Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real ~ Living a Grain-Free Life

For those who are new here ~ My son is allergic to ALL grains.  He is also allergic to most nuts, soy and a few other individual things.  In my opinion, the hardest thing to avoid is corn.  It is in everything from Pledge Dusting Spray to 80% of food you can buy in the store (according to our doctors).  Even processed food that has no corn in it likely was put on a conveyor belt sprinkled with cornstarch to keep it from sticking to the belt. Tomorrow I will be talking about going to the dentist with a corn allergy.  However, today I am celebrating food and learning how to eat grain free.

Pretty ~
I made Chicken Fingers recently.  They came out so pretty.  I took chicken breasts and dipped them in tapioca flour, then egg, then smashed potato chips.  Then I browned them in oil and baked them in the oven.  Yummy!

Happy~
My son really missed bread of some kind.  I did find a bagel in our health food store that he loves made out of tapioca flour.  However, it is almost $8 for 6 bagels!  That is a bit steep for me to buy on a weekly basis.  Thus, I was happy when I found this recipe.  I have trouble leaving recipes alone so I use tapioca flour instead of the potato starch and only a 1/4 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar.  My son loves this and I can use it for pancakes or sandwich bread.

Funny ~
As I said before, I tend to do my own thing with recipes.  Funnily enough, my husband often says he will never get the same dish twice, since his wife won't remember what she put in it last time.  Due to my son's allergies, I have been forced to follow recipes more closely in recent months.  It is so easy to ruin dishes when you are using all of these strange, unforgiving, grain-free flours.  Most people say you throw away a ton while learning grain-free cooking.  I simply can not afford to do that.  Unfortunately, I did have to throw away a batch of homemade jelly beans the other day.  I don't know if my kids will have jelly beans for Easter this year (even the organic, corn-free ones are shook in confectionery sugar, which has cornstarch in it, to keep them from sticking).  It must be possible since they sell the molds.  There was a time when I thought marshmallows were impossible, but now I can whip them up without any trouble.

Real ~
Almost everything has to be made from scratch, and I mean EVERYTHING.  We make our own fruit roll- ups, marshmallows, bread products, whip cream, ice cream and Feingold simple syrup (to replace corn syrup).  Now I need to learn how to make vanilla extract, since even organic is made with corn whiskey, as all extracts are!  I just made raspberry syrup for pancakes and ice cream.  It came out a bit thin but tastes great.

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Blessings,
Dawn