Dairy Free, Soy Free Cowboy Cookies

When I first had to go lactose free, I was pretty upset about having to discontinue my love affair with Giradelli Milk Chocolate Chip cookies.  However, between the half pound of butter and all the milk in the chips, I knew we had to break up.  I struggled, cookie free except for the occasional Oreo until my wonderful sister in law sent me the recipe for cowboy cookies.  Cowboy cookies have been a big part of my life, until I had to give up soy.  In fact, we are in the process of adopting, and I had always assumed one of the first things we would do when our child is placed would be to make cowboy cookies.  I had a little slightly panicked pity party in my kitchen and may have shed a few tears over the fact I couldn't find shortening without soy.  My wonderful, kind, supportive husband saw how upset I was, did some research and discovered Spectrum Organics makes a soy free shortening, and they sell it at Target.  While there, I discovered they also sell Enjoy Life mini chips which are dairy soy and nut free. 

Let there be cookies! 

Dry Ingredients:
2 cups flour (I use unbleached all purpose)
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder

Wet Ingredients:
1 cup Spectrum Organics Shortening (or use regular shortening if you don't have soy issues)
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

Additional Dry Ingredients:
2 cups quick oats (you can also use roller oats)
1 package Enjoy Life semi sweet chocolate chips (if you don't need to be soy free 1 cup of semi sweet mini chocolate chips is way cheaper)
1/2 cup sweetened coconut

Optional Ingredient:
1/2 cup chopped nuts (but only if you like your cookies defiled by nuts)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350

Mix dry ingredients and set aside.  Put shortening in your Kitchen Aid stand mixer and start it mixing.  Add remainder of wet ingredients one at a time.  Make sure kitchen aid is on stir and slowly add dry ingredient mixture.  Once you are reasonably sure it is mixed well enough turning the mixer up won't result in a flour cloud, turn it up one or two clicks.  Add additional dry ingredients one at a time.  Spoon them onto a cookie sheet and bake for 8-12 min. 

Note:  My husband loves these cookies.  Once I offered to make some for him to take to a work pot luck.  He politely and lovingly declined because, and I'm paraphrasing here, they were ameba shaped.  I'm pretty sure I  just stared at him squinty eyed and said "but they taste good."  After a few moments, I just chalked it up to being one of those things I just need to accept without understanding.   After a bit of experimentation, I discovered if I use my melon baller to scoop out the dough and then squish the dough a little with my hand, the cookies are uniformly shaped enough that my husband approves.

Updated Dairy Free, Soy Free, Gluten Free Peanut Butter Cups

I was successful in my quest to find a dairy and soy free chocolate chip, so here is my freshly revised dairy free, gluten free, soy free peanut butter cup recipe.  

1 cup Enjoy Life semi-sweet chocolate mini chips (I found them at Target.  They are expensive.  If soy isn't an issue for you, any semi-sweet chocolate melty or chip will work.)

light olive oil as needed to get the consistency right (You shouldn't need the oil if you are using melties.  You can use any kind of vegetable oil you have on hand.  I'm just lazy and only stock olive oil)
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup powdered sugar

Melt the chocolate.  I have a little electric fondue crock pot looking thingy that I use, but 30 seconds in the microwave, stir, 30 seconds in the microwave, stir repeat until melted works.  Put cupcake holders in your cupcake pan.  This recipe makes 6  if you use a regular size cupcake pan.  I suspect it would be 12 if you use a mini cupcake pan, but I don't have one, so I don't know. When the chocolate is melted, put a spoonful of chocolate in each paper then use the spoon to get the chocolate on the sides of the paper about 1/4 of the way up.  You should use a little more than 1/2 the chocolate.  Then put the cupcake pan in the freezer to set the chocolate.  While the chocolate sets, mix the peanut butter and powdered sugar.  I use my kitchen aid.  If you do it by hand, it will be easier if you heat the peanut butter in the microwave first.  Scoop the peanut butter mixture into the cupcake holders on top of the chocolate.  Then pick up the pan and slam it repeatedly into your counter to level the peanut butter mixture out.  The kids find this entertaining.  Then spoon the rest of the chocolate on top and put back in the freezer to set (about 5 min).  Enjoy!

PS No pic on this post because I haven't made it recently.  I'll try to remember to photograph it when I make it again.

Slow Cooker Beer and Onion Pork Chops

Back in the good ole' days, before I had to cut soy out of my diet, my family and I really enjoyed this recipe (with some variation as I am too lazy to butterfly cut pork chops). So this week as I was shuffling through the recipe drawer I saw it, thought "Yum! we haven't had that in a while." and put it on the menu plan, only to discover chicken bullion has soy.  Rainbows!  It would have been better to discover that before I did the unicorn shopping for the week.  Necessity being the mother of invention and all that, here is my revised version:

1 or 2 sliced onions
1 family pack boneless, pork chops (preferably thin cut but it doesn't really matter)
2 or 3 bottles of beer
2 or 3 cups organic chicken broth (make sure it is soy free)

Put a layer of onions on the bottom of the slow cooker.  Then a layer of chops.  Then another layer of onions and another layer of chops and so on until all the chops are in.  Then add one bottle of beer plus one cup of broth.  Add another bottle of beer and cup of broth until the liquid covers the top layer of chops.  Cook on low for 6 to 8 hours.  I usually serve it with rice and a steamed veggie.

Gloriously delicious, easy, dairy free, soy free pumpkin pie!

I LOVE pumpkin pie.  When I had to give up dairy 7 ish years ago, I embarked on a quest to find a pumpkin pie recipe that was as good as our secret family recipe (the one on the back of the big Libbie's can that makes 2 pies), that was simple, and that didn't require me to go to a specialty store to purchase ingredients.  And I failed.  Until today.  I will spare you the details on coconut milk pies that didn't taste quite right and soy milk pies that were the wrong consistency.  I acquired the recipe to make one using lactose free egg nog, which the store I go to didn't carry (they carry soy nog, which I can't have).  Last year, I spent 5 unicorn hours stirring a a pot of lactose free milk to evaporate it enough to make 2 pies.  (It's a good thing I have a kindle and a pumpkin pie loving lactose intolerant cousin willing to corral the children for 5 hours.) Finally, I found a  recipe that used almond milk and seemed simple.  However, I prefer white sugar to Brown sugar in pumpkin pies, I prefer using cinnamon, cloves, salt and ginger to us in pumpkin pie spice and I buy vanilla almond milk not original.  So I fussed with the recipe and came up with the following (which is a mix of the back of the Libby's can and the linked recipe).   I have sampled it (by eating 1/4 of the first pie for lunch) and it is wonderful!  There is a running joke in our family that my secret family recipe makes 2 pies so I have to make 2 even though most of the family prefers fruit pies, so when I created this recipe it is for 2 pies.  It can be halved, but since I like pumpkin pie for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert,  and snack,  I can't imagine doing so.  Enjoy! 

Pastry for two pies (I used Pillsbury refrigerated pie crusts, which are soy and dairy free but not vegetarian)

2 cups vanilla almond milk
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tsp ground cinnamon (I like cinnamon I added a little extra)
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cloves

29 oz can of pumpkin puree 

6 eggs

Preheat oven to 375 F.  Put the crusts into 9 in pie plates and flute the edges.  Or don't bother. I dont judge based on how your food looks.  Whisk together (I use my kitchen aid because I don't whisk by hand) remaining ingredients and pour into pie dishes and bake for 40 to 50 minutes. Also, when baking pies, I use a pie ring to keep the crust from getting over done.  You can use foil around the edges if you dont have a pie ring.  Or if you dont mind the edges being a bit over done, just leave it. Let cool.  Or do what I did and eat it as soon as it comes out of the oven being careful to blow on each bite so you don't burn your tongue so bad you can't taste anything for a week.

Rainbows, unicorns and sparkles

I grew up in a family that was no stranger to four letter words, in a town with potty mouth and  in a generation that uses the f bomb like punctuation.  As a result of that, in my teens and twenties I'm reasonably certain I could swear for 15 minutes straight without repeating myself.  And then I really read Ephesians 4:29, which in the Message version states: 

"Watch the way you talk. Let nothing foul or dirty come out of your mouth. Say only what helps, each word a gift."

So I decided to change my speech patterns.  It was pretty easy to drop the f bomb punctuation. And it wasn't too hard to find alternate ways to describe large or fun or positive things. However, I struggled and struggled with my foul and dirty mouth whenever I got frustrated.  I felt like substituting similar sounding words (like "shoot") or using less "bad" words (like "butthole") wasn't any less foul or dirty than the cuss words.  I also tried just muting the bad words (leaving a pause instead of saying the word, knowing that my audience would know which one I meant). Again, it just felt like I was still communicating the foul and dirty ideas even if I wasn't using the words.  I struggled with ways to express frustration without being foul or dirty.  And finally I had an epiphany.  I needed to come up with some words that allow me to express frustration.  But the ultimate goal is not to just be frustrated and let others know it, but to get rid of the frustration and replace it with joy.

So now when I'm frustrated, I throw in words like rainbows, unicorns, and sparkles.  It helps get the frustration out.  And it makes me smile.  It is pretty difficult to keep the negative emotions of a rant going when you are saying sparkles and unicorns.

Why on earth is this post on a food blog, you may be asking yourself. That is an excellent question! When you spend the first 30 years of your life eating cheese cake, pizza, macaroni and cheese,  Ghirardelli milk chocolate chip cookies, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Cadburry Eggs and a host of other delicious lactose containing foods, it is pretty unicorn frustrating when you eat 2 bites of something delicious and 12 to 36 hours later your rainbowing digestional tract goes into full panic mode causing noise, pain and embarrassment as you make a mad dash to the bathroom, without regard for how sparkling inconvenient it happens to be at the time.  Also, cooking is frustrating even when you don't have to worry about figuring out if you can  find a way to make something that was intended to have dairy without it.  When you add the frustration of realizing that it isn't just dairy that ties your guts in knots, but also the most common dairy substitute, soy, it is unicorning annoying.  

See, you enjoyed my rant, and by the end of it, I was giggling.  So if you see rainbows and unicorns in my recipe, know that I was frustrated, but I am now joyful.    

Dairy Free Soy Free Gnocchi

Potatoes + Pasta = YUM!  Here is a recipe for Quick Gnocchi which is both dairy and soy free (assuming the potato flakes you use do not contain soy lecithin as an emulsifier).  The only substitution is that I use 2 tsp of garlic salt rather than 1 tsp of salt.  I then pour some jar red pasta sauce (I use the Classico Italian sausage flavor which is dairy and soy free) over it and call it dinner.  Note, if you cook but don't have time to eat before running your oldest to Cub Scouts and forget to put the Gnocchi in the fridge before you leave, by the time you get home the Gnocchi will be nasty and you will have to eat a sandwich instead.  Not that that happened tonight.  

Introducing...Me

I love food.  And I hate to cook.  And I love to bake.  But my body's stubborn refusal to digest lactose and soy mean that I can't use the ingredients (like shortening, canned soup and cake mix) in most "easy" recipes.  So I have scoured the internet trying to find recipes for foods and treats that : 1) are delicious (and I am picky); 2) don't require me to go to a specialty store (because I'm lazy and I hate the grocery store);  3) don't require me leave the kids unsupervised for long enough for my toddler to swing from the dining room chandelier (It almost happened once.  He has no respect for gravity);  and 4) don't cause my intestinal tract to stage a loud painful protest at inopportune moments (because having a potty emergency in public it so not okay).  I have started this blog with the intention of posting recipes that work for my family, in the hopes that when someone else is scouring the internet looking for easy recipes that don't cause tummy rebellion.  And also in the hopes that there are other people out there that have lactose free, soy free recipes to share as well.