Gluten-free Experimentin'

Hi y'all!
Been a few days since my last post.
I've been working on gluten-free CRACKERS.
We are cheese and cracker kind of snackers - hey that rhymes!  So I decided to try out a few recipes and see what I think.  My first impression is that crackers are WAAAAAYYYYY easier to mess around with than cakes.  Cakes are for advanced gluten-free bakers.....I learned that the hard way...always trying to be a high-achiever...but I digress.  Back to crackers.  Yes, many yummy recipes out there and I have even been changing things up a little.  So far my fave is the parmesan cracker I made first and messed with most.

The recipe looks like this:
3/4 c flax meal
3/4 c almond flour
2 egg whites (I substituted 3Tbs water and 1Tbs tahini in round two - yummy!)
1 Tbs parmesan cheese
1 Tbs coconut oil
2 Tbs nutritional yeast (found at the health food store in bulk)
1/4 tsp sea salt
black pepper, onion and garlic powder for flav-ah

Line cookie sheet with parchment.  Place ball o dough in center and using a wax paper shield, roll out til impossibly thin.  Thinner than you think you can go.  Score with pizza cutter - bake at 350 degrees for 15- 20 minutes.  Break apart when cool enough to handle.   These are super tasty and really easy.

Very yummy with the homemade hummus - will post that recipe tomorrow.

Cake Disaster

It's a cake, it's pile of goo, it's delicious!

Okay so the first attempt at gluten-free cake did not go so well.  Tastes great but is just a pile of cake with no shape to it.  It fell out of the mold in pieces.  A mound of gooey, albeit incredibly tasty cake mess.  I probably should have started with a bona fide gluten free cake recipe but not me!  I used a regular pound cake recipe and just substituted coconut oil for part of the butter and a combination of almond and coconut flour for the flour.  Of course it was a recipe I'd never tried before so I probably should have done something safer - but who wants to be safe when charging forward into gluten-free eating!

Introducing - the Breakfast Bowl!

Weekends at Black Dog Ranch are breakfast bowl days.  My husband is used to finding all kinds of weird things in his bowl.  Breakfast bowls are awesome!  The foundation of the breakfast bowl is eggs but for the other ingredients - all bets are off!  I essentially clean out the fridge and call it breakfast.  These are tasty, filling, and an awesome way to use up leftovers from the week.  I'll give you the basic recipe but really the Breakfast Bowl is about experimentation!

Sunday Breakfast Bowl

some kind of meat - this can be traditional breakfast meat like sausage or bacon

or

chop up leftover chicken, pork chops, steak

vegetables - today I used fresh spinach, tomato, avocado, and leftover squash

eggs - 2 per person is about right

cheese - feta, cheddar, blue - whatever you have around

Cook the meat in a large frying pan.  Add the veggies.  Get everything nice and warm, then dump in the lightly beaten eggs.  Cook until eggs are done.  Split into bowls - add some cheese and a dab of salsa.  ENJOY!

Some of my favorite combos are chicken/avocado/mushroom; sausage/spinach/feta; bacon/tomato/avocado.....you really can't go wrong!

My Gluten Free Life

So I decided to take Matt and I into the gluten-free zone.  Why?  Because I noticed that my stomach would hurt a lot of times after a meal.  I woke up each morning with a stuffed up head and swollen joints.  We're in week two.  So far it hasn't been too hard.  We weren't big gluten eaters to begin with and we don't eat much in the way of processed foods.  I ordered some almond flour and coconut flour - but haven't really needed it yet.  Mostly just eating fresh veggies and meat.  Lunch has been a bit challenging for me at work but sticking to yummy soups.


Knowing me, experimentin' is in my future so I'll keep y'all posted on any new and wonderful recipes I come up with.

The Mighty Clay Pot Cooker


So, my mom and I found a terra cotta clay pot at a yard sale in Atlanta several years ago for $5.  Have you seen these?  They are a terra cotta pot shaped like a large loaf pan with an overlapping lid.  It looked interesting and for $5, how could we go wrong.

I didn't get a chance to try it until I moved to Idaho.  We pulled it out of the cabinet one day to do something a little different with a pork loin.  OMG.  YUMMY!  Since then, we've done a variety of things with the cooker, including whole chickens.  Meat comes out so nice and moist and veggies don't over cook to mush.

It's a little scary at first, but really easy to use.  You just soak it in water for 15 minutes, fill it with meat and veggies, and put it in a cold oven set at 425 degrees.  Then ignore it for 90 minutes or so and enjoy. 

Fall is definitely in the air....20 degrees this morning!
What a perfect day for some hot homemade soup.  I remembered I had the carcass of my Easter turkey still in the freezer.  I had partially boiled it down and frozen it with it's own stock.  Now it is simmering in the stockpot with carrots, onions, and potatoes from the garden.

I always freeze leftover chicken or turkey carcasses - leave some good meat on them!  It's a quick and easy way to make your own stock or soup whenever you want it.  It's easy to do, just pop them into a gallon ziploc - or in this case, I put the entire stockpot into the freezer with the lid on it.  You can't ask for a better base for soups or stews!

When you are ready to use it, just put it into a stock pot with water or organic chicken stock and let it boil until the meat falls off the bones.  Pull out any yucky bits (skin, bone, cartilage), add veggies (sweet potatoes make a great addition!), some egg noodles and Viola!  You have a fantastic soup for those chilly fall days.

Finding myself home alone on a smoky Sunday with lots of really ripe fruit laying around, I couldn't decide what to do.  So I started with pear-apple butter cooking in the crockpot.  That got the house smelling really wonderful.  Next I figured I'd better deal with the last of the peaches from the orchard, they were way beyond ripe.  So I made peach-cayenne jam.  Since I had the hot-water canner all heated up, didn't want to waste all that boiling water!  I made black plum-serrano jam too!!!

RECIPES

Black plum-serrano jam

3 pounds black plums, peeled and cut into eighths, seeds discarded

2 - 4 serrano peppers, seeded and finely chopped

1/2 cup water

1 Tablespoon lemon juice

7-1/2 cups sugar

1 envelope liquid pectin

 

I like to throw the plums and the peppers into the food processor to speed up the cooking process.  Combine all the ingredients except the pectin in a large saucepan.  Bring to a boil and cook for 3 minutes.  Add the pectin and boil for 1 minute.  Ladle into sterilized 1/2 pint jars and place into hot water bath canner (water should be boiling) for 10 minutes.  Makes about ten jars of beautiful dark purple jam with a little bite.

 

 

Peach-cayenne jam

• 8 large peaches, skinned and pitted
• 2 large cayenne peppers, stemmed and seeded
• 5 cups sugar
• 1 cup honey
• juice of one lemon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 envelopes liquid pectin

Chop peaches and cayenne peppers into small pieces.  Combine all the ingredients except the pectin in a large saucepan.  Bring to a boil and cook until the peach chunks are the size you want them.  Add the pectin and boil for 1 minute.  Ladle into sterilized 1/2 pint jars and place into hot water bath canner for 10 minutes.  Makes about 10 jars of delicious hot-sweet jam.  This is great for using in marinades - taste amazing on swordfish!

 

Pear-apple butter

• 6 pears
• 6 apples
• 1 cup apple cider vinegar
• 2 cups brown sugar
• 1 tsp ginger
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground cloves
• juice from 1 lemon (about 1 Tbsp)

Cut the fruit into large chunks, core or seed them.  You do not have to peel the fruit.  Throw everything into the crock pot and cook until it is the consistency you want (8 hours).  You may want to add additional sweetner like honey to taste.  I don't like mine too sweet.  Scoop the peels out and ladle into jars.  Place into the hot water bath canner for 15 minutes.  If you are having trouble getting it to thicken up, just take the top off the crock pot and cook for awhile that way.