YUMMY Fall Gluten FREE Recipes

As you have read, my focus has been on getting the new homeschool year planned out and started...next week I will share how our first week of homeschool crashed and burned, yet was profitable for the Homeschooled Young Man.

As I was taking a much needed break from life, I came across this wonderful website from My Gluten-Free Kitchen...YUMMY is all I can say. I printed out several of her recipes and plan to make them this week. I just love the fall time of year! I want warm, soft foods like casseroles and Michelle over at My Gluten-Free Kitchen has just the recipes.

Here recipes are all gluten free, but some of her links to other websites/blogs do not have gluten free recipes, but many of them that I looked like could be easily made gluten free. Such as replace soy sauce with gluten free soy sauce or replace noodles with gluten free noodles. All easy fixes so check her out!

Just a few recipes she offers up
Buckeye Brownies
Pumpkin Bars with Cream Cheese Frosting
Snickerdoodles
Chicken Broccoli Rice Casserole
Slow Cooker French Dip Sandwiches

Visit Michelle and enjoy some wonderful fall recipes.

Moe

Laying down on the job!

Our girls are really laying down on the job! They have not laid well in weeks. Most of our girls are molting and looking pretty shabby......LOL.....Is that where the scrapbooking and rubber stamping industry came up with the term Shabby Chic?

If you don't know what molting means, it's when a chicken's feathers fall out and new pretty fluffy ones come in, it must be stressful on the body since they don't lay many eggs when they molt.
I found these 3 chicks resting high up in the pine trees, they were safe from our beautiful red foxes that like to hang out around our place.

We actually had to buy store bought eggs last week, we got the jumbo ones from Meijers and they were the size of our normal sized eggs that our hens lay. The price of feed has really increased so these girls had better be getting back to work in the hen house to earn their keep!

A little chicken humor for you. LOL

Moe

Two New Recipes

The first recipe is just something that I threw together today. I found some boneless, skinless chicken thighs on sale (use leftover turkey later this week for this recipe, you could add more broth for soup or add gluten free dumplings on top for chicken/turkey pot pie), so I dumped them in the crockpot and covered with water. Cooked them on high for about 5 hours. Drained the meat and poured the broth into a large pot, I brought that to a boil and added 24 oz of gluten free & corn free chicken broth, I ran a head of celery through the food chopper along with 5 carrots, tossed those in.

I then added 1 tsp Poultry Seasoning, 1/2 tsp Thyme, 1 tsp onion powered (I would have chopped a full onion but we have a funeral visitation to attend this evening and I did not want my hands and hair to smell like onions  :O(  I then added my secret weapon Superior Kosher Chicken Base it is gluten free and corn free and REALLY REALLY adds some great flavor!! I put about 1 1/2 TBLS in. I let this boil for about 20 minutes to mix the flavors up.

Then I added in gluten free & corn free egg noodles. I order them from PastaAlley, we love their gf egg noodles and gf soup noodles, they soak up the broth and taste like Grandma's homemade noodles. After adding the noodles I let them boil for about15 minutes and then shredded up the chicken and added that. YUMMO!! I am eating a bowl full as I type. I did add a touch of sea salt at the end.

I also was in the mood for something sweet and holiday like. I bought some SILK Egg Nog, called the company and they assured me that it was gluten free & corn free. So I decided to make some Egg Nog ice cream.  I love my Cuisinart Frozen Yogurt Ice Sorbet maker it makes goodies in less than 25 minutes, actually it took me about 15 minutes start to finish to make this. And it tastes wonderful!
You can whisk this up in a bowl, but the full fat coconut milk is hard to whisk I think. So I use my mixer. I added
1 1/4 c Soy Nog
1/2 c sugar (use more or less to your taste)
1 can full fat coconut milk (liquid and the thick white stuff in the can (lol.....I freaked the first time I opened a can of this, I was like "what on earth is this?" lol)
And mix or whisk until smooth.
Pour into ice cream maker and run as directed from manufacturer.

I know this looks like a dough ball.......LOL. But it's really ice cream in the ice cream maker and it's YUMMY!!

So these are some starts to my Holiday cooking this week. My in-laws will have the traditional Thanksgiving meal and I will be bringing my own eats  :O)     I don't mind since I like the people better than the food. We will spend the afternoon playing board games and visiting. Of course I am sure that there will be some sort of football game blaring in the background...lol.  Though one person will be missing from the family meal table, our son's Birthmom. She was killed 6 years ago by a drunk driver the week of Thanksgiving. She was on her way home from Grad School to her Mother's home for  Thanksgiving break. I am thankful that our son had several years to get to know his Birthmom before her death.

Hugs and Happy Thanksgiving!
Moe

Sunday Dinner of Chicken & Noodles

Gluten Free, Dairy Free, Corn Free Chicken and Noodles.
This turned out really well!  It's also gluten free, dairy free and corn free! But please don't let that scare you off if you don't have to be FREE of foods.

I baked one of our farm fresh chickens yesterday and picked it clean. (Saved the bones for rich broth).
So here goes the recipe.
2 boxes of Hodgson Mill gluten free pastas  I LOVE THEIR PASTA!! (It's non GMO & has golden milled flax seed in it too!), you may use wheat pasta too. Cook pasta until just under done.
3 cans of Cream of Whatever Soup your family likes (I make my own gluten, corn and dairy free and will include the recipe below.)
Chopped up chicken, (in a pinch you could use canned chicken (check label for gf/cf/df if needed), cooked chicken breasts) however much your family likes. I used up the entire 6# chicken that I baked, my guys must see meat in the food or they think they will die of starvation! lol........
Mix this all together and heat until warm. I then served and sprinkled on some Penzeys Spices Pasta Sprinkle (ingredients sweet basil, Turkish oregano, thyme and garlic). I LOVE THEIR SPICES! You could also add some seasoning salt (not corn free). This recipe made enough for my guys and for about 6 single servings in the freezer for me.

Next time I make this I think I would saute some onions, celery and carrots to add to the mix and then add some frozen green beans.  To put a spin on these as leftovers, you could spoon this into an 8x8 pan, mix in some leftover veggies and cover with some gluten free, corn free, dairy free biscuit topping and have chicken, noodles and biscuits!

Recipe for gluten free, dairy free, corn free Cream of Whatever Soup
I found this one over at Allrecipes.com

A flavorful condensed cream of chicken soup base recipe for use in dishes that call for canned creamed soups

Yield:

3 cups (about 2 cans)

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups chicken broth
1/2 teaspoon poultry seasoning
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt (or less; taste to test)
1/4 teaspoon parsley
dash of paprika
1 1/2 cups milk (I used homemade rice milk)
3/4 cup flour (I used gluten free, but use wheat if you want)

Instructions:

1. In medium-sized saucepan, boil chicken broth, 1/2 cup of the milk, and the seasonings for a minute or two (longer if using fresh onions or garlic).
2. In a bowl, whisk together the remaining 1 cup of milk and flour. Add to boiling mixture and continue whisking briskly until mixture boils and thickens.

On Your Mark, Get Set, Go!!

School is fast approaching and I wanted to give you one of my all time favorite websites for cooking during the school year  the Crockpot 365 blog.

The entire site is gluten free, but the recipes are for everyone!  Look under the Slow Cooking tab and click on Index for a listing of the recipes. She also gives a review along with reader comments after each recipe.
We love the  Baked Oatmeal, Chicken Teriyaki , Rotisserie-Style Chicken (this is WONDERFUL! and tastes like the expensive store bought). After I make this one I add about a cup or so of water to the chicken broth in the bottom of the crockpot and then I freeze it for later use YUM!
Check it out for easy meals during the school year.
Moe

Where has Summer gone?

Well, here we are almost to July and I can't figure out where Summer has gone. We are getting ready to send Grandma back home after her long stay, she was suppose to be here about a month, but then decided that she needed to stay until her grandson's birthday (she got here April 11), so we are sending her off the day after.

Where have we been? Well we spent an incredible week at a Joni & Friends camp with our son's birthfamily, spent 4 days visiting with some friends out of state, attended my 30 year junior high class reunion, spent a few days in Chicago visiting friends, went to 6 Flags Great America, placed in the
4-H food show and 4-H food demonstration contest and took our son to a few days of technology day camp. To say that I am ready to fall to the ground, would be an understatement.......lol. But we are having fun.

Our son met a little girl at the Joni & Friends camp, so they plan on writing to each other. She lives in another state so the pen pal thing should be fun. I need to get our pictures developed so he can send them to her, but silly me, I used a disposable camera instead of my digital, so I have to mail these off to get them developed. Pray for this little girl and her family, they are being raised by grandparents and two of her siblings have special needs. Her brother is in a wheelchair with Cerebral Palsy and her sister has a seizure disorder. So life is not easy for this family, but they are relying on the Lord.

Had a few tough things to deal with like EATING! lol......everything at the Joni & Friends camp revolved around FOOD! I got terribly sick 2 nights because they were popping corn, and for those who don't know, I'm allergic to corn and that includes popcorn!! lol. The hardest part of all this traveling was getting food that I could eat. I did eat at Chipotle Mexican Grill twice and did fine. I just had the rice and chicken. All gluten free, dairy free and corn free. Just had to make sure that they change gloves before making my food since they do serve corn tortillas. Most of our hotels had kitchenettes in them and I was able to do some cooking while at our friends home. I even brought along one of our farm fresh chickens to eat and a few dozen farm fresh brown eggs. YUM!

In getting back to life in the real world, my home is totally trashed! LOL. To say the least, we have been dropping and running, so next week we will be getting things back in order and up and running. I came across this great website and wanted to share it with you. Homemaking: The List of Must dos.
It was a real eye opener to me. I know, I only have 1 child, but laundry does still pile up and I still have tons of dishes to do from cooking from scratch each day. Take a look at the link and tell me what you think.

Have a great rest of the summer and plan NOW for your upcoming school year. Relax outside while the kids play and have your planner book out and jot down some ideas, ask the kids what they would like to accomplish this school year and go from there. It's not too late to hit a convention, just Google and find one near you.

Moe

Freebie from a friends blog

Lynns Kitchen Adventures blog is offering a really cool menu planning print out for FREE! Can't beat that. She also has lots of neat things over there. Check her out she has regular recipes and a section with allergy recipes. Very tasty ideas.

I notice that I feel much better about having to follow a restricted allergy free diet when I plan ahead. If I don't plan and then meal time comes around, it's very hard to just grab something and eat it. I had a rough patch today. I made up a big batch of chicken, potatoes, celery and carrots in the crockpot. It was wonderful, but we were running low on the veggies, so I thought I would add my favorite Asian rice noodles. Cooked them up and had a small bowl of them with some butter on top, I felt not so great for awhile, fuzzy brain, racing heart, aching joints all the sudden, flushed face. Our son grabs the noodle bag out of the trash and says

"MOM!!! These have cornstarch in them!"

I was shocked, I don't know what I was thinking when I bought them!  It's plain as day, WATER, RICE, CORNSTARCH. Nothing hidden, but I sure did goof and now I am paying for it.  And I ruined a yummy batch of food that I made for myself. Oh, well my guys will enjoy it.

Live and learn.

Moe

EGG-cellent

So everyone laid an egg and at bedtime there was an extra egg in the nesting boxes.

Things that make you go HMM........lol.

Someone obviously laid a second egg, a tiny second egg.

We have yet to crack it open to check it out. I'm curious.

More to come on this one.

Have a great weekend!

Moe

Gluten Free Rotisserie Chicken recipe

In keeping with the pantry challenge theme I'm are shopping from the freezer this week. I have 1 whole chicken and 1 cut up chicken left. So today we are having either Rhodie (a Rhode Island Red rooster) or Freddie (a Leghorn), both were 4-H Grand Champions in 2010. These chickens fit nicley in a crockpot.

Gluten Free Rotisserie Chicken

4-5 lb chicken (I think we are using a 3lb one today)

2 tsp kosher salt or more if you like it salty like the store bought ones, I skipped the salt

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp onion powder (I would go 2 tsp next time)

1/2 tsp dried thyme

1 tsp Italian seasoning (I would make this 1 tbls next time)

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (I think I will skip this next time it was a bit spicy for me)

1/2 tsp black pepper

pinch of chili pepper (if you want) I used chili powder (too much spice for me)

4 cloves garlic

1 yellow onion quartered

Skin the chicken if you want to (I don't)

Remove all the goodies from the cavity

mix all seasonings and sprinkle inside and outside the chicken

put garlic and onions inside chicken cavity.

Put bird in breast side DOWN in crockpot.

DO NOT ADD WATER-no liquid is needed for this recipe.

Cover and cook on high 4-5 hours or low up to 8 hours. The longer you cook this the more tender it is. I am also going to put a few washed/scrubbed potatoes in the bottom of the pot to cook. YUM!

For safety sake when I have the time, I put the crockpot on high for the first hour to make sure that the temperature gets good and hot and then I turn it to low for the rest of the day. Always cook thawed chicken in the crockpot NEVER frozen since the inside of the bird stays at the wrong temperature for too long while in the crockpot and bacteria can start to grow.

This was pretty good, both my guys liked it, but it was too spicy hot for me, I like a bit of heat, but this was really warm. So you can see my changes for next time in (   ).
If you are not daring enough to try this recipe, just sprinkle your chicken with Lawyr's Seasoning Salt and turn the crockpot on. YUM!!! But way too much sodium for this body  :O( 

Moe

Month 2 of my Pantry Challenge & recipes

Tonight for dinner we had Chicken Stew as I call it. All from the pantry except for the chicken (did not want to have to butcher a hen for dinner....lol. So I let Tyson do the dirty work!)

I sliced up a bunch of celery, carrots, onion and put them in some olive oil and sauteed them.

Dumped those into the crockpot with a 32 oz container of NO SALT GF chicken broth,

cut up the chicken breasts (3 of them) added those to the crockpot,

sprinkled in some cumin (1/2 tsp or so),

1 tsp of poultry seasoning,

1/2 tsp of Kitchen Bouquet,

1/2 tsp of Marjoram.

A can of black beans drained and rinsed 

a large can of green beans (I think around 30 oz or so?) drained and rinsed.

I cooked that on high for an hour and then on low for about 3 hours. But you could put it on low all day and just leave it. I had some brown rice in the fridge leftover so I tossed that in about the last hour. It was a hit!!

Moe's Gluten Free/Dairy Free Chicken Stew

A fine meal like this was not be complete without a wonderful dessert!!

Moe's Gluten Free/Dairy Free Peanut Butter Truffle Brownie

1 box of Gluten Free Hodgson Mill Brownie Mix (use regular brownie mix if you can eat wheat  :)

I used 2 eggs to make the cake like brownies and followed the recipe on the box.

Then to make the peanut butter filling (use Sunbutter if you have allergies to peanut butter)

Filling

1/2 cup Fleischmann's salt free margarine (it's dairy free too!), softened (or use real butter)

3/4 cup creamy peanut butter

2 cups powdered sugar

2 teaspoons Almond/soy or dairy milk (I added a bit more to make it more creamy)

Blend with mixer until creamy. Then I cut the brownie in 1/2 with a knife, layed on the filling and then put the top of the brownie on. It's 1/2 gone already! lol

Moe

We lost a chicken :O(

I was resting in the recliner on Friday morning when I heard our son come screaming around the house. Now as a mother I know the difference between a 'I broke my arm' scream and a 'something terrible has happened' scream. Well it was the something terrible type of scream. And our son ran in the house crying saying "I can't find the head, I can't find her head." Well he had gone out to do his chores in the chicken house and found one of his hens missing a head and blood all over. It was very sad. I know it was hard when Sicky Chick was ill, but we knew she was ill and then she died, but to be enjoying your day and all the sudden walk in on that, it was very hard. We thought it was a mink or a weasel, but since the head is gone we are thinking more like a dog, since the other two would have just cut the neck and drank the blood. Now on our Christmas cards I will have to cross off 14 chickens and write in 13. Sort of entertaining in a weird way, but when you have been ill, sometimes the most interesting things are funny. lol. She will be missed though.

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
Ecclesiastes 3:3-5
I think I have done all of these this past week. It's so wonderful that God's grace extends to all who will accept His free give of Salvation. Won't you accept this gift during the season of giving? Click here to find out more.

Merry Christmas

Chicken Humor

A six-year-old boy told his father he wanted to marry the little girl across the street.
The father, being modern and well-schooled in handling children, hid his smile.

'That's a serious step,' he said. 'Have you thought it out completely?'

Yes,' his young son answered. 'We can spend one week in my room and the next
in hers. It's right across the street, so I can run home if I get scared of the dark.'
'How about transportation? ' the father asked.

'I have my wagon, and we both have our tricycles,' the little boy answered.
The boy had an answer to every question the father raised.

Finally, in exasperation, his dad asked, 'What about babies? When you're
married, you're liable to have babies, you know.'

'We've thought about that, too,' the little boy replied. 'We're not going to
have babies. Every time she lays an egg, I'm going to step on it!'

Chicken Foot Soup

We finally got the chicken feet out of the freezer and cooked them up. It was a family affair and lots of fun. Well worth it too.

The feet add such a wonderful flavor to the broth.

Here is a link to a great recipe.

Made a batch on Sunday, it was yummy.

After church I walked in the house and said "I smell feet!! Chicken feet that is......."

Click here for the gluten free recipe Chicken Feet Soup.

Then used it to make Jasmine Rice, I took 4 cups of rice, 2 cups water and 2 cups of the very think (like Jell-O) broth and added some parsley to the rice cooker and it was wonderful.

Here are some fun pictures from that experience. As  you can tell I am new to blogging as my pictures are not showing up like they should!

I am peeling skin in this pictures.

A chicken foot up close and personal.

Chicken is done! YUM!

Well I thawed out one of our farm fresh chickens from the freezer and baked it today. I added just a touch of salt on the skin and baked for 2 hours at 375 degrees. Store bought chicken is not going to happen in my house again after this!  This meat has FLAVOR! It reminded me of the rich taste of a Butterball, only we did not add anything to these chickens besides water, good quality feed, a few fruits and veggies here & there and lots of love! Here he is.

This was really good, but I think the legs were cut in the wrong spot because they almost touched the top of the oven.....lol. Though this breed of chicken is very tall, so that might be why the legs were so long. He was 4lbs 8oz. Pretty good size.  DS kept wanting to tell me the name of the chicken, and I kept saying "I don't want to know!" We each grabbed a fork and dug in......lol....no plates either just forks.

Now when I go out to the chicken tractor I keep seeing fried chickens walking around and even a few with those cute little white chef hats on! lol.......think of the old Looney Tunes cartoons.