Buona Epifana e Befana! with regular and gluten free options

La Befana, courtesy of JD Adams

After my last couple columns talking about Christmas, I had an offline conversation with another Italian gal about a curious custom in Italy to celebrate the Epiphany on January 6, 12 days after Christmas. As she explained, first La Befana was a witch, just giving children sweet coal if they were naughty and toys and treats if they were good. But then it was taken over by the Christians, and so La Befana, the good witch, became a part of Christ's Epiphany story. 

(Sweet coal from Flagranta delicia, a unique Epihany treat for the naughty. Gluten free naturally, here's her recipe.)

As such things go, there became a whole event around the introduction of La Befana to the story. She was supposed to be part of the 3 wise men group. She was too busy doing her housework to go, so she told them she would catch them later with the new infant Christ and steered them in the direction to go. Only they went back another way, and they missed her. D'oh! So she spreads her gifts and sweets around to good children (and sweet coal to the bad), hoping to find the Christ child she missed seeing the first time. What I love about this story is that it embodies what the world thought the Italian woman was like. Hardworking. Bossy in a way only a Nonna could be. Generous to a fault. And spreading around tons and tons of sweets! 

Invariably at this point when I start talking about this people at the table go off about one of three things:

1. "You hate Christians, don't you?" No, I just happen to be honest about my family's religious choice. In fact, I rather think the early church leaders were models of efficiency - why not take advantage of already planned festivities and use them to further the goals of the religion?

2. "Why the heck do we need another holiday?" and 3. "Isn't Christmas enough? I don't understand".Well, actually, there's really a smart reasoning to the pair of holidays...

What the problem is that with recycling holidays and adding local legends into them is that invariably, some parts of the tale get mish moshed around. Where most nativity sets include the three wise men, the actuality was that the three wise men didn't arrive until the twelfth night, where Christ was proclaimed him as the son of God. So you can see where people get confused - there really is two separate holidays, one the birth of Christ and the second his proclamation, called the Epiphany. Whether you choose to celebrate them or not, I think they are actually quite effective as a pair, and here's why: 

(a very close relative to Pinza Veneta, from Wikipedia)

In Italy, as I've mentioned, there's the feast of the seven fishes on Christmas, with lots of Christmas sweets. Nougat. Candied fruits. Pandoro. Panettone. Etc. Etc. Etc. It can quite frankly be overwhelming and there can be oodles of food leftover. In the spirit of La Befana, the efficient cleaning housewitch, Epiphany is the time to reuse those leftovers and make them into something new. Pinza Veneta is a good example of that. Old bread lying around? Extra candied fruit? Ground too much corn meal for polenta? Throw that puppy together and make it a sweet new dessert so the kiddos don't get tired of eating it. You can make it with regular bread and flour and even throw some grappa in there for good measure (here's the recipe, scroll down for the English version) but you can also just as easily make this a gluten free delicacy. Alessia Piva's gluten free version is in Italian but if you can't read in the Italian, it translates very well with Google Translate (surprisingly!). So you see - you can overindulge in baking at Christmas, and have a neat holiday with which one can clean up the larder. And the cool part about Epiphany? People go from house to house, helping you clean up your leftovers! It's like an impromptu progressive dinner, without all the organizational pains.

Now, my family lived hundreds of miles away from my Italian grandfather, so I don't know for sure if they ever celebrated this or not (I really need to talk to my aunts and father about that!). But I like to think that my grandfather would totally approve of this holiday, because he was a "waste not, want not" kind of guy. Extra pie filling? Make fruit pancakes the next day. Random mechanical gadget? Weld it to a base and we have a rotating Christmas tree stand. My grandparents' garage was a garden of interesting mechanical and wooden things that my brother and I would sneak into during the summer to find interesting things to play with (and some things that we probably shouldn't have, like Jarts, but we survived, all limbs intact). My sort-of-Irish grandmother loved Christmas and kept it up until mid-January, so they just as easily could have had a nice dinner with the nativity sets and Christmas lights. 

Isn't that a great picture? That's my grandparents from 26 December 1984, in the Lake Orion Review. You can read the full article on page 24 of the edition in iDigOrion, which is like, the best thing ever for Lake Orion researchers! In fact, their Christmas display got even larger after that, with dozens of people visiting and my grandfather starting to put up Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving.

St. Joseph's Day - advice for Sfince di San Giuseppe for gluten free folks and a bit of history

This my friends, is a sfinge (sfince in Italiano). Flickr user Howard Wallfish shows off the colors of it nicely here, with the ricotta, orange peel, and cherry. 

My family was not exceptionally into the Italian feast holidays. I suspect is has to do with the fact that the US was not a friendly place for Italians during the WWII era and many Italian Americans outside the major strongholds like Brooklyn decided it was better to fit in and provide a good life for their children than stick with feasts and other events. 

St. Joseph's day, however, has always been a special thing for me. I always try to wear green for my grandmother on March 17 for St. Patrick and red on March 19 for my grandfather. They were always so close to each other, it only seems fitting that their respective races have their major holidays only two days apart. Even when I was 16 hours away from my extended family, it was my little way of putting a connection back together. 

Most Italian American families have traditions that go back to the Middle Ages. When there were famines in Italy, especially in Southern Italy, the poor families relied on their faith to keep going. St. Joseph is the protector of the Holy Family (for those of you non-Christians out there that's the baby Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and himself). So the people would pray to him to end the famine, and they would celebrate when the famine ended by celebrating and making offerings with fish, with bread, and for dessert, sfingi, using the best of the foods that were preserved for use (waste not, want not). The candied orange peel would traditionally be the last bit of the oranges that were preserved over the winter to prevent scurvy, the cherries, soaked in alcohol to preserve them, and the ricotta, the last of the whey left over from making cheese from sheep, cow, goat, or Italian water buffalo milk.   

Now before we get into the advice about gluten free sfinge, a word.

Sfinge is NOT Zeppole. Those of you who don't like ricotta filling can just suck it. Even the bakers admit they only make zeppole for St. Joseph's Day because they have to for pitiful American palates. If you're going to gorge on this many calories, you should go for the real thing. There, now that is out of my system...

The question becomes after that, what do you do if you're gluten free, and like most Italian-Americans, making food for the St. Joseph's Day feast? 

Let's start with these:

Nichole from Gluten Free on a Shoestring has an amazing recipe for creme puffs that would give you the base recipe that you need in order to make the dough for real Sfinge. If you were being 100% traditional, you would want to fry them, but I think they're at least a little healthier if you bake them. 

Then, the next step would be filling. Let's go back to the traditional filling: ricotta, chocolate, sugar, grated or candied orange peel, and crème de cacao (though I think you can do w/o it). There you go! Gluten free Sfingi di San Giuseppe. 

If you want to admire some gorgeous Sfinge di San Giuseppe, you need to check out the blog at Pane, Burro e Marmellata.

Io Sono Celiaco (I am Celiac) - Italian food in the celiac world

People freak out about Italian food when they first get the diagnosis. OMG! No more spaghetti and meatballs? No more fried chicken parmigiana? No more macaroni?

Sigh.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Further, a real Italian would scream at them! That's only one part of Italian cuisine - its not ALL Italian! In fact, many of these foods are actually Americanizations of originally Italian dishes. Donna R. Gabaccia wrote a great article about Pizza, Pasta, and Red Sauce way back in 2006 that you should read. No really, I'll wait. Macaroni and cheese, that American staple, is actually from England-by-way-of-France so it will be saved for another day.

I've had this draft sitting in my blogger inbox for over a year, and I thought it time it see the light of day. Part of 30 days of gratitude has been rekindling my writing on a regular basis.

What I am grateful for is that there are people in the overall food community who have made gluten free food mainstream. Its not uncommon to see gluten free food in Epicurious, Pioneer Woman, Martha Stewart, Food Network, Williams Sonoma, Food52, Allrecipes, and the other big foodie sites - sometimes purposely and sometimes because they get back to what the dish was meant to be without all those gluteny additives. These folks really do help those of us with a major allergy eat, drink, and be merry with the best of them!

Here's a list of recipes that are in my rotation and are Italian without all that crazy gluten in them. And I didn't even scratch the surface - I didn't even add any of my family's own recipes in! Perhaps for a future column. I may keep adding to this list as I find more and republish as I go, too.

Chicken Parmesan

Polenta

Farinata Genovese

Wedding Soup Italian wedding soup is likely a mistranslation of the original word for it, but its still a really good soup!

Stuffed Mushrooms

Chicken Puttanesca

Meatballs

Gnocchi

Chicken Saltimbocca

Chicken Marsala

Mushroom Risotto

Risotto Primavera

Roasted Branzino with Fennel and Lemon

Cioppino

Herbed Spaghetti Squash

Crispy Prosciutto Bites

Cannelloni Bean Soup with Escarole and Italian Sausage

Ricotta Fritters

Snapper with Bruschetta / Italian Style Salsa

Italian Beef Sandwiches (American Italian, but I live in Chicago, so I can't do an Italian column without it)

Strawberry Gelato

Granitas

Italian Cheesecake

Ricotta Marscapone Mousse with Balsamic Strawberries

Strawberry & Marscapone Budini *note: see the next recipe for the cookies to use!

Amaretti Hard to find store bought and oh-so-tasty!

Zabiglione

Panna Cotta

Piccolo Affogato al Caffe

Figs with Goat Cheese and Prosciutto 

Gluten Free, Vegan Tiramisu

Gluten Free Regular Tiramisu

[Side note: this post was written back in 2012! Goodness. I polished off the rest of it 11/6/13 at 8:00 pm. I hope you like the recipes!]

Snakes, Tacos, and Crafting

I haven't posted here for about a month, so I wanted to assure everyone that I am

a)still alive
b)still crafting
c)still interested in blogging.

:-D

However, my time isn't always as well planned as it should be and I forget to make the posts that I had wanted to make. However, I am hoping that will change with the advent of planned blogging.

Its a concept I read on another person's blog (yes, I do read many blogs, usually via email since I can always download my email and read it offline). Instead of blogging "when you think about it", you set up a series of blogs in one day, and delay their posting until they meet set intervals. Interesting concept...

Then when you want to blog, you can also post "whenever", but once a month you plan the programming for the next month. That's where the word "genius" comes to mind!

So I'll try that in February. We'll see how it goes :-)

But back to the topic at hand....



Doesn't that look like what a glamorous Sea Snake should look like? Its a wonderful pattern by Nancy Nagle of Nangelli.com called "Delicious Diamond".

If you're interested, its a free Ravelry download, too. I found it to be quite fun to work and really worked to the advantage of the short fur style yarn.



Doesn't that look good? Sarahpark on Ravelry wrote up this nifty recipe which included those AND a pattern for a cast iron skillet pot handle.



Isn't that cute? It kind of reminds me of a fish, but it also makes Shawn happy and keeps his hand cool while cooking. A very fun test crochet project - I highly encourage you to to try it when she releases the pattern!

I've been working on some other things, but I'll save some stuff for this weekend to post.

Cooking

Hi all!

I've been doing a bit of cooking lately. Here and there, a bit now and then. Nothing too fancy. I love making soup - adding lots of different things together to make such a great comfort food. My husband made the comment the other day that he should send my info to Gordon Ramsay's campaign to bring women back into the kitchen (no, not that way, stop your outrage in its tracks). I was a little teed off, then I started looking through my recipe files.

And realized part of the reason I didn't want to cook is that the recipes I have are exactly what I don't want to eat - too many carbs, too high fat, and too complicated.

So I've been searching the blogosphere looking at different people's blogs and recipes. One particular one popped out at me (while I was ...ahem...searching for a martini...picture) as looking really intriguing.

Dr Mary Dan Eades

I don't often spend time going back and reading past posts (save for the Bittersweet blog, but that's partly because I enjoy the recipes and partly because she's a damn good writer). This one I went back and read them. And found another writer that is refreshingly good with the English language, cooks a lot of interesting stuff, and BTW, happens to be the author of a best selling book. I like when people are like that - they may be celebrities, but they are refreshingly down to earth and seem like they understand the struggles of us little people out there (err...should I say not so little?).

I have been extremely busy lately, so no cooking as of my newfound discovery. The husband's been experimenting with low carb, though - Sunday's meal was a "pizza" frittata that I absolutely adored and sincerely hope he makes again.

Aside from the stress of putting a proposal together and suddenly finding your CFO forgot to do the cost estimate, I've been putting together a design for my class on the 25th. I need to get that photo over there...

I've also been going to the gym three nights a week since early December (yes, I beat all the stupid New Years resolution people in and I'm still going where they are not). I had been winning the stupid incentives - free water bottles, a tshirt, etc. Two weeks ago, however, I won a personal training session. I had two goals: 1. to lose weight and 2. to gain abdominal strength (of which I've had none since the cancer treatment).

What an eye opener when I went last week! She had me do things I swear I haven't done since high school. Push ups, weights, etc. and a few things with a new twist - lunges and crunches on a ball as well as my work on the extension machine to help my legs. And I'm embarrassed to say I got on the elliptical machine for the first time and am wondering why the heck treadmills exist now. Seriously? I can do 2.7 mph on the treadmill and be able to do 20 minutes. 8 minutes of elliptical and I've burned the same calorie count at 1 mph. And its a LOT more of a workout. I have to say I've been enjoying my workout sessions more with this new plan. I was a bit bored before and now the workouts are back to being interesting.

With the new(ish) diet and the extra exercise, I'm at least hoping to see either the weight or the inches go down (I've been having issues with water retention) soon. My membership at the gym is through February, I'm hoping to have enough money to renew it.

We shall see!

Diabetic Baking!

Well, this topic seems to be everywhere this time of year as people are starting to get ready for the holiday madness.

I think this is one of my favorite new blogs as it takes the ingredients that I know of and goes one step further to actually create new diabetic friendly recipes that taste good. There's nothing I know of that infuriates me more when we diabetics have to eat a "special" meal. In other words, feed everyone crap so they get overweight while giving the diabetics the healthy food!

I think most of the people that know me know that I'm pretty liberal in what I eat - a little vegan, a little junk food, a little candy here and there, plus the normal stuff modified to be healthier, like whole wheat pasta, brown rice, etc. I happen to really like sushi, too, and have a weakness for potatoes and ranch dressing, but I try to find ways to work that into my diet.

Not that my blood sugar is perfect or anything but I am trying. Hopefully that counts in my body for something. I've been trying to deduce what causes my high blood sugars lately - crackers seem to be a big problem. The dance classes I've been taking seem to really be helping my blood sugars fall - DH and I are practicing 40 minutes a night.

I'm trying to cut back on the caffeine too but it appears as if I'm increasing it more as the sleep I'm getting at night seems to get less and less. I seem lost without my morning cup of coffee at work anymore. Anyway...

That's my little rant (trying to control myself) but I'm going to follow this girl's blog closely.