Gluten Free Eye Round Roast and Tangy Homemade Steak Sauce

Natural Gluten Free Eye Round Roast

Food can be a very tricky facet of our lives. Beside the actual buying and painstaking preparation of your jars and bushels and packages and bags of sustenance we have a whole host of social and familial implications to contend with. Maybe you're lucky and you don't haul emotional food issues around along with your spare tire. Maybe your family was ultra pragmatic (and completely outside the realm of the "normal" American family, read: dysfunctional) and never ascribed hives of emotional longing and investment into your Grandmother's spaghetti sauce, zucchini bread or borscht. Maybe your aunt never praised you to the rafters for cleaning your plate (even though you were stuffed to your earlobes and about to explode into a geyser of mashed potatoes). Maybe you've never told yourself "That's IT, food is evil, I'm only chewing on ice cubes for the next 5 days." If you are someone who has escaped the inner hell of food obsession and fully grasped the meaning of "I'm eating to live, not living to eat", I applaud you. If you're one of the rest of us, still hunkering through the battle of emotional eating, I offer you Gluten Free Eye Round Roast for meals without a second thought.

Gluten Free Thai Ginger Chicken

Delicious Thai Ginger Chicken

We recently watched Food, Inc. in two sittings no less because my blood pressure was rising to a dangerously molten level after the first half. If you've seen it you know why and if you haven't, well...watch it, discuss it, talk about it, share it with friends, make changes in your life. Or have the immediate reaction I did and paw through your fridge and cabinets, scanning the labels on every jar, box and bag for mutant GMOs, and the viscous poison of High Fructose Corn Syrup. Even though you know your entire loft is a GMO and HFCS free zone and your boyfriend is lounging on the couch, watching you swivel around the kitchen, calling out "that's all natural!", "minimally processed!", and "I ground that meat myself, it all came from a single source!" and indeed, he did. For that is what butchers do, part time or otherwise. And so naturally, even though I know everything we buy is natural or organic and minimally processed and all that jazz, I was pretty sure I never wanted to eat anything purchased at the store ever again and promptly began making mental plans to hang large planters from the ceiling in which to grow my own bounty. Until, of course, I came home to this Thai Ginger Chicken - this local, organic, free range chicken.

Gluten Free and Dairy Free Lasagna

Gluten Free Dairy Free Lasagna

People are out in full force around Santa Monica. Bikers in skin tight racing gear or ambling along leisurely on beach cruisers dot the streets, the parking structures along 4th street are buzzing with perfect-spot anticipation and the beach front is filling out with the toweled squares of families and friends laughing with reckless abandon in the constant ocean wind. Girls strut down the promenade in their Uggs, bright sundresses billowing and snaking around their tanned legs, weighed down with the happy satisfaction of spring packaged up in boastful bags. And they keep saying "it's spring, spring is here!". Which, I suppose it is. Technically. So what else is there to do but make a Gluten Free & Dairy Free Lasagna?

Pamela's Gluten Free Bagels

I'm afraid I'll have to preface this entire bagel nosh extravaganza with an explanation. Maybe even a defensive monologue? At the very least I'll hit the 'publish post' button and scamper for cover, wading through my blanketed bed to nestle between the sheets where the condemnation has no hope of finding me. Because, frankly? I'm fucking busy. And my cash flow situation? Pretty stagnant. So what does this mean - besides lack of quality sleep and and a sorely suffering Spring wardrobe? It means I was in the delightful state of mind to concoct Gluten Free Dairy Free Bagels from Pamela's bread mix. Yeeeehaaaaa.

Gluten Free Chicken Noodle Soup

Before I moved to California I tried to comprehend how it would be even possible to be sick here. Arching blue skies, layered clouds stretching off into the distance, the constant ebb of the ocean, a fresh, smooth air billowing with life. No, no smog here in Santa Monica. But it happens, we have gray days, sometimes the outlines of far off buildings are smudged with haze, maybe even the heavy clouds will oblige us with some rain. And sometimes you get sick. But there's always Gluten Free Chicken Noodle Soup. Or vodka. either one.

Mediterranean Crispy Stir Fry

Okay, you've found me out. My secret is scattered all over the internet. It's true, I'm a squash fiend. And yes, this is yet another recipe including those awkwardly shaped little beauties. But can you blame me? For most of you it's winter out there, bone shattering, muscle cramping cold. I get it, I lived in it for the first 22 years of my life. You want stews, you're craving gravy drowned comfort foods. But it might as well be summer here in ethereal southern California, and my plate begs for a light and tangy mass of noodles and veggies. I just love me some Gluten Free noodles and veggies in a crispy stir fry, it can't be helped.

Homemade Gluten Free Dairy Free Chocolates

Chocolate making is uncontrollably messy and sometimes painful, but isn't that what love is all about? The instantaneous delight which ricochets around the room after opening a box of personalized chocolates is well worth the stained table cloths and sticky-melty-chocolate burns you will potentially endure. If your snugbuddy has spent whole shopping trips sorting through the chocolate aisle trying to find a safe dairy free and gluten free chocolate with a delectable filling with no luck - well you can just go ahead and clear your calendar because there's going to be some love a plenty.

Gluten Free Sweet and Sour Orange Glazed Wings

I don't do sports. And I don't just mean in a strictly no thanks, I'd prefer not to have merciless balls thrown at me in a manner which makes it impossible to defend myself while I run pointlessly in a tiresome circle listening to my teammates groan about my physical ineptitude sort of way.

Gluten Free & Dairy Free Pizza

Hi, my name is Jessica, and I've been off pizza for two and a half years. Grudgingly. Bitterly. Even with the occassional pout. You see, all sorts of restaurants and maufactuerers want to provide a Gluten Free pizza. They know the electrifying hold these sweet little triangles have on us. They know some of us will do anything to sink our teeth into that ooey, gooey - slightly crispy - landscape of yum. But do they ever think to themselves, these white-aproned chefs, that we GF folks might need a Gluten Free, DAIRY FREE version of their tasty little pie? No, I'm saddened to say, rarely. And so, I've gone without, watching others pile into cheesy rounds of delight - GF or not. Until now. And hell, am I making up for it.

Gluten Free Breaded and Grilled Squash and Zucchini

I've always been a vegetable fan. A lover, admirer of vegetables even. Their perky, verdant hues highlighting my plate (always huddled together in their own zone, if there is to be any mixing of food it will be on my terms, deliberately chosen to couple on my fork).  I never understood, as a child, my anticipated role as an enemy of broccoli. Pile it on and pile it on high. Little bit of butter, little swish of salt, please and thank you. "Greenie Beanies", contingents of potato in all size and formation, stack the ears of corn up in my room if you have to, I wanted it all. And then we moved to Utah. To live on a farm. And subsist on vegetables we pulled from the ground. And I met squash. And knew what it was to choke down a vegetable.

Gluten Free Shredded Beef Tacos

I abhor the idea that your meal must be encrusted or sauteed, drizzled or infused with twelve totally obscure ingredients that come in one ounce packages for $21.99 to be considered legitimate or healthy or super fricken awesome. I'm about food. Food I can make with ingredients I have. Food I can cook up when my eyes are heavy and my hair is all out of whack and I've just driven from Torrance to Santa Monica in 35 minutes (No easy feat, I assure you). I'm all over food I can eat while Alex and I perch on floor cusions, taking in the last few episodes of The Wire, Season Two. Sure, every now and then I like to mix it up a little bit, get a little encrusting action going. (Despite the fact that encrust sounds like the very last word I want anywhere near my food. I'm conjuring up a vision of the underside of a 100 year old dock.) But when I want something good? Like "moan with delight" good? Break out the tortillas, it's GF taco night.

Quick Gluten Free Stir Fry

I really debated calling this "Shit, There's Only A Few Shriveled Veggies In The Fridge, What Are We Going To Eat For Dinner" Stir Fry, or maybe "Hell, The Fridge Is Overflowing With Leftovers" Stir Fry. Because, in fact, this is my go-to meal for both of these life conundrums. Case in point? Those succulent, vibrant zucchini slices? They were totally dancing in that shrively, bottom of the "crisper" drawer (does that drawer actually do anything, I ask you?) limbo, cavorting with the last few dregs of wispy lettuce and half-squashed, pruney grape tomato - the Forgotten Roughage. Okay, so maybe I need to clean out my fridge. But whatever your reasons for making a stir fry: crisper challenged refrigerator, Tupperware overflow, a hankering for something RE-diculously quick...let me just tell you, Gluten Free Stir Fry kicks multiple kinds of ass.

Gluten Free Croutons

The following is a dramatic telling of a tale not suitable for the faint of heart. Rest a moment while I regale you with The Tale of Rapid Cycle Gluten Free Bread. And Gluten Free Croutons.