Thanksgiving 2011

Thanksgiving ~ 2011
I LOVE this time of year.  The cooler weather has arrived and a nice break from work to spend time with family and to focus completely on being thankful.  This year has been one of so much heartache, so it was nice to focus on what I am thankful for in my life.  How easy it is to lose track of the good and spend to much energy focusing on the negative.  Although it has been a tough year, so many great things have also happened.  As this year wraps up, I will make a committment to focus 2012 on positive, even in the storms.  I will work to let go of my crazy type-A personality and let my hair down to enjoy the simple day to day things God has blessed me with.  My quick one minute brainstorm of current things I am grateful for:
My family, Sadie home for more than a few hours, Sadie will be a blessing to the people of Tanzania this summer, the farm, my mom's heart procedure was successful, JR didn't suffer long with Lou Gehrigs (although my heart misses him deeply), I have a job, Jim doesn't work for a cut-throat company anymore, I am healthy... Short list, but one minute does go fast and this is a cooking blog, so let's get to it~

I am so thankful my gluten-free cooking has actually gotten better.  This year our entire thanksgiving meal came from the best magazine ever, Living Without, the Nov/Dec issue.  If you live gluten/dairy free this magazine is for you and you can get a copy at Barnes and Noble.  So for copyright reasons, I can't share those recipes here, but I will tell you it was my BEST meal ever.  It was a pear based meal.  Here was our menu:
Butter/Lemon rub Turkey
Fresh Herb & Pear Gravy
Sausage/Pear Stuffing
Cranberry/Pear dish
Herb Popovers
and of course the traditional (not from magazine, but can't have a Thanksgiving without)
Green Bean Casserole - made GF with Pacific GF Cream of Mushroom and homemade french fried onions
Sweet Potato Casserole

As I have blogged before, I cannot master the pie crust :( 
But my family loves Pumpkin pie, so I just bought a frozen pie for them.  I really need to master the pie crust though so I can enjoy pies.  I do love them!

One of the things I am never a huge fan of for the Thanksgiving meal, but is a must is stuffing.  Well the Sausage/Pear stuffing I made was amazing!  I made it the day before so the pear flavors could soak in and then I baked it for 2 hours on low heat.  WOW ~ so good and so moist.  I cut the recipe in half because the one in the magazine served 14, well there are only 3 of us in the family so full amount seemed extreme.  But I wish I had made the full amount.  It was the first leftover that was completely gone the next day. 

Green Bean Casserole - I buy the Pacific Brand GF cream of mushroom soup at Target.  They also have Cream of Chicken GF.  Thank you Pacific Brand!  I use the traditional recipe, but I don't buy the can of french fried onions.  If you cut up onions in thin slices, coat them in brown rice flower by shaking them in a ziplock, and fry them over low heat until golden brown and crispy, they taste great.  I use Coconut Oil, which is pretty much all I use to cook with.  It is a solid oil at room temp, but will liquidfy when heated. 

Sweet Potato Casserole - The recipe I use was given to me by our neighbor when we lived in Hawaii - Thank you Kristen Tidwell!  It is like eating candy and so good.  Here is the recipe:
2 large cans of yams, drained
1 Cup sugar, I use rapunzel pure cane.  You can even do 1/2 cup pure cane and 1/2 cup stevia
1 stick butter
1/4 Cup Flour, I use my homemade flour blend (brown rice flour, tapioca starch, potato starch)
1 T nutmeg
3 eggs
1 can Pet milk
GF marshmallows
Put potatoes in mixer and add all ingredients.  Mix well.  Pour into a greased casserole dish and back uncovered at 375 degrees for 1 hour or until firm.  Remove from oven andpour marshmallows on top.  Return to oven just to melt - only takes a few minutes.

Well enjoy the pictures of our Thanksgiving food.  If you are on a gluten free adventure I hope you had a great Thanksgiving meal too.  As 2011 wraps up, I am looking ahead to 2012 and what I can do to advance my healthful eating.  I feel very comfortable with the no wheat and gluten diet and do pretty good cutting sugar, but can do much better here -- I LOVE chocolate.  But feel my new focus will be to work on cutting cow dairy.  I occasionally have stomach issues and when I trace back what I have eaten, it is usually dairy that I can link it too. 
Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Baking!  Time to start planning Christmas and New Year's meals. 

Green Bean Casserole - Gluten Free Style

Sweet Potato Casserole

Sausage/Pear Stuffing

Herb/Pear Gravy

Cranberry/Pear Dish

Cookies Galore

How time flies!  Well school is back in session and I got to do some gluten free baking for the incoming Oklahoma Christian lunch at Memorial Road Church of Christ about a month ago.  I made peanut butter cookies with that yummy hershey kiss on top; m&m cookies; rice krispy treats (so happy to have GF rice krispy cereal now).  I am finding that I can take pretty much any recipe - use my flour blend I keep in the fridge from the Gluten Free Baking cook book and a little zanthum gum to hold it all together and it is as good as any other dessert made with regular flour.  I am so happy to see business doing more catering to a GF eater.  I must say I feel great - still need to work on cutting all sugar, but that is a tough one for me.  I do have a sweet tooth, but I do a good job for the most part with portion control.
If you are still on the fence about trying GF baking, go for it!  You will not be disappointed.
Enjoy the pics and happy baking!

Angel Food Cake and Mango Cake

I haven't posted in some time now, but it doesn't mean I haven't made a few gluten free items.  Shortly after the 4th of July, I started craving an angel food cake with fresh strawberries.  So it was time to master a gluten free angel food cake and the picture below is the delicious outcome!  Sorry the picture is sideways, not sure what happened there??  But I think you can still get the idea of how the yumminess!

So then I got my new "Living Without" magazine it had recipes for some great cakes.  I decided to try the mango cake and WOW was it moist.  Of course I can't eat an entire cake on my own, so my friends got to share in the wealth.

I have a few more items to get made before I head back to work in a few weeks.  I did make some delicous blondie bars for our teacher luncheon today.  They were also very good and so easy to make.  I will get pictures on soon. 
Enjoy your summer and I hope you are not melting like I am - praying for some relief from the heat!

Pie Time

Well my dear friends, making a gluten free pie crust was much harder than anything else I have made to date.  I was just craving a yummy strawberry pie.  We had signed up to bring a dessert to a 4th of July BBQ, so I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to make that pie.  Well almost 5 hours later after try 2 of making a crust, I broke down and switched to making brownies.  So sad!  I have been successful in all my gluten-free adventures, so to have a recipe not turn out was a huge disappointment.  I did finally get a crust made, but it doesn't roll out like  normal pie crust.  I have my crust in the freezer, because once I did get one made that looked half way decent, I just was in no mood to make the filling.  Maybe later this week I'll whip together a banana cream pie or something, but the initial craving for strawberry pie - GONE!  I will say, the first crust I made - that just crumbled the moment it was touched - turned into an amazing dessert topping crumble.  So it was time for snacks with my niece and nephew and we cut up some cherries, put a big scoop of Coconut Milk ice cream into a bowl and then my pie crust crumble.  I can only say DELICIOUS!  So for my friends who want to go dairy free - coconut milk ice cream is sold at Walmart.  It is dairy and soy free.  Walmart carries Mint Chip and Vanilla Bean flavors.  It is very tasty.  Well my friends, my summer of baking has not been as adventurous as I had hoped with all our traveling, but I will continue to bake as often as possible.  Enjoy our 100 degree heat days by staying cool.  Happy Baking!

Cookie Picture

Forgot to add this picture with my last post.  Yum Yum!

M&M cookies

Back to baking finally!  I had a bunch of M&M's and decided to put them in a cookie.  I actually used the recipe on the back of the Hershey's Semi-Chocolate Chips bag, but instead of flour, I used the flour blend I keep made up in the refridgerator from the cookbook "Baking Gluten Free".  I was nervous, but they turned out AMAZING!  Tasted like regular chocolate chip cookies.  Now I get the blessing of practicing self-control because I want to gobble them all up.  I did make a big purchase ~ a KitchenAid stand mixer ~ WOW why did I wait so long to buy this machine.  It made mixing up these cookies so much easier!!!  I bought some strawberries and hope to make a go at my first gluten free pie crust.  Wish me luck and Happy Baking!

Vacation Adventures

Wow, summer is finally here and of course that means it is time to pull out the apron and get to baking!  I need to try to bake more from my original gluten free baking book.  Many of my most recent recipes have been from other locations.  Currently enjoying an amazing week with my mom, so no baking here.  I could have brought all my flours, but just wanted to enjoy fellowship with her this week.  I did take over her kitchen and preparation of our meals.  Today we ate a delicious tuna/rice casserole.  Super good and easy to make.  It is one of my favorites for a quick meal with amazing left over taste.  For dinner I made a Carribean Chicken Salad.  Oh my word!  Our breakfast is on the counter - Soaked Oatmeal.  I'll share more tomorrow.  Until then, enjoy the blessings of summer weather!