Fat Free Chili Fries

Here's my take on how to make this classic warm weather comfort food fat free, gluten free and Daniel fasting friendly.

Ingredients:
1 can of kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 small onion, diced
1 Tablespoon of oregano
1 Tablespoon of garlic flakes
2 Tablespoons of paprika
1/2 a jar of oil free tomato puree, from a glass jar or carton
1 1/2 cup of water
2 medium potatoes, cut into french fries
1 tomato, diced
1 slice of onion

Directions:
Bring the chili to a boil for a few minutes and then simmer until the onion is soft, about 20 minutes.
Peel and cut the potatoes up into wedges or fries. Place the potato wedges on a VERY lightly oiled nonstick pan and place in the oven. Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes or until done.
Dice the onion and tomato. Ladle the chili over the baked fries and serve warm. Garnish the top with fresh tomato and onion just prior to serving.

Low Fat, Gluten Free, Vegan Meatless Meatloaf

This recipe is for a low fat, gluten free, vegan meatless meatloaf that is suitable for The Daniel Fasting Lifestyle. (I realize calling it a, "vegan meatless meatloaf" sounds a little redundant, but it gets the message across, right?)

I don't know about you, but I don't have fond memories of my mom's meatloaf (sorry mom.) My mom's family is German and they used to own, run and manage German restaurants. My aunt can do some serious homestyle German cooking, mom not so much. Truth be told, I never did care for all that meat based food, even as a child. 

Mom's meatloaf pretty much consisted of hamburger meat, eggs and breadcrumbs, topped with the oblatory ketchup "glaze." No one else in the family seemed to have a problem with consuming all that meat. (We ate meat at every meal, except for breakfast. Breakfast pretty much consisted of cake. Yeah, cake. I used to scratch my head and wonder about that one, but after talking to some other grown up German-American kids, I soon realized that situation was pretty much the norm.)

Back to the recipe. I pilfered this recipe from Back to Her Roots and modified it to make it gluten free and Daniel fasting friendly.

Ingredients:

The tangy glaze:

• 1/2 cup unsweetened, oil free tomato sauce
• 2 tablespoons of apricot preserves
• 1 teaspoon paprica
• 2 tablespoons of mustard (I prefer the grainy type.)
• 2 - 3 tablespoons of water

The meatloaf:

• 1 cup cooked small grain brown rice or cooked millet
• 1/2 a large green or red pepper, diced
• 1 medium carrot, finely shredded
• 2 green onion stalks, finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 can of white beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 can of pinto beans, drained and rinsed
• 2 tablespoons of paprika
• fresh ground cracked black pepper to taste - Adding salt at this point would be overkill, as the canned beans would have been bathing in it for quite some time.)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. In a bowl, whisk the tangy glaze ingredients together and set aside.
3. Dice the garlic and fresh peppers up. Shred the carrot and cut the green onion up into thin little slices. Set aside.
4. Next, add the beans. Blend until smooth, but not too smooth. You still want those beans to retain some texture. (You may want to do this part in batches unless you have a Vitamix or food processor.) Finally mix the bean mixture, chopped veggies and grains together.
5. Pour into a lightly greased loaf pan. 
6. Pour glaze on top.
7. Bake for 30 - 35 minutes.

BTW ~ You can also shape the "meatloaf" mixture into little meatball shapes. Bake them, just like the meatloaf, but keep your eye on them. You don't want to over cook them. Or you can make little mini-meatloafs by baking the "meatloaf" mixture in a muffin  pan.

Eggs, Not So Incredible

Who remembers the slogan from the 70's, "The incredible edible egg"? And the commercial where the Batman character Egghead, played by Vincent Price, pitched the nutritional value of eggs?

Here's the thing, I cut eggs from my diet for about a week and I felt great. I had lots of energy, I got my housework done, cranked out a bunch of mini-literacy centers, wrote a really long and involved emergency lesson plan, slept well and got stuff done. Now, up until that point, everyday felt like a struggle. All I really wanted to do was to go home and vegetate.

So, I'm felling great, I come home from work and I decided to make millet pancakes with eggs. Big mistake. I made the pancakes and then decided to make some banana bread with eggs for a few of my colleagues and ate a slice. "Boom!" It hit me, that familiar sinking feeling. I could feel myself sliding into a pit of emotional quagmire. Since it occurred immediately after eating the egg laden fair, I put two and two together and did a mental inventory. There was no discernible reason to feel that way, sure there was some drama going on in my life, but it was predictable, dysfunctional family drama that was occurring on the other sided of the world. Nothing to get freaked out about.

Since I've struggled with low grade depression on and off over the years. I always tied it to my circumstances - lack of funds, not being where I had hoped I would be at this stage in my life, and the list goes on and on.

I had one of those light bulb moments.

I remembered all those times it felt like I had food poisoning and I just chalked it up to eating a bad egg.  Whew, what a relief! I mentioned it to a close friend of mine and she was amazed that I was so in touch with my body. She made a comment along the lines of, "If you were back home and this happened to you, they would have put you on medication." It made me think. I wonder how may people are on medication for depression that in reality, are only allergic to something in their diet, such as eggs?

While I'm not doctor, it's plain to see that people with allergies often suffer due to lack of information. And, after doing a preliminary search, it's clear to see that the most common side effects for egg allergies include, diarrhea, vomiting and other gastrointestinal issues. I couldn't find anything linking egg allergies to low grade depression, so there you have it. One woman's antidotal experience. If you suspect that eggs may be an issue for you, then by all means do what you have to do in order to find out for yourself.


Here's my top picks for websites that provide multiple options for egg substitutions.

• Love to Know - vegan egg replacements
• The Vegan's Society's suggestions for egg free dining
• PETA's egg replacement tips
• Vegan nutritionista's top choices
• Bryanna Clark Grogan's advice
• Chef in You recommendations - I have this page bookmarked for easy reference.

You may notice that there are all kinds of options for egg replacements, so I suggest you do a little bit of experimenting and see what works best for you.

Personally, I've been using flax seed in my baking endeavors a lot lately. It doesn't get the same rise or consistancy as eggs do, but it's a compromise I can live with.

A Flexible Gluten Free Quick Bread Recipe

I haven't been here for a while, but at the same time I haven't forgotten about this blog either. So with that being said, I'm here now and I plan on doing periodic updates as I stumble upon recipes that I feel you all would enjoy.

Let's kick off a new chapter of The Daniel Fasting Lifestyle blog with a flexible gluten free quick bread recipe. I've been experimenting with this recipe a lot in the last two weeks.  Now I'm going to share it with you.

Fair warning, this isn't a strict Daniel fast recipe as I have to use sugar. Please remember that I'm in China and some ingredients I used back home,  just aren't available here. For instance, normally I would use blue agave nectar instead of sugar. Unfortunately, that product is nowhere to be found, so I have to use sugar instead, but if you have access to agave nectar, then by all means please use it.

Regarding gluten free flour, one of the fantastic things about China is that you can take your little bags of millet, brown rice or whatever over to this little kiosk in the grocery store. There, they will grind it up for you. From my understanding, they don't use the grinder to grind wheat. They use it for other ingredients, which I'm not particularly familiar with.

As an egg replacement I prefer to use ground flax seeds mixed with a bit of water. Why flax seeds? Well, sometimes it's difficult to get my hands on apple sauce. It's considered an imported luxury here. With that being said, tofu is plentiful and cheap here. I just haven't whacked up the courage to use it yet. Although I do have a wonderful memory of making some tofu carrot muffins when I lived in St. Pete, FL. That was a long time ago, pre-internet days. I have since lost that recipe, but I may try to find it online somewhere and try it out again at some point in the near future.

Let's talk about sweeteners. A strict Daniel fasting recipe wouldn't include a sweetener, but this recipe would be destined for the trash can if you didn't add some sort of sweetener, so I leave it up to your judgement as to whether or not it make the cut in YOUR Daniel fasting lifestyle.



Ingredients:

300 grams of flour - I prefer millet flour, but I've been known to break it up into random ratios based on what I have on hand. The important thing to remember is the ratio of flour to starch, which should be about 60 percent starch to 40 percent flour.

400 grams of starch - Yeah, yeah, I know it isn't exactly 60 percent, but it's close enough for our purposes. As far as starch goes, I'm lucky enough to have lots of choices, so I usually stick to my favorites, sweet potato starch and plain 'ol potato starch, although I have a bag of pea starch in my pantry. It sounds exotic, doesn't it? The thing is that I doubt it will taste exotic. It is just starch after all.

Egg replacement - Click here for a compressive list of vegan egg replacement options.

3 tablespoons of oil - I like to use rice bran oil. It's plentiful and cheap here. Also, it has a nice neutral taste and does well when exposed high heat.

1 cup of sweetener - As mentioned previously, I prefer agave nectar, but unfortunately I don't have access to that ingredient in Chengdu. Maybe some specialty import shop in someplace like Shanghai or Beijing may carry it...

1 and a half tablespoons of guar gum - One popular website suggests:

Cake, muffin and quick bread recipes: Add 1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum or guar gum per one cup of gluten-free flour used.

You can follow their suggestion if you want, but some people have reported gastrointestinal upset after using guar gum and xanthum gum in their gluten free recipes. So far, using only a teaspoon and a half has been fine as far as this particular recipe is concerned. And I'm happy to report that I haven't suffered from any gastrointestinal discomfort at that level of usage and if appears that the recipe hasn't suffered either.

Side note: My family had to mail the guar gum to me as it is impossible to find here.

1 and a half teaspoons of baking powder - Of course, I use the aluminum free type of baking powder. Fortunately, we have an import store here that carries it.

1 and a half (or more) cups of liquid - I usually use water, but you can use whatever vegan alternative you chose. I've been known to use rice milk/soy milk/almond milk and orange juice in my recipes. It's really up to you and whatever you have on hand at the moment.

Optional flavoring choices - As always, you can add vanilla extract or any other extract your little heart desires, but for a period of time, I was unable to lay my hands on vanilla extract. Guess what? I didn't miss it.

Recently, I sprinkled some cinnamon sugar on top of the quick bread just prior to placing it in the oven and it turned out great. That was the time I mashed up two bananas and threw it into the recipe, which by the way,  isn't such a bad idea if you are going to go light on the guar gum.

I've also added cardamom to the basic recipe. That resulted in a very tasty,  light flavor.

So you get the picture, right? The optional flavorings are only limited by your imagination.


Directions:
Mix the dry ingredients together until they are thoroughly mixed together and the color is uniform in appearance.

Then add the wet ingredients. A word of caution, if you don't want the batter to come out all lumpy mix the wet and dry ingredients together with a whisk. The result will be velvety a smooth batter.

Place a bit of oil in your pan and wipe it thoroughly with a clean paper towel.  Now you're ready to pour the batter into the pan.

Place it in a preheated oven, set at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Bake for about 30-35 minutes. When you poke the center with a fork and the fork comes out clean, it's done.

Fresh Cilantro Salad

• 1 yellow bell peppers, diced
• 2 large tomatoes, diced
• 2-3 cups fresh cilantro
• 1 cup fresh parsley
• 1 clove of chopped raw garlic
• 1 Tbsp. dried thyme
• 4 Tbsp. dried cranberries
• the juice of 2 fresh lemons 
• 1 tsp. cumin powder
• 1 Tbsp. olive oil

Toss all the ingredients in a large bowl.  

To make the dressing, just whisk the juice of 2 lemons, olive oil, cumin powder and thyme together in a small bowl.

Drizzle the dressing onto salad and let it marinate for 20 minutes.