Little by little, it’s becoming obvious that the gluten free lifestyle is here to stay and becoming widely accepted. Two things caught my eye this week and both stand to make your holidays more enjoyable.
Gluten Free Thanksgiving
I’m a huge fan of NPRs Kitchen Window food discussion series. I especially like the podcast. It’s informative and investigative, but it also has this down-home quality that makes me feel that no food adventure is insurmountable. So, imagine my delight when I discovered Stephanie Stiavetti’s “A Gluten-Free Thanksgiving” article.
The menu includes:Brownie Tartlets with Peppermint Glaze – Lemon-Zested Refrigerator Cookies – Pistachio Cranberry Biscotti with Almond Glaze – Gingerbread Men – Gluten Free Pumpkin Pie
Hill’s Kitchen in the Eastern Market neighborhood is a gourmet cooking store that I stumbled upon recently because of its pressure cooking courses. There are few cooking classes that delve into the locavore culture, but Hill’s Kitchen is all about teaching people to cook with seasonal ingredients and preserve summer’s pleasures in jams, jellies and canned sauces.
What’s better? Today, the gourmet shop announced its November class schedule. What a treat – the local entrepreneurs are offering a gluten free baking demo.What’s even better than that? While bacon can sometimes be a glutie dining challenge, it’s often safe, but the hip new butchers of the world (like Nathan Anda of Red Apron Butchery) say make it yourself. Before learning how to bake GF toast, figure out how to cure your own bacon.
The recommendation is to book early; apparently Hill’s Kitchen’s approach to d.i.y. culinary education is in hot demand.
November Hill’s Kitchen Classes:
11/1 11-1p Cooking Without Meat
11/1 3-5p The Best of the Season: Apples
11/3 6.30-7.45p The Harried Chef: Roasted Chicken
11/6 6.30-8p Basic Knife Skills
11/7 11-12:30p Handmade Pasta
11/8 11-1p Baking Bread at the Speed of You
11/8 3-5p Knife Skills 2: Poultry
11/10 7-9p Lox to Learn with Allison Sosna from DC Central Kitchen
11/11 6.30-8p Basic Knife Skills
11/12 6.30-7.45p The Harried Chef: Fondue- It’s Back.
11/14 11-12.30p Basic Knife Skills
11/14 3-5p Curing Meats: Bacon and Pancetta
11/15 11-1p PIE!
11/15 3-6p The Thanksgiving Basics: A Guide for the Modern Cook
11/17 6.30-8p Basic Knife Skills
11/19 7-9p Gluten Free Baking
11/21 10-1p The Thanksgiving Basics: A Guide for the Modern Cook
Keep your eyes on this space for news about an upcoming gluten free event at an area restaurant to-be-named. The Gluties are in the process of coordinating our inaugural gluten-free tasting event for mid-October. More soon!
Recently, the gluties were lucky enough to receive a few sacks of Enjoy Life gluten-free granola. Man, this stuff is good. While it’s completely oat-free, it’s got that perfect granola texture you’ve been craving and the flavors (Cinnamon Crunch, Cranapple Crunch, and Very Berry Crunch) are all delish – sweet but not too sweet. We love to mix it into Greek yogurt.
While we’re on the subject of Greek yogurt, we have both converted from the grocery-store favorite, Fage, to Blue Ridge Dairy’s Yo-Lite Greek yogurt available at the Arlington Farmer’s Market. With Brandi’s encouragement, I tried it, and it was better than I imagined – rich, creamy and surprisingly low-fat! I like to top mine with organic Tupelo honey.
For all my healthy efforts in the a.m., they sometime go out the window after dinner. With good reason! If you aren’t buying, eating, and sharing Julie’s Organic Ice Cream sandwiches – it’s time to get on the wagon! These are hands-down my favorite ready-made gluten-free treat. I have an insatiable sweet tooth and have tried nearly every GF sweet under the sun, and these are by far, the the very best. Get them at Whole Foods.
Speaking of ice cream, we just had the pleasure of attending an ice cream tasting with Susan Soorenko who makes Moorenko’s Ice Cream. This grass-fed, ultra premium ice cream is so good you only need a few tablespoons to feel satiated. The milk chocolate tastes like the best black and white milkshake you ever had and, if your missing the Starbucks Valencia Orange cake, try Moorenko’s Orange Pistachio. Upon tasting it, I exclaimed, “This is breakfast ice cream!” In addition to her Silver Spring outpost, Susan distributes a selection of her products through local Whole Foods.
Last week, I had two scoops of Moorenko’s atop a slice of moist, rich Betty Crocker gluten-free chocolate cake. Recently Brandi moved close to me, and like true neighbors we stop by and swap food on occasion. This treat was the latest in a series of brownies and tomatoes and other goods. It tasted like REAL cake. And she said it was a cinch to make. I know what I’m making while I’m at the beach to celebrate my mom’s 60th!
One of our very own has run for the hills! Earlier this summer, founding glutie Samantha Abernethy graduated from theMedill School of journalism at Northwestern University. Shortly after, she threw caution to the wind, packed all of her belongings into a Ford Expedition and drove herself out west to pursue a unique opportunity as a reporter in small-town Wyoming at a paper called the Pinedale Roundup.
After all her big city living, this move had the makings of a gluten free nightmare. However, to our surprise, just last week, this tweet popped up on Twitter: “SamAbernethy: I have found gluten free heaven, and it is in Pinedale, Wyoming.”
Sounds like she’s happy. And we’re happy she’s happy.
Just for kicks, below is an article in which her new employer introduced her to the community.
New reporter ready for Wyoming ‘adventure’
by Stephen Crane
She started writing for a newspaper as an ambitious 13-year-old , and now, Samantha Abernethy is back at it as the newest reporter here at the Roundup. She’s come a long way since those middle school days, when she covered the peewee football’s “Player of the Week” for the Tri-County News back in western Pennsylvania.
As a recent graduate from the prestigious Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, Abernethy comes to Pinedale with high hopes and a bright future.
“Some day, I would like to do long, indepth investigative work,” she said. “But right now, I really just want to improve my writing.
“And I sort of thought it would be a challenge to find the news here…force me to be a little more creative in finding good stories. It’s easy in Chicago to just say, ‘Oh, Mayor Daley did this or that.’”
Abernethy’s journalistic aspirations began during her work in military health research, which she did after obtaining her bachelor’s degree. Upon graduating
from Dickinson College with a degree in political science, she went to work for the Rand Corporation, a think tank in Washington D.C.
“When I was working on the military projects at Rand, there was an article in the Washington Post, by Dana Priest,” she recalled . “And it was about how poor the services were at Walter Reed (Army Medical Center). “After the article came out, the whole attitude changed, more money started coming in and there was just more attention on the research.”
She saw the power and influence of journalism , and she was captivated, which led her to Northwestern University.
“I moved to Chicago not having really seen it or knowing where I was going,” she said. She soon fell in love with the place. “I liked D.C., but I like Chicago better,” said Abernethy. “It’s friendlier, more downto earth. In D.C., people wear suits all the time, and Chicago is more of a blue-jeans city.”
Both urban locations are a far cry from her childhood home, however, back on
the family’s 60-acre farm in Harrisville, PA — a town of around 900 people. “We had a big hayfield, and the rest was pretty much woods,” she said. “But we were never serious farmers at all.”
The family did become the unofficial adoption agency for injured or malnourished horses in the area — and orphaned lambs too. “We used to take them in and keep them in the house, complete with diapers,” she said. She also got involved in 4-H , showing and riding horses in Western and English styles. From farm girl to big city gal, Abernethy isn’t afraid of a good adventure. And it’s that fact that brought her to Pinedale. “Wyoming and Montana, they always kind of had this draw — the horses, the wildlife,” she said. “And I think part of it is that my dad always used to talk about it a lot. He had a vacation here when he was like seven, and he still talks about it. “It’s an adventure. I just wanted an adventure .”
She arrived in Pinedale last weekend after a long drive west on I-90 , when she got to see not only Mt. Rushmore, but also the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD.
“It’s literally the corniest place on earth,” she joked.
Her favorite part of the trip however didn’t occur until she arrived in Wyoming. “My favorite was picking my mom up at the (Jackson) airport and forcing her to crumple into a ball because the car was so packed,” she laughed. Both her and her mom made it to Pinedale safely, however, and she’s been pleased with her experience thus far.
“It has surpassed my expectations actually ,” she said. “I was expecting it to be smaller, and a little sleepier. “There’s a lot more going on than I expected there to be, and I didn’t imagine anything this pretty.” But the beauty and outdoor activities of the area aren’t the only things she’s eager to experience. “I also look forward to eating all of the wildlife Pinedale has to offer,” she added. Surely, she’s lived here before.
