Primary Ingredients!

The primary ingredients to my gluten free life, this is basically my GF life in a bullet pointed nut shell!

instinct
Shit, did I burn that?
My garden
Taste contrast... some of the craziest things work!
Freaking busy schedule
zero disposable income cuz I'm poor
Aw, man, I didn't turn the stove off!
Slow cooker, slow cooker, slow cooker!
Eating the same thing several days in a row.  Often.
Forgetting to eat on weekends
Living off of hot cocoa, basically.
Realizing I'm hungry at midnight
forgetting I have so much amazing stuff in the chest freezer
investigating the chest freezer... again.
Shortcuts.  LOTS of shortcuts.  As many shortcuts as possible.
Eating what I burned.
Seeing the adventure in the act of of feeding myself
Listening to lengthy involved recipes that people want to share with me.
Remembering two key ingredients of that recipe, forgetting the rest, and succeeding!
Failing.
Eating my failures.  Often.
Thinking "I have this, and that... hmmmm?" and ending up with good food.
Microwaving water.  Milk.  Radishes.  Stuff.  It's a shortcut.
Never ever ever doing dishes before the crisis stage.
Vinegar.  Mmmm Hmmmm.  Oh, and olive oil.
Skillets!  Yes!  Skillets!
Oversized bowls in the microwave so things don't bubble over.
Soaking beans.
Going to the little grocer to see their cool meat cuts!
Freezing things that shouldn't be frozen, and skipping blanching entirely.
If I can't put a shortcut on the time invested, then I better shortcut the price.
Being cheap.  Yeah.  Can't afford to be any other way.
Spending a lot of time not-in-my-house.
Asking the cats to help me catch up with my chores.  Yeah, it's that bad.
Going and checking the chest freezer again.
Digging through the mass of stuff in the regular freezer.
Washing the dish I need.  The pan I need.  The crockpot I need.
Putting things out to get rained on.  On purpose.  And forgetting them.
Herbs!  Fresh from the garden!  Or fresh from the kitchen pot!  All year, yay.
I dunno.  Other stuff too.

Well, that was fun, wasn't it?

I have pictures to show you how to make your own super laundry soap for pennies a bottle!  Woah.  Need to post those for you guys.  :)  And the garden is awesome.  Um.... strawberries!  The cats are great, too!

Yogurt with Almond

I started getting Dominoes dark brown sugar because of something I learned that I found very interesting.

A good while back I had started using brown sugar hoping to avoid refined white sugar.  I was buying the cheapest stuff off the shelf, but then heard something very interesting.  A lot of brown sugar is really refined white sugar that's been re-molassesed.  So I took a closer look at the ingredients.  My cheap brown sugar said "Sugar, Molasses" and the next time I was at the store I looked at a few labels, and found that the better quality brown sugar only had one ingredient "brown sugar".

So if you're for any reason interested in avoiding refined sugar in your diet, you'll want to go for the one-ingredient "brown sugar" instead of the two ingredient "sugar, molasses" to accomplish that.

I use brown sugar in everything as my substitute for refined.  It has a rich complex taste.  Wonderful.  So since I use it rather often, I've stored it specially.  The molasses can create hard lumps if it does not have some moisture control.  So I keep it in a sealed glass canister, and the oldest moisture adsorbing solution for brown sugar is terracotta - so I've washed and used one of those tiny terracotta pots as my scoop in the canister, and it turns out to be almost exactly 1/4 cup, so that's perfect.  Here's a picture:

And so yes, I made almond extract sweetened yogurt.  It's easy!

To a bowl of plain yogurt, add -
2Tbs dark brown sugar
A tiny bit of almond extract (a little less than 1/4tsp will do it)

And stir and eat!

And of course we have to say hi to the kitties!
Randal had a great time helping me sew pockets onto my jeans...

Lytkin's MUCH harder to capture a good photo of!  He's so black, I always have to use the flash, and the flash always makes him look really angry.  Here's a good one of the little fur man being all happy about cuddling!

Desert Apples - cinnamon cream cheese

This one is way too delicious to wait.  I am currently eating this!

And it's so easy!

Slice one apple.
Spread cream cheese on each slice.
Sprinkle cinnamon on each slice.
Eat!

Can it get any easier than that?  I hope your day is also going deliciously!  I'm going to get back to my world and perhaps there will be some garden to see very soon?!

Doubly Cheesy Muffins and SNOW!!!! (I love snow)

It's the end of December!  I've been so busy!

I started a Cross Country Ski group and I've been busier than ever.  I love it so much!  I've been back on my skis for a few years and just wanted some folks to go with.  These are the kinds of skis for flat ground and small hills, and it's great.  The snow has nearly arrived 3 times already, and we've been busy getting classes going for waxing, ski specific exercise clinics, meet and greets, hikes to see the trails that will soon have snow, all sorts of stuff.  So fun!

Here's laurel Ridge State Park, a hike we just did of the ski trail.  Since the snow is still thin we hiked it.

I get so excited this time of year!  All winter, actually, I'm just SO excited!  People tell me I should move to Vermont.  And yes, they might be right!

In other news, the cold weather has lead to me being able to get both cats calm and in the SAME picture!  Look, it's happened twice already!

Wanna know what I made for the office holiday party?  You got it right!  Doubly Cheesy Muffins!  There were only 2 left at the end of the party, they were a big hit!

 So we preheat to 400 and start with the following ingredients:

Got that? 

Okay, okay, fine, I'll list them for you, too.  Sheesh.

Makes 18 Muffins.

4 Tbs Grits, 1/2 cup Water, 2 sticks butter, 1/2 tsp xanthan,  3 Tbs brown sugar,1 egg, 1.5 tsp baking powder, 15 oz container ricotta cheese, 1 cup instant tortilla/Masa flour (corn product, check that it's safe) 1 brick of cheddar cheese.

So we're getting started!

Cook the 4 Tbs Grits in 1/2 cup water, with the two sticks of butter in there.  Microwave 3 minutes in an oversized bowl.

AS SOON as it's done cooking, add and stir in 1/2 tsp Xanthan Gum power (the heat helps reconstitute the powder). 

Then add the 15oz container of Ricotta Cheese (helps if this is room temp) 1 egg,and 1.5 tsp of baking soda, and 3 Tbs brown sugar to the mixture.

Stir all together to get basically this consistency:

Then gradually add the 1 cup instant tortilla/ Masa flour to get basically this consistency.  (Again, make sure this flour is safe for you, check that it does not contain any wheat ingredients and review all allergy statements.  Remember also that imports are not held to the same allergy statement rules as domestics, so be extra cautious there.)

That's pretty much it!  Spoon the mix into paper lined muffin molds.  (Mine are fancy, but that's just because I'm a silly person, regular old normal muffin tins are perfect, possibly even preferable.)  After you have the mix spooned in, just press one cube of cheddar into the center of each muffin (if the cheddar touches the paper it will be stuck to the paper after you cook it).

Bake at 400 for 30 minutes and you'll get 18 like this!

That's it, enjoy!!

Randal reminded me, he would like to send his Yuletide greetings via one green laser eye.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Sweet Pumpkin Beef and such

I'm watching two wet cats groom, having bathed them both, unscathed, I am simply moistened.  And I'm listening to Celtic hour on our local radio station, Sunday at 7pm 91.3 WYEP Pittsburgh.  It's a nice Sunday evening.

A bit ago I made myself pumpkin beef, it was a wild idea that happened only because I had a little pie pumpkin that was going to start to go bad if I didn't use it fast.  I also had a roast.  I looked at the two things and thought WHY NOT!

So I've got one wet cat sitting in front of the computer screen a bit, so I keep looking around him.

And the other has decided the kitchen is a better place to groom.  He takes up more space, anyways, little tank that he is.

Well, Lytkin must have learned to read, he moved over to a spot less intrusive!  Nice timing!  Bath time went very well.  I used one of those 30 gallon plastic tubs with handles in the bathtub, it saved water since filling it to neck height is less water than the old cast iron tub I have, and also provided a place to set a wet cat and hold him while he finished dripping, since only part of the bathtub base was taken up by the plastic tub.  I'll definitely be doing it that way again.

So does pumpkin beef look good to you?  Oh, it was delicious.  And the seeds were an extra treat, too!  And easy, what more could you want?

Preheat oven to 425
Cut pie pumpkin in half, remove and reserve seeds.
Place halves cup-side up in a baking pan.
Put 1/4 cup brown sugar in each half.
Put beef roast across both pumpkin halves, balancing so the fats will drain onto the pumpkin.

Baking times for 2lbs roast.  This was a bottom round roast, but most any roaster will work well.
Bake at 425 for 20 minutes to brown.
Reduce heat to 300 and bake for additional 45 minutes for med-rare.

While baking, put skillet on low heat with generous olive oil, and put the seeds in.  Don't worry if some threads are in there, then end up crazy-delicious, that surprised me too!

Stir frequently, I believe this took 10 or 15 minutes, and they come out looking likes this.  I was going to wait and put it on my beef, but instead I ate them all right then because they were so delicious.

And when the beef's done, yum yum!

And my kitties are mostly dry!  Lytkin the prince is back in this throne, and Randal's a goober as always.