Living Gluten-Free

I just made this Banana Crunch Cake from Gluten Free is Life. It was moist and delicious. She said it was a coffee cake but it would be just as good without the oatmeal crumble topping IMHO. It was not grainy -- it seriously took me back to my gluten days. It was full bodied and had a crumb just like a cake. It only called for oat flour -- no mixing or multiple flours and no guar or xanthan gum! It was easy and yummy!

It still amazes me how the gluten free products I try just keep getting better and better. I have learned a few things in the past year. 1.) The pre-made items are okay but can range from food grade cardboard to good but grainy. 2.) Some of the best brownies I have had were from a gf mix. Mixes are better than already made gluten-free products. 3.) The best gluten-free products that don't taste gluten free are the ones made from scratch.

I think I may be dreaming of this banana cake tonight. I am glad I did make it tonight (and sample it), with Little Miss Muffet's help (she helped sample it, also), because this means breakfast is made for in the morning.

Gluten-free living is getting easier. This past weekend we went on a scout camp out. It was rainy and cold! We were so glad our troop was in charge of cooking, that meant we could help out in the kitchen in exchange for beds in cabins and buildings. The first morning all those campers filed in looking forward to that warm liquid to help warm them up, whether it be hot chocolate or coffee. There were murmurs of the coldness and dampness and hopefulness it would warm up. My room was blazing hot, probably 90 degrees. It was absolutely stifling. I didn't dare complain because I was so glad to be warm and not sleep on rocks and have a bathroom literally three footsteps away from where I laid my head.

Working and helping out in the kitchen was fun. My entire family lent a helping hand with each meal in some capacity. One neat thing about helping with the food was access to the menu before hand -- also there was the boon of making sure there was not any cross contamination. Knowing the head cook helped so much because he kept our food needs in mind. I forgot we were having spaghetti, so really it only helps when one remembers things they shouldn't forget. We talked about what LMM and I would eat for dinner that night. We were hoping there would be a left over hamburger patty from lunch for each of us.

It's neat how things work out. We were both able to eat spaghetti!! Another camper also had Celiac. Her mom had made an entire package of gf pasta noodles. When she dropped them off in the kitchen ahead of time, I was able to introduce myself and I was able to glean some neat ideas from her. Her family has been gluten free for 8 1/2 years! She told me of an Asian market in town where I will be able to buy stir-fry to go and flours/noodles much cheaper than at the health food store. Yippee! She offered to share the noodles with us also. Usually, I would have thanked her but said no-thank-you. Not that afternoon, the noodles were good, they were not any noodles I had bought before. They were good, I just seemed to have required a lot of sauce with the noodles. I hope I can one day repay the kind act. Maybe I will make this banana cake and wrap up a couple of slices for her dear daughter.

The gluten free life just keeps getting better and better.

What's for supper...?

For some reason I didn't make out a menu for this week but I've had fun trying new recipes. So far I've made my grandmother's Chop Suey -- delicious! Then I made cabbage rolls, a black bean soup (I'm still searching for that special black bean soup recipe). I also made sandwiches, pimento cheese sandwiches. I used Paula Deen's recipe of which she credits her son. It contained cream cheese, grated cheddar, grated onion and I used roasted red peppers that I diced. It was delicious, we much prefer the cheddar to Velveeta. That brings us to dinner tonight.

I had some tilapia. Hmmm, what to make... so I searched and came up with this Spanish Moroccan Tilapia from allrecipes.com. We placed the tilapia and the Moroccan vegetables and broth atop some De Boles multi grain gluten-free spaghetti style pasta. Next time I would serve this on top of some brown rice, but we've had rice several times this week. The pasta was different, it was made with rice, quinoa, and amaranth. It was kind of crunchy on the inside but looked done on the outside. I cooked it for the recommended time. It was fine and made the dish not so soft.

It smelled wonderful when it was cooking and we all enjoyed it. It is definitely a keeper. I don't know if I will put it in rotation but it's great for those nights when you want something different. It was easy to make, there was a lot of dicing of vegetables but very easy to prepare. I did not add the garbanzo beans because I did not have them on hand. For the two red bell peppers I substituted mini sweet peppers. They are yellow, orange and red and added some really pretty color to the mixture. I used all the kalamata olives I had on hand, probably twelve or so. I diced them pretty small. The purplish-black flecks added a nice contrast visually to the dish.

The dish was a hit and the pictures don't do it justice. I was going to also include a picture when the tilapia was cooking but it was not visually appealing, it was just white globs on top of red. It tastes much better than the pictures look.

Crockpot Taco Soup

I knew this afternoon would be busy. We had a prom committee meeting and didn't know how long that would take. There were a few other errands to do so I knew we would not have much time to make supper tonight. I took out my trusty crock pot and decided what to make. I changed up my Taco Soup recipe and this is what I came up with. It was delicious by the way.

Crock pot Taco Soup
3 large frozen chicken breasts
2 potatoes, peeled and diced
1 large or 2 medium carrots, peeled and diced
1 can Rotel, do not drain
1 28 oz. can diced tomatoes, do not drain
1 26.5 oz. can black beans, drained and rinsed
2 cups water
5 chicken bouillon cubes
1 package taco seasoning
1 package dry ranch dressing
1/2 cup onions, diced
1 large clove garlic, chopped
1/2 teaspoon oregano

Place frozen chicken breasts in crock pot. Pour in Rotel and diced tomatoes. Do not drain. You need their liquid for the soup. Drain and rinse the black beans. Place all of the other ingredients in the crock pot. Cook on low 8 - 10 hours. Shred chicken before serving.

Optional garnishes: squeeze of lime juice, grated cheese, dollop of sour cream, and/or a few tortilla chips crushed

You may notice there is no corn in this recipe. Add it if you would like. Little Boy Blue is allergic to corn, so I omit it.

Eat and enjoy!!