~Let's Get Cooking Series~

During my Let's Get Cooking Series, I plan to beebop and hop around the net to some blogging sites that I frequent and give you some tips and tools to find great gluten free recipes to make your home life easier in the kitchen. As a wife, homeschooling mom, daughter of a Mother who lives nearby who needs constant care, I lead a busy life. I know that your life never stop either!

All the recipes in this series can be made either gluten free or with gluten, so don't run away if you are one of my readers that is NOT gluten free.

So the Let's Get Cooking Series is kicking off today with some AWESOME recipes from Lynn's Kitchen Adventures. Hop on over and check her out! Tell Lynn that Moe sent you from Adoptive Mom Home Schooling An Only Child blog.

40 Ground Beef Recipes
Lynn's Kitchen Adventures has some wonderful meals that could be easily made gluten free. Stop by her blog and  check out the 40 recipes that she has on there.


Taco Soup photo from Lynn's Kitchen Adventure blog

We are pinching penny's right now in our household due to my husband being hurt at work and ground beef tends to go a long way in recipes. I plan to make a number of these in the near future.

Many of these recipes look like they could be easily changed to gluten free and also look freezer friendly. Easy swap outs would be regular noodles for gluten free noodles. I think that these recipes will be easy enough for a Gluten Free newbie to try out and enjoy.

Lynn also has a Gluten Free button on her site for more recipes. Always check your ingredients and make sure that you are using gluten free.

Warm up with a nice hot meal on the cheap!
Moe


 Lynn's Kitchen Adventures

Neat recipe site

By now you know that I am a sucker for any recipe website.....lol. I can't pass one up, I've got tons of cookbooks, I just need to use what I have. hahaha. But then along comes a website like this Angelas Kitchen from my friend Megan. I clicked on it and looked around, saw some a gluten free, special diet, whole foods, and traditional menus with recipes. Off to the side I found some others including CORN FREE!!  (they have soy free, pork free and many others too!) What a wealth of info!

So check her out and see if you can find something new to eat, she even has once a month cooking plans.

Moe

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

Shopping again

I ran to Aldi and got a few things, spent around $21.00 and can't find my receipt to itemize it for you.
broccoli
cauliflower
mushrooms
yogurt
almond milk
dry pinto beans (going to try to make refried beans from scratch-share your recipe if you have one)
several loaves of high fiber bread for my guys (they were cheap)
Stolen (clearance & impulse buy!)
fancy cookies (clearance & impulse buy!)

Food sure does add up even when you are at Aldi!! $72.09 for the month so far on groceries for a family of 3, with me being gluten free/dairy free and now on low sodium. YES!! Saving money can be done even on a special diet.

I start my wonderful upper/lower scope prep today, drinking that wonderful drink that sends you to the bathroom time and again (I know TMI). I drink 1/2 of it today and 1/2 of it tomorrow. I would appreciate prayers for my scopes tomorrow, that all goes well and that the doctor sees what he needs to see so that he can fix the issues.

Hebrews 13:5b
"and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee."

Moe

Pantry Challenge Day 9 How is it going?

Just checking in to see how it's going. Remember you can still buy groceries, but do your best to eat from what you have in the house, it's like FREE food!! I'm needing some raisins, but I fear stepping into the grocery store and buying more stuff! lol. If you see a great buy on something, feel free to stock up on it, but also use what you already have too.

My doctor put me on a diuretic this week and I was told to really be watching my salt. So that has made things interesting on the pantry challenge to say the least. So I got some low-salt cookbooks from the library (we love that place!), found a recipe for no salt cream soup (not great, but it was OK). I had ground beef in the freezer, rice in the pantry and celery in the fridge, also had all the ingredients for the 'cream of no sodium soup'. I used coconut milk to make that, it was the unsweetened kind, but it still had an odd sweetness to it (oh well, at least I am using it up in the pantry challenge). I made beef & rice casserole for myself (gluten free) and then I made the guys a regular one using up 2 cans of Campbell's cream soups from the pantry. I also had made some wild rice from the pantry and used that in their recipe.

For desert I made a apple buckle (some call it apple betty) using gluten free flours, apple pie filling and Rice Bran flakes to add some fiber without changing the taste or texture.

Apple Buckle with yummy coconut ice cream to go with it.

Have you been having fun with this? Make it fun, have the kids go into the pantry and make some sort of fun meal. Our meals don't have to look like Julia Childs (loved watching her as a child with my mother). Any creative meals come across your table this past week?
Moe

Pantry Challenge day 8

I found some grilled burgers in the freezer from late this summer and we had those for one dinner, then I made Salisbury steaks for the next night. I used up the rest of the hamburgers and 2 cans of beef broth mixed with some cornstarch and dried onions. I put those into a pot with a lid and put them on med/low for about 45 min minutes, I served with green beans (1 can cut & 1 can string) and packaged rice mix (all from the pantry).

Any good recipes coming your way? Share them with us.
Moe

Pantry Challenge Day 4

I used up some zucchinis, mushrooms, carrots, garlic and chicken (from freezer). I put all that in a pan with some olive oil, cooked it up and sprinkled on a tough of seasoning salt. Went over well and I cleaned out some veggies that I had on hand. I think I will make some brown rice that I have (sitting in the pantry in the far back dark corner!) and add that along with a scrambled egg to last nights leftovers to make a fried rice. YUM!

What have you made?
Moe

Pantry Challenge!!!

How about it?? Anyone game for a pantry challenge? It's easy, before you head to the grocery store, shop your freezer, refrigerator and cabinets to see what you can use up. For the first 3 weeks I try to only buy milk, butter and bread, since I usually have an abundance of canned fruits and veggies on hand. If you don't have chickens you may need to buy eggs  :-p    Make a family game out of this, let the kids pick some can goodies from the cabinet, find some meat in the freezer and go from there.

Feel free to post here and let us know how it's going for you, ask for hints and tips on how to go about doing your pantry challenge. I for one sometimes need some help using up those odd cans of black beans, pinto beans and mole sauce that I bought for some odd reason....lol.

This is a great money saver to start the new year out. I think about many of my readers that are saving to adopt and homeschool moms that are eeking out a tight budget. I hope that this post will be a blessing to your household.

What kind of weird things do you have in your cabinet, freezer or refrigerator that need used up? Use things up before they go bad. Get creative and see what interesting things you can make.

Have a wonderful week!
Moe