Food Free Recipies

The term Food Free was coined by my former boss at Lighthouse Solar. On Fridays he would bring in pastries for everyone. When I went gluten-free, it was no big deal. Then with the dairy-free title, I could still eat macaroons. Once I realized that everything made me bloated or nauseous, he threatened to come with an empty box and declared me "food-free".

I've come up with some interesting and tasty recipes for my new diet (which looks a lot like the Paleo Diet now with some weird omissions). I never realized how creative cooking can be. I generally don't measure anything, but do what I call "intuitive cooking". It's hard to figure out what works while baking this way, so I've started writing these recipies down. Tonight was my most successful experiment: gluten, dairy and grain free cookies. My parents were devouring them too, so they must be yummy to normal taste buds.

Pumpkin Blueberry Cookies
For a batch of 6:
1/2 cup tapioca flour
1/4 cup coconut flour
1/4 cup coconut sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
vanilla and nutmeg to taste
pumpkin and egg to desired consistency
*mix the dry ingredients, then mix 1/2 cup pumpkin with 1 egg and vanilla. Slowly add the wet mixture to the dry ingredients until you get desired consistency (I only used about 1/2 the wet mix to get 6 firm hackie-sack sized cookies). Add wild blueberries into dough since they are smaller. Bake for 12-14 minutes on 350 (I used a small convection oven, so this may not be accurate).

Gelatinous Goo Stew
Start with beef bones in a crock pot. Fill water so it just covers them and add a diced onion, kombu seaweed, salt, fresh garlic and ginger to taste. Cook on low for 24 hours. Remove bones and make sure the marrow isn't still in them. Add the following:
2-4 beets squared
3-4 carrots diced
3-4 celery stalks
1/2-1 cup fresh cranberries
red cabbage
red kale
rosemary, more garlic and ginger
Turn the pot up to high and cook for another 2 hours
*If you aren't into the bone marrow, you can start with a fryer chicken and cook it 4-6 hours, then remove it and put all the meat back into the pot.

Baked Bone Marrow
If you don't want to disperse your gelatinous goo, you can bake beef bones and eat it with a fork like I did the other night. Be sure your system is ready for lots of fat or you might be uber gassy like I was!
Put bones upright on a pan in the oven for 20 minutes at 450 degrees. I added mushrooms, fresh garlic, salt and pepper. You can borrow my ridiculously long, skinny fork if you want.

Sunchoke Homefries with Pumpkin Crepes
Sautee 1/2 an onion, fresh garlic and a tomato (salt & pepper too)
Cut your sunchokes into desirable chunks and add to frying pan
Mix 1/4 cup tapioca flour with 1 egg, a dollop of pumpkin, nutmeg and vanilla
(this makes 2-3 crepes in an 8" pan, so make sure they are thin or they won't cook)
Wrap your homefry mix inside the crepes, yum!