Cooking on the Edge of Insanity

You might wonder why it's taken us so long in getting around to write this book review.  After all, it came out months ago.  The author, Emily Rosenbaum, first published this as an e-book (you can get it on nook or kindle e-reader), and due to its popularity has also been published in hardcover as well. 

 

So again, you ask, why so late on the review? Well, peeps, it's all well and good to read a book when it comes out, but we are of the firm belief that when it comes to a cookbook one must actually try a few recipes before you can give it a fair assessment.  If you ever saw the size of the closet kitchen we cook in, you'd understand why it took so long.

That said, the good news for you peeps is you know we're not feeding you any bullshit when we say we've actually used her recipes a lot.  You'll know we mean it when we say that mini, lover of all foods white, brown and bland, child who thinks fresh fruit is the stuff horror movies are made of, actually likes the spinach-chocolate muffins in this book.

Now we know the trend is all "hide it and they'll never know," but we went ahead and involved mini in the cooking process.  The hiding thing may be all well and good for some peeps, but mini is too smart to be outsmarted like that.  Not when it comes to food, anyway.  If she ever found a muffin tainted with a peach or an apple (the horror!) she'd stop eating muffins of any kind, altogether.  And mark our words, peeps.  She would know.  No matter how hard you tried to hide it, she would know.

But of course, if you read Emily's book and her endearing stories about trying to cook something all three of her children will eat, in the two minutes she has free between pickup and pulling out her hair, you'll know that if she can do this, you can do this.  And if her child will eat it, yours might too.

So instead of hiding things we sold mini on the idea of how fun it is that you're eating fruit, it's healthy for you, and you can't taste it at all!  This actually worked for a while, especially because it's really fun for kids to press that giant black button on the food processor and make that whizzing sound.  And once we calmed her down after the panic attack she had upon seeing the neon green substance in the food processor that is all the wet ingredients, she stopped hyperventilating long enough to realize that it all turns to brown once you mix it with chocolate.  Ahhh, chocolate.  

See? Brown.

What was next? Well we would never in our lives have considered making tortillas from scratch, but after a trip to whole foods where even the tortillas are processed on equipment that handles eggs and seeds, it was time.  So we broke out the flour, braced ourselves for the mess, and followed Emily's easy tortilla recipe.

These tasted delicious

While we were at it, we figured we might as well follow her method for cooking garlic, her spinach recipe, and her black bean recipe (forgive us, we used cans!)  Amazingly, despite smelling the cumin and curry that went into the beans and declaring them "disgusting!!!" to her mother and her friend, both mini and her friend gobbled it up.  Even with the visible chunks of onion and garlic.

So tomorrow, instead of a bland soy nut butter sandwich on whole wheat she doesn't like or eat anyway, mini will be bringing a bean burrito with homemade tortillas to school for lunch.  And a spinach muffin for her after-school snack. 

Seriously, if you have kids, and you care about what they eat, you should get this book.  The recipes are totally doable for those of us who cook in the real world, and even if you only cook once in a while, you'll be glad to have this one in your arsenal.

Cupcakes for Cancer

 Today we are honored to have a guest post up at Frosting for the Cause.

Frosting for the Cause is a cool blog where a different baker every day, 365 days a year, shares their own recipe and story of a woman affected by cancer.  Each woman who posts donates money to her cancer organization of choice and donates the baked goods to a local cancer center/hospice.

While we're usually all about the funny, this kind of thing calls for uncharacteristic optimism.  What we especially like about this is how it shows the power of one small act.  A couple of hours spent baking one afternoon can:

-Make you feel accomplished
-Provide you with quality time with your child (and baking helps with math!)
-The treats will hopefully make at least one person happy
-The money you donate goes to a good cause
-You create new content on not one, but at least two blogs!
-Someone may try your recipe (paying the enjoyment forward)
-Someone may be inspired to donate or bake themselves, helping many other people

See what one little mixing bowl can do!  Imagine the power of 365 bakers!

Please go visit Frosting for the Cause and check out our way-too-long post! A special shout out to our baker friends out there who we hope will consider sharing a recipe of their own.

Baking For Kids With Food Allergies

We're often asked how we bake for mini considering she is allergic to eggs.  The answer is it's pretty easy but it was a learning process.  All of a sudden we realized that over the years we've built up quite the repertoire and what we take for granted as daily tasks were tips that could have made life easier years ago had we thought of them sooner.

So, here is a tip for making life easier when bribing baking for someone with food allergies: Freeze-ahead single serve portions.

We cringe at reading this.  Even the sound of it "freeze-ahead"...sounds so domesticated, so put together and organized, so Martha Stewart, so...1950s housewife. All things we typically run from.  So the irony of this post is not lost on us.

However consider this: aside from the fact that this helps her live a normal life, someday Mini will be a teenager.  And then she will be in college.  And sadly, as uber-cool as her mother may be, she will not think so.  She will run far, far away from the embarrassment that is her neurotic and overprotective Jewish mother.

So, we bake.

We bake with the knowledge that if the products are good enough, even if Mini wants to hide us from her friends, her friends will prefer to hang at our place.  They will ask when mother is coming to school.  They will trade information for a cookie.

We bake for leverage.

As a bonus, we create allergy-friendly foods that help make healthy eating pretty easy.  One of mini's favorite recipes is this pumpkin bread.  It tastes like chocolate chip cake but since it has pumpkin, whole wheat and soy flour - it has fiber, vegetables, protein.  It's a good breakfast or at the very least an after-school snack you can feel better about than goldfish.  Around here it's used for bribery.

2 loaves = 20 "makes you feel so put together every time you use one" slices of delicious pumpkin bread.  And you'd never know it was egg-free.  In fact, it's so popular, Poker Chick now has to double the recipe each time she makes it to give some to her neighbors and best friends as well.

Poker Chick's Allergy-Friendly* Chocolate Chip Whole Wheat Pumpkin Protein Bread

Just so you believe this recipe is legit

STEP 1: Mix dry ingredients in a giant bowl
1  1/3 cup soy protein flour
1 1/3 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
3-4 teaspoons salt
1 1/3 bags Enjoy Life chocolate chips
3/4 cup - 1 cup sugar

STEP 2: Mix wet ingredients in medium bowl
30 oz (1 29-oz. can is ok too) canned pumpkin
4 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
6 teaspoons melted butter (works with non-dairy spread as well if you want dairy-free bread)

STEP 3: Preheat oven to 350 and grease two loaf pans
 
STEP 4: Prepare the Egg Replacer "Mixture"
For the equivalent of eight eggs, mix 2 tablespoons Ener-G egg replacer with 8 tablespoons water in a bowl.  Use room temp water or it throws off the recipe.  Whisk vigorously until all the lumps are gone and pour into the "wet ingredients" bowl immediately.  Egg replacer works best when it's used as soon as it's mixed for some reason.

STEP 5: Mix ingredients
Add Egg Replacer mixture to wet ingredients bowl
Pour 1/3 of wet ingredients bowl into dry ingredients bowl.  Mix with tough spatula until blended.
Repeat until everything is mixed together.

STEP 6: Finish and Bake
Pour batter (very thick), divided evenly between 2 loaf pans.  Bake about 45 minutes, a little longer if you're one of those rare people who like it on the dry side.

FINAL STEP:  Prepare for your acceptance speech as a domestic goddess
Cool, slice, wrap each slice in wax paper, then foil, then put them in 2 large freezer zipper bags. 

In the morning, grab one out of the freezer and throw it into the backpack for breakfast or a snack*.  Send thank you note to Poker Chick later.

This process works well for birthday party cupcakes too.  Just put them in the fridge to set the frosting before wrapping them (we suggest plastic then foil) or else the frosting will stick to the plastic and come off when you try and unwrap it.


*Bread is egg, nut, and sesame free.  It can also be made dairy free quite easily.  Bread does contain wheat and soy.

An Impossible Request

We realize Poker Chick is asking for the moon here, but if anyone has a Passover dessert recipe that somehow contains no eggs, no nuts, no sesame, no soy, and (obviously), no flour, she would really really really appreciate it!