Tasty Turkey Loaf & Fried Summer Squash

So tonight I went with a good ole standby-turkey loaf, and added a new side-fried summer squash. We never do deep-fried anymore, but since yellow squash is in season I've really been wanting some fried squash.
Again-fair warning- I don't measure my seasonings, I just add until it looks like a good amount.

Turkey Loaf
1lb ground turkey
1 package Pictsweet Seasoning Blend
2Tbs flax meal
1/4c chopped pecans (optional)
Organic baby food sweet peas (small container)
GFCF bread crumbs
Seasonings
Slap Ya Mamma (or any other Cajun seasoning)
sage
chili pepper
mint
sea salt
cumin
corriander
*you can leave out any spice*

Heat oven to 375.
Cook the PictSweet acccording to package directions. Use about 1/4c Seasoning Blend in the loaf. Mix all other ingredients together. I just keep adding bread crumbs until the meat stays together well. Form into a loaf-plop that baby into a baking pan and form into a loaf. Arrange the remainder of seasoning blend around the loaf. Cook for about 30min or until outside is brown, then pour some Sneaky Spaghetti Sauce over the top, cook another 15-30min or until done.
This makes a dryer meatloaf which we really like-and if you actually have left overs, makes great sandwiches.
*Veggie Spaghetti Sauce. Looks deceptively like the regular stuff. I use 1/2c organic spaghetti sauce and add a Stage2 size baby food jar of organic veggies (today was carrots), mix it well and use instead of regular spaghetti sauce. It's a good way to sneak in veggies, as long as your kids don't have colour issues (peas and green beans make the sauce brownish)m, but if so, just mix in a little less.*


Fried Summer Squish
1 or 2 yellow summer squash (dh doesn't do squash, so one was enough here)
Bob's Red Mill All Purpose GF Flour
Slap Ya Mamma (cajun seasoning)
Brown sugar
1 egg (or milk sub if you're egg free)
-Oil to deep fry (I used Canola)

Put about 1/2c of Bob's Red Mill in a bowl, and add seasonings, and just a little bit of brown sugar.
Make an egg wash-crack the egg, add just a splash of water or milk sub, whisk it up.
Slice your squish like you would potato chips-only a little thicker. I used the "thick slice" option on my mandoline slicer.
Dip the sliced squash in the egg wash, then the flour mix. Fry until they float-drain on paper towels. Ds couldn't get enough of them.

Banana Bread

Mmmmm, nanner bread.
I love when the commissary has produce on sale b/c it's over ripe...especially nanners. Though this is my first time doing gfcf nanner bread, I usually freeze the nanners for smoothies (no need to add ice!)
This recipe I got off the back of the Bob's Red Mill All-purpose GF Flour


Banana Bread

INGREDIENTS:


1/3 cup Canola Oil
2/3 cup Brown Sugar, packed
2 large Eggs
1 tsp. Vanilla
1-3/4 cups Gluten Free All Purpose Baking Flour
2 tsp. Baking Powder
1-1/4 tsp. Cinnamon
1 tsp. Xanthan Gum
1/2 tsp. Salt
1-1/2 cups Banana, mashed
1/2 cup Pecans or Walnuts, chopped
1/2 cup Raisins (Unsulfured)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease 9x5-inch non-stick loaf pan. Cream together oil, sugar, eggs, and vanilla in large bowl with eletric mixer. Add flour, xanthan gum, salt, baking powder and cinnamon to egg mixture, alternating with bananas. Beat until smooth. Stir in nuts and raisins. Batter will be somewhat soft. Transfer to pan. Bake for 1 hour.


*NOTES*
I omitted the raisins, besides that I couldn't find unsulfered, dh really doesn't like them.
I added 2T flax seed meal to the batter.
Coconut oil worked fine in place of canola.
Took 3 medium-ish nanners to make almost 2c of smashed nanner
I cooked 3 small loafs for about 45-50mins.
Letting them cool off makes cutting them a LOT easier. Cooled them over night (I decided to start making them at 9 last night), and sliced this morning.
Freezable! Wrapped each slice individually in wax paper and put in a zip lock.


The triplets my oven birthed

Tee-niny nanner bread

Magical Green Beans

Maaaagical green beans!
No, really, I think they have to be because Q just about ate half a bag!!

"Magic" All-Gone Green Beans
1 bag frozen steamable organic green beans
1 lemon
1/2T coconut oil
sea salt
fresh ground pepper
agave nectar or raw honey

In a large skillet, heat oil to medium. Add green beans, cover.
Stir green beans occasionally until cooked half way, then squeeze juice of lemon over them, add salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle a lil agave nectar (or honey works well) over the beans to add a hint of sweet, stir again, re-cover. Finish cooking until the green beans are tender-crisp and heated through.

Quincy, who has REFUSED to eat green beans, EVER, until I made these to go with lunch, ate almost half the bag I made. I was so excited. You can be sure these will most definately make the rotation into dinner more often.

Acorn Squash

So easy, and really good. This was the first time I've had acorn squash. It pretty much tastes like every other squash, and cooked the same way.

Acorn Squish

1 acorn squash
2T coconut oil (you can use ghee)
2tsp brown sugar
salt
pepper

Pre heat oven to 375. Wash and halve the squash, scoop out the guts. Place cut side up on a baking sheet. Add 1T oil/ghee, 1tsp brown sugar, and a lil salt and pepper to the hollow of each half.
Bake for about an hour or until tender when poked with a fork.

Skillet Chicken Fajitas

Fajiters, minus the tortillas. I tried the brown rice tortilla recipe on Bob's Red Mill, but they turned out like leather and tasted naaaaaasty.
You can always add more chicken, this was just a Q sized meal.

Ingredients
2 chicken breasts
bell pepper, sliced into strips
olive oil
salt
pepper
cumin

Pour enough oil to coat the bottom of the skillet. Cut chicken into fajita-sized pieces, and season chicken with salt, pepper and cumin. Heat skillet to medium, saute bell peppers, put in the chicken, and cook halfway through. Stir occasionally so it doesn't burn. When chicken is cooked about half way, add 1/4c water, cover skillet. Cook until chicken is done and bell pepper is tender.

I also sprinkled the seasonings over everything when I added the water and stirred it up so the bell pepper was coated also.

Quincy actually ATE THE BELL PEPPER. I wasn't expecting that, I praised him like crazy for eating it.

Lamburgers

I can't remember who on the
GFCFKids Y!Group
originally posted this recipe, but it's easy and ds loooves them.

Lamburgers

1lb ground lamb

1c cooked quinoa

1clove garlic

salt

pepper

Mince garlic. Mix everything together in a bowl, add salt and pepper to taste. You can add whatever other spices you like, I keep these sort of bland since I usually give him these on the 3 days of LDA.

Make into patties (I make them around the size of my palm, they shrink A LOT when you cook them). They freeze really well, just put a sheet of wax paper inbetween each patty.

Cook in a skillet with some oil in it over medium heat until cooked through.

Teff Pancakes

Two wounded pancakes I managed to get a picture of before they disappeared down Q's gullet.

Ooooh, these were tasty! The local hfs (health food store) ordered some teff flour for me, and I braved pancakes Thursday. Got the recipe from Tori's blog

Teff is actually almost mocha-y in flavour. I REALLY liked them, as did Q, he wolfed down 4 smaller pancakes, I managed to eat 2 before I was full. We used agave nectar instead of syrup, and sprinkled a lil cinnamon on top.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups Bob's Red Mill Whole Grain Teff Flour

1 1/2 cups milk sub

3 Tbsp. oil (I use coconut)

2 Tbsp. Agave Nectar

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. cream of tartar

1/4 tsp. salt

Directions:
Mix everything together in a bowl. Heat your griddle or skillet really hot. Pour batter onto the pan. Wait until you see bubbles coming to the top of the pancake AND the edges are getting dry. Then flip.

I cook with stainless so I greased the pan with some coconut oil so they wouldn't stick...because the first few I tried w/o greasing it and burnt the first couple I made. I cooked them on medium heat on an electric cook top...you might have to readjust if you're using different cookware and gas stove.

Age by Chocolate Math

This has nothing to do with cooking, but it's very amusing...and accurate!

Don't tell me your age; you probably would tell a falsehood anyway -but the Hershey Man will know!
YOUR AGE BY CHOCOLATE MATH
This is pretty neat.DON'T CHEAT BY SCROLLING DOWN FIRST!
It takes less than a minute. Work this out as you read. Be sure you don't read the bottom until you've worked it out!
This is not one of those waste of time things, it's fun.

1. First of all, pick the number of times a week that you would like to have chocolate (more than once but less than 10)



2. Multiply this number by 2 (just to be bold)



3. Add 54. Multiply it by 50 -- I'll wait while you get the calculator



5. If you have already had your birthday this year add 1759 ...If you haven't, add 1758.



6. Now subtract the four digit year that you were born. You should have a three digit number The first digit of this was your original number (i.e., how many times you want to have chocolate each week). The next two numbers are YOUR AGE! (Oh YES, it is!!!!!)
THIS IS THE ONLY YEAR (2009) IT WILL EVER WORK, SO SPREAD IT AROUND WHILE IT LASTS.

Pearsauce and Rice Milk

Sunday we had a bbq for Mother's Day, and I had to hit the commissary (for those of you civilians, that's the grocery store on post/base) for some goods. I got lucky and they were having eat-it-by-tomorrow produce sale (it's bruised, sad looking produce, or just perfectly ripe), and I couldn't pass up 5 large-ish pears for $1.24...so I grabbed 3 bags of them.Pears are low yeast feeders, so Q is allowed to have them pretty often, along with berries other than strawberries. I was trying to figure out what in the world I was going to do since there's no way he could eat 15 pears before they went bad, and pearsauce came to mind. I hopped over to Tori's blog since I had seen she had made it before for some ideas-and M had posted that she had done it in a crock pot, and since I spend 90%of the day chasing the kids, I went that direction.

Pearsauce
4 or 5 large/med pears (I used Bosc-the brownish ones)
cinnamon (optional)
splash (maybe 2T) blueberry juice

Wash the pears. I peeled them with a potato peeler first, then cored and sliced them with an
apple corer like this one
so I wouldn't have to pick out the seeds and stringy core.Drop them off in the crock pot, sprinkle on some cinnamon, add a splash of blueberry juice, and put them on low (I cooked them on high so they'd be done for dessert for the bbq).Cook until tender-I paid no attention to them other than to stir them, I can't say how long they cooked for.Smash them with a potato masher, or if you want more of an applesauce finer texture, toss it in the blender.
There you have it! Easy pearsauce. It doesn't need any other sugar, it's really sweet all on its own. I'm going to try throwing in some berries with it next time.

I decided to try out making rice milk today, too. It's mostly for dh and I since Q is on low carb/low sugar. Got the recipe out of the ADHD/Autism Kid Friendly Cookbook, only I added some sugar since I'm out of vanilla.

1c warm cooked rice (organic brown here)
4c warm/hot water
1/4c organic turbinado sugar

Put everything in the blender and blend as much as you can. Let it sit 30mins, then pour into another container (it doesn't make much). You can use a cheesecloth (I would have if I had any on hand)to strain out more of the sediment and squeeze out more liquid. But it was that easy, completely gf, and waaaaay cheaper than store bought.

Happy Mother's Day!

To all my fellow Mommas, hope you all have a bitchin' day for all the hard work you do!! You deserve it.

So beat right now, Bucko decided that sleeping was an option last night and only let me get 2hrs of sleep. Dh had 24hr duty until 9 this morning (such is the Army life), so I was on my own.
Bucko woke me up bright and early at 6.30 so we could watch Cars in bed until I was human enough to go downstairs to make breakfast.
I made Bob's Red Mill GF Scones and scrambled eggs. I needed something easy, I wasn't human yet (still not sure I'm fully there, either).


1-1/4 cups Gluten Free Sweet White Sorghum Flour
1/2 cup Tapioca Flour
1-1/2 tsp Cream of Tartar
3/4 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Xanthan Gum
1/4 tsp Sea Salt
4 Tb Sugar
4 Tb Butter or Margarine, cut in 1/2 inch slices (keep cold) (I used Spectrum palm shortening)
2/3 cup Lowfat Plain Yogurt or 1/2 cup non-dairy milk
1 large Egg
2 Tb Milk Sub for brushing on top
Nonstick Cooking Spray
Preheat oven to 400°F. Coat baking sheet with cooking spray, set aside.In food processor place flours, cream of tartar, baking soda, xanthan gum, salt and sugar. Pulse on and off to combine the ingredients. Add cold butter and pulse about 15-20 times or until the mixture resembles coarse meal.Combine the lightly beaten egg and yogurt. Pour over the flour mixture and process for about 10 seconds or until dough forms large curds. Scrape the dough into a bowl. Quickly, but gently stir or fold in currants with a spatula.On baking sheet pat dough to 8” circle, 3/4” thick. Brush top with 2 tablespoons milk.Bake for 12-15 minutes. Cut into 6 or 8 wedges.

*Notes: I made cinnamon scones by adding cinnamon (half asleep I almost used cumin) to the flours, again I have no clue, I just dumped a few tsp in. I also have to bake it for 20min for the dough to be fully cooked or else the middle is still raw.

For the eggs, nothing special, just 2 eggs per person, cracked into a bowl, whisk in some salt and pepper and a splash of milk sub, heat some oil in the pan (coconut here), and scramble on medium heat.

I'm going to go curl back up on the couch and watch my DVR Wife Swap until the Monster Quest marathon comes on History Channel in 45mins.

Coconut Curry Chicken w/Wild Rice

This is definitely one of my favourite dinners.

-chicken thighs-I used 4 tonight (or breasts, or tenderloins, as many as you need to feed your fambly)
-Tropical Traditions Coconut Cream Concentrate
-coconut oil
-curry
-hot pepper grinder (Red Monkey Organic hot pepper blend)
-three peppercorn grinder
-sea salt

In a large skillet, put about 1T (tablespoon) of coconut oil and 3-4T (more or less depending on how much coconut you like) TT Coconut Cream Concentrate. Warm it up on medium heat until it melts, and whisk in 3/4c water until blended.
Meanwhile, season chicken with sea salt (I just use a couple shakes), 3-4grinds of peppercorns per thigh, 2-3grinds hot pepper (or more if you want more heat), and 1/2tsp(teaspoon) per thigh curry (the curry I use is savory, not spicy).
Place chicken in the coconut milk, season the naked side, and cover skillet with a lid. Cook until chicken is done half way through, then flip and re-cover until cooked, 15-20mins on medium heat.

While the chicken is cooking, an easy side is wild rice. I use Rice Select Royal Blend of Texmati, White, Wild, Red and Brown rice.
-1c rice
-1c GF organic chicken broth
-1/2 c water
-1/2T coconut oil (can be omitted, or you can sub ghee)
-1/4t salt
Put it all in a pot, bring to a boil, then take it down to a simmer, cover and cook 10-15mins or until the liquid is absorbed.

Tada!! Tasty and quick. You can also make the rice a pilaf if you add some chopped veggies while it's boiling.

Is it morning already?

Buenos dias! While this morning I was craving a breafast taquito laden with chorrizo, eggs, potatos, cheese, pico de gallo and some bacon, I was still half asleep from Hudson waking me up at 3am (say it with me, teething esta el sucko), I was too tired to make a brand-spaking new breakfast, so it was leftover special. Heated up about 1/2tsp coconut oil in a small skillet, dumped in some spaghetti squash, sprinkled on some cinnamon, toss to coat, and re-heated it.
Quincy tore into it, I had to add a sprinkle of organic brown sugar to mine.
I have no clue what's up for lunch, probably lamburgers (which I HATE making because I can't stand the way lamb smells) with some wild rice on the side.
Going to the HFS (health food store) to get some teff flour today to see about making teff pancakes for dinner (using this idea from Tori-http://gfcfblog.blogspot.com/).
I'd link to her, but I'm not good at html and linking (still new to all this, I may have to enlist Bill or Barry for help).

Pan Fried Hot Salmon w/fresh Garlic

There was some more but I decided to dig in before I remembered to take a picture! (I'm still trying to get used to the blog).
This was quick and simple, and dh approved.

-Frozen (fresh) wildcaught salmon, thawed
-3 cloves garlic
-olive oil
-hot pepper grinder (Red Monkey organic Hot Pepper blend)
-sea salt

Mince garlic. Heat up a large skillet on medium heat and drizzle with olive oil-add garlic. Add salmon to the skillet, season with some sea salt a couple of grinds from the pepper grinder (I use 4 or 5), cover the skillet. Let it cook for a few minutes (until cooked about half way through), flip salmon, salt and a grind or two of hot pepper. Re-cover, let finish cooking (I honestly don't pay attention to how long it takes, I'm always doing something else while I'm in the kitchen).
Tada! Dinner is served.
Tonight I served it on top of a bed of quinoa (lunch leftovers) re-heated in a skillet with some coconut oil to keep from sticking and just enough Vanilla Hemp Milk to keep it moist.

Veggie Sauce

This isn't the most original, but seeing as I'm sure my son would eat a stick if he had spaghetti sauce for it, we figured it was a good way to get him to eat veggies. We also did this since we cut out ketchup (even organic) since they're all loooooaaaaaded with sugar.
Veggie Sauce is a sneaky, easy way to get your picky eater to get veggies.
Take 1/2 c of an organic spaghetti or marinara sauce, and add to that one container (I use the Stage 2 size) of organic baby food- squash, carrots, sweet peas, ect.
Be warned that the greens turn the sauce a lil brownish, so if your child notices things like this, use a little less greens or a lil more spaghetti sauce to make it more red.
If you're just starting on the gfcf diet and are trying to sneak in veggies, start with a smaller amount (Stage 1) of baby food, or even less than that and work your way up.

Spaghetti Squash

Squish for dinner!
So I took the easy way out tonight.
Spaghetti squash is easy enough to cook- you can either cut it in half, clean out the "guts", and bake in a 375degree oven, cut side down, until tender, about 30-40 minutes.
You can also boil it or nuke it, but I've never done either so I can't say how it'd turn out.
I cook it whole-pierce it or your squash will go nuclear in your oven (not pretty).
After about an hour, take it out and let it cool. Chop it in half, clean out the guts, and there we have it-spaghetti squash. Separate the "strands" with a fork, I just scratch at it until it looks like spaghetti sitting in the shell.
Eat up! Tonight Q and I had it with Veggie Sauce-looks deceptively like spaghetti sauce. I use 1/2c organic spaghetti sauce and add a Stage2 size baby food jar of organic veggies (today was carrots), mix it well and use instead of regular spaghetti sauce. It's a good way to sneak in veggies.

An intro

Yay! Ok, so I thought I would start sharing my gfcfsf recipes that I come up with.
Fair warning-I don't measure anything, I just whip it up as I go along, so I'll guesstimate the amounts I use. I've tried winging it first and then measuring everything out the second time, but it never turns out as well.
We're just gluten, casein and soy free for now. Also forgot to add corn and peanut butter free (they're both moldy foods). We do eat all organic when possible, and no preservatives or nitrates.
Some recipes in here will be some I got from other sources, and for those I'll link to or give credit to those who've earned it.
That's about it for now-I need to go prep for dinner. Spaghetti squash tonight.