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.

My Other Star

Sectionals!

The four runners and the alternate.

The girls had a GREAT time, which is really the point, after all!  They came into sectionals ranked 14th out of 16, so there was no pressure.  They knew they weren't going to State, so they could just go, have fun and enjoy the experience of getting to Sectionals.

Waiting for the hand-off.  She ran the 3rd leg.

They ran their race with everything they had and ran just shy of their team best time.  RoseBud felt like she has really figured out her strategy for running a 400 now and tested it last night.  It won't help her anymore this season, of course, but she'll go into next season with more confidence that she CAN go out harder at the beginning of the race and still have energy left for the finish.  She ran a 1:06+ and was pleased with that time.  They actually finished 12th, better than expected!

Rehashing the race and finding out their splits.

They were laughing and smiling after their race and they all said how much fun it was.  One of the senior girls on the team had ordered t-shirts for them all with their sectional, the date, and all the girls' names with their events on the back, so they wore them to the meet.  And RoseBud wanted a t-shirt from the meet (cross country meets always have shirts available for sale and she has quite a few, but only really big invitationals for track sell shirts, so she didn't have any to this point.) so I bought her a shirt.

The weather was a little dicey--it was VERY windy until the storm blew through.  There was a 30-minute delay and then it cooled off beautifully and the wind died down in time for RoseBud's race.

And we're sending 3 other events to State!  Altogether a very nice night!

Going to Sectionals!

Regionals went well.  We qualified over half the team for something at sectionals later this week.

RoseBud jumped 14' 2" in the prelims.  She was a little disappointed, but glad to have finished her season that well and happy she had met her goal of breaking 15' at least once.

Long jump take-off

While I was watching a race, I heard them announce her name, but missed what they were announcing it for.  I assumed it was the results of the long jump.  Counting, I estimated her to have finished 5th or 6th.  Not bad!

A few seconds later, I happened to glance across the track and saw her on the long jump runway.  OMG!  She was in the finals!!!  THAT was what they were announcing!!

I sprinted around the outer fence over to the long jump area in time to catch her first jump from afar.  I don't remember what it was but her second jump was 14' 7.75"--very respectable for her.  She scratched on her third jump and ended up 9th of 9 finalists (top 4 go on to sectionals).  Still, she was thrilled to have made the finals and to have completed a better jump in the finals than in the prelims.  Yay, Seagull!

She finished 6th overall in the 800m with a time of 2:36.48.  The top 4 finishers qualified for sectionals.

After the 800, her coach thought she looked tired and she said her legs were wobbly.  He substituted an alternate for her in the 4 x 400m.  She was a little disappointed, but she's a team player and she knew it was better for the team if they wanted a chance at qualifying.  They finished 4th with a qualifying time of 4:22.76, so they're going to sectionals!  The coach said he will run her at sectionals, and since it's her only race, she should be nice and fresh!

Team player, RoseBud contemplates block-holding strategy for her 4 x 400m teammate. (That's the starting block she's holding.  When you use a starting block, someone else stands on the end of it to keep it steady when you take off.  She held the block down.)

Way to go, RoseBud!  A great way to finish your season!

(I added photos to the previous, Conference, post.  Check 'em out.  And thanks, T, for taking all these great pics at the meets!)