Some Recipes for the Tender of Stomach

More accurately tender of gut, but who’s counting?

Everybody’s stressed lately. Good food is one way to keep up morale. But that can be tricky if you have food sensitivities. A persnickety gut doesn’t exactly make for thrilling writing. Though it can keep you from writing, either by reducing your concentration, actually messing with your brain, or a host of other annoying symptoms. I apparently have not just gluten sensitivity but an actual wheat allergy; eggs don’t like me either. Here’s some stuff I’ve found that works anyway.

Great Value Gluten-Free Brownie Mix.

Yes, the inexpensive one you pick up from Walmart. I’ve tried at least a half-dozen different brownie mixes, some not at all cheap, but none of them worked as well as this one. It does have two problems: It’s too sweet, and it’s not chocolate enough. And I need to get around the egg called for. I solve these by adding:

One 9-ounce bag of Enjoy Life Dark Morsels (melt them in with the butter).

¾ cup of cocoa.

3 tbsp of sour cream, to make things moister given I’m using a serving-cup of applesauce to substitute for the 2 eggs. (About ¼ cup of applesauce per egg.)

This will take a little longer to cook than the recipe calls for, and you might want to do the extra 5 minutes or so about 25 F lower so you don’t scorch the top. It’ll also take at least a few minutes cooling down to solidify. It is very chocolate.

Namaste Foods Spice Cake Mix

Good, but spicy; tastes better with a bit of sour cream on top to tone the spices down. I haven’t tried the “add shredded carrots” variation yet.

Gluten-Free 101: the essential beginner’s guide to easy gluten-free cooking, by Carol Fenster.

I’ve only tried a few recipes out of here so far, but the pizza recipe works. (You have no idea how many GF pizza crusts I’ve tried. I had one that worked but then the company reformulated it and included pea fiber. I get along with pea fiber even worse than eggs!)

The only caveat I’ll add to this one is, the crust may need to be cooked a bit longer than the recipe says before you put toppings on and cook it again. Ovens vary.

Other recipes in here that work:

Oven-Fried Chicken, though I used yogurt rather than buttermilk.

Chicken Fingers; again, I used yogurt rather than cold milk and an egg.

Carol’s Gluten-Free Flour Blend.

Planning on trying more recipes out of here now that I have all the ingredients for the flour blend. Unfortunately I can’t get them all local; while neighborhood markets did have things like xanthan gum and tapioca starch, brown rice flour and potato starch I had to order online.

If you also have problems with garlic and onions (very common in non-celiac gluten sensitivity), in a lot of recipes (say, for taco meat, or jambalaya) you can substitute chili powder with equal amounts of oregano and cumin, and some cayenne added for heat.

And a neat trick for hamburgers I ran across a few days ago: sprinkle salt and cayenne generously on each side before cooking. (If starting with a frozen hamburger, cook long enough on one side to thaw the meat slightly, turn, sprinkle, repeat, then cook the rest of the way.) This results in a spicier but also juicier hamburger; really noticeable difference if you’re starting from frozen burgers!