Dandelyon's Worlds

My family has always made holiday cookies--for instance, my sister Dragon made the Spritz Cookie in the icon here.

Also in the icon is just a bit of a Magic Cookie Bar my Aunt made that year, before I realized I have wheat and corn allergies.  I can't eat the original recipe or my family's variant recipe any more, but that's a favorite cookie for me, so I set out to modify it.

This started out as an Eagle Brand recipe, modified a bit by my family. Using that brand of milk is important in getting the cookies to form into bars. Other evaporated and condensed milks are not identical, and the time I tried substituting some other brand, I ended up with a soggy mess even though I almost burnt the cookies. Luckily for me, the Eagle milk is safe (so long as they don't alter the ingredient--I've found that one must read all labels if food allergies are an issue, as manufacturers do change recipes from to time without making the packaging obviously different).

So, once I discovered my food allergies, I had to modify it further. I made a couple of batches, and found Puffed Rice is safe, but awfully bland. Rice Chex worked better. I suspect Gluten-Free Rice Krispies will be similar to the puffed rice (i.e. bland), but haven't tried them yet.

Anyway, here's my current recipe:

Deirdre-Safe Magic Cookie Bars

1 1/2 cups Rice Chex or other safe cereal crunched into crumbs  (measure after crunching)
3 Tbsp cane sugar
1 stick actual butter (dairy is safe for me; Pat always used Imperial Margarine, but I don't trust margarine any more--however, if you've got a dairy allergy, feel free to revert to margarine)

Mix cereal, sugar and butter thoroughly, melt into 13 x 9 inch pan, press evenly & firmly to make crust.

Then scatter the other ingredients in layers:

1 cup safe chocolate bits (I use Ghiradelli Bittersweet)
1 1/3 c safe sweetened flaked coconut, and
1 c coarsely chopped walnuts,

Finally, drizzle 1 can Bordens Eagle Brand Milk evenly over it all and bake at 350º for 25 min, cool and cut into bars.



Maybe this year I'll try to figure out a Deirdre-safe spritz recipe so I can make Solstice Fairies and other edible holiday art.

I have a big old Victorian house. One of the corollaries to that is that when the temperature drops precipitously outside (60 to below zero in less than 32 hours this week) it can get a tad cool inside.

That means, to me, it's baking weather. (I'm convinced that there's a reason Midwinter is traditionally cookie and pie season.)

So I pulled out the Namaste spice cake mix. My sister Dragon used a different bag of the same mix to make spice muffins for me for Christmas dinner. She wisely told me to add butter (melted) to the mix before cooking. Looking at the bag, I saw instructions for making carrot cake. Since my Foodie Friend brought me more organic carrots than I'm likely to eat in a month ("they were a great deal and really, really good"), I had carrots in the refrigerator.

I grated carrots, rinsed off and rough-chopped a handful of salted cashews, substituted milk and melted butter for water and oil (I  thankfully do not need to be dairy-free), and baked.

I thought you might like a picture so I went looking for a suitably photogenic spot. Lo and behold, the dragon puppet wanted to try some. I don't blame her.  My Angel even liked it, and she hates most of my gluten-free stuff.

Now I'm off to make edits to Jrilii's prequel story...

The Gluten-Free Trading Company is having a cookie exchange tomorrow. I may go, or I may not, but it got me thinking about holiday cookies.

I need a whole new set of recipes for holiday cookies now! No flour. No wheat or other glutened substances. No corn--no corn flower, or corn syrup or corn starch.

So I'm off to Google to see what I can find--but it occurs to me that I have friends who cook. Do you have a favorite recipe I could eat? If so, I'd love it if you'd share, either in comments here or in your own journal, with a link here.

I'd particularly like a spritz cookie recipe, so I can make cookies like the one in my icon (which was made by my sister, Dragon).

Thank you!

So, Sunday and Monday I only ate things I had reason to believe were safe. The foods I ate at work were all things I've been eating safely for weeks, and the dinner, while at a restaurant, was at a restaurant where I've ordered the exact same meal repeatedly and been fine. The only thing I did that I haven't done since being on this diet was go to the dentist, and I did mention the allergies to him--he even checked on the sweetener for the numbing medicine.

So it all should have been fine, right?
( Cut for TMI )
Apparently the benefits of not stressing my body all the time with corn and wheat are at least partially offset by having my body be totally unready for a surprise assault.

I wonder if there's anything I could take to help me recover from the (painfully obvious) inflammation through my whole digestive tract the next time this happens?

For the moment, however, I have to figure out what else I can wear that won't press on my belly *at all* for tomorrow at work. 

In better news, these cookies (which I ate several weeks ago, but have not yet blogged about) are great:

Clare-Dragonfly wrote a story from a prompt I gave her!  Go check it out:  Steam Therapy.

In other news, I didn't manage to properly write it up, but for those of you who heard that my equinox evening was disrupted by an escaped cat, she got in safely.  She wouldn't come to the door when called, and wouldn't let us catch her outside, even with canned cat food in hand.  We finally resorted to trickery and rank bribery--we opened the window that opens onto the front porch, having first closed the living room doors, and then opened a new can of cat food.  The other cats set up a caterwauling--there was canned cat food and they weren't getting any.  She came in to investigate and eat, and we closed the window.  Once safe inside, she was delighted to be picked up and petted. 

And now, I'm going to stop typing with my eyelids drooping and fall in bed!  See you all again soon.

P.S.  Leftover steak, the second half of a can of peas, fresh basil, and purple haze goat cheese is a wonderful way to use leftovers!  Next time I'll try adding some sautee'd onions.

As I've mentioned, I'm allergic to corn.

Now they're making "cornplastic" glasses, plates, forks, and the like.

Is it safe for me to eat with/out of them?

Another installment in my Gluten-Free Adventures--and an announcement.

Informal office lunches are not what they used to be. Pizza is right out, as are sandwiches and...well, nearly everything cheap. I was delighted one day that the potato chips were safe (and that I had real food in my office for later). But today was different.

There's this sub place called Jimmy Johns in this neck of the woods, and they offer any of their sandwiches made as an "Unwich"--the same ingredients wrapped in lettuce leaves instead of bread. It was quite good--the lettuce was very fresh.

It was a good lunch.

Also, thank you to everyone who's supported my writing lately! I used the paypal funds to acquire some cool "church keys" to open old-fashioned bottles (like my corn-free Mexican Coke) with.



Thank you all for my fun new eating (well, drinking) tools!

In other news, my drabble "Sometimes They Do" will be published in the Re-Vamp anthology! The publication is due out on Halloween. They're currently running a contest over at mad_docs_of_lit, so you can read and vote on some of the candidates for the anthology. If you like vampire and monster stories, you might want to check it out.