Honey Glazed Chicken and Red Peppers on Vermicelli

I was having one of those days where putting on pants and going to the grocery store just to make lunch was too much of a hassle, so I looked in my fridge. I knew I wanted to make chicken and vermicelli, so I grabbed the last bit of an old garlic, some leftover red pepper and started work. I got distracted while cooking and wanted to finish off the meal with a splash, and spotted the container of local honey that I had used for my cup of tea. Plopping the honey in the pan was the best idea ever! This meal on a whim turned out wonderfully.

Being such a simple meal, I'll keep it quick and just include some tips:

1. Soak the vermicelli in a bowl until it softens and then transfer it into a hot wok with vegetable broth (Campbell's vegetable broth is the only gluten free one, but it has so much flavour!)
2. Cook the vermicelli until it soaks up all of the broth, and don't forget to stir! Take out of the wok and quickly wipe out all of the noodles for the Chicken step.
3. Heat up some oil in the wok and add sliced chicken breasts. Add some garlic early during the cooking, but don't add the red pepper at the same time. The red pepper will burn if you like to golden your chicken a little.
4. Honey honey honey! Before completely cooking everything, throw in a decent little dollop of honey (I used local honey from my friend Chandler, and it is very fragrant). It will take a second to turn into a liquid, so keep everything moving around in the pan until it's all coated!

Result: happiness for lunch :)

Diagnosis: Celiac Disease (One Year Later)

A month short of living a year with celiac disease, I'm continuing to live on the straight and narrow. I come to you now with gluten free cooking experience, plenty of photography to post, and lots of products and celiac-friendly restaurants to review! :) I'll hope to plunk out the first official gluten free post within a week!

Orange Sponge Cupcakes

(yummm, recommended for all those folk who can eat gluten!)

This post comes from the annals of history. From before I found out I have Celiac Disease, before
I started getting my mood and anxiety in check by eating gluten free, before I started fiddling around with gluten free cooking and (more excitingly) gluten free baking.
So here is an indulgence for me. Gluteny and Delightful Orange Sponge Cupcakes which I took from Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough's "The Ultimate Cook Book" which I still enjoy using. The recipe is actually for a cake, but I really wanted to make something in cupcake form.

Orange Sponge Cake:

- unsalted butter or nonstick spray

- 1 cup flour

- 6 large eggs

- 1/4 tsp. salt

- 1/2 tsp. cream of tar tar

- 1 cup sugar

- 2 Tbsp. orange zest

- 1 Tbsp. thrawed frozen orange juice concentrate

1. Set the oven to 360F and separate the eggs. In one bowl, mix the egg whites and salt on medium and mix until foamy. Then add the cream of tartar, mix on high until your mixers make peaks, just like when you make whipped cream. Yum! Except for don't eat this. I tried. Don't. You can even do this a little closer to the end since my egg whites just sat around for a while.
2. With clean and dry beaters, and a second bowl, beat your egg yolks and sugar until they're nice and oozy. The book states, 'the ribbons [of mixture] will drizzle onto the batter without immediately dissolving back into it' which was a really good gauge. Mix in the orange zest and thawed orange juice concentrate.
3.                                                    (mmmm, really delicious to taste test at this point)
4. Fold in the flour until it had just blended, and now add half of your lonely egg whites to the mixture. Blend these in and then add the second half. Pat yourself on the back for finishing the batter!
5. Now for the fun part. I use a 1/4 measuring cup and scoop cake batter into my baking cups which are placed in my muffin tray. I generally fill the cups all the way to the top so that the end product has a perfect cupcake 'babybump'. I can't remember how long I cooked them for, but I'd say it was around 20 minutes (never forget to do the toothpick test)

In my opinion: Perfection!

Diagnosis: Celiac Disease

Well, I just got a nasty surprise that any food lover just starting a food blog would hate to hear. On February 22, I got a letter from my doctor saying my blood screen for Celiac Disease came back positive. So now I'm on a gluten-free diet, unable to bake my old favourites of poppyseed lemon muffins and banana bread.

And I'm on a quest to continue my food blog. Let's call this motivation to stay on the straight and narrow to avoid gluten.

It'll be a surprise!