I received a few comments from people who were surprised. They had never considered a smoothie without milk. And this made it an option for those with lactose intolerance, and dairy or casein allergies. Well, do I have good news for you!

You can make a smoothie with that milk-type base… but instead of whole cow’s milk, you use unsweetened vanilla almond milk (I use Almond Breeze – I love ‘em!) It is milk made from almonds, so it is dairy, casein and gluten free! YAY!! The bonus: it has 0nly 40 calories for a whole cup! Which means for barely any additional calories, you’re getting that milk base that some people really prefer, plus the extra kick of protein. It’s like a smoothie on steroids!

Same as before, fill blender with your favorite fruits and banana.

Add almond milk, as little or much as you want.
You can add all milk, no water.
Or half milk, half water.
Or 72% milk, 28% water.
Whatever suits your fancy… or smoothie.

Pulse a few times to get the party started.

And then blend away, my friend

Blend away!!

And Voila!!
A creamy, milky-like dairy-free concoction of epic taste proportions!
Or, ya know, another great kind of smoothie.
Just to spice things up.

A few notes here: if this is too tart for your taste, you can always use sweetened almond milk. The calorie content will be higher, but it will be sweeter. Also, there’s no reason why it has to be almond milk at all. You could splash in some rice milk, soy milk, or go crazy and pour in skim cow’s milk (though, obviously, it won’t be dairy-free). The point is, this is YOUR smoothie. You can do whatever the hell you want.

Bottom’s up!

As promised, here is the recipe for the Green Smoothie I made tonite.
First, you will notice that is not, in fact, green!
How observant of you.
The Green has nothing to do with the color.
It’s because there are GREENS in it.
Mine has baby spinach, an excellent source of iron.
It also has blueberries, strawberries and raspberries.
And a banana, don’t forget the emulsification factor.
I talked about it in Smoothie 101.

Ingredients (these are approximations):
4 large strawberries (ok, that one is exact!)
4 oz. blueberries
3 oz raspberries
1/2 small banana`
1 c. baby spinach

My 1/2 banana, blueberries and raspberries are frozen.
The strawberries aren’t because I was too lazy to cut them up and freeze them.
Also, Skye LOVES strawberries.

Put ‘em all in the blender.
I know, you never would have guessed this was the next step.
I enjoy stating the obvious.
It’s how I roll.

Fill about half way up the fruit/greens with cold water.
With just fruit smoothies you fill it all the way to the top of the fruit.
But greens are a little “fluffy” in the blender.
Too much water will make your smoothie… watery.
I’m quite the wordsmith.
You’re impressed. Contain yourself.

Do NOT forget the lid!!
You would think that is also obvious.
But alas, my mother once tried to make strawberry jam in the blender.
You can guess where this is going…
She doesn’t live in that house anymore,
But I’m sure the current owners are wondering
what that red stuff is on the ceiling.
Lessons from Mom.

Pulse a few times to get stuff a’mixin’.
Hit liquify and let her rip.
Or blend.
Whatever.
Don’t freak out about the green flecks.
They get cut up into uber tiny specks.
When it’s done, you can’t even see them.
Or taste ‘em!!
You would never guess they are in there!
And neither will your kids.
Or husband.

If you have accidentally left your favorite smoothie glass at work,
a souvenir glass you got from The Rainforest Cafe
in Downtown Disney for you 37th birthday
is perfectly acceptable.
I wish I had a little paper umbrella for the full experience.

Drink up, Buttercup!

A few notes here about green smoothies (and it can apply to smoothies in general).

There are absolutely NO RULES! You can put in whatever you want. Whatever green, fruit combo. Experiment. Make it FUN! And delicious.

You can use more banana. I don’t care for that banana-y taste, so I use the minimum. But I am aware that some oddballs really like that banana taste. Whatever floats your banana boat.

If your fruit isn’t froze, you can totally use ice cubes.

Do NOT blend your smoothie for too long. The blades spin very fast, causing friction and HEAT. A hot smoothie = not awesome.

I have an average blender. I picked it up on sale at Target and I picked it because it’s red. Red is awesome. Most of my small appliances are red. VitaMix is considered one of the best. I don’t believe they make it in red. However, if I could afford it, I would totally get one. But I can’t. So I won’t. For now. Maybe Santa will bring me one for Christmas!

It’s recommended that you change up your smoothies everyday. Variety means you won’t get bored. There’s also this thing about greater range of vitamins and minerals this way. But really its all about taste. And color. You can really get a rainbow going.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask away! I am by no means an expert. But I have an advance degree in Google and I’m sure I can hunt down a variety of answers that may or may not be correct.

Now go out and drink your greens! Your mom will be so proud. Except mine, who hates greens and thinks it’s totally gross.

Sean and Skye had been begging for Spaghetti Tacos
ever since the episode aired.
I actually made them last year.
And they were a HUGE hit.
Then I promptly forgot about them.
Until today.

We were watching iCarly and the kids were asking what’s for lunch.
It didn’t take my brain long to connect point A to point B.
And Spaghetti Tacos were the obvious answer!!

iCarly’s infamous Spaghetti Tacos

Gluten & casein free version at end.

Gather together your ingredients.
The best part is that these are staples in most home pantries!
You’ll need:
spaghetti
pasta sauce
crunchy taco shells
we also like soft tortillas
Parmesan cheese

Cook spaghetti according to package directions.
Drain. Add sauce. Mix up real good.
Hard part over.
Whew.

Here comes the fun part.
Choose your weapon – soft or crunchy
I prefer soft… there’s something wrong with that sentence.
Anyway…
Put spaghetti on tortilla.
Sprinkle on a generous helping of cheese.

Roll up burritos style.
Consume.

Sean prefers it crunchy-style.
He will now demonstrate.
Put desired amount of spaghetti in shell.

Don’t forget the uber important cheese!

Consume.
Neatness does not count.

Super easy AND your kids will think you are crazy awesome.
Thank you, iCarly!

A gluten and casein free version is just as easy.

gluten free spaghetti (I prefer the quinoa, I think it olds up better than the rice)
gluten & casein free sauce (read your labels!)
most corn taco shells are gluten and casein free
gluten free brown rice tortillas are becoming easier to find
I haven’t found a casein free parm cheese, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t out there.

Follow the same directions as above.
Brown rice tortillas are usually more fragile.
They seems to break and tear easier.
I found that wrapping a few in a damp towel
and microwaving for about 30 seconds
works wonders on their flexibility.

Just a note for those new to GFCF cooking

Don’t be afraid to cook!!
I know it seems intimidating and overwhelming at first.
You’ll be surprised at how quickly it’ll become second nature.
Just about any recipe can be adapted.
You might have to substitute ingredients,
but I do that all the time anyway.
It’s part of the fun of cooking!
Be creative, adventurous. Look at it as a challenge.

Whatever you do, don’t stop cooking!!

Mangia!

Ingredients:

1 pint blueberries
1 banana
1/2 quart strawberries

My blueberries and banana were frozen.
The strawberries were not.
Since most of the fruit was frozen, I didn’t need ice cubes.
I find this works great because I can buy fruit on sale
and don’t have to worry about it’s shelf life.
The strawberries weren’t frozen because I had just purchased them.

Put it all in the blender and then add water to about the top of the fruit.
Don’t over do it to begin with, you can always add more as it’s blending.
Start by pulsing to break things up and get it all moving.

After several pulses, hit liquify or ice crushing if you are using ice cubes.
If it gets “stuck” or stops blending, turn it off.
Most likely you need to add more water,
add it 1/2 cup at a time so as not to end up with fruit juice instead!
I find that if you take a wooden spoon and using the handle,
give it a few stirs, this helps things to get mixing again too.

Once things are blending well,
leave it on liquify for several minutes
to make sure all the fruit is completely pureed.
This makes for a nice smooth smoothie!

Pour into a tall cute glass,
make sure to use a bendy straw.
They make everything taste better!

Delicious, nutritious,
and durn purty to look at!!
A smoothie trifecta!

One of the best things about smoothies
is that you can put pretty much whatever you want in them.
We’ve done all sorts of berry combos.
Mangos, melons, just about anything your blender can puree!

I would like to mention the importance of the banana.
Bananas emulsify, and that’s really what gives the smoothie
it’s smoothie-ness.
Without them, you’d just end up with fruit juice!

I don’t have step by step pictures because my kids made this while I was working out on the elliptical. Yes, it is THAT easy! Also, I have trained my kids well. Except for picking up after themselves and doing their chores without multiple reminders. Still working on that part. But the cooking thing, totally have that mastered!

This generic pasta dish has THREE ingredients (not including the parmesan cheese sprinkled on top.) It is so quick and easy that it is our go-to meal. We have it at least once a week, and usually more often than that. It’s delish and the kids never get tired of it (thank goodness, I don’t know what I’d make if they did!)

1 lb ground beef or turkey (we used turkey, it was on-sale)
1 26 oz can or jar of spaghetti sauce (we had Four Cheese on hand)
1 16 oz package of pasta (your choice, we used bow-tie)

Boil the pasta according to package directions. While that’s boiling away, brown the ground meat of your choice in a skillet. Drain and rinse with hot water to get rid of as much extra fat as possible. Put in a large bowl. Drain the pasta and pour into same bowl as ground meat. Pour spaghetti sauce over contents of bowl. Mix well. Serve, sprinkle with parmesan if desired. Enjoy!

Note: This is very easily adapted to GFCF – just use gluten free casein free spaghetti sauce and gluten free pasta, I preferred either a quinoa or corn flour pasta. They don’t get mushy quite as quickly as the brown rice pastas. But that’s just a personal preference.

So here it is, T-Day morn, and I have done… NOTHING toward that end. I am ridiculous (and filled with great ideas that will never, ever see the light of day.)

But rather than just skip this, I’m posting at least SOMETHING here now. Because I WILL get over this whole procrastination thing. Even if I have to do it one post at a time.

I DID roast and carve our bird (a 12 lb-er!) on Tuesday. Which, let me tell you, was BRILLIANT!! It took almost two hours longer to cook than I anticipated because I bought it the night before (see, procrastinating even that! It’s killing me. Srsly!) and it was still frozen solid after spending a night in the fridge. Like, we could have totally done some serious turkey bowling with it! It spent over an hour taking a lukewarm bath in the kitchen sink (tip of the day: don’t use hot water to thaw yer bird, you’ll end up with cooked bit and still have semi-frozen bits. Result: bad bird!) Even with the kitchen sink forced thaw, it was still hell’s frozen over damn cold. And so it took a really loooooooong time to reach the recommended (aka safe) internal temperature… as indicated by the little red pop-out thingy. And when it was finally done, I was able to let it sit for a good solid half hour instead of rushing to carve it right away. Which let it reabsorb all those juices and guess what: juiciest turkey I’ve ever made!! I will now do this for every holiday. It was brilliant!!

So, without further adieu, here’s our menu:

Aforementioned BRILLIANT and juicy turkey

Mashed potatoes (yes, I use potato flakes, in case you were wondering. They are one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century. Just make sure you read the ingredients. Mine are just potatoes.)

Gravy which I make from GF chicken stock. I use cornstarch instead of flour for a thickener. Other than that, it’s just regular old gravy. Normally I would have used the turkey drippings, but I wasn’t for-thinking enough and totally forgot to save them until after the pan had been tossed (oh, come on. If I using potato flakes, obviously I’m also using a disposable roasting pan!)

Stuffing – I followed my regular recipe using a loaf of GFCF bread (I discovered this one made with tapioca flour and it’s so SOFT, definitely our favorite bread!), GF margarine (I use the Nucoa brand since it’s readily available in our local grocery stores and not crazy expensive) and the same GF chicken stock I used for the gravy. I’ll try to post that recipe later, but other than subbing out the ingredients for GFCF ones, it’s just super basic stuffing.

Steamed asparagus (my kids picked the veggie. They love asparagus. And because they’ve only ever had it steamed, they love it that way. No sauce, no butter, nothing added whatsoever! I should have fed them everything this way. They’d be the healthiest kids on the PLANET!)

Dinner rolls… ok, here’s my concession. I bought regular dinner rolls for the other kids. For Sean, I’ll butter and toast a couple of slices of his Tapioca flour bread (which he LOVES and it’s the closest thing to homemade GFCF bread that I’ve found.) I was going to make GFCF rolls from this great recipe I found HERE and I AM determined to try it sometime, like maybe at Christmas. But I just ran out of time… and steam. It didn’t happen.

Apple crisp – my alternative to apple pie. I’ll try to get that recipe on here too. I use GF oats, brown sugar and CF margarine (good old Nucoa again!) Well, there’s a bit more to it, but not much! Easiest recipe ever!!

I bought the ingredients for pumpkin pie. I make it without the crust (takes care of the GF portion!) I have both unflavored hemp milk and this other non-dairy/casein free cream substitute specifically for use in recipes that call for cream. I’m dying to try them both. I just don’t know if I’m dying to try them TODAY. We’ll see.

And that’s it. I’ve kept it as simple as possible. Yes, it’s starch heavy. But it’s a holiday, not a healthfood faire. I’m trying to keep it traditional, I don’t want the kids feeling like they’re missing out… or me either!

Happy Turkey Day!!

It IS much easier to make a fully GFCF dinner than to pick and choose between what is being served at someone else’s house, combing through there recipes and ingredients. There’s hidden gluten in places people would NEVER think to look (like most prepared gravies) and dairy in just about everything (mashed potatoes, cauliflower au gratin.) Even the jello salad has whipped cream on it. And the green salad is pretossed with croutons. Thanksgiving isn’t a gluten and casein free friendly holiday (neither is Christmas, since it’s basically the same menu maybe trading out the turkey for a goose and throwing in a ham… mmmm…. ham!) And sure, I could make and bring Sean his own dinner (but then I’m making a whole dinner anyway.) But I’d have to make sure Sean was eating his own roll, not one of the regular ones. Are those Sean’s mashed potatoes or the ones with milk and butter? Oops, someone brought a cherry pie, but I only made GFCF apple and pumpkin – of course, Sean wants to have the cherry one… Well, you can see the headaches already. And that’s just the start.

But the other problem is that Sean just gets overwhelmed by large groups. He gets sensory overload and starts to shut down. He doesn’t have meltdowns (thank goodness!) but he’ll go off and play in a corner by himself. And that hurts my heart. Here we’ll be in a housefull of kids and he’s in a far corner of another room, babbling to himself. Off in his own world. Sometimes I’ll even find him in one of the guest bedrooms, he’ll have put himself to bed because it all just got to be “too much”. It’s such a stark reminder that he’s not like the other kids. That he’s “special”.

And so I try to keep our time in these situations on the shorter side. My mom doesn’t really understand and has been badgering me about staying for dinner. We’ve been doing this every holiday for the past year. You think she’d get it by now. I know she wants her family around as much as possible. And if I didn’t work with her everyday, this might be more of a valid arguement!

But that’s just it, too. I want to spend time with my kids. And when we are at these big family gatherings, I hardly even see them. So I am selfish and want to have some quality just our family time too. When we leave my parents, we head home to food already cooked and ready to heat ‘n eat (which is why I’m cooking today.) We watch movies and play games, usually throw a log or two in the fireplace and just relax. While I love visiting with my sibs and their kids, whom I don’t see all that often; this “just us” time is by far my favorite part of the whole day.

The cupcake came from a mix: The Gluten-free Pantry’s Old Fashioned Cake & Cookie Mix. This is the best boxed cake mix I’ve found so far. Some friends have mailed me the new Better Crocker GF mixes. I’ll be reviewing them next week.

In the meantime, I added 1/3 cup of cocoa to the mix. Next time I’ll add a 1/2 cup and a 1 tsp more vanilla than it calls for. Other than that, I made it according to package instructions. It doesn’t have a cupcake baking variation (why the hell not? That seems really basic!) So I baked them for 10-12 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean. Let cool completely on a baking rack. And I mean completely, or your frosting will melt and slide right off. So I’ve heard… uh… anyway. The mix I used is pictured below.

While they were baking, I whipped up a chocolate buttercream frosting. I took the original recipe I found at Cooks.com and made a couple of substitutions to make it casein free. Here’s what I ended up with:

1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup casein free margarine (I used Nucoa)
2 tsp. vanilla (I always use double vanilla, tip I got from a Wiltons cake instructor)
4 cups powdered sugar
3-4 tbsp rice milk (depends on how stiff or thin you want your frosting)
3/4 cup cocoa

Cream together shortening and margarine. Stir in vanilla. Add two cups of sugar and carefully mix thoroughly. Add remaining two cups of sugar and cocoa, again stirring carefully. Gradually add in milk 1 tbsp at a time until desired consistency. That’s pretty much it. Frost away!

After frosting all the cupcakes, I filled a bowl with chocolate jimmys. I took a frosted cupcake and dipped it upside-down into the jimmies, pressing and twirling to get jimmies all over the top of the cupcake. Repeat with all cupcakes. Caution: at this point, cupcakes are totally irresistable!! Not responsible for total cupcake consumption and blowing of entire week’s worth of calories in one sitting!!

2 thick cut, boneless pork chops cut into 1″ cubes (you could also use a pound of pork tenderloin)
1/3 GFCF all-purpose flour
2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp dried parsley
1 tsp dried oregano
3-4 tbsp olive or vegetable oil (your preference)
1/2 medium onion, finely chopped
4 baking potatoes, peeled and cut into 1″ cubes
4 large carrots, peeled, quartered and cut into 1″ pieces
2 granny smith apples, peeled, cored and diced
2 cups water
additional spices (garlic powder, chili powder, salt, parsley and oregano as desired)
1/2 cup COLD water
1/3 cup cornstarch

Take pork cubes and pat dry with paper towels. Put flour, garlic powder, chili powder, salt, parsley and oregano into large ziplock bag. Add pork cubes. Zip closed and shake shake shake until all pieces are evenly coated with flour mixture.

Heat skillet on medium-high, add enough oil to cover the bottom plus just a little. Allow oil to heat up for a minute, then add floured pork cubes. Cook pieces on each side for several minutes, browning all pieces thoroughly.

Add onions and continue to cook all pieces, stirring and turning frequently to prevent burning, until onions are translucent.

Remove skillet and put stock pot on same burner. Immediately put contents of skillet into stockpot. Add I cup of water. Add potatoes, carrots and apples. Add a second cup of water. Add seasonings as desired. When water reaches a boil, cover, turn down to medium-low and simmer for 20 minutes.

Remove cover and stir. Dissolve 1/4 cup of cornstarch in 1/2 cup COLD water (imperative that water is COLD, warm or hot water will result in lumps lumps LUMPS!) and whisk until cornstarch is dissolved (takes like 10 seconds.) Slowly pour cornstarch mixture into stew, stirring continuously. Add less or more, depending on how thick you like your stew (we like ours stand-a-fork-in-it thick!)

Cover and continue to let simmer another 30 minute. Check for doneness, by piercing a carrot piece with fork. It should be tender and offer no resistence. Stew takes forever to cool. For younger children, be sure to dish out their bowls and let them sit for at least 10 minutes!! (yes, we found this out the hard way!)