Gluten Free Burgers

After my order from i-can-eat.ch came in, it was time to open a beer and grill some burgers. Woohoo!My tomatoes were not ripe yet, but I was able to grab a few pieces of lettuce from the balcony instead of buying a whole head just for a couple burgers. I usually end up making the burgers for Kay because I always just wing the recipe with ground beef, a bit of onion, an egg, some GF panko, and whatever seasonings I feel like.

Kay put those bad boys on the grill and then finished by laying some cheese over the ones we would eat that night.It was a tasty burger! (Said in the tone of Samuel L. Jackson from Pulp Fiction.)To go with the burgers, Kay made a Cooksmarts slaw for our side. And since we had already tried some of the Brunehaut gluten free beer, we decided to make two flavors we’d already tested into Panache with lemonade since it was a very hot day.After a great meal, I enjoyed my new fairy lights from IKEA which are almost discontinued already as summer 2015 closes.

We’ve been doing a good job enjoying summer hardcore this year and I just hope the weather continues well into early autumn because Switzerland deserves some heat!

I-Can-Eat.ch Gluten Free Galore!

I can’t recall if a colleague recommend i-can-eat.ch to me or if I found it when I was searching for gluten free hamburger buns, but it was on my list of things to try out for a long time. I really wanted some pre-made hamburger buns!

In July, I finally made a big order for around 100CHF, which got me much, much more than I would from the local Reformhaus, where bio, gluten-free items cost much more for even the same things.A bag of muesli for instance can cost almost 8CHF in the store, but were under 5CHF online. Not only that, but they had tons of brands and foods not available in stores. I ordered multiple types of cereal, muesli, my hamburger buns, and several types of Belgian gluten-free beer that I had never tried.I had high hopes for the buns, but I only ordered two packs to test them out first. I mean, not only have I not tried to make hamburger buns myself yet, but sometimes you just want the convenience of making something spur-of-the-moment, or as on-the-fly as you can with a meticulous gluten free diet.

I can’t tell you how often I have hamburger cravings and know it’s impossible to order one. The gluten free hamburgers we found in Australia were incredible and I had a strong craving again this summer!We are also pretty set on cereal mixings for a long time. Normally if we don’t feel like going to Reformhaus to buy special cereal, we just buy the only available cereal at Coop or Migros, corn flakes (blah!) and add in dried fruit. Sometimes not even Coop carries GF corn flakes though, but now we can make our mixes with puffed oats or buckwheat, buckwheat flakes, assorted puffs and so on. I was also looking forward to testing out all the beer they had. I only ordered ones I haven’t had before and not everything was in stock, but I got five kinds of Brunehaut beer, which is made similar to Daura GF beer where they make the beer and then de-glutenize it later.

It’s worth noting that these beers would not be allowed to be labeled GF in the US because malt/barley is an ingredient, but I have never reacted on one of these de-glutenized beers yet, so I partake in them from time to time. (Don’t worry, my main love is still caipirinhas!) Overall I am happy with my purchase and plan to make another one in the future. The only downside is all the packaging that ordering online comes with, but lots of these products are French or foreign and I couldn’t  get them in a store in the Zurich area anyway.

Le Creuset Pot Roast

Like the crepe pan, I also really needed to put my new Dutch oven to use and what better way than by making my mother’s classic pot roast?Not having a family recipe, I decided to use this recipe from The Wicked Noodle.

We bought a huge piece of meat. Seriously, look at that thing! I got to browning it, using two forks to help me maneuver the meat in the pan without burning myself.After the meat was a tad browned on all sides, I pulled it out and stuck the onions in to cook for awhile. I also used fresh thyme, which very sadly did not survive our recent Montenegrin holiday. 🙁After the sauce was done, I threw that bad boy back in the pot and cut up my carrots and washed my potatoes.After roasting time, the house smelled gorgeous and Kay was reaaally hungry for dinner.I took the roast out to carve it on our big cutting board. Success!I hope I will get a lot of use out of this pan. I plan on moving it with me wherever I go. This pan is coming to the grave! I’m really happy to finally have a pan that I can transfer from the hob to the oven.

Do you have any favorite Dutch oven recipes?

Gluten Free Crepes

After promising Kay to use my Le Creuset pans lots after buying them,  I made it my mission to use both the pans the first weekend after buying them.

To be quite honest, Kay always made our crepes with our old pan because he was better at it, so it had been about a decade since I made them myself. Still, he is going away next year and I wanted to master the crepes again. I told myself again that if he can do it, I can do it, so I picked out a recipe from Blackbird Bakery for basic crepes to wet my toes.Spoiler alert, they were so good that I made them for both Saturday and Sunday breakfast that weekend. I even doubled the batch on Sunday, which is how I found out that I actually left out the last few ingredients in the batch on Saturday. Oops.

That might have added some difficulty to my first attempts. I won’t even show them to you because they were a little depressing. But after awhile in the kitchen and a few youtube videos later, I was getting pretty good at this whole crepe business! They were so light and paper thin with a beautiful taste.The next day I went hog wild and decided to make a double batch so that I could really practice my technique. I also followed the recipe correctly and wouldn’t you know it, with the additional ingredients, there was actually a lot more batter in the first place before doubling the recipe!I decided to follow the book’s advice and make a cinnamon and sugar variant with cognac instead of cointreau in the batter. After making each crepe, I brushed them in melted butter and sprinkled cinnamon and sugar before rolling up and sticking them in the oven to stay warm.Just like pancakes, I started using two pans, although I suppose I do like my fancy crepe pan better. After they were done, I stuck them in an oven heated to 50ºC to stay hot until serving.This was the pile of finished crepes and it was definitely way too much for the two of us! We stuck the rest in the fridge and ate them for breakfast on Monday. They were heaaaavenly leftover too! So sweet and moist.All rolled up.And a bite of rolled crepe. Delicious!Yes, I do believe I will be making these a lot in my future!

Do you like crepes? What’s your favorite thing to put on them?

Fives Years on Paper

Happy anniversary to my wonderful husband!

Hard to believe that it has been five years since we tied the legal knot at the Zivilstandsamt in Zurich! It feels like it was not that long ago and yet things are very, very different these days.I am thankful that my MIL was there for this and for our church wedding in Columbus the year after. She and my FIL were a bit taken aback that we wanted to marry so young by European standards (I was 23 and Kay was only 26), but after the civil union it was all smiles and joy and quite a few happy tears.Kay also had his own fears about the legal wedding because friends warned him that things would change for the worse, but it’s pretty clear that things have only been getting better and better between the two of us. I love him so much and want to spend as many years on this planet with him as possible.

Next year will be our five year anniversary for the “real wedding” where we finally exchanged rings and started referring to each other as husband and wife in front of family and friends (and not just in front of the government). I’m not sure we will be able to be together because of Kay’s studying, but I hope so.