Gluten-Free | The Dinner Special podcast

138: Alanna Taylor-Tobin: Behind the Pages of Alternative Baker

September 7, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Alternative Baker cookbook

I am so excited to welcome Alanna Taylor-Tobin of The Bojon Gourmet back to the show today. The last time we talked was over a year ago. And Alanna has been busy working on a bunch of awesome stuff. One thing in particular is her cookbook called, Alternative Baker: Reinventing Dessert with Gluten-Free Grains and Flours. I’m super psyched to have her here today to chat about her labour of love. And to learn about the process of putting her book together.

(*All photos below are Alanna’s.)

On Her Cookbook, Alternative Baker:

I really wanted to write a cookbook about rustic fruit desserts because that’s my favorite way to cook. It’s like using what’s in season and how do you take those perfectly ripe peaches and make them even better than they are on their own? And I’m gluten sensitive so I’ve been playing with different flours for the last decade or so. I think actually the thing that made me really want to write this book was my gluten-free pie dough, which I’m really proud of. It’s so delicious. I just wanted to really highlight that in the book. And how you can create these great flavours and textures from these alternative flours. The publisher was really excited about the alternative flours aspect of it so we sort of put the two together and we came up with this concept of alternative grains and flours, but also seasonal fruits and vegetables. It makes for this really vibrant, colourful, fun cookbook.

In October, it will be two years since the initial e-mail exchange. I started working on the book actually right when we had talked the last time in January of 2015 but it was brand new and I hadn’t told anyone about it yet. I had eight months for the recipes and manuscripts and then an additional month for the photographs after that. And then it was tying up things and doing editing. Then it’s been at the printer being printed.

So it will be almost two years from start to finish.

On Creating a Cookbook for All Skill Levels:

I didn’t really think about that at first. The thing that really made that become important to me was when I started sending my recipes out to testers. I ended up with I think 60 or 80 recipe testers, just volunteers or friends or readers. I really wanted to get each recipe tested by at least two different people because gluten-free baking is so finicky. And so I just really wanted to make sure at least two people could make each recipes before they went into print and went out to the masses.

When the testers started making these recipes I really realized like, this isn’t just a hypothetical person who I don’t know, who’s anonymous and who buys the book years in the future. This is my teacher from pastry school making this or this is an old friend of mine, this is a reader who I have a nice rapport with. I want to make this recipe really easy for them and make it as good as possible, and as streamlined as possible. I realized I was already asking a lot for people to go find these obscure flours to use and also seasonal produce that maybe was not in season or was hard to find. So I started to try to simplify things.

On an Instant Household Classic for a Beginner:

I have a few recipes. And actually, I have a full section in the book that lists the simpler recipes or the more complex ones. If you’re a flour child, F-L-O-U-R, then you can make these simpler recipes that don’t use many flours or these easy to find flours. Up to you. If you’re a grainiac then you can make these crazy recipes with more obscure flours. And so one recipe is a brownie recipe that is adopted from Alice Medrich who’s the goddess of baking, gluten-free baking and alternative flour baking. And her brownie recipe is just…it’s amazing. You whip the eggs with the sugar so you get the light and airy, but they’re really dense and fudgy, and chocolate-y at the same time. But it’s totally easy to make and you can use pretty much any flour in there. There’s so much chocolate and eggs to stick it together. The ones in my book have chestnut flour in them. It makes an extra earthy, rich brownie with this delicious buttery texture.

On Probably the Most Challenging Recipe in the Cookbook:

There is one recipe. I think it’s probably the most challenging recipe in the book. And it’s not necessarily hard to make. But it’s just sort of a pain in the butt. And it’s this trifle… When you make a chiffon cake, just add like a citrus flavor in the chiffon cake… And the chiffon cake is like, it’s just really easy to make. It just takes a little bit of technique that you have to whip the egg whites and then fold them into the batter so you have to know how to do that. And then you make a Zabaglione… Zabaglione is such an annoying dessert because first you have eight egg yolks and what are you going to do with those egg whites. That’s annoying just to begin with. And you put sugar and I put Lillet Blanc in it. It’s that aperitif…It’s a wine base that has these citrus, honey flavors in it. So delicious. So you put that with the egg yolks and then sugar. And you put it in a hot water bath. You have to whisk it and you have… You’re sweating and there’s steam coming up from the pot and it’s burning you, you have to just keep whipping and whipping, mixing by hand with the whisk until it get’s really frothy. And then you have to chill it. Then you have to fold heavy cream into it. It’s such a pain to make it but it’s just like nothing else. It’s just this super silky, fluffy, light sort of custard that is layered with the chiffon cake and soaked with more citrus juice and more Lillet, and then layered with winter citrus fruits, like oranges and grapefruits and tangerines. It’s this amazing really impressive looking dessert. But it’s really a pain to make.

On a Surprising Challenge That was Different From Blogging:

The thing that snuck up on me was that when I’m photographing for my blog, first of all, I do those process shots. And so I get to warm up…you don’t just go sprint out the door. You stretch and you start slowly and work up to it. When shooting for my blog, I realized shooting these process shots was kind of a warm up to get the final beauty shots at the end. And then with the book, it was only the finished shot. It kind of surprised me how much it helps me when I’m shooting for my blog to have this warm up period to the beauty shot. Also, just being creative under pressure was really hard for me.

With my blog, it’s free content, it doesn’t matter if it’s not perfect. But, with the book, it kind of put the fear in me. First of all, there was this intense deadline – all these other people are waiting on. For my blog if don’t post one week it doesn’t matter really. No one’s mad at me. For the book they had this deadline and I had to try to be creative and really think on my feet and just come up with interesting shots. At first I felt paralyzed. Because it was just so different and it just felt really difficult.

On If We Can Expect More Cookbooks in the Future:

I think I’m crazy enough to do this thing again. I don’t have kids but I would imagine, your first kid, is like you have no idea what you are doing.

It would be nice to do a second book to apply all of those things first of all. But also I love the whole process, making all these recipes that all fit together. For the blog, I do that to some extent on the blog, but it’s not the same as like having it all together in a book and pulling all these different influences and flavors and everything and having it all come together into a book. That was really satisfying and I’d love to do that again.

On How to Get our Hands on Alternative Baker:

Well it comes out September 13th. And it can be preordered through anywhere. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, your local bookstore, Books-a-Million, any retailers of books you can preorder it. And if you want to find out more about the book you can go to alternativebaker.com and that’s my cookbook page. I talk all about the book there.

121: Beth Manos Brickey: Taking Control and Making Healthier Choices

May 4, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Tasty Yummies

Beth has been 100% gluten-free since 2005 and was inspired to create her blog, Tasty Yummies, after significantly changing her diet and her life in 2010.

Her goal is to inspire us to get creative with our food and to live and eat well with food intolerances and allergies. Her work has been featured in America’s Test Kitchen, Huffington Post and The Kitchn, just to mention a few. Beth is also an artist, a certified yoga instructor and adventurer and lover of all things yummy.

I’m so excited to have Beth Manos Brickey of Tasty Yummies joining me here on the show.

(*The photos below are Beth’s.)

On Whether or Not to Try a Gluten-Free Diet:

The longer I’ve been in this world, the more I see that it’s different for everybody. We’re all such individuals and there’s obviously classic signs of gluten intolerances, or you can have an allergy or you can have Celiac disease, which would also bring on the intolerance. There are varying degrees of symptoms. I would say, certainly chronic digestive issues, it’s worth looking into.

Brain fog, skin issues, just feeling generally run-down. I know people that have a very classic allergenic response, hives. So, it can take on many forms and there’s also different ways but I also think that sometimes people think, “Well, I don’t have diarrhea every day, so clearly…and I eat gluten every day, so clearly, I don’t have an intolerance,” but as I was saying previously, our bodies actually are really smart and they’re built with these mechanisms to protect us. If you’re constantly exposing your body to something that it doesn’t want, it will learn how to protect you from it by building up a tolerance. So, just because you don’t have itchy skin and you don’t think you’re tired or brain fogged or digestively challenged, it doesn’t mean that there’s not something else going on. So, it’s worth experimenting. I tell everybody, if there’s any question, just try it.

On Relearning to Cook Gluten-Free:

There were a lot of fails, a lot of fails, but I think that that’s what made me love food. I’ve always loved food, I’ve always had an appreciation for it but it really connected me in a different way. I built this different relationship with food, where I started learning that I had to listen to the food and what it wanted and what I wanted to do with it. Just getting back to basics but also, realize that there is so much exploring that can be done, and sometimes the most basic things can be the most beautiful things.

On a Simple First Step to Making Healthier Choices:

If I had it my way, I’d tell every person that I ever met to never eat a processed food again because it’s just garbage for you. Your body doesn’t recognize most of what you’re eating as true food. There’s no nutrition to it, so it’s not sustaining any sort of life force within your body. So, start to take note of the things in your kitchen and be aware of what’s in them. And obviously, we’re all in a world of convenience and needing to eat on the go, so if you’re going to pick a processed food – again, this comes from Michael Pollan – but my rule is five ingredients or less, and know what those ingredients are. If you cannot pronounce a word on a box, don’t buy it, just don’t.

On a Dish That’s Special to Her:

It’s actually under my website as a tutorial because it’s a little bit more step-by-step of a recipe. My family is Greek. My dad is 100% Greek and I grew up very surrounded by traditional Greek foods and everything that you see in My Big Fat Greek Wedding where Greek people eat, someone passes away, someone gets sick, we eat, we always eat. Food is celebration. So, growing up, my grandmother, my yaya, always made stuffed grape leaves. We call them dolmades; they’re called different things in other cultures. And it’s something I always loved, I thought it was a ton of work. I would love when she would make them and I would come over and I never made time to have her teach me how to make them. It’s one of those things, she passed away. Ironically, the month that I did that cleanse to remove everything, to find out if I needed to remove gluten, that was the month my yaya passed away, smack in the middle of that. I remember then and even now being like, “My gosh, I learned so much from her in the kitchen.” She was a great cook but I never learned how to make dolmades. I moved in to this house here in southern California about three years ago and when I moved in, the whole back alley of the house right behind my bedroom window, it’s all lined with grape vines.

And I was like, “Oh, I know what I need to do. I need to make stuffed grape leaves.” So my parents came out to visit and we got my grandmother’s old church cookbook that they – all the women of the Greek Orthodox Church in Buffalo – put together and we followed the instructions and followed her notes of the things that she changed and added and we learned, taught ourselves how to make stuffed grape leaves, with fresh grape leaves nonetheless. And after we did that, the first year I was like, “I need to make this a tutorial on my website. I need to show people that even though it’s cumbersome in the sense it’s a lot of steps and there’s a lot of hands-on aspect, it’s not just dumping stuff in a pot.” It’s also such an amazing and beautiful process that it’s one of those foods I have never once ever made them on my own. I always make them when my parents are here or when I go back home or something where there’s like a community, family love aspect to the meal.

It’s cool, it’s a recipe that I have a lot of pride in, even though it’s not anything original and it’s really simple but it’s just such a fun and beautiful connection-type recipe. And then I also – in the tutorial, because I generally avoid a lot of grains and I know a lot of my readers do as well – I offer the option to replace the rice that’s in the stuffed grape leaves with cauliflower rice. So, it’s kind of a different option and then you can make it with meat or without meat, you can eat them hot or cold. So, it’s amazing.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

This is not going to be a popular answer but I don’t really watch cooking shows anymore. I got sick of always turning on Food Network and always seeing Guy Fieri and a bunch of garbage food that I didn’t really want to get excited about. So, I just don’t watch it anymore. Although, Aida Mollenkamp, a friend of mine in L.A., she works with Tastemade and does a series, it’s a web series. She travels around the world and does a quick 10-minute show about the food of that area. And so, I guess I do watch a little bit, just not the traditional stuff. So yeah, that would be my pick.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

Some of my favorites are Nourished Kitchen. This woman, Jennifer, who does an amazing job sharing how to enjoy real food and get into the kitchen; very similar mind-set to mine, get in the kitchen, make it yourself, real food. I really love Salt & Wind, also created by Aida Mollenkamp, who I mentioned before. She travels the world, she has a bunch of contributors, it’s really focused on travel and the food of travel and all around the world and being inspired by that. I think the other one that really makes me happy right now is a blog called Will Frolic for Food. It’s a friend of mine, Renee Byrd, and she’s just a beautiful photographer, beautiful photos. Everything she makes is just gorgeous and you can tell she really puts time into every detail of every dish and there’s just this level of love in every recipe. It makes me happy to see somebody slowing down and taking time with food.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

So on Instagram, I follow a whole bunch of people that stemmed from this one person, in terms of what she was doing. I really love Beth of Local Milk. She just takes beautiful photography that has so much emotion in it and most of the time, it’s food-focused. So, I just love what she does. There’s a feed on Instagram called How You Glow. It’s two girls from L.A. and they also seem to travel a lot and they promote healthy living and getting out and experiencing your world and experiencing all the different things there are, but also mindful living; they’re very focused on yoga and healthy eating. I love The Feed Feed feed, just because it’s a really great way to find new bloggers, new recipes, new people. And then I follow a lot of people that are very much in line nutritionally with what I’m doing. Some of them happened to be Paleo food bloggers, but Diane Sanfilippo, Mickey Trescott, Liz Wolfe, Robyn Youkilis, who I just discovered recently, who wrote a book that came out this month. I think it’s called Go With Your Gut. It’s about gut healing and food. So yeah, those are just some of my favorites. Again, I could probably go on forever.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

I don’t know if it’s unusual, but right now, it’s my most treasured. It would be a toss-up between my Vitamix and I just recently bought a pressure cooker, Instant Pot. I do a lot of batch cooking because I want to make sure that even when I’m busy and life’s crazy, that I can eat well. I drink bone broth every week. Again, another gut healing thing, and there’s just so many nutrients and I used to make it in a big stock pot and let it cook for 24 to 48 hours, and I don’t think that’s really safe to leave a pot on a gas stove that long. It doesn’t make me feel good. So the pressure cooker cooks it in a couple of hours and it’s the best. I buy a bunch of organic chicken thighs and cook that in there and I’ve been cooking sprouted grains in there. So, sometimes at the start of the week that thing doesn’t leave the counter for two days while I just cook a storm up.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

It’s kind of a weird thing. I laugh now but I used to think that maple syrup was really gross because the scent of it I felt like it would linger if you’d have it on pancakes. When you were a kid it would just, the smell of it would just stay on your body and then it was just all you’d smell. I probably realize now that it wasn’t real maple syrup and maybe that was what I was not loving. Now, I love it. I use it when I bake and it’s always in my kitchen.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

One that jumps out is Danielle Walker of Against All Grain, put out a meals-made-simple cookbook. It’s Paleo but I just like that it’s simple. It’s not, you have to have a million crazy ingredients you’ve never heard of; it’s casseroles made with cauliflower, rice and chicken, and comfort food and the things that you grew up with. I often just turn to that for when I want something easy that I can throw it on the Crock Pot and not think about. But I know it’s well tested and it will be great.

I actually don’t cook a lot from cookbooks but another book that I turn to a lot when I want some sort of inspiration, I love Indian food but I obviously didn’t grow up with Indian food. It’s just called India Cookbook.

It’s beautiful and it’s huge, and beautiful color pictures through the whole thing. But, it’s a really nice way to look at a very classic, traditional culture’s food and how they would make it, and nine times out of ten, it’s way more involved or ingredients that I don’t have access to, but it’s a good inspiration for something that maybe comes from it that’s inspired by it.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

A lot of times when I cook I don’t have music on, but it’s when I’m taking my photos that I turn music on and then that’s so dependent on my mood. And it’s so dependent on my mood that if you looked at my stream on Spotify, you’d be like, “Is this person bipolar or are they like schizophrenic? What’s going on?” Because it would be Iron Maiden and Motorhead, and the next day it will be Fleetwood Mac and Beyonce, and then it will go to traditional Indian yogic-style music and then jazz, and then Sigur Rós. I am all over the map with music. I just don’t like country music, it doesn’t make me want to dance. But depending on my mood, I would say almost everything else will make me dance and depending on the day.

On Keeping Posted with Beth:

I’m at Tasty Yummies on pretty much on every platform, so take your pick. I’m on Snapchat and Instagram and Pinterest and Facebook. The blog is always a good home base for recipes and just stay in the loop, probably with Instagram. I have a new website coming in the next few months. So hopefully my new website will be an even better platform to keep up with the yoga events I have and retreats I found working as a nutritionist, and all the different things that I’m doing.

111: Amanda Paa: How a Gluten Allergy Inspired Her

February 24, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Heartbeet Kitchen

On her blog, Amanda shares food stories and recipes with the hope to inspire us to realize that the best meals are those made with fresh seasonal and simple ingredients. She believes that food doesn’t have to be fancy nor does it require expensive equipment. Amanda is also the author of Smitten with Squash, her cookbook with 80 original recipes on the squash family.

I am so excited to have Amanda Paa of Heartbeet Kitchen with me on the show today.

(*All photos below are Amanda’s.)

On Learning How to Cook:

There were some things that I just watched Grandma do, like my Grandma made the best loaves of bread. I never rolled them out with her, or kneaded, or anything like that. But I always ate what came from it and it was always the same and it was always so good. I could smell the yeast coming from her oven and things like that. So I think it was definitely a little bit of both. Some watching, some helping. With my other Grandma, she makes lefse every year, which is a Norwegian specialty, and I did help her, from rolling the balls to then putting it on the hot iron to getting it real thin, all of those little things, I did do with her.

It wasn’t really until about six years ago, I was living in Wisconsin and I moved back to Minnesota because I did grow up here. But moving into the Twin Cities, there were so many more farmers markets, so much more of a farm to table movement and just interesting food. I had never really taken the time to learn about or experience and so, I had this thing where I’d go to the market and every time, I would pick a new fruit or a new vegetable or even a cut of meat that I had never cooked with before. And I said, “We’re going to experiment. There is no judgment here. Just let the creativity flow,” and that is really kind of how my blog started too. It really forged this passion for telling the real story behind real food and real food recipes and it never gets boring. Because there is always something new to learn.

On Her Food Heroes:

There is so much inspiration that we are so fortunate to have because of the Internet. Years ago, it was just cookbooks which I still am inspired by today. But there is so much content out there and beautiful work being done all across the world. It’s eye opening every single day, and so when I think of my own cooking and who has inspired it a lot, I think of some of my favorite blogs like Lindsey of Dolly and Oatmeal, and Sherrie from With Food and Love, and Sarah Kieffer from The Vanilla Bean Blog.The way she is with baking and her precision and her beauty, you can’t look at it and not be inspired.

And then I think, even just typical sites like The Kitchn and Food52 have, whether it’s new ways of doing things or new ingredients that they are coming up with ideas for, and just the way that they look at food really inspires me.

I also have to say too, like even traditional people, I mean, I think Martha Stewart is phenomenal and she has gone through how many decades and not only evolved with but kept her brand. I only wish that I could throw a dinner party like her. Every little touch she does is really something special. And she takes the time to do it. I think that that’s part of what I love too and the change in me is that, cooking is an experience and I wrote about this on my blog. It’s much more than just for your health or for just putting it on the table. It evokes emotion, it can change mood, it can bring conversation. It’s just a beautiful thing.

On How Her Gluten Allergy Impacted Her Cooking:

So I have had quite a few autoimmune issues since I was young and still kind of battle it. But we finally figured out that one of the main stressors and causes was an intolerance to gluten. It was causing severe headaches and rashes and different things like shingles that I got when I was in eighth grade. I mean just very odd things, and finally, one doctor suggested that I stop eating gluten and it was basically like a miracle. Within three weeks, I was much, much better.

And at first, it was daunting. It was like, “What? You’re telling me I have to give up all of these foods that I love and I have to kind of relearn how to cook? How am I going to eat out?” All that type of stuff. And I can say today, that I would not probably be here sitting and talking to you if that had not happened, because what it did was inspire me to say, “Okay, here is what I can have. Let’s embrace this,” and what happened was it opened my eyes to all these new foods that I had never tasted or nothing that I grew up with, whether it be gluten-free grains like millet and sorghum, or teaching myself how to make flat bread that’s made from chickpea flour known as socca.

And to really too start to look at different cultures because, a lot of other cultures don’t use as much wheat or they use it in different ways, and so there are a lot of cultural things too that really were like, “Wow, this is good. I’ve been missing this for all these years?” And what I also started to realize was that most real food, that’s grown from the ground, plants, lean proteins and meats that are grown in a humane way, fruits, nuts, seeds, all those things are naturally gluten-free anyways.

It’s most of the processed food where the problem comes in. It made me feel good to get that burst of energy in the kitchen. And I wanted to share that with other people. Because as I was going along, I was meeting all these farmers or these artisans that were doing this really cool stuff that it didn’t matter if you were gluten-free or not. It was just really good stuff.

On Some Good Sources for Learning How to Cook with a Gluten Allergy:

It’s funny you ask that, because I had someone message me the other day. Their friend had just found that she was gluten-free. She was like, “Where do they start? How did that work?” And my first resource and still someone that I truly love and really think is such a benefit for the gluten-free community is Shauna from Gluten Free Girl, and her and her husband started a blog before gluten-free had really even been talked about. He was a chef and I read her book which was called, Gluten-Free Girl. It was more of almost a documentary but then also education on her whole transition, and it made me feel so much better. Like, “Okay, my world is not coming to an end. A, I feel so much better and now there is this whole new world of food that I get to explore,” and that was super, super helpful for me.

The other one, I don’t know if she blogs anymore. But her site is still very active. But Gluten-Free Goddess. There are so many beginner, basic recipes that will make you feel less intimidated, and that was really powerful for me too.

On Her Book, Smitten with Squash:

Smitten with Squash was published in July of last year. I was approached by the publisher who, they kind of do these, one book a year basically on a Midwestern fruit or vegetables that you love or that you’re very passionate about and the growing of it and history, because it is a historical publisher that publishes the cookbook. It’s the Minnesota Historical Society Press. They contacted me and were like, “You know, give us a few of your ideas, write a proposal around it. We’ve got a few others in mind.”

And I had always liked squash but what was interesting to me about squash, a couple of things is that, living here in Minnesota, our growing season is rather short. And squash, the family of squash between winter squash and summer squash, you can eat locally almost all year round here. Because summer squash is so abundant and then winter squash, you can store it for up to six months, and that will last you almost until summer squash is starting to arrive again. I thought that that was really neat because I do try to base my recipes off seasonal eating, because I feel like that’s when food tastes the best and you can become creative with what looks good at the market and things like that.

The other part that was really cool to me was that squash really is a part of every culture in one way or another and there aren’t very many foods that are like that. And so I just started formulating this idea about doing my whole book on squash and they accepted the idea.

There is 80 original recipes. There are about 40 summer squash recipes and then 40 winter squash recipes. And you’ll see everything from sweets to appetizers to pickles to main dishes, vegetarian to Paleo to kind of everything in there because it is so versatile.

The other real passion behind it is, you know how there are those foods that you had when you were young and you think like, “Oh my gosh, I do not like this because, this is probably the only way you can make it or this is the way I always see it served and I can’t stand this.” And when people talk about it, they are like, “Oh, yeah, well my mom made it, acorn squash. She baked it in a pan with some water and then when it came out she put butter and brown sugar on it. It’s just not good.” And I wanted to change that. I wanted to give people new ideas for what to do with summer squash in stuff like brownies or cake or things like that.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Chopped.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

Well, the ones that I mentioned before. So The Vanilla Bean Blog, Dolly and Oatmeal, With Food and Love, Sara from Cake Over Steak has such an interesting food blog that has beautiful recipes but she also illustrates her recipes, and I know she’s been on your show, and she is fantastic.

If you’re looking for a wonderful vegan site, Abby from The Frosted Vegan has just a great way with words and she is one of those people that makes things very easy to understand. I love too, if you’ve never glanced over the blog, Green Kitchen Stories, just beautiful photography and wonderful, nourishing, healthy food that never loses flavor and is exactly what I love to do, which is cooking seasonally.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

Well, on Instagram, I love following The Fauxmartha. She has her little girl that she posts pictures of, but her food scenes are just so incredible and simple yet they just make me want to start cooking. That is something that is obviously what we all aspire to do. Another friend, her blog, it’s called Sunshine and Sea Salt. And she is just a real good friend and is an amazing recipe developer as well, but her words that she writes on Instagram are almost like sometimes blog posts. They are just beautiful. Oh, Ladycakes too is a really fun one to follow along with, and I love following her. Those are a few of my biggest inspirations.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

My most treasured, the one that I use the most that like, if you could only keep three things from your kitchen, would be my Le Creuset dutch oven because they are just workhorses. They do everything that you could ever want, and then I used to think it was strange that my mom gave me my grandma’s silverware and now, I love it and I use it in so many of my photographs, and it really means a lot to me when I see it. And then, thirdly, are some of my thrift finds that I find while I’m out. One of those is this real old baker’s scale. You’ll see it in a couple of my posts and on my Instagram but they just don’t make things like that anymore.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

Ricotta cheese. I used to not like the texture. I only really had it in lasagna and I prefer cottage cheese over it in lasagna and that’s what formulated this dislike. Now, I think it is so great whether that’s baked with lemon and olive oil and herbs for an easy appetizer, or on salads. My favorite thing too is to put it into desserts where typically, you might use yogurt or something like that. It creates such a soft texture and moist, rich, just kind of like cake and it’s really a fabulous ingredient. But I thought I hated it. Now, I love it.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Deborah Madison’s Vegetable Literacy is, I mean, that should definitely be in your kitchen because it’s all about cooking with families of plants and how they all go together. It’s just really simple but interesting recipes and I use that as not only a reference guide but something every week in my kitchen.

Another one that I think you just should have it is Joy of Cooking, because every single technique or question you ever had about food is in there. There are also vintage recipes and modern new ways of doing things which I think is really cool.

One of my newest cookbooks that I use a lot and that I love is Sheet Pan Suppers and it’s all different recipes and it’s not just suppers but things that you can make on a sheet pan and have so little clean up. Very little clean up, like a sheet pan is just another workhorse too. And it creates delicious meals.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I wouldn’t say it’s any particular album or anything, but 50s and 60s music, some of those classic kind of blues but like, pop hits too. They’re all so upbeat and all have such a happy tone. They don’t make you think too hard and that’s kind of what I always have on in my kitchen.

On Keeping Posted with Amanda:

I am on Facebook and Instagram as heartbeetkitchen and beet is spelled like the vegetable, just for my blog too. And I am also on Pinterest and I am also on Twitter.

Snapchat: heartbeetkitchn

095: Tessa Fisher: Gluten-Free Baking with Whole Ingredients

November 30, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Salted Plains

Tessa is fascinated with turning her love of baking into creating gluten-free treats that taste good. On her blog Salted Plains she shares recipes of her gluten-free creations many of which are also dairy-free or vegan. Tessa strives to use whole ingredients and refrains from baking with refined sugar whenever she can.

I am so happy to have Tessa Fisher of Salted Plains joining me here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Tessa’s.)

On Her Interest in Baking:

Baking was something that I always did growing up. My mom was a really great cook, she was always creating new things for us at dinner but she didn’t do a whole lot of baking. That was something that I always really liked experimenting with, probably putting weird combinations together when I shouldn’t have been. But it’s always been something that I’ve really just enjoyed doing.

I’ve always felt more comfortable baking than cooking and from preparing meals for sure.

I think the idea of just creating something sweet, I kind of have a sweet tooth, and then being able to share those things with other people, has always just been a lot of fun for me.

On Being Gluten-Free:

About middle school, high school, I started getting severe migraines and they would just put me out for a whole day and then make me pretty sick, very nauseous, dehydrated, just really awful. As I went through high school they kind of became more frequent. In college, they were very frequent, and so I tried everything. I did acupuncture and saw a chiropractor and saw ear, nose and throat doctors, and allergies and all sorts of things to try to figure out what was going on and no real an answer. Some things helped calm symptoms a little bit but nothing really ever got rid of them. I just became okay with the idea that I was always going to have migraines but at the same time when a special event was coming up, I’d get nervous that one would come and it would just ruin the day.

So I really came to be gluten-free because I had a friend mention that they had read that there was a connection between gluten and migraines and maybe I should check it out. So I did. I did some reading and I decided to cut gluten out for a couple of months just to see what would happen. I really didn’t think anything was going to change and I started feeling better and so I kept going and the migraines lessened. I’ve been a few years migraine free now, so kind of life changing.

On Baking Gluten-Free and Being Self-Taught:

My biggest adjustment, I think, with the absence of gluten–that kind of glues everything together–is just figuring out, “Okay, so how does that work exactly? And what do you use to replace it?” Just the very basics, really, of it. That was probably the toughest part for me and a little bit overwhelming.

When I went gluten-free and I started seeing the positive effects for me of that, I then also at the same time realized, “Oh, so that means no cookies and cake and all the stuff that I loved.” I was okay with maybe not having bread so much, but the other things seemed kind of dire so I started looking things up online. That’s how I became acquainted with bloggers that were dealing with being gluten-free and that kind of thing and really just did a lot of reading online about it.

On Some Good Resources for Gluten-Free Baking:

The blogs that I was going to initially over and over again for baking gluten-free and cooking gluten-free were Gluten-Free Girl, I learned a lot through what she was doing. Also Against All Grain, Danielle Walker’s site, I learned a lot there. Tasty Yummies, I went to all the time.

Against All Grain and Tasty Yummies are both, I think, more Paleo-based, but obviously grain free, gluten-free and so I learned a lot through reading their blogs.

On Baking Without Refined Sugar:

One of my favorite substitutes for just regular granulated white sugar would be coconut sugar. You can use it as a one-to-one substitute, it’s also a lower glycemic but it also has a little bit more nutrients than just regular white sugar so you can feel a little bit better about using that. I really like coconut sugar. I use honey a lot; I also use maple syrup a lot. Those three are probably my top unrefined sugars.

Usually honey and maple syrup are pretty interchangeable. It will change the flavor a tad bit, but for those recipes that could be converted to vegan, obviously maple syrup would be a great way to go.

I have some recipes on my site that are using coconut sugar and people try to use maple syrup or vice versa, the liquid, the granulated, usually don’t always transfer very well.

Coconut sugar is more similar to brown sugar, it has a more caramel-ly taste to it which I really like. I think it gives a whole different depth to your baked goods. So that’s something I wasn’t initially thinking about when I started using it. Now I will purposely use it in something that I think could use that flavor. Sometimes I use sucanat also, which is a little bit lighter. It doesn’t have so much of that caramel-ly flavor but is also unrefined.

Learning those little nuances with the sugars has helped a great deal.

On Her Blog:

I was riding myself ragged with my full-time job and I was also coaching swimming. That schedule in general was pretty intense. Early mornings, working all day and then late evenings and weekends. I was feeling just totally worn out which wouldn’t make you think, “Let’s start a blog,” but I was feeling the need for something creative, something to look forward to, to cause myself to learn about something on daily basis. It really was born out of that. I had started playing around with gluten-free baked goods by then, taking them to our weekly girls’ night and getting really good feedback and I thought, “Well, maybe this is the way to go for now and just see what happens.”

A lot of inspiration I get from just the seasons – the fruit and vegetables that’s out there seasonally, but also just what I’m craving a lot of times goes into what’s the next thing that I’m going to work on. Or, what have I not attempted yet that I think other people might want to have a gluten-free version of? Or, what not gluten-free grain could I use that I haven’t really played much with? That kind of dictates what I do next.

The Bojon Gourmet, I love her blog, her photography, what she does with her food I think is amazing, always getting really good ideas from her. The cookbook Flavor Flours by Alice Medrich is fantastic and she has chapters on, maybe seven or eight, different grains–gluten-free grains–and how to use them. So I go to that a lot to get ideas on the texture and what you can use for cakes, and what’s good for cookies and that kind of thing.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t really watch a whole lot of TV and I don’t have a particular food show, but if I turn on the TV and I’m flipping through and there’s something related to food on, I’m going to stop and just watch.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

Well, one quick blog that I came across recently that I loved is called Appeasing a Food Geek and Kelsey is the writer of the blog. She breaks things down from a scientific point of view, how things work and react and because I wish I knew more about that, I love that she does that.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

I guess Instagram is probably my favorite. I love seeing photos from Food Stories. Also Adventures in Cooking–Eva Flores. She just does beautiful photography. There are so many and I love also following travel photographers on Instagram. Alex Strohl is a travel photographer and he just goes to amazing places so I would have to say those are my top.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

Well, this is pretty simple. But my Silpat that you use for baking on your cookie sheets. It’s a reusable replacement of parchment paper, but I use it over and over and over again and it’s great. It cleans super fast and it’s always handy.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

Well, one food for sure is brussels sprouts. Never liked them growing up and now they’re probably one of my favorite foods.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Well, this is not a cookbook but Ratio. The book Ratio has been really helpful for me. My Paleo Patisserie that came out this last year has been fantastic and again I think I mentioned Flavor Flours, one of my all-time favorite cook books.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Well, Josh Ritter–he’s coming out with a new album and one of his new singles is Getting Ready To Get Down. That pretty much gets you ready to do anything I think, so love that song.

On Keeping Posted with Tessa:

I really love Instagram, I’m on there a lot. Also on Pinterest and Facebook, and those are all @SaltedPlains. Those are probably the best places to find me, and Twitter.

094: Sarah Nevins: Cooking and Eating with Celiac Disease

November 25, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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A Saucy Kitchen

Sarah moved away from everything familiar in Arizona to Sheffield, England in 2014, and busied herself in the one place where she was always comfortable, the kitchen. She feels strongly that the food we eat has a huge impact on the way we feel in our daily lives. This really hits close to home for her because her husband was recently diagnosed with Celiac Disease. Sarah created A Saucy Kitchen to share their journey to better health through their stomachs.

I am so excited to have Sarah Nevins of A Saucy Kitchen here with me today.

(*All photos below are Sarah’s.)

On the Role Food Played while Growing Up:

I was really lucky because both of my parents are really good cooks. My mom more so just regular, everyday meal cooking, and my dad’s really great on the grill. So I was pretty spoiled with that and I guess that’s why I got into it because I always had good food around me. If I wanted that to continue growing up, I needed to figure out how to do it myself.

For local foods, being so close to the border, I think we were spoiled with Mexican food. That’s something now, that I live in England, that I really miss. But other than that, I don’t know if there is anything… just lots of really cool coffee shops. That was probably my favorite part, going and just finding different things that you’d see featured on the Food Network and trying their cupcakes and the coffees. All that was really great.

On Her Curiosity Around Cooking:

It started really young. I was thinking about it and I remember having an Easy-Bake oven when I was really little. That’s the little microwave sort of thing where you just make single cookies and I loved that. Then my mom actually got me into baking quite young to help me learn fractions. I’m a very visual, kinesthetic learner and I felt it was really helpful to measure things out and figure how it adds up to a whole. I’m not good at math, but I am good at baking and it’s stuck with me since then.

I was around them cooking a lot, and I’d see what they did. When I was little, my mom had a shelf of cookbooks in our pantry that I’d often go to and pull them out and I just did it. Most summer vacations in Arizona, it’s really hot. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing to turn the oven on in 110-degree weather, but that’s what I would do. I’d just spend time trying out different cakes and things like that just getting my hands dirty and doing it myself.

On the Difference in Food Between Sheffield, England and Arizona:

I feel like in Sheffield or in England, in general, they have more of their staples that you recognize. And I don’t know if it’s just because Arizona doesn’t have anything that’s specific to them. But here you have a lot of fish and chips, and you get the classics like Yorkshire pudding, which I really love. There was a lot of different food. it was the same but very slightly different, which is kind of confusing.

We went to Liverpool, which is not at all like Mexico, and we went to this pub, which is not where you should buy Mexican food. And I was just really curious because I saw taquitos on the menu so I’m like, “Hmm?” And they were really nice but they were not taquitos. I feel like there’s a lot of things that they say is something like enchiladas and they’re great, but they’re not enchiladas. It’s funny seeing how different it is not having that influence there. But then they have a lot of really great food here. They’ve got a lot of Indian food because there’s a large Indian population. So you can get great curries. That’s something that’s unique to here, I think.

On Celiac Disease and What it Means:

Celiac Disease is an autoimmune disorder which is basically when your body confuses itself or things inside your body as being foreign invaders and attacks itself. With Celiac Disease, what happens is when you eat gluten, which comes from wheat products like bread. When it gets to your small intestine, your body kind of freaks out and starts attacking itself because it doesn’t know what to do. That just leads to a whole host of problems. When I looked it up last, there were about 300 symptoms of Celiac Disease. Which can be really difficult because, for the most part, people only think of the stomach issues when, in reality, you can have arthritis that you got from eating gluten and not even know it.

It is because he was diagnosed only a couple years ago but sick for about 10 years without even realizing it. It can take years and years for people to finally get a diagnosis.

It’s difficult too because it just affects people in so many different ways. His dad actually found out when he did that he also had Celiac Disease because it’s a genetic thing. But with his dad, he goes through his entire life not really realizing that there’s something wrong. Whereas, with Mike, when he was about 10 years old he got sick and he just never really got better from it because of the same exact thing.

On Learning to Cook Without Grains and Refined Sugars:

It was a lot of trial and error. A lot of research went into it because I used to just bake anything. I would use real sugar, real butter, real eggs, everything. Then we found out that he had Celiac Disease. It’s like, “All right, take out the gluten.” And then as we started uncovering more health problems, it felt like it wasn’t quite enough, so it’s like, “Okay, maybe cut back on the sugar, cut back maybe even on the eggs sometimes.” Really, I think with something like that, you just have to try it yourself and figure it out. One thing that helped me, I think, is just reading other blogs and seeing what they have to say. That helps you piece it together.

On FODMAP Foods:

FODMAPs is an acronym. It’s Fermentable Oligo-Di-Monosaccharides and Polyols. Basically what that is, is they’re carbohydrates that your body doesn’t fully digest. For most people, like me, I can eat garlic and I can have no problem. But if you’re someone with a lot of stomach issues, what happens is it sits in your small intestines and it just sits there and ferments, and it causes a lot of IBS problems. High FODMAP foods can be anything from apples to garlic and onions and things like that. A lot of people have found that their symptoms of IBS pretty much go away if they take out these foods. For some, it could be that you have a problem with apples but not onions. It’s one of those things where you just have to take it out for a while and see how it is and then slowly, over time, add it back in.

I think a lot of people are turned off by the idea of doing the elimination diet, which is where you get rid of food for a period of time and enter it back in. But I think the people who have gone through so many different health problems, it’s almost just too easy for them to do something like that because if it can give you your life back, it’s really not that difficult of a thing. Because it doesn’t have to be forever, it could be until your body gets back to health.

On Eating Out with Celiac Disease:

It’s so difficult because the thing is it’s very difficult to be completely gluten free. Just because you take the burger off of a bun doesn’t mean that meat is gluten free. By just touching it, it’s got gluten residue on it because it’s such a sticky thing. So we haven’t really been eating out lately because it’s been such an issue. But whenever we do, we call ahead and we tell them the situation, and we’ll talk to the chef. Either they’ll tell us, “I’m sorry, we can’t guarantee this,” or they’ll say, “We can set something aside for you,” which is really great when that happens.

I think in England there are so many people who are getting diagnosed recently that it’s pretty easy. It can be difficult because it is also, to eat gluten free, a very trendy thing right now. So people say it’s gluten free when it’s not. But because there are many people who have this issue as well, restaurants are really needing to learn about it. We’ve got a couple of restaurants I can think of where the owners are Celiac, so they get how serious it is and those ones are great.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I quite like to watch Chopped. That’s one that I used to watch with my family. That one’s really fun. And I haven’t kept up this season but I really like The Great British Bake Off. For anyone who likes baking, that show is amazing. It’s just great.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

I really like Not Without Salt. I think Ashley Rodriguez is a really great writer, and I really admire her. And I quite like Bev Cooks because she’s the opposite of her where she’s just completely zany, but it’s just so bright and fun, and I love it.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

I follow so many people on all of those. I quite like following people with really great photography because I’m so jealous of it. So I like following Half Baked Harvest. She has such beautiful photography. Local Milk’s another good one. And this isn’t on any of those channels, it’s on YouTube, but my husband and I often watch someone called Greg from Ballistic Barbecue. It’s just fun because he just goes out and he just grills all these crazy things and makes these amazing hamburgers, and we quite like watching that. So I’ll add him to the list.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

It’s not very unusual, but I treasure my coffee pot. After I moved to Sheffield last year, there were a few dark months when we didn’t have a coffee pot because they drink tea. So they had tea kettles and instant coffee, and I find instant coffee offensive. So I didn’t have coffee during that time, and I got one for Christmas and it’s amazing. It gets me through the day.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

You know what’s funny? I cook almost exclusively now with coconut oil, and I hated the smell of it. I hated the way it made things taste. I don’t know if I just started off using really strong coconut oil, but now I really quite like it. I think it adds an unusual flavor to the dishes and it smells nice, makes your skin soft. So, probably coconut oil.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I don’t own as many cookbooks as I’d like to because I tend to be on the more minimalist side, but I have Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything and that is a really great resource for anyone. It pretty much covers the basics. I grew up on the Taste of Home cookbooks, so those ones are always special to me. I think they’re just great and fun.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I like listening to more upbeat things in the kitchen. And it depends on the week, but what I’ve found I’ve done lately is I just go on Spotify, and I find a Motown playlist and I just do that, and it’s a lot of fun.

On Keeping Posted with Sarah:

I keep my Facebook and my Instagram updated the most consistently so probably on one of those, and on both of them you can find me @ASaucyKitchen.

092: Emma Galloway: Learning to Cook with Food Intolerances

November 18, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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My Darling Lemon Thyme

Emm went to culinary school and worked as a chef for almost eight years in restaurants, the pastry section of cafes, and catering companies in Australia and New Zealand. She left when she became a parent and discovered that not only do her children suffer from gluten and lactose intolerance, but so does she. Emm started her blog in 2010 to share gluten-free vegetarian real food recipes, and stories and tips on organic gardening. Since then, she has written a book, My Darling Lemon Thyme – Recipes from My Real Food Kitchen, and her blog was the 2014 Saveur Blog Awards Winner for Best Original Recipes Blog.

I’m so excited to have Emma Galloway of My Darling Lemon Thyme here with me today.

(*All photos below are Emm’s.)

On Her Interest in Cooking:

I grew up on quite a large property, where my parents grew heaps of vegetables and fruit that we had. And being vegetarian, my mom used to put a lot of time and effort into preparing most of what we had from scratch. So it was part of who we are, and my family, I mean, we’re all into cooking, and from a very young age, I knew that I wanted to be a chef. So, even though a few people told me not to, because that’s a pretty crazy profession, long hours and stuff, I didn’t listen and I just followed my heart and did what I wanted to do.

On Working in Restaurants, Cafes, and Catering:

My preference was working in smaller cafes, so that’s where I worked in New Zealand, mostly it was smaller cafes. Smaller cafes, you generally have only a couple of you in the kitchen, so you’re basically covering all bases yourself, you’re doing everything. Sometimes, even doing the dishes as well, which is actually how I started off in the industry. Restaurants tend to be divided into sections, so you’re only in charge of the one section. And catering companies are quite similar. So I was in charge of the pastry section when I worked for two catering companies in Sydney years ago.

They all have their challenges. It’s a pretty high stress environment, working in the kitchen. Especially when, like I said, if you’re working in a cafe, where there’s only one or two of you in the kitchen and you’re doing two, three hundred covers a day, it’s a lot of work and a lot of stress and a lot of running around. So, yeah, they’re all pretty high stressed.

I think cafes in the winter time generally are nice and calm and that’s when you have your time to play and be a little bit more relaxed. I don’t know if it’s the same in the States, but in New Zealand in summertime, if you work in a cafe, it’s extremely busy, especially if you’re in a cafe anywhere near the ocean, which is where I used to work. People are always going to the beach in the summer and then they’re wanting to go and eat, so it’s pretty busy.

On Starting Her Blog:

When I left the kitchen when my daughter was born, I didn’t even know what a food blog was. We’re a little bit behind in New Zealand and Australia. Five years ago when I started my food blog, there was probably only two of my friends that had ever heard of a food blog before. Even though, I mean, there’s people like Heidi Swanson in the States, who have been blogging for well over 10 years. We’re a little bit behind here, so I had no idea when I left the kitchen at all. And it was actually from finding Heidi Swanson’s cookbook in the library and then getting onto her food blog that I even discovered what food blogs were. So that was only five years ago.

For years I’ve always recorded recipes. If I find a great recipe in a magazine, I was always the crazy person who would be frantically writing out recipes and trying new things. And after I got onto food blogs, I thought, “Well, I’m at home.” Just looking after my kids, my kids were four and two at the time when I started it, so I wasn’t working professionally. And then I missed that creative side of cooking, where you can just experiment. So, at the start I had no clue of what I was doing, didn’t really know how to take photos, but just started.

On Recognizing Her and Her Children’s Food Intolerances:

When I was pregnant with my daughter, I had basically just a sore tummy the entire pregnancy. I just thought that’s just what happens when you’re pregnant. Being my first pregnancy, I had nothing to compare it too. And then when my daughter came along, she was extremely upset 24/7, wouldn’t sleep and was just in a lot of pain, basically. And so, my midwife at the time suggested that maybe I try cutting out some of the foods in my diet that might be affecting her through my breast milk. So, that’s when I cut out gluten and dairy, but I’d always been interested in alternative food. Being vegetarian, I’d always look to vegan foods and loved seeing how people get creative with vegan food, but the whole gluten-free thing was quite a challenge at the start.

I didn’t really know what I was doing and I don’t think I was 100% gluten-free, because I hadn’t figured out that it’s in basically everything at this stage. So, when my son came along two years later, and showed a lot of the same symptoms as my daughter had, I got quite serious and went and got us allergy tested. That’s when it showed up that we can’t handle any gluten. We can handle small amounts of dairy, and more so as the kids have gotten older, but yeah, gluten is not our friend.

On Tackling a New Approach to Cooking and Food (with Food Intolerances):

I think the easiest way to approach it, is to focus on what you can eat, rather than being all upset that you can’t eat that donut in the store. Although, there are a lot of gluten-free donuts and things around these days, but I think focusing more on what you can eat, and naturally gluten-free and dairy-free things.

I’m very lucky in that my husband is Vietnamese, and so, all of our night-time meals are based mostly around rice, which is gluten-free and dairy-free. So I find that eating a more Asian-inspired diet or a Mexican diet, where the core ingredients are naturally gluten-free is usually the easier way to go to begin with, until you get your head around working with different gluten-free flours and dairy-free alternatives.

I’ve never really used the pre-packet gluten-free flour mixers, I prefer to just use my own individual flours. I think, when you’re first starting out, by all means, if you’re overwhelmed by gluten-free, then going that way is totally acceptable. You’ll probably get to a certain point where you would love more flexibility to add different flavors or different nutritional qualities to what you’re making. So that’s when you can use your own flours, but it’s totally acceptable at the start. When it all feels too much, I just think, do whatever you can do to make it easier for yourself.

On Some Good Resources to Learn More About Gluten-Free Cooking:

The main one that I have used over the years is glutenfreegirl.com. Shauna’s recipes are extremely well-tested. I guess with her teacher background, she’s extremely good at explaining everything, and why she uses certain flours, and for all the basic things that you’re missing, like pizza and bread and all those things. She has brilliant recipes on her site and in all of her books as well.

On Her Book, “My Darling Lemon Thyme – Recipes from My Real Food Kitchen”:

After a couple of years of blogging, I pretty much had made up my mind that I wanted to try and get published. Over the years, there were a lot of recipes I had been holding back from putting on the blog, because I thought they’re too good to share in this capacity and I wanted to save them for a book.

And so, I spent about a year trying to approach publishers and see if they were interested. And I got turned down by every single one. Basically, at that stage, this was probably going back at least three or more years, probably four years nearly even. At that stage, gluten-free, dairy-free, vegetarian food was a little bit too specialized for most publishers, so they turned me down saying, “It’s just all too hard.” And basically, I was in talks with one publisher in New Zealand at the time, who said, “We’ll publish a gluten-free baking book if you’re interested in that.” But that’s not really what I wanted to do for my first book.

And so, I was extremely lucky when I was nearly giving up hope, Harper Collins, New Zealand, who I hadn’t approached, because you had to have an agent to approach them and I didn’t have one at that stage, they actually approached me from seeing my blog. So it all worked out well in the end – very, very happy and thankful.

The book is filled with a hundred of my favorite recipes. Most of the recipes in there are recipes that I have been making for a long, long time. Some are inspired by recipes my mum made when I was little and I’ve adapted them to be gluten-free. And there’s a lot of base recipes, which is what I wanted my first book to be, so that anyone can pick this up, that’s new to gluten-free, and it covers all the bases.

There are numerous breakfasts to choose from. There’s pizza. There’s a homemade sourdough. There’s how to make your own yogurt from scratch. Tomato sauces, everything like that. The whole book is vegetarian and gluten-free, and then most of the recipes are dairy-free also. There are little bits of yogurt and butter, which is what my body tolerates, so that’s in there.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but I do watch MasterChef.

There are a lot of professional chefs that think cooking shows like that are just slightly embarrassing, but there’s a lot of talented people that go on MasterChef. Some of the dishes they make a lot of professional chefs would struggle to make. So, I quite like it.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

I’m terrible, I don’t actually read heaps of food blogs. So, 101 Cookbooks is the number one, I don’t think I’ve ever missed a post of hers in the five/six years that I’ve been reading it. I love The Vanilla Bean Blog, Oh, Ladycakes, The First Mess and With Food and Love. All of those blogs, they make food that I want to eat, even if I can’t, like The Vanilla Bean Blog, my friend Sarah writes it. Most of it I wouldn’t even be able to eat, because it’s not gluten-free, but I just love looking at her gorgeous photos.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

Green Kitchen Stories Instagram’s feed is amazing, absolutely amazing. Tara O’Brady, Seven Spoons. Luisa Brimble, Australian food and lifestyle photographer, her stuff is always amazing, and both on Pinterest and Instagram, she has amazing stuff on there. And Sarah Kieffer as well, from The Vanilla Bean Blog, her Instagram and her Pinterest even more so, it’s just amazing.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

That would probably have to be all the vintage props that I’ve acquired over the years. I have a wee thing for bowls and plates and glass jars.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

Mushrooms. That would probably be one of the vegetables I didn’t like as a kid, but now I can’t get enough of them.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I love, I’m not sure if it’s available in the U.S., but it’s called Vegies, by an Australian chef called Simon Bryant, that’s one of my favorites. Heidi Swanson’s book, Super Natural Every Day is another favorite, and Afro-Vegan by Bryant Terry is another good one. I have so many cookbooks it’s hard to choose. I have stacks of them all around my house.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Anything reggae. So, I really love listening to Burning Spear, any of his albums when I’m cooking, it just makes me happy.

On Keeping Posted with Emm:

Instagram is a daily update, so probably Instagram. On Facebook as well, but yeah, Instagram is probably the best one.

057: Grace Rusch: Finding a Diet That’s Right for You

July 8, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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The Sunday Table

Grace is a self-taught cook and a holistic nutrition consultant. She feels that our diets should be personalized, with a balance between food that makes us feel good and food that is healthy. On her blog, Grace features seasonal, organic, and whole-food ingredients, and she follows a mainly gluten-free, dairy-free, plant-based diet.

I am so happy to have Grace Rusch of The Sunday Table here on the show today.

(*All images below are Grace’s.)

On Starting Her Blog:

I’d say it was just a matter of wanting to continually be inspired by new recipes or new ingredients. It helps me keep things interesting and that way I’m looking at new cookbooks, new recipes online and trying different ingredients.

I’m always inspired by seasonal ingredients, as well. So, the blog is really just a vehicle for me to constantly come up with new things for dinner and for breakfast. That way food’s not boring.

On Her Interest in Food and Cooking:

I’ve had a long-time interest in food and cooking.

I started cooking at a young age, just helping my mom in the kitchen. So, it probably stems from that good foundation that she built and instilled in me. And then, I got a lot more into it in college and high school. I really started to get into nutrition and thinking about how the food we eat affects how we feel and our bodies. So, that really is what, kind of, jump-started my interest in cooking. Through that, I’ve discovered how food actually made me feel. And through that, I found out I was gluten and dairy intolerant. So, it’s just been a journey.

When I moved to California, this “California fresh” fare was really inspiring to me. I come from the Midwest; I’m from Minnesota. And not that we didn’t eat healthy growing up, but it wasn’t quite the same cuisine. So, in college in California, I really started to use fresh produce and make that the foundation of my meal. Since that was something that was relatively new to me, it really inspired me to find new recipes.

Finding food blogs was also an inspiration to me, as a source for new recipes.

What else inspires me is just the food that makes me feel good. I try to eat food that’s healthy, but also tastes delicious. I definitely wouldn’t say I only eat for nutrition. Sure, that’s my basis, but it also has to taste good, because I also really enjoy eating.

What pushes me further is the fact that I have some dietary restrictions. And so, I have to constantly be creative and be adapting recipes to make it something that I can eat that’s not going to hurt my stomach.

On Experimenting in the Kitchen:

I’d say I’m a creative or curious cook. I just throw things together. I don’t have too many total flops, but that’s because I love adapting recipes that I know work. Or, I just throw things together that are super simple, like oatmeal or an egg bake. There’s a lot of really simple foundations that you can build on to make something healthy and delicious. I’ve definitely had major flops, though. Especially in baking. There’s trial and error, for sure.

I think if you find recipes that you like, just try swapping out an ingredient. Like, having that curiosity. If you switch vegetables in a dish, that’s a pretty safe swap. Just start experimenting. If you add additional spices, that’s a pretty easy way to explore. Baking it’s a little harder. But for cooking, it should be fun and it should be kind of an experiment.

Just having the curiosity of “What happens if I add these spices?”, or you switch up the vegetable or you switch up the meat. Don’t feel like you have to have exactly what’s in the recipe, unless that’s exactly what you want to eat.

I think I look a lot to the online community. There’s so many people doing really amazing things. So, I’m continually inspired by other food bloggers. I have a lot of cookbooks and I cook from a lot of them here and there, but I don’t have one in particular that really inspires me.

On Some Good Resources for Learning to Cook:

I am a 100 percent self-taught cook in the sense that I never really looked up the science behind cooking or baking. I think you learn that over time. So, I don’t think that I went to one resource. 101 Cookbooks, Heidi Swanson was definitely a first food blog that I found. Sara Forte from Sprouted Kitchen was another one.

On Being a Holistic Nutrition Consultant:

I had considered, in college, going to school for nutrition but decided to go to school for business, but I found this holistic nutrition school in Berkeley, California which is where I live now. And so, I kind of made it my plan: “Alright, I’m already in California. After I graduate I’m going to move to Berkeley and do this program.” It took me a few years, but eventually, I signed up to do the holistic nutrition program. It really just stemmed from curiosity of how food affects our bodies and how you heal yourself from the inside out, through food.

I think it’s pretty baffling to me that people don’t have the connection between what you eat and how your body feels. So, for me, it was really just to get that information. I’m a total food science nerd, so I love learning about how what we eat affects our body and then how that affects how you feel. It really is a holistic approach how that affects the rest of your life.

There’s definitely a balance between healthy and food that makes you happy. It’s easy to go too far one way or the other, and finding a balance is really a personal preference. It’s different for everyone. For me, I definitely feel better when I eat a lot of vegetables, but I also love sweets. So, oats with maple syrup is one thing; that, even to me, is enough.

Sometimes I really want dark chocolate and I’m not going to deny myself that. So, it’s definitely different for everyone. That’s my overall philosophy: every single person has a different diet that’s right for them, and food should make you happy. It should be something that you look forward to eating, but it also should be nutrient-rich. It should be something that’s not going to eventually, down the road, make you sick.

I think that is the first question you get asked and it’s the hardest question to answer; is “What should I eat?”. Because it is so individualized. It is fun to navigate that path with people; to help them understand foods they like and foods they don’t like.

If you really hate peas, then there’s no reason to eat them. If you really hate beets…I personally hate beets. It’s really hard for me to want to cook them and eat them. Just because it’s healthy, doesn’t mean you have to eat it. You should definitely find things that you want to be eating that are also healthy.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t watch any. I have a television, I rarely use it.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

Ones that I frequently visit and actually cook from are: Sprouted Kitchen, it’s one of my favorites.

Cookie and Kate, that’s a really good one, I’ve cooked a lot of delicious things from her site.

A Couple Cooks, they have a lot of really good recipes.

Dolly and Oatmeal, she’s also gluten and dairy free, so I always love her recipes.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook that make you happy?

I’d say Instagram’s probably my favorite platform, just because I love to look at photography. I actually follow a lot of photographers and travel or portrait photographers on Instagram. I follow the food blog world, too, but those are the pictures that make me happiest. It’s just seeing other parts of the world and little snippits. If you’ve had a rough day and you’re feeling uninspired, it’s so nice to see these beautiful nature landscapes.

One that comes to the top of my head is Jeff Marsh. He’s a Seattle photographer, both portrait and outdoor nature photos. Beautiful, beautiful photos. Aubrie Pick, she is a local San Francisco food photographer; just amazing stuff. Oh, I recently met a photographer from Vancouver Island, Kelly Brown; she’s a wedding photographer and lifestyle. Really beautiful stuff.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

I don’t think I have anything too unusual, but I have to admit, my most treasured thing right now is my Vitamix. I use it every day.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

Probably, snap peas. I really like them and can eat them raw now. And bell peppers. I kind of have a love hate relationship with them. I’m learning to like green beans; still not my favorite.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Recently, I’ve been returning to Vegetable Literacy by Deborah Madison; I love that one. The new Sprouted Kitchen cookbook just came out, that’s a really great one and her previous cookbook is excellent. I’ve also been cooking a lot lately from Vibrant Food, which is Kimberly Hasselbrink’s cookbook.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I love music. I went to school for music business, so music is a big part of my life. I couldn’t just pick one, but I always go to Motown or old soul or funk music in the kitchen. It’s just fun, upbeat, and inspires you. Right now, I’ve been listening a lot to Brandi Carlile’s new album, The Firewatcher’s Daughter; that’s a great one. So, a big mix.

On Keeping Posted with Grace:

Instagram is my preferred platform. But I have a Facebook page, I’m on Twitter, I’m on Pinterest, and of course the blog.

056: Autumn Giles: Black Sheep Ingredients, Gluten-Free and Beyond Canning

July 6, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Autumn Makes and Does

Autumn is a writer and home cook who shares her greenmarket-focused gluten-free food on her blog. She’s also a poet and produced a podcast called Alphabet Soup, a project about food and language from fall 2011 to spring 2014. Autumn’s work has appeared in the New York Times, Serious Eats, and Buzz Feed Food, just to name a few.

I am so thrilled to have Autumn Giles of Autumn Makes and Does here on the show today.

(*All images below are Autumn’s.)

On Her Curiosity Around Food:

I always remember being fascinated with food. I can recall when I was just old enough to be left home by myself with my little sister, we would make up a lot of experiments in the kitchen, and my mom getting home and feeling frustrated with me. Because not all of my experiments were edible at that time. But I did that. I remember always having that interest, wanting to experiment, I guess, and cooking up weird stuff and making my sister eat it.

Then, both my parents, I gardened with them growing up. And my grandmother always gardened, so I think that grew my interest, and cooking came from that as well.

On Her Blog:

It was at a time when I had been out of graduate school for about a year. It was nothing that I had thought about or considered, but it was sort of because of the prodding of my friends and family saying, “You might have something to share. You might have some knowledge that could be useful for other people.” I didn’t go into it with any kind of expectations. It was very casual at the beginning. And my blog is still very casual, you know, crappy camera, crappy pictures, that kind of thing, like, “Here’s what I cooked.” And it just evolved from there.

The writing (is most challenging) but it’s a specific aspect of the writing that was difficult for me and remains difficult because I think I’m a pretty private person. As I moved more toward writing my blog more regularly and writing online more regularly, I never really had that impulse to write about what was going on in my life. I didn’t have that drive. I actually felt like I was resistant to that. Because I was feeling like not really wanting to put all the details out there on the Internet.

I’ve worked on striking a balance. So I can still be a blogger who writes about what’s going on in my life, but also keeps a comfortable level of privacy for me as a person.

On Her Interest in “Black Sheep” Ingredients:

I guess I just mean weird stuff. When I lived in New York, I was a regular greenmarket shopper and was so lucky and privileged to be able to have access to the amazing greenmarkets in New York with such an insane variety of food that’s grown locally there. I would go to the greenmarket week after week and new things would show up.

That’s what I would get most excited about, and just learning about those new ingredients by cooking with them and tasting them.

In the past year, I moved to the southwest and one thing that I tried when I first moved here that completely blew me away was nopales. Nopales, for folks who don’t know, are the flat, teardrop shaped part of a cactus. The cactus have flat paddles. So someone had prepared those smoked and it was so amazing. The texture was very meaty. The flavor was very smoky but also very tart. And I guess as an ingredient in general, cactus pads also just blew me away because they have a tartness that is really surprising for folks who haven’t tried them. I think I expected them to be more bland. Because I’ve heard people compare them to tofu, like, they can take on flavors and textures. But I found them to be very tart and very surprising in that way.

There are different varieties that have varying level of spikes on them. So they have the big long spikes, and then they have tiny spikes called glochids. And one of the ways that people will help remove the glochids is grilling them, and it burns the spikes mostly right off. I did a post on my blog about harvesting the prickly pair of fruit, and also a way that people get the little glochids off the fruit.

On Gluten-Free Foods and Misconceptions:

There’s a lot of reasons that people eat gluten-free. The reason that I eat gluten-free is because I have celiac disease. So I have to be pretty careful.

I think a misconception that I’ve encountered is, “Oh, you can’t eat the bun on this hamburger. Let me just take the bun off for you and here’s the hamburger.” I would be really sick if I ate that hamburger. I think there is just frustration, like, gluten-free people are a pain, that they don’t like to eat. That’s probably the big one, like, “Don’t you want to eat something?” And I love food, I just happen to need to eat gluten-free food all the time.

For someone who needs to eliminate or reduce gluten in their diet, my first tip is to always focus on foods that are naturally gluten free. There are just so, so many. When you really focus on that and really find things within that to get excited about and explore, you definitely don’t feel limited in your diet.

I am writing a preserving book right now, and that’s something that in very rare cases, encounter any gluten in those recipes. So that’s an area that I connected with, got excited about, and I’ve explored a ton. And I didn’t really have to worry about gluten in that arena at all.

I think trying different and sometimes a little more odd or less likely used cuts of meat because they’re usually cheaper, you can buy higher quality meat and explore something that you have not cooked before. Also, without having to worry about gluten.

On Her Podcast:

I started Alphabet Soup on my own. About halfway through, my friend Kelly from Kelly Bakes, joined me.

In grad school, all my poet friends were always getting together to cook, and it just seemed like most of my friends who were writers were also very into food. It was sort of the impetus for me to start a podcast – talking to writers about food and talking to food people about writing. That was how it started.

I started out with just myself doing interviews, and then it went into Kelly and I having conversations along that topic as it continued.

As I probably don’t have to tell you, producing a podcast is a ton of work. It wasn’t like I got tired of doing it; I would still love to maybe explore in the future. But I think at that time, Kelly and I were both ready to shift our energy towards other projects. I felt like it had come to a natural conclusion in a way.

On Her First Cookbook, “Beyond Canning”:

It is about preserving and it focuses on three main techniques, which is preserving with vinegar, fermenting and sweet preserves, like preserving sugar with jam. It’s really trying to focus on unique flavors, different textures, and something new to the conversation around food preservation.

I have no formal culinary training. I most definitely consider myself a home cook. And when I started with preserving and did it more and more, I learned what I liked.

I definitely see it more as a really great tool for home cooks, not something that should be separated to the side, like you cook and then you preserve, that they can really be incorporated together to make people more savvy home cooks. And of course my love for the greenmarket had a big part of it.

Almost all the recipes in the book are quite small batch. So if you are in a CSA or you go to the greenmarket and you find something beautiful but they’re quite expensive, you can buy a few and make something great out of them that you can enjoy later, and incorporate into your cooking and make your cooking better.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I have to say I’m not a big cooking show person. However, the last cooking show I watched was my friend Dan who has a blog, Renegade Kitchen, who’s also an actor, just joined…I think it’s Home and Family TV. It’s on the Hallmark Network, a whole new family show on Hallmark Network.

He does an awesome job of talking to people. So we were saying like black sheep ingredients… He talked about black garlic. I think he did a DIY corned beef. I have to give him a shout out and say that was the last food show I watched and I really enjoyed it.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

There’s so many. It’s so hard to name. But my friend Elizabeth who has the blog, Brooklyn Supper, I think she is consistently making awesome food, seasonal food, and really accessible delicious recipes that are also unique, which is so hard to do.

I love the site, Wayward Spark. It definitely has some food but it isn’t just food. And then Southern Soufflé; Erika is a phenomenal writer and takes gorgeous pictures. As the name suggests, focuses on southern food and really is an incredible storyteller.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook that make you happy?

The one that I engage with the most and the most naturally that doesn’t feel like work for me is Instagram. The people who make me the happiest on there are ones who are very inspiring home cooks who aren’t just posting about composed pictures but are sharing what they cook every day. I know that bugs some people but I love it when people share what they cook everyday. It really gives me inspiration for what I’m cooking.

Folks on Instagram that really make me happy are Michele who is at Cider and Rye, who makes phenomenal cocktails and posts lovely pictures. Dan, who I mentioned at Renegade Kitchen. The Joy of Cooking, Megan and John, the folks behind The Joy of Cooking are always posting super inspiring stuff and gorgeous photos. Hector, who is at Mexicanity is a phenomenal example of someone who is cooking insane amazing stuff, and it is just super inspiring. My friend Julia Sforza is another person who is just always cooking and is an awesome home cook. And Nicole Taylor, who is at Food Culturist, who is also working on a book.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

I think the most unusual, it’s not technically an item, but my home is a very old home and it has a cellar which is just literally a cave dug into the hill. A hundred year old cave is definitely the most unusual thing in the kitchen.

I want to track the temperature a little better. Because I’m wondering if I could use it as a cold storage. I do live in Arizona and it’s pretty chilly during the winter months, but I figure it probably wouldn’t be as chilly during the summer.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

As a child, I really hated tomatoes. And I think it was partially a texture thing. And also just the issue of eating tomatoes out of season from somewhere far away, which is still to me not a very pleasant experience.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Taste of Country Cooking by Edna Lewis is a favorite one of mine.

I’m a huge community cookbook fan, so like the church. I mentioned I was into casseroles. So huge big collection of community cookbooks which really make me happy.

And Saving the Season by Kevin West is one that I really look up to, and I think is a great book.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Definitely Beyonce. As I mentioned, I’m finishing up my cookbook right now. I just need to get motivated, get things done, it’s Beyonce.

On Keeping Posted on Autumn:

I’m probably most active on Instagram. I would love if folks joined me there. I am Autumn Makes on Twitter and on Facebook.