Coconut Macaroons

I had a bag of unsweetened coconut lurking in the back of my cupboard, and in the spirit of trying to use up ingredients but also wanting something really simple to bake because I cannot deal with recipes that use up dozens of dishes these days, I made some macaroons. I was surprised by how much I liked them; they are slightly crisp on the outside and pleasantly chewy inside.

Macaroons: very simple to make, and gluten-free/dairy-free without adaptation.

Macaroons (with unsweetened coconut)

Adapted from this recipe

As always, if you need to be gluten-free, make sure to check your ingredient labels before baking.

3 egg whites

2 cups finely shredded unsweetened coconut

½ cup plus 1 TBS granulated sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

¼ tsp sea salt (optional)

Yields about 12 cookies.

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Mix all the ingredients together, until all the coconut is incorporated and the dough is slightly sticky (you may need to use a little more or less coconut depending on how big your egg whites are).

Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper (or use a lot of cooking spray instead of the paper, but I like parchment paper because it makes clean up really easy). Using your hands or a spoon, form the dough into walnut-sized balls and place on the baking sheet. Flatten them slightly.

Bake at 350 F for 16-20 minutes, until the macaroons are slightly brown (I live at 7000+ feet, you may need to adjust your cooking time. 18 minutes was perfect for these cookies at my altitude).

 Mixing all the ingredients together.

It will take a few minutes of stirring, but eventually all the ingredients will come together to form a dough. 

Unbaked macaroons. 

Baked macaroons! You can see that I had a small ring of caramelized sugar/egg white around the macaroons. I think this could be prevented by adding a little more coconut and/or by putting the cookies on the middle over rack; I forgot to rearrange my oven racks and used the bottom one.

Sweet potato and black bean enchilladas

Good heavens, I haven't posted since May! Last time I mentioned that I hadn't officially made it into my graduate program yet (most molecular biology PhDprograms have you do rotations in 3+ labs, then you choose the lab you want to spend the next few years of your life in. Some programs, including mine, also have a written exam at the end of the first year, which is important to pass before you are officially accepted) but shortly after the last post it became official.

 So I have been in a lab for the last 6ish months, working on my dissertation research, which is awesome! But though things have slowed down from my first year (I often only work 60 hours a week now! You may roll your eyes at the "only" but I was doing 12 credits of grad work last spring, and studying takes a while)  grad school is really quite time consuming. And I try to find time for my spouse, and occasionally to be social, and to go to the gym every now and again, so I don't exactly spend the kind of time on fun baking as I did when I was unemployed in 2011. But the Man and I try to trade off who makes dinner each night, so I am still doing a decent bit of cooking, it just isn't always very creative.

However, these enchiladas are really quite low-effort for how good they taste, and they are quite healthy as well. I have made these enchiladas several times now, including for vegetarian guests one time, and they liked them quite a bit. This is very much inspired by a sweet potato burrito served at the vegetarian restaurant in town (called Sweet Melissa's, I highly recommend it if you are ever in Southeastern Wyoming) which is amazing, but sometimes I am just too tired to go out when I want enchiladas. So this is how I make them! They are vegetarian (except that I use a bit of chicken broth when it is just us omnivores [that is what I always have open in the fridge] but you can use vegetable broth or water) and pretty easy to make vegan/dairy-free, just skip the cheese!

Sweet potato and black bean enchiladas

serves about 3

1 roasted medium sweet potato

16 oz can of black beans, rinsed and drained

salt and pepper to taste

2 tablespoons gluten-free broth (I used chicken, but use vegetable to make it vegan/vegetarian) or water, optional

Gluten-free tortillas (I use the small corn tortillas from Mission)

shredded cheese, optional

16-24 oz jar of salsa verde, mild or medium

1/4 avocado, optional

Preheat oven to 400 F. line a pan with foil, and place your sweet potato in the pan. Roast until the sweet potato is soft, about an hour if it is medium sized, an hour and twenty minutes if it is big. (I like to roast several at a time and use them in recipes later in the week, cooked sweet potatoes seem to keep for a while. There are 3 in the picture but I just used 1).

Let the sweet potato cool until it is safe to handle. I like to stick sweet potatoes in the fridge. After it has cooled sufficiently, cut it in half, and then peel the skin off. At this point, if you turned off the oven (which I did, having roasted these the day before) begin preheating it to 400 F.

The skin should pull off pretty easily if the sweet potato is cooled enough, but you can use a knife to cut off any stubborn bits.

Cut the sweet potato into small cubes. It should be pretty soft, but doesn't need to be completely squishy, just make sure the middle isn't crunchy. If it is, you can cook it in the oven longer, or microwave the uncooked parts for a minute or two.

Put the cut sweet potato into a bowl, and add the rinsed black beans to the bowl. Season with salt and pepper, or other seasonings if you'd like. I add two tablespoons of broth at this point, it adds a bit more flavor, and some moisture that lets the filling stick together better, but you can skip it or use water or vegetable broth to keep it vegetarian. 

Stir everything together until the ingredients are evenly distributed.

Now you can start filling the tortillas. The little corn tortillas crack easily, so be careful when handling them. Lay out a couple tortillas in a baking dish, preferably one that is lined with foil and well-oiled. Scoop a couple spoonfuls of the sweet potato and black bean filling onto the tortillas.

I added some cheese (I can tolerate dairy quite well now! After my roughly 18 month hiatus from all dairy products except butter) but the meal is still delicious without any cheese if you don't do dairy.

Fold over each tortilla as shown below. The corn tortillas like to split apart at this stage, so be careful when folding them.

Now flip the rolled enchilada over so that the seam side is facing down.

Like so! Repeat with your other tortillas. 

Fill all the other tortillas and flip them over until you A. have decided you have enough enchiladas, B. Run out of room in the baking dish or C. have used up all of your filling.

Pour a jar of salsa verde over the enchiladas so that they are all covered in sauce. I did not take a picture because there is no way to make a pan of salsa verde look appetizing under fluorescent lighting at night. This is a 24 ounce jar, but I think you could get by with only 16 ounces if you don't like really saucy enchiladas.

I added some cheddar and mozzarella cheese. Again, this isn't necessary if you don't do dairy, but it is tasty. I find that serving Mexican-inspired food with avocado or guacamole instead of cheese is a very good substitution.

Bake at 400 F for 20-25 minutes.

I like to serve these with avocado, but skip it if you are not so inclined.

And that's it! These are easy and tasty, and pretty quick if you roast the sweet potato ahead of time. 

Olive focaccia from gluten-free pizza crust mix

I have been absent from this blog for an entire school year. I had intended to write a post over Christmas break, but then my computer broke and I didn't get it back from the repair place until well after classes had started back up (which was stressful when trying to write a presentation). As it turns out, grad school is hard, and it takes enough time as it is just trying to make nutritious food, let alone blogging about it. Classes are done for the year, though! I just need to get through a final and a qualifying exam, then I will officially be in the program and on my way to getting my PhD. I am excited while also being mildly terrified.

Most weeks there hasn't been a lot of time for baking, and certainly not much time for tinkering with new techniques and recipes. I have looked at this recipe by the Gluten Free Goddess with the intent to make it, but I haven't yet just because of time. Inspired by how delicious it looks, I saw that I had a bunch of pizza crust mixes in my cupboard and decided to experiment. I am very happy with this olive focaccia recipe, both because it is absurdly delicious, and because it is so very easy! I made this in 1.5 hours, and about 1.25 of that was rising and baking. That fits into my (incredibly busy) schedule quite nicely. (No, seriously, some well-meaning ladies at church were telling me that I am just finding excuses to get stressed, and I responded with how excited I am to join my thesis lab, because for most of the summer I will only be working 60 hours a week thanks to no classes and it will be relaxing. They were like "...oh.")

The trick to this is that I used Bob's Red Mill gluten-free pizza crust mix, which makes really good focaccia-style bread, as it turns out. And I accidentally bought four of the crust mixes for about 3 dollars a piece (long story) on Amazon the other day, so this was quite a bit cheaper then some of the 6 dollar GF bread mixes I've used.

 So here is how to make it:

Olive Focaccia from GF pizza crust mix.

Ingredients:

1 package Bob's Red Mill pizza crust mix (you could probably use another brand, but I wouldn't know what is good)
1.5 cups warm water
2 eggs
2 Tbs olive oil, plus more for the pan and the loaf.
30 or so of your favorite olives (pitted!)
Sea salt to taste
Rosmary or other herbs to taste

Mix the warm water (110 F) with the yeast packet from the mix in a large bowl. Let the mixture sit for five minutes, this is "proofing" the yeast.

Add eggs and 2 Tbs of oil, and whisk together. Add the contents of the pizza mix and stir until the dough is well-mixed.

Let the dough rise for 20-30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 400 F.

Oil a 9 inch round cake pan well with olive oil. Transfer the dough from the bowl to the pan, then pour another tablespoon or two of olive oil over the top of the dough, which is both delicious and will also help you during the next step.

Smooth the surface of the dough with your hands so that there is a fairly level surface. The olive oil helps keep your hands from sticking.

Make sure that your olives are fairly well-drained before proceeding.

Push pitted olives into the surface of the dough, making sure they are well-buried, but the tops are still visible. I used a mix of smoked green olives and kalamata olives. Be sure to space the olives apart fairly well.

Sprinkle the top with sea salt. Rosemary or Italian seasoning would have been excellent, but I didn't think of it in time.

Allow the bread to rise for another 10-20 minutes while the oven is heating.

Bake the bread for 25-35 minutes (I only needed 30, but I am baking at 7200 feet and you may need more or less time). The surface of the bread should be lightly brown, and if a fork or toothpick is inserted into the bread, it should come out clean.

Let the bread cool for 20 minutes or so, then slice and enjoy!

If you can't have one of the ingredients in the mix, or don't want to buy a mix, then check out the Gluten-Free Goddess's recipe. I have not made it yet, but it was the inspiration for this!

Adventures in moving.

So life has been a bit busy. We successfully made the move to Wyoming, despite not knowing where we would be living when we got there. A nice couple in town had us stay in their spare room for a couple days, but there was some stress about this, as none of the rental agencies we'd looked at had a move-in date before the 15th of August. Since we got to town on the 5th, this was worrisome. And there weren't a lot of apartments left, as school began on the 27th, and many students had already moved to town. But we made the move anyway, hoping the apartment situation would work out.

We drove through Portland one last time. This picture was the reason we missed our exit; I was too busy taking the photo, and forgot to point out exit 300 (which is the only exit in Portland that I definitely know how to get to, as it is the exit to OMSI where I volunteered for a while this year). We sorted out the debacle, and eventually got to I-84, with only an extra 20 minutes added to the trip. 

Starvation Creek in the Columbia Gorge. It is very pretty, and makes a nice rest stop.

I really liked the root structures.

Somewhere around here, used to be Celilo falls. This and other important fishing sites used by Oregon and Washington tribes were submerged in the 50's by the dams being built at the time, which had been a center of trading to these tribes for thousands of years. Which, well, is depressing, but I think it is important to remember what was lost when things like hydroelectric power from the dams were gained.

We spent the night with some family in Meridian, ID. You can do the drive in two days, or theoretically one (it is ~22 hours of non-stop driving) but we split it into three days in order to have a bit of a roadtrip.

We fueled up the next morning with some Starbucks. I don't get Starbucks too often, I mean, I come from the Willamette Valley, home of a lot of independent coffee shops, but we go to Starbucks all the time when we travel because it is reliable and ubiquitous.

A lot of people don't get why I like Eastern Oregon and Idaho so much. Dude, look at it! So dramatic and rugged, and I like sagebrush and basalt flows a lot.

We took a detour to Twin Falls, which I am glad we did.

You know you are in Wyoming when there are buffalo heads at the rest stop.

There are a lot of bison around. Incidentally, we eat a lot of bison now that we live here, and it is really good!

Our journey was basically the Oregon Trail in reverse.

Why don't they have covered wagons at Oregon rest stops? They should. ~History~

Anyhoo, so we got to town, and stayed at a hotel the first night. The next day, we drove around town a bit, and hung out in parks and a coffee shop (they do have at least three good coffee shops here! As a definite northwesterner, I approve of this). We ended up driving around some neighborhoods near the university, and saw a for rent sign in the window of one little house. We thought "what the heck" and called the number.

The landlord was actually at the house doing some painting right then, so five minutes later we took a tour, really liked the place, and decided to sign the lease straightaway. This turned out to be a good decision, because ten minutes later, while we were doing the paperwork, someone else who wanted the house gave the landlord a call. 

We stayed with the older couple for a few days while some work was finished up on the apartment, and then moved in shortly thereafter. About two weeks later, though, we still didn't have our furniture and other belongings, just what we'd taken in our car, and it was getting a little ridiculous using three plates and some mason jars for cups.

So, due to a miscommunication about being able to deliver our stuff to Wyoming, we ended up driving a 17 foot truck to Fort Collins (~70 miles away) in order to get our things that were in storage. Not because we needed a truck that big, but because it was the smallest thing any of the Uhaul stores had at fairly short notice.

So I did not enjoy moving our ~2.5 tons of stuff three times (once into the truck, out of the truck into the neighbor's driveway (she gave us permission) because we couldn't get such a big truck any closer to our place, and finally into the house) but we finally got our things, and were able to start getting our house settled.

We did get new Ikea desks though. And you might be able to tell I am a geek, because there is a set of Harry Potter books, and a TARDIS mug on my desk. What self-respecting scientist isn't a geek, though, really?

We did a little hiking at Vedawoo this weekend, which is amazing. 

So, there you have it. We successfully moved and got settled this month. There are still some boxes, but it is mostly our massive collection of books, and buying bookshelves will take care of that.

And I am starting to get the hang of school, I think. The classes aren't too bad, except for Biochemistry, as I was unable to take that at my old school and I don't already have the amino acids and thermodynamics memorized. My research project for my first rotation is really cool though, and I think I am starting to make that transition from undergrad to grad. It is very different then what I am used to.

Packing and moving

We moved from Oregon to Wyoming last week. Moving is never too fun, and I thought I'd had plenty of experience with moves, as I moved 5 times from the start of my Freshman year to the beginning of my Sophomore year, but it turns out that moving several states away is quite a bit worse. Particularly if you are leaving a small town you have lived in for over twenty years.

But Joel (whom I usually call the Man on this blog, if you are confused) and I managed to get it all done pretty well, I think.

Though our apartment got a bit chaotic with all of the boxes and piles.

Luckily we had quite a lot of family members there to help us pack boxes and lift heavy things. Also, my parents were very kind and let us use their driveway as a loading station.

We decided that the best fit for us was to order a pair of Uhaul uboxes, which are sort of like a big crate that you can get shipped to your house, and then Uhaul ships it to your new location, or stores it in a warehouse. Since we did not want to drive a big truck, and since we didn't have a final address yet, these were a perfect solution. 

This is a picture of me in our living room probably two weeks before the move. We'd started packing, but just enough that it made the apartment chaotic.

The living room at the end of the first day of packing. Quite a bit better, but it still looked pretty bad.

And here is the living room after the second day of packing. It looked so much nicer! But also weird, because we'd lived in this apartment for two years, and leaving our old home felt really surreal.

The way the furniture was packed in the Ubox meant that I had to climb onto the furniture in order to fit the rest of the gear. 

This is a picture of one of the fields a few miles from where we lived. We left a valley full of rolling green fields, and have arrived safely to Wyoming, which is also beautiful, but in a more rugged way.

It sort of feels like a chapter of our lived has ended (and like I am speaking in cliches) but I am excited to start my PhD program.

Later, I will post photos of the actually trip to Wyoming.

Baking Powder Biscuits, gluten-free and vegan

I have been a bit remiss in blogging. It may have something to do with the fact that we have been going places like this:

Crater Lake, which is still very snowy in June. And cold.

Or doing things like this:

Cannon Beach! You can rent a bike and drive on the beach and it is fun! Also, this was the first time I'd been on a bike in years.

...every weekend. The Man and I have been taking a somewhat whirl-wind tour of Things We Love or Have Always Wanted to Do in Oregon Before the Epic Wyoming Move. So of course that means visiting the coast and as many of the national parks as we can get to before moving day arrives.

While eating breakfast on one of these weekend trips, The Man and I both found ourselves lamenting that there isn't much in the way of gluten-free breakfasts to be had at restaurants (he can eat gluten, but often feels sad for me that I can't just order pancakes when we go out). Usually you can have some kind of omelet or potatoes at a restaurant, but we both were thinking how nice it would be to have a good GF biscuit recipe that either of us could just whip up at home.

That got me thinking about weekend breakfasts at my house growing up. My Dad would always (and still does!) make breakfast on Sunday morning. He'd get up at what seemed an early time to me (but I often get up at 5 for my job now, so seven is sleeping in. I must finally be a “real” adult.) and start making eggs and coffee. And there were almost always biscuits. It was a pretty simple recipe, half bisquick, half whole-wheat flour, and all of the add-ins that the bisquick box said to do. I have fond memories of being eight or so, and learning how to shape the biscuits. We don't cut and roll biscuits in my family of origin, you take a wad of dough, roll it into a ball, and stick it on the cookie sheet. They were very, very tasty. In eighth grade, I started making baking powder biscuits from scratch so often that I had the recipe memorized for a while.

Biscuit dough is so simple, surely it must be easy to make gluten-free, I thought. So I took a look in an Amish cookbook I have, and made a couple ingredient swaps to take out dairy and gluten. The result? Tasty, fluffy biscuits that the Man and I happily ate for lunch. They don't quite taste as whole-grain as the biscuits my Dad makes, nor as light as the white-flour ones I used to make, but they are a happy compromise, without the gluten and dairy.

Baking Powder Biscuits

Adapted from “From Amish and Mennonite Kitchens,” by Phyllis Pellman Good and Rachel Thomas Pellman

1 cup coconut or alternate milk of choice

2 tsp lemon juice

2 cups gluten-free flour mix*

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp xanthan gum

¼ tsp sea salt

3 Tbs Shortening (I used Spectrum)

Preheat oven to 450. Combine the milk with the lemon juice, and set aside for at least five minutes**. Meanwhile, whisk together the dry ingredients. This helps make sure the ingredients are evenly distributed. Add the shortening, and blend with a fork or pastry blender until the mixture becomes fine (1/3 inch or less) crumbs. Add the milk-lemon juice mixture about a quarter cup at a time, stirring the dough after each addition. The dough should be slightly wet, so that it clumps together, but not as wet as muffin batter.

Take about 2 tablespoon of dough at a time, roll into a ball with your hands, and press onto a cookie sheet. Flatten the ball slightly. Do this until you have used up all of the dough. Alternatively, roll out the dough to ½ inch and cut biscuits out.

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until lightly browned. Makes about 10 biscuits.

Yaaaaay!

They were a little more crumbly then normal wheat biscuits, but still held up well to normal toppings like jam.

Incidentally, it has been just over one year since I got my gluten-intolerant diagnosis. I thought about doing some kind of big dramatic blog about it, but I haven't the extra time between my job and getting ready to move. I just wanted to make a note of it, and encourage any people who are newly gluten-free. The adjustment does suck a lot at the beginning, but after a year of this diet, I feel so much better, and it is pretty easy and natural to cook for myself. Hurrah for better health!

* My current favorite flour mix is 2 parts sorghum flour : 1 part millet flour : 1 part brown rice. I keep it in a big container. I think this would work well with part oat, or quinoa, or oat flour, but to make biscuits exactly like these, use 1 cup sorghum, ½ cup millet, and ½ cup brown rice flours.

** Adding lemon juice to milk (either an alternate milk or a dairy milk) makes a sort of cheaters buttermilk. Do this anytime you need a non-dairy buttermilk in a recipe, or if you can have dairy, but don't feel like running to the store just for buttermilk.