{"id":4839,"date":"2014-01-25T15:10:07","date_gmt":"2014-01-25T23:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amyglaze.com\/?p=4839"},"modified":"2014-01-27T10:47:58","modified_gmt":"2014-01-27T18:47:58","slug":"giving-up-gluten-lemon-polenta-cake-with-brown-butter-walnuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.amyglaze.com\/giving-up-gluten-lemon-polenta-cake-with-brown-butter-walnuts\/","title":{"rendered":"Giving Up Gluten? Lemon Polenta Cake with Brown Butter & Walnuts!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two weeks ago I stand facing my kitchen with arms crossed ready to do battle. My husband sits perched at our bar Americain<\/em> watching cautiously, sipping his morning tea. \u00a0I fling cabinets open and toss anything and everything with a wheat ingredient into the trash can. He says nothing. How can he? I’ve been reading aloud to him every night from Grain Brain and Wheat Belly (because I know he won’t read these on his own) and now, I’ve decided for the both of us, that the time has come to see if this whole gluten-free diet is fact or fiction.<\/p>\n

I know it might appear that I’ve completely flipped my lid considering that only months ago I was making croissants from scratch and whipping up tarts \u00e0\u00a0la minute<\/em>, \u00a0but since the body clock is ticking away and the nutritional supplements are piling up along with the pre-natal vitamins and the extraneous bottles of flax-seed oil, fish oil, and Bragg amino acids \u2013 why not just go whole hog?<\/p>\n

\"DSC_0043\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Meyer Lemon Polenta Cake with Brown Butter and Walnuts<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

“Not the Acme batard! You’re really going to toss that too?” My husband jumps up from his stool and digs the loaf out of the trash. I grab it back and shove it further down. He leaves the kitchen a little teary eyed and perhaps a little deflated. He’s a sandwich guy and this, no doubt, is sacrilege. \u00a0It’s not that I like to throw away food \u2013 both of us hate that more than anything \u2013 but if the science in these two books is true then the wheat of today is<\/em> unsafe for human consumption.<\/p>\n

We are\u00a0not celiac and we are not trying this purge for weight loss reasons although we both could stand to lose a little around the middle. But the fact remains that over this two-week self-imposed non-gluten diet and my crazy kitchen cleanse we have both lost 5 pounds by simply NOT eating anything made with wheat. The real bonus is: I feel great. I wake up feeling GREAT! I run farther and faster, I have more energy during the day, and my clothes are fitting again!<\/p>\n

My husband will not echo my sentiments as forthright because he, unfortunately, feels hungry all the time and has trouble getting enough food at work. He is athletic and requires at least 1000 more calories than me. He complains that his snacks choices from the complex-carbo overloaded snack bar at his start-up company are now singled out to smoked almonds. No more cereal. No more chex mix. No more beloved sandwiches piled high with fresh deli cuts and oozing with condiments. And, perhaps the worst of it all, no more pizza and beer. But regardless, he’s on board, as long as some new book doesn’t come out with a steak smear campaign. (His co-workers are all on the Paleo diet anyways \u2013 Meat!Meat! Meat!)<\/p>\n

\"Lemon<\/a><\/p>\n

Gluten Free Lemon Cake with Brown Butter, Walnuts, Polenta and Almond flour!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Why cut out gluten? You should probably read the fore mentioned books and not take my second-hand wisdom but as I understand it, the evidence points out that wheat today is so genetically modified that it barely resembles the wheat from our mother’s and grandmother’s generations and it is higher in gluten than ever before which is more readily absorbed in our bodies and creates an addictive state where the body actually craves it (and other junk foods) even more. Yes, it’s true that in France and Italy it is still possible to get flour that Monsanto hasn’t altered to a frankenfood but how do we know, as consumers, specifically which type of wheat is in our daily bread?<\/p>\n

Of course, there is more, much more, to condemn our modern wheat, but for the purposes of this post I will leave it there.<\/p>\n

We have not cut out all complex carbs but we have cut down on them significantly. My husband is Persian and rice is never going to be eradicated from his diet or I’m afraid divorce papers will be en route<\/em>. And I still like something sweet every once and awhile so refined sugar (another evil) will probably never fully disappear.<\/p>\n

\"Lemon<\/a><\/p>\n

Macerated Meyer lemons line a parchment covered ring mold<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Sure enough, we aren’t the only late-comers to this gluten-free craze since all of the latest food rags and mags and blogs of January are touting the usual New Years Day detox cleanses along with creative recipes sweet & savory that are wheat free.<\/p>\n

People, there’s got to be something to this! I’m willing to give it a try \u2013 are you? Any takers? Any personal experiences out there that uphold or trash this diet?<\/p>\n

Although I don’t feel that cutting out gluten is an excuse to overload on everything else that is ‘bad’ for you, I still would like to leave you with something sweet. And after reading the latest Bon Appetit magazine and being sorely disappointed with their Gluten Free desserts \u2013 even their Polenta cake \u2013 I thought I’d leave you with my nutty brown butter lemon Polenta cake which is super moist and dense and has much<\/em> more protein, flavor, \u00a0and also a nicer crrrrunch!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two weeks ago I stand facing my kitchen with arms crossed ready to do battle. My husband sits perched at our bar Americain watching cautiously, sipping his morning… Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4850,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[674],"tags":[1268,26,925,90,1271,109,112,132,901,209,867,245,1269,253,262,1266,283,284,285,952,323,836,359,379,390,1267,404,1270,451,478,484,494,510,511,699,609,618,1039,902,805,660],"class_list":["post-4839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sweet-pastry","tag-almond","tag-amy","tag-blog","tag-breakfast","tag-brown","tag-butter","tag-cake","tag-chef","tag-damour","tag-desserts","tag-fall","tag-featured","tag-fertility","tag-flour","tag-free","tag-gf","tag-glaze","tag-gluten","tag-gluten-free","tag-healthy","tag-how","tag-image","tag-lemon","tag-make","tag-meyer","tag-morning","tag-ms-glaze","tag-nutritious","tag-pastry","tag-polenta","tag-pommes","tag-pretty","tag-recipe","tag-recipes","tag-spring","tag-tasty","tag-to","tag-vanilla","tag-walnuts","tag-wheat","tag-winter"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.amyglaze.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/DSC_0043.jpg?fit=4288%2C2848","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2kn35-1g3","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amyglaze.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amyglaze.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amyglaze.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amyglaze.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amyglaze.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4839"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"http:\/\/www.amyglaze.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4875,"href":"http:\/\/www.amyglaze.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4839\/revisions\/4875"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amyglaze.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amyglaze.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amyglaze.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amyglaze.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}