Green Options

There’s so much more to the wonderful world of noodles than old-world durum semolina pasta. And no, I’m not talking about substituting stringy spaghetti squash or strips of summer squash for pastalicious goodness.  Did you know there are gluten-free noodles made from rice, soy protein, quinoa, and even sweet potato starch?

A lot of supermarket vegetarian burgers try so hard to resemble meat that they ignore the fact that vegetables actually taste delicious in the first place. Why try to replicate a beef burger with a monotonously colored brown thing full of mysterious ingredients and even weirder textures when you can eat a vegetable burger that actually showcases the flavors of the vegetables? Here on Eat.Drink.Better we’ve seen fantastic burgers made of black beans, white beans, lentils and portobello, and and even beets! Here’s another veggie burger that’s brightly colored, packed with exciting flavors, and simple to make with both fresh and canned vegetables. Plus, it’s healthy but still deliciously tasty thanks to the freshness of just-grated carrots and zucchini with the heft of canned chickpeas and the salty tanginess of halloumi cheese.

Do you ever have an insatiable craving for a delicious, summery burger — but don’t want the autolyzed yeast extract and soy protein isolates contained in many commercial veggie patties? There’s no need to go without!  You can make your own grain-free version using just a handful of healthy ingredients. Organic french lentils and fresh portobello mushrooms combine to make a nutritious, mouthwatering vegan burger.

Many people have never heard of teff, but this unique gluten-free grain dates back to the age of the pyramids.  Most often ground into flour to make injera, a fermented flat bread, teff has served as a primary food source in Ethiopia and Eritrea since approximately 3000 B.C.  Despite its enduring history as an African staple, teff’s presence in America is less than forty years old. In the 1970s, an entrepreneurial farmer observed a parallel between the weather of Idaho’s Snake Valley and Africa’s Great Rift Valley, and began successfully cultivating teff in the United States.

Individual grains of teff are extremely small, just 1/150th of the size of a kernel of wheat.  When cooked as a hot cereal, the tiny grains –  comparable to the size of a poppy seed — create a deliciously smooth texture.  In fact, the taste and consistency of teff porridge is more like cream of wheat than any other gluten-free whole grain I’ve prepared.

When you see teff’s impressive nutritional profile, you’ll see why it provides a compelling case for adding this gluten-free grain to your diet.

Summer is my favorite season.  It’s the time of year for sunset barbecues and dinners on the patio, and for strings of tiny Italian lights and flickering Moroccan lanterns. Summer plays the beautiful hostess of longer days and breezy nights, polka-dotted sundresses, and peals of joyful laughter coming from children playing in the backyard.

There’s no better time than summer to indulge in a sliver of chocolate cake, so rich in contrast to the simplicity of the gingham tablecloth and the mason jars overflowing with wildflowers.   This cake is made without using wheat, corn, or dairy ingredients, yet it is unmistakably, deliciously, chocolate.

This twist on classic pizza ushers in summer with a tender gluten-free crust, garlicky oven-roasted tomato sauce and the zing of fresh herbs.  You could top this with homemade mozzarella cheese or soy cheese, but what if you’re avoiding both dairy and the highly-processed soy isolates found in many cheese alternatives? Is it even possible to imagine – much less create and enjoy — a pizza without wheat and cheese?

Of the adjectives used to describe gluten-free baked goods, the word “fluffy” rarely makes the cut.   Heavy,  solid, crumbly, dry — yes, any and all of those. Those of us living sans gluten have gotten used to the slice-and-toast routine when it comes to wheatless breads.  Fresh-out-of-the-oven-fluffy has all but vanished from our vocabulary. These fruit-sweetened beauties, though, change all of that.

For starters, the batter actually rose above and beyond the baking tin’s edge.  When’s the last time you remember anything gluten-free doing that? These muffins even manage to disguise shredded fruits and vegetables without coming anywhere near the dreaded dense description.

Goodbye flat, vaguely muffin-shaped globules.  It’s time to move on.

Over the course of a lifetime, the average American consumes over 87,000 slices of bread.  Yes, you read that correctly — eighty seven thousand. That’s more than a loaf per week per person, not counting the additional 5,000 hot dog buns and 12,000 hamburger buns each American devours in his or her life.

All that wheat calculates out to a lifetime grand total of 21,947 loaves and buns.  The National Geographic Society’s Human Footprint project has illustrated this shocking bread obsession in a stunning visual (see the video clip below).   In the words of my little brother, who is no stranger to wheatless ways,  “That is a totally nasty amount of bread.”

There’s no argument that bread is an American staple.  Amber waves of grain are, after all, an American icon.  But we can’t live by bread alone.  So what are some wheatless alternatives?

There are so many fabulous whole foods that are naturally wheatless, from plump, juicy, healing fruits to bright, crisp vegetables to satisfying, protein-rich legumes.  But when it comes to carbohydrates — you know, the baked goods and pasta we all crave from time to time — things get a little bit more challenging.  But who says being wheat-free means you have to sacrifice these things?

Whether you’re just getting into the swing of Wheatless Wednesdays, or whether you’re in the middle of a life-long wheat-free adventure, don’t despair.  There are three crucial gluten-free ingredients that will leave you with your attention fully riveted to your wheatless plate, just like like the toddler in the photo above.

Wheatless Wednesday, along with her currently more popular cousin Meatless Monday, were the brainchild of Herbert Hoover during World War I.  Already active as a food relief administrator in Europe, Hoover was appointed to preside over the U.S. Food Administration in 1917, just before the United States entered the First World War.  It would be twelve more years before Hoover was inaugurated as the 31st president of the United States, but by that time he was already a household name.

Hoover’s massive food preservation program encouraged Americans to reduce food consumption so that the food supply for the troops and war-torn Europeans would remain strong.  The uniqueness of his plan– as opposed to later World War II efforts — was that Hoover’s program avoided rationing, while still successfully reducing American food consumption by 15%.

Our kids take packed lunches daily.  We do this for a multitude of reasons… Celiac disease which mandates a gluten free diet, dairy allergies which means no milk or milk protein. For two of our children, we end up packing wheat free/dairy free/gluten free/vegan lunches. The other two get wheat and dairy but otherwise vegetarian lunches.

Another reason we pack lunches for all our kids is to ensure they eat healthier and so that I can see what they are actually eating on a day to day basis.  The leftovers come back home, so they can become snacks.

We do spend time brainstorming lunch ideas… the kids never complain but I get bored of packing the same foods over and over.