Gluten Free Raisin Coconut Cookies – DELICIOUSNESS

Gorgeous aren’t they?? They are quite possibly my favorite cookie ever. M also totally endorses them, he has had to stop himself from eating all of them and save some for me! They are crispy around the edges and soft and chewy in the middle. Heaven, pure heaven. The recipe said it would make 4 dozen but I made them a little bigger and got out 30ish. I also threw in a few craisins as well as golden raisins.

This recipe comes from the super awesome book “The Gluten Free Bible”, I am a huge fan of the recipes I have made from this book so far. All Amazing!!

1 3/4 cups Gluten Free All Purpose Flour Blend (they have a recipe for a blend, I just used the Bobs Red Mill gluten free flour)

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp xantham gum

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup (2 sticks) butter (or dairy free margarine to make this recipe GFCF)

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup packed brown sugar (I only have brownulated so I used that)

1 egg (you probably could use egg substitute to make it vegan also with the dairy free margarine)

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups flaked coconut

1 1/2 cups rasisins

1. Preheat the oven to 350°. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper if your cookie sheets aren’t non stick

2. Combine flour blend, baking powder, xantham gum, and salt in medium bowl, whisk to blend.

3. Beat margarine ad sugars in large bowl with electric mixer at medium speed about 2 minutes or until well blended. Beat in egg and vanilla. Add flour mixture; beat at low speed about 30 seconds or until just combined. Sir in coconut and raisins. Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls 2 inches apart onto prepared sheets.

4. Bake 10-12 minutes or until brown around edges (centers will be light). Remove to wire rack, cool completely.

So, I am not the most graceful person in the kitchen always but I almost gave up part of the way through with these cookies. My electric mixer just kept mixing the butter up onto the whisks and I had to stop every two seconds to scrape it back off. I ended up mixing by hand for a lot of it. The prep for these ended up taking me a lot longer than it should have. Cookie dough is quite hard to stir…duh, I forgot.

Oh, and the parchment paper thing, that was a cute little ordeal also. I own non stick (I know they are terrible, enough, stop it, seriously) cookie sheets, so I lined them with parchment paper because the recipe says to. The paper kept sliding everywhere and then I realized you probably don’t need it if they are non stick.

So, yes I can do Organic Chemistry, but baking baffles me. These cookies were amazing, as I have mentioned before a few times, so if I can do it being a baking dummy, anyone can!

enjoy!

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Hanger Steak, Potato Skins and Twice Baked Potato Casserole….

Meat and Potatoes…..I think there was a mistake and I was supposed to be a guy. Look at this meal, in all fairness I only ate the steak, skins and some peas in that one sitting; the casserole I have saved for another time. I didn’t take any pictures while cooking but my final pictures are so awesome I can’t contain myself.

I had been craving potato skins for what seemed like weeks. It had to be done. They aren’t the most healthy thing I have made but I baked them so they definitely aren’t as bad as the ones you would get in a restaurant.

I used this recipe: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/potato_skins/

Went by the letter of the recipe, so there are no changes or tweaks to post. They were, fabulous! Perfect texture, and mouth watering.

So now I had to figure out what I wanted to do with the scooped out insides. I followed along the same theme so I could split my supplies between the two recipes. Instead of having to buy additional other ingredients I just bought a larger amount of the ingredients I was already using. yay!

Recipe Link: http://www.food.com/recipe/twice-baked-potato-casserole-26043

I used way less sour cream, bacon, cheese and added dried chives to the sour cream layer.  I was using the scooped out insides of 5 large potatoes instead of 6 whole potatoes. I wasn’t sure how to alter the recipe for that but I figured recipe or not if I threw bacon, sour cream, chives, potato and cheese together it would be delicious no matter what. I haven’t tried that one yet because I had the skins and steak, but from the looks on M and Mom’s faces when they took their first bite it is pretty damn delicious!!!

I LOVE hanger steak. It is by far my favorite steak ever. I don’t have a knack for cooking steak especially when in a rush and in pan on the stove. I am for sure not giving any tips on how to cook meats, one day I hope to get to the point where I am way more comfortable with it. So, although it isn’t gorgeous it did still taste wonderful!!

Here is my whole meal together:

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Quick Dinner Fix

I bought potatoes yesterday to make potato skins to go with the Hanger steak I have. I was way too tired yesterday to do all of that so I ended up making bean and cheese tacos ftw.

I grabbed the soft corn tortillas yesterday at the food store while I was picking up other items needed for the potato skins. This quick dinner consisted of 6 corn tortillas, cheddar cheese, a can of refried beans (only used a small amount of it), 2 scallions, some frozen corn, avocado and sour cream. I took these out of the fridge and cabinets and went to work . My food was done in 10 minutes; it was great to be able to have a dinner option that I didn’t have to slave over for hours to eat!

BONUS: there were already neatly cut up components to this meal in containers for when M got home from work!! Score for me, and clearly him 🙂

I steamed the corn for a few minutes, nuked the beans, cut up my scallions and avocado, toasted the tortillas on a hot pan for 20 secondsish, grated the cheese right onto the top and plopped on some sour cream before I wrapped it up.

Thanks mom for mentioning refried beans and letting me steal the rest of your frozen corn :), then I figured out how to do this in almost no time.

It’s definitely not like this is rocket science, but when all familiar things are gone (or you think they are) it become almost foreign to eat without it being a giant production. I have to gear up to think about gluten free food. Not think thoughts like, “Since now I am eating gluten free everything I know and love is gone and I can’t have anything I like”. Waaaaaaaa.

There are still a ton of options for me and anyone else with food restrictions, sometimes we just need to get a little more creative.

Food restrictions are one of the toughest treatment protocols to follow.

Tell me to take nasty medicine, fine. Tell me to have a PICC line put in and inject myself with antibiotics everyday, fine. Tell me to get a spinal tap, fine. Tell me to take 45 pills a day, fine. Tell me to go to a minimum of 2 Doctors every week for YEARS, fine. Tell me not to eat gluten or dairy or whatever it is and “Oh, there is no way in hell I can deal with that!!” “It’s too hard, I can’t handle it”. Haha

I remember crying in a doctors office when they told me I should stop eating dairy because I couldn’t imagine my life without ice cream…..guess what I still haven’t given dairy up, oh lactaid pills I love thee. I know, I know, one day I will give up dairy fully, but for now gluten is the major enemy and I think I am finally in the right state of mind to build up my arsenal to fight this battle and win gracefully.

Peace.

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Broiled Lamb, Roasted Potatoes and Veggies, Apple Chutney and Corn/Plantain Muffins!

Longest title ever for one of the most delicious meals that has ever come out of my kitchen!

During the day I started brainstorming about what I was going to make for dinner. I have to take injections of B12 vitamins weekly because I am B deficient but I am not exactly diligent about doing it every week. The benefit has now become when I DO take them I have a weeks worth of energy packed into one day.

Well, yesterday was that day. I decided that since I had taken my vitamins I may as well plunge into a large cooking undertaking….so it goes. I found the muffin recipe online yesterday at 12ish, daydreamed about lamb chops, roasted veggies with the little red potatoes and some other yummy thing that I created, yay for improvisation!

The most beautiful thing to me about this meal is that I embarked on making 4 things I have NEVER made before and was totally OK with fumbling around the kitchen and just flying by the seat of my pants.

So here are the rough recipes for what I did yesterday: (I don’t measure so I can’t provide measurements for the ones I came up with, the one I kinda followed I will provide a link and describe my changes to it).

Apple Craisin Chutney – I was about to throw out a decent amount of apples, three small and two large. I felt guilty about wasting them so I decided to make something a bit different from my normal apples, cinnamon and sugar. I was watching one of the cooking shows and they made a pear something something chutney. I got the general idea of how it works and what you put in it, from there I made my own version. I don’t know how I feel about nutmeg and I HATE cloves so I left those out and just used the cinnamon.

Apples
Craisins
Onions
Apple Cider Vinegar
Cinnamon
Organic Sugar
Brown Sugar
Grated Ginger
Orange Zest
and a pat of butter (I used smart balance 50/50 blend bar)

I put the vinegar in a pan, warmed it up a little, added brown sugar, ginger, orange zest and onions. Then I let the sugar dissolve and get whole mixture almost boiling. I added the apples, cinnamon, sugar and craisins, brought that to a boil and then set it to simmer. I let it cook covered for 40 minutes and then uncovered till most of the liquid had evaporated. At the end I had to add more cinnamon and sugar to cut the acidity of the vinegar (think I will use less next time) but it did come out very interesting and good. It was awesome to eat this and the lamb together, mmmhhmm.

>>>>>>>

Broiled Lamb chops were simple and fast, it was the perfect meat to add to this meal. Lamb chops were something that we ate growing up as kids. Mom made them the same way every time, just some seasoned salt and pepper and put the under the broiler to get all crispy and delicious.

I was expecting the same taste of what I grew up eating and I am happy to say that I nailed it! They were well done (which is how I wanted them and how I remember them) and that took about 7 minutes on each side on the setting High for Broil. I put a healthy dose of seasoned salt and pepper on each. They were AMAZING, I had this silly giant smile on my face when I was eating them because it was exactly what I wanted.

>>>>>>

Roasted Baby Red Potatoes and Veggies –

1 Bag of Baby Red Potatoes
2 small zuchini
2 small yellow squash
1 carrot
1 box of white mushrooms
I small turnip
Large Onion (I only used half, but next time I would use a lot more)
Roasted Red Peppers (I can’t eat the skin on the pepper because it aggravates arthritis, so I opted for the skinless roasted ones)
Onion Powder
Garlic Powder
Salt
Pepper
Fresh Thyme
Dried Rosemary
Dried Cilantro Leaves
Dried Oregano
Olive Oil
and I can’t remember if I used dill or not

I put the scrubbed potatoes (with some salt) in a pan in the oven to cook for the time it took me to chop up the rest of veggies. Then the veggies went into a large roasting pan followed by my olive oil and seasonings. I used a decent amount of rosemary in this one, where normally I wouldn’t do that for fear of overpowering it. Yesterday I was fearless in the kitchen. After those are tossed almost well enough I put the slightly cooked potatoes into the pan with the veggies. I roasted them for about an hour at 400˚. The one thing I would do differently next time would be to cook the onions, potatoes and mushrooms together only and the other veggies in a different pan. Some of the veggies got too a little too mushy for me, but they still tasted phenomenal!

>>>>>

The corn/plantain muffins were the show-stopper of the day! I needed something to bake, as I very much miss baked goods. I was thinking about corn muffins or cornbread and then remembered I had two plantains sitting on my countertop ready to be used or thrown out. Yesterday was a save all the garbage food day and it was more delicious than a go out and buy everything day! hahahaha.

So I searched online for corn and plantain muffin and what do you know? I found a recipe someone had created for just that. The only problem? Not GLUTEN FREE. I decided instead of trying to search the gluten free community (which really is amazing) to find one that was I would take my chances and try my hand at converting it over to gluten free with the Xanthum Gum and all purpose GF baking flour I already had at home. I’ll never learn if I am not willing to gamble with something new….trying to remember that.

Corn/Plantain Muffins:

Here is the recipe link to the original: http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/plantain-corn-muffins/Detail.aspx

Below is the altered recipe with what I changed in bold:

• 1 1/2 cups Bobs Red Mill gluten free all purpose flour (<– I am totally in love with this stuff!)
• 3/4 teaspoon xanthum gum
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup cornmeal
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup almond milk
• 1 cup mashed, ripe plantains
• 2 large eggs
• 1/3 cup canola oil
• 3 tablespoons melted smart balance 50/50 blend

1. Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F. Line 6 small muffin cups and 6 giant muffin cups with paper liners.
2. Stir the flour, xanthum gum, sugar, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt together in a bowl. Whisk the almond milk, plantains, eggs, oil, and 50/50 melted butter together in a separate bowl. Mix the flour mixture into the milk mixture until just combined; do not over mix. Allow the mixture sit at room temperature for 10 to 15 minutes. Pour into prepared muffin cups to about 2/3 full.
3. Bake in the preheated oven until golden and the tops spring back when lightly pressed, 15 to 18 minutes for the small muffins, 20-25 for the large muffins.

The muffins had the texture of regular muffins and tasted absolutely fabulous! I am so happy to have gotten a baking recipe to work the way I wanted it to on the first try! It gives me a lot of hope and know I don’t feel like I am missing out on anything. There would be no way someone could tell the difference between a regular corn plantain muffin and this gluten free one. Here’s to success! and eating dough like things that don’t all taste like rice! Wooohooo!!!!! These are desert and breakfast. We are using the large ones for breakfast muffins and the small ones for after dinners. I can’t wait to experiment more with this all purpose flour and the xanthum gum.

Here is a picture of my whole meal all together 🙂

and yes the measuring cup does say cat food in the batter picture….my boyfriend thought it would be funny if we ran that through the dishwasher (vet gave me a special scoop for the kitty food) and used it for cooking people food! I just realized it is in the picture, hahahahah. Fantastic.

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Polenta Fail

Lately I have been watching a lot of different competition shows. I used to rag on them all the time and still kinda do, but in truth I like a decent amount of them. Some I do watch for comic value show, but the others I actually like. Shhhhh, don’t tell anyone!

Staying on topic, I was watching America’s worst cooks, or some similar title and they had a recipe on there for polenta. I have never eaten polenta or cooked but was excited because I was pretty sure it was gluten free. So I go online, dig up a recipe and start cooking. The corn meal I have was moms that she had laying around in her closet. I am trying to work with ingredients I already have in the house in all of the cooking craziness. Budget, budget. In keeping with that, I find a recipe that calls for ingredients I have…here it is:

http://wickedgooddinner.blogspot.com/2010/07/polenta-cakes-with-roasted-mushroom.html

Picture from recipe : 

It looks amazing, right??? I’m sure it is when done CORRECTLY. I definitely did not do that correctly.

I found out after I began to cook already that the corn meal I had was NOT the coarse ground corn meal. Eh, so what, I think and throw it in. In this recipe like most of the other polenta recipes I have come across you are supposed to cook the polenta for 30 minutes or so. Mine cooked in oh, 5 minutes. So yeah, that was clearly wrong. It ended up just absorbing the chicken broth and tasted and smelled like the chicken broth and not corny at all. In addition, it was sloppy like and when I left it to set in the fridge and then tried to take it out, it came out, but the second I touched it and tried to position it, it fell apart in my hands. I was very very very very sad. This was the main part of my meal, so this night I ended up eating some ground chicken with sauteed mushrooms…..in a taco shell. I swear I put everything in taco shells lately!!!

So I messed this one up good. I now have the right corn meal (I think) to make it. I am going to try the recipe on the bag that the corn meal came in just to try and be way more simple with it this time. Next time though, I am going back and trying this recipe because it looks absolutely delicious!

So wicked good dinner, this is totally not your fault. I didn’t make sure I had all the right ingredients and just tried to wing it. It doesn’t quite work that way in my world of gluten free foods. I just suck at change, and this is a big one!

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