Not Coo Coo for Coconut

We keep running in the same problem. Every time we try and replicate a recipe from the 'past', we come up with some alien food that most often ends up in the garbage. The most recent example is our attempt at biscuits and gravy.

First off, we kept seeing recipes that called for make your own 'Bisquick' mix, so we looked up one that we thought we could convert easily. We settled on this one:

http://blessherheartyall.com/one-minute-gluten-free-bisquick-mix

And, of course, because nothing can be that easy, we had to switch the dry milk powder out for dry coconut milk powder. Even cutting the sugar down to 1/4 cup, this biscuit mix ended up making biscuits much too sweet to work with our planned Biscuit and Gravy meal. That, and our sausage gravy made with butter replacement, almond milk and corn starch instead of butter, milk and flour, made the entire meal disappointing.

This meal followed a week filled with dairy-free cheese grilled cheese sandwiches and gluten -free tomato soup and more dairy-free cheese macaroni and cheese. Artificial cheese grilled cheese sandwiches taste like nothing. Seriously. There was absolutely no taste besides greasy bread. The macaroni and cheese did not taste too bad, but it smelled like vomit. This was from a pre-boxed mix that said 'delicious'. I grasp that I am going into this world kicking and screaming, but seriously I understand perfectly why people say gluten-free food tastes awful, because, mostly, it does.

Even tomato soup! Really Campbells, you put wheat into tomato soup? And not just Campbells, everyone! And, if it is not wheat, then the Tomato soups have to be fancy Cream of Tomato and contain milk! The only ONE I have found without wheat or milk is blah, blah, blah! Sigh.

I think what the real problem is that we are trying to recreate tastes instead of just starting over. I have had vegan cheese lasagna that was really good. So, we need to just throw out every thing I need to know about food and begin again. 

I think the first thing we have learned is that pre-packaged foods are a NO GO. If something feels it has to claim it tastes good, that is not a good sign. Next, we need to concentrate more on the fresh ingredients that are so readily available in California. Fruits and vegetables are abundant year round at both grocery stores and farmer's markets.

A couple of years ago, I lost over 60 pounds by completely changing the way our family eats. Sadly, most of the techniques I used included yogurts, skim milk, smoothies and cereals I am  no longer supposed to eat. Replacing skim milk with almond based and coconut based milk is frustrating. High fat, high calorie. Plus, the stress and frustration of figuring out how to make this all work explains all of the new cookie recipes.

What we really need to work on is more smoothie recipes. So far, like everything else, all of the yogurts that we have tried are pretty awful. This week we need to try harder to find better, healthy and tastier recipes. Avoiding coconut flour, which Natalie doesn't like. Actually, she doesn't seem to like anything coconut, flour, yogurt, ice cream, or milk. Or almond flour, which I don't care for, though the milk is fine. Natalie does like the almond flour. Go figure.

I think a trip to Costco is in order, so we can get a couple of bags of frozen berries, which work best for smoothies. And then, we will work out from there.