Condiments - BBQ sauce

My love for ketchup lives side-by-side with my love for BBQ sauce. It makes almost everything taste better. And, it's a dipping sauce that tastes vaguely like bacon. Genius!

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 cup ketchup (commercial or make your own)
  
• 1 cup prepared mustard (commercial or make your own - recipe coming)
  
• 1 cup vinegar (grain-free options include: apple cider vinegar or brown rice vinegar)
  
• 1 cup molasses
• 1/4 cup honey
  
• 2 tsp liquid smoke (hickory flavor)
  

DIRECTIONS:

1. Mix molasses and mustard.
2. Add honey.
   
3. Add vinegar.
4. Add ketchup.
5. Add liquid smoke.
   

Yield: I'm not sure on actual volume. I think 1 quart or 2 pint jars would be enough to store, if you're not going to use any right away.

ALTERNATIVES:

• Try different kinds of vinegar.
  
• Try different smoke flavors.
  
• Try adding powdered spices - onion, garlic, cumin, turmeric, etc.
  

coconut-molasses stir fried veggies

We have hit harvest time, the time of abundance. Fresh veggies are coming out our ears, so it seems. What better way to enjoy lots of veggies at once than a quick & easy (and of course, delicious) stir fry.

We just had this for lunch. Lily just told me that she's "not really a big fan of this stir fry." When I asked her what didn't she like, she said the "taste of all of it." Well, then. Aevryn and I thought it was great. Aevryn is also currently eating a wedge of lemon. Make that, Aevryn is currently spitting out a wedge of lemon. So, perhaps her palette is suspect. Lily and I just had a conversation about when you don't like something, the cook isn't going to jump right up and make you a brand new meal. I offered to let her forage in the fridge for a meal or she could try her stir fry again. Guess who's decided the stir fry is good after all (once we took out the onions)? Gotta love my houseful of negative first responders.

INGREDIENTS:

• Whatever veggies you have on hand. We used: cauliflower, broccoli, onions, green onions, cilantro, left over shredded cabbage, left over shredded kolrabi
• roughly 1/2 cup or so of bone broth (we freeze ours in pint-sized jars so that we always have broth on hand). You can easily sub water.
• roughly 1/4 cup coconut milk
• coconut oil
• juice of half a lemon
• sea salt
• pepper
• 1/4 cup or so nutritional yeast
• 1 TBSP molasses
• I would have added ginger, were it in the house. I thought it was when I started gathering my ingredients. Oh well. Blame it on the kitchen gnomes.
  

I feel compelled to make it known that I really don't measure out my ingredients. I do pinches and handfulls and drizzles and squeezes. My measurements here are really just approximations.

DIRECTIONS:

1. Saute onions (& ginger).
   
2. Add bone broth, veggies (including herbs), coconut oil. Season with salt & pepper.
3. Simmer until veggies are tender. (When the broccoli turns bright green, you know it's done!)
   
4. Add molasses, coconut milk, nutritional yeast. Stir well.
   
5. Simmer until liquid is mostly absorbed and a thick sauce remains.

Yield: lunch for one adult (with an admittedly healthy appetite) and two small children.

ALTERNATIVES:

• Serve over rice or rice noodles.
• Add seafood or chicken or beef.
• Try honey instead of molasses.

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
  

"Free" Cherry Muffins

We live in northern Michigan, on the outskirts of Traverse City - the Cherry Capitol, as it were. Naturally summer = fresh, juicy cherries. Yesterday, the girls and I picked cherries with their grandma. We had a great time eating cherries straight off the tree. I think Lily got more cherries in (and on) her than in her bucket. Aevryn was in the sling and started snagging some cherries for herself. She managed to get two cherries (including pits) before we decided perhaps she could sit on a blanket and hang out with some toys for awhile. Surprisingly, this worked out okay - but there were lots of interesting wildflowers all around to grab at and sniff.

At any rate, I have 17lbs of cherries in my house right now, so I am embarking an a Very Cherry culinary journey over the next few weeks. I am hoping to make cherry salsa, cherry jam, cherry preserves, cherry muffins and breads, dried cherries and frozen cherries.

Here is my recipe for our Cherry Breakfast Muffins

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 cups gluten free flour of your choice (I like to mix and match: today's muffins were sorghum and brown rice)
• 1 tsp xanthan gum
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
  
• 1/3 cup safflower oil
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup rice milk
  
• 1 cup fresh, pitted sweet cherries

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 350*F (don't leave door ajar like I did today, somehow? Yikes!)
2. Mix flour(s), xanthan gum, soda & salt.
3. Add brown sugar, making sure it is mixed in very well.
4. Stir in oil, vanilla and rice milk.
5. Add fresh cherries and mix until evenly distributed.
6. Pour batter into greased muffin tins (we greased ours with coconut oil, yum!). For extra cherry goodness, put a pitted cherry on top of each muffin.
7. Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until muffins are golden around edges and feel set on top.
   

We like to cut ours in half and spread with coconut oil.

Yield: one dozen delicious muffins.

Alternatives:

• You can sub two eggs for the xanthan gum.
  
• Instead of rice milk & vanilla extract, you could use almond milk & almond extract.
  
• Instead of sugar, you can use honey or brown rice syrup or agave syrup (use 1/2 as much) or maple syrup.