FoodGizmo Recipe Search Engine

Whenever you get large number of sites on a popular subject, somebody always comes up with a way of doing a meta-search on all of them at once. One example I use so often that the URL is burned into my brain is bookfinder.com, a meta-search engine that searches all the major used book sites and returns every copy of a book out there.

There are bunches of major recipe sites on the Internet. Ergo, somebody will create a recipe meta-search engine. And that somebody seems to be foodGizmo. Naturally, they brag all about it in a press release.

Denver-based foodGizmo, LLC, has launched a free website, simplifying the way people find and manage their online recipes. For the first time, using foodGizmo’s recipe search engine, users are able to simultaneously search from dozens of the top recipe sites, including Allrecipes.com, FoodNetwork.com, Food.com, Epicurious.com, CampbellsKitchen.com, MarthaStewart.com, and Allrecipes.com. ...

Going beyond the basic search filters of recipe source, rating, preparation time, and cooking time, foodGizmo has added additional filters that include:

Ingredient Search: Users can enter up to 3 items they have in their pantry and find recipes that meet their needs from across multiple websites.

Nutrition Search: Users can search for recipes by calories, low-fat, low-carb, as well as, Gluten Free and Dairy Free recipes.

Online Recipe Boxes: Users can store their recipes and also share them with friends.

Online Meal Planner: Helps users plan and organize their meals for the day, week or month.

Grocery List: Members can quickly and easily create grocery lists from the recipes they find on foodGizmo.

The Dairy Free Diva Recipe Exchange

At the top of the Dairy Free Diva Recipe Exchange Site stands a whole lone of corralled cows cowed behind the universal big red slashing line that symbolized NO. No dairy. No meat. No processed cow effluvia.

Just recipes galore. Potato-Leek Breakfast Casserole. Cornmeal-Crusted Tempeh. Cashew Cheeze Spread. Spinach Fettuccine with Creamy Pesto Sauce. Vegan New England Chowder.

Click on any of the pictures of the foods,

like the Almond Sour Cream Coffee Cake

and you'll be taken to a long and detailed set of instructions.

Looks to be lots of amazing recipes. Please give them a try and come back and drop off a review.

Cooking Lactose-Free Blog

I told you a couple of years ago that Mandy Kocevar and Monika B. Pis had teamed up to produce a cookbook, Lactose Free and Loving It: Learn to Enjoy Dairy Again!

They've used the book as a springboard to a whole blog experience, Cooking Lactose-Free: Home of the Lactose-Free and Loving It Cookbook. You're coming right in at the start.

They alternate recipes like Super Simple Hummus, Sun Dried Tomato Scramble, Beet and Feta Mixed Green Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette, and Pecan Encrusted Tilapia with Remoulade Sauce, with simple general information piece on lactose intolerance. Not all the recipes are repeats from the book, so you can stop over there and find dishes that are brand new.

Substituting for Evaporated and Condensed Milk

I received this question recently:

Are there any canned lactose free evaporated or condensed milk products? If not, do you have a recipe on how to make lactose free evaporated and condensed milk?

The answer, sadly, is that there aren't any lactose-free evaporated or condensed milk products on the market. (Lactaid did a tryout of one in Puerto Rico, but has no plans to take it further.) Creative cooks will have to devise substitutes. No one-size-fits-all answer comes to mind, though. You'll definitely need to think about what you're cooking and what the role of the milk is in it.

First, what are evaporated and condensed milks? A good answer can be found at the Eating with Food Allergies site.

Evaporated Milk
Evaporated milk is just concentrated milk (with about 60% of the water removed). For an easy substitute, use Vance's Foods DariFree Original Powder Gluten-Free Beverage. Rather than mixing it as milk, mix 1/2 c. of the powder with 1 c. of hot water. I used this substitute in this Dairy Free Fudge recipe.

Sweetened Condensed Milk
Sweetened condensed milk is just evaporated milk with sugar added. To make your own dairy free version, make 1 c. of evaporated milk (recipe above) and, over medium heat, dissolve 1-1/2 c. of granulated sugar in the mixture.

Vance's Foods DariFree is a potato starch-based nondairy milk substitute that is useful is many alternative recipes.

That's just the starting point. When people look for an evaporated milk substitute, pumpkin pie is often the target. I've given a couple of different possibilities for this in previous posts. One answer is tofu, as in Use Tofu to Substitute for Evaporated Milk. Plain soy milk will work if you boil it down to about two-thirds its original liquid content. You can also try just cooking a pie five to ten minutes longer to firm it better without boiling down the soy milk.

If you're looking for a generic substitute to use in many possible recipes, GoDairyFree has a maze of links that lead you to a variety of suggestions, from coconut milk to soy or rice milks.

And another range of possibilities emerge on this page at Celiac.com with plenty of cooks sharing their personal secrets.

You will have to do some experimenting to see which substitute works best with the particular dish or recipe you want to try. No easy answers, but a wealth of advice.

Pennymint Patties Wins Allergy Free Recipe Contest

Allergiesandme.com, an online store offering selections of allergen free foods, held a recipe contest last month. The Grand Prize winning submission was "Pennymint Patties" by Lori Zook of Pennsylvania.

"My daughter, Jazlyn, is anaphylactic to egg, dairy, peanuts and tree nuts. I have always tried to come up with recipes for the foods she saw and wanted to eat. One day Jazlyn asked my mom what her favorite candy was and she said York Peppermint Patties. Jazlyn adores my mom and wanted to try the candy. Since the store bought version was unsafe, I came up with this amazingly easy recipe that tastes just like the original. I've called them Pennymint Patties because my mom's name is Penny. Since I have developed this recipe, my mom no longer eats the original candy, she just asks me to make another batch of these for her".

You can find links to Pennymint Patties and the other prize-winning recipes on the Allergy and Me recipe contest page.

Two Gluten- and Dairy-Free Recipes

The AllergiesAndMe.com website has a recipes page.

They've been adding to it from other bloggers and authors and announced that in a press release.

Tina Turbin is a children’s book author, Danny the Dragon, and provides gluten-free support on her blogsite, www.GlutenFreeHelp.info as well as her main website, www.TinaTurbin.com. Tina has donated one of her favorite gluten free recipes, "Browny Muffins", and it should become a household favorite.

Megan Hart is one of the founders of the blogsite, WelcomingKitchen.blogspot.com. In addition, she has co-authored some allergen free cookbooks with Kim Lutz. Their newest Welcoming Kitchen will be available in September. Megan’s recipe contribution this week is “Gluten Free Apple Cider Donuts”. These donuts have a coffee cake-like texture and will start your mornings off with a skip.

I've corrected the name of Megan Hart's blog, which was wrong in the press release.

Allergy Free Recipe Contest

The Allergies and Me website is holding its first annual “Allergy Free” Food Recipe Contest.

We are offering three lucky winners the chance to win a shopping spree in their store and, for the lucky First Place Winner, an autographed copy of Kelly Rudnicki’s “Food Allergy Mama’s Baking Book” cookbook. Ms. Rudnicki has just released this fantastic recipe compilation full of great Dairy-free, Egg-free and Nut-free treats for the whole family.

The rules are simple. Submit an allergen-free recipe with one of the top food allergy restrictions and you could win shopping coupons of up to $150! This would help stock your pantry with many of the allergen free foods and mixes offered at www.allergiesandme.com. Send your recipe entry to sales@allergiesandme.com. Be sure to include a picture of the dish, or be creative and share a picture of the person that inspired you to create this recipe!

The submission deadline is February 28, 2010.

Dairy-Free Pumpkin Pie Recipes

What's Thanksgiving without a good old fashioned pumpkin pie? Hollow. Unfulfilling. Cool Whip-less. And what's the problem with pumpkin pie? Traditionally, the best recipes call for a can of evaporated milk, the thick concentrate made by removing most of the water from milk. That gives evaporated milk a lactose percentage about twice that of ordinary milk.

For years I sublimated my cravings with a wonderful dairy-free pumpkin pie made by Malek's Bakery in Rochester (technically in the suburb of Brighton), a kosher bakery that knows when and how to carefully remove all the dairy from a dessert. I've been avoiding dessert entirely for the past few weeks so I'm foregoing the pleasure this year. But that means the longing for the pie is all the greater.

It's not easy to substitute for evaporated milk. Most dairy-free pumpkin pie recipes will tell you to toss in low-fat lactose-free milk or soy milk or almond milk or just about anything that's liquid and lactose- or dairy-free. It's hard to imagine that these all can be made to march in lockstep in a recipe as delicate as pumpkin pie.

So I did a search to find recipes that specified one particular type of substitute, with the assumption that naming names means that the recipe has been successfully taste-tested.

The wonderfully named site MedPie.com has a recipe by a doctor, Robert Latkany, that manages to do away with the need for a dairy substitute liquid entirely, filling the hole with coconut oil and water.

The Teens With Crohn's Disease Website has a more straightforward version using vanilla Edensoy, a soy "milk."

PieChef.com uses coconut milk, a substitute that is the most commonly named alternative for evaporated milk.

One more. On the My Kid's Allergies blog, the author adapts a Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook recipe with rice milk and suggests using a Pillsbury refrigerated pie crust because it contains neither dairy nor soy. There is, of course, wheat.

Those are all the major alternatives for evaporated milk so among them you should find one that will suit your special needs. Enjoy.

Lactose-Free Recipes

Gourmet magazine recently folded operations with a thud so loud that it made national headlines. What happens to purveyors of the world's fanciest dishes? I guess they start roaming aimlessly across America like the Joads, looking for handouts of truffled nitrogen foam in exchange for chopping wood and sharing a few of their more plebeian recipes with the plainfolk.

How to to explain the appearance of the magazine's Ex-Executive Editor "Doc" Willoughby on the CBS Early Show with, of all things, lactose-free recipes?

The Forbes' 400 loss is our gain. The Early Show website shares five recipes with us, Tuscon Yellow Pepper Soup, Grilled Cornish Hens With Coconut Curry Sauce, Black Rice Pudding, Chocolate Sorbet, and Hazelnut Biscotti, a complete meal from soup to nuts, if a bit heavy on dessert..

This is less generous than one would think, since sorbet and biscotti are virtually always lactose-free so you don't need "Doc" to make 'em so. Still. You try making truffled nitrogen foam over a wood stove.

Dairy-Free Recipes. On Your iPhone.

Didn't I just read a piece of satire about the one billionth app available for your iPhone? It allows you to dial another person and talk to them.

It's hard to think of that as satire when you see the headline IPhone - Ready for Rosh Hashanah? iPhone Now Has 'Kosher Cookbook' by Marisa Torrieri.

Sweet, dairy-free chocolate-chip cookies and savory “mushroom ears” are just a few taps away for home bakers creating delectable Rosh Hashanah treats.

Just in time for the Jewish New Year, APPSolute Media has launched Gloria Kobrin’s “Kosher Cookbook” for iPhone and iPod Touch users – its first digital recipe book as part of its new Cookshelf application.

Ideal for spontaneous cooks who don’t always have recipe files handy, “Kosher Cookbook” features more than 300 of New York City-based cook Kobrin’s kosher recipes, including 50 customized meal plans for Shabbat and Jewish holidays. ...

Upon clicking the chocolate-covered pear application on an iPhone or iPod Touch, the user is led to a menu where he or she can choose recipes and add the needed ingredients to the one-click shopping list. These lists can also be viewed by store aisle or by recipe.

Oy.

CrazyAllergyGirl Gluten-Free Recipe Blog

CrazyAllergyGirl.com is a community based gluten free recipe search engine for the food lovers with multiple food allergies. Visitors to the site can find delicious recipes from some of the best food-based websites. Members may even create a recipe and post it on the website. There are recipes categorized on the basis of allergies such as corn-free, diabetic, dairy-free, egg-free, high-fiber, lactose-free, low sodium, low sugar, vegan, etc.

That sounds like press release prose because it is. It's from the CrazyAllergyGirl gluten-free website announcing a new sister site.

Recipes.crazyallergygirl.com has been designed as a community-based gluten-free recipe search engine and editorial resource that aims to serve to food lovers all over the world. The site has handy information, specifically aimed at helping those trying to cope with food allergies or food intolerance. The website also comprises useful food recipe links from some of the top food sites on the Internet. Food lovers can easily locate their favorite food recipes from this database and the site allows users to upload and share their favorite recipes with others. By creating a free account, members can share recipes as well as modify the existing results, add title, descriptions and recipe links to the website.

All the visitors to Recipes.crazyallergygirl.com can add, vote, and comment on the recipe search results that come up. The users may also modify existing recipe results on the site. The order of the search results depends on how well the community has specified the title, description and tags for the result.

Recipes.crazyallergygirl.com aims to build a food loving, gluten-free and corn-free community, much akin to its parent site, Crazyallergygirl.com. For further information, visit the website http://Recipes.CrazyAllergyGirl.com.

Gluten Free Cooking Expo

If you're anywhere near Chicago this weekend, you should drop in to the Gluten Free Cooking Expo going on at the Wyndham Hotel, Lisle, Illinois.

The Gluten Free Expo Includes:

•Two full-days of gluten-free/dairy-free cooking demonstrations by notable chefs, cookbook authors and nutritionists

•Printed recipes so you can follow along, take notes and ask questions about successful replacement ingredients for common allergens such as soy, sugar, egg, dairy and corn

•Learning how to prepare each dish, and getting the chance to taste them as well

•Gourmet Gluten Free Dairy Free lunch will be provided

•All Expo Attendees will take home a gift bag of great gluten-free products, literature and offers

There are a bunch of events aimed at kids and families as well.

Can't make it this year? It's an annual event, so mark it on your calendar. Or just go over to the site and take a look at the recipes that are being posted there. Or share your own.

Controversy Over "Vegan" Cookbook

Pat Crocker is the author of The Vegetarian Cook's Bible, which I mentioned in December in 2007 in my Cookbooks As Giving Gifts post. It didn't get a lot of attention but garnered fairly good reviews on Amazon.

This year she came out with The Vegan Cook's Bible. An interview with the people at the Chicago NBC station indicated that she has good advice to offer.

3. What are some principles of making vegan dishes flavorful?

I spent a lot of time developing a healthy (pardon the pun) 'Basics' section in order to do just that. This section includes vegan sauces, dips, spreads, glazes for perking up vegetable and fruit dishes, as well as providing many nut and fruit milk alternatives, along with egg, cream and butter plant alternatives. My promise in accepting the challenge of writing a vegan cookbook was that the recipes would be delicious and that even non-vegetarians and non-vegans would enjoy them because they simply tasted divine.

That all sounds great. There's also a bunch of solid vegan recipes on that page.

But when you go to Amazon you see a page full of angry reviews from vegans. They all complain that Crocker uses fish and honey in her recipes, both obviously not vegan dishes.

I don't understand why any author would do this in a supposed vegan "bible." It's clear that many of her recipes are completely vegan and I like the advice that I've seen. Yet I can't recommend the book. You'll have to make up your own minds whether to ignore the non-vegan recommendations to get to the useful recipes or just go on to another of the many vegan cookbooks published these days.

Delight, New Gluten-Free Magazine Debuts

For all the millions of us in the country who try to follow special diets, there's a definite paucity of magazines that cater to our needs.

One magazine caters to people with multiple allergies. Living Without: the magazine for people with allergies and food sensitivities provides recipes that are gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free. I did a post about it a couple of months ago.

There's also Gluten-Free Living, "the only national, full-color magazine completely devoted to helping you lead a happy, healthy gluten-free life."

Gluten-Free Living is a leader in providing practical, reliable information about the gluten-free diet.

Editor/publisher Ann Whelan brings together first-hand knowledge of celiac disease and extensive experience in journalism and publishing. She has worked for health-related magazines, helping to launch five publications before she founded Gluten-Free Living. Ann, who was diagnosed with celiac disease 15 years ago, received a Master's in journalism from Temple University and a BA in English literature from Hunter College. A voracious reader and yoga enthusiast, she has two grown children, Andrew and Caryn, and five of the world's most perfect grandchildren.

Associate editor Amy Ratner was a newspaper reporter, magazine editor and freelance writer before joining GFL. She received her BA in journalism from Pennsylvania State University and has won several newspaper writing awards. Her daughter, Amanda, was diagnosed with celiac disease 15 years ago. Amy and her husband Andrew also have two sons, Alexander and Austin. Yes, it's a family of five A's.

Marketing Manager Kendall Egan brings previous sales and marketing experience with CBS and Liz Claiborne, Inc. She received her MBA in finance from New York University and her BA in political science from Boston College. Kendall was diagnosed with celiac disease 10 years ago, followed by her son, Brett, five years later. She and her husband Ken also have a son Troy, and two daughters, Dana and Rachel. Ken is known to make a mean loaf of gluten-free bread - a good thing because Kendall's mother and two nieces also have celiac disease.

GFL has a medical advisory board made up of physicians who are experts in treating those with celiac disease, and cutting edge researchers. The dietitian advisory board includes nutritionists specializing in the gluten-free diet.

GFL, published for more than a decade, is known for extensive and reliable research into ingredients and the gluten-free diet. The editors use their journalism experience to investigate and clear-up misinformation about the gluten-free diet.

Now a third contender bravely enters the circulation race at a time when magazines are dying in droves. Delight Gluten-Free positions itself somewhere between the other two, with gluten-free in the name but doing a variety of recipes aimed at the general allergy audience. Here's what Julie Ann Luse, Editor & Publisher has to say.

Years after my husband and son were diagnosed, I became discouraged with all the negativity surrounding Celiac Disease and the struggles of people with food allergies. A researching journalist at heart, I began meeting with lots of other people struggling with Celiac Disease, gluten intolerance and other food allergies. Turns out, I wasn’t the only one who was discouraged. The common complaints were, "There is nothing for me to eat," "I’ll never enjoy food again," and “This lifestyle is just too hard!” After committing to the gluten-free lifestyle myself, I began to see it from a new perspective.

It became my quest to seek out the most delicious food recipes and take amazing recipes already out there and tweak them for the right person. I found a passion for showing others dealing with food allergies and intolerances that it could be a beautiful thing. I was delighted that a simple diagnosis could cause people to take charge of their health; to look closer at the foods they eat and to read labels for their own safety. These are the attributes severely lacking in the mainstream American diet today.

After eliminating other food allergies, I found the gluten-free diet to give me energy, clarity, migraine-free, better mood, healthier days, and I want the whole world to experience just how delicious a gluten-free diet can be.

In our issues you will find gourmet, scrumptious, easy SemiHomemade, GF on a budget, Healthy and Fresh, fully illustrated recipes that will suite [sic] the gluten-free, casein-free dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, soy-free and rice-free diets. I hope you enjoy!