What Do Grain-Free Vegetarians Eat? Birthday Edition!

I turned 36 on Saturday, which means the blog turned 3. I have started drafting three different birthday/blog goals/life aspirations posts and then I've scrapped them all. The truth is, I have no idea what lies ahead this year. None of us do, right? I could set goals, muse about changes I want to make to my daily routines or the ways that I pray God will be at work on my heart this year. I am thinking about all of that stuff, and I have PLENTY of time to think about it these days while still jobless.

But here's the stone-cold truth: I'm thinking about food today, and every philosophical post I tried to write kept turning its way back to food. So I'm going to follow where my heart leads me, and my heart leads me to CAKE.

Whenever I tell someone that I try to keep a grain-free, vegetarian diet, the next three words uttered are inevitably "What do you EAT?!".

Good question.

Here's a snapshot of a Day in the Life of my food  (What I actually ate yesterday):

Breakfast - frozen berries, flax seeds, and cherry juice blended into a smoothie, plus an apple with almond butter.

Lunch - home-made lentil salad with dill and tomatoes, a few tapioca-based crackers with guacamole.

Dinner - baked potato with sun dried tomatoes and goat cheese and a green salad

Basically, I eat what a lot of vegetarians eat, but I replace bread and rice with things like plantains, sweet potatoes, quinoa and veggies. Disclaimer: I am not perfectly consistent. I occasionally buy gluten-free things that are made with rice flour. I eat corn chips sometimes. They make me feel kind of crummy, but I choose my battles. Sometimes a minor chips-and-salsa digestive hangover is worth it.

I'm learning and cooking and baking my way through this, and I hope to have enough recipes in my repertoire soon that I can get away from any corn or rice cheats and lean more towards a mostly-vegan diet. But that's for another blog post.

What about the cake? 

Ok, so in January I decided that I would invite a few friends and my dear siblings over for a Birthday Brunch to celebrate. Party prep would give me something to do and a fix a deadline for getting the house more or less in order. I wanted to make a menu full of food that everyone would enjoy, but that I could eat with the gluttony one reserves for one's own birthday.

Yum.

One thing was for certain: There had to be macarons. 

The original French recipe for macarons is totally grain-free and made with almond flour. Learning how to make a pretty macaron absorbed many wintery hours in February. They are pretty much the hardest thing I have ever tried to bake, but they turn out sooooo pretty, even the imperfect ones. And they are filled with things like jam and chocolate and Nutella. What's not to love? Here's the best macaron recipe and tutorial I found in my trial and error. After the 4th pan, I really had the hang of it! Now I want to make them all the time.

So, one sweet option was settled with the macarons. But it seemed that there should be something savory in the spread, so I made some little omelet cups in muffin tins. They ended up being a melange of a couple of different recipes I saw online, but essentially I baked scoops of frozen hash browns in muffin tins until they got a little crispy and made a bit of a "crust", and then poured eggs that I had whisked together with milk and seasonings into the cups. Top with omelet fillings like peppers, cheese, herbs, and other veggies and bake them up. Easy! 

And now, for the Cakes. Yeah. That's right. Cakes, plural.

It just wouldn't be a birthday party without chocolate cake, as far as I'm concerned. I made this grain-free dark chocolate espresso cake and it was simple, tasty, and chocolatey. Honestly, I expected it to taste even darker, so don't be afraid of it if you are not a dark chocolate fan. 

The other cake was definitely the surprise hit of the brunch. Lemony, soft, almondy grain-free perfection. The recipe is converted from an Australian cooking blog. I've made this twice now, so if you want to make it, message me and I'll send you my notes. I found I had to tweak a couple of things to make it turn out, but in general it is a simple, quick and elegant cake to make. 

As you can see, I'm really not at a loss for what to eat on most days. If I could get away with eating cake and omelet muffins every day, I would, and I'd be fine (if spherical). Being at home for a few months with little to do besides cook and scour Pinterest for new recipes has really turned out to be a blessing. I'm optimistic that a job will come around eventually, and I'll be much better prepared to eat things that are working with, rather than against, my body every day. And when I do get a job, I'll celebrate with cake.

Breakfast Plantain & Veggie Scramble

Back in the day when I happily noshed bagels or English muffins, I loved to make breakfast sandwiches and things that resembled Benedicts. I still love a good eggy/cheesy brunch, but I've had to retool my starch a bit.

There are recipes out there for grain free muffins, breads, bagel-like things, cookies, crackers, and pizza crusts readily available, but I've come to the conclusion that trying to make grain-free versions of my favorite carbs turns out to be akin to the veggified versions of meat products - expensive, time consuming, and not very much like the item you are trying to fake. I ended up preferring lentils and beans to Chik'n Nuggets or ToFurky, and I've discovered that bread cravings can almost always be quelled without Fava bean and flax meal "sandwich flats".

Here's my #1 tip for anyone trying to cut down on conventional grain-based foods: Rethink your base.

This morning I woke up craving Eggs Benedict. What did I really want? Bread, Eggs, and something saucy. No bread, no interest in making hollandaise. But it is my day off, so I had a bit more time to tool around in the kitchen, so I rummaged around and got started with a new breakfast melange.

Let's start with the new base:

Satisfying little discs of starchy goodness: Plantains

I'm sure there must be some way to roast plantains, but honestly, if you fry things hot enough and blot them quickly enough, flash frying is not a terrible way to cook things. I did these up in some grapeseed oil, because it can handle high heat and quick cooking.

Plantains do not taste anything like the bananas they resemble. They remind me more of sweet potatoes than of fruit. And they are an excellent bready substitute.

After the plantains were cooked up, I started dumping random bits of veggies from the fridge into the same quick-cleaned saute pan:

leftovers from a can of fire roasted tomatoes

some unused black beans 

handful of baby spinach

the rest of a can of black olives from an ill-fated recipe earlier this week

And then I tried to fry up an egg quickly, but the pan was so hot it ended up overcooked. No matter. I stacked up my odds and bits onto a plate and scraped some disappointingly not-quite-ripe avocado on top.

There you have it!

And it was really, really good. Filling and carbish and proteiny. You could put cheese on top, but I'm trying to go easy on the dairy these days too and this is plenty rich. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper and you are done. All the breakfast, none of the grains.