Food Philosophy: Recipes and ramblings from a gluten-free naturopath

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!!  We certainly did!  My aunt and uncle traveled down from Iowa to spend the week with us and we had a fabulous visit.  Family is truly what the holidays are all about...that, and of course, the food!  We certainly had PLENTY to eat!! Okay, if truth be told, we had way too much food, but that's what makes Thanksgiving great, right?  That, and all the days of leftovers and turkey sandwiches!  And, of course, the pies... I made 3 pies this year (yes, that's almost 1 whole pie per person!)...in the back is the traditional Pumpkin Pie that no Thanksgiving feast would be complete without.  On the left is one of my very favorites...a maple creme pie.  You'll love this one!! Maple Creme Pie Recipe For the crust: 1/4 cup soy flour 1/4 cup brown rice flour 3/8 cup tapioca flour 1 tsp. xanthan gum 1/4 tsp. salt 3/8 cup butter-flavored shortening 1/4-1/3 cup ice cold water 3/4 cups chopped pecans Combine flours, xanth

Thanksgiving is my all-time, ultimate, absolute favorite holiday!!! (Okay, I lied just a little bit there because it actually ties for 1st place with the 4th of July...but, we'll just go with it.) I love everything about Thanksgiving...the family get-together's, the movie watching, the game playing, the parades, the chilly weather, the contemplation on the amazing blessings in my life, the funny Pilgrim hats, and...of course...most of all....the amazing food!!  Thanksgiving is the perfect holiday for a foodie like me! I love pie baking, which I'm doing right now, as I'm typing...2 are done and 1 is in the works.  Yummy!!  I've already done a pumpkin pie, and a maple cream pie, and am working on creating a new one based on a recipe my husband came across in a newspaper and decided he'd like me to figure out how to convert it to GF.  Once I've finished, and it's been thoroughly taste-tested, I'll post some pictures and the recipe.  But, j

As I look at my blog, I realize that I haven't posted all summer!!  All I can say in defense is that it's been one of the busiest summers I've had in a really long time!! We decided for my husband to retire from the Air Force after 30 years of dedicated service and bought a small, 5-acre farm in central Missouri.  In the midst of all of that, my youngest daughter, Carlie, delivered a healthy baby boy, Henry Spock Johnson, and I spent 3 weeks in Idaho with her family while trying to close on the farm. Then, I spent the entire month of August closing things out with the Air Force, having a ton of farewells to attend, packing up and moving to Missouri.   Just 2 weeks after I arrived here, and while I was still unpacking and getting settled, my father, Dean Douglas Holliday, passed away unexpectedly and I spent the next 10 days trying to get a funeral accomplished and handling his affairs.  I know he missed my mother terribly and I'm so glad that they'

Today I've got 3 super summer salads for you!!   Too many times we think of fruit salads as just a bunch of fruits thrown together and used as a light dessert...nothing wrong with that at all!!  In fact, I love that kind of dessert, especially in the summer time when there are so many types of fruits to choose from. But, in doing that, we don't fully utilize fruits!  They make a wonderful counterpoint to a savory salad and I've got 3 recipes for you today that do just that... This first recipe I actually posted last summer, but thought I'd repeat it since it's just SOOO good! Watermelon-cucumber salad 3 cups cubed, seeded watermelon 1/2 of a large English cucumber, diced with the skin on 1 handful cilantro, chopped 1 jalapeno pepper, diced 4 oz. crumbled feta cheese Place all the above ingredients in a large bowl and stir.  Then, in a separate container, make a dressing from: the juice of 2 limes about 1/3-1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil Salt and pepper,

I feel the need to ramble today, so please read on and bear with me! You would think in today's society where it seems that NOTHING is off-limits for discussion or in movies or on TV or the internet that we'd be able to talk openly and honestly about female sexuality, but we don't.  It's like we're back in Victorian England, where sex was a woman's marital duty and it was never even admitted to, much less discussed!  And heaven forbid that a woman might actually enjoy it---that was the sole duty for prostitutes. We need to open a dialogue regarding female sexuality!  I've been an advocate of this for a long time and, in most cases, people look at me like I have 6 heads if I bring it up, but since this is my blog, I plan to talk about it...and I hope you will, too.  If nothing else, I hope you'll be educated by this information and have a desire to share it. Let's talk anatomy first.  When I was growing up, I never received any worthwhile inform

Yes, I said it....foodgasm!!  There are just some foods that create such a rush of pleasure when you eat them that there's no other word to describe the incredible feeling!!  Today's recipe is just one such fabulous food :) There have been innumerable studies done on the pleasure centers in our brains.  What's so interesting is that there's basically one targeted area that is stimulated by pleasurable things....so, making love, eating great food, seeing a super-good movie, running or exercising, being out in nature....the list goes on and on....all these things send signals to the pleasure centers in our brains and our bodies respond appropriately.  Now, personally, I don't get the same rush from running as I do from eating great food or making love, but some people really love it!!   Other studies have proven that women who starve themselves or deny themselves on a regular basis of "pleasurable-type" foods, such as sugar, chocolate, fats, etc...decrea

When my youngest daughter was a senior in high school, we lived in Pebble Beach, CA.  There was a Jack-in-the-box fast food restaurant near our home there and, every Tuesday, they had a 2 tacos for 99 cents special that she just adored!!  I could never understand how she could enjoy those tacos, which were basically a hard corn shell filled with drippy grease, but she loved them! However, she usually only went there if she was working on Tuesdays.  Thus was born the family Taco Tuesday tradition....if she was going to be home, I always made sure to have some kind of taco and my husband and I have continued that ever since (although, it's not EVERY Tuesday anymore....:) I absolutely love the traditional taco with spiced hamburger meat, lettuce, tomato, cheese, sour cream and guacamole and I would never dis that!  But, sometimes you just need something different.  So, after a lot of research and experimentation, I've come up with some different types of tacos that I think y

I have SOOOO much fun creating new foods for holidays!!  Now, I know a lot of people don't consider Valentine's Day a holiday, or at best, they consider it a "made-up" Hallmark, commercialized excuse to make people feel bad about their relationships!  Well, I just don't agree!  I love any chance to show the people I care about how much they mean to me...and Valentine's in no exception. One of my favorite things to do is to dip strawberries (or anything, for that matter!) in chocolate!!  This is super-easy and seems so decadent!  Just melt whatever flavor or color of Wilton's candy coat that you want and quickly dip, place on parchment paper and let sit.  As soon as I dipped these strawberries, I sprinkled them with a pink sugar, just to give them a little bling :) An obvious choice for Valentine's Day is anything heart-shaped!  And these Cherry-Chocolate Scones are a huge hit!!  I made them yesterday morning for a meeting that I was hosting and

I absolutely LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE (are you getting the picture?) ZOOS!!  My husband takes me to the zoo whenever we move to a new place.  Every time I think I've surely seen all the animals out there, I go to a zoo and see, at least, a dozen new ones that I had no idea about or ever even heard of!  Last week, Kevin took me to the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, SC, which is only about 40 minutes from our house.  It was a beautiful, sunny Saturday morning with temps hovering around 55 degrees...perfect for walking around and admiring all of the amazing plants, animals, reptiles, fishes, and more.... I know you're thinking that it's very strange that I'm talking about zoos on a gluten-free website, but there's a point, I promise! Animals, by instinct and for self-preservation, have very limited diets, unless they're introduced to new foods by humans.  Think about, for example, the panda bear...their diet, in the wild,  consists of 99% bamboo, with just a