, pulpy, slushy, oozy all its delicious embonpoint melted down my throat like a large beatified Strawberry. I shall certainly breed.” (John Keats, Letters of John Keats (1891), p 324)

When Keats gushes in pleasure-induced rapture about a nectarine to Charles Wentworth Dilke, the recipient of his letter, he is in the midst of describing a rather mundane career decision he has made to pay his bills while he waits for his creative writing to become profitable. Up until this point, which comes about two-thirds of the way through the letter, Keats has been explaining his reasons for taking on work for pay that he knows Dilke will find a bit distasteful. Keats creates an image for the reader by describing himself as having a pen in one hand and the nectarine in the other, going about the ordinary task of letter writing. Suddenly, the unexpected shock of the nectarine’s flavor, juice, and texture transports Keats into a moment that transcends his engagement with his ordinary task of letter writing. For Keats, the ingestion of the nectarine is a sensual experience, to which the characteristics of the fruit itself are essential. The “soft, pulpy, slushy, oozy” plumpness arouses a moment of surprise: an unexpected rush of joy in the midst of the banal act of writing a letter. He stops mid-thought (having just mentioned to Dilke his fear that he will not be able to afford many of life’s pleasures) to record the unexpected pleasure aroused by his enjoyment of a perfect piece of fruit.