gluten free banana bread

WOW. This bread is fabulous. It's even better than the banana bread I used to make - and that stuff was made from wheat flour. I'm telling you - this is better.

The bread is made from a mix made by Mindy of Miracle Munchies.

If you live in Tucson, stop by the farmer's market at St. Phillips Plaza on Sunday mornings and pick up a bag of the mix. If you don't live in Tucson (too bad for you), you can buy the mixes on her website.

Thank you, Mindy, for making such a wonderful mix for me to enjoy. (Even my skeptical husband has been eating the bread and raving about it all weekend.)

PS I subsituted half a cup of lite applesauce for the oil and added about 1/4 cup walnuts. This stuff is heaven.

Big News!

I got the job!

watermelon gazpacho

In the spirit of our clean out the fridge and pantry week, we recently made watermelon gazpacho. Well I shouldn't say we - I should say David.

He diced up half a watermelon, added in maybe half a peeled cucumber, a few tablespoons of red onion, a couple of roasted red peppers (we didn't have any fresh ones in the house), one hot chile pepper, about 1/4 fresh basil, a big drizzle of vinegar (we used both balsalmic and apple cider), drizzle of olive oil, salt, and pepper.

Pop it in the blender in two installments, then add additional seasoning to taste. (Ours needed an extra drop of vinegar.)

Since our chile pepper came from my boss' garden, we didn't know how hot it would be. Turns out, it was very hot. Luckily, the cool temperature and flavors worked well with the heat. Next time I'd use less pepper - maybe half of one.

This gazpacho is interesting because it doesn't taste too much like watermelon. It's similar to tomato gazpacho but it's got a cooler and slightly sweeter taste. I will definitely be making this again.

If you need a point of reference (I know my measurements leave something to be desired), this recipe is very similar to what we did.

Chicken stir-fry with black bean sauce

Image from foodservicedirect.com

Um... yeah. This black bean sauce is REALLY SPICY. I'm no spice wimp and I could barely eat my dinner. Let me explain how it all happened...

I'm trying to find more Chinese, Thai, and Indian recipes to make for dinner since they are typically gluten-free (think curries over rice, pad thai with rice or bean noodles, etc).

And in our continued effort to eat only what's in the pantry, fridge, and freezer, I concocted an idea to make chicken with black bean sauce stir-fried with bean thread noodles (sometimes called cellophane noodles or glass noodles) for dinner. I have some bean thread noodles I picked up at the 17th Street market. Asian ingredients are easy to find there and cheaper than the grocery store. An 8 oz bag of bean thread noodles was $1.69, but I saw many varieties for even less.

Most of the recipes I found for black bean sauce stir-fry called for a couple of tablespoons of black bean sauce, thinned with some chicken stock and whisked with cornstarch. So we used about half of the jar pictured above, a can of chicken stock, and about half a tablespoon of cornstarch. We stir-fried some veggies, then added diced chicken breast, then the sauce and the bean thread noodles after soaking them in hot water for about 90 seconds.

WHOA. It was REALLY spicy. Next time I'd use about a tablespoon of the black bean sauce. I guess we should have tasted it, especially considering it is called "Black Bean Sauce with Chilli."

Maybe next time I'll learn and try a recipe like this one or this one.

I love a challenge

Recently I've been picking up new grocery items we don't normally use. From the 17th Street Market, I picked got a bag of bean thread noodles and a bag of very thin rice noodles. And yesterday we went to Costco and I bought a huge jar of marinated artichoke hearts. I'm pretty sure in the lazy susan cabinet there's even a can of beets from a recent grocery trip.

We buy most of our meat and seafood in bulk, too, and keep it in the freezer. Chicken breasts and salmon from Costco, a whole beef tenderloin trimmed and cut into 1 lb servings, and shrimp purchased in 2 lb bags when it goes on supersale at the grocery (ask for the 2 lb bags from the butcher - they've got them in the back).

So we're pretty stocked up on food around here. David suggested that this week we skip the grocery and try to make a week's worth of meals from the items we already have in the house.

Today for lunch we had spinach salads with diced Costco rotisserie chicken breast, roasted red peppers, tomatoes from the garden, and artichoke hearts.

Tonight's menu:

Tilapia filets, cooked in a little olive oil and and white wine, seasoned with salt, pepper, tarragon, and lemon juice (I wanted to do cornmeal-crusted, but David is cooking tonight)

Steamed veggies (carrots, broccoli, and bell peppers left over from our pool party)

Quinoa

A quick note about Costco: They have some seriously good deals. If you don't have a membership, you don't know what you're missing. Yesterday I picked up a 3.5 lb bag of Bob's Red Mill quinoa for $8.69, 3 lbs of tilapia fillets at less than $6/lb, and 3 lb bag of spinach for $4.

gluten-free products

Friday night we tried both the Arrowhead Mills Pizza Crust mix and Trader Joe's gluten-free brownie mix. We invited 4 friends over (one has Celiac) and sat down to dinner.

courtesy of www.arrowheadmills.com

Everyone liked the Arrowhead Mills gluten-free Pizza Crust mix. We didn't have any extra rice flour, so we dusted the counter with cornmeal before rolling out the dough. It worked perfectly. We baked each crust for about 10 minutes before adding toppings. The crust has a nice, firm, and slightly crunchy texture. It's almost reminiscent of biscuits. We topped the pizza with Trader Joe's fat-free pizza sauce, lots of freshly shredded mozzarella, and black olives, mushrooms, and red onion. The mix makes two pizzas, and the two pizzas just barely served 6 hungry adults. We had a nice big salad to round out the meal. If you can't find the mix at your local supermarket (this came from Safeway), you can find it on amazon.com.

courtesy of www.gluten-free-blog.blogspot.com

I added maybe three tablespoons of crushed walnuts and about a quarter cup of chocolate chips to the Trader Joe's gluten-free brownie mix, then lined an 8x8 baking pan with foil and Pam'd generously. I cooked the brownies about 5-8 minutes longer than the 30 minutes listed on the package, but I think they were actually done at 30. Next time I'll trust the bag instead of judging by the toothpick test. The brownies have a great flavor and decent texture, but mine were dense and a bit dry and I think my over-cooking was to blame. Although this mix is yummy (my husband had a second brownie after everyone left), next time I want to try gluten-free brownies from scratch. But it's nice to know of a good product to use in a time-crunch.

I wish I had pictures of the end products, but I got distracted by entertaining and the food was gone before I knew it. I guess that's a good thing!