Best Black Bean Soup EVER!

I love soup. I love black beans. I hate cold weather. So I made black bean soup tonight.

We can’t get black beans here in Ankara. But I brought a 2kg bag of them with me when we last returned from Canada. Unfortunately, I couldn’t bring all the ingredients in rebar’s black bean soup recipe with me. Jalapeno peppers, also unavailable here, just don’t last long. Nor does fresh coriander (cilantro, to my North American friends.) Limes… only irregularly, unreliably in stock in these parts. The list of what I lacked goes on. So I had to deviate a fair bit from the rebar recipe. There were a heap of ingredients I couldn’t do.

Link through for the recipe!

Zing! Zang! Zow! Crackers!

This is just a quick post, no photos, so I can share (and recall) the fantastic cracker recipe I came up with today. It’s got some kick and it is SO TASTY. I accosted EcoDad as he arrived home from work and demanded he eat one on the spot. That’s how good they are. And he, who usually recoils from requests made the moment he walks in, raved about them and didn’t fuss at all about my forcing him to eat before he’d even removed his outdoor gear.

Without further ado:

Splendiferous Gluten-free Crackers!

Yesterday afternoon I made a horrible discovery. The rice cakes we’ve been giving EcoBabe in bountiful supply have more than just rice in them. They also have corn. But I knew that. What I didn’t know, what caught my eye as I was reaching into the cupboard for something else entirely but just happened to glimpse the rice cake packet in doing so, is that the little cakes, advertised as rice-corn cakes also have WHEAT and OATS in them. In fact, there’s more wheat then there is rice! EGADS!!!

***This story ends well. Click on that pretty Read More link to discover the happy ending.***

Educational Cookies

EcoKid and I hauled one of our hunks of cookie dough out of the freezer yesterday. Today, while EcoBabe was napping, we baked them up. Not without incident, of course. This is us we’re talking about.

The dough was a crumbly mess. I eventually added some water to it to bring its consistency back to something roller-pin-able. I swore a lot first.

***Want to know what happened next? Click below and find out!***

GFCF Spicy Molasses Cookies… Divine!

Do you remember the link I posted here last holiday season? The one taking you to the Pioneer Woman’s Spicy Molasses cookies recipe? (Notice how I just gave it to you again thereby saving you the time of searching through my archives trying to locate it? I’m nice that way.)

EcoKid and I have been wanting to do a bit of holiday baking together. We had fun with our GFCF sugar cookies a couple of weeks ago. We’ve still got loads of the dough in our freezer for future baking…

***Don’t sit there in suspense! Link through! Discover how this culinary mystery unfolds!***

The Christmas Tractor Post… and something else too!

Sorry this post is arriving so late in the day. I suppose for those of you reading this from North America, it’s not so late. But for my readers in the Eurasian time zones, it’s late. And for those in Oceania, well, it’s already tomorrow.

Ack! And it’s a fun post today! (Which is not to say that my posts are not usually fun…)

***Link through for the EXCITING announcement of what falls behind advent calendar door number 5!***

The 1st Day of Holiday Surprise Month!

Will you check out that Christmas tree EcoKid drew and decorated!!!???!!! Her pride in her work is evident in her face, no?

I thought a photo of my little wondergirl in her holiday jammies, grinning gleefully over her fantastic creation would be a great kick-off to Holiday Surprise Month.

What is Holiday Surprise Month, you ask?

***Link through to find out!***

EcoMum’s MultiGrain, Gluten-free Brazil

This little guy of mine, EcoBabe, as you may recall, has recently switched to a gluten-free, casein-free diet.
It’s been a remarkably easy transition. EcoBabe is so keen on so many foods that he doesn’t seem to have noticed the things we’ve removed from his diet. He’s eagerly taken up the entirely new things we’ve introduced him to: millet, buckwheat, and a variety of gluten-free pastas.

The weather here in Ankara has been getting steadily cooler. Nothing like the brutal cold of Alberta, from whence we hail, but cool enough that I’ve been craving winter food. At the top of my winter food craving list? Chili.
***Link through for the recipe and the complete tale***

We’re Going Gluten-Free and Casein-Free!

“We” is a bit of a mis-statement. EcoBabe is going GFCF. We are implementing the change.
EcoBabe has ongoing gastro-intestinal issues. I won’t be excessively graphic; I’ll just say that he’s got some persistent messy bowel issues that we’ve been unable to sort out or explain.
And there’s oodles of anecdotal evidence to suggest that a GFCF diet can help alleviate some of the symptoms of ASD…
***Link through for the rest of the post!***

Cinnamon Creams

I saw a recipe for Peppermint Creams on Flossie Teacakes. (It’s a wonderful crafty blog that I highly recommend. I get giddy when my feedreader shows an update for FT.) I really wanted to try out the Creams but, as will likely be no surprise to my faithful readers, I couldn’t find peppermint essence anywhere in Ankara. I’ll add that to the long, long, looooong list of culinary fare I can’t track down in good ol’ Turkland.

But I still wanted to make some Creams. So, I thought, why not vanilla? I’ve got vanilla (imported courtesy of my mother, can’t get it here either.) On Friday morning while EcoBabe slept and EcoKid frolicked at school with her amigos, I set to work making Vanilla Creams…