Do a Happy Dance: A Couple More (Mac and Macarons) Popular Options for the Vegan and/or Gluten-Free Set

BY VW

VEGAN-EATING, gluten-free consuming, time-constrained, health-conscious individuals, rejoice! There are two more options to add to your meal plan: a savory and a dessert.

It is safe to say that macaroni and cheese (or mac&cheese or simply, mac) has been having a moment these last few years.

This comfort food dish is a popular item on many a menu at restaurants, events and grocery aisles, though not often enough as a vegan, gluten-free option.

Now another company making it so is Chickapea, with its Organic Vegan Mac. Chickapea is the pasta company founded by onetime health food store owner Shelby Taylor.

Its mission is to make available nutritious, delicious, easy-to-make foods for finicky eaters and those with health restrictions and concerns.


The organic vegan mac is, of course, dairy-free. Standing in for cheese is a creamy sweet potato and pumpkin sauce. Some of the other ingredients that make the dish include organic chickpea flour, organic red lentil flour, organic vegan seasoning, organic cauliflower powder and sea salt. Good stuff.

Perhaps after Chickapea’s mac&cheese the meal can proceed to dessert. Just the thing might be Les Macarons Duverger.

These are not your ordinary macarons. Created by Claire Becker, née Duverger, they are made from natural, organic and gluten-free ingredients.

And, yes, they are authentic French macarons. CB began making her confections for friends and family before she scaled up to the general public.

They are available in 20 flavors, not including seasonal varieties such as pumpkin pie. Regular flavors run to Blueberry lavender, Chocolate, Cookies and cream, Hazelnut brittle, Lemon, Orange truffle, Red velvet and Salted caramel.

The macarons also come in quite the splashy color palette (no chemicals) – an elevated version of lemon-yellow and orange-orange – and are a by-product of CB’s background as a painting conservationist.

What more is there to say? Bon appétit!

Visit https://choosechickapea.com/vegan-mac/ and http://www.duvergermacarons.com/home.html to learn more about Chickapea vegan mac and cheese as well as Duverger macarons.

For the Holiday Table or Any Other Time of Year: Addie's Fine Foods Pies, Little Miracles Tea-Juices & Cliffton Dry Sparkling Cider

Addie's Fine Foods sweet potato pie has proved to be powerful medicine. Photo from Addie's Fine Foods Web site.

FOR all intents and purposes the holidays are upon us. It's November, after all. I'ts on! The feeding frenzy has begun.

Per tradition, the nation will be overfeeding and overwatering itself until about the time of Twelfth Night. At that time, said bloated and contrite nation will then seek repentance in the New Year's resolution diet.

Until then, though, a feeding frenzy. For your consideration are a few new and newish products – Addie's Fine Foods pies, Cliffton Dry Premium Cider and tea-juice blends from Little Miracles – to consider for the table.

Giving new meaning to Hippocrates' admonition to “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food,” the only thing that Mississippi-born Addie Simon could eat and not pay for it later when the now-disease free survivor was suffering from cancer and its treatment, was a dessert of her own making: Sweet Potato Pie.

Surprising notion at first. But think on it. Put on those thinking caps and recall that sweet potatoes are sweet medicine. They are a good source of dietary fiber, which lowers blood sugar and ailments such as diabetes that high blood sugar levels can trigger.

Cliffton Dry is made from fermented apples. Photo from Cliffton Dry Web site.

Just as important, sweet potatoes can help fight cancer, particularly orange Beauregard and the purple Okinawa, the two varieties used to make the Addie's Fine Foods sweet potato pie. It should be noted, too, that the sweet treat will make all kinds of love to the palate … More shortly

Visit the following Web sites to learn more about the products:
Addies Fine Foods, http://www.addiesfinefoods.com/
Cliffton Dry Premium Cider, http://www.clifftondry.com/
Little Miracles, http://www.drinklittlemiracles.com/

National Indian Pudding Day: An Easy, Breezy Dish

LOOKS yucky; tastes yummy. That is Indian Pudding in a nutshell.

Today, is National Indian Pudding day and this little Thanksgiving-time dish deserves a few, sweet words. Like so much in life, it was a happy accident. Keep in mind that Indian Pudding is one thing the British colonists did not take from the natives, though the name may suggest it.

Indian pudding was born when home cooks, lacking wheat flour, substituted corn flour, a New World staple back in that day. Eventually, the corn flour would be gussied up with molasses, ginger, cinnamon and other ingredients. These additions created a dessert, departing from the more savory porridge that it was intended to replicate.

A happy accident! Sweet, no?

Recipes for Indian pudding abound. The challenge set forth, however, was to root around the World Wide Web for one with few (five!) ingredients - the ingredient list for this little sweetie can be rather massive (as large as 15!). Success! The winner is an old James Beard recipe (below) that appears in Epicurious (http://www.epicurious.com/).

See the video at top from The Culinary Institute of America and click on the link in the photo caption below to see more elaborate Indian pudding recipes.

The recipe for Indian Pudding with Bourbon Spiked Cream is only a click away: http://www.bit.ly/17Uu9bs. Photo courtesy of Yummly.

Old-Fashioned Indian Pudding
(by James Beard)

1 qt milk (scalded)
1/3 cup meal (yellow corn)
1 pinch salt
1/2 cup molasses
1 ginger (good teaspoon)
Yield: 6 servings

Put the scalded milk and corn meal in the top of a double boiler over boiling water. Add the salt and cook, stirring frequently for about 20 minutes. Mix with the molasses and ginger and pour into a buttered 2-quart soufflè dish or baking dish. Bake in a 300°F. oven for about 2 hours. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

Nutrition Information (per serving)
Calories 214; Carbohydrates 36g (12%); Fat 5g (8%); Protein 6g (12%); Saturated fat 3g (15%); Sodium 106mg (4%); Polyunsaturated Fat0g; Fiber 0g (2%); Monounsaturated Fat 1g; Cholesterol 16 mg (5%)