Monday, April 30, 2012

Gluten-Free Egg-Free Banana Bread


I have been waiting for the two bananas on my counter to turn extra ripe so I can make banana bread. I usually make Elana's banana bread recipe but I did not have any eggs to spare so I tried to make a new egg free version with the ingredients I had on hand. This banana bread came out great! You can't tell that there are no eggs and it was NOT crumbly. I store it in the fridge and when I want a slice, I put it in the toaster oven an top with a sliver of butter.

Gluten-Free Egg-Free Banana Bread Recipe

3/4 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup flaxseed
1/4 cup white rice flour
2 tbsp ground chia seed
1/2 cup coconut oil, melted
1/2 cup soaked almonds or walnuts, chopped
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp stevia powder
2 bananas, mashed
1/2 cup milk*

Preheat oven to 350F.

Grind up flaxseed and chia seed (I used a magic bullet.) Add milk to the flaxseed and chia. In another bowl, mix together the brown rice flour, white rice flour, stevia, cinnamon and baking powder. Mix well. In a separate bowl, mash bananas and add vanilla, milk, and baking soda. Mix together the coconut oil, banana mixture and flour mixture. Fold in nuts. Pour into greased 8 x 4 glass loaf dish.

Bake for 45-50 minutes.

* I have used sour cow's milk and fresh goat milk from my goats!



Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Milking Goats

Chloe
We had been trying to milk Chloe for a week an were only getting an ounce or two each time. I did try separating her for a few hours during the day from her son, but he kept getting out of the pen I put him in. We thought Chloe just wasn't a good milker and decided to put her up for sale. A registered milking goat came up on craigslist so we went to take a look at her. The seller (we told her the issues we were having with Chloe) let us milk 2 other goats as well as the one for sale just so we could see the differences. We also got to see how much milk Bambi was giving. We decided that we would take Bambi, we were just going to wait until the weekend to pick her up. She also told us to try separating Chloe from her son at night and then milk her in the morning. We separated them on Friday night.

Bambi
So Saturday morning we tried milking Chloe in the morning (We had to wait until Saturday so my husband could help me.) I could feel the milk in her udder! So I milked her. She finished all the grains while milking so I got her more and kept milking. We ended up with 12 ounces of milk! (All this time we thought that we needed a registered dairy goat to get milk; we were so wrong, You just need to learn the correct procedures to milking a goat, which Bambi's owner taught us.) So I took all the ads I posted to sell her down.

Chloe has been giving me 12-14 ounces of milk every morning since then, which has only been a few days. I am very pleased with her. She is also much better on the milk stand as she will only kick a few times and doesn't fight me while trying to milk her.

We have decided to sell her son. We are going to have to keep him separate if we want to use him for breeding purposes which means we will have to get him a male goat friend to keep him company in a separate pen. But we already know he can get out if he really wants to. Also, I have to use him to bribe Chloe on the milk stand in the mornings - too much work! Not to mention, my husband would have to build a pen for him and we would always worry about him getting out and knocking one of our goats up.