My first Loaf of Gluten-Free Vegan Bread!!

I Did It!! I made my first loaf of Gluten-Free Vegan bread! It is not completely from scratch, because I was chicken to go that far the first time I tried baking Vegan or Gluten-free and the first time using the bread machine, but I did have to do quite a bit of "tweaking" so it is not just a mix either. The really exciting part is it came out so good. It is not "good enough", it is good. Not dry or crumbly, not heavy and doughy. Just nice bread with a good flavor. NOTHING like what we bought at the health food store last week, LOL. So I used Bob's Red Mill Homemade Wonderful Bread Mix (Gluten Free, Dairy Free) which can be used in a machine or by hand. I used 1 2/3 cups Almond Breeze milk (coconut/almond milk mix) for the milk, and 1/4 cup sunflower oil for the butter. In place of the egg I used 1 pureed banana (which made 1/4 cup) and then 2 tsp of egg replacer with enough water to fill the cup to the 1/2 cup mark, so that I ended up with a total of 3/4 cup egg replacer total (banana and mix together), which is the volume the recipe calls for on the package. I was nervous that it would not have any flavor so I added some cinnamon and vanilla flavoring to the mix at this point. Just because I always add some kind of spices to everything to make it a bit different. My machine says to make sure you have blended all the liquid ingredients well before putting them in the machine for the best results, so I used my Vitamix and mixed milk, oil, banana and egg replacer for one minute, from slow to full speed. Then I placed this in the machine, put in the powdered mix, and made a hollow in the center and poured in the yeast. I set the machine for white bread, medium crust, large loaf and started it. Three hours later we were waiting for it to cool enough to try. And we really like it. So next time I will try mixing my own flour and see if I can come up with anything as good as Bobs Red Mill mix. We will see. I want to try some sweet breads, too.

First "from scratch" Veggie Burgers

Tonight I made our first from scratch veggie burgers and they did not turn out bad! Especially when you take into account I kind of made up the recipe. I looked at several recipes and then mixed them together to fit the ingredients I had and the things we tend to like. So for our first try, and a bit last minute with part of it at that, here is the recipe I used: 4 cups cooked Kidney beans old fashioned gluten free oats Salt, pepper Garlic Powder Onion Powder Bar-B-Que Spice 1/2 cup canola oil sunflower oil put canola oil in food processor or Vitamix. Add 1 cup of kidney beans and spices to taste. Process to smooth. Add 2 more cups of beans slowly, until smooth. Hand mash remaining cup of beans until chunky pieces. Pour bean puree into mashed beans and mixed together. Add oats until thickened to paste consistency. Let sit 15 to 20 min. Heat sunflower oil in skillet and cook until brown on each side. They were not perfectly cohesive, but not too bad either. Next time may try adding a little flour, and maybe some seeds. I also tried out our new Rice Steamer tonight. It was a mixed success. The rice was a bit chewy and the water boiled over. Next time I am going to leave the steamer part in even if I do not have any veggies to put in it and see if that makes a difference. But the rice did not burn or stick, and I did not have to baby-sit it in any way. Dumped the ingredients in the pot and turned it on. So if I can figure the rest of the trick out (maybe oil in the water?) this will be a VERY cool thing. Also VERY excited by the Tahini Recipe my sister sent me!! Can not wait to try that!

Shopping at "The Grainery" in Longview today

Feb 17, 2014 Mom picked us up a rice cooker/steamer yesterday at Freds and I am eager to try it out tomorrow. We have had a real problem cooking rice well the last several times we have tried it. Since so much of what we are doing is based on improving our health and decreasing our inflammation levels, we are trying to do as much from scratch and as little processed or microwaved food as possible. There will be links here to my other blogs if you want details, but I have a muscle disease with no known cure or treatment in which the inflammation in the muscles causes them to be destroyed and not be able to heal or regenerate. So I am trying to decrease the inflammation in my body in all the natural ways I can. My mom has MS and Arthritis. After much research, a plant based, (or Vegan) gluten-free diet seems to be the healthiest choice for us. Since we were Vegetarians for years and are animal lovers, it is not against any of our beliefs or lifestyle. However, we are having to relearn and adjust to make sure we do this in a healthy way. Today I cooked up Pinto and Red beans to work on making homemade veggie burgers tomorrow. I am looking up and Pinning recipes tonight. I also want to make Hummus and Falafel but could not find Tahini today when we went shopping. Any good fairly simple recipes you want to add or put links to on comments I am happy to add to our collection :-) I have been given a bread maker and am also going to be embarking on figuring out how to make gluten free bread over the next few weeks. LOL We never do things in a small way. Mom bought 20 pounds of fresh asparagus on sale yesterday and we are eating and freezing it tonight and tomorrow to have available. We are pretty tight financially right now, so we are trying to do all this on a very, very tight budget. So buying and freezing good quality stuff when it is on sale is one of the ways we figure it is going to work. What other ways can we make this more economical? We were excited to find the Grainery in Longview and how many things it had. No more waiting to go to Tyler or even Dallas to the big stores (Whole Foods or Fresh) to do most of our shopping! We are using a Vitamix and crockpots, dehydrator, and steamer to try to make this all as labor un-intensive as possible since we both have issues with stamina due to our health issues, and are busy with my daughter and her needs as well.

Starting our new Adventure...

Feb 15, 2014 Yesterday we ate an Opal apple. It was so good. I went gluten free a month ago (mostly) and now Mom and I are moving toward Vegan eating. I am going to pick up a rice cooker for us and a very nice couple has given us a bread cooker so we can make our own bread. Mom made a great stir fry last night. I think I am already starting to feel better. Now I just have to get my wheelchair fixed and finish healing from my fall 2 weeks ago and we can start to really make some progress.