We’re packing up here at GMS to head home for the holidays – yoga mats and sneakers are a must! Are you traveling this season? Safe travels if you are – keep your eyes peeled for Christmas Eve’s delicious meal, coming soon!

Christmas is only a few days away, which means it’s last minute shopping time! Here are a few of our recommendations for the foodies, chefs, and kitchen enthusiasts in your life. These are all items we’ve given or received as gifts and they’ve all been a hit!

1. Garlic Zoom rolling chopper: This little gizmo makes short work of mincing garlic cloves, and it’s easy to use and easy to clean. If you use as much garlic as we do, you can’t go wrong with this gift.

image: Amazon

2. Digital Thermometer: We don’t know what we did without our thermometers. Without them we’d have been eating overcooked, dry Thanksgiving turkey for the last 5 years instead of discovering that our bird is somehow always fully cooked after 3 hours. The digital thermometers are especially helpful for accurate measuring when tempering chocolate or activating yeast.

3. Mixer: Another example of a kitchen tool we can’t do without. With the number of birthday cakes and cookies that we churn out every year, the mixer has more than earned it’s counter space.

4. Dutch Oven: Perfect for stews, soups, pot roasts, casseroles, roast chicken and just about anything. We love our dutch ovens so much, they’re also on our must-have kitchen tools list.

5. Barefoot Contessa At Home Cookbook: This is one of our all-time favorite cookbooks. The Barefoot Contessa’s recipes are always a hit.

image: cooking.com 

6. Cast Iron Skillet: Another must-have item. It seems like we cook everything in either the dutch oven or the cast iron. Cast irons are naturally non-stick, they heat evenly and can be well seasoned for delicious results. This is the ultimate kitchen tool!

7. Whisk: Never underestimate the value of a good whisk. Not all whisks are created equal, and this is the kind of kitchen item that you don’t think to buy for yourself until you’re elbow deep in whipping cream with only a measly fork to with which to whip it up.

8. Measuring Cups: This is another item that you absolutely can not do without, but you seldom think to buy. And what’s more, you can never have too many. They make the perfect gift, especially if you want the gift recipient to remember you fondly every time they measure ANYTHING. We always think about Nikki when we use these gorgeous measuring cups she gave to Jennie a couple years ago.

9. Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook: This cookbook might as well be titled “How to Cook Everything.” No matter what we need to make, we look in this cookbook first. It has everything from our go-to cake recipe to simple instructions on how to boil an egg.

image: Amazon.com

10. Kitchen Scale: This is invaluable for bakers! Using a kitchen scale is a much better way to measure accurately, both when following recipes, and creating them. We love ours.

11. Immersion Blender: Gone are the days of waiting on your soup to cool before adding it, bit by bit, to your blender to puree. You will never have to dirty an extra dish in order to blend something again. With our immersion blender, we even blend the tomatoes into tomato sauce right in the can. Its magical and it will change your life. Trust us.

12. Mortar and Pestle: Ahem. Hint Hint. To my knowledge, neither of the ladies of Garlic, My Soul has one of these yet….

image: Amazon 

What’s on your Christmas list this year?

When Peter Jackson’s first Lord of the Rings film opened in December of 2001, I began a long tradition of associating Tolkien stories with the holiday season. I read all the books. My father re-read them. And for a few years seeing one of the Lord of the Rings films with my Dad became an important Christmas ritual.

This holiday season, I was excited to renew that tradition by seeing the newest Tolkien film, The Hobbit.  In preparation, I started reading the book and I was pleased to discover that Mr. Bilbo Baggins is a foodie!

The Hobbit opens with a description of a hobbit-hole which means comfort. Shortly after that, 13 uninvited guests show up for tea and then stay for supper. In other words, it’s your typical day in the life of the Garlic, My Soul kitchen.

The first chapter of the Hobbit casually lists the menu for an impromptu tea with 13 dwarfs: tea; beer; seed-cakes; ale; porter; coffee; cakes; buttered scones; raspberry jam and apple-tart; mince-pies and cheese; eggs; cold chicken and pickles; and biscuits. That’s just one meal! If you’re like 10 million other people, and you saw the movie last weekend, you know there was a delightful scene in which Jackson captured the wealth of Bilbo Baggins’ well-stocked larder. All this got me thinking about the kinds of hearty, home-grown, comfort foods that hobbits must eat.

Right away, I thought of my favorite cold-weather comfort food, cassoulet. Cassoulet is a traditional French peasant dish that’s slow-cooked and features seasonal root vegetables, cannellini beans, and pork or duck. The peasant roots of this dish have always appealed to me, because its most important ingredients are interchangeable depending on whatever you might have on hand. I like to think a hobbit would also appreciate a dish that is at once so practical and so delicious.

Now, I’ve made cassoulet before with spicy pork sausage using this recipe from Real Simple. This time, however, I substituted spicy lamb merguez sausage both to try something new and because it felt more hobbit-esque.

To accompany my lamb stew, I needed hearty homemade bread. This recipe from the Pioneer Woman for rosemary onion bread with blue cheese topping is an old favorite and seemed perfect for the job. I swear I saw a plate of these exact rolls being passed around by the dwarfs in the movie!

And to wash it all down? Ice cold beer of course. Hobbits are known to love their pints, so we made sure to include a brown ale with our hobbit meal!

In my mind, eating like a hobbit means eating comfort foods made with fresh, local ingredients. Fresh and local is always good, but it’s those comfort foods that warm our hearts and make it really feel like the holidays.

What are your seasonal favorites that could be Hobbit foods?

Read this post and other nerd-tastic delights at Fanboy Comics!

Inevitably, there comes a time when a GF person will have to prepare food in a non-GF kitchen.  While you can safely cook in other people’s kitchens that are not GF, you need to be aware of cross contamination issues and adapt your behavior and implements accordingly.  Every GF person depending on their circumstances will have to set their own threshold of comfort with ingredients and environment.  Very little gluten will make me sick so I tend to play it on the more cautious side because I’d rather be safe than glutened!

Usually the first thing that I do when I am in a foreign kitchen is wipe the counter tops and other surfaces down  with a  new sponge.  I also give any dishware, utensils, and other implements a quick rinse or wash before I use them, just to be on the safe side.  I also personally have a rule that if food touches a surface it’s “dead” and can’t be included with the meal, just in case.  Usually I just make the non-GF person eat the morsel so it doesn’t go to waste!

In general, when cooking and eating a meal with someone who is not used to being GF I like to go grocery shopping with them because label reading is difficult for the untrained eye as there is no end to contingencies and exceptions.

The major surfaces you have to watch out for are any that are porous.  This includes wood, teflon, and cast iron.  Non-porous surfaces include glazed ceramic, glass, and stainless steel.  I also tend to use plates or plastic cutting boards to prepare my ingredients.  For surfaces I am unsure about or cannot clean thoroughly enough, I use aluminum foil to cover the cooking surface.

When making pasta, instead of using a potentially contaminated colendar (colendars can’t ever really be cleaned thoroughly enough to be definitively GF) I prefer to use the side of the sink to drain the pasta.  Sinks are usually ceramic or stainless steel, both non-porous surfaces, that can be cleaned fairly easily.  Another possibility for draining pasta is to use the lid to drain the water.

For kitchens other than  your own that you cook in frequently, I suggest stashing some GF serving and cooking utensils, a cutting board, and maybe a colander   The best part about cooking in another person’s non-GF kitchen is the collaborative process and helping them become more comfortable with GF cooking (let alone the delicious resulting meal)!

This weekend, we had a cookie exchange with some bloggers I knew. It was hosted by Studio DIY and Very Sarie and Love Creative. And by we, I mean a bunch of bloggers. I didn’t go because I ended up hanging out with the coolest one and a half year old I know, but I sent my cookies along with Kelly of Studio DIY.

You might recognize these cookies from Cucina Fresca. They are my favorite, favorite cookie.

Here are the cookies fresh out of the oven – delicious. But here is the best part: we get to frost these babies.

Look at these babies! Did I just say babies twice? Sorry. But, look at ’em!

And in exchange, Kelly was the sweetest and dropped off cookies for us that evening!

Please ignore the bites and the bad quality…I kind of got carried away…

Amanda of Love Creative put together these cute little booklets with all our recipes.

Look! Here we are!!

Thanks to Sarah and Amanda and Kelly for putting together such a fun event, and a SPECIAL thanks to Kelly for helping us out and delivering the cookies back to our door!

What is your favorite kind of holiday cookie?