YumQuest

Saturday, September 27, 2003 -- A (nearly) Gluten-free Meal

Jean came over to help us come up with our gluten-free menu:

Bacon and Cheese Spoon Bread
Sweet-and-Sour Cucumber with Fresh Dill
Salad
Crustless Spinach and Feta Quiche
Calcutta Chicken with Apple-Pepper Relish
St. Julian's sparkling 100% Juice (Peach, Raspberry, Cherry)
Chocolate Pumpkin Brownies
Easy Chocolate Hazelnut Fudge
Ice Cream

This week's Cooking Adventure was brought to you by Chris, who said, "You spent HOW much on all this? Here!" Thank you, Chris!

Thanks also go to Eric, who once again brought sparkling juices and did the post-dinner dishes and this time offered a blender; to Chris again, for bringing a lot of beverages; and to Dave, who repeated the loan of three chairs and a large skillet and this week also brought himself.

Location: Lynda's

People who came: Lynda, Emily, Chris, Bethany, Sara, Cindy, Michael, Eric, Dave, Jean, Belle, Robby

Lynda's Comments:
A visiting friend's allergy led to this Adventure's gluten-free-except-for-the-brownies menu, which turned out great, and the concept is leading us to occasional future themed meals (just think of it as Iron Chef without the competition, the budget, or the professional training). Everything was marvelously tasty, and there were, alas, almost no leftovers this time.

This time we decided we'd try it without a schedule. Unfortunately, we thus kinda forgot about most of the spoon bread's prep and wound up a bit late on everything -- "Hey, wait, doesn't this take nearly an hour in the oven? Um, that means we have less than ten minutes to get it there. Can we still do that? Whups." Schedules from here on out, is my vote.

This Adventure also reaffirmed that Tools Are Good. My little mini food processor (thank you, Anthony and Jori!) grated large quantities of cheese in no time. The garlic press did double duty, not to mention a surprisingly good job, shredding the fresh ginger. Using Emily & Eric's significantly sharper knives salvaged our chopping sanity. And we can't offer enough praise to the KitchenAid mixer -- mine's the one my grandmother gave my mother almost 30 years ago (thank you, Grandma!) and is still going incredibly strong, no repairs ever, does every hard job ever thrown at it, and Emily long since grew to like it enough that she got one of her own.

Emily's Comments:
Wow. As we were cooking it seemed like it would be a less impressive meal than last week...was I ever wrong! Most of these recipes were simpler -- no multiple steps, just prep and cook, basically. So we worked more slowly, and were more relaxed, until we realized how long the prep time on the spoon bread really was. Still, we weren't any later than last week. Actually, we were closer to having everything ready on time. And, after all, this *is* a learning experience. :) The brownies were the only thing that wasn't gluten-free, since we had planned on them before we knew of the restriction. I baked those the night before, which made cooking a lot saner.

THE NEXT YUMQUEST

Emily and Lynda's Cooking-New-Recipes Adventure (newly nicknamed YumQuest) continues this SUNDAY!

THIS WEEK: Potluck.

THIS MEANS: Find a recipe you've never used before that you think sounds yummy. Prepare it and bring it *and*its*recipe* to share, or plan to cook it here (if so, email me how many stove burners and/or how much oven space at what temperature you'll need for how long; we may have the option of overflowing into Dave's kitchen if absolutely necessary). Alternately, drop off your recipe and ingredients at my place by Saturday afternoon, and Emily and I will cook it for you. (Chris, you're covered!) Figure on 10-14 people here, not counting Michael's second stomach, but keep in mind both that there'll be a fair number of prepared recipes and that you get dibs on all your own leftovers.

OTHER OPTIONS: Given that a dozen dishes seems slightly overkillish, feel free to team up and cook in twos or threes. If you feel you can't do the cooking thing even on a drop-your-ingredients-off-over-here-and-we'll-cook-it-for-you basis, you can sign up to be the event's dishwasher.

PLEASE CONSIDER: Emailing back reply-to-all with your cooking choice, to prevent a menu of, say, a dozen variations of potato salad.

WHERE: Lynda's place. I now have to ask you to park on the street in front of the building rather than in the small lot behind the building.

WHEN: Sunday, October 5 -- meal at 7pm, food prep going on all afternoon, show up whenever you like.

WE'RE RECORDING ALL THIS AT: http://www.geocities.com/mandaryn_lemon/index.html

SOME RECIPE SITES, FOR THOSE WITHOUT A PLETHORA OF COOKBOOKS:
http://www.recipesource.com
http://www.allrecipes.com/
http://eat.epicurious.com/
http://www.recipeland.com/

Note: There will be no YumQuest next week (October 11-12), as Emily and I and various others will be at ICON (www.mindbridge.org/icon).

-Lynda

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