Dairy-Free "Cheez-It" Crackers

These crackers are about the closest I've come yet to a "junk food" flavor, at least a savory one.  They taste a lot like a Cheez-It or goldfish cracker.  These are based on a recipe I found in an episode of Raw World TV, which you can view here on YouTube.  They present the recipe as a cheese sauce as well as a cracker recipe, however when I made it it didn't have the "cheese-like" texture that theris did.  Maybe you need a Vitamix to make it into a sauce.  It might be worth playing with this for those who are really wanting a macaroni and cheese type sauce.

To make it as crackers, follow the same basic recipe, which is to put one red bell pepper, one cup of macadamia nuts, some salt and cayenne pepper in the blender or food processor and blend until smooth.  Then spread it thin on a dehydrator sheet and dehydrate until it reaches the desired level of dryness.  At 105 degrees this took me well over 24 hours, so I would use a higher heat.  If you want to make crackers in cute shapes I would pull it out partway through, when it is still pliable, and cut it with cookie cutters, then put it back to continue drying. 

Celery Chestnut Stuffing

Chestnut stuffing has always been one of my favorite comfort foods and I have been experimenting with it for quite a while now.  This version is my favorite so far.

INGREDIENTS:

2 T butter or ghee
2 onions, chopped
1 T dried rubbed sage
2 tsp dried thyme
1 cup reduced turkey stock (or other meat stock)
1 large celery or 2 small ones
2 c chopped chestnuts
salt to taste
additional stock as needed

METHOD:

Melt the butter in a large, heavy skillet.  Saute the onions until softened, about 5 minutes, then add the herbs.  Mix and add the stock, and bring to a simmer.  Add the celery and chestnuts and cook until they are soft, adding additional stock if needed.  Taste and add salt if desired.  This will depend on how salty the stock was.

VARIATIONS:

For "rice stuffing", add a grated cauliflower at the end.  You may need to add additional stock as well.

For bread stuffing, I used the nut butter bread recipe although coconut bread may work as well.  Cut about half of a loaf of bread into cubes.  If you feel that the bread is too soft, you can slice it and toast it first.  The cubes can then be added to the above recipe at the end and cooked until they are softened and have absorbed the liquid.  You may need to add extra stock or butter.

Baked Seed Crackers and Pizza Crust

I originally came up with this recipe as a pizza crust (which, by the way, I think is the best one so far), but quickly realized that it would also work well as crackers.  As a pizza crust, it's a little on the crispy side (which I like), and as crackers they are a little on the soft side.  If you like your crackers crispier, then simply leave them in the oven longer. 

INGREDIENTS:

1 c ground pumpkin seeds
1 c ground sunflower seeds
1 tsp salt
1 large or 2 small eggs
1-2 tsp olive oil
optional- crushed garlic, chopped parsley, dried Italian herbs, or any other ingredient for flavor

METHOD:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Ideally the seeds should be soaked in water overnight, then dried in the oven or dehydrator on a low setting.  Once dry, they can be stored in jars so they are ready when you want to cook.

Grind the seeds before measuring out 1 cup each.  I like to grind mine in a coffee grinder that I use only for seeds, nuts, and spices.  Blend all ingredients with an electric mixer in a medium bowl.  The dough will be very stiff.  Vary the amount of olive oil based on how dry the dough seems- if it is wet enough with one tsp, then omit the second one.  If you are adding herbs, garlic, or anything else for flavor, do it now.  For the batch in the photo, I added 2 cloves of garlic and a handfull of chopped parsley (additional flavors are good for both crackers and pizza crust).

Grease a cookie sheet and sprinkle it with coarsely ground pumpkin seeds.  Pat the dough into a ball shape and place it in the middle of the cookie sheet.  Beginning in the center and moving outwards, squish the dough flat with your hands.  I suppose you could also cover it with waxed paper and roll it out with a rolling pin.  I try to get it to about 1/4 of an inch.  For pizza crust, you may want to make the edges slightly raised, for crackers, make it flat.

 For pizza- bake for 20 minutes (or longer if it looks very wet).  Remove from oven, top with sauce and toppings, then return to oven for as long as it takes for the toppings to get hot and cheese to melt if you are using cheese.

For crackers-bake 25-30 minutes, depending on how crispy you like them.  Cut them into squares with a pizza cutter.  If you left them in a long time to get crispy, you should cut them quickly while they are still a little soft.  Top with hummus, yogurt or kefir cheese, or any other topping you like.  If you made them on the softer side, you could cut them with cookie cutters to make them look fancy.

Classic Hamburger or Cheeseburger

We've been eating hamburger patties since nearly the beginning of the diet, which we enjoy, but we really wanted "the real thing" the other day.  For the bun we used large bread-like pancakes which held together remarkably well.  We topped off our burgers with homemade mayo, Bubbie's pickles (which are raw and lacto fermented), sliced tomatoes and GAPS-legal mustard.  You could also make your own ketchup for this.

Here's the basic recipe we use for hamburger patties:

1 lb ground beef or buffalo
1 egg
1 T honey
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1-2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1/2 tsp grated ginger
1/4 cup marrow or liver (optional)

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and kneed with your hands.  Form the meat into patties (we prefer to make 6 patties from 1 pound of meat).  The patties can be fried in cooking fat, broiled, or grilled.  We like ours topped with melted cheese and fried onions.

Garlic Bread

Now that fall weather is settling in, it's back to the joys of having the oven on and wonderful smells filling the house.  Garlic bread is a flavor I've missed until now.  This coconut bread recipe is very good, and will work well for many things I'm sure!

The recipe for the bread comes from the Cheeseslave blog:
http://www.cheeseslave.com/2008/11/26/coconut-flour-bread/
The original recipe comes from the book "Cooking with Coconut Flour" by Bruce Fife and was adapted for GAPS by the Cheeseslave Lady.  Thank you Cheeseslave Lady!

Once you've made the bread, just melt a lot of butter or ghee in a skillet and gently saute LOTS of crushed or chopped garlic to let the butter take on the flavor.  I used about 1/3 of a loaf of the bread and big chunk of butter, so I can't tell you exact proportions here. Some people prefer to make the garlic butter by mashing the crushed garlic into butter at room temperature without melting it.  Also, many people like to add chopped parsley.  Garlic bread is more of an art than a science :)

Spread the garlic butter between slices of the bread, and wrap in foil (if that's your thing) and place in a baking dish.  I prefer for my food to not touch aluminum, so I put the bread back in it's bread pan and covered the top with foil to keep in the moisture.  If you have another method, please post it in the comments!

I placed it in a 300 degree oven for about 30 minutes.

French Toast

It would be an understatement to say that we are tired of eating eggs for breakfast, so I've been looking to branch out.  I had part of a loaf of nut butter bread left over and decided to try an old favorite of ours, french toast.  This bread is soft and spongy and worked very well!

To make french toast, first make a loaf of the Nut Butter Bread:
http://grainfreefoodie.blogspot.com/2009/09/nut-butter-bread.html

In a large, flat dish (such as a Pyrex baking dish), put three eggs and several tablespoons of coconut milk.  You may also want to add a dash of vanilla extract and or cinnamon for flavor.  Blend with a fork.

Place slices of the bread in the dish to soak, making sure to flip them over so they soak up the liquid on both sides.  Take care not to soak too long or the bread will come apart when yu try to remove it.  Cook them on a hot greased griddle or skillet, on both sides, until they are brown. 

Serve with butter or ghee, honey, homemade SCD-legal jam, fruit compote, stewed prunes, or honey lemon syrup.  To make honey-lemon syrup:

1/4 C honey
juice of half a lemon
vanilla (optional)

Combine the first two ingredients in a saucepan and heat over medium heat. They will heat up and become much thinner very quickly. Turn off heat, and add vanilla, if using. At this point you can further thin the syrup by adding in some filtered water.

This would also be good with a different fruit juice, such as pomegranate or cherry. The Knudsen's Just Juice line is supposed to be acceptable for GAPS, and this could offer some welcome variation.

Nut Butter Bread

This bread is soft like a quickbread, but stays together well enough to use for sandwiches.  It has a pretty neutral flavor to it, but can be either sweet or savory depending on what you add to it.  It is very similar to the recipe for nut butter muffins already on the site.

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup nut butter (or seed butter)
1/4 cup honey
3 eggs
1/2 tsp baking soda
Pinch of salt
1 T vinegar or lemon juice

METHOD:

Combine all ingredients except for the vinegar and mix well (this usually requires an electric mixer for me). Add the vinegar or lemon juice and mix well, then pour into a greased loaf pan.

Bake about 40 minutes in a 350 degree oven.  It is done when a knife or toothpick comes out clean.

For a sweet bread, increase the honey to 1/3 or 1/2 cup and add cinnamon and whatever other spices you like, such as nutmeg or ground cloves.  Adding more honey will extend the baking time so keep an eye on this.

To make it savory, reduce or omit the honey, and add a little more salt as well as crushed garlic, onion powder (if it is SCD-legal), and other savory spices such as thyme.

Hazelnut Pizza Crust

This is based on a recipe from Breaking the Vicious Cycle by Elaine Gottschall.  The recipe in the book calls for almond flour, which we don't use because it is high oxalate.  Hazelnut flour gave this crust the look and feel of whole wheat.  This is the best GAPS pizza crust we've had so far.

INGREDIENTS:

2 eggs
2 cups of hazelnut flour, plus more?
2 tsp olive oil
3/4 tsp salt
dried spices, such as basil, thyme and oregano, are optional

Beat the eggs in a medium mixing bowl.  Add the other ingredients and stir.  If mixture does not easily form a ball, add more flour by the tablespoon.  1 T of coconut flour will also help as it absorbs excess liquid very well.

Grease a pizza pan or cookie sheet, and sprinkle some of the flour on as well.  Place the ball of dough in the middle of the pan and squish it out into the shape you want.  This should be enough dough to mostly cover a standard cookie sheet.  It is fine if it doesn't reach all the way to the edges.

Bake the crust for about 20 minutes at 350 degrees, until it is lightly browned and no longer wet.  Top with sauce and other toppings, and return to oven for 5-10 minutes, or long enough for toppings to heat up and cheese to melt if you are using cheese.

NOTE:  I think this would also work well as a pie crust, but as I am allergic to hazelnut flour so I won't be experimenting with that.  I also think that if you just baked the crust then cut it up it would make nice crackers.

Banana Hazelnut Bread or Cake

We ate this before I could photograph it :)

This is based on the recipe for banana cake by Elaine Gottschall in Breaking the Vicious Cycle.  The hazelnut flour gave it more of a look and feel of wheat then anything else I've tried.  Unfortunately, I also discovered that I'm allergic to hazelnut flour.  This can be a bread or a cake, depending on how much honey you add to it.

INGREDIENTS:

3 cups hazelnut flour (other flour should work as well)
3 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup melted butter or ghee
1 tsp baking soda (optional, not GAPS legal)
2 extra ripe mashed bananas
honey- 1/3 cup for bread, 2/3 cup for cake

METHOD:

Mash bananas with a fork in a large mixing bowl.  Add other ingredients and mix thoroughly.  Pour into a greased cake, loaf, or baking pan. 

Bake at 350 degrees for about 40-45 minutes, or until the top springs back when poled.  Baking time will vary depending on the shape of pan used.

Pancake "bread"

I created this recipe while experimenting to find ways of using the nut pulp left over from making nut milk and was surprised by how much the texture reminds me of wheat bread. The flavor and texture will vary quite a bit depending on which nuts the pulp was made from. We eat these either hot off the griddle with butter and honey (in which case they remind me of toast), or let them cool and use them to make round sandwiches. If the sandwiches are to be savory, you can add herbs to the batter, if they are to be sweet (say nut butter and fruit) they taste good with honey added and maybe a little cinnamon.

INGREDIENTS:

5 eggs, separated
1 cup nut butter
1 cup nut pulp
1/2 cup nut milk (or other liquid)
pinch of salt (for savory)
1 T honey (for sweet)

METHOD:

Mix all ingredients except egg whites. Beat egg whites with mixer until they form soft peaks, then fold them into the other ingredients. If the other ingredients are very stiff and it is hard to mix, you can either add more liquid or just keep stirring- even if you lose some of the fluffiness of the egg whites the pancakes will still turn out well.

Cook on hot greased griddle.

Coconut Flour Pizza Crust

I came up with this recipe today because I wanted a pizza crust not made with almonds, as one of my kids is sensitive to oxalates. This recipe is loosely based on a low-carb pizza crust recipe by George Stella, which uses soy flour. I wish I could say this recipe was fabulous, it's not- however it does get the job done and sometimes that what counts :) It did not, however, photograph well.

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup coconut flour
3 eggs
3/4 cup coconut milk
1/3 cup club soda or water
1 tsp salt
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried basil
1 clove garlic, crushed

METHOD:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Beat eggs in a medium bowl, then beat in other ingredients.

Spread thinly and evenly on a greased pizza pan or cookie sheet (this was just the right amount of dough for a 10" x 15" jelly roll pan). The dough will be more sticky then regular dough and bit thinner in consistency

The original recipe said to bake for 12-15 minutes, until the crust is nicely browned and cooked through. This took closer to 30 minutes in my oven- not sure whether it is the change in flour or the fact that my oven temp is off. It should be done when the edges start to brown.

Top your pizza with sauce and whatever else you would like. Bake for another 5-10 minutes, depending on the toppings. If you are lucky and able to have cheese, bake until the cheese has melted nicely.

Onion Torte

I wanted cornbread, but I obviously can't have it. I came up with this recipe that's not really like cornbread at all, but is very tasty nonetheless. It's more like a savory torte in that it's dense and moist. I'm sure it would be delicious with various herbs and spices added too.

Ingredients

1/4 cup GAPS "legal" bacon grease
2 Tbsp. butter
1 large onion thinly sliced
3 eggs, well beaten
1/4 cup filtered water or chicken broth
2 tsp. cider vinegar
1 tsp. honey
1 cup almond flour*
1/2 cup ground sunflower seeds
1/2 cup ground pumpkin seeds
1 tsp. sea salt
Pepper to taste

Method

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Melt grease and butter in an 8 inch cast iron skillet. Sautee the onion in the fat until translucent. Mix the remaining ingredients well. Add extra water, if needed. It should be about the texture of cornbread batter. Pour into the pan with the onions. Place in the oven and bake for 30-40 minutes until lightly browned on top and cooked through.

*I bought slivered blanched almonds and ground them to a fine meal in my food processor. I used raw seeds, but I will soak them and dehydrate them next time.