In My Gluten-Free Kitchen With Ellen the Gluten Free Diva

 

When Wendy asked me to join her “In My Gluten-Free Kitchen” series, I was really excited to have the opportunity to share my gluten free kitchen with you. After reading the other shared gluten free kitchen posts in Wendy’s Celiacs in the House series, I was even more excited. Have you read them yet? They’re all so interesting, and so different. I’m delighted to be in such good and creative company.

My kitchen is definitely the room in my house in which I’m the happiest. Oh, I love exercising in my newly created fitness studio (sounds fancier then it is…it’s a TV room turned fitness room!) and I love spending time reading and sleeping in my bedroom and I love playing the piano in my living room, but I REALLY love hanging out in my kitchen.

In 2004, after a six month remodeling project, my kitchen was ready to be cooked in. During the planning phase, I worked diligently at determining every single aspect of the place I knew I’d be spending a lot of time in, down to the number of steps I wanted to take from the refrigerator to the sink or prep area. I knew exactly what I wanted each drawer to hold. From a working kitchen standpoint, I love the flow of my kitchen. Everything was perfectly placed, just as I had planned.

At the time the kitchen was finished, I didn’t yet know how much time I’d actually be spending in it. That wouldn’t happen for another almost two years. You see, in late 2005 I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease. It was then that I began converting the space into a totally gluten free kitchen. And while I’d spent many happy hours in it between 2004 – 2006, the amount of time would increase significantly once I began cooking most of my gluten free meals at home.

So, come on in. Pull up a chair and allow me to share my kitchen and some of the kitchen “toys” that get the most use during my daily culinary escapades.

One of the things I love about the kitchen is the warm wood that was used for the cabinetry. It’s called Alder wood and it’s the same wood that is used to make guitars. Being a musician, I thought that was kind cool. Here’s a picture of some of the cabinets:

In this picture, you can also see some of my ever-growing cookbook collection, the radio that plays NPR while I cook and bake, and my Cuisinart toaster/bake oven which serves as a toaster and as an important second oven when needed.

One of the workhorses in my kitchen is my Viking 6 burner gas stove. This stove kicks major gluten free butt. I remember the first time I broiled fresh salmon in it. I was in shock. It tasted like something you’d get in a 5 star seafood restaurant on Cape Cod. I knew it was a good recipe, but full credit went completely to the broiler. Amazing!

To the left of the Viking oven is my Sharp microwave convection oven, also used many times a day. Originally, I wasn’t thrilled about placing it below countertop level, but as it turns out, I’m very happy with where it is. Sitting on the stove is my Lodge cast iron pan which is my go-to pan for sautéing everything. I leave it on top of the stove because I use it just about every day.

Also, on top of the stove, sitting forever on a back burner when not in use, is my Kuhn Rikon pressure cooker. I can tell you this…it ain’t like the pressure cooker your grandmother owned. The newer models have built in mechanisms that prevent them from exploding. This baby makes brown rice in record time. After you bring the rice and water up to pressure, which takes about 5 – 10 minutes, you cook under high pressure for 15 minutes and you have perfect brown rice in under a half hour. You can’t beat it! I also make every manner of soup and beans and homemade vegetable stock in it. It gets a workout, for sure.

Over in the corner is my Soda Stream seltzer maker. This nice Jewish girl grew up in a New Jersey house that was never without kosher pickles and seltzer. We used to have the bubbly stuff delivered by the “seltzer man” and it came in those cool blue and green glass bottles. Always cold and very fizzy. Now, instead of bringing home bottle after bottle from the grocery store, I make it fresh every day. Bubbly and fizzy and refreshing. By making seltzer at home, I save money plus I’m no longer lugging home bottles of seltzer from the grocery store AND it gets kudos because guests are always amused by the spitting sound it makes when the gas gets injected into the water to make the seltzer.

I am drawn, for reasons unknown to me, to a particular sweet curly cue symbol. I don’t know its’ significance, but needless to say I was tickled when I found a metal tile with this symbol on it, and was able to incorporate it into the neutral tile backsplash. If you squint, you can see this curly cue symbol in the tile backsplash that overlooks my oven. The curly cue can also be seen all over the backsplash throughout the rest of the kitchen on individual tiles.

Let me introduce you to my Vitamix blender. It was an expensive splurge, but I use this every single day, primarily to make my mid afternoon daily smoothie. Banana Jamma Smoothie, Chocolate Cookie Dough Smoothie, Banana Cocoa Smoothie, Berry Green Smoothie, Green Smoothie, Triple Berry Smoothie, Chocolate Banana Almond Butter Smoothie, and the list continues. I ordered a small grain jar for my Vitamix which I use to grind/blend my own rice flour, quinoa flour, and millet flour. Worth every penny. Not too long ago, I made a recipe that called for millet flour and I had none left in my pantry, so I pulled out some millet grain and in about two seconds, I had fresh millet flour. Gotta love it!

In the next sort of messy picture, you can see my Excalibur dehydrator, which sits in this window nook along with some of my thrift store goodies that tend to live here until they make it to their final storage location. Did I forget to mention that I’m a thrift store junkie? There must be a 12 step program for me. I’m hooked, totally. I’ve scored some major finds at our local Goodwill and Salvation Army. For example, four yogurt makers, all in perfect working condition. I know, four seems excessive, but as part of my work as a soon-to-be Certified Health & Wellness coach, (I’m a student at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition – if you have any questions or might be interested in attending, please email me at ellen at glutenfreediva dot com, as I’m an ambassador and I’d love to share my experience with you.) I plan to teach cooking classes in my home, so I want to have a few of these for my students to use. My thrift store finds include my numerous crockpots, a Spiralizer (which makes really funky spaghetti-like noodles out of zucchini and other veggies), a French cast iron dutch oven, a Pampered Chef chopper (LOVE THIS!!!). And more. Fun!!!

Next in line is my Zojirushi Bread Machine. I love love love this machine. If you know how to “tend” the dough, it produces a fine looking and delicious loaf of gluten free bread. By tend, what I mean is this….while it’s kneading, I use a wet spatula to sort of wipe down the dough from the sides of the pan AND at the end of the kneading cycle, before it begins to rise, I take that same wet spatula and flatten out the top of the dough. That’s how I get a perfect looking baked gluten free bread. My favorite mix to use in this machine is any mix by Breads From Anna. Her mixes simply are the best in the gluten free world. Hands down. When I’m in the mood to tinker and make my gluten free bread in my bread machine, completely from scratch, I might make this recipe for Multi-Grain Gluten Free Homestyle Bread.

I count my blessings each and every day for my glorious kitchen with extra special thank you’s for my pantry. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I am so fortunate to have this storage space. The shelves are too deep but I solved that by buying a bunch of metal and wicker baskets that I can easily slide in and out of the shelves.

Here is my non-refrigerated collection of gluten free flours, labeled as only an obsessive compulsive labeler will do. I need to get one of those slidey baskets for these, as I tend to have to juggle and move when I need any of the containers not directly in front of this shelf. I’m not complaining, trust me.

 

I also have a small refrigerator in the pantry. This holds my collection of gluten free flours that need to be kept refrigerated. Plus extra eggs, dates, etc. Comes in super handy when I have company over for meals. Behind it, attached to the wall, is a pretty, decorative metal rack that holds extra bottles of oil and vinegar. And I use the top of this frig to store jars of craisins, a big container of rolled oats, and a few other things.

On the higher shelves, I keep appliances that I use infrequently and some other assorted things like cake and bread mixes that don’t fit anywhere else. You can also see a dark jar with a yellow cap – it’s one of about 12 empty clean bottles that contained Kombucha. Another of my addictions. I decided to start saving the bottles and I’m going to fill them with my own homemade Kombucha using starter I bought from Cultures for Health.

I ordered this custom-made spice wall rack from a fellow on eBay. It is perfect for my collection of herbs and spices. I do a lot of ethnic cuisine cooking and thus have a pretty large collection of dried herbs and spices.

And last but not least is a picture of the closet in my pantry. Still needs some organizational work, but I know where everything is.

One of the benefits of writing this post for Wendy’s series is that I cleaned my kitchen! Though you wouldn’t know it by looking at the dish drain to the right of my sink. You can also see, on the right of the picture, my Champion juicer. I use this at least 5 days a week to make my super nutritional powerhouse green juice consisting of romaine lettuce, kale or collards or baby spinach, cucumber, celery, carrot, ginger, apple and pear.

This picture shows my stacked dishwasher drawers. I probably only needed one of them, as I only use the top one unless I have a lot of company. But who knew? And you can see my large cutting board overhanging the countertop, with a loaf of Gluten Free Ryeless Rye that I turned into crispy, garlic croutons.

Just to the left of the dish drawers is a peninsula where I do some of my prep work. You can’t see it, but there are two blue stools underneath the overhang on the far side of the peninsula – this is where daily meals take place. Just the other morning, I could be found sitting on one of these stools eating Gluten Free (and Dairy Free and Egg Free) Waffles. And then there’s my recipe for Four Grain Hot & Savory Breakfast Cereal. And if there are more than two people, I pull up the two additional blue stools that are flanking either side of the industrial shelf on the far wall.

This is a picture of the industrial shelf unit on the far end wall of my kitchen. I keep my cast iron and stoneware pots on one shelf, I store some of my ever-bulging cookbook collection on another shelf. Then there are baskets and napkins (I gave up paper napkins a few years ago) and my two Kitchen Aid stand mixers (one was a gift and I won the second one in a contest!) and my wok (hanging off the side) and a few other odds and ends.

So, there you have it. A tour of my gluten free kitchen. Thank you so much to Wendy of Celiacs in the House for inviting me to take part in this “In My Gluten-Free Kitchen” series.  If you’re interested in reading about the others who took part in this series, click here. And thank you for stopping by. Next time, stay for dinner, won’t you?!?