a gluten, dairy and nut-free post.

the boy is one of those horribly annoying children that can't eat anything. at 6 months he stopped gaining weight, by a year he was diagnosed as failure to thrive, and at 18 months i'd figured out that he is a celiac and he was gaining weight once more. the alternative ending to that story was that he die of malnutrition while eating us out of house & home. i'm more than a little glad that the story ended the way it did, i'm not crazy about that alternative ending. so now he's 2 and weighs about 22 pounds, only 5 pounds more than his baby brother.
anyways.
i am constantly searching for gluten, dairy and nut-free foods for the little man. (yes, he has food allergies. the fun just never stops) and i have discovered a couple of great things this week:

1. thick slices of eggplant will work as pizza crusts. i haven't tried it yet, but i'm still stoked. one day the little dude is going to realize that everyone else eats a much wider variety of foods than he does and he will want to eat pizza. so now he can have a little pizza on an eggplant crust. so long as he doesn't want cheese on the pizza.

2. these 'cookies' are pretty decent and nicely versatile, as well as being ridiculously healthy. i got them from this book. it's the best gf cookbook i've found yet. i want to kiss jeanne marie martin on the lips. anyways, the recipe:

brown rice breakfast chews

• 1 cup cooked brown rice, cold (i used hot rice. it worked fine)
• 1 tbs maple syrup (i used honey. spank me.)
• 1/4 cup chopped almonds or other nuts (i was out so i omitted this but will use sunflower seeds and coconut next time)
• 1/4 cup raisins, currants or other dried fruit (my chopped up dried apricots got all soft & delicious)
• 1/4 cup tapioca flour (i used minute tapioca. i have no idea if it's even close to the same thing, it gave it an odd texture but the kid doesn't seem to mind. i'll have to try it with actual tapioca flour someday)
• 1-2 tbs arrowroot flour (skipped it, don't have any. might try rice flour or potato flour or another of these crazy expensive flours i have kicking around next time)

mix all together and try not to squash the rice. drop by the tablespoon onto a greased cookie sheet and form little ball thingies.* bake at 300 for 40-50 minutes.

*these things are insanely sticky and i couldn't form them into any shape at all. they're little haystacks, with tons of rice scattered all over the cookie sheet that burned. if i could figure how to make them into granola bar shapes i would, they're the right consistency. oh, and don't skip greasing the cookie sheet like i did. the nonstick surface of the cookie sheet came off with the cookies and that can't be good.



if you know of any good gf recipes or whatever, let me know.