Quinoa pasta - herbed up

My garden is planted in containers all around our house. (Ignore the weeds, please.)

Today I picked cilantro, parsley, chives and basil and herbed up a quinoa pasta salad.

Colorful, flavorful...herbed up.

Breadsticks with seeds and herbs

Tonight's supper was brown rice penne pasta with tomato and meat sauce. Bean requested breadsticks to go with it so I did a little searching and found this recipe.

I mixed up the dough and added some sunflower seeds, fresh basil...

...and chives from my garden.
Half way through baking Bean brushed them with FlaxMilk and sprinkled them with sea salt.

We really liked this recipe and it will be fun to try adding something else next time.

Cream of Mushroom Soup & Hotdish!

Today's challenge: GFCF cream of mushroom soup. I wanted to make a hotdish (a.k.a casserole) and it was one of the ingredients.

I didn't have fresh mushrooms but I did have some canned ones. I cut them up small enough to keep kids from identifying them in the final product and I cooked them for a few minutes in ghee. (Ghee is clarified butter.)

Then I set them aside and melted a few more tablespoons of ghee.
I mixed in about as many tablespoons of my favorite GF flour mix....
...and made a roux.

I whisked in some organic chicken broth and a milk substitute (FlaxMilk)...

...and I added the mushrooms. Ta-da! GFCF cream of mushroom soup.

I browned some hamburger with some onions.

And I sliced up 8 or 9 potatoes and layered them in a crockpot with the hamburger. Then I spooned my cream of mushroom soup over the top....

...and seasoned it up nicely with some salt, pepper, thyme and basil.

It cooked all afternoon in the crockpot and by suppertime the house smelled wonderful! Now that I know I can make a GFCF cream of mushroom soup, the hotdish is back!

GFCF Lasagna - a hit!

Last night I made lasagna, one of my family's favorite meals, for the first time since we went gluten and casein free four months ago. The thought of lasagna without cheese made me sad. Very, very sad. But I found this recipe and I gave it a try. It was a HIT!

I modified the recipe slightly. I didn't use mushrooms even though I love them. I was trying to keep the cost down and hoping to avoid having a certain child perseverate on picking them out. Now if I could just sneak the spinach past him...
The great thing about spinach is that it starts out like a big salad...
...and wilts down to almost nothing.

I picked the first of my fresh basil from our container garden and I breathed in the aroma as I chopped it.

I love the smell of fresh basil. (Cilantro, too. There isn't any in this recipe but I thought I'd share that just in case you stop by someday and catch me sniffing it.)

Now for the tofu. I didn't let the kids see the part where I crumbled it up and squeezed the water out through a dishcloth. I could almost hear the gagging.

I thickened the beaten eggs with my GF flour blend (recipe in the "Cooking for Isaiah" cookbook) instead of the one suggested in the recipe. Again, trying to keep the cost down.

Then I mixed the tofu in. It almost resembled ricotta cheese.

Almost.

I wondered how it would taste.

The recipe said to partially cook the GF lasagna noodles but I didn't. The box said that boiling wasn't required so I just added a little extra liquid to the hamburger mixture and layered the noodles in dry.

Sauce, tofu, noodles...

Repeat...sauce, tofu, noodles...

Java made coleslaw to go with the meal. The dog stationed himself under her to eat the cabbage that fell to the floor. Cabbage? What a weird dog.

Lasagna and coleslaw. Nobody seemed to miss the garlic bread that once would have accompanied this meal.

I liked the tofu / egg mixture in the lasagna. It wasn't cheese but it added a creamy, cheesy type texture. The added protein and lower calories was a good thing, too!

We'll definitely be making this one again.

GFCF strawberry ice cream

Java had a few simple requests for her 9th birthday party... cupcakes, a Justin Bieber tablecloth and strawberry ice cream.

The cupcakes were simple enough- Betty Crocker GF yellow cake mix with Duncan Hines Creamy Home Style Classic Vanilla frosting.

Justin Bieber tablecloth. Check.

The challenge was to find a good GFCF strawberry ice cream recipe. I found this one but I didn't have any agave nectar or vanilla beans. I made it anyway, substituting white sugar for the agave. I doubled the recipe so we'd have enough for Java's two birthday celebrations (one with family and one with friends).
I won't double it next time. It was very good freshly made but not as good after being in the freezer for a few days.
I'll try the recipe again with the agave and the vanilla beans but even my modified version was enough to make the birthday girl smile! Or maybe it was the Justin Bieber tablecloth.

Pizza, hummus and smores

I didn't buy regular Bisquick when we were eating regular, but I thought I'd try the gluten free version as an option for quick pizza crusts. We tried it last night. We also tried a pizza seasoned hummus. (We've given up on any vegan type cheeses for pizza. Blech.)

Loved the hummus. The GF Bisquick pizza crust? Not so much. We'll stick with our favorite recipe.
Some friends of ours were camping in the area so after supper we brought some smores stuff out to make around their campfire. I didn't have a GFCF chocolate bar so we brought some GFCF chocolate frosting (Duncan Hines Creamy Homestyle Classic Chocolate Frosting) to use instead.

The gluten free graham crackers were expensive but good. I found a recipe so I might try to make my own sometime.