Fast-5 Diet and Lifestyle: Re: [fast5] (Heather

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Re: [fast5] (Heather - food gifts (GFCF baking mix)

You got me thinking about older recipes-----I have cookbook that the State
Jersey (cow) organization put out in 1989, but the first half is a reprint
of the 1960 Jersey Assn cookbook.

I am going to go back and look at that older version and see what recipes
I could glean that look promising.....and not so heavy on flour.

Thanks for the brain-bump.

iakaren

> On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 7:44 AM, Karen<laurvick@charter.net> wrote:
>> Awesome! Thanks for sharing! And I know that Joy of Cooking book is
>> quite
>> old, isn't it? Amazing that you can find GF recipes in it!
>
> It doesn't actually have "GF" recipes in it, and yes, it's quite old.
> Actually I'm not sure they even knew what caused celiac when
> it was published, and for many years after it was considered a
> baby disease that people grew out of.
>
> Thing is, in the old days, flour didn't have so much gluten in it.
> In George Washington's day, "flour" (spelled "flower", really!)
> didn't necessarily even mean flour from wheat. So the recipes rely
> on eggs and other ingredients to make them fluffy.
>
> And, in older days, meals weren't all about starch. In our
> environment now, most of the food in the market revolves around
> the government-subsidized crops: corn, soy, sugar, wheat.
> But in years past, food revolved around what you could easily
> grow in your yard: collards, cabbage, beans, potatoes,
> grapes, apples, squash, cows, chickens, pigs. Wheat flour was
> expensive and hard to keep (they hadn't invented Tupperware
> yet, and it got moldy and got bugs and went rancid).
>
> So when you look at what, say, George Washington had at
> a party ... you can do that, they published menus for parties
> in the paper gossip columns ... you see that they had like
> 7 different kinds of meats, a mess of different vegetables,
> dried fruits and nuts, a ridiculous amount of alcohol, and
> then here and there some bread and pastry. Poor people
> would have cider, cabbage, pork fat, and oat gruel.
>
> Ditto for the recipes. There certainly are desserts, but you
> don't get the impression this was a daily thing, and most of
> the meals revolve around vegetables and meat. Actually it
> reminds me a little of Asian cooking: your average Chinese
> dinner has vegetables cooked in a huge variety of ways.
>
> Sometime after the harvesting combine got invented and
> even more after food subsidies got invented, our food mix
> changed, until today "vegetables" are sort of an ignored
> side-dish except at Thanksgiving, meat is a condiment,
> and the main meal consists of a mess of starches and
> sugars and canola and soy.
>
> So you can pick out most of the recipes in those old cookbooks
> and 1) they don't rely on wheat 2) they are basically healthier
> 3) they are really, really yummy!
>
> The "flour" recipes tend to be very heavy on eggs and
> work with GF flour. I use coconut milk and coconut oil though,
> instead of cream and butter.
>
> The one thing I can't do is make a nice kneaded bread dough.
> However, I can do that by using Chebe mix, when I feel the
> need to make something really bready, like calzones.
> Adding a little Chebe to pie dough makes it more workable too.
>
> </ END RANT >
>