Fall Is In The Air!

 

No gluten cheating going on here! Time to make some Pumpkin goodies! I have a week of cooking & baking ahead of me since we are heading out of town for some much needed fun! I'll give you an update on our fun at a later date as I don't have all the plans laid out just yet. I busy getting food cooked and packed for myself for the trip, always a fun job! lol.

 

As for our homeschool we are in full swing and getting ready to take our fall break. Love schooling year round, because we ca take off during our favorite seasons and fall is one of those times.

 

Stop back by for an update our our fall fun!!

 

Pizzelle Cookies: gluten & corn free!

I did some cooking yesterday, I found some Gluten Free Bisquick at our local salvage store for $2.49: that is a BARGIN! It's almost $5.00 a box at our grocery store. I found the Pizzelle recipe on the ezgf blogspot checkout her other great recipes too.

 One of my favorite cookies before being diagnosed were Pizzelle. They are light, crisp Italian cookies that are just delightful. You can flavor them however you like. I have a Pizzelle make that I bought from Taste Of Home, it makes Pizzelles, waffles and filled sandwiches. I made some rolled up cannoli shells, flat cookies and some dessert shells (add ice cream or fruit to them for a pretty dessert). You can also shape them into ice cream cones. 

These tasted really good, I would say about 98% of what I remember from the gluten kind  :O)

Enjoy!
Moe

 

Cooking Flops & how to unflop them!

Going to attempt to make a loaf of bread today without corn. That is a hard one when you are gluten free as corn is such a wonderful ingredient. I've not had a slice of bread in over a month and must have one! lol. So here goes!

Well......I'm back....lol. No bread!  I ended up beating the egg whites for too long, so I made Meringue Cookies instead!

These were really good! The kids kept coming back for more, so you know that they were good! lol.......Kids won't come back for seconds on something that does not taste good. I used farm fresh egg whites and they are filled with chocolate & peanut butter chips......YUM!

Onward to the bread, here it is cooking in the oven. I won't be able to taste it for several hours since the recipe says that it's way too gummy to eat when warm, so it's suppose to cool for a few hours.

I'm hoping for a taste as good as Panera Breads......but since it's gluten free, I won't get my hopes up. The best gluten free bread I have ever had was from Schar, but it's around $8.00 per loaf and I just won't pay that price for bread. My husband works way too hard to waste almost an hour of his paycheck for a loaf of bread!! I might just have to snag an end off this bread and try it when it comes out of the oven. YUMM!

Gluten Free & Dairy Free French Bread

YUM!!!! This was my first attempt at using my Chicago Metallic Commercial Perforated French Bread Pan that my husband bought me for Christmas. Amazon sells them and they are wonderful!
The recipe I used was from 100 Best Gluten Free Recipes by Carol Fenster and was called French Yeast Bread. I got it from the library for free and you probably can do the same through inter-library loan.

The bread was very tasty and had a wonderful mouth feel to it. I've never shaped a loaf of french bread so it does not look like Panera Bread's, but it sure tasted good! Our son said it was even good without any spread on it. It had a nice crunchy outside and that fluffy yummy inside. I liked it better than the $8.00+ packages of Schar's bread. I'll let you know how it tastes after it sits over night, ya know sometimes gluten free tastes really good out of the oven and not so great the next day. We shall see.

Enjoy!!
Moe

Soup Supper anyone?

This is day 11 in my own pantry challenge and I found some soups hidden away in the cabinet. Soup suppers can be a very frugal way to feed your family. Think ahead in the day and get the bread machine out too. Make some sort of yummy bread, that always makes a meal seem special, or swing by the grocery store and pick up a loaf of crusty french bread if you are not gluten free. Pop a pan of brownies in the oven too. It's little things like that, that keep my husband from saying "Were only having soup?"

Also you might think about adding to your soup or mixing flavors, sometimes I will mix the Chunky soups or Progresso ones. Such as 2 different types of beef soups or 2 different types of potato soups and add some extra corn, green beans, peas, carrots, canned potatoes, whatever your family likes, this way it sort of bulks up the soup, as my guys don't care much for runny soups. Sometimes I add a bit of cornstarch (1/2 cup cold water to 1 tablespoon corn starch, stir it up well and add to boiling soup, stir until thickened, about 3 minutes).

If you make a potato soup you might try sprinkling some cooked bacon on top or a touch of cheese (if you can have dairy) and even some parsley. YUM!! Search the web for some very frugal potato soup recipes!!

For the homeschooling mom soup suppers can be a huge blessing!! Easy meal, no planning and you can even let the kids pick 'their own can of soup'. Or you can dump all the ingredients into the crockpot first thing in the morning, get the bread machine up and running and dinner cooks while you teach. What a blessing a soup supper can be.

Enjoy a soup meal each week and I bet you will save a few calories and $$ in the new year!

SOUP's ON!!

Moe

Gluten Free Marble Cupcakes

I got this from a friend on a gluten free/casein free group. They are yummy and I just took my first batch out of the oven. I think the next batch I will skip the marble part, I'm not a big cocoa fan. But these are still really good!! Head on over to Marcie's blog for the recipe (click here)

NO milk, NO eggs, NO soy, NO wheat or gluten, NO tree nuts, NO peanuts, NO fish, NO Shellfish, yet these taste WONDERFUL!!

You can see one missing in the bottom right hand corner, I snatched on and ate it. YUM!!
And for those of you who are not big pumpkin fans, don't worry, these are not pumpkin flavored!! Though I am now thinking that when I leave the cocoa out of the next batch, that I might add in some pumpkin pie spice. I will report back on how that goes.

Back to baking!

Moe