Ener-G Egg Replacer

The Ener-G brand is the only vegan egg replacement I have ever tried, and I have found no reason to try any other. I first tried it when I wanted to make vegan Christmas cookies that all my friends could share. The more I use it, the more versatile I find it to be. I prefer to use it in all my baking now, I get the binding of natural eggs and I control the amount of liquid that gets added to the recipe. The instructions recommend mixing the powder with warm water, but in most cases I simply mix the powder with my dry ingredients before mixing up cookies or breads.

Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free Brownie Mix

I love chocolate. Nothing draws me to a potluc table faster than heaping plate of moist brownies. I’ve never been too successful with making brownies from scratch, and before I was diagnosed Duncan Heinz was my got to mix.

Bob’s Red Mill has such a wide selection of Gluten free mixes that it’s no surprise that they have a brownie mix as well. I’ve had such success with their other mixes, and that Bob looks like such an honest guy, I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed.

The mix stayed on my shelf as was waiting for a good chance to use it so it moved with me when I moved in with my boyfriend and his family. Living in this new space with these Ecuadorian immigrants there were some things to get used to, one of them being that they keep the gas stove unplugged to save electricity and use a lighter to start the burners. For the longest time I thought that the oven simply didn’t work, because his mother stored all her pots in it.

By the time I learned that I could in fact use the oven, once all the other hardware was removed I had become impatient and caved in to my chocolate cravings. Every now and again I poured out s portion of the brownie mix, mixed it with a little milk until it was the right consistency, and satisfied myself with batter instead. I once attempted to make a brownie pancake on the stove but that just doesn’t work, don’t try it, it’ll burn and stink up the house.

Eating the batter on the sly worked out just fine, because nobody had to know about it, and I didn’t have to share. As a connoisseur of all things brownie, this batter is fantastic. It has the right flavor and consistency to make a great brownie. The next potluc I attend, I will be weighted down with these brownies, I may even share them.

Arrowhead Mills Blue Corn Meal

I found Arrowhead Mills Blue Corn Meal at a local grocery when I was living in Brooklyn Heights. I was looking for a mix to make my own corn bread for stuffing. I love blue corn chips, and there was a cornbread recipe on the back of the bag, so into my cart it went.

Thanksgiving of ’06 was a number of firsts; my first time preparing a gluten free Thanksgiving meal, my first time preparing a Thanksgiving meal solo, and my Ecuadorian boyfriends first turkey. I wanted everything to be perfect so I started prepping early. A few days before T-day I made a pan of cornbread following the recipe on the bag. After it was cooled I sliced it and set it on plate to get stale for the stuffing.

It tasted just like a regular corn bread; only it was a very intriguing shade of blue green, quite pretty actually. The recipe on the bag is for a real, dry, crumbly Southern corn bread, not the Northern version that is more appropriate to being a dessert.

The evening before Thanksgiving I set about chopping the vegetable and mixing up my stuffing. Reaching for the cornbread I found the plate bare, with the exception of a few wayward blue crumbs. Upon questioning, the elderly gentleman I was living with as a companion ‘fessed up to eating all of it, since it “was just so good. I couldn’t stop myself”. The second batch was just as good as the first, and even though it didn’t have a chance to get stale it still made an excellent stuffing. The one pan that I made was just enough to stuff the smallest turkey I could fins.

The recipe on the package was easy to make, and turned out just fine even though I have no idea how accurate the thermostat was on the ancient oven I was using. I’m sure that the Blue Corn Meal could be used as a substitute for yellow cornmeal in any recipe with colorful results. Arrowhead Mills offers other gluten free flours and mixes and processes the Blue Corn Meal in their gluten free facility.

Bob’s Red Mill Pancake Mix

I was never a fan of pancakes growing up, so I never really missed them when I went gluten free. However, my boyfriend likes to have bread and cottage cheese for breakfast, and I wouldn’t allow gluten containing bread in my house. To settle this dispute I decided to try making gluten free pancakes for us to share one Saturday morning.

I had previously experimented with making them from scratch and had decide that a mix was the way to go. I picked up Bob’s Red Mill gluten free pancake mix at my local organic store and decided to give it a try.

This mix is so easy that anyone, except maybe my boyfriend can make it. I just put an egg, some milk and the pancake mix into the blender and let her rip. I get four nice sized pancakes out of one batch and everybody loves them. My boyfriends family is from Ecuador, and had never had pancakes before, and now they wait expectantly every Saturday morning for me to get up and make them. Even our two gerbils love them.

I can say that these are better than the ones I had as a child, and they have awakened in me a new appreciation of pancakes. We like to have them with cottage cheese and maple syrup, but the few times I’ve made them with blueberries they’ve been just as good. The recipe thins out just as a regular pancake batter would and this summer I plan on experimenting with crepes to go with some of the great fresh fruit.

The mix itself is not only gluten free but egg and dairy free as well. It can be made with soymilk or water and the egg replacement of your choice.