Making It Too Hard?

[fantasticalice]

I have been reading this site for awhile now. I have learned some stuff but nothing to make it "easy". We can all see this by the over 7,000 posts alone for cooking advice. I have been to the library and read countless books. I have spent hours online trying to "get this down". Well, when I decided to RELAX and let go, it all of a sudden became easier.

1st and foremost: Find a recipe that works for you. Pancakes are easy, so are cookies. Just find one thing you can do and go from there.

COOKIES: 1 cup some kind of nut butter or seed if you don't do nuts (sunflower)

1/4 cup raw sugar (you can use whatever you want including liquid)

1 cup some kind of flour(oats are excellent), cereal,(Chex?) something along this line

You can add anything to this; dried fruit which you chop, cho. chips, nuts, seeds, chia, hemp seed, flax

If you toast them, then grind the add-ins you will get a better result. I almost always toast my flax, it

tastes better.

I have been grinding flax, chia and hemp and adding it to everything I make. A tablespoon or two will do it.

You can stew prunes and use those instead of sugar. Think outside the box. This you can do "raw".

I make my cookies using a blend of Bob's Cornbread Mix and Pam's Baking mix. WOW! This last time I added a whole bag of sorghum flour, to make it go farther. This is what I make pancakes, waffles, cookies and banana breads out of. Works like a charm. I am not a huge fan of gar gum or the other stuff, which I cannot spell, but use powdered buttermilk and yogurt to make stuff rise. Yes, there is already leveling agent in Bob's and Pam's. I use a cup of the "mix" and then add a cup of something else like amaranth or sorghum or teff flour. One egg and some baking powder & soda. I always start with 1/4 cup of sugar in everything. I really don't like too much sugar, not good for us. You can use any kind of liquid sweetener too. To keep it all together I dress it up with oats. So far we can eat Bob's gluten-free oats and I use them a lot. Trader Joe's also carries gluten-free oats, 1/2 the price of Bob's!

So, start with a tray of no-bake "cookies" and see what you think. There is some really terrific peanut butter out there from Sweet Dreams that has chocolate in it as well as some sugar. No need to add anything, just melt it in the Micro for a minute with 1/4 cup honey, mix it together with oats, dried fruit, seeds(millet is good) and ANYTHING else you want. Press into a pan or make balls, chill and eat!

[fantasticalice]

Don't forget the SALT! While some of you cannot have salt it really makes the gluten-free stuff "pop"!

I made Sea Salt cho chip cookies the other night, WOW! Salt really helps balance the flavors,

as gluten-free tends to taste so harsh.