Cookies for the Holidays...recipies fitting into a dairy free kitchen

Now with Thanksgiving over we are getting ready for Christmas, and the Holidays. I have always liked to make cookies this time of year. From now to Christmas I will post recepies I make which are all safe for the Galactosemic diet

Ausstecherle (cut-outs)

Ingredients for the dough (sorry its all metric, but you can convert here http://www.onlineunitconversion.com/ounce_to_gram.html --> you must adjust the type of units on the screen)

250 gram Flour
125 gram Powderd Sugar
Grated lemon rind of 1/2 lemon
1 Egg
150 gram Earth Balance (this is where the recipe calls for butter)

1. Add flower, with sugar and lemond rind.
2. Add the egg in the middle, and surround it with the Earth Balance cut up in small pieces
3. Mix everything up either by hand or with the dough hook on your mixer
4. Roll dough up put into foil, and let rest in the fridge for at least 1 hour

5. Preheat oven to 360 F
6. Roll dough 3 - 4 mm thick out
7. Cut out hears, starts, etc. and put on baking sheet that has been lined with Parchment Paper
8. Bake 8 - 10 minutes until cookies are golden
9. Let cookies cool off

Frosting
125 gram Powdered Sugar
2 - 3 TB Lemon Juice

10. Mix sugar with the lemon juice --> it must be thick
11. Brush frosting on the cookies
12. Decorate cookies with colored sugar, or any other decors

Pumpkin Pie for Thanksgiving

I confess that I will not be making my own Pumpkin Pie. I certainly had all the intentions of making one for Thanksgiving but then I called Sweet Pea Bakery...Yup, they are open on Thanksgiving and will have Vegan Pumpkin Pies. Ours is already ordered and we will pick it up Thanksgiving Day.

So what can you do if you are not as lucky as we are? I just looked at the recipe in Joy of Cooking. The recipe uses either evaporated milk, or heavy cream - to make the pie Galactosemia friendly I would substitute the heavy cream with Plain Silk Coffee Creamer. I make a chocolate pie where the recipe also calls for heavy cream. There I substitute with Plain Silk Coffee Creamer and it works perfectly...Let me know how those pumpkin pies turn out :)

Alfredo Sauce Mix

Today we tried the Alfredo Sauce Mix from "Road's End Organics". When I first put the sauce together in the sauce pan I was not so sure. But it actually tastes good. I added on 1 TB of olive oil and some plain, unsweetened soy milk. Then I put the pasta (we had Trader Joe's Alphabet Pasta what a hit that is :) ) in the pan with the sauce and tossed it all together. I also got a box of pancetta from Trader Joe's which I fried up and put that on top of the pasta. For Alena I grated some Parmesan Regiano as well...Bottom line the Alfredo Sauce Mix is a great alternative www.chreese.com...

Birthday Party

Our big girls is having a Birthday Party this weekend. She is so..... excited, and to be honest, I am very excited too :)

This week we already went to Sweetpea Bakery to pick out her birthday cake. Yes, I admit I am not making the main cake this year myself. But it seems to me that all the parties I had been to all the girls had cakes that weren't baked by their parents....In any case we went to Sweetpea Bakery. Alena picked out a chocolate cake with vanilla frosting. The frosting however MUST be pink she said :) Prior to picking out the cake she of course sampled just a little bit...Sweetpea is such a GREAT place. Everything is vegan so the girls can eat whatever they like. Yummy donuts, cakes, linzer bars, bagels with cream cheese, even soups....In case you have not been to Sweetpea here is the link http://www.sweetpeabaking.com/.

As for the Birthday party there will be the cake, chocolate soy milk (of course it has to be chocolate), games, music. For dinner we will have potato salad and Wiener's. The theme of course is a fairy with lots of pink. It is a all "Prinzessin Lillifee" :) (see picture above...

Memories...

It is November again - Alena is about to turn big 5!!! WOW - time flies by. She is doing so great, and I am just so proud of her. Still I am plagued by the memories of her first six weeks of life. To this day I keep having flashbacks to the time my little baby was lying in the hospital bed and we did not know whether she would be OK. The scare whether her little body would continue to be up for the fight, putting in the PIK line, the scare whenever she needed to get platelets...The sounds of the machines beeping...It still continues to hunt me.

But you say, she is doing so great why do you still dwell on it...I do not know but it is still there and always will be there. I reminded me how fragile life really is. Five years ago one Saturday was the happiest day in my life, one week late it was the scariest day of my life with my little baby being in the PICU....OK - I feel much better now that I have written this off my chest.

Thanks for listening...

New feature on blog - Recall information

I just added a new feature to the blog and am now listing food recalls as they become available. The information is on the left hand side of the blog. Please let me know if this is helpful for you...

FYI - the information is added as it becomes available, and is for recalls in the United States only. Please also not that recalls prior to November 1st, 2008 are not mentioned. For an all inclusive list go to http://www.foodallergy.org/alerts.html

Legacy Emanuel Hospital NICU celebrates 30 years

Last week I saw in the paper that Legacy Emanuel Hospital is celebrating 30 years of its NICU. To celebrate all those who have been patients of the NICU, or been affected by the NICU of Legacy Emanuel are invited. The celebration is on the 18th of November, not quite five years after Alena was a patient there. Should we go, should we not go? - We talked about it and decided that we will be going. When calling to R.S.V.P. I got all choked up and teary eyed. This is the hospital that saved our little girls life. This is the place where I spent much of the month of December in 2003. I never left from my baby's side, yes, I did get a cot but I could not leave. It may not seem like much to the reader, but to me just thinking about it gives me chills and yes I could start to cry. Alena still has a scar on her arm from the PIK Line which was set then...For the longest time I could not bear even driving past Legacy Emanuel. Always being hunted by the memories of our fear, and not knowing what would happen. Of course we have the greatest outcome, and that is a reason to celebrate. This is why we will go with the entire family to celebrate the NICU. Hopefully we will also get to meet some of the wonderful nurses, and Doctors who helped save Alena.

To learn more about Legacy Emanuel Children Hospital click here, there is also a link to the NICU...http://www.legacyhealth.org/body.cfm?id=34&oTopID=34&PLinkID=21

Vegan Pesto available in stores

This product may have been available for a while, but I just discovered it at our grocery store. For quick meals I used to keep Pesto around all the time. I discontinued that practice due to the cheese content in store bought Pesto's and making it myself has just been too involved...In any case, today I gave it another try to see whether I can find vegan pesto. I found it, but cannot talk about how it tastes yet. I am so excited...

In any case here is the information

Vegan Pesto by Rising Moon; we do buy their frozen Raviolis from time to time...they taste great!!!

http://www.risingmoon.com/

Enjoy!

New Soy Yogurt...

There is a new soy yogurt on the shelves at our grocery store. It is from Turtle Mountain the "So Delicious" brand - I already love the ice cream. They have different flavors than Whole Soy including Cinnamon Bun which Alena likes a lot. The consistency of this yogurt is much thicker than the Whole Soy brand. I like both and have not yet decided if I prefer one over the other. At this time I buy whatever yogurt is on sale :)

More information at http://www.sodeliciousdairyfree.com/

Enjoy! - Please let me know what you think. I love hearing back from you.

Grand Central Bread

Grand Central has great bread. A lot of local restaurants actually serve bread from this bakery. They also have bakeries, and deli's across town.

Here is the link to their breads listing all of the ingredients --> http://grandcentralbakery.com/breads.html
NOTE: There is one bread which does contain milk. The bread is NOT listed on this list, but
they will be able to tell you in the store. I will let you know once I know.

Enjoy!

Out for breakfast in PDX - "Jam" in SE PDX on Hawthorne

We had breakfast yesterday at JAM. What a great little breakfast place. All foods are sustainable, local, etc. The jams are homemade....just a great find. Beware so, this place gets packed especially on the weekends. It opens at 7:30 AM so be there early.

But why - you may ask - do I write about this restaurant on the Galactosemia Blog...well, they offer VEGAN Blueberry pancakes, the Hashbrowns, eggs, etc. are all dairy free and of course they have soy milk. I am just excited to have another option now where the girls can eat pancakes (Besides "Cup & Saucer" and I love that place too). The kids breakfast menu includes eggs & bacon, vegan pancakes, and the bread...its all from Grand Central. And all breads from Grand Central is milk derivative free :)

Here is the information for JAM -Phone: (503) 234-4790
2239 Se Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, OR 97214. - It is located on the North corner of Hawthorne, between SE 22nd and SE 23rd Ave. (Right across from Grand Central on Hawthorne)...

Enjoy! - Let me know what you think...

Diet of CG in Germany

While in Germany we met with a couple of families in Berlin who both have kids with CG. I understand that families are urged to include aged cheeses in their diet thus eliminating the need to supplement calcium. I saw the list of cheeses which was ok'd after new testing and it includes cheeses which have been aged for 6 weeks or longer. Interesting, isn't it?

For us, we allow our oldest to eat Parmesan Reggiano. This we only allow at home. She has been eating Parmesano Reggiano on a regular basis now for almost 6 months and her levels did not increase. Note also, that we do not adjust our diet in any way before the draw. I am very interested however to see whether it increases her calcium level in any way...

Halloween - "Trick or Treating" we had so much fun

We had SO much fun last night. For dinner we orderd pizza from Oasis Cafe, and then went out trick or treating. Both girls wanted to be cats this year. Cats with bright pink tails :) After dinner we went "Trick or Treating". I think this is first year that Alena really understands the concept of knocking on somebody's door, say "trick or treat" and then you get some candy. Maybe 4 is the magic number for that :)

Both girls had little jack-o-lanterns to collect their candy in. They just had so much fun digging through the bowls to take any type of candy that looked good to them. After an hour their bags were almost overflowing.....What fun!!!

Back home Alena and I sat down at the table. Alena sorted out all the candy containing milk (I had no idea that she knows exactly which candy she cannot eat....), trading it for candy she can eat. We did the same thing with Mia...That's how easy it was....

When I first found out that our girls have CG I would have NEVER thought it possible to go trick or treating, or thought that it would be no problem at all to just sit down with them and exchange the candy. And you know what? It is just that easy and no issue at all. Life is what you make of it!!!!

Happy Saturday to all....

P.S.: After a breakfast of pizza the girls are now indulging in their candy. Mmmmmhhhh...but then again, Halloween (or the day thereafter) is only once a year....