Quinoa & Roasted Corn

Before making this dish I had never eaten Quinoa...and now that I have... well it doesn't taste bad, and yet it doesn't really taste great. There is something about the texture that weirds me out. Also it kind of comes apart when you cook it.. and then there are these little stringy things all over the dish. This dish happened to have black beans in it, and when the quinoa fell apart onto the black beans, it kind of made it look like the beans had eyes... gross.

So now that I've convinced you that this was the best dish ever... I'm sure you'll run right out and buy some quinoa and corn. :) No seriously it actually did taste good once it was all together. The roasted corn was delicious, as were all of the other ingredients. I was able to hide a head of cabbage from our farm share and some leftover frozen cauliflower in it, so it had that going for it!

Here are the basic steps of the recipe: Cook the quinoa. I added too much water by accident and it came out super soggy. Don't do that. :) Then, saute the veggies: corn (frozen or fresh), green onions, regular onion. Add to quinoa, then add in chopped tomatoes (cherry or plum), black beans, and any other (cooked) veggies you want to add. This is where I added my cabbage and cauliflower. Mix well. Take some lime juice (or balsamic vinegar if you forget limes at the grocery store), olive oil, cumin, a tiny bit of sugar, and black pepper, mix this dressing together. Add the dressing to the quinoa mixture and serve warm or cold!

To make this more of a whole meal, I also chopped up some cooked chicken breasts and added to the final meal. The chicken went really well with the quinoa, so even after all of my complaining, it turned out pretty well. I *might* make it again. :)

Here is the final product:


And one of Ellen today at the park - it was 60 degrees today!!! :):) Early spring??

Sweet Potato Gnocchi

So its come to my attention (thank you Matt) that I probably shouldn't be posting the recipes from my gluten free book online... something about copyright material blah blah blah... Anyway, Matt scared me by saying that if they come after me they could get $100 per PAGE VIEW, not just per recipe.. but per page view!!! (how does my husband know this?) So, I've decided to not post the entire recipe, but if you decide you want it, please comment or email me and I'll gladly send it to you!

So tonight I finally made Sweet Potato Gnocchi and it was amazing. Wow. Its one of those meals that you finish and just feel good inside! Your stomach is happy with you! :) This recipe was not hard, but it did take a good amount of time / preparation. Plus you need to have xanthan gum (see previous post!)

Here is the non-official recipe:

1. Peel Sweet potatoes, chop into medium to small pieces and then roast in a roasting pan until tender.

2. Mash sweet potatoes, and add gluten free flour, xanthan gum, nutmeg, a little sugar, salt, pepper and lemon juice. I didn't have lemon juice, so instead I added orange juice! It didn't seem to make a difference and the gnocchi didn't taste anything like oranges. :) Mix well!

3. Put a generous amount of flour onto a cutting board and your hands, and roll the sweet potato mixture into 1/2-1 inch diameter rolls. Cut the rolls into 1 inch long pieces, mark with a fork (like for peanut butter cookies) and then place on a foil lined cookie sheet. You will need a lot of flour for rolling, as the sweet potato mixture is pretty sticky.

This step takes the LONGEST and you will get flour everywhere! Wear an apron!! I did not and somehow ended up with flour all over my chest that Matt happily pointed out and laughed at me.

4. Freeze, yes freeze the gnocchi for 30 minutes.

5. Heat about 1 tablespoon of oil in a saucepan and cook the gnocchi until they are browned on both sides and heated through. I used medium-high heat which worked well. You'll need to cook them in batches, and each batch will need another tablespoon of oil. If you don't put more oil in, they will stick to each other in the pan which makes them super hard to brown evenly.

6. Drain the gnocchi on paper towels to get some of the oil out

7. Serve on top of steamed spinach. The bland flavor of the spinach goes really well with the sweet potato flavor. Amazing. :)

Here are some pictures:

On the cookie sheet


All done!

Curried Noodles and No-Wheat Brownies

So I was planning to make sweet potato gnocchi as my next GF recipe, but it turns out you need xanthan gum for the recipe, and our grocery store does not sell xanthan gum...when I went to ask customer service if they had any xanthan gum at my nearby Giant, the guy looked at me like I was crazy. He then called someone in charge of inventory maybe? who also knew nothing and had never heard of it. I was told that maybe they have it in their organic / gluten free aisle. While I acknowledge that xanthan gum is really random and most people have never heard of it... why does Giant not have a list in their computer of what items they have in stock? Maybe its just too many items for a supermarket to keep track of? I was at Kohl's the other day and asked if they had a pair of jeans and this woman pulled out a mini touch screen computer and was able to tell me that not only did they not have the jeans, but no store anywhere near us had them either. In like 5 seconds. So why can't a grocery store do that? Wouldn't it be helpful for them?

Anyway, back to the xanthan gum... :) it is going to arrive tomorrow (tues), so in the meantime I made some yummy Curried Noodles for dinner Sunday and Monday nights, and No-Wheat Brownies to take to a friend's house over the weekend.

(In case anyone is wondering, xanthan gum is used mainly in gluten free cooking to give the dough or batter a "stickiness" that would otherwise be achieved with gluten. Thank you wikipedia, so glad you are back up. :))


The No-Wheat Brownies turned out ok: really crumbly on top, in fact the entire top looked like it had caved in, but they tasted really good. I'm realizing that I should be taking some pictures of the food I am making... next recipe I will be better about this! I actually followed all of the directions on this one, and didn't substitute any random ingredients. I even went back to the store to get cornstarch and cocoa powder, braving the 6 inches of snow that we got on Saturday!

Here is the recipe:
1/4 cup brown rice flour
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) margarine or butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs, lightly beaten

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray an 8-inch square baking pan with nonstick cooking spray. Combine rice flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl.

2. Melt butter / margarine in a large saucepan over low heat. Add brown sugar; cook and stir about 5 minutes or until sugar is completely dissolved and mixture is smooth. Remove from heat; sift in cocoa and stir until combined. Add flour mixture and stir until smooth. (Mixture will be thick)

3. Stir in chocolate chips and vanilla. Beat in eggs until mixture is smooth. Spoon batter into prepared pan.

Here is where I got a little confused, I think that I understood the directions to mean that I should have added everything to the saucepan. It seemed strange to me though to be adding a bunch of flour and eggs to a pan, especially when it then told me to beat in the eggs... so I just mixed them in a lot with a spoon. I was using a non-stick saucepan and didn't really want to get out my egg beater mixer. I'm just used to making brownies in a bowl! :)

4. Bake 25-30 minutes or until toothpick inserted into center comes out almost clean.

The baking time was accurate, and they really did taste good, they were just a little strange on top and quite crumbly, though somehow also chewy. I can't explain. Maybe they needed some xanthan gum. :)


Next up is my Curried Noodles! These turned out awesome. And made my house smell like curry for 2 days... not so awesome. They were perfect to add in extra veggies, kind of like you'd do in a stir fry. I even added in some chicken to make the noodles more of a main dish an less of a side dish, this worked great. I had to find some gluten free soy sauce which I thought would be really hard, but in fact was super easy, it turns out that the generic Giant brand of soy sauce doesn't have wheat in it! For Kikkoman's soy sauce wheat is like the first or second ingredient so it is a substantial part of the soy sauce, but Giant's soy sauce doesn't have any! Must be cheaper or something, which works for me! :) We ate this for dinner both Sunday and Monday, and it was delicious both nights. Ellen wasn't really a fan unfortunately... her tastes just haven't matured enough for curry yet I guess!

**for anyone who truly can't eat gluten with celiac's disease, I bet that the giant soy sauce is not completely gluten free, so you might want to find an actual gluten free soy sauce. For me, almost gluten free is good enough.**

Here is the recipe:

7 oz thin rice noodles (rice vermicelli) I used regular gluten free rice spaghetti noodles because that is what we had in our cupboard, but I'm sure the Asian rice noodles would be even better.
1 tablespoon peanut or vegetable oil (I used olive oil)
1 large red bell pepper, cut into short thin strips
2 green onions, cut into 1/2 inch pieces (I just used a whole bunch of green onions)
1 clove garlic, minced (you could use more garlic here too)
1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger (I used dried ginger, but only used 1/2 tsp, I think that dried ginger is more concentrated than fresh ginger)
2 teaspoons curry powder (I can still smell it!)
1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (I skipped this, sorry Matt!)
1/2 cup vegetable broth (probably could use water if you don't have this)
2 tablespoons gluten-free soy sauce (try generic!)

1. Place noodles in large bowl, cover with hot water, soak 15 to 20 minutes or until soft. Drain, cut in to 3 inch pieces.
Since I used just regular rice spaghetti noodles, I just followed the cooking directions on the box.

2. Heat oil in wok or large skillet over medium-high heat. Add red pepper strips, stir fry 3 minutes.

3. Add green onions, garlic and ginger, stir fry 1 minute. Add curry powder and red pepper flakes, stir fry 1 minute.

4. Add broth and soy sauce, cook and stir 2 minutes. Add noodles cook and stir 3 minutes or until heated through.

The cooking times do not have to be exact. I was feeding Ellen dinner as I was making this and really didn't watch the clock at all since she was either asking for more food, or to have her hands cleaned off.. or to get down. So... with all of that who knows how long I cooked anything... but it still turned out great. :)


If you made it this far in my long post... here are a few pictures of Ellen from our weekend of snow!! She was not a huge fan but did enjoy being pulled around in her sled. :)



We decided its time for Ellen to start helping out around here:


All done! Good job Ellen! :)


Swinging in the snow!

Crustless Ham & Asparagus Quiche (Substituted Spinach and Cauliflower for Asparagus)

First gluten free recipe made today! And it was a delicious success even though I deviated from the recipe quite a bit! :) I chose this recipe because we have about 2 dozen eggs in the fridge that need to be used up, and I had most of the ingredients at home which was helpful because Ellen was napping, so no time to go to the store! Also quiche is a great dish to hide extra vegetables in, which helped me get to my goal of 3 servings of leafy veggies a day! Unfortunately I didn't have any asparagus... one of the main ingredients in this dish! I went through our deep freezer and found some frozen cauliflower and frozen spinach, a little strange, but it turned out awesome.

First I steamed the frozen spinach, it was one that you can steam in the bag, so that was super easy. Then I microwaved the cauliflower until it was tender. I chopped up a red bell pepper and also microwaved it for about a minute. It was crisp, not tender. I mixed up the gluten free flour, milk, and eggs, and then added the cauliflower, pepper, and spinach. The spinach pretty much took over the mixture which worried me a little, but in the end it turned out fine. The quiche was definitely very spinachy, but not in a bad way! :) I also added salt and ground black pepper, and then I poured the mixture into two 9-inch pie plates. I decided to double the recipe to use up the eggs and because I had so much spinach. And now I have one in my freezer for later! :)

Before putting the quiche in the oven, I shredded some cheese on top. The recipe calls for swiss cheese, but Matt hates swiss cheese and I didn't have any. I substituted monterey jack and it was fine. I imagine any cheese on top of quiche would be good! :)

The quiches baked for about 45 minutes, I was almost late to work because I didn't account for needing extra time to bake two of them. The recipe calls for 35 minutes.

We each had two slices of the very spinachy quiche for dinner and it was delicious and healthy!! I will definitely make this recipe again. Maybe next time I'll try to use asparagus. :)



Here is the recipe:
2 cups sliced asparagus
(I substituted about 1 cup cauliflower, 2 cups spinach)
1 red bell pepper, finely chopped
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons rice flour
3 eggs
1 cup chopped ham
2 tablespoons chopped fresh tarragon or basil (I skipped b/c I didn't have any)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 cup finely shredded swiss cheese (any cheese is probably good)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine asparagus, bell pepper and 1 tablespoon water in microwavable bowl. Cover with waxed paper, microwave on HIGH 2 minute or until vegetables are crisp-tender. Drain.

2. Whisk milk and rice flour in large bowl. Whisk in eggs until well blended. Stir in vegetables, ham, tarragon, salt and black pepper. Pour into 9-inch pie plate.

3. Bake 35 minutes. Sprinkle cheese over quiche; bake 5 minutes or until center is set and cheese is melted. Let stand 5 minutes before serving. (I put the cheese on by accident before baking at all. To make sure the cheese didn't over-brown, I mixed the cheese in with the quiche mixture before putting in the oven.)


Enjoy! I'm sure you can substitute in whatever veggies you'd like, that's the beauty of quiches! :) I've decided I like this cook book, at least from this first recipe. The ingredients and directions are simple and easy to follow. Most ingredients I had, I didn't absolutely have to go to the grocery store to get anything, which is helpful since the best time to cook is when Ellen is sleeping! I think next I will try sweet potato gnocchi, I have a few sweet potatoes in the fridge that need to be used up. Yum!

Ellen's words and signs

So I've been meaning to document the words and signs that Ellen knows. I plan to eventually actually WRITE them down in her baby book, but until then this will have to do! She is now 15 1/2 months old... and her signs and words are growing every day! Its exciting to watch. :)

Signs:
More
Drink (cup, milk, water)
Please
Thank you
Butterfly
Monkey
Eat
Fish
Bird
Open
Light
Down (as in get down from the high chair)
Blankie
I Love You (working on this one!)
(forgot these!)
Ball
Book


Words:
Mommy
Daddy
(both now said when asked)
Doggie (pronounced DEEDEE!!!!)
Bath
Butterfly (at least the "Butt")
Hi
Hello
What's That?
Yum Yum
No No No (always multiple Nos!)
Birdie (occasional)
Cat (occasional)
Flower (occasional)
Water (once)

Animal Noises:
"Caaa Caaa" for bird noises
Meow
Ruff Ruff
Moooo
Quack Quack (kind of)

Turnip Soup

So I finally made turnip soup with the 2lb turnip that we got from the farm-share this past week, and wow did it turn out good!! While this wasn't officially a gluten-free recipe from my cook book, it is still a good gluten free recipe and will probably be one of my staples for the next few months as we get tons of turnips from the farm-share during the winter months. We ate it with some toasted gluten free bread that I made in my new breadmaker and it was delicious!! :) YUM YUM. Healthy and cheap.

Next up is beet soup (barf). I have trouble motivating myself to make beet soup because beets are so gross and I have to peel all of them... but if I don't make it then the beets will go to waste and that is the whole point of this farm-share, to eat vegetables that I would not usually buy in the grocery store. So... hopefully tomorrow I can find some time to make it. Its not hard... just annoying. And red. So red.

But, my new gluten free cookbook should arrive tomorrow!!! Maybe there will be a beet recipe inside. (unlikely) :)

Here is a picture from my trip to the park with Ellen this morning in 20 degree weather - wow it was cold! Ellen didn't seem to mind and just wanted to walk in the tiny patches of snow. Just wait until we actually have snow!! :)




For anyone interested, here is the turnip soup recipe:
Ingredients
1-1/2 to 2 pounds turnips
3 small potatoes
2 tablespoons butter
2 leeks, thinly sliced (I skipped this and substituted 2 onions instead)
1 Garlic clove, minced (or more if you like garlic)
1/4 cup of chopped parsley (I usually skip this)
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
Salt and pepper
6 cups of water or stock
1/2 cup of cream or milk

Peel the turnips, slice them into rounds, and blanch them for 1 minute in boiling salt water. This step is unnecessary with fresh turnips, but helps restore the sweetness of those that have been in storage for a while.

Melt the butter in a soup pot over medium heat. Add the turnips, potatoes, leeks, garlic, onions, parsley, and thyme. Cook for about 5 minutes, then add 1 1/2 teaspoons salt and the water and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer, partially covered, until the vegetables are tender, about 25 minutes. Puree all or just part of the soup, depending on the texture you want. Stir in the cream.
Taste for salt, season with pepper.

This soup is great because you can add in any leafy greens you want and besides turning the soup green, you can barely tell they are there. Good way to add Kale or Chard to your diet. :) Ham is also great to add to this soup, I especially like the ham steaks that you just cut up.

The Project

So I've decided that I need a project to take my mind off of our recent baby troubles. In case I ever share this blog with anyone, I should explain that I just had my first miscarriage. We made it to 8 weeks and then lost the baby. While I'm gradually feeling better about this every day, I'm worried that getting pregnant again will consume my every thought, hence the need for a project! My acupuncturist is convinced that I will be healthier if I am gluten free, so I am going to combine gluten free eating with my new project - gluten free cooking! I ordered a gluten free cookbook on amazon, the same one that sits in the waiting room at my acupuncturists, so its got to be good, right? It will arrive on Tuesday and then get ready for some hopefully yummy cooking!

I also want this blog to be about our darling Ellen, who at 15 1/2 months is just as adorable as can be!! Some firsts that have happened recently: Her first real word that she will say on command: Meow! She LOVES to meow at our cat Puff, she follows her around the house and yells MEOW at her. Its hilarious. She also just learned to jump, and will jump on command, it is adorable. And, yesterday she got her first haircut! It went really well and now she has the most adorable bob.