Product review time! El's Kitchen Snaps and Medleys

A few weeks ago, I volunteered to write a review on Amazon for a new gluten free product in exchange for free samples. Yesterday, my samples arrived.
I've never been asked to write a review for a product before, so this was a bit of a first for me, but, happily, it turned out to be a product I have no problem supporting.  My samples came from a new company called El's Kitchen. They are running 2 new gluten free snack lines and I got a sample from each.

The first sample I got was from their Snaps line.  This is a line of bagel chips.  This line is free from gluten and wheat, eggs, nuts, peanuts, dairy and soy. It is also free of trans fats. It comes in a 4 oz bag and each 1 oz serving has just 90-100 calories.
They come in 3 different flavors, original, garlic and herb, and cinnamon sugar.
The sample I got was for the cinnamon sugar snaps. I have to say, they were very good bagel chips. It has been a while since I've had "traditional" wheaty bagel chips, but, from what I can remember of them, these were spot on. And it had some great flavor. Not too sweet, but a very good blend of cinnamon and sugar.
I had my non-gluten free husband try these as well and he really liked them as well. That is saying something as he often has flavor or texture issues with some of the gluten free products.

The second line of snacks they are offering are called Medleys. This snack contains a mixture of corn nuts, flax seed corn chips, pretzels, potato chips and bagel chips.
This line also has 3 flavor options: original, cheddar and the sour cream and onion. This line comes in a 5 oz bag and each 1 oz serving varies from 140 to 150 calories per serving.
I got the sour cream and onion flavor as my sample from this line and oh boy, did we like this. Hubby and I really, really liked this one. Really our only complaint was that we wanted more, which is a good thing for the company. :)
The flavors and textures of the various components blended very well together, and the flavor blend wasn't overpowering. It was just really very good.
This line contains no trans fats, no eggs, nuts or peanuts.





These products are currently available via Amazon.com and are retailing there for $5.12 per 4 to 5 ounce bag. That might seem a bit much (and really it is..) but, sadly, that's about typical for gluten free products, and is actually better then some prices I've seen.
This was a good enough product that I feel comfortable recommending it to anyone who is looking for a good, crunchy snack. It won't be joining our "regular" line up, but it is going to be watched and ordered once in a while.

** Note: The only "payment" I received for this was my free samples, in exchange for which, I agreed to write a review on Amazon.com. I liked the product enough, and had wanted to start doing some reviews on my site, that I took it upon myself to write my review here as well. **

Chocolate Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Because we all need cookies from time to time:

1 cup sugar
1 cup peanut butter (or other nut/seed butter)
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
1/4 cup mini chocolate chips (I used the Enjoy Life brand.)

I've been thinking about making cookies for about a week or two, but just never quite seemed to get around to it. The last few weeks have been busy with everyone in and out and visiting for the summer and then the holiday.
Tonight, I had just put dinner in the oven (meatloaf...) when my husband called to let me know that he had a stop to make tonight and would be about a half hour later then usual, which meant dinner would be delayed, which meant I needed to pull the meatloaf back out.. But I had this nice, warm oven and some extra time, so, cookies!

These are very simple and quick cookies. I've seen several variations on the grain free peanut butter cookies online, but, well, I really like chocolate, so we needed to make some modifications..

I started by measuring my cup of sugar and a cup of peanut butter into my mixing bowl. I like chunky, and that's what I had, so that's what I used. Any peanut butter or other nut butter works well for this.
Then I decided to add 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder, my vanilla and the egg. I mixed these until they were well combined, then I added my chips and mixed those in as well.

Then I scooped them onto my baking stone. I used my 1 tablespoon measure and made rounded balls. Once they were all places, I gave them the traditional peanut butter cookie crosshatch.
And into the oven they went, while I peeled potatoes for mashing.

They baked for about 10-15 minutes at 350. They tend to run closer to 15 minutes for me, but some of the other pages I've seen this posted on calls for 10, so watch your first few batches and adjust the time to suit your oven and altitude.

Out to cool then try not to eat them all before dinner :)
Yield for me, today: 17 cookies

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 :)