Happy Halloween!!

So the Halloween and autumn season is upon us, and I hope everyone know's what they're being this weekend! I kicked off the week right by helping out at my club's pumpkin carving event. Nothing says Temple administration quite like the Student Activities Center police coming and telling us it's technically against school policy to carve pumpkins in the SAC (yes, I said SAC). Nevertheless, it was a success and we had many beautiful pumpkins to display at our autumn banquet this past Thursday. Now aside from baking the pumpkin seeds and compositing A LOT of the guts, I still had a garbage bag filled with the string gooey mess that comes post pumpkin carving. Most people throw this gross stuff out but I decided to put my creativity skills to the test and see what could be eat cooked. I came up with cookie, muffin, bread, cupcake, and cake recipes that are super simple and are also gluten-free and vegan! I most recently mastered the ratios for the bread recipe (which also can be used for a muffin recipe) so I'll share that one. The others are still working themselves out in my mind.

Pumpkin Gut Vegan/Gluten-Free Bread **this makes quite a bit (a.k.a one small loaf and a dozen muffins, so you may want to half it)

preheat oven to 350

2 1/2 C. Pumpkin Guts (to prepare them for cooking, remove seeds and use a food processor/blender (actually all I had with blades were sicssors) and cut up the stringy goop so it resembles a puree.
3 1/2 C. Rice Flour (or a mixture of whatever flour you have)
2 tsp. Baking Soda
1 1/2 tsp. Salt
2 Tsp Cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 tsp. ground ginger **you can also use nutmeg/pumpkin pie spice instead of the cloves/ginger mix
2 1/2-3 c. sugar (I found that 3 c. kind of made the muffins less pumpkin-y due to the low flavor of most carving pumpkins--the pumpkins people usually use for baking are the small ones)
3/4 C. olive oil
**optional** 1 c. raisins/choc. chips/nuts

combine the flour, baking soda, salt, sugar, and spices in a large mixing bowl

add olive oil and pumpkin guts

add raisins/choc. chips/nuts if applicable

mix until flour just barely disappears

pour into greased pans

bake for 1 hour, or until fork comes out clean (muffins will take around 25 min)

Midterm mayham, and meanwhile, in the kitchen...

So midterms ruled my life the past two weeks. Countless hours were spent in Paley, and I'm pretty sure I REM'd in Chinese. Now that the scariest part of October is finished, we can focus on more important things, like eating! I spent the majority of my weekend in South Philly, and was able to eat at the Loving Hut, located at 7th and South Street. Along with being a cute place, they are 100% vegan. Items I would urge everyone to try are their smoothies and tofu-nuggets. These treats and many more are made in front of you and served to you by the extremely friendly girls who work there. After my lunch, I was feeling pretty creative myself and decided to attempt gluten-free and egg-free apple pie. I used a basic apple pie recipie and snipped around until I came out with a room mate friendly version of the American classic. As a side note, I can't stand the rice-flour version of the apple pie crust, so feel free to try this with regular flour. I'm currently going to try a more "grain-y" flour to the mix next time. Next time so happens to be tonight, so I'll keep you posted!

Crust for Pie:
2 1/2 c. rice flour
1 c. (2 sticks) butter, chilled and cubed **I used 1/2 c. apple sauce and only 1 stick of butter**
2 tbsp maple syrup (you can use sugar also, but I'm trying to cut down)
1/4 c. ice water

Filling:
3 lbs. apples
3/4 c. sugar **I used a mixture of white and brown sugars, I'm going to try it with less sugar and honey next time**
3/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. all spice
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 tbsp. rice flour

non-egg egg wash:
some melted butter (I think I melted around 3 tbsp)
2 tbsp milk

--preheat oven to 375--

In a bowl, place the flour, sugar, and cubes of chilled butter (and also the applesauce if you went that route).
Rub the butter into the flour using your fingertips or a pastry cutter, until largest pieces are pea-sized.
Add ice water little by little while mixing dough. When dough holds together when you squeeze it, it's ready.
Gather dough into a ball and divide it in half, wrap in plastic and chill in fridge while you make the filling (I've heard it's actually ideal to chill dough for 30 min, but since I thought I would be productive, I put the dough balls into the freezer for 10 minutes...the result? Dough was hard to form without breaking)

Peel and cut apples into slices. Toss apples with sugar, cinnamon, allspice, flour, and vanilla. Let sit while you roll out dough.

Take out one ball of dough and roll out into a circle that is as big as your pie pan circumference. Fit into pie pan and mound the shell with apple filling. Take out other ball of dough and roll it into a slightly smaller circle and place over pie. Fold edges over and crimp to seal. Make a few slits/designs in the top crust to let steam out.

Melt butter and mix in milk; brush over top crust of pie (but not the crimped edges)

bake at 375 for 20 minutes, then lower temperature 350 and bake for another 30-40 minutes. Pie is done when juices are bubbling and crust is browned.

I don't have a photo yet, but I can assure you it tastes great! Enjoy with ice cream and friends. (We also enjoyed ours with wine)

MIT: Gluten-Free!

Offering gluten-free options and keeping up with separation standards is an issue that I believe is very important for schools and other institutions to take seriously. One of the biggest issues in being gluten-free, especially when allergic to gluten, is that many people do not trust public eateries. Some restaurants do not realize that just because there is no gluten in their fish doesn't necessarily rule out the fact that there could be gluten remnants in the pan that the fish was baked in or on the hands that prepared it.

There are gluten-free options in many university and high school cafeterias, including Temple's Johnson and Hardwick Dining halls. Yet the problem still lies within proper food separation. Anyone who has been to the dining halls during rush hour can vouch for the picture that comes to my mind. Bustling students, different types of food dropped into the salad bar, employees that slop food onto plates before you have a chance to request anything special, and crumbs on the hot lines. This is about as dangerous as no man's land for people like my room mate. She was limited to the salad bar and french fries that J&H offered during her freshman year (2008-2009) and even then experienced uncomfortable rashes due to contact with gluten.
Lindsey Howell, contributor to Ezine articles, suggests that college attendees get a personal kitchen a.s.a.p. I think institutions need to go the extra mile and offer safe and completly separated gluten-free food options. This means different gloves and cooking necessities to cook the food and knowledgeable employees.
When the university fails to take up the challenge, students tend to help each other out through self-research and blogging. A blog posted on MIT's website gives a list of gluten-free eateries on campus along with nearby restaurants, cafes and grocery stores that offer gluten-free menus and aisles. Temple students also call awareness to local eateries (such as Sweet Freedom) that are safe for students suffering from gluten allergies.
But why shove the responsibility onto the sufferers? I think that schools should be aware of the hardship that comes along with finding food options on campus for students with food allergies. A gluten-free blogger complains, "Sometimes I get annoyed that I have to always know where my next meal is coming from". This pretty much sums up the experiences that I have observed from my room mate and other friends who choose vegan or gluten-free lifestyles.

In elementary schools, having celiacs disease can be a nightmare for parents who are too busy to pack lunches every day. Children shouldn't feel ashamed or like an outcast because of their food allergy that is easily dealt with if institutions implemented the proper food handling techniques. Triumph Blog, a blogging site dedicated to gluten-free communities, is working on a petition that is aimed specifically towards schools, demanding a lunch system that meets students' "medically prescribed dietary needs".
Blogging helps gets small voices heard, and it is with further awareness that we can get our own institutions to start offering safe and healthy meal options for people with food allergies. They should not have to be secluded to limited (and often weird) food options. They shouldn't be shunned from dorm life just because they need personal kitchenettes. The college experience should be about learning about ones self image rather than avoiding disasters that are easily preventable.
Recently, in talking to some freshman at Temple, I have learned that the J&H dining hall does in fact now offer more gluten-free options and there is an entire section dedicated to vegans and gluten-free students. This pleases me as it represents a positive reaction towards students' demands and requirements. Temple is an innovative university, and perhaps in the future more options will arise for the students who have special dietary requirements.

dressing on the side, leave out the gluten please

So apparently to my own surprise, not everyone is gluten free because they are allergic to it. One of the biggest complaints that I hear from my room mate is when she has to have conversations that go like this

person: want to get pizza?
room mate: sorry, I'm allergic to gluten and eggs; I can't
person: what's gluten?
room mate: it's like flour and such. I can't eat things like cookies, pasta, pizza blah blah blah
person: oh my GOD. How do you LIVE??!!
room mate: well...
person: well you're pretty lucky! no wonder you're so skinny, it must be the best diet to be on!
room mate: **rage**

Surprisingly enough, I found a web page that talked specifically about the "trend" of gluten-freedom. It is an article from The Hartman Group and it touches on the fact that even though 1% of the U.S. population has celiacs disease (the main reason for an allergy to gluten), 93% of gluten-free buyers do NOT have celiacs. Gluten is increasing in popularity. Maybe because it makes more sense to cut out starches than to only eat a half a grapefruit each day.

What was interesting was that the web page decided not only to disagree with the validity behind this new fad, but it also seemed biased towards gluten-free products in general. They disproved the idea that gluten is healthier--indicating that a gluten free diet can lead to spikes in ones glycemic index (pushes your body into extreme states). It also sheds light on the "social nature of eating" and how being gluten free can be a "burdensome restriction".

It's interesting to see a marketing group take a concept (not a product) and completely pull a 360 on the idea and portray it back in a negative way. By no means is the hartman scoffing at those of us who absolutely cannot eat gluten, but it is rather sending out factual information to the people (much like the person in my example conversation) who only see the superficial selling points of going sans-gluten.

examples of celebrities who are following the gluten-free trend