The Busy Chicken Kitchen

 Sometimes you just get on a roll.  And sometimes you make rolls.  But since we're mostly gluten-free around here, we don't make rolls.

But I've been on a cooking kick today and so far, we have:

 Eggy Breakfast Muffins from Owlhaven's book Family Feasts for $75 a Week.  I made them gluten-free  by using 1 c. white rice flour.  Other changes:  I used 18 eggs and about a cup of milk, 1/2 lb. of bacon and a whole bag of frozen broccoli, chopped. This made 36 muffins in 3 Pampered Chef muffin pans. They freeze great and are easy to pull out for breakfast or cold lunches.

I've got a crockpot of chickpeas going and another of lentils.  Rosebud is hungry for lentil patties.  Patties are a super on-the-go GF food.  They can be cooked up and refrigerated for the week, or frozen.  She likes salmon patties made with cooked brown rice instead of bread crumbs.

These are "like eating Fall leaves," according to Daisy.  "Only they taste better!"  Love kale chips!  The only sad thing about making kale chips is that such a huge head of kale makes such a small amount of chips.  Must buy more kale.  (and note to self:  wash it first next time. :P)  updated to include link to a recipe.  Changes I made:  I used Italian dressing, sparingly. 1 large head needed 4 Pampered Chef pans to be spread in a single layer. Every recipe had a different temperature, with 300 being most common. I baked them at 300 for the first 10 minutes, flipped the kale and turned the oven down to 275.

Slip and Slide and Easy Gluten-Free Cookout with Friends

On a hot summer's day, we decided to put up a slip and slide on the lawn (since we don't yet have the pool up) and invited friends to join us.  My friend A. has Celiac and so is gluten-free also.  I knew she'd be blessed to go out and not have to worry about what she could or couldn't eat, or whether what someone claimed to have made gluten-free actually was.

We did a super-easy menu.

Hamburgers (with buns for the glutenous and lettuce wraps for those of us who are GF, which this week includes RoseBud, myself, Daisy (by choice) and the boys, on whom I am experimenting.  Mr. GT and Pepper chose buns)

Brats from our pigs.  Brats may or may not be gluten-free.  Ours are.

Two kinds of potato salad--the traditional mustard/egg kind and Yogurt Potato Salad (a boring name for a great salad!)

Yogurt Potato Salad (another recipe we've been making for over 20 years)

4-5 medium red potatoes, boiled, peeled and diced
3 T. plain yogurt
1 T. mayo
1 1/2 t. dijon mistard
1 t. thyme
2 t. fresh basil, cut in thin strips
2-3 radishes, sliced thinly
salt and pepper to taste

Peach-Black Bean Salsa

1/2 c. peaches, diced (can be fresh or canned)
1 can black beans, drained
2 c. frozen corn kernels
1 t. cumin
2 T. red wine vinegar
2 T. lime juice
2 T. chopped fresh cilantro
1 green onion, sliced thin
salt and pepper to taste

Mix well and chill.  Serve with GF tortilla chips or Fritos (which are GF--at least the traditional, way-too-thin-for-scooping (ask me how I know this) are.  Check the bag for the Scoops.

Fresh veggies (carrots, plum tomatoes, celery, pepper strips)

Crystal Light (is GF) pink lemonade

The kids are all really sore and scratched up today from the slip and slide.  RoseBud, especially, who went flying off the end a couple of times, is full of scratches.  We finally had to add some more plastic to the end to extend it.  Fun!

Today's gluten-free: Strawberry Pie, Pea Soup and Chick Pea Crackers

Pepper made a Sky-High Strawberry Pie.  And because this is not a foodie blog, I'm going to link you to the recipes.  Lazy.

Sky-High Strawberry Pie, original  (from Taste of Home.)
We've been making this awesome pie since 1994!  We never use the whipped topping or pudding on top.  And we've always made it with a graham cracker crust.  We didn't have any GF graham crackers in the house so we used...

...Gluten-Free Crumb Crust  (also from Taste of Home).
Modified by substituting coconut powder (finely-ground coconut) for the nuts and honey for the juice concentrate.  Nuts, while themselves gluten-free, are often processed in a facility which also processes wheat, so they may be cross-contaminated.  You have to read the label.  We didn't have any uncontaminated nuts in the house.  This crust was easy and tasty. Pepper made it by herself.

After we finished dessert, (kidding) we had pea soup.  Pea soup is naturally GF.

Ham broth (I also often use just water for a vegetarian soup)
Dry split peas
1 large onion, diced
carrots, sliced
potatoes, cut in small cubes
salt and pepper to taste
oregano (dried or fresh)
2 bay leaves
chopped ham, if desired (my family doesn't desire)

Cook peas in broth or water with onion.  When peas start to soften add carrots, salt, pepper, oregano and bay leaves.    When carrots are nearly done, add potatoes and cook until all vegetables are tender and peas are mushy.  Add ham, if desired.

Then I went for uneasy.  I tried these crackers, which were neither easy (although they weren't THAT hard) nor that tasty.  I'd say they were fine.  I don't know if I'll make them again.

Gluten-Free is Easy!

RoseBud has been gluten-free since December, due to some health issues she had.  Probably 60% of what we eat as a family is gluten-free because of that.  She's remarkably disciplined and can cook for herself, so if she can't eat or doesn't like what we're having, she makes something else.  She's feeling much better, btw, and can tell if she eats something with gluten in it.

So I've been wondering if going gluten-free would help anyone else in the family.  Specifically, I'm thinking about the boys.  All three of them.  So with the end of school and the advent of summer I'll be regaining control over everyone's diet and I thought we'd all try it.

You all know how I'll never be a famous foodie blogger, but in an effort to show that being gluten-free isn't really all that hard, I thought I'd toss a couple of recipes on the blog.  Heaven knows I don't blog about anything else!

So my theme is that gluten-free eating, at least at home (!!) isn't all that hard.  In most cases, cooking for RoseBud has mainly involved reading labels.  There have been a few minor substitutions I've had to make, but nothing complicated.  I don't go for complicated anyway.

My theory about simple gluten-free eating is that you can't expect to directly substitute for every glutenated (I made that word up!!) food you eat.  If you try, you will often be disappointed.  In other words, if you try to replicate your grandma's 200 year old chocolate chip cookie recipe, it won't work very well.  If you can be happy eating a nicely textured coconut/peanut butter cookie instead, you can, well, be happy!

We happily eat lots of beans, fruit, veggies, meat and eggs here, and not so much bread/pasta/gluten in the first place.  I'll talk some more about that in another post.

Anyway, lots of things are just plain naturally gluten-free and fine to eat without any modification.  Instead of our afternoon go-to snack of graham crackers, Banana Boy made (almost all by himself!) fruit salad and everyone felt happy!

Banana Boy's Fruit Salad

(we are also not so much measurers in this house!)

a handful of grapes
a banana, sliced
strawberries
an apple, diced
plain yogurt, enough to coat everything
a splash of vanilla
the dregs of the honey jar (about 2 T.)

Mix gently and share with your sisters!

And for dinner (remember, I never said I was a photographer...)

Gluten-Free Taco Lasagna

(My ingredients were home-made (beans cooked from dry, tomatoes & sauce canned from the garden, home-made taco seasoning).  Be sure to check labels of purchased items for gluten-free status)

2 lbs hamburger

1 large onion diced

1 qt tomato sauce

1 pint (14-16 oz) diced tomatoes with green chiles

1 pkt. gluten-free taco seasoning

salt and pepper to taste

3 c. pinto beans

Brown hamburger and onion.  Add remaining ingredients except beans and simmer 20-30 minutes.  Add beans and mix gently.  

More ingredients:

gluten-free corn tortillas (I used Chi-Chi's brand and I used 14 of them)

grated cheddar cheese

black olives

other taco toppings as you like

Spread 1/2 of meat sauce in a 9x13 pan.  Top with gluten-free corn tortillas to cover.  I used 6 in the first layer.  Cover tortillas with grated cheese.  Top with remaining meat sauce, then more tortillas (I used 8 in the top layer), more cheese and black olives.

If I was making this for us at home (It's for a potluck tonight) I'd also top the final layer of cheese with jalapenos.  Bake at 350 until heated through and cheese is slightly browned (30-60 min. depending on if it goes right into the oven after assembly or if it has been refrigerated).  You can sprinkle with other traditional taco toppings after baking like diced raw onion, shredded lettuce, chopped tomatoes, etc.  Serve with sour cream and salsa.

A Few of My Favorite Things

Another disgusting picture.  A foodie blog, this is not!  But it does provide an introduction to a couple of things I've been wanting to share for a while.

Chickpeas (chicken peas, my kids call them)
(there are also kidney beans, or "kid beans" in this salad, and although I love them, I was not particularly going to talk about them today.  I just wanted you to know how cute, or weird, my kids are, renaming everything)

ANYWAY....

Some of my favorite things:
chickpeas
crock pots
tupperware
Owlhaven

First, chickpeas.  I just love them!  Is there a more perfect food?  They are salad, they are chole, they are oven-dried and crunchy, they are hummus.  They are wonderful!  Oh, and if you buy them dried and cook them yourself, they are also cheap!  Which leads me to

My crock pot.  I.LOVE.my.crockpot(s)!  Yes, (s).  I own 4 of them, none of which I actually purchased, btw.  You haven't done anything until you've stuck a crockpot under your jacket and snuck out of Target!

KIDDING!!!!

One was a wedding gift, one was a Christmas gift, was was part of my inheritance and one came from my mother when she downsized.  Two of them hold 5 quarts of stuff!  Those are my favorite!

So anyway, if you ever thought cooking dried beans was a pain in your bean, you have not cooked them in a crock pot!  If you have ever tried to read about doing it online and thought even they made it sound complicated, you have not cooked them in a crock pot.

Here is what you do:
Dump dried beans in your crockpot (it IS a good idea to rinse them and/or lay them all out on a cookie sheet first.  I really HAVE found little stones and little hunks of dried mud in my dried beans!  If you don't like the idea of that, pick them over first, like the bag says.  However, being lazy, I often skip this part.)

For a normal-sized crockpot, I'd start with a 1 lb. bag.  I buy mine in bulk and just dump until my eye says it's right.

Cover beans with water.  The water should cover them by an inch or inch and a half.  We have a water softener and I use soft water (the hot side of my kitchen faucet).  I think I've forgotten and used the hard water and it's been fine, but the soft water has never failed me.

Add salt.  I like salt.  I add a tablespoon or so.

Add bay leaves.  I like bay leaves.  I use 2 or 3.

Cover crock pot and turn on high.  Go away for 4 hours.  Actually, you should check it ever 2 hours or so to make sure there is still enough water.  If you need to add more, add HOT water.  It takes too much energy and time for your crockpot to heat up the cold water you dump in.

Taste beans.  Mine are usually done in 4-6 hours.

Drain well.  Dump in ziplocs and freeze.  I like to make sure they are spread out flat in the bag.  It makes it easier to break off a hunk if you don't need the whole bag when you take them out. Ta-Da!  Beans you can use anytime!  No muss.  No fuss.

I do black beans, pinto beans, white beans and garbanzos (chick peas).  I buy my kidney beans and red beans in a can.  Conventional internet research says if you don't heat red beans hot enough, there is a toxin in them that is harmful.  A crockpot wouldn't heat them enough, I don't think, so I just buy them canned.

Ok. Onward and upward.  What was next?

Tupperware.  Oh, I just wanted to mention the container that my ugly salad is in.  I bought a whole bunch of those containers when my sister, who was  Tware consultant, was ending her consultantship.  I got a great deal on them and I use them all.the.time.  Love my Tupperware.

And Owlhaven.  I have her cookbook Family Feasts for $75 a Week and it is seriously one of my favorite cookbooks!  There are so many recipes in it that I make all the time.  I can't speak to the $75 part, as I don't follow that part of it.  Can you feed your family for $75 a week?  She says you can.  Most of the tips in her book I already did before I bought the book so I guess they are good and useful!

But you should go buy her book so you can make Easy Pizza Rolls and Thai Chicken Curry (with homemade Thai Red Curry Paste, yum!), and Orange Chicken and Chili Corn Pone Pie and Chicken Pot Pie with Cheesy Biscuit Topping and Spaghetti Carbonara and she has crock pot recipes and rice cooker recipes and Cheesy Garlic Biscuits and oh!

And this ugly Chickpea Salad you see in my tupperware above.

It's only ugly because my chickpeas are still frozen, but when they thaw out, it will be so delicious!  This is the second time this week we are eating it.
My modified Owlhaven recipe:
Chickpeas (about 3 c.)
a can of kidney beans
a can of black beans
half a red onion, sliced
a whole mess of attracting-fruit-flies-sitting-in-a-pail-in-my-kitchen tomatoes (about 2 c. diced--yours do not need to have fruit flies on them)
a big handful of black olives, sliced in rings
1/4 c. or so fresh parsely, minced
1/4 c. or so fresh basil, minced
2 cloves garlic in the garlic press
1/4 c. balsamic vinegar
1/4 c. olive oil
3 T. lemon juice
1 T sugar
salt and pepper

Mix the dressing ingredients and pour over the ingredients that are not part of the dressing.  Let stand on your counter or in your fridge several hours to blend flavors.  YUMMERS!

yeah.  This is why she makes the big bucks writing cookbooks and I don't.  But try it!  This is so good!