In the Kitchen this Month: February

Our gluten free meal plan for February. We will do one large grocery trip this month and do our cooking on Sunday for the week ahead. We also double everything so we can eat it for two meals. I enjoy it...the kids do not. Otherwise, this process is working well for us and I like looking forward to the meals ahead!

Week 1

Breakfast:

• Yogurt & granola
• Sausage & Veggie

Lunch:

• Mexican & Potato Chowder

Dinner:

• Beef tacos with corn tortillas, corn/peppers/tomato salsa, slaw
• Tempeh sandwiches in marinade, carrot fries, buttered peas
• Indian Butter Chicken with rice

Week 2

Breakfast:

• Cereal
• Eggs & Veggies

Lunch:

• BLT Salad
• Veggies with hummus

Dinner:

• Cheesy Mexican Lentil Mac
• Veggie Stew
• Veggie Fried Rice

Week 3

Breakfast:

• Pizza Muffins
• Sausage & Veggies

Lunch:

• Lasagna Soup

Dinner:

• Roasted Cauliflower & Chickpea Tacos w/ Corn, Tomato, Pepper Salsa
• “Irish Nachos” Sweet Potatoes with beef
• Chicken Fingers, homemade fries, steamed broccoli

Week 4

Breakfast:

• Cereal
• Tostadas

Lunch:

• Sausage Creole

Dinner:

• Chickpea Tomato Minestrone
• Quesadillas with beans, Spanish rice, & fajita veggies
• Bun-less burgers with twice baked confetti potatoes

In the Kitchen this Week, 9/1/14

We picked up corn, broccoli, tomatoes, carrots, and ground beef at the farmer's market this week. We built our menu around that and cooked all of our meals Saturday. Now we can come home and eat dinner without the stress of chopping, cooking, and cleaning. I love when I can just focus on digging in! (We double most of our recipes so we can have a meal twice during the week.)


These Chili Cheese Lentils by Red and Honey.

Grilled Corn + Cheddar Quinoa by How Sweet It Is.

Pizza...because it's delicious and I can! We had a frozen Against the Grain cheese pizza and added corn and broccoli to the top.

Gluten free pasta with a meat sauce and side of grilled carrots and broccoli. 

We also make blue berry muffins with King Aurthur's gluten free muffin mix. They are so delicious, but tend to liquify once they are a few days old. All the more reason to eat them quickly!

Chicken Mojo and Kid Friendly Veggies

Every week we meal plan. It's for our sanity. To make a family run smoothly, something has got to give---and we gave up spontaneity! But, our meals are delicious, so it's not much of a sacrifice. We cook everything on the weekends in double batches. Sure it takes time on Sunday, but we don't have to cook anything during the week.

This week, our highlights were...

Mojo Chicken Avocado Cups from Rachael Bryant from Meatified. Think mango, avocado, lime juice, cilantro, and chicken walking into a disco and doing the electric slide on your plate. Amazing. And the kids liked it enough. They like all of the ingredients on their own, but in this plate, they didn't love it as much as I expected. Maybe they were having an off day--they didn't even eat all of the mango! Perhaps it was all of the cilantro.

Mac and cheese with....wait for it...beef and veggies. There is no official recipe for this. We have made it so much, it just comes natural. Maybe we like macaroni and cheese too much! We start by browning some beef. I prefer beefalo; it has more flavor in my opinion.Then we grab some veggies from the fridge or freezer, cut, and cook. We pick kid friendly veggies like carrots, peas, tomatoes, cauliflower, and potatoes. In a large pot we cook a whole bag of gluten free noodles...it does have to make 2 meals for the week...if it makes it that far. When the noodles are done, I put them in the strainer in the sink (bonus points if you don't have to take dirty dishes out the sink to put the strainer in it). In the now empty pot, we make the cheese sauce with almond milk, gluten free flour of choice, cheese, salt, and some other spices depending on our mood. We add the beef, vegetables, and noodles with the sauce, stir, and consume.

Chicken: Humane Choices and Gluten Free

I was a vegetarian for a long time, like 15 years. It was a place I was very comfortable in. Ask me to whip up a vegetarian Thanksgiving, no problem. But ask me to pick up some chicken at the store and my palms get sweaty and my heart pounds nervously. There are so many questions that run through my head...Was the chicken happy? Did it get to go outside? Was it able to move? Will eating this chicken make me sick? Will it kill me? Was it fed hormones and antibiotics? 

But then I found this chart from Greener Choices and now I see the light. Chicken comes with a label on it. On that picture below, see that multicolored circle on the right? That says American Humane Association Certified. If I want to buy raw chicken, it's either this or conventionally raised. It sounds good, "humane," but upon closer inspection, it doesn't settle my chicken-loving heart. The farmers can feed the chickens animal byproducts, they do not need to have access to the outdoors, and there is no limit on slaughter line speed. 

Don't get me wrong, it is better than conventionally raised chicken. And food is food when you come right down to it. But if I'm going to eat meat, I need to know that they were treated like I would treat them. I try to buy whole chickens from farmers I know at the farmer's market and natural food store, but it expensive. As it should be. So, I will keep making the hard choices between humane and money...until we raise our own.

Now that we have that out of the way, lets eat! When you find the chicken you want to eat, here are some great recipes to try. They are all Paleo and/or AIP, but all delicious. Really, try them!

My fav is the Mojo Chicken and Paleo Nuggets. The picture at the top is our try at the chicken nuggets. There were oh so very good!


Paleo Chicken Nuggets 

 Paleo BBQ Chicken with Chipotle Slaw and Poblano Guac

AIP Coconut Lime Ginger Chicken

AIP Herb and Coconut Crusted Chicken Breasts

Mojo Chicken Avocado Cups

Grilled Whole Chicken

And when you buy that whole chicken, don't throw those bones away! Make some broth. It's easy, free, and good for you.

Chicken Bone Broth

July Recipes: Pizza, Pie & Hash

Every weekend, I meal plan. Not only do we purchase everything we are going to eat for the week, but I try to make all of the food on the weekend so we can heat up the leftovers Monday through Friday. We have so little time between work and bedtimes that this system is the only way to stay sane! Seriously, I would have a melt down if we tried to actually make dinner on a work night.

On top of some major planning, we eat real/whole food meals and are moving slowly towards Paleo and Autoimmune Protocol meal plans.

This past week we had...


Bacon and Kale Pizza (Paleo, Autoimmune Protocol Friendly)

• So delicious...The pizza crust was made from plantain, which was weird but worked. The recipe calls for a "no-mato sauce" and left out the cheese. But since we are moving slowly towards another major diet change, we used tomato sauce and cheese. We kept the bacon and kale and even the kids loved it. I would have taken pictures, but we ate it too quickly!

Chicken Pot Pie (Paleo)

 

  

• There is something about pot pie that just makes you all warm in side. For this recipe, we used a local whole chicken that we roasted ahead of time. (Side note: We save the chicken bones to make broth that will go in the freezer to use another day.) We also added carrots, a winter squash, plantain (it seemed to have been a theme for the week), celery, and onions. We followed the recipe for everything else. The crust did not turn out as expected. It ended up being spooned on top. It did not survive rolling and transferring. Next time I would add more liquid. 

Home Fries with ground beef hash

• Who doesn't like potatoes?! We made these fried ones, cooked in lard, and added ground beef. We served these with steamed cauliflower. I think our downfall with fried potatoes is that we cook in cast iron skillets. The nice fried crust you get on the potatoes sticks to the bottom of the skillet and we end up with just a plate of mushed potatoes. Still yummy...just not what we expected. 

My favorite gluten free replacement foods

When I became gluten free, I knew I needed to change the whole way I approached my meal planning and diet. I admit at first I just used gluten free bread to replace my whole wheat loaf. The gluten free brick was not fit for a sandwich let alone my consumption. At that moment, I knew I needed to cut out wheat AND any product that resembled wheat.

But what do you eat with marinara if it isn't on noodles? And what vehicle can hold the cheesy pizza goodness I want to eat on Friday nights if it isn't pizza crust? It is a good exercise in changing eating patterns and finding new recipes. But, eventually, those noodles and pizza crusts win and you just have to eat them. I can smell the bubbling cheesy, noodle-y goodness now!

In a world of if-it-doesn't-taste-like-cardboard-it's-good, replacement gluten free foods are hard to find. Here are some delicious products I reach for every time:

Against the Grain
This Vermont based bakery has amazing, crusty, yet fluffy breads. And their pizza...image the cheesiest pizza you've ever had...now double it! It is one cheesy (and therefore delicious heavy) pizza! And it is the size of a traditional frozen pizza (what is that, 12 or 14 inches?). I would eat it even if I weren't gluten free.

Udi's
This brand is more main stream than Against the Grain, so it is easy to find in most towns. They make a million different things and most of them are great. Their frozen pizza is individual-sized and of the thin crust variety. While the texture of the bread can't be compared directly to their wheat-filled counterparts, I enjoy eating them all the same.

Tinkyada Rice Pasta
Gluten free pasta is easier to find now than ever. I have tried several brands and most of them have been edible. The problem is the mush factor. If you don't time them just right, your noodles remain too firm to eat or liquify under the sauce. I have had success with Tinkyada every time I cook them. They have both conventional and organic varieties. My family sticks with spirals and penne because it is easier for my little girls to eat.

King Arthur Flour
Every.single.thing I have made from an King Aurthur Flour mix has been amazing. From bread to cookies to pancakes, I am in stomach love <3. If you are familiar with them, you know Vermont based King Arthur has specialized in baking, so I am so happy they are in the gluten free world as well. They also have great gluten free recipes, tips, and tricks. There is a lot to learn from this company.

 

Nature's Path EnviroKidz
What can I say, I'm a kid at heart. I love me some cereal... All of the products I've had from this brand has been yummy. And my kids love it. There is a limited section at my grocery, but these puffs are great as a cereal or snack.

So that's my list as of today. Do you have any favorites? Please share!

I was not paid to mention these products. 

These are purely my opinions based on my taste buds and wallet. 

I have not tested nor researched any consumer reports stating the validity of the the label "gluten free" on these products. 

If you are aware of any information I am not, please let me know.