Stuff You Should Know Podcast

My sister rocks! See my sister to the right! --> OK, maybe not, but since my dog is me, I figured hers could be her!!

Anyway, C. is always on the look out for me for gluten-related items. She's also a big podcast fan, especially of the "How Stuff Works" podcast called "Stuff You Should Know." Today, her interests happily combined.

Today's "Stuff You Should Know" podcast was titled: SHOULD YOU NOT EAT GLUTEN?

YAY! I'm always fascinated by articles, reports, etc. on gluten, and especially the history of gluten allergies. I'm really looking forward to 29 minutes of intellectual, GF yummies.

You can download the podcast through iTunes. It's free!

However, if you don't have iTunes, I will see if I can embed it here.

Side Note here: Do you know that you cannot upload anything but images to the free blogs on blogspot?! How useless is that! I'm going to host the file elsewhere and embed. But maybe it's time to change my blogging platform. Geez.

Give it a second to load the embedded audio player!

SHOULD YOU NOT EAT GLUTEN? (the podcast)

SUPERGRAIN!!! (aka Quinoa)

It's a bird. It's a plane. It's SUPERGRAIN!!!

image by Kurt Stueber

---

Quinoa is weird. So am I. I like quinoa.

I blogged a bit about quinoa (keen-wah) in this 30 Days entry. But it keeps popping up in my life.

Today there was an article on Yahoo! News about "Quinoa's popularity boon to Bolivians." Not surprisingly, the more "First World foodies" (as the article calls us) consume quinoa, the more rural farmers can make off of it. Which, of course, gives way to concerns about over-farming and the crushing of small sustainable farmers by big commercial/government operations. Sigh. Sometimes, no good deed goes unpunished.

But for me, quinoa is great because it's overly healthy (10 essential amino acids and 14%-18% protein content) AND GLUTEN-FREE!

image by Blairingmedia

I bought a bag of red quinoa on impulse a few weeks ago because of all of the good hype. My nutrionist had given me a crockpot recipe that had "an approved grain" as one of the ingredients. So I used the red quinoa. It's great! Really filling and it was a very easy 'make'.

• Herbed Chicken & Quinoa Crockpot fun

GF MENU: A piece of Pi

I know many cool people in St. Louis, including some relatives and in-laws (as it were). Every year when I visit, we go out to eat.

This year, as in one year previous, we ate at Pi Pizzeria: http://www.restaurantpi.com/.

They have WONDERFUL gluten-free pizza. It's thin-crust. I had it with fresh basil and grilled chicken. So very nummy.

I am very excited now, because they are scheduled to open a DC location in Spring of 2011. WOOT! District of Pi (since there's already a Pi Pizzeria, sadly) will be in Penn Quarter. Check them out: http://www.pi-dc.com/!

RECIPE: Gluten-Free Banana Bread

I'm going to call this recipe "Going Bananas Bread (Gluten-free)". I am quite sure I'm not the first person to cleverly think of this title, but since it fits, I'm going with it.

The need for this recipe was triggered when I had five VERY ripe bananas on my table and a potluck karaoke party on my calendar. I found a plethora of recipes for banana bread and even a few gluten-free options. But there wasn't a single recipe that had all the elements I wanted (or didn't want). So a combination was born!

The main or base recipe I used was this "Banana Banana Bread Recipe" from AllRecipes.com:
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Banana-Banana-Bread/Detail.aspx.

GOING BANANAS BREAD (Gluten-Free)

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose gluten-free flour (I used Arrowhead Mills GF Pancake & Baking Mix*)

• 1 tsp baking soda

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• 3 tsp egg replacer (dry part of 2 “eggs”)

• 1 tsp ground cinnamon

• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

• 1/2 cup butter

• 3/4 cup brown sugar

• 4 Tbsp warm water (wet part of 2 “eggs”)

• 4 to 5 overripe bananas, mashed about 2 cups-ish

• 1 tsp GF vanilla or GF vanilla extract
  

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a 9x5 inch loaf pan.

2. In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients: flour, baking soda, salt, egg replacer, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
   

3. In a separate bowl, cream together butter and brown sugar.

4. Stir in water, mashed bananas, and vanilla until well blended.
   

5. Blend banana mixture into flour mixture; stir just to moisten. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan.

6. Bake in preheated oven for 55 to 60 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of the loaf comes out clean. (For me, it took about 56 minutes.)
   

7. Let bread cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack.

* The ingredients for the baking mix are (copied from the bag):
Organic white rice flour, organic potato flour, tapioca starch, baking powder (monocalcium phosphate, sodium bicarbonate, corn starch), organic whole grain yellow corn flour, natural flavor (?huh?), sea salt, organic cinnamon.


A wonderful side effect of this bread - it smelled absolutely wonderful and filled the entire first floor of our house with yummy-smelling goodness. :-)

Lacking Confidence...

This is a placard from a wedding I recently attended. I admit quite freely that it does not inspire confidence in me. At least, they tried, I guess...

Gotta watch out for that pesky glue!

Low Iodine Cooking on a 'school' night

Because of my busy schedule this weekend, I had to cook last night (on a "school" night!). Unfortunately on a low iodine diet, you cannot really eat out since every place cooks with salt, and who knows if it's iodized or not!

So I took my Monday to make:

• Greek grilled chicken (good)
• Sesame chicken fingers (salty, but decent)
• Roasted root vegetables (tons of chopping, haven't even tasted it yet)

All fo the recipes were taken from/adapted from ThyCa's (Thyroid Cancer Survivors' Association) Low Iodine Cookbook. You can find it on their website (http://www.thyca.org/) or directly through this link (PDF). I will try to post one of the altered recipes each day.

For all its restrictions, the diet is not vastly different from the anti-candida diet I'm supposed to be on. There was even one recipe from the cookbook that I really didn't have to alter and that never happens! I'm holding out hope that I'll be able to continue with some semblance of the diet past the end of the month and then maybe the yeasties will die.

You know what's sad? I barely remember when being on a diet just meant eating fruit for dessert instead of cookies; and if you cheated on the diet, all that happened was guilt. Ah, for the good old days.

Low Iodine Diet to add to the mix

In September 2008, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and had my thyroid removed. Luckily, we caught it incredibly early in the process. Because of that, I take replacement hormones each morning and have a very nice-looking scar, but otherwise it's not on the forefront of mind usually.

However, as part of the process, I have to go through a series of scans/tests and some radioactive iodine annually for the first three years. February 2010 is my thyroid month this year.

Starting tomorrow, I will be on a low iodine diet. The last week of the month, I will do lots of scans & tests...and become radioactive. I'll be given a low dose of radioactive iodine. The low iodine diet is to limit my body's iodine level so that it uptakes the radioactive version wholeheartedly come Feb.24th. If there are any remaining cancer cells, the radioactivity will pool there and show up on the subsequent scans. Here's hopin' for nothing on the scans!

I don't really diet any more dietary restrictions, but the advantage of this diet is (at least, psychologically) that I don't have to stay on it. It's only for a few weeks. We can do anything for only a few weeks, right? So here I go!!!