Courtesy of their “Product and Company Information” page, we get this gem:

So for the time being, it looks like Bailey’s is currently gluten free.  However, I really wish our various food, beverage and alcohol groups/advisory boards/congressional groups would get with the program.  Make alcohol producers put ingredient labels on their products, just like for every other product we consume.  And I really wish companies would cut the shit out with the ‘consult a medical professional’ bullshit.  How the hell is my doctor going to know what is in your product when I don’t?  This line in particular galls me: “Your doctor can then contact us for a more detailed list of component ingredients if required.”  I should be able to hold a consumable product and know what is in it.  Neither I, nor my doctor, should have to contact anyone to know what is an a product that is meant for human consumption.

But one thing I did discuss with my doctor the last time I saw her was the possibility of doing a gluten challenge so that I can finally get diagnosed with celiac disease.  It’s been hard to really work through why I really want a celiac diagnosis.  There is a little voice that lives in the back of my head that questions this whole gluten free thing.  Wonders if I really need to do it.  Wonders if a little wouldn’t hurt.  I’d like to attempt to quiet that voice.  Since my dad is diagnosed as celiac, and I fit two out of the five criteria for having celiac disease, I likely have it too.  Now to make it official.

The hard part however has been scheduling when to do this gluten challenge, as I’m sure it will impact my ability to function, and answering the question of just how much gluten I need to eat for how long to get an accurate diagnosis.  On this last one, the doctor and I didn’t agree.  She said to eat “some” every day for two weeks, and then come in for the blood work.  That set off warning bells in my head, so off I went in search of papers on the subject.

So far, there is only one paper that addresses this question specifically:

Pyle G. G., B. Paaso, B. E. Anderson, D. Allen, T. Marti, C. Khosla, and G. M. Gray. 2005. Low-dose gluten challenge in celiac sprue: malabsorptive and antibody responses. Clinical gastroenterology and hepatology 3:679-86.

pubmed link

The gist is that 8 diagnosed nonsymptomatic celiac patients ate gluten daily for 21 days.  Four of them had 5 g a day, the other four had 10 g a day.  While all the patients had an increase in symptoms and all the patients performed worse on a few of the malabsorptive tests (which aren’t incredibly accurate), NO ONEs antibody levels changed.

So I’m still left wondering how to handle this.  This paper was helpful in that I know 10 g a day for 21 days is insufficient.  But I don’t know if I’ll just need to eat more or longer, likely both.  And as 10 g is roughly equal to two slices a day, I’ll definitely be blowing that portion right out the water, as I plan on consuming gluten like a ‘normal’ person, at pretty much every damn meal.  Now the question is for how long will I need to suffer?  And hope that this will all be worth it in the end.

While there are 11 bottles in this picture, I’ve had the Woodchuck special reserve before (all 12 bottles of it :) But of the others, I had never seen them. So into our bottle collection in the trunk they went.

So far, I’ve tried the Peach Hard Cider from Bean Blossom Hard Cider made by Oliver’s Winery in IN. The cider was incredibly light and fruity, more peach cider to me than apple cider with peaches. Would I buy it again? Unlikely. Am I glad I tried it? Certainly. And now I’ve got the funky bottle to show for it.

Look forward to a few more reviews. I’m not sure I’ll review them all, but hopefully I remember to post about the notable ones.

I’m going to make these recipes VERY bare bones. If you know how to can, these are all canning safe recipes. If you like fresh salsa, these all work fresh. If you’d like to learn to can, I suggest reading something like this pdf from the University of Wisconsin Extension office. Canning is doable, with patience and the right equipment, but you really need to be prepared. I don’t want anyone blaming me for a case of botulism because they tried canning these recipes and didn’t know what they were doing.

There are three recipes. I’ll post them in order of what I liked best. I also halved all the original recipes, as I wanted variety more than volume. If we weren’t leaving Tuesday, I’d contemplate getting more tomatoes to make of the first of these two salsas.

Peach Apple Salsa
This recipe is also from that pdf I linked above. It’s *almost* like Trader Joe’s peach salsa, which is by far my favorite store bought salsa.

1. You’ll want to make sure your apples and peaches don’t brown. You want to end up with
5 c peeled diced unripe peaches
1 c chopped granny smith apple
Into 8 cups of water, add 1500 mg of vitamin C (ascorbic acid). If you don’t have vitamin C tablets like I don’t, you might be able to find this in pure powder form at your local health foods store (Willy St Coop had it). In that case you’ll use about 1/2 tsp of the powder to the 8 cups of water. Wash and peel your apple(s) (1 large) and peaches (4 for me). Chop them in half and add to the vitamin C water. Soak for 10 minutes.

2. Combine in a large pan:
3 cups of peeled diced tomatoes (they suggest roma, that isn’t what I had)
1.25 c diced yellow onion
1 c chopped green bell pepper
2T pickling spice (tie into a reusable tea bag, mesh bag, cheese clothe, whatever works for you)
1.5t canning salt
2 t crushed red pepper flakes
1.875 c (so 1.5 c + 1/4 c + 1/8 c) packed light brown sugar
1 1/8 c cider vinegar (must be 5%)
5 c peeled diced unripe peaches (from step 1)
1 c chopped granny smith apple (from step 1)

3. Bring to a boil, stirring, reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

4. Remove spice bag.

5. At this point it is edible. But if you want to can it:
you’ll need to put the solids in first to 1.25 inch headspace, then stop with cooking liquid to 1/2 headspace. Do your canning clean up and process cans for 15 minutes at sea level.

If you really want to can this, and want all the more nitty gritty directions, read the pdf link. Seriously. But if you have experience canning, I don’t imagine this will be difficult at all for you. It’s quite tasty.

This recipe is by far the one I’ve used the most in the past two weeks. I got the base somewhere off allrecipes and then mangled it to be ours. And honestly, I haven’t made it the same way twice. Every time I use it, I change something. Every version has been stellar. All the spices here are dried.

Chicken/Pork rub
Combine in a small bowl:
1/8-1/4 c brown sugar (the original was 1/4, 1/8 works too, more is better if you have more meat)
1 tsp basil
1 tsp garlic salt
1 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 Tbsp olive oil

Mash around with a fork and then rub onto your meat of choice. Cook as desired.

More specifically how I’ve used it:
-Two large pork steaks, slathered on both sides, cooked under the broiler for 7 min a side (a bit too long in our opinion)
-4 chicken quarters, baked at 350-400F for 45 or so minutes, until the chicken was done, or with 6 quarters.
-I’ve also put rosemary in. And sage. I forget the cayenne last time. You could do the garlic and salt separate. The original had 1.5 tsp of basil.
Etc.

This recipe is truly my mom’s recipe, and her mom’s recipe. I did not grow up eating tomato sauce from a jar. While my mom always used canned whole tomatoes, the sauce was always made by her. You can certainly use canned tomatoes in this recipe, or fresh as I’ve attempted to detail below. If you find the sauce too thin, or not tomato-y enough after cooking down, I suggest adding tomato paste until you get it to how you like it.

My mom’s tomato sauce
1. In a medium soup/stock pot combine:
-About a half a pot worth of roughly chopped tomatoes (roughly 3 28oz cans), mine looks like about 6 cups, I’ve honestly never measured.
-1 tsp salt
-1 tsp oregano
-1 Tbsp sugar

2. Bring to a boil and reduce to simmering. Simmer for 1-2 hours.
3. Put through a food mill to get out all of the skin and seeds.
4. If you still aren’t satisfied with the thickness of the sauce, continue to cook it down some more.
5. If the taste isn’t quite there for you, add some more of what you think it needs, and simmer just a bit more.
6. This sauce can certainly be used fresh. It also freezes well. Unless you REALLY know what you are doing, I don’t suggest canning this recipe, as I have no clue if the acidity level meets any of the guidelines for canning.

In hindsight, this recipe works much better as a conversation than a list of instructions. There are so many variables here. Have fewer tomatoes? More? It will still work, you just need to adjust. Really like other spices in your sauce? Have at it. Prefer it sweeter? Etc. This sauce is VERY easy to modify.

Cherry Ice Pops
In a blender or food processor combine:
2 cups pitted cherries
2-4 T sugar (I used 3 this last time and it was perfect for me)
2 t lemon juice
2-4 t vanilla extract (I wanted to use 4, but I got distracted, so I might have used 3)

Blend/process.
Pour/spoon into ice pop molds.
I bought these ice pop molds a few months ago and they are turning out to be my favorite.

Gluten free yellow cake in a cup
1. Melt 4 T of butter in a large mug.
2. Add 4 T sugar and mix well.
3. Add one large egg and whisk as best you can with a fork.
4. Add 1/2 t vanilla.
5. Add the following flours, one or so at a time:
1 T potato starch
1 T brown rice flour
2 T sweet rice flour
2 T white rice flour
Mix well between each addition.
6. Add 1/8 t baking powder and a pinch of salt. Mix well.
7. Microwave in bursts, assessing how done your cake is between each. Each microwave cooks different, and I’m sure the mug you use will also affect timing. Mine was something like 45 seconds, 45s, 25s. I do wish after the first microwaving that I’d added chocolate chips in (not at the start, because they’ll just all sink). But I forgot. So after I turned the cake out into a bowl I just sprinkled on chocolate chips. Either way, it’s all gone now and I’m feeling guilty for the amount of refined carbs I just ate.

Easy green beans
1. Put a pot of water on to boil with enough room to fit your green beans in.
2. While the water is heating up, rinse and cut the ends off your green beans. If you’ve got a newer cultivar (and if you don’t know, you likely do have a newer cultivar), you shouldn’t have to destring them. If you’ve got an older cultivar, you might need to destring them.
3. When the water is boiling, drop the green beans into the water and blanch for 6ish minutes. More or less depending on how cooked or crunchy you like your green beans.
4. While the green beans are cooking, chop up one to two cloves of garlic and a few sprigs of fresh dill. Mince them together.
5. When the beans are done, remove them either with a slotted spoon or use a colander.
6. In a bowl combine the hot beans, one to two tablespoons of butter, your garlic/dill mince, and a few shakes of salt. Mix well and serve.

39 Africot, Black Velvet
91 apple, ambrosia
82 apple, arkansas black
67 apple, cortland
64 apple, crab
92 apple, granny smith
81 apple, haralson
72 apple, honey crisp
80 apple, northern spy (2011)
65 apple, paula red
101 apple, water
61 apple, WI gala
87 apple, winesap
14 Apricot
26 Asian pear
17 Avocado
6 Banana
44 banana, red
31 Blackberries
18 Blueberries
58 cactus fruit
29 Cantaloupe
46 cherries, dark sweet
28 cherries, Rainier
38 cherries, sweet red
37 Clementine
77 cranberry
70 date, medjool
51 eggplant
56 gooseberries
104 granadilla
98 grape, muscat
32 Grapefruit
50 grapes, black
55 grapes, concord
20 grapes, green seedless
10 Grapes, seedless red
5 Guanabana
7 kiwifruit
84 kumquats
52 lemon
78 lemon, meyer
100 lemon, orange, CR
34 lime
42 lychee nuts
102 mamones
62 mandarin, daisy
89 mandarin, gold nugget
96 mandarin, royal
2 Mango
60 mango-nectarine
110 melon, galia
109 melon, honeydew orange flesh
53 melon, horn
47 melon, sprite
36 mulberries
103 nance
15 Nectarine
41 nectarine, white
106 noni
83 orange, blood
90 orange, moro
12 orange, navel
4 Papaya
9 passion fruit
11 Peach
54 peach, donut
99 pear, abate fetel
43 pear, bartlett
86 pear, bosc
88 pear, comice
24 pear, D’anjou
108 pear, forelle
76 pear, Harrow’s delight
85 pear, luscious
30 pear, Packham’s Triumph
27 Pear, red Anjou
73 pear, seckel
63 pear, star krimson
107 pear, taylor gold
71 pear, tosca
97 pear, ya
113 peas, snow
112 peas, sugar snap
25 pepper, bell (red)
33 pepper, jalapeno
74 persimmon
35 pineapple
22 plum, black
48 plum, dapple dandy
66 plum, egg
3 Plum, purple
21 Plum, red
45 plum, yellow
23 Pluot
40 Pluot, Red Velvet
75 pomegranate
59 prune plum
95 pummelo
79 quince
13 Raspberries
57 star fruit
8 strawberries
111 string bean, purple
105 tamarind
94 tangerine, murcott
93 tangerine, pixie
19 tomato, grape
69 tomato, heirloom
68 tomato, roma
16 tomato, vine on
1 Watermelon (May, 2010)
49 zucchini