Trial and Error: Safe blackened filet of sole with avocado salad and Spanish rice

Error.
Looks delicious, right?

Not. Mouth-burningly salty. And still somehow boring. Blech. A nice palate cleansing cup of rose congou tea should help, and perhaps a dessert of creamed honey on a rice cake?




Lessons:

• never follow a recipe for seasoning (2 tsps salt! too much!)
• don't use broth as the only liquid for rice (too much salt!)
• most broth has sugar in it, and corn solids, and yeast - read labels carefully...
• it's hard to blacken without garlic (or a Cajun uncle)
  
• radishes alone are not a proper palate cleanser
  

Safe Summer Pancakes

The ideas are flooding in. Thanks to JMB for this possible gem (look forward to trying these Saturday morning to usher in the official diet days).

Caipirinha Pancakes

Pancake mix [substitute buckwheat for bisquick crap?]**
Limes [I assume these are OK since lemons are]
Regular old sugar [replace with preferred sweetener. If you use honey, mix with lime juice before applying to pancakes]

Pancakes with maple syrup is a breakfast fit for the winter, before you go out lumberjacking and whatnot. This version of pancakes is better fit for the summer…for weekend days you might spend at the beach. Very light and delicious and full of vitamin C.

How to do it:
1. Make some pancakes!
2. Put the pancakes on your plate!
3. Sprinkle granulated sugar on top of the pancakes you just put on the plate. Some people like more sugar than others.
4. Squeeze about half a lime’s worth of juice over a plate full of sugary pancakes. This will dissolve some of the sugar.
5. Eat it up, go to the beach.

I'll have to make a mashup here, using, perhaps, this recipe found on Group Recipes:

Ingredients

1 cup buckwheat flour
1 tsp gluten and corn free baking powder
2 Tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbsp potato starch
1 cup + a little more coconut milk
2 Tbsp olive oil

Directions

Heat the skillet to medium heat while you are preparing the batter. (You don't want the skillet too hot; due to the thickness of the batter, they take a little while longer to cook than regular pancakes, so too hot will result in burning the edges and a raw middle.)
Combine the dry ingredients.
Mix in the coconut milk and oil until the batter is smooth.
Make sure that the skillet is hot, water will sizzle and jump if you put just a drop on.
Pour pancakes to the size that you prefer. I use a serving spoon or a ladle to do this. Because this batter is thick, you may have to even out the cake with the back of your spoon, this also makes it difficult to get perfectly round cakes. .
When bubbles start forming around the edges, cover the cakes with a lid for thirty seconds to a minute; this will stiffen up the top of the batter just enough so it doesn't drizzle off when you flip it.
When the pancake has bubbles throughout, flip it. Depending on how thick your cake is, you might not get a lot of bubbles.
Cover with the lid again for at least part of the time, so that you ensure cooking throughout.
When cut, the cakes will be dense, but should not be sticky in the middle.
Serve and enjoy!
If you are making a larger batch to serve, you can put the cakes on a cookie sheet and cover with tin foil and keep them in an oven set to warm.

Safe Guacamole

Avocado, schmeared on a rice cake, with salt.

Next time: Go to the store. Buy cilantro, and lemon. Mash (but don't pulverize) with a fork.

Before

The sexy bodybuilder girl at work teases me that I'm going to get skinny.






This calls for before and after pictures.


Before:

Iced Americano with hazlenut milk

Good texture, awfully nutty though. Tastes too much like flavored coffee. Time to seek out hemp milk. Rope is more coffeelike than any nut I've ever met...

Thank You, Fred Meyer

Hit the jackpot yesterday at Fred Meyer. I went in for a gold Indiglo watch ( original lost on a redeye, and thankfully now replaced) and stumbled upon a goldmine of gluten free glory.

Their "Healthful Living" section offered cheap rice pasta (to keep favorite dishes like spaghetti with chicken and broccoli alive, albeit sans garlic), buckwheat flour (need a recipe for buckwheat pancakes/crepes without milk or eggs - suggestions?), rice cakes, and fresh almond butter (at a 3rd the cost I was expected from my Manhattan grocery experience). I also picked up some muffin and loaf tins for future experiments in safe baking.

Now I just need to clear out the inflamers and get some nice fresh fruits and vegetables to get my kitchen ready for the adventure.

And the real jackpot came from Goodwill:

An early 90s water resistant clock radio!

Friends Are Awesome

The search for the best alternative milk is on.

Based on those I've polled (primarily Seattle coffeeslingers, who should know), the best milks that are derived from neither cow nor soy bean and that are available sugar-free are:

Human milk (unfortunately my lactation isn't sufficient to make a latte - any wet nurses in West Seattle up to the task?)
Hemp
Almond/Hazlenut
Rice