REAL food e-book give away

It's give-away time. I know you are all looking at how to better your health in the new year. I have found a great resource called Nourish MD. Their facebook page is wonderful and they continually link fabulous resources to all things healthy! Nourish MD takes you through a step by step change to clean up your "dietary" life. You can find that info on the sidebar of their main page at any time. They also blog on many topics.

Now on to the COOKBOOKS. Ya'll know I 'heart' cookbooks. E-Cookbooks are no exception. You can find all of them here. At this moment they are each $9.95 but they continually have "package" deals. They do include eggs, dairy and wheat but most of the recipes are very adaptable to gfcf. I have many favorites that I make from them. If you subscribe to their Facebook page you will keep up to date on the sales.

I have written a review of them before and you can find that here. They are chock full of ideas and recipes to eat REAL food. I am pretty good about eating real. The other night I tossed some taquitos from Trader Joes in the oven. We are gluten, casein and soy free... and this product was pretty 'clean' but I paid for it. I felt terrible the next day and I just knew that was what it was. The folks at Nourish MD give all sorts of great tips about prepping food and making step by step changes to change your life! Angelle also has a ton of resources that you can read about including a 20 minute coaching call for $10. That is a STEAL.

So, how can you win a REAL food e-book that is written by Nourish MD?? It is simple. Leave a comment for EACH item that you do below. Then on January 4, 2011 I will pick a winner and can send you the e-book via email. I will pick the winner via random.org and will count down to THAT comment- thus the need to leave comments for each thing you do.

1) Follow this blog and leave a comment that you are doing so. (If you already follow, feel free to leave a comment.) You can do this by Google friend connect or some other RSS feed indicated. These are on my sidebar.

2) Post this contest on facebook. You may do this once per day but leave a comment for each day please.

3) Re-blog this contest.

4) Send this to 5 friends.

I will draw a winner on Tuesday January 4, 2011

mmmmmmmm.... BEST NO BAKES!!!!!!

My friend 'Tam" gave me this recipe and we made them yesterday.

Melt 1 stick margarine with 2 cups sugar and 1/2 cup milk substitute on the stove until boiling and boil for about 1 minutes. (I cut the sugar to 1.5 cups and will do closer to 1 cup next time.)

Put 3 cups oatmeal, 4 TBS peanut butter, 1 cup chocolate chips and 1 TBS vanilla in a large bowl. (I used crunch almond butter and put a dash of salt in with this mixture.)

Pour the hot mixture onto the oats mixture. I had waited approximately 5-10 minutes after I took it off the burner because we were doing this as an RDI exercise and I wanted to pour it into a plastic container I had.

The hot liquid melts the chocolate as you mix it up. Then drop spoonfuls onto waxed paper. (I used a silpat.) Put in the fridge and 30-60 minutes later- enjoy.

I used Trader Joe Semisweet chocolate chips which are milk free.

REAL Thanksgiving Dinner

Putting together my Thanksgiving menu!

Turkey- fresh from John Henrys meat. They are delivering it on Tuesday. I might brine it with the recipe given here.

Mashed potatoes

Gravy

'Regular' stuffing. Shannon in charge here.

Thinking of trying this slow cooker GF cornbread stuffing recipe.

Tripple Cranberry Sauce- I read this in Bon Appetit in 1992.

Green Beans or Haricot Verts- pre-steamed and then sauteed at the last minute with sliced almonds.

Sweet Potato casserole made by mom.

Roasted sweet potatoes potentially with this balsamic glaze.

Bobby Flay's Brussels sprouts with pomegranate.

Homemade rolls made by Shannon.

Pies made by Shannon.

Potentially will have the kids make a no bake chocolate cookies.

Toying around with a GF dessert option.

Roasted Veggies Three Ways

Just a quick post with a few ideas because I wanted to send this off to a friend. I will update later with specific ingredients. You who know me know i am NOT a recipe girl. I'm more a good enough gal... so consider this a canvas for your creative abilities.

My friend J gave me a great tip on how to expand the use of roasted veggies. First, you roast a ton of veggies at around 400-425F for as many minutes as it takes to get them done. Maybe half an hour. I use cauliflower, eggplant, peppers, zucchini, carrots, sweet potato. The list is endless. Then divide it into three batches.

Batch one: Add tomato sauce and italian spices. Freeze. Thaw, heat and put on pasta, or bread sticks or make pizza.

Batch two: Add curry sauce (or spices) and maybe some coconut milk. Freeze. Thaw, heat and serve on rice, or polenta or eat with a spoon.

Batch three: Whirl in the blender or food processor and make a dip. You might add Greek yogurt if you want. I can't recall what else she adds to this batch because I have yet to make it but you get the idea. You could add chick peas and make a veggie hummus. This one you probably don't want to freeze especially if you use a milk product.

Play around with it!!

Favorite Allergy Free REAL food blogs

I admit..I judge a blog very quickly. I was recently looking through a list of REAL food allergy (mostly gluten) free blogs. Here are the ones I found to be my favorites. There are other great ones..and some that are much more well known. But these struck me right off the bat. They are simple looking blogs, not a lot of ads, easy to read and most have beautiful pictures! I 'heart' pictures.

Sure Foods Living

The Whole Life Kitchen

Allergy Free Lunchbox with Brain Power

Glugle Guten Free (Currently has a ton of Halloween ideas.)

The W.H.O.L.E. Gang

My Tartelette

Elana's Pantry

School Snacks: No Milk...No Nuts please.

A friend emailed me asking for ideas for snacks. Her son is milk free and over the summer they worked on increasing his weight through nut snacks. She cooks / bakes with a ton of almond milk. So... when she realized his classroom would be nut free next year she was bummed to say the least. She understood the gravity but still was bummed. But leave it to my facebook friends who tried to convince her to homeschool gave her lots of great ideas. Keep the ideas coming and I will add them.

Here are a few:

• Sunflower butter....for baking and for eating. Still waiting on a friend to tell me what the best brand is.

• Fancy toothpick meat snacks

• Pre-packaged milk free puddings

• Hummus

• Guacamole

• Black Bean Dip

• Various nutrition bars (maybe make them homemade)

• Homemade granola and trail mix without nuts

• Deviled Eggs

• Ham roll ups without cheese..maybe with pickels

• Enjoy Life cereal bars

• Various nut free cereals without the milk

MMmmmm..Zucchini Bread

I combined two friends' recipes last week to make a great zucchini bread. One friend has a great banana bread recipe I have posted before. The other makes the zucchini bread without the banana but with applesauce and uses egg replacer of some kind. Here is what I made and it was delicious. It did flatten so I'll have to work on that. But it was very very moist and wonderful.

Ingredients:

2 cups (more or less) grated zucchini

1 1/4 cups sugar

3 eggs

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 large ripe banana smashed

2 tsp vanilla

3 cups gluten free flour mix (I used Trader Joe's pancake mix)

1 tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon (I use incredible cinnamon from The Spice House.)

1/2 tsp nutmeg (I have a whole nutmeg and grate a bit into the mix.)

Combine sugar, eggs, vegetable oil, vanilla and banana until well combined. Add zucchini. Mix remainder of dry in separate bowl and mix gently into the wet ingredients.

Oil and flour 2 loaf pans. Bake at 325 F for 30-45 minutes (or until done.)

Spreads and Dips! Theme: Cilantro

Cashew Spread

Made this in the Vitamix last week. It was very tasty. You can eat it 'straight' or spread it on a tortilla and bake it like a pizza. Sliced tomatoes on top would be good as well. Sorry I don't really measure stuff! It should be the consistency of a thick paste. For those that don't eat cheese, it makes a tasty alternative for pizza. It is not the same...it is better.

• Cashews
• Cilantro
• EVOO
• lemon juice- fresh squeezed.
• salt and pepper
  

----------------------

Black Bean Dip

Today I made a bean spread. Cilantro is the theme. I made it too thin but it was still very tasty. You can use it as a dip, topping for nachos or whatever. I didn't have any canned or fresh tomatoes but I think it would have been a great soup heated to serve in the Vitamix with some corn mixed in at the end.

• Canned (or pre cooked) black beans
• Pitted Kalamata olives
• Cilantro
• Lemon juice- fresh squeezed.
• Salt and Pepper
  

Rebus Recipe of the day

Recipe 1: Presto Pesto

Add Basil (Stems and all)


+




EVOO



+




Cashews



+







Lemons



Whirl until blended in your











Vitamix





YUMMO!!!


Then- before cleaning it out, because you can't possibly get ALL the thick pesto out on the first try,




walk to your garden and grab some





















herbs


add to the Vitamix with some














Lemon and some















Water
and













EVOO

Mix it up. Recipe #2 is Green Dressing for the week!

Lunchables!!!

I have posted before on Bento Boxes but thought I'd whip up a post on some of the more recent 'homemade' lunchables we have done!

These are made from a new Ziplock product I found at Target. These are very re-usable. In this I have gluten free pretzels, a salad and for dessert a smallish amount of cashews and dark chocolate chips. Trader Joes makes a great cf chocolate chip. The salad was so yummy. I do NOT like romaine or 'regular' lettuce and in general am not a lettuce gal but I have taken a liking to arugula and various leaf lettuces. I put pre-cooked chicken (that I pre-cooked), avocado and tomatoes. I love my new Vitamix for many reasons but it makes the best dressings. I make a very creamy cashew dressing with...cashews, oil and some lemon juice. Yummo.

The other lunchable is from Laptop Lunches. Love it! They have no phthalates, bisphenol A or lead. For a school kid I think they are large enough for lunch and a snack. Often times I pack both Andrew and I a lunch in there but wasn't sure how long we were going to be at the zoo so I wanted to pack for a few days ;)



Happy Eating!!

Menu Plan Monday

I posted my basic breakfasts lunches and snacks a few weeks ago and they are pretty standard. You can find them here. I will need to think these through, especially on Tuesday because we have a strangely packed week with two trips to Ann Arbor.

Dinner

Each week I am making a chicken ala Julia Child. I plan to start blogging that this week or next. I serve these with steamed green beans and mashed potatoes with gravy.

Turkey Avocado Cobb salad. I will be using chicken thighs instead of the turkey.

Turkey with green Mole. Again...chicken thighs. (I don't like turkey. Can you tell?)

Palominlla Patty Melts with Yellow Mustard Slaw. I saw Rachael make these are her show and they do look yummy!

Some sort of Slow cooker concoction with bone in chicken thighs.

Good Enough Gal...

I can tell it isn't going well. I am sticking to the plan with one small diversion which involved several rolls of homemade oatmeal cookie dough that I had stashed in my freezer. It isn't as bad as it sounds. Friends were coming over who were also GFCF and I needed to entertain. Still I had a few to many. The cookies were incredible. It is a day to day adventure. If I do this 80% of the time and 'cheat' 20% of the time, I am fine with that regardless of the results.

The Flat Belly Diet has a 4 day jump start which includes Sassy Water and even more calorie restriction. I just knew that if I did that, I'd go straight off the diet on day 5 and I am not quite sure that Sassy water would taste too great. I'd rather just go for something straight from the tap.


The other item that is 'off' the menu for this diet is coffee. Say it ain't so!!! That just is not palatable to me. I have had zero Diet Cokes in the last 4 years, very little cream and have made the move to just a tiny bit of sour cream and goat cheese to feed my dairy habit. My friends who know me well know I am a "good enough gal" and so the coffee is staying. I am moving to tea in the afternoon though and I actually feel better when I do that instead of coffee then. But I can not be a perfectionist and stick with it. Because in the end, it is all about course correction..not pass or fail.

Along the same lines I ran across a young man who has blogged his weight loss. He takes the right track in my opinion. We can't all be on the Biggest Loser. In addition, although I think exercise is healthy, I don't think many of us can manage hours at the gym every day. He has lost over 100 pounds in the last year by diet and exercise and still having cookies and setbacks every now and then. But he keeps on going.

Menu Planning!!!

Last week I ran short on time... and energy. I didn't really plan or shop. I even pulled out some cookies from the freezer because, "we were having company." That caused the scale to become mean and ornery on me. So this week we plan. The MUFAs are in bold. I think the key to this diet is the planning and the eating..not so much the mufas. But the 400 calorie meals every 4 hours make it seem not so much like dieting.


Breakfasts:

Bob's Red Mill Steel cut Oats with cinnamon, maple syrup, nuts and rice milk made in Zojirushi rice maker. (It is ready when I wake up and lovely.)

or

Eggs fried in Olive Oil and toasted rice tortillas



Lunch choices:

Pizza: pesto, arugula, cheddar goat cheese using rice tortillas as crust. Bake for 10 min at 350F and top with fresh tomatoes.

Indonesian Vegetable Salad

Wrap Sandwich in rice tortilla with meat and avocado.

Snacks:

Hummus with Crackers and avocado

Granola

PB&J with fruit

Apple with almond butter and crackers


Dinners

Roasted Chicken with green beans sauteed in EVOO

Pasta with peanut sauce. Add on Chicken for Mark.

Beef Roast with potatoes. Salad with greens, tomatoes and avocados

Bok Choy Skillet Dinner

Week One and Gluten Free Pizza

End of week one and I'm down 2 1/2 lbs. I'll take it. Here is just one of the yummy snacks I made. First I made a batch of pesto without cheese. I used basil, pine nuts, olive oil and a squirt of lemon juice. (I forgot the garlic but that would be great.) You have to calculate your own calories because it depends on how much basil you you put in the recipe.

Here is the pizza recipe:

Use a rice tortilla for the crust. I find them at Whole Foods by the other tortillas. Spread 1 TBS (or desired amount) pesto on the crust. You can obviously do this with whatever you want but I added a large bunch of arugula and some shaved goat cheese. I keep a stone pan in my oven and preheat it to approximately 400F. Then just heat it up for 5-10 minutes. Add tomatoes when you pull it out and it is very delicious.

The extra pesto can be used with pasta, in soups or any bread. A friend who also does this diet scrambles an egg and puts the egg and pesto on a piece of toast in the morning.