From Alice Enevoldsen
Mix all ingredients until smooth. Pour into crust.
Bake 10 minutes at 425F, 50 minutes at 350F (until filling is set). Cool.
IMPORTANT: Refrigerate overnight before serving. This is how you get that firm pumpkin pie without egg or milk.
Potlucks and snacks can be difficult when accomodating your food allergic friends. Here are some quick and easy (some are quicker and easier) snack options that work for us. We at least won’t have problems being in the room with these items. These may or may not work for your friends. Check with them about their allergens and list of safe snacks.
Here is a link to the general list of our allergies.
Most fruits are safe for us to be around.
You’re going to have a hard time finding safe bread, but as long as the bread has no direct milk or egg ingredients, we’ll be fine around it. Go for sub-style sandwiches with enough toppings that people won’t miss the cheese
Again, it is tough to find safe crackers, but we can be around them as long as they have no milk, egg, nut, cheese, or butter direct ingredients.
Notes to the host: If you really want us or your friends with food allergies to eat something, leave it sealed in the package until we arrive. Let us check the package ingredients, and then take what we want. Then put it on a plate for everyone else – this allows us to be in control of any cross-contamination. Please don’t be offended if we or your friends choose not to eat food your provide, especially if you worked really hard for it to be safe. Eating is so much more than an enjoyable activity, or something we do to be polite to the host. For us, ingesting food is always a life safety issue, and sometimes we just don’t want to take any risks at all. We’ll be gracious about declining, appreciate the effort, be incredibly thankful we can be in the room with the food without worrying, and just not partake. You can help by being gracious about our choice not to. Thanks!
If you really want us or your friends with food allergies to eat something, leave it sealed in the package until we arrive. Let us check the package ingredients, and then take what we want. Then put it on a plate for everyone else – this allows us to be in control of any cross-contamination.
Please don’t be offended if we or your friends choose not to eat food your provide, especially if you worked really hard for it to be safe. Eating is so much more than an enjoyable activity, or something we do to be polite to the host. For us, ingesting food is always a life safety issue, and sometimes we just don’t want to take any risks at all. We’ll be gracious about declining, appreciate the effort, be incredibly thankful we can be in the room with the food without worrying, and just not partake. You can help by being gracious about our choice not to. Thanks!
I bet some of you out there have fragrance and perfume allergies as well. I wanted to share a laundry solution I finally found: Borax.
I just add it to my washer with any load that has a chemical fragrance (like new clothes or “new” clothes from the secondhand store). I wash them twice like this and they come out with no scent!
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Now for the epic story of the quest to find a laundry solution that removed “fragrance” and “parfum.” Stop reading if you’re not interested – the whole solution is above.
I like to shop for clothes secondhand. The selection is more varied, it is waaay cheaper, and sometimes you find treasures. A few years ago Value Village switched detergents, to something that makes me itch and sneeze.
I washed those clothes a dozen times with my detergent, All Free&Clear to no avail. I washed them with a box of baking soda, soaked them for days in vinegar, soaked them for days in baking soda (both wet and dry), and hung them outside in the Sun. (All tried & true methods according to the housewife wisdom on the internet.) Still stinky. One thing did work: wearing the clothes for a day and then washing them. Something about the sweat and skin oils worked into the perfume and it got washed away. But, as this was incredibly uncomfortable, this was not a long-term solution. Strike 1. (On one notable occasion I had a friend wear a shirt for me, and then washed it.)
“There must be an answer,” I thought. “We live in the future.” So I started looking into odor and scent removers. Sadly, they’re mostly about pet smells, and other organic residue. They’re often enzyme-based, so those little enzyme buggers love to eat the organic smell-causing molecules.
This led me on a chase to find out what kind of molecule “parfum” is – probably an alcohol or an oil – not what the enzyme buggies are bred to eat. Strike 2.
“There must be an answer,” I thought. “People have been washing clothes for thousands of years, and washing out perfumes since at least the middle-ages.”
And then I had a baby. First of all – everything is (uhg) baby-scented, which doesn’t smell anything like actual baby. Secondly, thoughtful friends and relatives would pre-wash gifts for us, with their nicely-perfumed detergent or dry it with their softly-scented dryer sheets. Things had gotten desperate, especially if we wanted to enjoy these incredibly useful gifts.
“What’s the oldest form of laundry detergent?” I asked. “What is the unadvertised, no-additives, little non-descript box hiding on the shelves behind all the colorful jars?”
‘Clean-Clean washes cleaner!’ ‘Keep you brights brighter with Bright-It-All!’ ‘NEW! Organic lavender-lemon-patchouli scent is better for Mother Earth and better for Mother You!’
All of which have fragrance or “parfum” as one of the middle ingredients.
What have people been using for decades, without mentioning it, without bragging, but with so much success the brand doesn’t need to advertise? Like baking soda or baking powder or salt – those boxes and cans have looked identical since at least 1909.
What is the not-so-secret but forgotten laundry fix-all?
Borax.
I took some home (it only comes in large boxes from the brand 20 Mule Team), followed the suggested directions on the back. My blankets came out bright, clean, and completely “parfum”-free. Finally.
Sometimes with new laundry it takes two borax-washes, because I haven’t already been battling the Parfum Dragon with Sun, baking soda, vinegar, fresh air and wash after wash of free & clear detergent.
Still, it is nice to have clean clothes that don’t make me sneeze, and baby clothes that smell like actual baby when they have a baby in them. Home Run!
*On ingredients labels I repeatedly see “fragrance (parfum)” or the other way around listed. I think it is a funnier word than “perfume” which is why I use it here.
UPDATE: Dial Corporation makes the MSDS of Borax available here. This pdf is the copy of the Borax MSDS I downloaded May 31, 2011. In short, don’t eat it or get it in your eyes and you’ll be fine. A quote from the MSDS: “The use of this product by consumers is safe under normal and reasonable foreseen use.”
Chicken NuggetsImage © 2011 Jason Gift Enevoldsen
Preheat oven to 425F, and prep a (nonstick) cookie sheet. Cut chicken into nugget-sized pieces.
Mix fake eggs with water, and add the chicken. Let it sit.
Chop up the spices, mix with bread crumbs and wheat germ. Mix in the oil well. Dip each chicken piece in the seasoning and coat well. Spread out on the baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes. Turn and bake for 5 more minutes.
I have also made the seasoning ahead of time and refrigerated it or frozen it so all I have to do is chop the chicken and coat it. If you do this I would add the oil at the time of coating, not before you freeze or fridge the topping.
I always thought chicken nuggets were an insanely processed, always cross-contaminated product of the fast-food industry. The above recipe is for whole pieces of chicken, baked, and a super-yummy mode of transport for your favorite dipping sauces. So I suppose they’re just as healthy as your dipping sauces.
Earth's Best Kidz Baked Chicken Nuggets I have also just found that (as of April 2011) Earth’s Best Kidz Baked Chicken Nuggets are safe for us, though they contain wheat and soy. And they’re not as healthy as the above home-baked ones which you have complete control over the ingredients for. But they’re frozen, cook up quick, and are a healthier vehicle for dipping sauces than french fries.
Earth's Best Kidz Baked Chicken Nuggets
I have also just found that (as of April 2011) Earth’s Best Kidz Baked Chicken Nuggets are safe for us, though they contain wheat and soy. And they’re not as healthy as the above home-baked ones which you have complete control over the ingredients for. But they’re frozen, cook up quick, and are a healthier vehicle for dipping sauces than french fries.
Mix Together
Stir Together
Cut into Strips (if you want strips, I haven’t tried this with whole slices)
Mix liquid and dry ingredients in a plate. Coat (do not soak) only as many strips of bread at a time as will fit into your skillet. In cooking words I would say “dredge” the bread strips in the goop.
Place immediately into low-heat lightly-greased skillet, cook till done – a couple minutes on each side. Hopefully you can get to a point on side 1 where the bread seems to be drying a little on the top before you flip, and then the bottom side that you flip up will be golden-brown.
I’ve been searching for a good, functional egg-free French Toast recipe for years. Thank goodness for Jennifer and Alyce on the WA-FEAST listserv who turned me on to the idea of making a very thin pancake batter, and using that. It is very close to exactly what I need. There’s one more recipe through them that I need to try – it relies on Xanthan Gum. The recipes on the vegan websites that use bananas, egg-replacer, or cornstarch never turn out for me. I wonder if I’m using the wrong bread. This recipe is also shared with other allergy-friendly recipes at Cybele Pascal’s website.
I’ve been searching for a good, functional egg-free French Toast recipe for years. Thank goodness for Jennifer and Alyce on the WA-FEAST listserv who turned me on to the idea of making a very thin pancake batter, and using that. It is very close to exactly what I need. There’s one more recipe through them that I need to try – it relies on Xanthan Gum. The recipes on the vegan websites that use bananas, egg-replacer, or cornstarch never turn out for me. I wonder if I’m using the wrong bread.
This recipe is also shared with other allergy-friendly recipes at Cybele Pascal’s website.
From Alice Enevoldsen (modified from Kitty Gift)
Shoo-fly pie Image © 2011 Jason Gift Enevoldsen
Bottom:
Make pie crust, put in pie dish. Place pie dish on a non-stick cookie sheet (you’ll thank me later).
Make top crumbs by mixing flour and brown sugar, then cutting in palm oil until it loosely clumps together.
Measure Karo and maple syrup in 2 cup glass measuring cup (to get a more barrel molasses-y flavor put in more Karo, less maple syrup, and a tablespoon or so of Grandma’s molasses. Do not use blackstrap molasses). In 1 cup measuring cup, boil water. Add baking soda to hot water. Add water to molasses measuring cup and mix thoroughly.
Assemble pie by alternating layers of the liquid and the top crumbs – about 3 layers of each.
Bake at 375F for 35 minutes. (Don’t forget to have that non-stick cookie sheet under your pie, it will save you from any boil-over burning on the oven elements)
I’ve taken up the Gift family torch to pass on the cult of loving shoo-fly pie to as many as possible. So far I have at least a dozen converts. When it is described to you – “pie made with innards of brown sugar and molasses” – you have no idea what this will be like. You picture some sort of candy in a pie crust. Tasty sure, but how do you eat it? You’re completely wrong. It is a bit like cake in a pie-crust. But that doesn’t do it justice.
I’ve taken up the Gift family torch to pass on the cult of loving shoo-fly pie to as many as possible. So far I have at least a dozen converts.
When it is described to you – “pie made with innards of brown sugar and molasses” – you have no idea what this will be like. You picture some sort of candy in a pie crust. Tasty sure, but how do you eat it? You’re completely wrong. It is a bit like cake in a pie-crust. But that doesn’t do it justice.
This should be made with barrel molasses instead of Karo and maple syrup. Sometimes this is called Dutch barrel syrup (as in Pennsylvania Dutch – i.e. German). If you have access to this ingredient, first send me some, then make the pie with it instead. For the rest of us, the last sighting of barrel molasses was at a little Mom & Pop style general store in New Jersey. You had to bring your own containers. You’d think molasses would be a better substitute than corn syrup, but after many, many trials I’ve determined that the closest flavor is dark Karo. There is no bite to barrel molasses, though it has a depth of flavor lacking in Karo, which is why I put in half maple syrup also. The barrel molasses is aged in barrels – giving it the name and the flavor.
This should be made with barrel molasses instead of Karo and maple syrup. Sometimes this is called Dutch barrel syrup (as in Pennsylvania Dutch – i.e. German). If you have access to this ingredient, first send me some, then make the pie with it instead. For the rest of us, the last sighting of barrel molasses was at a little Mom & Pop style general store in New Jersey. You had to bring your own containers.
You’d think molasses would be a better substitute than corn syrup, but after many, many trials I’ve determined that the closest flavor is dark Karo. There is no bite to barrel molasses, though it has a depth of flavor lacking in Karo, which is why I put in half maple syrup also. The barrel molasses is aged in barrels – giving it the name and the flavor.
Clockwise from top: Gingersnaps, Star Shortbread, Powdered-Sugar Lemon, Oatmeal, Oatmeal with Craisins, and (middle) Lemon-Flower Tarts Image ©2010 Jason Gift Enevoldsen
I baked 5 batches of cookies this week. Yum!
If you think holiday baking is harder with allergies, well, I don’t think it is. What’s hard is store-bought safe food. Here are some of my favorite recipes for the holidays.
Gingersnaps Shortbread Powdered-Sugar Lemon Cookies Oatmeal Cookies (add craisins for festivity) Lemon-Flower Tarts
Julekake Sugar Cookies Joulupiparkakut – Gingerbread Powdered-Sugar Mints (wheat free!) Blondies Pumpkin Bread And don’t forget about pie with the filling of your choice
Have a safe and yummy holiday season!
From Debbie Gift
Cream the margarine and sugar
Add other ingredients
Form into balls
Roll in sugar
Bake on ungreased cookie sheet
300 degrees – 30 minutes
Julekake Image © 2010 Jason Gift Enevoldsen
Heat the milk until warm, but not hot – 130F max.
Mix dry American* plain yeast with 1/4 cup warm water. Add a dash of sugar or honey or something for the yeasties to eat.
Pour milk into the room-temperature mixer mixing bowl. Add fat, sugar, cardamom, salt (yes, I put salt in this time – I never do but I’ve been frustrated at this dough so I decided to follow the recipe more closely in some ways). Mix a little – your fat won’t mix in, don’t worry about it. If the yeast is foamy, add it and 2 cups of flour to the mixing bowl. Mix with dough hook until smooth. You want this dough to be as “loose” as possible, while still holding together as a dough.
Sprinkle your raisins and candied fruit with a generous dose of flour, and toss till all are coated lightly. Add these to the mixer.
Continue to add flour as you’re mixing (but wait in between to see the flour get mixed in, and see how the consistency changes while mixing) until you have dough that holds together as a lump, not sticking to the sides of the bowl too much. You should be mixing for about 7 minutes. You may well not use all the 3.5 cups of flour, but you don’t want sticky dough.
Detach all dough from dough hook, transfer to a greased (IMPORTANT) bowl, cover, and let rise in a cozy, warm place until doubled in size – about an hour. Punch down. Rise again until doubled in size – about 2 hours (IMPORTANT, but maybe you can skip this by doing your first rise for 2 hours, I’m not sure yet). Punch down. Form into round buns on a greased or non-stick baking sheet. Let rise again until half again as big – another hour. Brush liberally with oil, bake at 350F degrees for about 25 minutes. Brush with oil while still hot. Cool. Slice and eat.
I FINALLY GOT IT TO WORK! The texture was light and fluffy and AWESOME. Yay! So, the major changes were doubling the yeast, adding a second double-time rise, and rising the dough in a greased bowl.
*I think American yeast is different than Scandinavian yeast. In all these high-fat, “warm the milk”-first doughs I seem to never be able to get them to rise. I follow the recipe diligently, and where it says “doubled in size” mine always comes out 1.25 times in size. In discussions with a Danish baker, we determined that the directions on her package of yeast were quite different from the directions on mine – always calling for the dry yeast to be mixed in with the flour while still dry. The above directions are a modified version based on what we need to do with American yeast, and what I saw watching a Norwegian video about making Julekake. This is my first attempt at using a dough hook.
*I think American yeast is different than Scandinavian yeast. In all these high-fat, “warm the milk”-first doughs I seem to never be able to get them to rise. I follow the recipe diligently, and where it says “doubled in size” mine always comes out 1.25 times in size. In discussions with a Danish baker, we determined that the directions on her package of yeast were quite different from the directions on mine – always calling for the dry yeast to be mixed in with the flour while still dry. The above directions are a modified version based on what we need to do with American yeast, and what I saw watching a Norwegian video about making Julekake.
This is my first attempt at using a dough hook.
We used to get these all the time at a local Scandinavian bakery. Eventually I started having minor reactions to the cross-contamination, and I wanted to share them with my more-sensitive husband. As they’re an integral part of Christmas for me, I had to learn to bake them myself. I always struggle with not killing my yeast, and with getting them to rise enough.
We used to get these all the time at a local Scandinavian bakery. Eventually I started having minor reactions to the cross-contamination, and I wanted to share them with my more-sensitive husband. As they’re an integral part of Christmas for me, I had to learn to bake them myself.
I always struggle with not killing my yeast, and with getting them to rise enough.
