Recipes

Gluten-free Holidays and Chocolate Bread Pudding Recipe

December 22, 2012 by Amy 1 Comment

Christmas 2012 has been our first gluten-free. So far we’ve managed well but desserts are always hard to sift through. But it doesn’t have to be that way. If you or someone you’re serving is gluten-free rest-assured there are very simple substitutions.

For our small group gathering, I served Udi’s Snicker doodle cookies right along with the rest of the desserts. No one was the wiser and ya’ll, they are GOOD. So chewy and soft. Yum.

Today I tried my hand at bread pudding. With a simple substitution of the bread with Udi’s Gluten-free bread, it’s safe for gluten lovers and haters alike.

And as we should with all desserts, I substituted the raisins for chocolate chips and made my own Chocolate Bread Pudding.

Gluten-free Chocolate Bread Pudding

8 slices of Udi’s Gluten-free bread, cubed

4 eggs, beaten

1 cup sugar + enough to sprinkle

4 cups milk

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Cinnamon, for sprinkling

Grease a 2-quart baking dish. Place cubed bread and chocolate chips in the bottom.

Beat eggs, sugar, milk and vanilla in bowl

and pour over bread cubes.

Sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Bake at 350 for 30 to 40 minutes or until golden brown.

If you have any questions about serving for your gluten-free family and friends, please let me know!

Udi’s provided me with the products for this post. All opinions are my own.

How to Cook Split Chicken Breasts

November 8, 2012 by Amy 6 Comments

November is killing me so far. I’ve worked 13 hours of overtime the past week with more on tap this weekend. I’m planning both the girls’ birthdays (people are Christmas shopping? what?!), trying to keep up with my Bible in 125 days reading, still trying to catch up from being out of town with Allume and tried to stay up for the election on Tuesday night. The time change hasn’t done me any favors. I think my thyroid is all messed up again and I’m feeling extra tired and cranky. Wah-wah. I know, I know. At least I have a house and power. I do realize I could have it worse (NJ, we’re praying for you!). But tired is tired.

The last thing I need is a complicated dinner and I’ve got a super easy one to share with you today. Easy. So easy I feel a little silly sharing.

A little back story here.

When I was first married I was a, eh, simple cook. I think my 3 highlights were spaghetti, breakfast for dinner and Hamburger Helper.

When Pampered Chef started becoming popular in this area, we had been to so many parties that I was running out of items to get. I know, first world problems here.

I picked up this roasting pan and my friend Dani and I would joke “You know, for all those chickens you’re roasting.”

Well.

It’s been at least 10 years and I haven’t roasted an entire chicken yet but I used my pan! with chicken! With skin. And bones. It’s like serious chicken cooking here.

And the best part is it’s EASY. Our local grocery store often has the split chicken breast package on sale and I finally decided I would figure out how to use my roasting pan. And look! Chicken!

And ya’ll, it’s easy.

Rinse off the chicken
Brush the chicken with olive oil
Sprinkle generously (about 1 tsp of each) with cayenne pepper, garlic salt (or kosher salt) and garlic powder
Arrange the chicken on the grate
Cook at 350 for one hour
Let it sit for about 10 minutes
Serve!

The chicken is so juicy, it’s great.

Normally I serve it with rice and a veggie. This week, I was out of rice and just served it with broccoli and cheese.

You may ask about that sauce. Here’s a tip. I buy just the shrimp sauce at our local Japanese restaurant and then use it throughout the week to make all sorts of food better to eat. You get the best part of eating out without the large bill. The broccoli is DIVINE with the cheese dipped in shrimp sauce.

I have yet to find a recipe for shrimp sauce that is comparable. If you have one, feel free to share away!

Now break out those roasting pans and let me know how it goes!

This post is linked to Gluten Free Weekly Meal Plan

My Three Easiest Crock Pot Meals

September 24, 2012 by Amy 12 Comments

Salsa chicken, recipe below

I get asked often for crock pot meals. I have 3 go-to meals that are fool-proof and SO easy—just 2-3 ingredients.

Salsa Chicken

Frozen or regular chicken breasts or tenders

One jar of salsa

Dump them in. I usually put it on high and it’s done in 4 hours. Just before it’s done, I shred the chicken and let it simmer on low in the salsa.

I love to serve this for Mexican night. I make rice, refried beans, shells and serve with cheese, sour cream, lettuce, etc.

For the kids, they don’t really like all that as a mix so I just serve the chicken, rice and a can of corn to make a plate for them.

BBQ

Boston Butt

About 1/2 cup of water

Salt and pepper

Dump them in. I usually put it on high about 8-10 hours, or until it pulls apart with a fork

When it’s done, I separate the meat from the bone and then shred it. At this point, you can either mix in BBQ sauce or let people put their own on.

If you want, you can serve with hamburger buns or just eat it on its own. I always make baked beans with this. This is my go-to large group gathering meal. If you’ve been to eat at my house, you’ve probably eaten this.

Roast

Chuck Roast

One packet of dry onion soup mix

1/2 cup of water

Dump them in. I usually put it on high for about 8 hours, or until it pulls apart with a fork.

When it’s done, I separate the meat from the bone. I always make rice or mashed potatoes this this and make gravy from the leftover juice in the crock pot. BONUS! I added the gluten-free version of the gravy that I use.

BONUS: Gluten-free gravy

Juice from roast

3/4 + 1/4 cup of water

1/4 cup corn starch

Put roast juice in sauce pan. Add 3/4 cup of water. Heat to boiling on medium to medium-high. Mix 1/4 cup corn starch and 1/4 water until there are no bumps. Stir in corn starch mix and keep stirring until it thickens. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Really cannot get more simple than these 3. They’re great to pick up when the meat required is on sale and you can have a ton of REAL food for a great price.

Any really simple ones like this to add?

This post is linked up to Just a Girl

Potato Candy

April 30, 2012 by Amy 11 Comments

Potato candy. I found out tonight that at least two of my friends do not know about potato candy and I am very scared there are more of you. My mom made it time and again growing up and it was just one of those things that I assumed everyone knew about. Apparently not and I’m here to fix that!

First, hang on to your seats folks because this candy is made from MASHED POTATOES! OK before you check out, I promise it’s so yummy. I wish I could just stuff a piece in your mouth and let it do the talking instead of trying to convince you but alas, it will have to do with a tutorial.

I’ll warn you, the recipe is kind of sketchy. Anal bakers are going to hate this post. But hang with me because the good part is it’s pretty hard to mess this one up.

This is the recipe you go to when you have that last 1/2-2/3 cup of leftover mashed potatoes and it’s not enough to go around for another meal. It works best with real mashed potatoes. If you’re not making The Pioneer Woman’s mashed potatoes you’re seriously missing out on life. It’s not hard. Really.

So if you have about 1/2 cup or so of potatoes left, put them in a mixing bowl with a teaspoon of vanilla. Then grab a whole bunch of powdered sugar. You’ll probably need about 5 cups for every 1/2 cup of potatoes. Stir the powdered sugar in about a cup at a time. It makes it really runny somehow, even if your potatoes were super thick. So, add in a cup at a time, working it in until it turns into dough. You’ll need to be able roll the dough out but you don’t want it crumbly. Think about something slightly less stiff as fondant.

Once you get it to the right consistency, sprinkle your work area with powdered sugar and roll it out until it’s about 1/4” thick. Parts of mine were a little too thick this time.

Now get your peanut butter out and spread a thin layer across the top.

You don’t want the peanut butter very thick because it will be messy when you roll it up. I think I could have done this layer of peanut butter just a tad thicker. But I can never get enough peanut butter so there’s that. Ok. Now carefully roll up the dough like a cinnamon roll.

At this point, you can cut the roll in half and put it in a gallon plastic bag or wrap it in wax paper and then put it in the fridge to harden. Once it’s set about an hour or two later, take it out and cut it in 1/2” thick slices. And bam! Potato candy. Clearly I couldn’t wait to taste it.

This basically tastes like creamy powdered sugar dipped in peanut butter. Maybe like a peanut butter fudge. I don’t know. All I know is it’s good.

My mom always kept it sliced up in a Tupperware container, separating the layers with wax paper. Potato candy has a TON of sugar in it and it’s not good for you but definitely something you gotta try.

Gluten-free Strawberry Pie

April 11, 2012 by Amy 1 Comment

Gah, two recipe posts in one week, back-to-back, no less? Promise I’m not going to become a gluten-free recipe site but do you see this?

Mmmm. Gluten-free or not, this must be shared and must be shared immediately.

I had some Bob’s Mill All Purpose gluten-free flour on hand so I went with this pie crust recipe. Next time, I’ll cover the edges with foil, be sure to poke holes in the bottom and maybe knock off about a minute. My oven is rather toasty compared to others. Now to be fair, a gluten-free crust isn’t nearly as yummy as a regular, but it’s definitely good and honestly I’m not sure anyone would know the difference if you didn’t tell them.

The filling I got from this recipe. You basically cook some strawberries, water and sugar and thicken with corn starch and then fold in whole strawberries to your cooked strawberry mixture. I don’t like big strawberries to bite into in the pie, so I cut the second batch of strawberries into halves and quarters. But my favorite part about this one? You can see it a little in this picture but there’s a layer of sugary cream cheese on the bottom of this pie. I said yum, right?

Neither of these recipes were hard or time consuming on each step but a little time consuming overall because you have to cool things in between steps and then you have to let it all set in the fridge. Definitely give yourself time on this one. In any case, make one while the strawberries are good and juicy. If you’re in my area, be sure to get your strawberries from The Peach Stand. We’re actually looking forward to going strawberry picking soon and this gives me just the motivation!

Gluten-free Cream of Chicken, Crockpot Ranch Pork Chops and Corn Casserole

April 10, 2012 by Amy 5 Comments

OK, I admit. I’m awfully proud of myself today. I made cream of chicken soup from scratch. I don’t know why this is a big deal. Now that I’ve done it I see that’s it’s about as easy as it gets. It probably took me less than 15 minutes start to finish. But still, it makes me proud and happy:

Look at all that creamy goodness. I followed this recipe and used brown rice flour as she suggested to make it gluten-free.

The whole reason I made it because I saw this ridiculously easy crock-pot meal on Pinterest to make Crockpot Ranch Pork Chops and I’m all about the ridiculously easy crock-pot meals. Not a good fit for us though since the canned cream of chicken is full of regular flour (read: not gluten-free) and I’d either have to go buy something expensive at Earth Fare or go for it on my own. So glad I went for it on my own because I did 3/4 of this recipe, dictated by the ingredients I had on hand, and came out with about 4 cans of gluten-free, fresh, homemade cream of chicken for about $1.18 a can. I’m pretty sure you can’t beat that and it would be MUCH cheaper if you don’t need it to be GF.

So we made the pork chops tonight with the cream of chicken I made and yum. Yum, yum, yum.

Lexi had THREE helpings of the pork.

I paired it with green beans and some leftover corn casserole I had made for Easter. Follow my favorite corn casserole recipe from Paula Deen and use Bob’s Mill Corn Bread Mix instead of Jiffy to make it gluten-free. Easy peasy!

Enjoy!

Puppies, Bikes and Cupcakes

March 23, 2012 by Amy 9 Comments

How about a few random things?

1 – Our puppy Tucker has made it to 1 year and 1 day. Possibilities were sketchy at times. Sadly, many, many, many things were destroyed in the process. A blue tooth, Nine West shoes, more markers, pencils and pens than I can count, a pool skimmer, grill brush, pool lights…oh I could go on. Scott tells me it’s worth it. Possibilities are sketchy.

2 – Both Emma and Lexi are now riding their bikes. We did not totally fail as parents. We actually went on a family bike ride the other night and it was a pretty darn good feeling.

3 –This has no story except to say Emma was the one taking the picture. I found this in my camera and this is why I’m scared of her being a teenager and thought you should be warned of my impending meltdown. Those eyes cut through any fuzziness of the picture. They are LOUD and CLEAR.

4 – I also need to confess I made cupcakes although I know how bad all the sugar is. They’re from the King Arthur Gluten-free cake mix with my mom’s icing recipe. They were divine. If you couldn’t tell by Lexi’s face.

5 – On a serious random note, please pray for my family. My grandfather is very sick in ICU with pancreatitis. My father-in-law has diverticulitis and is having surgery today and will be in the hospital for the next week. Praying for peace for the family, healing for them and wisdom for the doctors. Thank you.

And if you’re feeling chatty, tell me the worst thing a puppy ever destroyed at your house.

How We’re Coping with Gluten-Free – Week 3

March 9, 2012 by Amy 9 Comments

We’re going on 3 weeks of our diet changes. One thing I want to be clear is Lexi is not particpating fully in either of these. While she eats some of the gluten-free products and I make all of our dinners GF and milk free, she still eats the regular bread, cereal, ice cream, etc. And while Emma is milk-free, Scott and I are not. So we drink regular milk, have GF products that have milk in them, etc. So basically we’re managing 3 different diet needs.

But even that said, this week was SO MUCH better than last. So much. While I’m not 100% happy with what we ate (wish we could have had less red meat, less grains and more veggies), we ate and there was very little complaining. I was tallying it up last night and I realized I had cooked every meal for ten days straight other than Sunday dinner at Scott’s parents’. That’s a lot of meals in a row for me. I’m sure it’s some sort of record. And I have to say, this week I kind of liked it. While our grocery bill has obviously gone up, our eating out category has drastically dropped and it feels good to know that while the meals aren’t perfect, it’s a lot better than fast food. And ya’ll? I like the meal planning. It’s worked out great for us to either shop on Saturday or Sunday and buy for the whole week.

I thought I’d share some recipes and products that have absolutely saved us these past 3 weeks, broken down my meals.

Breakfast

Van’s blueberry waffles. Emma eats these every morning with syrup. OJ for a drink.
Granola bars. I sub with Bob’s Mill gluten free oats and Bob’s Mill gluten-free all purpose flour (and 1.5 tsp of xanthum gum so it will hold together) and I have a bar every morning for breakfast with some OJ. Emma would eat these but she can’t have the butter in them.
I bought Bob’s Mill Pancake mix but haven’t tried it.
Crystal swears by these waffles.
We also do bacon, eggs or a smoothie as alternates.

Snacks

Lots of fruits for the girls when they’re at home. Their favorites are bananas, apples, grapes and kiwi.
Zucchini bread
Banana bread
Smoothies with Silk Vanilla Almond Milk

I always have at least one of those breads made. I alternate between the two and Emma eats that for snack after school. I’m pretty sure she would eat the entire loaf if I let her. I wish it didn’t have so much sugar in it but I’m just going with it for now.

Lunch

Rudi’s or Udi’s Gluten-free bread. It’s not the best thing ever but Emma has been a trooper and eats her PB&J’s at school.
Vegan mayo. I use this to make Emma some tuna salad for her. Sometimes I put it on bread for lunch and sometimes she just eats it as a snack after school.
Glutino’s pretzels. Both the girls love these.
Pre-packaged fruit. I don’t know what it is but they hate eating fresh fruit at school. Is it not cool? I don’t know. But the packaged fruit is the next best thing.
Applesauce packs

Dinner – main course

Steaks
Salsa chicken in the crock-pot. Just put a few chicken breasts and a jar of salsa in. Shred it towards the end. You can either make tacos out of it, put it over rice or just eat it separate.
Spaghetti with alternate noodles. We tried rice noodles last time and trying quiona noodles tonight.
Manwich. We tried Rudi’s hamburger buns and they were horrible. They soaked in all the juice and made it very dry. We all ended up opening up the sandwich and eating the meat plain which was just fine.
Sweet potato chili. This was delicious. Scott’s parents and my sister all tried it and liked it. Lexi wasn’t a fan and I think she hate some sort of leftover that night.
Amy’s gluten-free, dairy-free spinach pizza. Emma will eat the spinach pizza but I buy Lexi and Amy’s small cheese pizza and just bake them together.
BBQ. Put a boston butt in your crockpot all day with a little water, salt and pepper. Shred after you get it out.
Pot Roast. I don’t like potatoes and carrots in mine so I just put a chuck roast in with one package of onion soup mix and 1/4 cup of water. I even made the gravy with corn starch.

Dinner – sides

Baked potatoes. Earth fare has non-dairy cheese and sour cream Emma uses while the rest of us use regular.
Refried beans. Emma didn’t like these but Scott and I loved them with the salsa chicken.
Any kind of Alexia potato fries. We’ve done both yukon gold and sweet potato.
Spinach. Turns out we like spinach. Lexi of course hated it but Emma asked for me to make it the next night.
Cauliflower mashed potatoes. I made this with the roast and put the roast gravy on them. No one knew it was cauliflower instead of potatoes. Amazing. It felt so good to get up from that meal and not feel too full.
I also use canned or frozen corn, green beans, carrots or peas as a side.

Desserts

Chocolate Cookies
Earth fare Gluten-free chocolate chip cookies
Dairy Free ice cream. You can get this in any store. Just look for a yellow wrapping at the top.
Oatmeal raisin cookies. These didn’t bake well for me but it still tasted good.
Peanut butter cookies

Miscellaneous

Smart butter is what I use for Emma on popcorn, potatoes, bread. I actually really like it and use it too.
Dino’s BBQ sauce. I got this recommendation from Katie and it’s really fabulous if you like it both sweet and a little kick. It was too hot for Emma and Lexi hated it but Scott and I loved it.
Agave nectar for sweetner in smoothies and coffee

So that’s what the last 10 days or so have looked like.

In really good news, Scott has seen no acid reflux at all. Before, he would only see a few good days in a row before he’d need to take some medicine. He did have one incident this week when he ate gluten by mistake and threw it all up that night. The doctor said it was a normal reaction when you are cleansing yourself from gluten. He also said it could be related to the bad fats they used to make it. I think that speaks a lot to how his body must be changing because of the diet changes.

Emma has only had one stomach ache in the past week and it was one morning she woke up and I can’t say it wasn’t just because she was hungry. She was fine as soon as she ate. She also has been MUCH more regular.

As for me, I’ve lost another pound or two, I rarely get bloated and my skin is looking so much better. Someone at work just saw me for the first time in a few weeks and immediately commented on my weight and skin. That was a great confirmation for me. I’m just enjoying having no cravings. For at least a week now, I haven’t had ANY food after dinner. We eat between 5 and 6 and sometimes don’t go to sleep until 10 or 11. I think that’s huge.

Truth be told, I’m not sure we’ll go back to gluten. This week really proved to me we could happily be gluten-free and I’m not impatiently counting down until our check-up at the end of the month. Feels great!