A Special Treat

If you found your way here because of the article in The Clarion Ledger today I appreciate you stopping by!!  I'm by no means an expert but I try to make life sweet for my crew.  Here is the link if you would like to read it.

My 10 year old was absolutely beside herself this morning about having her picture in the paper.  My 13 year old grunted and said "cool."  Jenny took a copy to school for her teacher to hang up.  Will shrugged and said "uhahu"when I asked if anybody at school saw it. Two very different responses but still I thought it called for a special after school snack.

I haven't done Floats in awhile and both kids have asked for them in the last week so I grabbed a bottle of root beer while I was the grocery today and we had Root Beer Floats after school today!

A little vanilla ice cream, a little root beer, and a cute soda glass from the dollar store just makes for a happy afternoon.  Even if you're 13!

**Most root beer is GF, but please be sure and check!  Barq's is just fine and Diet Barq's is caffeine free.

I bought a 20 ounce bottle but barely used half to make two floats so a can would be plenty.

Add some ice cream to your glass.  We went with 2 scoops because, you know, you don't get your picture in the paper every day.  

  

Pour in some root beer.

Maybe a little bit more.

Add a straw and a spoon.

And you end up with this!!!

And that makes me happy!

(Please excuse the laundry on the table behind the smiling girl.)

Pizza, Pizza!!

Remember when you always got two pizzas from Little Caesar's.  "Pizza, Pizza!" the little Caesar guy would yell and sure enough you did get pizza, pizza!  Then Little Caesar's went away for awhile-I wonder why?!  Anyway several years ago Little Caesar's started popping up again- no more pizza, pizza! but you can't beat  a $5.00 large pizza! Hot and Ready now instead of pizza, pizza but good non the less!  I would pull up to little Caesar's after a day at the water park, give money and my rewards card to my child and in a minute out he'd come with dinner.  Of course I could see him through the class, but he thought he was big stuff!!

Well, those days are gone.  No more pizza, pizza for us and I'll be honest I miss that!  Cheap convience is hard to come by!   We do pizza a couple of ways around here;

1)  Kinnikinnik has a good pizza crust.  It's frozen and comes four to a box.  It costs about $8.00.  The kids like them and its easy.
2) Sometime  we will order take out pizza from Biaggi's where you can get a GF pizza.  With a teeange boy who can eat almost one himself and at $10 a pop this is not the best option for us.
3) There are frozen GF pizza's.  Gluten free and Fabulous makes a good one and so does Amy's.  Price wise they are about $6.00-$8.00 each.

and last but not least....
4) We make our own!

I have tried several different recipes for pizza crust with out a huge amount of luck, but this one I found not long ago and it is easy and was really good.  We ate it as a BBQ chicken pizza which is super yummy and feels more like a real meal than pepperonis although if I could grab that $5 large I so would!

BBQ Chicken pizza w/ homemade crust

2 1/2 cups flour (I use Pamela's bread mix)

1 Tbsp sugar

1 tsp salt

1 Tbsp dry milk powder 

(I use buttermilk powder because I keep it in my fridge and add it a lot to things.  It is found near the powdered milk on the baking aisle.  It is helpful to have on hand)

2 1/4 tsp yeast (1 pkg)

3 Tbsp oil

1 cup of very warm water (I let the tap run until it is very hot)

Combine 1 cup of the flour, sugar, salt, milk powder and yeast in a large bowl.

Add the water and oil and mix

Stir in remaining flour.

Stir until it comes together and then dump onto the counter and knead until it's "cohesive"

Put it back in the bowl and let sit for at least 30 minutes.  I let mine sit covered with a towel for several hours and it was great.

Now I know pizza from a restaurant is perfectly round but it's really nor necessary.  Just mash out your dough into a roundish shape.  I should have made this thinner but you can do it however thin you like.

I poked it a few times with a fork.  No real technical reason to do this.  Just seemed like the right thing to do!

Put it on a baking sheet and stick it in a 425 degree oven for about 3 minutes.  Just to let the top get a little toasty.

Now for the yummy part!

I cooked several chicken tenderloins on the stove and then chopped them up and put them back in the pan with a lot of BBQ sauce.  That is a very precise amount-a lot.  

BBQ sauce can be tricky-be sure it's GF.  I used Kraft original but Sweet Baby Rays is also GF.

I then spread more BBQ sauce on the warm crust.  Again I just used whatever amount felt right.  

Add the cheese.  Lots of cheese.  Whatever kind you like or have.  We had Kroger brand something.  We added a lot.  Its hard to mess this up.

Add the chicken

 Stick it back in the oven until the cheese is all melty and the house smells yummy.

Eat up! 

 You could add a salad to the table to make it balanced but to be honest we just had pizza!

This makes a pretty big pizza.  We all had several pieces and there were still several left over.

I haven't tried to freeze this dough yet but next time I think I'll make 2 recipes of the dough and freeze one.  I'll let you know how it turns out!

Then I'll have Pizza, Pizza!!

Tailgating

Even though we are from Mississippi my husband and I didn't go to Ole Miss or Mississippi State.  We didn't go to Southern Miss either.  We went to Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama.  We loved every minute of it but its not exactly a football powerhouse.  There was no major tailgating going on.  In fact I don't think there was any tailgating period although we did drive through the Checkers burger at half time for a cheeseburger and a strawberry milkshake.

So although we never perfected tailgating as an art form we do love to hang out with friends.  Our local high school (Go Jags!)  is right next door to our neighborhood and we love to go to the games on Friday night.  There is a large area out front where people gather to do some tailgating.  We have some friends we meet there before home games and its a lot fun.  Nothing over the top.  If you want to cook, that's great.  If you want to pick up a pizza, that's great too!

I wanted to take something my kids could eat but that everyone else would like too.  It needed to be easy to eat and transport.  So here it is:

Taquitos 

I found this recipe here on Our Best Bites and have tweaked it a little here and there and it has turned into a family favorite.  It is easy and good.

I used Hormel's canned chicken.  In a perfect world I would have baked or boiled chicken breast and then shredded them but it wasn't happening on Friday and canned chicken was made to be used right?  Be careful with anything canned.  Hormel's is clearly labeled GF so that is what I always use.

I shredded the chicken good and then added:

1/3 block softened cream cheese

Juice from 1/2/ lime

1 tsp. Chili powder

1/4 tsp. chipotle chili powder (totally optional-I had it so I used it)

dash of garlic powder

1 cup cheese- pepper jack is really the best but all I had was mozzarella and it was good)

Mix this all up and then pull out the corn tortillas.  I used extra thin Mission brand tortillas.  Microwave a few at a time for about 30 seconds.  This makes them good and pliable.  Put about 2  Tbsp. of chicken mixture on the end of one tortilla.

Then rolls those suckers up.  I put them all on a baking sheet and then, and this is kind of weird, spray the tops lightly with cooking spray and then sprinkle with kosher salt.  Or any salt, but I like Kosher salt for this.

Bake them at 425 for about 15 minutes.  Line 'em up on a tray and you are good to go!

My kids are NOT corn tortilla fans, but they love these.  The tortilla gets crunchy not mushy.  These are great with sour cream or salsa.

Happy Tailgating!!

**I know it's a little weird to post about tailgating on a Tuesday morning but Blogger was giving me fits this weekend or it would have been a little better timed.  Kind of like the fact that I'm about to write one called "Monday Morning Muffins."  Oh well, better late than never!

How to feel appreciated

Do you ever watch the show Cake Boss?  Buddy, he's the boss, has 4 sisters who work at the bakery he owns.  It's a funny show about their family and their bakery.  The bakery is in Hoboken, NJ and they have some pretty serious NJ accents.  He has a sister named Grace whose a little bit of a busy body.  She cracks me up and no matter what is going on whether it involves her directly or not she always managed to work these words in.  (Cue the MASSIVE Hoboken accent)

" All I know is I am feeling very underappreciated"

Well Grace, I have the answer for you.  Chocolate chip cookies.  I break these bad boys out and I get all the love and appreciation you can imagine!  Makes everybody real nice for awhile.

Can GF chocolate chip cookies be as good as regular you ask?

Why yes, yes they can!

I wish I could take credit for this recipe but I can't.  This is just the plain old Nestle' recipe on the back of the chips bag.  I use Pamela's bread mix and flour blend for the all purpose flour.  I have tried other flours in this recipe but this works the best.  I like to use a whole bag of the chocolate chunks.  Today I only used about 3/4 a bag because that was all that was left after a big ole chocolate craving hit earlier in the week.  It was enough though and there was lots of love about 3:15 this afternoon.

So Grace, you work in a bakery, break out the chocolate chips and whip yourself up some appreciation!!

Woot! Woot!!

It's the little things in life isn't it!!!  These brown rice tortillas are really good and my kiddos love to eat quesadillas on them.  Before today I could only find them at whole foods.  Since there is NO WHOLE FOODS in the entire state of Mississippi I loaded down with them anytime we were anywhere near a Whole Foods.  We have been out for months.  I dropped by the heath food store I frequent to pick up some flour for chocolate chip cookies and low and behold, a light shown down and there they were!!!!

Made my day!

Fried Cheese!

Ok.. so I normally don't necessarily cook this much after church on a Wednesday night but I ran across this recipe the other day and I can't get it out of my mind.  Does anybody else do that?  Please say yes.

There are some things I'm not sure my kids ever ate before they were GF and mostly that's fine.  If you don't know what your missing then no sweat right!  But some things it makes me a little sad for them.  Awhile back Shane and I went to a certain chain restaurant with excellent fried cheese.  It had been ages since we last had fried cheese and we indulged.  It was soooo good and I just thought it a little sad that Will and Jenny couldn't have that pleasure.

And then I found this recipe on The Pioneer Woman.  I love her blog and lots of her recipes translate well GF.  I decided to give this one a try.  Here is what you need:

  Cheese sticks, egg, milk, oil and 2 specialty ingredients:
1) All purpose flour.  I have a whole post planned about that one but for this I used Pamela's bread mix
2) Bread crumbs.  I found these at a local health food store.  I'm glad to because I tried to make my own a few weeks ago and it really was not pretty.  The recipe calls for Panko bread crumbs and Kinnikinik makes those GF but alas no where in Jackson, Mississippi so regular bread crumbs it is!

Cut the cheese sticks in half and roll them in the flour, then dip them in the egg and milk mixture and then in the bread crumbs.

I used 10 cheese sticks, so ended up with 20 of the finished product. Math was my strong point.

Well, not so much but I was a home ec major!

I just lined it up like an assembly line and dipped and coated.

 I did all the sticks before heating the oil and frying them up

It did not take long for them to cook at all.  Maybe 1 minute total in the oil.  I left the last batch in a little longer and the cheese began trying to escape it's breadcrumb shell.

Here is the finished product!  We didn't have any marinara sauce but pizza sauce seemed to work just fine. 

These turned out really good!  The kids gobbled them up and they got Shane's approval.  This was all the leftovers I had.

I would say this was a success!  Total prep and cooking time was around 30 minutes with the hardest part being undoing all those cheese wrappers!

Enjoy!

Our Celiac Story

I'm excited about writing about and sharing with you our gluten free adventures!  We have been a gluten free family for 2 1/2 years and during that short time I have learned so much!  I love trying out new recipes and sharing with others who are going through the process.  I wanted to start out by sharing our story of how we ended up with not one but two celiac kids!


When my son, who is now 13, was about 18 months old he lost some weight without explanation.  This was distressing to me as a young mom but also concerned our pediatrician.  He ran a whole battery of test and one in particular came back positive.  A celiac panel test.  I had never heard of celiac and he told me that this particular test had a high false positive rate but he felt like we should follow up and he made us an appointment with a pediatric GI doctor in town.


When we went to the appointment the doctor took one look at my otherwise healthy son and pronounced that he did not have celiac-she could tell by looking at him.  Celiac kids have swollen bellies, chronic diarrhea and were generally sick kids.  What a relief!  She had me keep a food log for several weeks.  We had a follow up appointment at which point he had gained a little weight back.  She told me to be sure he got enough calories and sent me on my way.


Fast forward 8 years and I am sitting at the endocrinologist's office with a 10 year old boy who has not grown an inch or gained a pound in almost 2 years.  He was fast becoming the smallest kid in the 5th grade and was falling farther and farther behind.  We were testing to see if growth hormone shots would be beneficial.  Several weeks later the report from the doctor game back and stated that his growth hormone levels were fine and the only thing abnormal in his blood work was.....you guessed it...the celiac panel.


Fortunately over the last ten years a new GI doctor had come to town and I immediately made an appointment with her.  She examined Will, looked at all his records and scheduled an endoscope.  His intestines she said were classically celiac.  Gluten free here we come!


I made many mistakes over the next year and half but that is another post for another day.  On to child #2! 


 My daughter's birthday is the first of March and because so many kids are still sick I usually scheduled her well check up for the summer time.  I had done that but there was a huge outbreak of the flu late in the summer that year and the clinic called to say I might not want to bring my well child up to there office!  So by the time that passed it was sick season again and long story slightly shorter it was almost two years between well visits for her.  She was now 9 years old and her growth chart should have showed her hitting that preteen growth spurt.  Just the opposite seemed to be happening.  She had grown almost none at all.  This rang all to familiar for my liking and I called our trusted GI doctor and scheduled an endoscope.  A few weeks later, the day before Thanksgiving, I got the call.  Now I have 2 celiac children  


So there it is, in long form, our celiac story.  We are for the most part totally gluten free.  There is a secret loaf of real bread hidden for my husband, but other than that no gluten in this house!


I hope you will check back again as I share with you how our family copes and even flourishes Gluten Free!