Gluten nightmares with pleasant results

I recently had a nightmare that  I was consuming all these pastry's, cakes and cookies, mainly cookies. Good things that I dearly missed eating. In the dream I realized I was eating gluten and tried to only chew the delicious treats and spit them out before swallowing them. Needless to say I woke up feeling  guilty and deprived. These past months I've been looking for a gluten free chocolate chip recipe that is at least similar to the one I made all during my childhood and haven't had much luck. I decided that after work that day I needed to make myself some cookies. Once I was home I realized that I didn't have any chocolate chips in the house, my plan needed to change because I wasn't going to the store just for chocolate chips. After searching my saved recipes on pinterest ( I love pinterest if you can't tell) I found one that I could do, and still get my chocolate fix as well. http://delightfulbitefuls.blogspot.com/2011/02/peanut-butter-nutella-swirl-cookies.html

I used the above recipe but I switched out the flour with a gluten free blend.

 I love how easy peanut butter cookies are.

It was a lot of self control not to eat just the dough, it smelled soooo good.

This picture was before they were cooked.... they didn't last long enough after to take additional pictures. I did manage to save two for my mom and sister (but my mother ate both of them before my sister had a chance) I don't know if it was my desperation for a cookie treat or the actual recipe but these things were gone before the next day.

White beam chili

 I've had this craving for chili for over two weeks now.  A week ago I bought all the stuff to make my white bean chili but between work and other things I wasn't able to make it and the past few days we had a friend staying with us and she can't even look at chili with out getting grossed out, so chili was a no go. I now have a free day, Mr. beam is working and I am by myself for the rest of the night, chili? I think yes!

We  have some hominy, white beans, green taco sauce, sour cream, monterey jack cheese, chicken stock, chicken, salt, pepper, coriander, cumin, garlic, onion, celery and corn.

 I drained and rinsed the hominy and white beans. Shredded the cheese , cubed the chicken, and chopped the onion, garlic, celery and corn (well I didn't chop the corn I took it off the husk).


I  cooked the chicken then added the onion, garlic, celery, and corn and let the onions sweat.

 I then added the hominy  and beans and mixed in the green taco sauce.

Then I added the Chicken stock and spices to taste. Once this was done I let it simmer until it became a chili consistency.  To serve I dollop with sour cream and top with the shredded cheese, if I had them I would of also crunched up some tortilla chips in there.

 If you like really spicy chili you'll have to add more of a kick to this. I cannot have a lot of spice (even this mild stuff doesn't sit  very well with me) adding more fresh peppers and change the cheese to pepper jack will turn up the heat a bit :)

This makes way to much for one person to eat so I put some in the fridge for the next day and  some in the freezer for when my craving hits again :)

Homemade chicken soup

Spring is in full swing now a days and although the majority of flu season is behind us some bugs are still lingering and effecting people. One nasty bug hit one of my friends not to long ago *cough cough, last month when I was lazy in the kitchen* I really had no spark to cook anything, my imagination with food had gone dry (much to Mr. Beams dismay)  That is until I heard that our friend was sick and the night before had a fever of 103+.  I believe whenever someone is sick its when they need to be pampered the most, when your sick, being comfortable is a hard thing to achieve. To me homemade chicken soup it the closest to comfort one can get while sick, so I set to work.

Onions, Carrots, and Celery is the holy trinity that you begin with,  I also chopped up some garlic and shiitake mushrooms, chicken of course, and chicken stock (I happen to have homemade in the freezer).

 I don't use noodles not only because I'm gluten free but because before I was I hated how soggy the noodles would get. So I made sure  there was a ton of veggies for the soup.

 I set the frozen stock to the side to melt a bit before adding it.

I put a good helping of olive oil in the bottom of my cast iron pot and added the chicken. When that was done cooking I added the holy trinity and let the onions sweat out there goodness before adding the garlic and mushrooms.

Looks yummy :)  I added the chicken stock and a bit of extra water to make sure there was plenty of broth. Now I let it cook for a bit to develop all the flavors and added some spices. The homemade broth already had some herbs like rosemary, marjoram and thyme, so I salt and peppered it and added a pinch of coriander. I checked its taste and when I was happy with it I took it off the burner to cool. I was pressed for time at  this point  and I wasn't able to take any more pictures, but I transferred the soup into some containers and delivered it. Our friend was better within two days, wither it was the soup or all the NyQuil she drank we will never know.  But she did say the soup helped and was amazing :)

Broccoli soup

 Last week the weather was a bit bipolar. It couldn't decide if it wanted to be sunny, rainy, cloudy, or hailing. As a result from the nasty weather  I wanted soup or a chowder of some sort, something comforting and warm. Even though it was late (8:30pm)  and I had already eaten, I wanted to make something for the next day. I thought of doing my white chili, I didn't have the ingredients. Split pea soup,Coconut stew, clam chowder, again didn't have the ingredients. All the comforting soups I wanted I was missing something  and couldn't make them. I  knew I needed to go food shopping but I had to wait until pay day on Friday, But I still wanted soup and where there's a will there's a way. Looking at what I had on hand I decided to throw something together. I had broccoli and sweet potatoes (or were they yams?  I always get them confused, It was the yellow potato looking kind, not the orange-ish kind) which I  cleaned, peeled, cut up, drizzled with oil and sprinkled with salt and I roasted them at 350 degree until they were tender. At this point it was 10pm and I need to get to bed for work the next day, so I  put the roasted goodness in a container and stuck it in the fridge.

The next day I was out of the house and couldn't  make the soup, but the following day was my day off and I made time to make my soup.
After heating up my cast iron pot I put in some butter, my roasted vegetables, and some chicken stock. I then took my handy dandy emulsion blender and pureed everything.

After tasting it I added some salt, pepper, coriander, garlic and onion powder, and a splash of cream.

Before dishing up I grated some sharp cheddar cheese to top it with.

 I must say it didn't last long, even though I made a lot if it :)

Oatmeal muffins

 This year I began liking oatmeal. I'd don't remember eating it as a child, cream of wheat was my hot breakfast of choice, however I do strongly remember thinking it was nothing but brown mush with sugar. Now that  Cream of wheat is no longer an option  I've expanded my breakfast menu and I love it :)

I found a recipe for crock pot oatmeal a few months ago. http://www.frugalupstate.com/recipes/the-great-oatmeal-experiment-results/     I put these on at night before a busy morning and I leave out an apple, in the morning I peel and chop the apple and saute it with a little butter and add   cinnamon, sugar, and a little water and  cook it down to make a syrup. I fill my bowl with oatmeal, a little milk, my apple mixture and some chopped walnuts and I'm a happy camper for the rest of the day :)  but with doing this I often find myself with left over oatmeal. I found another wonderful recipe a while ago and decided to try it.
http://glutenfreegirl.com/gluten-free-oatmeal-muffins/

Using your left over oatmeal you can make delicious muffins. Now I didn't have everything in her recipe so I used some of the substitutions she mentioned and I mixed my own flour blend from the few flours I had... I don't know if it was my flour mixture or what but when I tasted it before putting it in the oven, I gagged. It was so bitter (I tasted my flours and none of them gave off that flavor, I'm wondering if it was my chia seeds? and I mixed them for too long?) Whatever the reason I threw out the first batch,  and began again. Instead of mixing my own flours this time (as I didn't have many on hand at the time) I used an all purpose mix and I didn't add any chia seeds.


I didn't have any dried fruit either so I used the frozen raspberries I had. This time the batter tasted as I expected  muffin batter would...

The picture isn't the greatest but they were delicious  and  when I would get some of the raspberry  the flavor reminded me of the scones (that I truly miss) sold at the Washington state fair. I am defiantly going to be making these again.