Rebecca Weger

I’ve been finishing up a big work project on deadline. Almost there, but I’ll probably go in for a few minutes over the holiday weekend. But tonight, it was time for a break. First we headed out to the wine tasting at Red Feet. The focus was on American wines, and I believe most of them were from California. They were all fairly nice, but none of them grabbed me.

Tonight called for some low-effort comfort food, and we went for an old favorite: Amy’s Rice Crust Pizza. Unfortunately, Greenstar stopped carrying them about a year ago, but Wegmans still carries it. I love this pizza. It doesn’t have the same yeasty risen crust as wheat pizza, but it is a tasty, convenient thin-crust. I headed onto the porch for the first herb harvest of the season and snipped some chives, oregano and basil. We sunk into the couch and ate in the living room – a nice way to head into a relaxing weekend.

Tammy Tuesday tonight covered a wide range of topics from rating local doctors to the “fire” at the Friends of the Library, from grandma’s 93rd birthday and strawberry shortcake to planning a trip for a Shakespeare in the park picnic.

We sat on the porch with the plants, watched the neighborhood (including the comings and goings of an old friend of mine from Maryland who also lives in Ithaca and is friends with my current next-door neighbor), and swatted off bugs. A lot of them. Note to self: dig out that citronella!

Joseph cooked dinner from my inspiration. Rice pasta (Tinkyada is the *only* brand to use as far as I’m concerned), hot Italian sausage from Kingbird Farm, broccoli from Early Morning Farm, and a white sauce with plenty of Parmesan cheese. We finished off an open bottle of rose. Then we finished off the strawberry shortcake with a bit of one of my my favorite Malbecs – 2007 Gouguenheim Malbec Mendoza Argentina purchased at Red Feet.

On another note, there are some transitions on my mind tonight.

Today was a bittersweet day at my job as lots of great folks worked their last day before retirement, among them one of my favorite bosses ever. Kate is one of the kindest, most thoughtful, leaderful, supportive people I’ve ever known, much less had the pleasure to work for. We enjoyed some tasty gluten-free chocolate bunt cake at her retirement party last night. I wish her all the best for her new adventures, and also hope to do some baking together in her new “downtime.”

I want to offer a shout out to my friend Nora who is leaving Louisiana tomorrow to move to Ithaca for her residency at the Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine. Congratulations and safe travels. I’m looking forward to taking annoying pictures of food on your plate soon!

My friend Sherrilyn also heads out on the road in the morning traveling to Ithaca, arriving for a six month sabbatical in the College of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell. Smooth sailing to you.

Spurred forward by Josephs’s amazing success with the strawberry tart, I thought I’d dive into some baking myself today. Baking is not as easy for me as cooking, and the gluten-free factor leaves for the possibility of doom. Most of my cooking is improvisation from an inspiration. This does not translate well for baking. Today was a perfect example of that. I get distracted, I leave out one little ingredient because I lost track of the yeast packet on the table…. But I got lucky and the focaccia was fairly forgiving.

The most interesting part of this baking project is that I used *no* rice flour! Rice flour is almost a given in gluten-free baking, but this bread flour recipe left it out. Instead it uses sorghum flour, millet flour, cornstarch, potato starch flour and tapioca flour. The resulting flavor was rich and had depth. It was the closest thing to wheat flour I’ve had in a while.

Next time I’ll use a little less sea salt on top, but the rosemary, onions and feta (from Lively Run Goat Dairy) are keepers. And perhaps I’ll follow the directions a little better.

Our dinner plans were in the “still forming” stage when I got a call from a good friend in a crisis who needed a shoulder. Off I went. Before I left, Joseph asked if there was anything he could do for me. My response: “Yes. Make a strawberry tart and buy a bottle of wine.” When I came home, he had done just that.

The tart involved two different recipes from what may be becoming my new favorite gluten-free cookbook: Gluten-Free Baking Classics by Annalise Roberts. One for the crust/shell, another for the custard. Most importantly, it provided an excellent way to use quite a number of strawberries at once. We headed out to the porch, lit some candles and opened a bottle of wine. Decadent would be an understatement.

I received this from my CSA this morning. Still thinking about one? There’s still room. Click the image to go to their website to read more or to sign up.

It hasn’t been the easiest week in our house.  We’re both under big deadlines and lots of pressure.  Then we ended up unexpectedly home tonight with a little bit of downtime. As much as we love cooking, neither one of us was quite up for expending any extra energy.  We opted for a rare week night out.

Tonight was an easy choice – as we realized we both wanted burgers.  There are only two options in town that serve burgers I’m comfortable eating and we went with our favorite – Stella’s.  They serve local, organic grass-fed burgers and I love their salads.  They have a solid wine selection and a bit of a hipster ambience that I don’t see around here much.  We go up perhaps as often as every six weeks or so.

I love to walk after dinner. A quick drive back down the hill from Collegetown, park the car and head off again: our neighborhood Gimme! Coffee.  We are are blessed to live in one of the most beautiful places, and our evening walk took us through quiet neighborhoods and old Victorian houses, past earshot glimpses of a performance on The Commons, and up to one of my favorite waterfalls, the lower falls of the Cascadilla Gorge (take a look at those gorgeous pictures).  Its one of our favorite places to go in the evenings, and tonight it was immense.  We had an intense storm in the the late afternoon, and the falls were thundering, the water a bit muddy around the edges.  The sun sets facing the falls, so there’s always light for just a little bit longer. Tonight we were the only ones there.

I had an increasingly common moment today where I found out that another co-worker of mine is also gluten-free.  I feel like we’re in a secret club and we should all have a secret handshake.  A decoder ring would be great too – especially for figuring out how to navigate a world that sometimes feels like its full of poison.

Gluten is a kind of protein that is found in wheat, rye and barley.  Increasingly it seems to make some people sick.  Celiac disease and gluten intolerance are the primary conditions that come to mind, but other blame gluten for autism, allergies, and any number of other problems.  The treatment is to never. eat. gluten. at. all.  And in case wheat, rye and barley wasn’t enough, most oats and some proportion of buckwheat are generally cross-contaminated.

Here are some foods I never eat in their normative state:

• bread
• pizza
• pasta
• pita
• bagels
• soy sauce
• beer
• cookies
• cake
• pie
• croutons
• couscous
• crackers
• flour tortillas
• pretzels
• oatmeal
• granola
• onion rings, mozzarella sticks, etc.
• veggie burgers (some new gluten-free ones are entering the market now)
• most vegetarian meat substitutes
• tofu-kan (a great sadness)
• cream soups
• gravy

And then there are all the more hidden ingredients!  It can be a really overwhelming shift for people when they find out they have to change their diet, but gluten-free resources are expanding exponentially. Recipes and products that are truly tasty are becoming readily available.  I’ve made some formidable inroads into gluten-free baking and I have many friends and colleagues who would readily testify that I don’t cook bad food – especially of the gluten-free variety.

Here in Ithaca there are a few small companies specializing in gluten-free products.  Emmy’s Organics and Le Garden Bakery are two.  GreenStar Coop makes gluten-free bread and stocks hundreds of gluten-free ingredients.  Wegmans also caries hundreds of products, and labels all their store-brand food if it is gluten-free.

Some local restaurants have gone through their menus and taken notes about what is gluten-free and what can be made gluten-free.  The two I know of are Taste of Thai and Taste of Thai Express.  Viva! knows all their ingredients and can answer questions easily, as does Just a Taste. (I believe their warm chocolate souffle is gluten-free)  Smart Monkey Cafe has gluten-free bread.

A recent discovery of mine was Triumph Dining, and particularly their Triumph Dining Cards.  I *hate* having to ask 20 questions and draw attention to myself when I go out to eat, and these cards written for 10 different cuisines and multiple languages make it easy to send it back to the kitchen with a server to verify what I’m about to order is safe.

I’m always happy to share resources and always delighted to hear new ideas and tips.

A friend of mine once shared her perspective that one of the ways we humans can be authentic, ethical and in right relationship with each other and the planet is to accept our own hypocrisy. I try to practice this sense of paying attention to my choices and noticing that my choices are complex and often they come from imperfect options. In no place does this hit harder for me than in choices about what I buy to eat.

I’ve gotten to show off a couple of gorgeous photos of the wonderful local food we buy at the farmer’s market, but of course we eat other food. So how to decide what to buy?

Price is certainly an issue – we have a fairly set food budget – but we value lots of things that have higher prices because the cost to the environment or our sense of ethics is lower. Some things we consider:

• It is local?
• Is it organic?
• Is it ethical?
• If there is an animal involved, what do I know about its care and life?
• Is it free of allergens (I follow a strict gluten-free diet)?
• Is there limited packaging?
• Can the packaging be recycled?

There are a number of guidelines for me that result from this line of questioning.    Here’s a simple example.  I struggle about what I eat for carbohydrates.  I eat a lot of rice, which is not local to central NY.  Most rice options are imported from Asia.  Lundberg Family Farms, however, grows and processes all its rice in California.  That’s about as local as I can get for something that is pretty standard fare on a gluten-free diet.  I buy it from the bulk section at the coop where I can take my own container and eliminate any packaging.

So in my world of imperfect choices, here’s a look at what I bought at the store tonight:

The gluten-free bread was made by the coop bakery here in town.  Organic Valley is my commerical organic brand of choice for butter and milk.  It is a cooperative of family farms, some of which are in my area.  The avocados are organic and from California (not Mexico).  They are a serious weakness of mine and on the short list of foods I buy with some regularity that don’t fit a lot of my other parameters.  Three kinds of organic rice and organic red quinoa.  That quinoa and the Jarlsberg cheese are two of the items I’m sure came from outside the US.  The box holding the organic vanilla, organic granola (for Joseph), and the potato starch flour (one of my flour necessities) contains three blocks of local tofu.  The walnuts are conventional, the cinnamon is organic.  I know little about all the details of the cat food.  I picked it two years ago and stuck with it.

It certainly doesn’t look like a lot of food for $65, but that’s one of the areas we’ve chosen to pour our money into our values – as hypocritical as they sometimes are.  What do you think about in the grocery store?