Ask the Food Fairy!

One reader just shared with me that she lost all her books in a flood and was looking for the praline recipe from The Sweet Potato Queens’ Big-Ass Cookbook and Financial Planner, which I wrote about a couple years ago. We aim to serve here, so I thought I’d share their recipe and take the opportunity to plug that book again. I just love it! It has so much love and positive energy – so much recovery. Consider this:

Depending on your astrological sign, it may be desirable – even necessary – to incorporate some extra gift-giving occasions into your yearly calendar. This would be gift-giving by others, naturally…. [Super-awesome story about a "giant cee-ment monkey" statue redacted. Worth buying the whole book for.]

Anyway, pick a day – any day you like – and declare it to be Special (deserving of presents), throw out the essential hints (instructions), and start planning the menu. After all, Your Special Day is a perfect time to eat a whole lot of wonderful and fattening food….

For many years now I have made these pralines at Christmastime, ostensibly to give to folks. I must confess, however, not one single praline has left my kitchen – not a one. I have personally eaten each and every one of them my very self, but my intentions continue to be good.

Lorene’s Pralines

In a heavy saucepan, combine 2 cups sugar, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 cup buttermilk, and 1/8 teaspoon salt. Cook this on high heat, stirring it a lot, for 5 minutes, then add 2 tablespoons butter and 2 1.2 cups pecans and cook it for a little while longer over medium heat. Then take it off the heat, let it cool down a little bit, and then beat it with a big wooden spoon until it’s thick and creamy. Drop blobs of it on waxed paper and let it harden.

I guarantee that Lorene’s pralines will make any day Your Special Day.

I live in the Bay Area, where Cafe Gratitude (that raw food haven) first started, so I’m certainly at an advantage when it comes to hearing about raw foods. When I hit our Whole Foods, I pass by Cafe Gratitude’s counter, their shelves full of books and Himalayan crystal salt and to-go cakes, across from the aisle of raw chocolate and raw kale chips and raw cookies.

And yet I still don’t understand the basic concepts behind raw food. I get that people say cooking food kills at least some of the enzymes in it, and that that can make it lose nutritional value. I get that some greens, like spinach, need to be cooked in order to make their nutrients accessible, because they have oxalic acid or other juices in there that are somewhat toxic to us and prevent us from getting at the good stuff. And I know that I feel full faster when eating raw food, but I don’t know why. So what’s the bottom line?

I’m doing some research on it right now, and I thought I’d share it with you as I go. But first, my bottom line conclusions – for those of you who just want the facts, not the journey!

So, in support of raw foods:
* They often contain enzymes which aid digestion, as well as vitamins and amino acids, whereas many of the above are destroyed in the heat of cooking.
* Eating raw generally forces people to stick to high-nutrient foods that contain tons of antioxidants, etc., because the foods that don’t tend to be the ones that REALLY need a bunch of processing to be edible.
* Many raw foods, and foods which have been fermented to “cook” them, are good for the immune system because they are packed with probiotic and prebiotic bacteria (i.e. “good bacteria”) that support the digestive system, which is closely tied with the immune system – and these also tend to be killed by cooking. Which makes sense since killing off bacteria is one of our major arguments for cooking food.
* There are foods that it’s dangerous to eat raw – I don’t mean chicken here, but things like sprouted alfalfa – but not as many as I thought, and Wikipedia has what I hope is a complete list – linked below.

If you want to see more information and the process of getting there, click Read the rest of this entry »

I saw a lovely picture of chocolate “twinkies” with peanut butter filling over at Tastespotting and instantly thought, “GLUTEN-FREE TWINKIES! I’ll make a fortune! Everyone will flock to my blog!”

Boy howdy, I am not the first person to go there. So for your delectation, and my amazement, a little array of gluten-free twinkie recipes! These range from little cream-injected suckers to ginormous ones that you can fill just by cutting open. Behold:

From “Hey, That Tastes Good”: ginormous vanilla cake twinkies with a buttercream filling via cutting out and replacing a little cake window.

From celiac.com: vanilla layer cake with strawberry filling, not really a twinkie.

The celiac.com forums have what they say is a really authentic-tasting gluten-free recipe for the Twinkie cake, and link to an authentic recipe for the filling.

Clan Thompson’s Celiac Site has another layer cake variation, this one vanilla/vanilla.

Making a layer cake and calling it a twinkie seems to be the order of the day: there’s another one at GroupRecipes, which by the formatting I think was copied from RecipeZaar somewhere, which is one more vanilla layer cake, this time filled with marshmallow creme.

And you can even order them pre-made from a bakery in Michigan, at $24 per dozen. Molly’s Gluten-Free Bakery in Wisconsin does too, but they don’t ship! But Gluten Free Creations in Arizona does, $5 for three “Winkies”.

So then the question becomes: why haven’t Mariposa Baking, near my house, or Farmer’s Kitchen Cafe in Davis where I grew up, jumped on the recreated-childhood-snackin-cake bandwagon yet? If the quality of Mariposa’s cookies and cupcakes is anything to go by, their twinkies would be FABULOUS!

I’m surprised that there were no gluten-free cake recipes that called for making small twinkie-style cakes with injected filling. Or even big ones. Of course, it wouldn’t be hard to get this twinkie-style cake pan – which I am now TOTALLY registered for, by the way – and make any of these in it. I’m just saying!

In the quest for a Creative Commons-licensed picture of Twinkies on Flickr to delight your eyes, I found something even more delightful: a picture of my friend Cola! What happened there?! Apparently in the adjoining text, Les is comparing French madelines to Twinkies. But still.

So, in retrospect, maybe there is room for some more gluten-free twinkie exploration out there. From what I’ve read, and vaguely remember – not having eaten a Twinkie in what seems like ten years – they are actually more lemony in the cake region. I would love to make a gluten-free Choco-Dile or Suzy-Q or, my god, a Sno Ball. Watch this space….