Making vs Eating vs Cleaning

Today I'm looking forward to cleanup more than any other part of the nourishment process. The sink is empty, and my One-Bowl Meal is really only going to need to be rinsed out of said Bowl. It's gonna be easy-peasy, and I'm going to be so proud of myself for accomplishing something today.

I have a migraine, so after I nursed The Nug to sleep, I moseyed around the kitchen gathering items I figured I could throw into a bowl without wanting to lobotomize myself in the process. The result: a prewashed organic Super Greens mix of chard, kale and spinach, a dollop of hummus, a container of organic short grain brown rice, a handful of shredded organic baby carrots, Korean red pepper flakes, mustard seeds, and a drizzle of Gluten-Free soy sauce.

Easier to make than to eat, in my condition. Tasty and filling nonetheless. 

Mama out.

Using What You Have

Mitch Hedberg joked that potatoes take so long to bake, he'll throw them in the oven when he's not hungry - because "by the time they're done, who knows?!"

Beans are my baked potatoes, man. I used to have shelves full of beans daring me to cook them, and I was always one to back down - until I found a recipe for cooking them in the oven. I'm sure it's better to soak them first, but since I'm never going to plan ahead well enough to soak my beans, I'm going to venture a guess that it's still better to have cooked beans on hand than dry ones.

It's a good sign when your One-Bowl Meal is too hearty to finish in one sitting. 

Today's Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free and Mostly Meat-Free One-Bowl Recipe for Busy Stay-At-Home Moms Who Also Intend To Feed This To Their Toddlers is an exercise in using what you have. I had wilted mixed greens and mushy chopped onions and limp celery. So I simmered them, covered, in a heavy-bottomed pot all day.

Sometime that evening I got around to remembering to turn off the stove, and I just left the pot, still covered, to cool overnight. In the morning, I grabbed the salad spinner from the dish drainer and poured the broth and the veggies into the colander part while it rested in the bowl part. To get enough to cook my beans in, I picked up the colander with my left hand, fended The Nug off with my left leg, and squeezed the living daylights out of the greens with my right hand. I poured the liquid back into the heavy-bottomed pot (a Le Creuset enameled cast iron, for those who are wondering), and dropped the colander back into the bowl to await A) the moment I wash a medium saucepan and turn it into pesto, B) the minute someone else needs the salad spinner and tosses my unrecognizable green goo, or C) the more likely event that it turns into a mass of moldy mush. We shall see...

Meanwhile, I preheated the oven to 325, rinsed the beans in their bag and added them to the pot, topped them with a strip of kelp (kombu in Japanese, dashima in Korean), popped them into the oven and took The Dude to work. I ran some errands, came home, sniffed the air, decided the beans were fine, took care of the garden and the baby, came back and turned off the oven. Put brown rice in the cooker, tried to get The Nug to nap (failed), came back and put the relatively cool beans in a glass container to store in the fridge.

The broth, the beans that didn't fit, some of the rice, and a splash of veggie juice comprised my One-Bowl Meal - and there you have it!

Milk, And What It Means To Me

Milk

Why do I eat "Dairy-Free?" More than anything else, it's to keep my marriage healthy. My husband and I are flippin' awesome together. We'll celebrate our 8th anniversary this year,  and look forward to many more. But there's a dark period in our past we must never forget.

People laugh when I say there was a time in our lives when I was physically and verbally abusive of my husband. He's tall, strong and confident, so I get why that's hard to imagine, but it really happened and it was really bad. My husband felt like he was trapped with a rabid honey badger, and wondered what in the world had become of his spunky college sweetheart.

In many ways, The Dude and I are the same kind of weird.

Milk. Milk was the problem. Milk is like heroin to me; all dairy products are, to some degree. I have an allergy/addiction, so dairy consumption is followed by an intense high, which is succeeded by a super crazy low. So I guess you could say I suffered mood swings.

All I know is, a bowl of cereal was never enough. If I had one, I had to have at least two more, and often I continued having more until there was no more to have. When I was done, I could barely move, nor would I want to; I just wanted to sit there loving life and enjoying the high. Soon after, though, the crash would come on, but I wouldn't even realize it. I'd get quite sleepy and very, very cranky. Suddenly,  everything seemed like a personal attack, so I subconsciously lashed out in "self-defense."

If I'd seen a video afterwards, I wouldn't have recognized myself!

So now I don't drink milk, and the addiction has no foothold in my life. I have plenty of options I can turn to, depending on what I need.

Milk Substitutes

I live in a small town where not much is available; sure, we have a supermarket with a "health-food" section, but I am not convinced that "health-food" and "healthy food" are synonymous phrases. The boxed "milks" with added stabilizers and gums and sugars and flavor-enhancers... I don't react well to those, so I find other ways to get what I need. The substitute I use is determined by the intended application. 

For cereal?  A banana and water in a blender make a quick solution.

Knockoff Rice Chex (Also Marked Gluten-Free), Chia Seeds and Banana "Milk"

I like tahini and water blended to a delightful state of frothiness if I'm planning to add something to my coffee. (More often than not, I don't add anything, as I prefer "coff-tea," myself. Maybe I'll tell you about it some time.)

In fact, many nut butters blended with water make excellent milk substitutes.

When I do buy boxed "milk," it's organic soymilk from Trader Joe's (in a big city far, far away), because the only ingredients are soybeans and water. If I need it to taste like vanilla, I add vanilla. If I need it sweeter, I add something sweet (fruit, frozen apple juice concentrate, maple syrup, or an Indian sugar cane product called gur shakkar).

The Nug, Enthroned on High, Requesting "Milk," Which in This Case Means the Bowl of Qi'a I'm Stirring

Several mornings this week, the One-Bowl Meal I've shared with The Nug at breakfast time has been this hot/cold bagged cereal my mom picked up for me at Costco: Qi'a. It's got chia seeds, hemp and buckwheat groats, dried cranberries and sliced almonds. The baby's spoonfuls don't contain a lot of the last one there, but when he gets them, he handles them like a champ.

This particular bowl was made with soymilk, water, vanilla, cinnamon, ginger and maple syrup.  Another was recently made with banana "milk."

Maybe It's The Hunger Talkin', But...

Holy Mamba Jamba, this dish was good.

Not a mac n' cheese substitute by any means, but it hit the mac n' cheese spot for me today - and I didn't even know I was craving it!

I'll grant you that this shouldn't count as a "One-Bowl Meal," per se. Pasta with oil and spices, gluten-free though it may be, is by no means an exemplary dish as far as nutrition goes.

But hunger is hunger, and I promise you, it could have been worse!

I finally got The Nug to bed and had set about completing my To Do list (by which I mean forwarding 60% of the tasks to another day, delegating one to my husband, circling two as urgent/important and doing nothing toward accomplishing them, and leaving several blank in the hopes that they'd fall into place after the priorities) when suddenly I realized that Mama's gotta eat. They do, from time to time, you know?

I told myself I had too much to do to come up with anything "fancy" (I bet you can guess what my standard is there), so I boiled half a package of corn/rice pasta I'd had stashed away since a trip to Target a couple of months ago.

I wasn't sure what I was going to add to it by the time it was done, but I was aware I was getting stupider by the minute. That hunger had hit me like a bus outta nowheresville!

By the time it was done, I had decided no tomato sauce. If I used a new jar, I'd have to find a place for it in the fridge! If I looked for an old jar, I'd have to stand in front of the cold fridge, rearranging cold, ugly leftovers, and it would probably be moldy anyway (Aesop style, son!).

I ate about a quarter of the noodles bare, right from the pot, as I thought about my options. Finally, I decided on just a light coat of oil and a green herb, like basil. Or a mix, like Italian seasoning.

But once I got the olive oil evenly distributed, heavens to Betsy, my hand made for the nutritional yeast flakes instead. And then the granulated garlic, and then the smoked paprika. Some Himalayan salt followed shortly thereafter, grinding smoothly and calmly over the dish as though it never once believed I would leave it behind.

I ate it so fast I had to take a picture of the corner of the bowl because there were no more noodles left in the rest of it!

So I know it's not super healthy, but there are some things going for it: yeast flakes, garlic and paprika are more than just flavor enhancers; each has its own nutritional benefits.  And just think of all the terrible things I didn't put in there!

So if you try it (as part of a balanced meal, perhaps), let me know: was it just the hunger talking, or is this a mighty tasty munchie?

Guys, I Just Ate The Best Avocado

Like, life-changing good.

If you grab a spoon and eat straight out of the skin, it counts as a "One-Bowl Meal," right?

Excuse me while I go figure out how many avocado trees I can plant in my yard...

Free avocados taste that much richer. These were a gift from generous family members in Southern California. 

Single-Ingredient Sourdough

If you want a hands-on beginner's course in lactofermented flours, I personally suggest you start with garbanzo bean flour. Known by many other names, including gram and chickpea, it's the ingredient that makes The-Gluten-Free-All-Purpose-Flour-Mix-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named taste so terrible.

A starter is like a baby... but you can give up and start fresh anytime you want, no strings attached. Come to think of it, it's more like Tamagotchi.

I know, I know, who could refuse such a glowing recommendation? Well, let me tell you something. It's also the ingredient that makes the best gluten-free sourdough starters. I don't know if it's the protein, but for whatever reason the cultures love it. And here's the thing: souring it makes all the difference in the world.

For ages, other cultures have been making a very simple flatbread out of soaked chickpea flour (sounds so much cuter than "garbanzo bean," right?), so I took it a step farther and used the soured stuff. I borrowed ideas here and there from recipes for socca and farinata, but never ended up with an exact recipe.

I keep my starter very thick (for one thing, this saves space, and for another, it allows the cultures to metabolize the flour more slowly, giving you more time between feeding the starter and more time between... well, feeding you!) Maybe you wanna eat this stuff every day. I dunno, I think I'm happier with my poops when I stretch it out to once a week (the eating, not the pooping).

It's Movie Time Somewhere...

Sure, we may not be the ones watching anything at the moment, but are we going to let that stop us from enjoying a bowl of "Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Mostly Meat-Free" deliciousness?  I think not.

#likemotherlikeson 

For us, the particulars are as follows:

We use an old-fashioned stovetop Whirley Pop with a couple of teaspoons coconut oil, a dash of sea salt, and a third cup of organic popcorn from the bulk bins at Raley's*.

If you've never had coconut oil on popcorn,  you need to hang out with me. You hold the Nug, I'll wash the Whirley Pop (what, you thought it was already clean?), and we'll have ourselves a popcorn party to remember. Just be prepared to navigate around grabby little hands that move like lightning!

I read somewhere that popping corn actually preserves a lot of the nutrients.  I haven't looked into it since then... because if that's wrong, who wants to be right?

*If you're worried about gluten cross-contamination, do not buy your popcorn from bulk bins. 

Because Why Not Me?

I posted today on Facebook. After several days in a row with very little of either sleep or food (you know, in other words, life as a mom), I had had enough of navigating the complexities of my special diet, my toddler's schedule, and my messy kitchen. Wearing the kid out everyday is enough to wear me out - so how am I supposed to make sure Mama gets fed?

Mama's Little Bundle (of energy and willfulness)
A.K.A. "The Nug"

I knew exactly what I needed. So I posted:

Okay, who wants to write a cookbook entitled "Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free and Mostly Meat-Free One-Bowl Recipes for Busy Stay-At-Home Moms Who Also Intend To Feed This To Their Toddlers" for me?

Several of the comments were all, "Why don't you write one?" And I was all, "Because I don't have time." Duh.

And then one guy was like, "If you cut out wheat, dairy and meat, what else is left?" And before I knew it I had described exactly the kind of meal that would show up in this magical, mystical "cookbook" of which I dream.