Do any recipes not use pre-made ingredients?
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A friend of mine suggested this site after I complained that I’m getting depressed with my food here in a new country. There are no gluten free bakeries and other than gluten free pasta I can not find any gluten free products. No GF cereal, no GF crackers, etc. Where I am living now (small town Holland) absolutely everything is made with wheat so I’m left with only fresh food. I haven’t had any treats except icecream and plain chocolate in 6 months and it’s really starting to depress me as I watch everyone else get treats and not me. Also you can’t buy chocolate chips here, noone has any idea what I am talking about. You have to buy chocolate bars and break them up.
So anyway, she loves the recipes here and suggested this site. The problem is so far all of your recipes call for some ingredient that is already made (cereal, or crackers). Do you have any dessert recipes that do not but also do not include weird flour ingredients as I can’t find them here either.
5 Responses
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Thanks for your quick response. I can indeed order, actually there is on Dutch GF store (one in the whole damn country) and it is an online only store. But everything I’ve ordered has been dry and aweful. I used to live in Winnipeg which has an amazing GF bakery and I was spoiled!
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Can you get rice flour and tapioca flour?
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regular rice flour and glutinous rice flour are at the local chinese shop. No Quinoa flour but I have a coffee grinder so I can make course Quinoa flour with it as I have found Quinoa grain. Tapioca flour I am not sure but this is starch, right? I think I probably can find it as they make soooooo many baked goods here I would be surprised if there were none (though then again noone has any idea what chocolate chips are so I’ve been proven wrong before lol). In any case there is potatoe starch here so it could be substituted if things are that desperate.
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AJ, sorry for the delay. I did not get my usual auto alert about your reply :)
If you can get rice flour and tapioca starch (which is just the same as the “flour”) then mix those 2/3 to 3/4 rice flour with 1/3 or 1/4 starch. This will make a decent flour mixture for you. Then visit the Sweets and Treats course and read the Top 10 to create excellent baked goods. This should be free to all members.
Give a recipe a try and let me know how it turns out!Tif
Hello AJ,
it does sound like quite an adjustment for you! I know people some smaller towns in the US that voice the same issues. But from one perspective, only having access to whole foods can be quite a gift.
Here are some suggestions:
1. This is a huge opportunity to reframe what you believe a “treat” to be. In westernized cultures there is such a focus on pastries, cookies, cakes, etc as being the “treats.” But I have found over the years that those foods (even the gluten free ones!) generally make my energy lower and my mind foggy. It is only a brief psychological “happiness” that can be considered positive when I eat them.
As I have learned and experimented with more and more whole, live foods I see that are the TRUE treats! They are the foods that love me back, that nourish my body, mind and spirit. Take for example a ripe cherry: It is sweet, has depth of flavor, juicy, satisfying AND it happens to be great for us! Sliced ripe pineapple is an unbelievable treat… the flavor and sweetness dances on your palate.
From there if you wish to create even more sweetness, or add fat, you can do things like melt chocolate and then dip fresh cherries, apples, pineapple of any other fruit in and then munch away! You can do this with caramel as well.
One of my favorite treats is dates and nuts milled together (in a food processor) and then rolled into little balls. I like to mix equal amounts of date and cashew or hazelnut. If you can get cocoa powder that is good in there as well.
Bananas dipped in melted chocolate and then rolled in coconut and froze in the freezer are incredible! I also like banana dipped almond or peanut butter that has been mixed with honey and then frozen… tasty.
It is pretty easy to make pudding if you like that sort of thing. Sometimes I make rice and then mix it with warm milk, honey, cinnamon and nuts… this is quite a treat in the cooler months.
Many of my patients eat Greek style yogurt with honey on top as a treat.
So as you can see, there are lots of amazing treats out there if you are willing to step outside the box a bit.
2. If you are really set on GF pastries or pre-made cookies I would think that you order online. I know that there are a couple of companies in the US that ship overseas.
3. When you are really craving something that you see other people eating that you “can’t have” think of it as a blessing in disguise as you can feast on all type of whole fruits and other treats like I mentioned above, without feeling run down after!
Hope that helps AJ,
Tif