Hasselbeck - Deliciously G-Free

ALSO BY ELISABETH HASSELBECK

The G-Free Diet: A Gluten-Free Survival Guide

No book can replace the diagnostic expertise and medical advice of a trusted physician. Please be certain to consult with your doctor before making any decisions that affect your health, particularly if you suffer from any medical condition or have any symptom that may require treatment.

Copyright 2012 by Elisabeth Hasselbeck Enterprises, LLC

Photographs copyright 2012 by Kelly Campbell

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

B ALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hasselbeck, Elisabeth.
Deliciously g-free : food so flavorful theyll never believe its
gluten-free / Elisabeth Hasselbeck.
p. cm.
Includes index.
eISBN: 978-0-345-52940-4
1.Gluten-free dietRecipes.I.Title.
RM237.86.H3682012
641.3dc23
2011035301

www.ballantinebooks.com

v3.1_r4

To Grace, Taylor, and Isaiah
I love you with my whole heart

Mommy, are you remembering what it was like when you were a little girl? my daughter, Grace, asked while we sat at the dinner table, my eyes closed as I savored a g-free version of my grandmothers meatballs. Happily, I wasfinally! Thanks to my mom, who had been working with me to adapt and perfect that long-loved recipe for my gluten-free needs, for the first time it tasted just like Mamas (as we called my grandmother). It was in that moment that the desire to write this cookbook was born, and the direction clear: rediscovering the foods I once loved but had lost for too long, due to my celiac disease. It was time to bring back timelessly delicious food, but deliciously g-free for the first time.

I grew up in the heart of an Italian-American neighborhood in Providence, Rhode Island. Our apartment was on the third floor, and my great-grandmother, who had come from Italy to America at the young age of sixteen and whom we called Mama Great, lived on the first floor. She was the last person to see us out the door in the morning, and the first to see us come home. No matter what the time was on the clock, her kitchen always smelled as if dinner was just moments away. The concrete sidewalks outside the apartment building hid a lush backyard gardenlike a pearl in an oyster, as my mom always sayswhere we grew eggplant, tomatoes, basil, and green beans, all of which made their way to our family table. Snapping fresh green beans from their stems was just one of my many jobs (I hired myself!). Later in the season there were clusters of fragrant deep purple grapes to pick from the homemade trellis (which seemed like a huge vineyard when we were kids) and pop from their skins. Mama Great also had a basement full of treasures: homemade pepper biscuits, wine, and jelly. Straight from the school bus, Id knock first on her door if I smelled biscuits in the oven. I knew that she might need me to paint them with egg wash to make them shiny.

Just minutes away by car, and years later a five-mile run, lived my moms mom, Mama. Her thumb was so green, I still think she could grow anything out of plain dirt! We kids spent many afternoons carrying as many plum tomatoes or zucchini as possible into the house. Mamas house was everyones home.

Mama was most often at the stove tending a large pot that was almost overflowing with meatballs and sauce. We grandkids would try to be patient for the two perfectly browned meatballs shed hand to each of us when they were ready. She kept track of how many she made and was proud to give us the final number every time. On big feast holidays or for special events, she made so many as to be almost uncountable. Later, when I was on the softball team at Boston College and we were passing through Rhode Island, Mama made the whole team a meal, with a record seventy-two meatballs!

Meals were special in my home. We never rushed, and the food and great (loud) conversation kept our family at the table for hours. At every major holiday, Mama made a Big Dishbaked macaroni and lasagna were the two I remember best. On Thanksgiving, even the turkey was a side dish to Mamas main event. Isnt it beautiful! everyone would say as she brought the dish to the table. She would beam. It was oh-so-good to eat, but more important, the beauty was that Mama honored us with her specialty and that she, in turn, felt honored when we ate it so enthusiastically.

Enter the Italian bread. A thirty-inch-long fresh-baked loaf was a staple at every meal, there to soak up every last drop of sauce or salad dressing and even to be dipped into coffee at the end. Some of the best conversations were had over coffee and, as we called it. To this day, the meals end with this, and the next morning, the bread is toasted and buttered for breakfast.

As we grew older, my parents kept alive the traditional meals of their childhoods as well. My mom continued the tradition of stuffed peppers, baked macaroni, and biscuits. My dads Polish heritage brought kielbasa, gwumpkies (stuffed cabbage rolls), and pierogies. After decades of taking for granted the meals that we had growing up, I am now a working mom myself, and I remain in awe of my parents ability to work all day and still put something so good on the table at night. My father, a brilliant architect, has also become quite the creative chef and he never disappoints when it comes to food presentation. My mom, who initially taught high school biology and chemistry, made a career change shortly after my brother was born, when I was just over two years old. She found her calling in law, and she went back to school for her degree at night, taking the bus from Providence to Boston for her classes. I remember going along for the ride to the bus stop in my footie pajamas. My parents commitment to their careers never interfered with their devotion to putting our family first, and somehow they both managed to continue to bring us together with home-cooked family meals.

I still ask my mom at least once a week how she did it all. We just did! she says. And every week that passes, I understand that response more and more. It is a challenge for any parent, working or not, to get it together for dinnertime. There are days when I am at the stove with my kids running in and out of the kitchen (sometimes offering to help, which isnt always so helpful!), hungry bellies leading to whines and sibling battles, and I think, Why didnt I just order pizza? Indeed, the witching hour of dinner preparation is never picture-perfect. But the resultsitting together and talking over a meal (even on pizza delivery nights)is just that: perfect.