Quick change in dinner plans...

Well, it has been a while, and I'm still not back up to speed. Lots of things have been going on, and now I'm getting ready to head off for possible jury duty for the next 2 months... so lots of limbo right now.

A few weeks ago we had signed up to feed the missionaries from our church. We had heard that they had some food allergy issues that hadn't been being taken into consideration when people were having them over for meals. The issues were fairly simple ones. One is allergic to mushrooms, the other has to be dairy free. Well, those are easily enough handled so we signed up and decided to provide a wonderful all out meal to make up for the lack they'd been getting.
I planned on making a slow cooker pot roast with a nice tangy sauce, gluten and dairy free dinner rolls, corn on the cob, my infamous pickled potato salad - with a home made mayonnaise, and a nice slow cooker dairy and gluten free chocolate cake. Note: The cake recipe isn't mine. It's one from another GF blogger and the link can be found at http://www.glutenfreegigi.com/slow-cooker-gluten-free-chocolate-cake-with-fudge-sauce/   

 Then things changed. The night before we were to have them over for dinner, they called to confirm, and let us know that the person with the dairy issue was no longer in the group. Instead, we had someone who could not have sugar or sweeteners of any kind, and could not have any grains or starches. Ok.. time for a challenge. This meant that most of my dinner plans had to be quickly rearranged and simplicity was going to be the key.

So, we still had the slow cooker pot roast, but instead of the sauce I had been thinking of using, I simply threw in most of a chopped onion, gave the beef a lovely salt, pepper and garlic dry rub, and then added a splash of my home made turkey stock to the bottom of the pan. For sides, well, we knew she was good with leafy greens and most veggies, so we had green beans and a lovely salad full of all sorts of things. Cucumbers, carrots, radishes, green onions, cabbage, lettuce and tomatoes all went into that salad. And I made a simple vinaigrette using some garlic balsamic and olive oil with a little garlic, ginger, onion and pepper added to it. Not the best I've ever made, but, you make due with what you have and get things done.

I don't have any pictures from tonight's dinner. Most of the things that would need a recipe were from the original plan and have been covered in other posts anyway. But, I just wanted to get back into the posting sadle and show that, no matter what plans you make, things can always go a bit sideways at the last minute and cause changes. A few years ago, that sort of thing would have thrown me into a melt down. I really did not do well with change or surprise. Since going gluten free, that has gone away. And I also wanted to show that you don't need to be afraid of feeding people with food issues. We had a very simple meal, but it was delicious and everyone at the table had a good time and felt included. 

Chicken and Black eyed-pea Soup

So, my online classes are coming to a close, and the boys are off camping with their father this last week before their mom gets back. M has gone back to her mother's home and B2 has not yet arrived..
So I'm going to try to start getting back and active with this blog.
Tonight I made a very simple soup for dinner. Didn't take a lot of photos because I wasn't sure I was going to be posting this, but, here we are..
Ingredients that went into this soup:

1 large frozen chicken breast, diced
1/4 diced onion
1 quart chicken stock
@ 1 quart of water
1 can stewed tomatoes, diced, plus juice
garlic
Worcestershire sauce

These items were placed into the pot and allowed to come to a simmer, cooking the chicken.

Then I added:
1 cup frozen corn
1 can black eyed peas
1 pint carrots
pepper
basil, sage, or whatever combo of herbs and spices you like. Taste it and adjust as needed

Allow this to come back to a simmer and when everything is heated through, it is ready to serve.

It's a cold and rainy Sunday here, so soup seemed just the thing. And since it's down to just the 2 of us for a few weeks, we're going to try to focus on very simple foods. We'd also both like to drop a few pounds, and soups are a great way to help that along. The are nice and filling, but can be lower in calories because you are filling up with liquids.

Tonight's soup was served with some rolls we had in the freezer. (Hubby's were sourdough, I believe, and mine were Udi's whole grain, gluten free rolls.)

Nutrition classes week 2 (May 13-19th)

Ok, so for this week's cooking assignment for the Child Nutrition class, our object was to make a "balanced breakfast."

We needed to include 1 source of complex carbohydrates, a source of protein and at least 1 fruit or veggie.  I decided to make a quiche. I'd seen a recipe for an oatmeal pastry crust from the 1940's rationing website (1940sexperiment.wordpress.com) and figured I could adapt that fairly easily to be gluten free. It doesn't roll out like a traditional pie crust, instead I just plopped it in the pan and spread it around with damp fingers, but it worked well and tastes very good. Will probably be using that crust a lot.
So here is my modified recipe:

Gluten Free Oat Pastry Crust:
      3/4 cup of Pamela's Baking and Pancake mix (It originally called for a self rising flour.. I had this handy, so used it.. any good flour blend will do, just make sure to include baking powder)
      Pinch of salt (I didn't add and didn't notice it missing, though with a different filling it might be more noticeable)
      1-2 tbsp of butter or "cooking fat"
      1/4 cup rolled oats
      water
      1 tbsp ground flax seed meal ** (this was not in the original, but I thought it would make a good addition as I'm also working on getting more fiber into my diet. You don't need to add if you would rather not.)

Mix the flour, salt and butter and then add in the oats. Combine well and then drizzle in enough water to form a sticky dough.
Spoon into a greased pie plate and spread mixture around with damp fingers.
Par bake the crust at 350 for about 10 minutes.

Then I chopped and fried up 3 strips of turkey bacon and chopped up some assorted veggies. I used pea pods, onions, green beans, assorted bell peppers, broccoli, zucchini, carrots and mushrooms. Then I diced 2 tomato and basil flavored mozzarella cheese sticks. I combined all of these and filled the pie shell up, adding more veggies as needed until it was full then sprinkled it with some garlic powder and pepper.
I cracked 6 eggs into a bowl and added some Worcestershire sauce and whisked those together and poured it over the veggie/cheese/bacon mix.
Out it into a 350 degree oven and baked for about 35-40 minutes until the eggs are set.

A serving would be 1/6th of the quiche. I have been having it left over and cold for my breakfast all week and am really enjoying it. You could easily change up your fillings to  use whatever your family likes or what you have to hand.

These classes have really gotten me thinking and paying more attention to what my family is eating, and it's really coming at a great time as we are still coping with some financial recovery from our stints with unemployment. One of the videos we watched in the Nutrition, Health and Lifestyle class featured a chat with Peter Menzel about his book, Hungry Planet. It showed pictures of families from around the world with 1 week's worth of food... everything they would typically eat in a week and the USD equivalent of what was spent on that food.  It was really interesting and fascinating.. refugee families in Chad were living on basically less then $1.50 a week.. not per person, but for the WHOLE family. And there was 5 or 6 people in that family if I recall correctly. Just amazing.
So, to help us save money right now (so we can pay down the credit cards and such we lived on while unemployed..) we're going to be trying to simplify our diet and our food budget. It's going to mean giving up some variety and we might get mighty sick of some things after a while, but we're going to give it a try.  And we're not giving up everything or going too drastic all at once.. I know there'd be a revolt in the house if I tried to do too much, but we are going to be cutting back. We're going to try to focus on more veggies as well. Lunches are going to be some nice, lovely big salads. (I'd rather do them for dinners, but Hubby needs easily packable lunches, so I would have some problems with making that our main meal just yet.. and everyone's a bit scattered in the mornings yet, but I've got some ideas there too... just have to see if I can pull them off... This quiche would be great, though there's too many "weeds" in it according to Hubby... his limited veggie tolerance is one of my biggest hurdles...)

Nutrition classes weekt 1 (May 6-11th)

So, in the midst of the on-going babysitting/homeschooling I'm doing this month, I also signed up for some online nutrition classes. I've been having a lot of fun and learning all sorts of things. I'm taking the classes through coursera.org and really have nothing but good things to say so far. I'm taking a Nutrition, Health and Lifestyle class and a Child Nutrition class.
For the Child Nutrition class, we have a weekly cooking assignment where we make something that meets certain requirements, then post pictures and a description and the other class members review and  evaluate.
For our first week, we were asked to make a "colorful vegetable main dish featuring at least 3 vegetables."
Now, if you know me, you know I'm going to play around with a few things for something like this... and I did.. I make 4 different dishes then picked the one that I thought tasted best, photographed best and best met the requirements.. so, here are the 4 dishes I made:

The first one I did was simply a veggie pizza.

 I used:

Rustic Napoli herb gluten free crust

Fred Meyer pizza sauce

fresh mozzarella cheese

sugar snap pea stir fry veggies (carrots, pea pots, yellow peppers, onions, mushrooms)

The pizza crusts are pretty small so this made a very small pizza which I had for lunch one day. It's not my favorite gf pizza crust, but it's one I had on hand, so I used it.. I would have liked to have tried a cauliflower/cheese crust, which I've seen online, but I didn't have any fresh cauliflower, so maybe next time... This was pretty good, though could have used more veggies then I used.. 

The second dish I tried was a baked omelet (aka fritata) 

2 whole eggs

2 yolks (they were in the fridge and needed using up)

2 spears asparagus, frozen

1 inch zucchini, sliced and quartered

sliced bell peppers

1 mushroom cap, large, diced

baked at 350 til done. Added flax seed meal at the end for fiber and covered with a little bit of mozzarella cheese and placed upside down on the plate. I split it to show off the veggies.

This was probably the biggest failure. It needed.. something... maybe some more cheese or some Worcestershire sauce or something.. it was still edible, just not very great.. 

Meal number 3 was a veggie enchilada!

 

broccoli, zucchini, bell peppers

sugar snap pea stir fry veg. - sugar snap peas, carrots, mushrooms, bell peppers, onions, water chestnuts

enchilada sauce

cheese sauce

cheese

olives

tortilla wraps

I sauteed the veggies and mixed them with the enchilada sauce and the cheese sauce.

I greased a small mini-pan and placed a spoon of plain sauce in the bottom, spread it around and then put in a layer of torn tortillas. Cover with the veggie/cheese/sauce mixture, cover with tortillas and another layer of the mix and repeat until pan is pull. Cover the last layer of tortillas with a thin layer of the veggie mix and a little more of the plain enchilada sauce. I cheated horribly and broke up a piece of sandwich cheese for the top and sprinkled some chopped olives over the top. 

Bake at 350 for about half an hour or so until done. Serve with sour cream.

This one was a bit spicy but very good. I had enough left over veggies that I made a second one of these and tucked into the freezer for later.

And the last one I made, this is the one I wound up submitting. It was really down to this and the enchilada, but this one photographed so much better, so it won... 

Veggie Spring Rolls!

cauliflower “rice”

veggie stir fry – sugar snap peas, carrots, mushrooms, bell peppers, onions, asparagus, water chestnuts

soy sauce

garlic powder

butter powder

spring roll wraps

I steamed some frozen cauliflower and mashed it up with a little bit of butter powder to make a "rice" substitute.
Then I sauteed the rest of the veggies with a little bit of garlic powder and soy sauce.
One at a time, soften the wraps as directed on package, place a spoon of the cauliflower "rice" mix, top with a spoon of the veggie mix, add a sprinkle of sesame seeds and roll.

I've been on a little bit of a spring roll kick lately, as it's such an easy way to make lunch with assorted left overs, so it really wasn't much of a surprise that this is what I picked.. I will get to see my evaluations in a few more hours, and am working on the next assignment (A Balanced Breakfast)  and am pretty sure I know what I'm going to do so I will be posting that here in the next few days if all goes well (and we don't have repeats of last week's tantrum melt downs... oye... )

break time

Due to a friend's family emergency, things around here might be a bit slower then usual.. One of my neighbor's has to go out of state to help her parents recover from some medical issues. Taking her kids would have made things very complicated, so I will be watching them during the day while their dad is at work. So I'm going to be a bit busy and might not have much time to play with recipes.. If I come up with anything at all interesting, I will do what I can to get it posted. Mostly we tend to eat enchilada casserole, nachos, pasta, rice and whatever... fairly basic stuff...
Will keep you posted as things happen :)

Chicken Stock - part 2: The Canning

Ok, technically it's bottling, but that's a semantic issue...

First, a note:
I half thought about delaying this post due to the unfortunate happenings in Boston earlier this week. However, in the end, I decided that I would go ahead with this. Pressure canners can be dangerous. It is always very important to read and follow the instructions that come with your canner. But they are very useful tools in the kitchen. The ones used in the bombs in Boston were much smaller cookers then are generally used in home canning.
We live very far away from Boston, but our thoughts and prayers are with all of those who were there and who have friends and family out there. Our neighbor's son was at the race Monday. He is in Boston serving a mission for our Church. He suffered some minor injuries and we are all very thankful that he was not injured more severely.

Anyway, so after a week and a half of stock making (we had a late, last minute extra carcass to toss in after hubby wanted chicken fingers for dinner Sunday.. so Saturday I spent deboning another chicken...) and some time for the stock to sit in the refrigerator so the fats would solidify.. Today I was able to get everything into bottles and processed for long term storage.
I will walk you through what I did, but, as always, please read the instructions that came with your pressure canner when doing this at home. There may be some differences in processing time due to elevation or whatnot..

6 quart sized bottles for the first batch..

lids for the first batch

First thing I did was to gather all my bottles and run them through the dishwasher. This makes sure they are clean, and, in as much as possible, hot for the canning process. While they are washing, get out your canner and fill it with water to the pressure canning mark. It should be fairly low down, an inch or two from the bottom. Get a small saucepan and fill with water. Your lids will go in this. You will need to have your lids boiled and ready to go.

bubble bubble...

Fill a large stock pot with your cold stock and bring to a boil. I had 3 large bowls of stock in my fridge, so I couldn't fit it all in at one go, but that is ok, because I was going to have 2 rounds of bottles anyway.


When your dishwasher is just about done, bring all 3 pots to a boil. (The canner you might just want to bring to a simmer, but it will go faster if you've preheated your water... again.. follow the instructions for your canner!!)

bottles all full

When the stock has come to a boil, turn off the heat and fill your bottles. For stocks and soups, the instructions for my canner says to leave a 1 inch head space. When your bottles are filled, run a damp cloth around the edges of the top of the jar to wipe any spills or obstructions that might prevent the lid from sealing. Place your boiled lid on your jar and twist closed with your ring. They just need to be finger tight.

into the bath!

When you have enough jars to fill your canner, do so. Use your jar lifter so as not to burn your fingers and move your jars into the canner.

Place your lid on the canner and wait for the pressure indicator to pop (again, follow your canner's instructions..) place your weights and wait for the rattle and then start your timing. For me, I processed at 10 pounds pressure for 25 minutes for quarts and 20 minutes for pints. I did one batch of each. I got 6 quarts and 7 pints.

When your time is up, turn off the heat and wait. This is the part that takes all the time. You have to wait for the pressure in the canner to slowly dissipate before you do ANYTHING else at this point. Removing the weight or attempting to open the canner at this point could cause an explosion and there could be scalding hot liquid, glass and metal all over your kitchen, so please, JUST LET IT SIT. Wait until the pressure indicator drops and then you can remove the weight. If it is still releasing steam at this point, you might want to wait a little longer. When you do open the lid, keep in mind, things will still be incredibly hot in there and the steam can burn you, so be careful.

second batch - 7 pint sized bottles

Once your lid is open, use your jar lifter to move the jars from the canner to the counter. I always put down a dishcloth or several layers of paper towels, both in my cooling station and in my filling station. It helps cut down the clean up from spills and helps cushion the hot jars and protect the counter top.

Again, you will want to place them and let them be. Let them sit several hours or over night to cool before moving them to your pantry. Always check to make sure they have sealed before moving them and any that don't can either be reheated and reprocessed using a new lid, or tucked into the fridge for immediate use.

lots of stock!

Home made Chicken stock - part 1

So, over the last few weeks we've made use of a few chickens. Whenever possible, I save as many of the bones, skin, organs, etc in bag and stick them in the freezer. When I've got enough to fill my slow cooker a few times, I make some stock.
I also save up the odds and ends of veggies for this as well. Carrots, celery, onions, chard, spinach, peppers and the like. About the only thing that doesn't work well for this is potatoes. Potatoes and similar starchy vegetables tend to cloud the stock and we don't want that. Also, you might want to add garlic or other herbs. It's a matter of making stock that _you_ like the flavor of and that works for you and your family.

This isn't a hard and fast recipe by any means. Use what you have, what you like, what you want to "sneak" past your kids (or in my case, husband...) We will be pulling as many of the nutrients out of the foods that are going into the pot as possible and making a nice, rich stock from it.

Put this in and wait 24 hours.....

This is a really easy way to make stock from left overs you would otherwise throw away and really doesn't take up that much of your time. All you really need to do it toss your left over chicken (or turkey) carcass and some veggies into your slow cooker, add some water, set it on low and walk away for 24 hours. Honestly, that's all there is to it.
 This batch was a mixture of pre-cooked carcases and raw bits from a bird I'd cut into pieces, so I had the left over necks, back bone, wings and the like.

And come back to this....

When you come back 24 hours later, you will have this lovely mess. Here's where the "work" comes in. At this point you need to strain this to separate the solid matter from the lovely stock. I use a strain and sort method so I can pick the bones of any useful bits of now cooked meat that might have stuck to the raw bones, but will just fall right off now. Save those for later use.

ooh.. marrow!

 
I will also use this as a chance to break open a few of the larger bones. We want this lovely marrow to have every chance to escape into the next round of stock.
Bone broth, aka, stock, gets a good deal of it's nutrients from the marrow in the bones. We want to cook them until the bones easily crumble and most of the marrow has escaped into the stock.
(Sorry about the fuzzy picture, my battery was dying..*sigh*)

 Then back into the pot goes the bones, and bits again, as they still have lots to give. I will add in more of the bones from my freezer stock pile and more veggie scraps and run this for 3-4 days until my stock pile is gone and I've gotten pretty much all that I can from the bones.

Here you see round 1 of the stock. There is a nice shimmer of fat on top of this and it is still cloudy from some of the smaller particulates. I plan to use some of the stock I'm making this week for soup, but the bulk of it will most likely be bottled this weekend for long term storage in the pantry. Before bottling, we will want to remove as much of the fat as we can, so this will get covered and go into the refrigerator every night after getting topped off. (I will easily fill this bowl and perhaps another before we're done..)

So, next day we pull this out and before we go about repeating the strain and sort and adding the next round of stock to the bowl, we need to remove the fat. As you can see, it has solidified overnight in the fridge. This makes things much easier as now you can simply use a spoon or a fork and simply lift the fat off the top of the stock in small sections.
Again here, I always save the fat that I skim off my stocks. I use it for all sorts of things from seasoning my cast iron to using it as my saute fat when browning onions, mushrooms or peppers and such, or anytime I'm working with something that could use a little extra fat in the preparation.

congealed stock

That leaves me with this lovely, semi-congealed stock. The natural collagen from the skin and bones will gelatinize  the stock while it is refrigerated. From here you can use it as is, freeze it or bottle it for long term storage. I will be doing bottling later in the week and will cover that then, but first, I will be pulling some out for "fresh" use in a soup in order to use up some other left overs:
No pictures, but I had some left over meatballs that I quartered, added some mixed veggies, a can of diced tomatoes and some left over rice. I added a few ladles full of the stock and about a cup of water, along with some herbs and let that all simmer.
Serve with garlic bread and there was dinner.

In part 2, I will show you how I bottle all this goodness up for storage in the pantry.



Also, if you've been to this site before, you might notice a new button off to the side. We want to adopt and could use a little bit of help with some of the finances for it. We had most of the money we would have needed last year before the 2 layoffs and some emergency septic line repair. Now that Hubby is employed again, we're working on building everything back up, but, we would certainly be very grateful if anyone felt impressed to help us along with donations. Adoption is, sadly, not cheap, not easy, and not guaranteed. But it would go a long way if we could get our homestudy paid for and out of the way. We've been quoted a price for the homestudy of around $2000, and, if we're lucky, the entire adoption could be around $10,000, which would be wonderful as many agencies charge 4 or 5 times that, or more. We are also working with the foster care system, so if we get matched through that, things could be much less expensive, but we need that initial home study out of the way so that we can get things moving along. Any contributions would be wonderful. (And I'm not above bribing... or making a deal for some of my home made jams, jellies, pickles, syrups, etc...  just saying...)