Zucchini Gratin

Zucchini gratin gets a make-over. Gluten-free and dairy-free.

On the way to saving your life there are moments that stir up a thousand kinds of trouble. Denial. Anger. Grief. Desire. The last one is the trouble I hear about the most here on Gluten-Free Goddess. The slow burn of longing. Comments and letters asking, sometimes pleading, pining, always hungry for some beloved recipe one can no longer consume. Due to evil gluten. Food is an emotional issue. Charged with hot spots and invisible buttons that can be pushed and engaged by a myriad of things. A scent. A circumstance. A holiday. Food can equal love. Evoke comfort. Mom. Or lack of Mom. Food can feel like self care and nourishment. But it can also be a fence. A barrier erected to survive. A way to numb. Escape. Live three feet from yourself.

Because some days it's hard to be a human being.

Sometimes I get tired of blogging about food. Sharing recipes. Because in all transparency, I don't feel like a foodie. I don't build my day around a meal or shopping for ingredients. Food is fuel. And often (in my house) food is an after thought. As in, Sweet Tap Dancing Bodhisattva, I'm starving. It's six PM. And I have nothing in the fridge except a jar of organic peanut butter.

And lettuce.

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Gluten-Free Fried Zucchini Chips with Lime-Mint Dipping Sauce

Gluten-free fried zucchini chips with vegan dipping sauce.

The Dog Days of Summer are upon us. Gardens are exploding. Vegetables are shiny fresh and happy. From A to Z, produce is queen. 'Tis the season of abundance. You know where I'm going with this, right? Need I say more, Dearest Reader? Do I really have to wax poetic and effusive about the humble cucurbita pepo known as zucchini? Do you crave another verbal celebration of le fabuleux courgette?

Perhaps I should invent a tale about some beatific Italian grandmother and what she used to do with weathered buckets of fresh-picked zucchina, transforming the green torpedoes (still cozy-warm from the sun) into melt-in-your-mouth garlic laced bliss. I could go all James Frey on ya and pretend I had a childhood that included actual, fresh picked produce (in full disclosure, there were potatoes) and not canned corn and fried bologna.

Because I didn't have an Italian grandmother.

Or a French grandmother.

The one I had on hand was Polish. And not only did she not grow vegetables, Darling, I sincerely wonder if she ever ate a vegetable in her long and prickly life of nine decades- beyond said canned corn and the occasional boiled potato. Instant Sanka, Russel Stover Assorted Creams, and Lucky Strikes were her three favored food groups. So I often find it ironic that I blog recipes and take pictures of food.

Though Dr. Freud, perhaps, would not exactly be surprised.

I've been reading the book Women, Food and God by Geneen Roth. It is a thought provoking read, and I highly recommend it. Though it is not for the faint of heart. There's stuff in there we don't necessarily want to hear, clinging as we do, to our assumptions.


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Vegan Peach Ice Cream

Gluten-free dairy-free peach ice cream.

A small gift for you this weekend. Some cool, frosty, non-dairy peachy goodness. A vegan ice cream recipe for the sticky dog days of late summer. Wait. Is it August already? Good goddess, the summer is careening by. It's true what they say about the concept of time. It speeds up and gets fluid as you get, um, shall we say, older. Seasoned.

One might even venture, weathered.

During your ritual morning walk your husband turns to you and mentions a moment from yesterday and the dirt path beneath you starts to swim (not that swimming surfaces are all that unusual out here in the shimmering southwest sun).

You ask, Wait. Was that yesterday? 

And he thinks a minute. Wait, he says. Friday? 

You hear the brittle dryness of the desert wind. The roar of the loud cobalt sky. There are red and sienna stones beneath your feet. The same stones as yesterday, last week, last year.

That was last week, you offer gently, shaking your head in a spin cycle of empathy and disbelief and astonishment. 

Dude, he says. Recalculating.

Tell me about it, you sigh.

Weeks morph into days.

How about some peach ice cream for breakfast?

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Gluten-Free Goddess Zucchini Bread

Delicious gluten-free zucchini bread.

Today's post will be short and sweet. I have no proper words for the complicated stew of thoughts and feelings stirring inside me. My heart breaks for every living soul touched by Aurora, Colorado's horrific tragedy. As we collectively sift through the debris and damage, my hope is that insight, wisdom and peace will prevail.

I am reprising a favorite recipe here on Gluten-Free Goddess. A cinnamon laced tea bread made with garden fresh zucchini.

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Gluten-Free Blueberry Muffin Recipe with Coconut Flour

Tender gluten-free dairy-free blueberry muffins, warm from the oven.

Tenderness on the block ...

Baking a batch of fresh blueberry muffins is one of my favorite simple pleasures. I do it early, before the summer day turns sultry and my body slows to a liquid ballet of movement designed to conserve every last salty drop of intention and energy my creaky, vanilla lotioned body can muster. I rise and bake to the morning sun, stirring my batter half asleep, sipping hot coffee (my last remaining addiction). A local mockingbird sings his deceit outside the open apartment window. He is remarkable in his uncanny repertoire. A gifted mimic. Silhouetted high against the North Hollywood sky, perched on the tallest utility pole.

I've been thinking about all the thoughtful comments on my last post- my message in a bottle. Your words were a balm and a message tossed back. Received and pondered. Talked about and appreciated.

I've been reading this week (as I always do). Finding books a provocative companion. Words that illuminate and poke. Shared stories that send shivers of recognition, trigger anger, or tug one's soul (kicking and whining) into that impossible place- that place where you don't want to go. The stuff that scares you.

Because it might be true.

And it might be painful. And it just might ask you to consider something. Something hard. Something true.

I've been reading about this business of being a daughter. This isn't the first time I've looked at this subject. I am no stranger to the postmodern Jungian women's psychology section. But reading a book at twenty is one thing. You bring to its wisdom your newly hatched self-hood, your fresh experience, your familial-infused expectations (and prejudices). The expectations, assumptions and dreams of a young woman. You are the heroine, the daughter starting out on your journey, looking at a long and winding road ahead. So you read. And listen. And play with ideas. You see what fits. And what doesn't.

And then you stand, stirring blueberry muffin batter on a clear July morning, decades later. And here, now, the words ring deeper. And the truth stings darker. There is a lifetime of days spiraling out beneath you and above you (because by now you know that time is not linear, or finite, like some calendar). And the same words vibrate with a different meaning, engraved with experience and regret. The same words illuminate as if from a different light source. Not from the world.

From within you.

And so here I am. A daughter, still. Learning something old as if it is new. And discovering truths as if for the first time, arriving, as T. S. Elliot wrote, where we started.


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Gluten-Free Whole Grain Olive Bread

Crusty, fragrant gluten-free olive bread, warm from the oven.

Grainy, whole grain bliss.

Giving up bread is hard. Bread is basic. Almost a need. Like air. Like breathing. It is both routine and celebratory. Prosaic and divine. A simple, torn-off hunk of good bread embodies a deep sense of nourishment, for body and soul. The bewitching mix of a handful of flour, some yeast, some salt, some water.

Stir. Knead. Rest. Bake.

And as if by magic, this warm and fragrant alchemical creation called bread appears.

And all is right with the world.

When I think of our honeymoon in Italy (seventeen years ago, darling) I think of the color of the evening sky above the cypress. A shot of burnished gold that shimmered with the faintest veil of pink and lemon yellow. I think about the shopkeepers sweeping their doorsteps each morning, nodding their Buon giorno! as we walked to fetch a New York Times and a cappuccino not served in a paper cup. There was love, yes. And wine. And olives.

And there was bread.


The best bread I had ever devoured. 

My go-to breakfast was a plate sized flat-bread studded with olives, paper thin tomato slices, or chopped fresh garlic. Chewy, salty, sweet, and earthy. A bread worth the walk into town. I must have eaten dozens in our too-short two week stay.

Here in southern California, I have been living almost breadless. By choice. The hundreds of gluten-free breads I have baked in the past nine years have not tempted me into the kitchen. Not even the best gluten-free bread recipes. Starch, you see, is not agreeing with me lately. I think we may be breaking up. For good. My body hums happily without it. My waistline is trimmer without it (though not quite up to honeymoon standards, I am seeing the promise of a waistline appear). But this week I started remembering.

The bread.

In Italy.

And the craving began.

So I began bargaining with myself. The dialogue went something like this.

Okay. You want a piece of bread, darling? You're going to have to bake it without starch. Without sugar. You know that, right? And you are prepared to plunge into abject failure if this gluten-free whole grain concoction doesn't turn out? It is a risk, you know. Baking without gluten. Making bread without starches. It's tricky. It's fickle. So if this turns out badly, promise you won't despair.

I pulled out every non-starchy flour and ingredient from my snug little pantry and imagined my pre-celiac Italian memory. I stood and stared at the tumble of half-used bags and battered boxes on the counter for a good ten minutes. Steve walked by and glanced at his wife of seventeen years standing deer-in-the-headlights still.

He knew not to ask.

I grabbed brown rice flour. Almond meal. Millet flour. Quinoa flakes. Rice bran. Garlic. Sea salt. Olive oil. An impossible, motley crew of ingredients that would prompt any Italian baker to raise her eyebrows in a justified Che cosa succede?

And guess what, my Bella Bambina?

You know what.

Smooches. xox


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Gluten-Free Multigrain Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

Multigrain gluten-free lemon poppy seed muffins.

I usually don't bake in the summer. I mean. Do you? Who in their right mind likes to crank up the oven when it's hot and steamy outside? At my age darling, I'm sticky enough as it is. Hot flashing and fanning myself with the latest issue of AARP as I bounce and waggle on one of those bubblegum hued balance balls, lurching at my desk like a pear-bottomed yoga reject seeking not enlightenment, I am sorry to tell you, but the promise of burning three hundred extra calories as I sit and write. Apparently using one's sacred core (or is it sacroiliac?) to perch atop a ridiculously big ball with a penchant for rolling sideways requires fuel. More fuel than say, slumping.

Or lying on the sofa reading a book. With the oscillating fan on high.

Which is what I'd rather be doing.

Preferably with a bar of organic dark chocolate.

I would rather keep the kitchen cool. By not cooking (that's why The Goddess- in her infinite wisdom- invented tomato sandwiches).

But a certain husband had a craving.

For a lemon poppy seed muffin. Our son planted this idea in his head last week, during an impromptu visit. Said son was blithely munching on a lovely looking gluten-free lemon poppy seed muffin. Freshly baked. Adapted from one of my muffin recipes.

He mentioned, in passing, it was fabulous.

His secret?

I used a little cornmeal, he told us.

And thus the muffin craving was born.

And who am I to deny my husband.

He buys me dark chocolate after all.

And turns on the fan. So that I don't have to get up from the sofa.


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