Gluten Free Pantry muffins

This morning I made muffins for everyone. I used Gluten Free Pantry's muffin mix. I added fresh bluberries and orange zest. I made them with olive oil and soymilk. They were yummy!

Almond Cake a l'Orange

Tonight I tried another recipe from Gluten-Free French Deserts and Baked Goods by Valerie Cupillard. It turned out really well. We put a little apricot preserves on it, but I would like to have had orange marmalade. I couldn't find any at the store that didn't have corn syrup in it. I think it would be really good with it though.
1/3 C vegetable margarine
1/2 C sugar
1/2 C finely ground blanched almonds
1/2 tsp vanilla
3 eggs
3/4 C white rice flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp orange zest
Melt margarine. Stir in sugar, almonds, and vanilla. Mix in eggs, one at a time. Then mix in the flour, baking powder, and zest. Pour into an oiled bread pan and bake at 400 for 10 minutes. Raise the heat to 425. Bake for 13 more minutes.

more enchilada casserole

I made enchilada casserole with corn tortillas, pinto beans, green chile, enchilada sauce, and cashew "cheese." They were pretty good. Ray scarfed them down. They need less "cheese" and more sauce and beans. I think they'd be really good with potatoes, too.

The kids made onigiri today at the bento party. I made a tofu salad, and even the kids who aren't used to our "weird" food (the ones who tried it anyway) liked it. We got our onigiri molds in the mail today, and the kids had fun with them. I really liked them, too. I kind of thought they'd be a pain, but they're really great.

scratch cookies!!! finally

I tried a recipe from Wheat-free Recipes & Menus by Carol Fenster tonight for chocolate chip cookies. These are the first scratch cookies I've made since going gluten-free. They were pretty darn good. I'm going to have to check this cookbook out. Someone gave me this recipe. I have eight children in my house tonight (four of which are mine and four of which aren't), and they have all eaten the cookies and asked for seconds and thirds. I'd say that's a "thumbs up." Trey liked them, too. This picture is of the second batch I cooked. The first batch looked better, but the kidlets ate them up before I could get a picture! I made these a little bigger, and they really should have been smaller. They were a little more gooey than the first ones.

Here's how I made them:
1 1/4 cups Bob's Red Mill all-purpose GF flour
1 teaspoon xanthan gum
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup shortening
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 extra large egg
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream shortening and sugar. Beat in vanilla and egg. Mix remaining dry ingredients together and beat into everything else. Now stir in chocolate chips. Drop cookies by tablespoonfuls onto greased pan and bake for 12 minutes.

Cat in the Hat bento

I made my first "theme" bento. It's a "Children's Book" theme - Cat in the Hat. It's not great, but it's a start! Here it is.

"Green" smoothie

I love my Blend-Tec blender. I think I could blend a tire with that thing. It wouldn't be very tasty though, so I stick to edible things! One of the healthier things I make is our morning "green" smoothie. Trey really likes them, and so does Olivia. The older two will drink them, but they prefer peanut butter/banana smoothies. Here is what I put in them:
about 2-3 C spinach
1 1/2 C water
4 dates
1 large banana
1 scoop ground flax
1 scoop probiotic powder (for both of these I use the scoop that came with them)
I blend that up really well, then I add:
1 C frozen blueberries
1 C frozen raspberries (or other frozen fruit)
Blend really well and enjoy! This amount is enough for Trey and I to share, and sometimes Olivia has some, too.

WaterCourse Foods

For father's day, we went downtown to our favorite restaurant - WaterCourse Foods. We've been going to WaterCourse Foods for ten years, since right after it opened. When we first started going, you could walk in on a Saturday morning and sit right down. It got to where you could wait an hour to get a seat on a Saturday morning. Recently, they moved to a larger place a couple of miles away. We went to their new place for the first time Sunday morning.

The atmosphere of the new place was a little more trendy and a little less hippie. It was nice. I sort of prefer the old place, but at least this place was bigger, and we only had to wait 30 minutes for a table.


It was the first time that I'd been to WaterCourse Foods since going completely gluten free, so I was hoping they'd have a good gf selection. While we were waiting for a table, we bought one of their gluten free muffins, and it was really good.

I was pleased to see that they had a few gluten free items on the menu. I hope they'll add some more options. Their other restaurant, City O' City, has a lot of gluten free options. They had gluten free onion rings which was really cool. We ordered "frings," french fries and onion rings. They were really good. We ended up ordering a second order.

Trey ordered the special. It was called the "Big Rig," and it was chicken fried seitan with scrambled tofu and home fries. He said it was really good. It's not gluten free though.

The three older kids ordered the kid's taco meal - a tempeh taco, rice and beans. I tasted Olivia's and it was okay. I ordered the chilequitos. It was pretty good. I'd love to give them a great review, but I'll have to go back again. The food was good, but I'm used to their food being AWESOME! Unfortunately, what I normally get has gluten in it. I've never tasted anything there that I didn't like though. I was disappointed in their scrambled tofu. I swear they changed it. Maybe we just caught the on a bad day because it wasn't as good as it used to be.