gHere's another recipe is from my ecookbooklet: So What CAN You Eat? Gluten-free Paleo Vegan (mostly) recipes for health and Weight Loss available for Kindle at Amazon.

It's a delicious naturally gluten-free vegan dish that is filling and healthy. It might be my absolute favorite food in the world. Inspired by and adapted from Pennythoughts from Wholesome Goodness:
http://pennythoughts.wordpress.com/.

Spicy Red Lentil and Spinach Stew

1-2 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
4 large garlic cloves, minced
2 cups red lentils
1 can diced tomatoes (I use Rotel with green chilis - yum!)
6 1/2 cups water
1 tbsp Trader Joe's smoked sea salt
2 tsp dried basil
1 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp tumeric
1/4 - 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp curry powder
3-5 cups fresh spinach, or 16 oz bag of frozen chopped spinach or other dark leafy green

In a large soup pot, saute the onion and garlic in the olive oil until tender.  Add water, tomatoes, lentils and all the seasonings except the salt. Bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat and simmer for 35 minutes. Add spinach and salt and simmer 10 more minutes or until your greens are as tender as you like. Freezes and reheats very well.

This recipe is from my ecookbooklet: So What CAN You Eat? Gluten-free Paleo Vegan (mostly) recipes for health and Weigh Loss, also available for Kindle at Amazon.

These eggs so fast and easy it'll make your head spin. As written, the recipe is delicious and filling and chock full of protein and healthy goodness. If you've got room in your calorie budget, serve it with additional cheese, a high quality gf corn tortilla or chips, and/or sour cream or plain yogurt to taste. But it's really very satisfying as-is. Promise!

Nutrition Info ·        
Calories: 242.6  ·        
Fat: 7.1g  ·        
Carbohydrates: 29.1g  ·        
Protein: 17.0g
 
Ingredients

1/2 can Mexican-seasoned diced tomatoes (or plain if you prefer)
8 oz of your favorite salsa
1/2 bag of frozen chopped spinach
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 Tablespoon shredded Monterey jack cheese
4 eggs
Salt and pepper to taste 
 
Directions

Combine the tomatoes, salsa, frozen spinach and black beans in a skillet. Heat on high until everything is hot and bubbly. Reduce heat to medium.

Make four wells in the bean mixture and carefully break an egg into each one. Cover and cook on medium for 3 to 5 minutes depending on how runny you like your yolks.

Season the top of the eggs with a little salt and ground pepper and sprinkle lightly with shredded cheese.

Divide among plates and serve with chips or tortillas and sour cream or plain yogurt if you must.

Serves 4

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The the overnight road trip to AC was all about Corley's 11th birthday. We saw the Amazing Kozak the Magician on Monday night, which was a total homerun.  We stayed over at Harrah's and the boys frollicked in the pool for a good portion of the next day.

Culinarily, I sustained myself primarily with apples, reconstituted powdered peanut butter (surprisingly good!) and the Kinnikinnick sandwich bread I reviewed earlier in the week. The family had messy pizza on the boardwalk. For Corley's big birthday lunch, however, we wanted to find a place that would accommodate all of us.

We picked the Rain Forest Cafe on the boardwalk. It's a theme restaurant with animals that spring to life every 15 minutes and has a passing thunder shower every half hour.  Perfect for the younger set! It was listed in Find Me Gluten Free, so I had some hope that we'd be able to craft a palatable meal for me. Upon my announcement of needed a gluten-free dining experience, we were greeted by the chef, who told me to check out the regular menu (they don't have a gf-specific menu) and then he would come talk to me about what he could build to meet my needs and tastes.

The menu is not very vegetarian friendly, which posed a bit of a challenge. I suspect that the chef usually does a gluten-free request by preparing a meaty protein source in a clean pan, with maybe a house salad. The menu contained enough Mexican-y sorts of offerings including tri-color tortilla chips and a black bean-corn salsa thing that I thought I could create an appetizing taco salad sort of thing. In consult with the chef, I learned that their chips aren't gluten-free, and the black bean corn salsa thing was neither vegetarian or gluten-free. I ended up ordering a salad of romaine, tomatoes, cucumber, chopped egg, and unseasoned canned black beans with an underacheiving pico de gallo for a dressing. Not thrilling, but healthy enough, and safely prepared.

We had ordered the Chocolate Volcano birthday dessert for Corley. Fabulous for him (and Jenn and Scott), but inedible for me. I was a little dissappointed that the server didn't attempt to offer me something else. Instead, he brought four plates for us to share the dessert, conveying to me either a complete lack of understanding of the gluten issue, or that he might not have been paying that much attention. I eventually flagged him down for a cup of decaf. It was a total missed opportunity for him to increase the somewhat substantial check. What was nice was that I was only charged $4.49 for my salad -- practically free compared to their other salads. I can handle a less-than-thrilling lunch if I don't have to pay an arm and a leg for it!

My advice for any mid-priced Italian or Mexican restaurant in Atlantic City is to develop a decent gluten-free menu and get the word out about it. There is such a huge opportunity there to serve our community. Whoever leads will be a big winner.

All in all, the trip was terrific. As much as my meal was forgetable, the real memories were in the fun we had as a family and the absolute joy Corley took from this birthday jaunt.

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Compare a slice of gluteny Stroemann's wheat bread, a slice of Kinnikinnick's Multigrain sandwich bread, and a slice of Rudi's Original sandwich bread. Despite my expectations, the Kinnikinnick slice was about the same size as Rudi's, and it definitely had some structural integrity issues. But how would it taste?

I spotted the Kinnikinnick sandwich bread on a recent field trip to Martindale's Natural Market  in Springfield, PA. I had heard a lot about this loaf but hadn't seen it in a store near me. I had very high expectations. Looking back at my blog post Kinnickinnick beats Udi's? I see now that the person was singing the praises of the hot dog bun, not the sandwich bread. Still, in my mind, I was expecting it to be like regular gluteny bread. I had my first slice untoasted with peanut butter on it. It held up okay and the texture seemed good, but I couldn't actually describe the taste because of the peanut butter. I decided that my next try should be a blind taste test comparing it to a slice of the Rudi's Original I had in the freezer. In the meantime, I shot this video of my kids giving it a try.

So with that inconclusive (but highly entertaining) review, I did my own blind taste test of the two breads, thawed but untoasted and unadorned so that I could have a straight up test for flavor and texture. Despite the "blind" portion, I pretty much know what the Rudi's bread tastes like -- a little sweet and more suited to PB&J or toasted with butter and jelly than hummus, lettuce and tomato -- so I figured it out pretty quick. Rudi's has a noticable aftertaste, and it was a little grainier in my mouth and required multiple sips of water to cleanse my palate before moving on to the Kinnikinnick sample.The Kinnikinnick is equally porous, a little squishier, not sweet, and in fact did have a generic bread flavor -- not too distinctive -- which I think is a plus in the gluten-free bread universe. There would be no mistaking either of these breads for glutenous breads, but Kinnikinnick certainly comes closer to its wheaty cousin than Rudi's.  So, all in all, I will pick Kinnikinnick when I have a choice between the two, but I can't yet declare that I have found my one true love. Ah, I mean loaf.

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A friend of mine was recently diagnosed with Multple Sclerosis. MS, like celiac, is an autoimmune disorder. A recent study indicated that 10% of people living with MS also have celiac, and a third of their first degree relatives have it. But the link isn't clear, nor is it universally accepted as true by the medical community.

I should note my skepticism of relying on Western medicine. My mother put a great deal of faith in her doctors to essentially save her from herself and her less-than-healthy lifestyle choices. The short version is that she died at 53 when an angioplasty-turned-bypass surgery ended in a heart attack in the recovery room.

I do appreciate my health care team comprised of my primary physician, my hematologist and my gastrointerologist. Regardless, I can barely express how thrilled I am that my incurable autoimmune disorder is completely controllable by diet. I know from reading Eat More, Weigh Less and Eat to Live and by reading about the China Study that our nutrition choices can and do have a huge impact on our health and longevity.

So when I got the news about my friend, I remembered the amazing story of Dr. Terry Wahls, who drastically improved her MS symptoms through a radical shift in her diet to a gluten-free paleo diet. My friend has an excellent diet already. I shared this video with her anyway, because it was what I could think of to support her. I share it here again because it's such a powerful story for all of us, with or without celiac or MS. It might be the most important 17 minutes and 47 seconds of your week. Watch it in good health.

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