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.)

Meal Planning 101

Ok.  So I've mentioned before that I was a home ec. major in college.  Well, when your a home ec major in college you take the above mentioned class.  Yep.  A whole semester of meal planning.  Crazy right?  Actually it was a good class and we planned meals for all sorts of things including a thanksgiving meal for the faculty.  Actually that may have been for my "Institutional Foods" class.  Exciting stuff was going on in the basement of the education building.  That's where they put home ec majors.  In the basement.  It really was a blast though!

So anyway.... the point being I had a whole class on planning meals and one of the cardinal rules of running a household full of GF people and boy scouts is to BE PREPARED!  So it is my habit every Sunday night to sit down and make a meal plan for the week.  This is not Earth shattering stuff I realize.  Most people do this, but when we first went GF this was a monumental task.  I will share with you what our first GF meal was one day but I'm just still a little embarrassed by it so not today.

There are lots of fabulous organizational tools out there to make a menu and I usually love that sort of stuff but for me a yellow legal pad is my weapon of choice to make our weekly menu.  I post it on the fridge and nobody looks at it except Jenny who possibly has similar control issues as her mother.

I plan breakfast and dinner for each day and any "special things" I want to make during the week.

So without further ado-the earth shattering, a little lite on the veggies this week, Huff Family Weekly Menu!!


Monday: (This day is not a winner, but we have a crazy afternoon/evening and not a lot of time)

Breakfast:Yummy Goodness (code for sweet rolls at our house-usually reserved for Fridays, but these are left over from the weekend)

Dinner: Tacos

Tuesday:

Breakfast: Waffles with the good syrup, bacon

Dinner: Cornmeal dipped catfish, yellow rice, butter beans

Wednesday: Church

Breakfast: Eggs, sausage and bagels

Dinner: Before church: Bagel pizza  After church:  Grilled cheese

Thursday:

Breakfast:French toast, yogurt

Dinner:  Pork tenderloin (Hormel has lots of already seasoned pork tenderloins that are GF), Brazilian cheese rolls, black-eyed peas

Friday: Fall Fest at school (They have food there, but....)

Breakfast: Blueberry muffins

Dinner:  Pizza on homemade crust.  Maybe make your own.

Saturday:

Breakfast: Pancakes from the freezer cause I'm sleepy!

Dinner: Potato Soup

Sunday:  Breakfast day at  Sunday School

Breakfast:  For the kids: Chex cereal

                  For Sunday school: Sausage, egg and cheese frittata (Make 2)

Dinner:  The second frittata

Extras for the week:

Cupcakes for fall festival-I'm thinking cookies and cream!

Try to make homemade goldfish (I found this on Pinterest and I'm dying to try it-we'll see if there is time this week!)

There you have it.  I'm sure you are just blown away.  It's a little lite on veggies this week. But we'll balance it out next week.  Will is pretty good about eating whatever I fix, but Jenny is still fairly new to the GF game and is sticking to tried and true things like cheese.  Lots and lots of cheese and candy.  That would be all she would eat if given a choice so scrambled eggs are a pretty big deal.  Baby steps!

I hope if your new to being GF that this will help give you some ideas.  It is possible.  It just takes time.   

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!!

Monday Morning Muffins

Yea.  I know.  It's Tuesday morning.  Sorry.  I'm totally blaming it on Blogger.  I wrote a post for about half an hour yesterday and then Blogger made it go away and I just had to move on.  I like the alliteration of Monday Morning Muffins too much to change it.  Anyway.....

Yesterday was Labor Day and I love having my people home on Mondays.  Just feels good.  It was rainy, rainy, and dark and a little bit chilly outside.  I was up before everyone else.  Not that it was early.  Everybody else just slept really late.  I love to be up before everyone with it kind of dark outside.  I love to cook then.  Make my house smell good and have something good waiting for the people I love.  Makes me feel motherly and happy.

I had been wanting to make these and just had not done it yet, but I had all the ingredients and a quiet house so I decided to go for it.  Straight from Pioneer Woman Cooks   I give you:

Marmalade Muffins

I used Pamela's Bread Mix and Flour Blend for the all purpose flour.  

Cream 2 sticks of butter and a cup of sugar.  Yea.  I know.

Add 2 eggs and mix until combined.

(I used the electric mixer for most of this but got a little wigged out that I was using the mixer on muffins.  If you over mix muffins they will be tough and GF muffins have that issue anyway.  I mixed everything just slightly and then finished up by hand.  It's the Home Ec. major in me.)

Next, add 2 cups of all purpose flour.  I put it in a bowl and give it a good stir with the whisk to "fluff" it.  That totally contradicts the whole Home Ec. major thing but I don't own a sifter.  

Mix it just a little.

Put a tsp of baking soda into 1 cup of buttermilk and add to mixture.

(I have started to keep buttermilk as a staple in my fridge-makes all things good and works especially good for GF things)

Add the zest of 2 oranges.  YUMMY!!  This made my house small like a dream!

Finish mixing by hand.  Grease a mini muffin pan and fill it up.

Bake at 375 for 15 minutes.

While baking, mix the juice from the oranges and 1 cup of brown sugar.  Yea. I know.

When muffins come out of the oven spoon the "sauce" over the warm muffins before removing from the pan.

Let sit for a minute and then remove.

These were fabulous!!

We each ate a couple for breakfast and when I came back through the kitchen later the rest were gone.  Consumed by the teenager.

Which totally cracks me up because 2 years ago pre gluten free he ate nearly nothing.  At all.  Now he eats a dozen mini muffins without even thinking about it!!!

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!