Sorghum Bread (a la Cornbread)

What goes better with Chili than cornbread? Sorghum Bread, of course! Sorghum is a grain that has a sweet corn-like taste to it. If you can tolerate cornmeal, sorghum mixes very well with it for GF muffins, breads and crusts. The secret to successful GF, in my experience, is to focus on sweets and quick breads (i.e. ones that don't need to rise, thus don't need gluten to hold them together). This Sorghum Bread is sweet and fluffy. It may crumble apart when you try to put honey & butter-substitute (coconut oil!), but it will taste great in doing so. It may also force you to go ahead and mix the bread right into the chili. Yum!

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 cups sorghum flour
• 2 tsp GF baking powder*
  
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 1 - 2 Tbsp honey, maple syrup or agave
• 1/4 cup palm oil shortening
• 1 egg, slightly beaten
• 1/2 cup rice milk

* or make your own: 2 parts cream of tartar to 1 part baking soda

DIRECTIONS:

1. Mix flour, baking powder & salt.
   
2. In a separate bowl, mix shortening, honey. Add egg.
   
3. Stir dry ingredients into wet.
   
4. Very lightly stir in rice milk.
   
5. If batter seems too wet, add more flour; if too dry, add more rice milk.
6. Spoon batter into a single-layer cake pan, lightly greased & floured
   
7. Bake @ 400*F for roughly 20 minutes, or until edges are golden brown and a toothpick or knife tip comes out clean when inserted into the middle.
   

We slice ours up and eat with coconut oil and honey. Or crumbled into chili. Or sometimes both at the same meal.

Yield: 1 single-layer cake. Enough for 8 people, when served as a side to a main dish.

ALTERNATIVES:

• (Vegan): Use flaxmeal gel instead of egg (1 Tbsp flax meal to 3 Tbsp water, heated in microwave)
• If you can tolerate corn, substitute one cup of cornmeal for one cup of the sorghum flour.
  
• Instead of shortening, try olive, coconut or safflower oil.
  
• For a spicy version, omit honey and add one or two jalapenos, minced
• Bake in muffin tins for "sorghum bread" muffins
  

Three Bean Chili Casserole

Last summer, before we truly embarked on the elimination diet adventure, we loved one-pot meals. Especially meals I could cook bit by bit throughout the day - say, chop veggies in morning; cook beans/meat later; then just saute aromatics & stir in spices before dinner time- and still be tasty & fresh in the evening. We were tomato-free at the time, still eating legumes, and trying hard not to eat very much meat. This was a filling meal that really hit the spot at the end of a long summer day. It's also perfect to take to potlucks - i.e. it travels well.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 cup cooked chickpeas (1/2 cup dry)*
  
• 1 cup cooked kidney beans (1/2 cup dry)*
  
• 1 cup cooked green beans, chopped
• olive oil
• 1 onion
• a couple stalks of celery
• 1 jalapeno, minced (leave some seeds if you want spicy)
• 2 tsp cane sugar, maple syrup or honey
• 1/4 tsp clove
• 1 Tbsp cumin
• 1 Tbsp paprika
  
• 1tsp coriander
  
• 1/2 tsp allspice
  
• 1 tsp oregano
  
• sea salt
• black pepper
• 1 cup bone broth (or water)
• juice of one lemon

*it's best to soak your beans overnight, then rinse them before cooking in fresh water. 1 cup of dry or soaked beans cooks in 2 cups of water. Bring to a boil, then turn down and simmer covered for 45ish minutes (until the water has been absorbed and the beans are soft all the way through). Soaked beans will cook faster than dry beans. They are also much more easy for your body to digest.

DIRECTIONS:

1. Saute finely chopped onions & celery in olive oil
2. Add cooked beans, jalapeno, spices & sugar/sweetener
3. Add broth/water & lemon juice
4. Bring to a boil, then turn down and simmer for 10 minutes.

Serve with Guacamole & Sorghum Bread.

ALTERNATIVES:

• Add chopped, peeled, cored & seeded fresh tomatoes (or a can of tomatoes or tomato paste plus more broth)
• Add fresh cilantro
• If you can do corn chips, eat it like salsa/dip (this was our favorite way)
• Put it on brown rice tortillas or noodles
  
• Add green and red peppers, sauteed with the onions
• Add mushrooms
• Serve over rice, quinoa, or millet
• Replace beans with ground turkey or shredded chicken
• Add a 1/2 cup nutritional yeast

Grain-free Turkey Chili with Guacamole

We are big fans of Tex-Mex influenced cuisine. (We are fans of many cuisines, as you will learn.) This Chili is easy, fast and filling.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1lb free-range ground turkey
• 1 small onion, diced
• 1 small green pepper, diced
• handful of mushrooms, diced
  
• 4 medium tomatoes, peeled, seeded & diced
• 1 large zucchini, diced (Apparently, I like dicing things!)
  
• homemade chicken bone broth (you can use water instead)
• spices: sea salt; pepper; ground cumin; clove; allspice; ground coriander; paprika; oregano
• fresh cilantro leaves, whole & diced
  
• lemon
  
• olive oil
• nutritional yeast
• medium avocado

DIRECTIONS:

1. Saute onions, peppers, mushrooms, zucchini in olive oil, sprinkled with salt. Set aside.
2. Brown ground turkey. Add bone broth as needed to keep meat from sticking to pan. Once meat is cooked, add reserved onion mixture. Stir.
3. Add diced tomatoes, chopped fresh cilantro and more bone broth. Simmer.
4. Add spices. I used: handful (well, a palmful, really) each of paprika & cumin. Liberal pinches of sea salt & pepper. Small pinch each of oregano & ground coriander. Dash each of clove and allspice. Stir well. Continue to simmer.
5. Add a couple handfuls of nutritional yeast. Stir well and continue to simmer bone broth down.
6. Once you've reached desired thickness, stir in the juice of most of one lemon, cover and let sit.
7. For guacamole, I just mash up avocado with oil oil, sea salt & lemon (or lime) juice, fresh squeezed (squeeze a bit of the lemon into the guac and then squeeze the remainder into the chili).
   

Serve the chili in a bowl with a dollop of guacamole in the middle, garnished with fresh, whole cilantro leaves.

The yield is hard to guess. This recipe easily fed all four of us for dinner with plenty left over for the girls and I for lunch the next day (and me for breakfast the following morning).

We like to make enough to have left overs. For lunch tomorrow, I will put the chili (sans gauc, because 1. it doesn't keep well & 2. my kids devour it so there's never any left) in on leafy greens - kale, lettuce, steamed cabbage - and eat like a taco. Yum!

Alternatives:

• instead of ground turkey, use free-range ground beef, buffalo, chicken, fish, whatever.

Vegetarian Alternative:

• The meat can be swapped for quinoa, millet, or rice & beans.
• Instead of swapping meat for grains, use as a meatless taco stuffing and put on brown rice tortillas - brushed with oil and nuked in the microwave or heated in the oven to soften.