Dairy Free, Gluten Free Key Lime Pie

One of our favorite holiday desserts is this pie. I buy fresh key limes in season and then feeze them in 1/2 cup portions. I am sure commercially frozen key lime juice would work as well.

Gluten and Dairy Free Key Lime Pie

1/2 cup key lime juice
1 can coconut creme (we like roland brand best but we have tried several and they have all worked)
1 package plain gelatin
3 egg yolks
1 premade pie shell (We use the cookie crust from November 2 blog)

Preheat oven to 300.
Put coconut creme in a glass bowl and warm in the microwave until hot but not boiling. Add the gelatin to the coconut creme and mix thoroughly. Using a hand blender or mixer, blend in the lime juice. Blend in the egg yolks last. Pour into a premade pie shell and put in the oven. Cook for 40-45 minutes. Cool on a cooling rack 30 minutes and then refridgerate until set.

Orange Cranberry Sauce

Orange Cranberry Sauce

My kids are huge fans of cranberry sauce but I hate all the sugar. This recipe reduces the sugar some while adding another flavor that keeps it from being too tart.

2 oranges, peeled and seeded

1 bag of cranberries, preferably organic, rinsed

1 cup orange juice

2/3 cup sugar

Throw the oranges and cranberries in the food processor and chop until uniform. Put all ingredients in a small stainless steel saucepan and heat on medium until the mixture is a deep purple red and sticky. The consistency will be similar to commercial whole berry cranberry sauce.

Gluten free Poultry Stuffing

The holidays are here and we have had one turkey and will be having number 2 on Christmas. My family loves stuffing. It is their favorite part of a turkey dinner. I think part of the reason is that it is the traditional stuffing my mother made when I was a kid, only adjusted for the diet. The most difficult part is that I make the pork sausage from scratch because we have been able to find an aceptable gluten free alternative that tastes right for this application.

For the sausage

1 1/2 lb. organic ground pork

organic palm oil

Bell's poultry seasoning

I use the meat grinder attachment for my Kitchenaid mixer to grind together the ground pork with about 25% by volume palm oil, adding poultry seasoning until it is a universal light grey color smelling faintly of sage. I usually have to run it through the grinder twice to accomplish this. The original recipe I followed was from The Joy of Cooking and called for lard. Since I was unable to find organic lard, and lard was just horrid to work with and clean up, I tried palm oil this year and it worked out fine.

Gluten free Poultry Stuffing

1 1/2-2 lb GF sagey pork sausage

1 small loaf white gf bread (about 2/3 a loaf of our no-fail gf bread, or 1 loaf Kinnikkinnik white)

1 small loaf brown gf bread ( 1 loaf Washburn and Butts brown or 1 loaf Kinnikkinnik brown)

1 large onion or 2 small onions chopped

2 eggs

2 cups chicken or turkey broth

salt

pepper

Bell's poultry seasoning

The bread works best if it is stale, but you can cube the bread and dry it in a 250 oven for 40 minuts, turning halfway through. After the bread is cubed and ready, mix bread, eggs, sausage , and onion together. Add about 1-2 tsp salt, 1 tsp pepper and enough poultry seasoning so that the stuffing smells sagey. Knead it all together using enough broth warmed in the microwave to get a good sticky texture. The goal is for the cubes to maintain some structural integrity. You are not looking for a paste. You can stuff it in your bird to cook, or put in a baking pan in a 350 oven, pouring the rest of the broth over the top, covering with foil and baking for 1-1 1/2hours until done, adding broth as needed to keep it moist. My kids love this with lots of cranberry sauce.

Dairy Free Pumpkin Pie

Fall is here and that means pumpkin pie to my guys. I spent a lot of time last fall getting this right and with the cookie crust this is a success.

Dairy Free Pumpkin Pie

3/4 C granulated sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp ginger

1/4 tsp cloves

2 large eggs

1 15 oz. can pumpkin, or 1 1/2 C fresh pumpkin

1 can coconut milk, warmed and blended with 1/8 C dried coconut cream

1 cookie pie crust

Preheat oven to 425. Mix together sugar and spices. In a separate bowl beat the eggs. Add pumpkin and mix thoroughly. Gradually stir in coconut milk. Pour in pie shell. bake at 425 for 15 minutes then reduce the heat and bake at 350 40-45 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool completely on a cooling rack. Refrigerate if not serving immediately. My kids like it cold best anyway. Enjoy.

Basic Cookie Recipe / Cookie Pie Crust

The holidays are coming and growing up in my family that meant PIE and lots of it. I have struggled for a decent pie crust and have not found anything that worked like regular roll out pie crust. What I have come up with is a cookie crust that works well for most pies. I can use it for pumpkin or key lime (2 favorites here), or with apple or blueberry if I add a crumb topping. So, in preparation for the holiday season this week I made cookie pie crusts to freeze to be ready when I need them. The basic cookie recipe I use was published in the United Buying Clubs Catalog last fall and is useful for many types of cookies. This recipe makes quite a large batch(I got 8 pie crusts and 3 pans of cookies out of it) but it can be split easily.

Basic Cookie Recipe/Cookie Pie Crust

3 C powdered sugar

2 C granulated sugar

2 C shortening- we use palm oil

6 eggs- we use Pete and Gerry's Organic exclusively-why is another story

1 Tbsp salt

1/4 C vanilla extract

1 C amaranth flour

2 C potato starch

2 C sweet rice flour

4 C brown rice flour

2 Tbsp xanthan gum

3 Tbsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 325. In a large bowl mix together the flours, potato starch, xanthan gum and baking powder. In your largest bowl cream together the sugars and shortening. Add the eggs, vanilla and salt. Mix together until well blended. Add the flour mixture about 1/4 at time stirring vigorously. At the end you will likely have to knead in the last portion. It should be about the consistency of Play-doh. If too dry, add 1 Tbsp of water at a time until it is the right consistency. The original recipe said to use an ungreased cookie sheet but I find that a thin coating of spray oil makes everything go more smoothly particularly as you will be using the cookie pans multiple times.

For Pie Crusts

Spray oil your pie pans. Take a smallish baseball sized ball and put it in the center of each pan. push the dough out toward the sides and edges creating a thin layer of cookie dough. Since the dough rises some during baking it is not necessary that it be thick, in fact that is undesireable. remove any excess that gets worked over the edge. For a more finished looking edge roll small bits of dough into "snakes" to lay along the edge and blend in. When the crust is complete, prick the bottom with a fork across the surface and bake for about 15 minutes. It should be a light golden brown, darker if you will be using it for an unbaked filling. Cool on a cooling rack completely and fill or freeze for future use.

For Thumbprint Cookies

Spray oil a cookie sheet or minimuffin pan. We use minimuffin pans because they make for a nice deep well in the bottom and we don't have to worry about filling spilling out. Make a 1" ball and push your thumb in to create a well in the center. In the minimuffin pan push the dough up the sides to create a little cup. If you are using jam to fill these you can add that now or you can wait and fill them when they are cooked and cool. We like to fill the cooked ones with a chocolate coconut ganache or with homemade peanut butter cups(those don't last very long here.) I will post that recipe in a couple of days but if you want to be able to make the peanut butter cups you need to cook some of the cookie dough as crumbs. I usually cook about 1C that way then freeze whatever I don't use for toppings, etc.

Basic Chicken Stock

Basic Chicken Stock

Almost all of the broth we use is our own homemade chicken stock we make based on the recipe in Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. Here is our method. We buy mostly natural chickens and definitely only use natural chicken for chicken stock. Generally speaking we use a table top roaster oven to roast chickens, usually 2-3 at a time (natural chickens are generally smaller that the hormone fed behemoths in the grocery store.) This is also helpful because it does not tie up the stove with the long broth cooking process. After the meal is over, the chicken bones are returned to the roaster oven. We throw all the skins out as skins are where a lot of the environmental toxins end up. We fill the roaster 2/3- 3/4 full with water (you will need more to cover a turkey carcass.) Add 1 large or 2 small onions, several organic carrots, several stalks of celery and a couple of tablespoons cider vinegar. Bring to a boil and remove the scum that rises up to the top. Cover and simmer for 12-24 hours. The longer you cook it the richer the flavor. When you are done cooking, strain the stock and remove the solids. Return stock to roaster and boil off liquid to concentrate broth in order to make it easier to store. The last step is to add a bunch of fresh parsley for the last 5 minutes of cooking, then remove before cooling. In the winter I put the stock pot part outside in the cold to cool until the fat solidifies and can be skimmed off. We freeze this in 1 and 2 cup containers, planning on a 2:1 ratio of bought broth to homemade for a recipe. Why go to all of this trouble? "Properly prepared meat stocks are extremely nutritious, containing the minerals of bone, cartilage, marrow, and vegetables as electrolytes, and hence in easily assimilated form. ... Stock is also of great value because it supplies hydrophilic colloids to the diet. ... Although gelatin is by means a complete protein, ... it acts as a protein sparer, allowing the body to more fully utilize the complete proteins that are taken in. " Nourishing Traditions, p.107.

Dairy Free Vegetable Chowder

Dairy Free Vegetable Chowder

Everyone is still sick here but I have another soup success story to post. Both my older sons (8 and 6) chose a second bowl of chowder over eggs to complete their meal.

This is adapted from original revised Moosewood Cookbook.

1 Tbsp. margarine

2 C chopped onions(any of these dairy free chowders need really sharp, cry producing onions to counter the sweetness of the milk substitutes)

6 cloves garlic, crushed

2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. thyme

2 tsp.basil

1 medium potato, peeled and diced

3 medium stalks celery, diced

3 medium carrots, diced

2 C chopped broccoli (I used frozen)

2 C chopped cauliflower (again, I used frozen)

1/2 lb. mushrooms, chopped

2 cup corn (again frozen)

freshly ground black pepper

1 1/2 C water

4 cups hot water to mix with

1 1/4C Darifree potato milk powder

1 cup coconut milk

Melt the margarine in a dutch oven or other soup pot. Add onion, garlic, and spices.

Saute on medium about 5 minutes.

Add potato, celery,carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower. Saute for another 5 to 8 min. Add mushrooms and corn and a generous amount of black pepper. Saute another 8-10 min.

Add water and half of potato milk, cover and simmer 15 min.making sure potatoes are cooked through.

Add the rest of the potato milk and coconut milk. Remove from heat and rewarm just prior to serving.