Gluten Free B Goes Suzi Homemaker

There’s something about preparing a healthy meal with natural fresh foods that creates a feeling like none that I have ever experienced before.   I must say that today I am feeling like quite an accomplished Suzi Homemaker and (dare I say,) I’m starting to like it.

After resisting this title for years; being intimidated by my lack of cooking and baking skills, (it’s nothing I ever aspired to) I realize now that without going gluten free I would have never been inspired to delve deeper into being a better, healthier me. I also would have never gotten to the root of my problems that I thought were just part of me, (regular sinus and congestion, headaches, fatigue and mood swings to name a few less obvious problems associated with gluten and dairy). By changing my diet, these problems have pretty much disappeared. No more daily snorts of Flonase in my nostrils and now a bottle of IB prophen lasts me a lot more than a month. Lastly, I would have never discovered the endless possibilities and the joy that preparing fresh meals could bring.

In the book, Gluten Free Girl, by Shauna James Ahern she talks about her experience with foods and Celiac Disease, a story that is similar to mine. She was raised in the 70’s, remembers eating TV dinners in front of the TV, (we never did that, but still). She remembers people referring to foods as brand names like “Count Chocula, Coco Pebbles, Alpha-Bits.” She says, “After a lifetime of grabbing burgers from fast-food joints and eating in the backseat of our cars, we are a cooking illiterate generation.”  I wholeheartedly agree with her. Regularly fresh cooked meals for many of us are pretty much a thing of the past, and understandably so (to a degree) with the society and culture that we now live in.

She said her mother did anything the TV told her to do and if that meant buying Stouffer’s, Hamburger Helper and the other boxed meals loaded with chemicals and preservatives, that’s what she did. That was normal. That was what all of America was doing. Little did her mom know that the food she was feeding her daughter was making her sick. She thought her daughter had a tapeworm because she felt sick after eating all the time and wasn’t gaining a lot of weight. She was also sick with pneumonia countless times throughout her life and required 18 hours of sleep before being diagnosed with Celiac Disease.

Unlike me, Shauna always enjoyed baking and cooking and when she got older was able to travel around the world to experience different cultures and foods from these foreign places. So, when she was in her mid-twenties and found out she had Celiac Disease, creating gluten free meals from scratch wasn’t as daunting to her as it might be for other people, (like myself) who aren’t accustomed to doing much from scratch. She describes the smells and tastes of different herbs, oils and spices that she’d never been exposed to before going gluten free that she now had the joy and pleasure of incorporating into her new cooking and baking creations.   Check out her website, Gluten Free Girl and the Chef. (She married a Chef, how niceJ)

So, today I made Sausage, Kale and Potato Soup, (not my own recipe, I’m not that creative). It’s taken me this long to go outside my comfort zone of the typical gluten free go to meals like tacos, enchiladas, gluten free pasta, chili and chicken stir fry. It is definitely time for a change and I am ready to take that on! With a little help from the gluten and dairy free freezer recipes I found on www.onceamonthmom.com, and http://www.ringaroundtherosies.net/, in addition to some of the many other awesome websites available out there, this transition shouldn’t be as intimidating or difficult as I thought it would be. On the contrary I’m expecting that it will be very excitingJ

So here is a picture of my soup.

I wish I had a nice soup dish to present this in, but Hey, one step at a time! Did I mention that I am also not a photographer? Yeah, I’ve seen those other FANCY SHCMANCY websites out there with those beautiful pictures, complete with perfect lighting. But, I live in the Northeast and in the middle of winter, if there’s not natural light shining through my window to help me out then this is what you get. I can’t do it all, so the pictures and presentation will have to fall short.

Either way, look on the bright side!  You still get a fabulous recipe for a quick, delicious and healthy Gluten and Dairy Free Meal:

FYI- this is not a freezer meal- but maybe it could be, IDKJ

Sausage, Kale and Potato Soup

1 tablespoon cooking oil

1 pound turkey or chicken sausage  (I used GF Al Fresco-Spicy Chipolte found at Walmart)

1 onion, chopped

4 cloves garlic, cut into thin slices

1 quart water

2 cups canned low-sodium chicken broth or homemade stock  (I used GF Pacific Natural Foods Home-style Chicken Broth found at Walmart)

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 1/2 pound boiling potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/4-inch pieces

Pinch dried red-pepper flakes

1 pound kale, stems removed, leaves shredded

1/4 teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper

1.In a large pot, heat the oil over moderately low heat. Add the sausage and cook, turning, until browned, about 10 minutes. Remove the sausage from the pot and, when it is cool enough to handle, cut it into slices. Pour off all but 1 tablespoon fat from the pan.

2.Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until it is translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic to the pan and cook, stirring, for 1 minute longer.

3.Add the water, broth, and salt and bring the soup to a boil. Add the sausage, potatoes, and red-pepper flakes and bring back to a simmer. Cook, partially covered, for 2 minutes. Add the kale and bring the soup back to a simmer. Cook, partially covered, until the potatoes and kale are tender, about 6 minutes longer. Add the black pepper.

Serve With An interesting bread completes this meal with aplomb. Try corn bread or tomato-topped Italian focaccia. A good crusty loaf of white bread will do fine, too.

(http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/kale-and-potato-soup-with-turkey-sausage)