Here's the thing though; I'm not very inventive. I don't come up with original recipes. What I do is find a recipe (or several) on the web, or from a cookbook, and then I mess with it to make it work for me. Due to a number of food allergies, intolerances, and dislikes, most recipes need messing with to make it something I want to eat.
I'm also autistic, with sensitive taste buds, and you may find that some of my recipes are too bland for you. Hey, mess with them! That's what I did!
All my blog posts will come with a google docs download for the recipe that will give you as short and simple directions as I could manage (I have a brevity deficit, some will laughingly tell you).
So, what do I aim for when I'm messing with a recipe? Several things, which I will list, but none of them is "the most important." I'm just listing them in the order I think of them.
- Lactose-free (I'm lactose intolerant. I will use things like whey protein isolate that come from milk but no longer have lactose in them, so my recipes aren't necessarily "dairy-free" for those of you with actual milk allergies.)
- Lower in calories. No, I'm not trying to lose weight (or gain it). But if I can lower the calories, I can eat more of it, and then I'm hungry less. I like being hungry less.
- Lower glycemic index. This goes along with the previous comment. The faster the sugar in a food hits your insulin system, the faster you get hungry again. I don't like being hungry. But no, sorry, I doubt most of these recipes would be suitable for an actual diabetic. It does mean that I like whole wheat flour and oat flour and oats and raw sugar (vs white sugar), etc.
- Low sodium. I don't have heart disease. Yet. It gallops in my family history, though, and I'm sure it'll catch up with me. So it doesn't hurt to reduce the sodium I'm eating. I don't mind the salt substitute KCl so I use that in baking a lot. If you do mind it, or you don't care about sodium, feel free to simply use table salt wherever I say KCl (or potassium chloride, same thing).
- Tastes good. I don't like the way artificial sweeteners taste; stevia and monk fruit and sucralose (splenda) all have a bitter flavor. So you won't find artificial sweeteners lowering the calories here; everything's natural and ordinary.
- Avoiding my food allergies So ... no vinegar (or very, very little, and no apple cider vinegar at all); no chicken (yes, I'm allergic to it, astonishingly enough), no soft cheeses like ricotta or feta, no onions (unless they've been cooked to mush), um, you know, I can't actually keep track of them anymore. I just know them if I look at ingredients and go, nope, can't do that one, let's see what I can substitute.
- Avoiding my food dislikes There are things I'm not allergic to that I simply don't like. Most vegetables fall into this category, unfortunately. So does most fish.
- Making things simple to cook Yeah, I know, all that came before doesn't sound like it! But I get tired easily, and I don't particularly want a recipe that requires a lot of baby sitting, slaving over a hot stove, making all kinds of bits and pieces that then go together, etc. I like one-pot recipes (or one-mixing-bowl); I will grudgingly use two if I have to. I like things that are quick to put together.
- Low noise level Remember the bit about me being autistic? I don't like a lot of noise, and I have to put up with a lot at work, so at home, there's hardly any automatic kitchen equipment. Of course, the first recipe I'm posting violates that by using a coffee grinder (I don't drink coffee ...) but I don't even own a food processor and for the most part, everything can be done by hand. Except that first recipe.
As you can see, all my requirements almost demand that I mess with other people's recipes. I'll give them a link-back credit if I still know where it comes from, but don't be surprised if mine is drastically different once I got done with it!
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