We are reducing our consumption of wheat, though not eliminating it.  Most of us feel swollen and yucky when we eat a lot of wheat, but no one feels enough of a difference that they have given up wheat entirely.

Good thing, because my attempts at gluten-free pizza crusts have been edible, but not awesome.

Here’s the recipe I use:

In a big bowl, mix 1 Tbsp yeast and 1 Tbsp salt with 3 cups warm water.  Add 5 cups white flour, and 1.5 cups spelt/whole-wheat/rye/whatever-other-kind-of-flour-is-around.  Mix, cover with a pot lid, and let sit in a warm place for at least 4 hours and a maximum of 24 hours.  Do not knead, do not concern yourself with it in any way until you’re ready to use it.  When you’re ready to make pizza, turn the dough out on a floured surface, and mix in enough flour to make it the appropriate texture.  Stretch it into the right shape, then add toppings and cook until done at 450 (15-25 mins).  I find that if one doesn’t oil the pan, it sticks dreadfully, and that thinner crusts work out better than thicker ones.  And sesame seeds on the crust are really nice.

For the gluten-free crust, I just substituted Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-free flour mix. It was fine, just not quite as nice. It needs to be patted in place like a giant cracker instead of rolled and stretched like a wheat crust.

I recently ran out of white flour, and so I used 1 cup of white and the rest spelt flour, and it was fine. More stretchy and squishy with the white flour, but overall it was something I’d probably do again. Once we get a grain mill, I plan to make it with 100% whole wheat – I’ll keep y’all updated.

Happy pizza!

It might seem that eating is all we do here!  It is the biggest part of our budget, for sure; 10 people eat a lot.  With little kids, we need to make three square meals a day.  Not everyone takes part in all the meals, but we mostly eat together.

And breakfast mostly involves eggs.  Fried eggs, scrambled eggs, eggs in pancake batter with eggs on top.  Eggs.  We get about half of our eggs from Inishoge Farm (http://www.inishoge.ca/), and half from whichever farm gate we happen to be driving past (or The Horrible, AKA the grocery store).

When I was a kid, my father used to make Eggs Ranchero: toast, with salsa on top, a poached egg on that, and melted cheddar on top of that.  Delicious!  In 2005, Jeremy and I went to Japan to travel and WWOOF (www.wwoof.net), and I came home with what we termed a ‘rice hole’; if a meal didn’t include rice, I didn’t feel full.  I found all kinds of ways to include rice, including Modified Eggs Ranchero.

Eggs, on top of salsa and rice, with cheese melted on top.  Even though it does’t have any Braggs sauce or tahini, I labeled it West Coast Hippie (WCH) Style. That’s mostly tongue in cheek, due to the short-grain brown rice and locally-sourced ingredients.  Sometimes I add homemade nettle gomaishio, for extra WCH++.  Delicious!

We’ve been eating a lot of root vegetables, because they’re seasonal and CHEAP.  Plus, I love them, and when we’re feeding more than two adults it makes sense to make a dish that is mostly just for us.  We do roasted roots (we call them Rude Vegetables, or ‘Neeps [turnips] and ‘Nips [parsnips], depending on the constituents), Bashed Neeps, and roots cut into wedges and dipped in coconut oil before roasting.  Turnip saurkraut.  So good.

Tonight, we have something new to add to the roster: Neep Noodles.  Tony took a raw turnip, peeled it, and then kept peeling long strips with the vegetable peeler so that the pieces resembled long, flat noodles.  We boiled them in salty water for a scant few minutes, then served them with butter, salt and parmesan cheese.  I think it’s my new favourite way to enjoy turnips.  You may ask, “Isn’t anything good, covered with butter and salt and cheese?”, and you may be right, but there was a certain turnipiness that comes through.

All hail the noble turnip, oft-scorned, but deserving of toothsome adoration!

(Next time we make it, I’ll take pictures.)