It's been a pretty good summer so far, all 7 days of it. I've given myself off for the summer and have decided not to take classes. Instead, I've planted a raised-bed garden and have a kitchen full of new gadgets to experiment with. Three of my favorites so far are a bacon press, a cast iron griddle, and a 12-cup mini-bundt cupcake pan. The bacon press makes a wicked grilled cheese.
The mini-bundt cupcake pan lends itself quite well to making the gluten-free menu just a little bit better. I used the Betty Crocker yellow gluten-free cake mix as my base. I normally use the mixer to beat the eggs first so that the cake is lighter. This has proven to make a tastier cake that actually tastes like cake, if you can believe that. The mix is cheaper than the gourmet mixes and doesn't have that crumbly texture that gluten-free cakes often have.
Since we recently found out that my 2 year old niece, KM, has an allergy to eggs, I decided to experiment with the batter just a bit, based on the suggestion from a stranger in the supermarket: use a can of soda. Yup. That's it. She suggested using a can of Coca Cola and the chocolate cake mix. I used Sierra Mist and the yellow mix and baked it up in the mini bundt pans.
Here's what I learned...
- Yellow cake and Sierra (a lemon-lime soda) makes cake, but it's a moist and heavy cake.
- Moist and heavy cake doesn't mean delicious. It does however mean that it's a good base to add things to, since it was pretty bland. Things to add include chocolate chips, nuts, cranberries, poppy seeds and lemon extract, and my favorite, almond paste and almond extract.
- The cupcakes were much better when served warm, with warm, real maple syrup. The dense texture soaked up the syrup and they reheated in the toaster over the next morning for breakfast.
- Microwaving a bit of regular frosting for 10 - 15 seconds and drizzling it on the cakes adds as well.
Overall, the cake mix on its own is good. The eggless version is going to take some tweaking to get it right. I may experiment with some orange soda and some zest. We'll see how that goes...
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Wedding on a budget - Three days later
The wedding went off surprisingly well this weekend and I am now officially married. I'm completely exhausted, but here's how we survived without going into a complete financial hole.
Flowers: They came from the local supermarket floral department. I worked with them just as if they were a legitimate florist. We went with carnations for the bridal party flowers so that the bouquets would withstand the heat. We spent a little under $250 for all of the flowers.
- Cascading bouquet of daisies, carnations, mini carns, ivy, and babies breath (with a blue accent spray)
- 8 red roses and babies breath (for the other ceremony that we did)
- 3 bouquets of carnations with blue accent sprayed babies breath
- 11 white rose boutonnieres
- 4 double white rose wrist corsages
Centerpieces: The centerpieces were all handmade. The local crafts stores have coupons for 40-50% off one regularly priced item, so I signed up for their "shopper club" card and got additional discounts. You can print off as many coupons as you want and rope in a few friends to help you buy the pieces that you need. I bought bunches of silk Gerber daisies and put glass stones in them to weigh down the vases. The vases were from Freecycle. I asked for the vases that come with floral arrangements and I received them in abundance! I then covered them with tulle and tied them with simple satin ribbon.
Photos: Two girlfriends helped with this. One has her MFA and the other is trying to get a photography company off of the ground. The friend with the MFA took the abstracts. The friend with the photography business focused on the other shots. We were thrilled that she agreed to take the pictures - in lieu of a gift, being that we already have two crock pots - and she was thrilled to have a wedding to add to her portfolio. Win-win.
Food: At the reception hall for the small wedding, we went with a buffet. That worked out incredibly well, since one of my peeves about weddings is that there's rarely enough food on the plate. A buffet allows people to take what they want. We also went with a sparkling juice toast instead of a champagne toast. We did this partly because there are several family members who don't or can't drink. In addition to being more cost efficient, it tasted pretty good. I can't remember ever going to a wedding and thinking to myself "Heavens to Mergatroid! This champagne is delicious!" More often than not, the mostly full glass of gross champagne sat on a table until it got cleared or a boozey relative poured it off to drink.
Favors: I've got a personal stash of nice, but useless wedding favors that I've received over the years. Even the personalized seed packets were a bust, since they didn't actually produce any flowers. Since we had two ceremonies, we needed two sets of favors. We used beer steins from the dollar store and we put two blueberry flavored candy sticks (like candy canes sans the hook) in them. The candy sticks were tied with blue ribbon and the steins were put into cloth bags. We gave out playing cards in plastic boxes for the larger wedding. The cards came with personalized stickers that we put on the cases. The cost for the cards came out to 89 cents a piece. I'm still getting messages from people telling me that these were the best favors ever.
Dress: I purchased my dress from David's Bridal. Got it for a really good price since that style was being discontinued. By good price, I mean $150. And make sure you ask them to clean it if it's a floor model. They should clean it for free, no hassle. Make sure they write that the cleaning is free on the receipt...
Headpiece: This was my "something borrowed". My sister was more than glad to lend it to me and it looked absolutely stunning. She purchased it on eBay for a great price. :)
Shoes: Those dyeable shoes are only great if your wedding is on a completely dry day and there's no chance of them coming in contact with water. You can have them dyed down after the wedding, but let's face it... Unless you can find them on sale, they cost the same price as a good pair of regular shoes. I went with a nice pair of white sandals from the Clark's Outlet store by my home. Now I have a pair of comfy sandals that I can wear for some time to come.
That's about all that comes to mind for now. I will say that getting married takes a lot of work. If you're not planning on taking a honeymoon right away, do consider taking a day or two before going back to work. Trust me on this...
Flowers: They came from the local supermarket floral department. I worked with them just as if they were a legitimate florist. We went with carnations for the bridal party flowers so that the bouquets would withstand the heat. We spent a little under $250 for all of the flowers.
- Cascading bouquet of daisies, carnations, mini carns, ivy, and babies breath (with a blue accent spray)
- 8 red roses and babies breath (for the other ceremony that we did)
- 3 bouquets of carnations with blue accent sprayed babies breath
- 11 white rose boutonnieres
- 4 double white rose wrist corsages
Centerpieces: The centerpieces were all handmade. The local crafts stores have coupons for 40-50% off one regularly priced item, so I signed up for their "shopper club" card and got additional discounts. You can print off as many coupons as you want and rope in a few friends to help you buy the pieces that you need. I bought bunches of silk Gerber daisies and put glass stones in them to weigh down the vases. The vases were from Freecycle. I asked for the vases that come with floral arrangements and I received them in abundance! I then covered them with tulle and tied them with simple satin ribbon.
Photos: Two girlfriends helped with this. One has her MFA and the other is trying to get a photography company off of the ground. The friend with the MFA took the abstracts. The friend with the photography business focused on the other shots. We were thrilled that she agreed to take the pictures - in lieu of a gift, being that we already have two crock pots - and she was thrilled to have a wedding to add to her portfolio. Win-win.
Food: At the reception hall for the small wedding, we went with a buffet. That worked out incredibly well, since one of my peeves about weddings is that there's rarely enough food on the plate. A buffet allows people to take what they want. We also went with a sparkling juice toast instead of a champagne toast. We did this partly because there are several family members who don't or can't drink. In addition to being more cost efficient, it tasted pretty good. I can't remember ever going to a wedding and thinking to myself "Heavens to Mergatroid! This champagne is delicious!" More often than not, the mostly full glass of gross champagne sat on a table until it got cleared or a boozey relative poured it off to drink.
Favors: I've got a personal stash of nice, but useless wedding favors that I've received over the years. Even the personalized seed packets were a bust, since they didn't actually produce any flowers. Since we had two ceremonies, we needed two sets of favors. We used beer steins from the dollar store and we put two blueberry flavored candy sticks (like candy canes sans the hook) in them. The candy sticks were tied with blue ribbon and the steins were put into cloth bags. We gave out playing cards in plastic boxes for the larger wedding. The cards came with personalized stickers that we put on the cases. The cost for the cards came out to 89 cents a piece. I'm still getting messages from people telling me that these were the best favors ever.
Dress: I purchased my dress from David's Bridal. Got it for a really good price since that style was being discontinued. By good price, I mean $150. And make sure you ask them to clean it if it's a floor model. They should clean it for free, no hassle. Make sure they write that the cleaning is free on the receipt...
Headpiece: This was my "something borrowed". My sister was more than glad to lend it to me and it looked absolutely stunning. She purchased it on eBay for a great price. :)
Shoes: Those dyeable shoes are only great if your wedding is on a completely dry day and there's no chance of them coming in contact with water. You can have them dyed down after the wedding, but let's face it... Unless you can find them on sale, they cost the same price as a good pair of regular shoes. I went with a nice pair of white sandals from the Clark's Outlet store by my home. Now I have a pair of comfy sandals that I can wear for some time to come.
That's about all that comes to mind for now. I will say that getting married takes a lot of work. If you're not planning on taking a honeymoon right away, do consider taking a day or two before going back to work. Trust me on this...
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Gluten-free friendly wedding on a shoestring budget...
I've been meaning to start this sooner rather than later, but I'm getting married in less than 4 days and well, some things take priority. I finally have a few minutes to sit down, breathe, and wait to do all of tomorrow's tasks tomorrow, including a bit of gluten-free (GF) cooking for Saturday's extravaganza. The constant thinking about cooking is what finally motivated me to start blogging. That and I'm just too tired to do any more wedding prep work.
The Fi (that's his name for the next 4 days) and I are in our mid-thirties and are paying for most of the wedding on our own. Our families are helping where they can, so we decided that the most cost-effective way for us to celebrate our special day with what we had was to have a very small wedding, for family, at one of the local restaurants. After the small wedding, we're having a BBQ, affectionately dubbed "The B*tchin' Kegger", because we're classy like that. (It was initially the "Han Solo-Cup wedding" being that we're both somewhat nerdy, but "The B*tchin' Kegger Wedding" just flowed better.) Since it's a BBQ and we're on a budget, I've taken to doing some of the cooking and recruiting volunteers where I can. Sunday can't get here fast enough.
With so many people coming out of the gluten-free closet in recent days, I wanted to make sure that everyone had something to eat at both weddings. While I've never had a true positive for Celiac Sprue on a blood test, I've been wheat-free for the last 11 years, by choice, and have noticed a multitude of benefits. I can tell you that wheat and I have exchanged some pretty harsh words and are no longer on speaking terms. I'll get more into that in a later post though.
I'm not a fan of Elizabeth Hasselback, but I'm thankful for her popularity and for making gluten-free "the new black". The restaurant part was easy. The Kegger? Well, so far, it looks good on paper.
Here are a few tips / ideas for not completely losing your sanity if you're trying to plan a GF event, like... say... a wedding.
If you're doing in on your own...
1) Determine if you're going 100% GF or if you can just have a separate GF table. We opted for what was behind door number 2. A separate table is probably going to be cheaper, will prevent cross contamination of utensils, if that's a concern, and will allow you to have a "safe" place for other dietary preferences, like vegetarianism. A lot of vegetarian options are also GF, which is a huge help. Go team!
2) Figure out what you normally eat. Use that as a baseline so that you don't go crazy and can eat the leftovers. We eat a lot of poultry, so we went with chicken and a GF marinade. The Fi's content with 100% beef burgers, which if they only contain beef and no fillers, should, in theory be GF. Read the label though.
3) Use your RSVP cards to help determine how much food you'll need. Our cards had checkboxes for food preferences such as "Gluten-free", "Vegetarian", "None", and "Other". If you've got a funny group of friends, you'll probably get some good write-ins back in the mail as well. (I think "Whiskey and BACON" is my favorite so far.)
4) Shop around. Use the shopper club cards, clip coupons. Buy in advance. Check with managers in the various departments in the supermarkets. Most stores change their sales on Sundays and know what the sale prices are going to be the following week. Ask about sales. I was at a local grocery store last Saturday. The woman in the meat department told me to come back the next day, because the turkey I was going to buy was going to be 40% off. Do your homework and check the circulars too. The name brand soda was on sale two weeks ago and cost 15 less per can than the store brand. It might not seem like much at first, but I needed Thirty-two 12-packs of soda. (The normal price for the name brand 12-pack was 5.19 per pack. The sale price was 2.50.)
5) If you're serving booze and are new to GF living, the brewing process for many of the beers involves wheat or some other gluteny grain. Get a keg of regular stuff for most of your guests. They won't mind if they're not GF and kegs are usually less expensive than bottles or cans. Do your research for GF stuff. It exists. Some of what's available might surprise you. Woodchuck hard cider should be labeled GF. If you throw in some syrup from a jar of maraschino cherries (or Ribena, if you know what that is) it makes life even better.
6) Recruit friends and family to help. Borrow freezer space, get hands to help prepare food. Accept food or services as gifts. My friends know that we're on a tight budget and so we asked them for suggestions. One friend asked me if she could make me a GF wedding cake and if that could be her gift. I was thrilled. Another friend is making trays of GF / veg rice and beans. Another, pulled pork. A fourth friend is making GF potato salad. Another friend is taking pictures, and another helped The Fi to cast our wedding rings. (We were super lucky with that last one.) The list goes on. You just need to ask people for help / suggestions. And if you're not going 100% GF, let aunt Martha make her macaroni salad. Just make sure the GF stuff is labeled as such for the GF people.
If you're using an outside facility...
The Fi (that's his name for the next 4 days) and I are in our mid-thirties and are paying for most of the wedding on our own. Our families are helping where they can, so we decided that the most cost-effective way for us to celebrate our special day with what we had was to have a very small wedding, for family, at one of the local restaurants. After the small wedding, we're having a BBQ, affectionately dubbed "The B*tchin' Kegger", because we're classy like that. (It was initially the "Han Solo-Cup wedding" being that we're both somewhat nerdy, but "The B*tchin' Kegger Wedding" just flowed better.) Since it's a BBQ and we're on a budget, I've taken to doing some of the cooking and recruiting volunteers where I can. Sunday can't get here fast enough.
With so many people coming out of the gluten-free closet in recent days, I wanted to make sure that everyone had something to eat at both weddings. While I've never had a true positive for Celiac Sprue on a blood test, I've been wheat-free for the last 11 years, by choice, and have noticed a multitude of benefits. I can tell you that wheat and I have exchanged some pretty harsh words and are no longer on speaking terms. I'll get more into that in a later post though.
I'm not a fan of Elizabeth Hasselback, but I'm thankful for her popularity and for making gluten-free "the new black". The restaurant part was easy. The Kegger? Well, so far, it looks good on paper.
Here are a few tips / ideas for not completely losing your sanity if you're trying to plan a GF event, like... say... a wedding.
If you're doing in on your own...
1) Determine if you're going 100% GF or if you can just have a separate GF table. We opted for what was behind door number 2. A separate table is probably going to be cheaper, will prevent cross contamination of utensils, if that's a concern, and will allow you to have a "safe" place for other dietary preferences, like vegetarianism. A lot of vegetarian options are also GF, which is a huge help. Go team!
2) Figure out what you normally eat. Use that as a baseline so that you don't go crazy and can eat the leftovers. We eat a lot of poultry, so we went with chicken and a GF marinade. The Fi's content with 100% beef burgers, which if they only contain beef and no fillers, should, in theory be GF. Read the label though.
3) Use your RSVP cards to help determine how much food you'll need. Our cards had checkboxes for food preferences such as "Gluten-free", "Vegetarian", "None", and "Other". If you've got a funny group of friends, you'll probably get some good write-ins back in the mail as well. (I think "Whiskey and BACON" is my favorite so far.)
4) Shop around. Use the shopper club cards, clip coupons. Buy in advance. Check with managers in the various departments in the supermarkets. Most stores change their sales on Sundays and know what the sale prices are going to be the following week. Ask about sales. I was at a local grocery store last Saturday. The woman in the meat department told me to come back the next day, because the turkey I was going to buy was going to be 40% off. Do your homework and check the circulars too. The name brand soda was on sale two weeks ago and cost 15 less per can than the store brand. It might not seem like much at first, but I needed Thirty-two 12-packs of soda. (The normal price for the name brand 12-pack was 5.19 per pack. The sale price was 2.50.)
5) If you're serving booze and are new to GF living, the brewing process for many of the beers involves wheat or some other gluteny grain. Get a keg of regular stuff for most of your guests. They won't mind if they're not GF and kegs are usually less expensive than bottles or cans. Do your research for GF stuff. It exists. Some of what's available might surprise you. Woodchuck hard cider should be labeled GF. If you throw in some syrup from a jar of maraschino cherries (or Ribena, if you know what that is) it makes life even better.
6) Recruit friends and family to help. Borrow freezer space, get hands to help prepare food. Accept food or services as gifts. My friends know that we're on a tight budget and so we asked them for suggestions. One friend asked me if she could make me a GF wedding cake and if that could be her gift. I was thrilled. Another friend is making trays of GF / veg rice and beans. Another, pulled pork. A fourth friend is making GF potato salad. Another friend is taking pictures, and another helped The Fi to cast our wedding rings. (We were super lucky with that last one.) The list goes on. You just need to ask people for help / suggestions. And if you're not going 100% GF, let aunt Martha make her macaroni salad. Just make sure the GF stuff is labeled as such for the GF people.
If you're using an outside facility...
1) Talk to the catering people. Don't be afraid to share your GF recipes with them. People are only just now starting to learn what this stuff is all about. Show them that it's doable and is so much more than quinoa with lemon juice.
2) Explain to them what your needs are, but don't go overboard. If you have one GF dish that you know you can eat, that's fine. Remember, this is one day. Don't be a pain in the butt. Appreciate that people are trying to help. Keep the menu reasonable.
And most importantly, remember to breathe.
(Gluten-free wedding menu to follow...)
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