As American as Gluten-Free, Low-Amylose Apple... "Pie"

Ok guys, its a LONG list of ingredients, but it's mostly all the same stuff repeated for the 3 parts. We had a bunch of college students and Rabbis visiting us all weekend for the Chabad on Campus Shabbaton  here in Crown Heights, so (selfishly) I decided to make a treat that I could also enjoy. Lemme know if you have trouble with it or suggestions. I tweaked and the combined three different recipes to make this one, so I'm sure there's more than ample room for improvement... but our guests gobbled this thing up in less than a day. Here ya go....

INGREDIENTS
Crust:
-1/4 cup almond flour
-1/2 cup + 2 TBS coconut flour
- 1/4 tsp sea salt
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- dash of ground nutmeg
- dash of ground ginger
- 1/4 cup coconut oil, melted
- 1/4 cup honey
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp vanilla

Filling:
- 1 cup water
- 1 TBS lemon juice
- 1 cup coconut sugar
- 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp ground clove
- 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
- dash of salt
- 1/4 tsp vanilla
- 3 large apples; cored, peeled and chopped (I used Cortland, because that's what we had in the house)
- 1/4 cup almond flour

Crumble topping:
- 3/4 cup coconut sugar
- 3/4 cup almond OR coconut flour
- 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
- dash of ground cinnamon
- dash of ground ginger
- 1/3 cup Earth Balance, chilled & cut into little pieces

DIRECTIONS
Crust:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees
- Mix crust's dry ingredients
- In a separate bowl, mix crust's wet ingredients
- Combine the two bowls' mixtures
- Wait a couple of minutes to make sure moisture is really absorbed
- Press evenly into the bottom & along the sides of a pie pan
- Gently stab with a fork all over the bottom (don't go TOO crazy)
- Bake for 5-7 mins; make the filling during this time

There's no olive oil in this recipe. That guy's just photo bombing.

Filling:
- Combine the ingredients. Yep, it's that simple.
- Throw it into the partially-baked crust (I added the crumble later in the baking process)
- Bake for about 20 minutes. (I checked it a couple of times to make sure the crust wasn't burning, but you could also put tin foil on the crust.)

With unbaked Crumble Topping

Crumble Topping:
- Mix everything but the Earth Balance together
- Cut in the Earth Balance until combined
- Using your fingers, crumble/break off small chunks and sprinkle on top of the pie.
- Bake an additional 10-20 minutes.

It'll look pretty liquid-y, but it solidifies as it cools.
Hope you enjoy!

Off-the-Wall with Off-White

I'm going to start this off by confessing that we've I've painted parts of our hallway walls at least 5 different colors. It's totally embarrassing. It started with Shakespeare Tan 228 by Benjamin Moore. I thought it'd be a nice beige, but as soon as I got the first bit of paint on the wall I realized that (at least in our sunless hallway) it was way too green. It was like a puke greenish tan. It was terrible. It was my first of many paint-oopsies, and for a few minutes I was too proud to admit it was disgusting, but by the second small wall I knew we couldn't keep it. I actually just recently gave that gallon away on Craigslist. Next we moved on to Smokey Taupe 983, also by our good friend Benny. At the time, my thoughts were that it wasn't "enough of a color". Or maybe it was too cold. I'm not sure, but it didn't make it on to many walls before I gave up on it too. After that, we moved in a new direction-

-no, not those New Directions... but let's take a moment to say RIP to Corey Monteith/Finn. Judging by my fb feed, last night's tribute episode was a tear jerker.

I decided to go blue. Labrador Blue 1670 or CC-740 (I think they're they same but who knows). I loved the color anyway, but then I found out it was the color used in the Dunphy home on Modern Family. Whattup. There was no going back. We actually finished the whole hallway this time. Buuuut it was super bold and dark- not at all like the pale blue it is on the show.... Sad face.

It was around that time that Hubbs and I went on vacation to Acapulco (that's a story for another time) and fell in love with the calm blue-greens that we saw everywhere. We came back and I was on a mission to find the right one. Long story short, it was the precursor to my 50 Shades of Gray shenanigans, and we painted about 100 blue/green/aqua sample in the hallway before choosing Olympic's Sea Sprite C61-2. And then we realized that our hallway has totally different lighting in different parts of it (there's some turns and parts of it get a trickle of light from the windows in the kitchen and living room, while other chunks are tunnel-like and others just get no sunlight whatsoever), so colors look COMPLETELY DIFFERENT in each section. So while Sea Sprite had been perfect over by the living room, our entryway was super duper green.  Ruh Roh!

Here's a photo where you can see the original off-white, the current color (Bird's Egg by BM), and at least two other colors (the greenish sea sprite and darker labrador blue)... what a hot mess:

Which brings us to the point of this post, because that pic also shows what I did last night. All of the trim and everything from the chair rail down plus most of the ceilings in our apartment are off white. All of the walls were off-white too until I painted them 28x each. Off-white is far from terrible. It's not bad at all. It's just boring and kind of makes everything look dirty. NBD, really. But this is me we're talking about. The painting nut. So over the course of about 4-5 hours, I painted it all most of it white. Behr's Ultra Pure White (off the shelf) in semi-gloss, which I'd bought about 2 months ago (and then couldn't find for awhile).

To cut to the point, here are some before, during, and afters...just try to ignore the dustballs and our sad-looking hardwood floors, mmmkay?:

To the right of our front door (when coming into the apartment).

The right-hand turn once you're inside, leading to the breakfast nook (that's our pantry door) and kitchen. This is where I began painting.

The same spot, just painted white. Obviously the next step is to finally cut-in with the blue paint. A step I clearly never got around to. For the past year.

Before and after of the hallway connecting our bedroom, the bathroom, the living room, and the guest room... I'd previously painted the border, but not the inner part, below the chair rail:

This is looking toward our front door; there's usually a West Elm runner here (see the photo below). The left side is partially painted, the right side is done.

My favorite shot. :)

And there we have it. I only had a quart of paint, so I'd like to get another and do a second coat in some places. And paint the baseboard in the breakfast nook. And kitchen And do below the chair rail in the living room. Uhhh yeah we'll see if it takes me another year before any of that happens....

Leo and Kate Approved Chickpea Flatbread

I was going to reuse the blogpost title "Chick-chick-chick It Out" for this, but decided it was too soon. We're only 14 posts in. No, this isn't about chicken. It's about chickpeas. Well, Chickpea flour. Err... garbanzo bean flour. 

You know I've tried almond flour, coconut flour, and now it was time for garbanzo bean flour. There might've been more experimentation too... but that's what comes to mind so far. Chickpea flour is pretty awesome in that it can be used to make... wait for it... Chickpea Flatbread or Pitas. Seriously. Check it out on Pinterest, there's a million (exaggerate much?) pins about "Authentic Italian/Persian/Indian etc Flatbread/Pita/Taco/etc" and there's about 100 different names for them. Trust me, I checked it out. I used this recipe (look there for more detailed instructions! and more gorgeous photos!), but I'll be buying more flour and trying out a few more. 

These are awesome. And there are only 4 ingredients:

- 2.5c Chickpea flour or Garbanzo Bean flour or Gram (all the same thing, AFAIK)

- 3.5c cold water

- 1/4c extra virgin olive oil 

- salt/pepper to taste 

Alright so maybe that's 5 ingredients, but who's counting?

The only bummer is that once you mix the ingredients together (I mixed them all together, but just realized while I was re-reading that original blog post that the oil is supposed to be used later, whoops), you have to let it sit for 3 freaking hours (yep, the length of Titanic) on the counter. I was wary so I covered it with plastic wrap but maybe you don't have to. [Update: Good news, folks! I added in the oil when I did it because I actually followed this recipe with much more concise instructions, not the one I previously linked to! We're trying the same recipe over again right now with that first link's oil trick. I'll let you know if it's any different.]

You should know that since 1997, I've used "How many times you can watch Titanic" as an estimate of how long anything 3 hours or longer will take. I'm totally serious. I don't always say it out loud, but I definitely think it. Especially at work: "Only 3 more Titanic viewings till I can go home!"

pre-salt & pepper

Pre-Titanic

So after you watch Titanic (I guess you could watch 3-4 episodes of Breaking Bad instead... or, like, actually do something productive...), you turn on the oven to 350*, skim off any foam that formed on the surface (yeah, I know), pour the oil into a large, rimmed cookie sheet (which I clearly did not do), and then pour the batter in so it's about 1/4" thick. Then you bake it for about 30 minutes or until golden brown (mine took quite a bit longer but that might be because of my oil mishap). And BAM. Just cut it and serve it up.  

I ate mine with hummus, because pita made of chickpeas just wasn't enough chickpeas. Duh.

I put the rest in Tupperware and it got kind of hard, but maybe if you heat it up it'd get softer? Who knows.... clearly not I. Winning major credibility points here.

(UPDATE #2: The second batch came out crispier along the edges, which were especially yummy. I've already eaten about half of the batch. I'm not sure if adding the olive oil vs. putting it in the pan first made any noticeable difference, but if you happen to experiment with the two methods, lemme know if you liked it better one way or the other...)

My Fitness Lifesaver

You guys. This was maybe my favorite (Jewish month of) Tishrei ever, fun-wise (only competes with Tishrei 2005, really). I got to see tons of old friends, made some new friends, stayed up late with all of the festivities in our neighborhood, and Hubbs was on vacation for all of Sukkos. #winning.

But diet-wise, it was horrendous. I gained 9+lbs in like 3 weeks. Seriously. I really tried to limit my challah intake over Rosh Hashana, but we were eating at friends' houses for all of the festive meals so "being careful" quickly became a lost cause. If I'd really wanted to, I could have made my own food, but c'mon. If you know me at all, you know I have the worst case of FOMO (fear of missing out) ever so I'd just be crying all month that I didn't get to taste so-and-so's chicken pot pie.... or whatever. Those Sukkos cupcakes that we never ended up sharing with anyone weren't going to eat themselves.

So, I cheated. And I cheated. And then I cheated some more. It got more and more out of hand, and by the week of Sukkos I was eating insane ice cream Sundaes and all the rugelach I could get my hands on. My skin broke out, my stomach was having all kinds of issues, and I actually felt gross.

When we got home from visiting friends on Sunday, I stepped on the scale and almost cried when it was more than 9lbs higher than it had been before Tishrei. And I'm human, so I started beating myself up over it a little a lot... But the good(?) news is that even the Husband was feeling disgusting after this month of binge eating, so we made a pact to do a 3 or 4 day juice-and-chicken-soup fast starting Monday morning. And here we are, Wednesday afternoon, still going strong. I'll write more about juicing later. Here's an old instagram pic of our juicer, just for kicks. We aren't using root veggies or anything else not low-amylose approved this week, so ignore the carrots.

My main intention for this post was to say that for me, MyFitnessPal has been a real lifesaver. I got on the scale this morning and saw that I was just shy of 6lbs lighter than I was Sunday morning. And somehow still felt bad about myself. Which is totally unhealthy and I should definitely be in therapy. Anyway, when I went to log it in, my phone's battery was dead and I had to do it on the actual website on the actual computer. I know. The horror. But then! This graphic popped up and it put so much into perspective and really made me see how much this low-amylose diet is really doing for me. Check it out:

That's a graph of my weight fluctuations in the past year, October 2012-October 2013. As you can see, I really started trying to lost weight (again) about a year ago, without much luck. You should know that from October 2012-April 2013 I was literally eating at most 1200 calories a day (except for those very clear binge days). It was so not healthy, and I was miserable, but I didn't know what else to do. April 2013 is when I started Low-Amylose, and while it hasn't exactly been smooth sailing, there's a difference of more than 20 lbs between the highest and lowest points on this graph, and we're less than 4 lbs away from a new lowest point. BOO-YAH!

Moral of the story? Being OCD and charting my weight-loss story finally came in handy and inspirational. And that's what's up.