Let’s be honest. Gluten-free bread is awful. But, I refuse to give up my search for a decent (yes, my standards are that low) replacement.
I recently discovered a Glutino mix called “Favorite Sandwich Bread” and threw it in my bread machine. What a pleasant surprise. It was light, doughy, tasted like real bread and didn’t need to be toasted to choke down.
Try a box. You’ll like it!
Ever get a rut? I’ve been in a cooking rut for the last few weeks. I’m doing plenty of cooking _ we have to eat, of course _ but I’ve been relying on a few standby recipes to get food on the table. No more!
I put a spark in dinner tonight be creating a Thai salad. It’s incredibly simple and cleared out a bunch of vegetables from the weekend farmers market.
Here’s what you need:
_Half a package of Thai gluten-free rice noodles cooked.
_2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
_1 medium bok choy chopped
_ 3 carrots peeled and chopped
_1/2 onion diced
_4 stalks celery chopped
_1/2 jalapeno diced
_1 broccoli crown cut into florets
_1 head of romaine lettuce ripped into bite-size pieces
_2 tbsps g-free red chili paste. I use the Thai Kitchen brand.
_1/2 cup gluten-free teriyaki sauce. I use the San-J brand.
_3 limes juiced
_1/2 cup toasted almonds
Here’s what you do:
_Cut the chicken into bite-size pieces and saute in olive oil.
_When the chicken is nearly done, add all the vegetables and cook until they start to soften. Season with a few sprinkles of salt and pepper.
_Remove the chicken and vegetable combination from the stove and combine it in a bowl with the cooked rice noodles and chopped head of romaine lettuce.
_Make the dressing by combining the red chili paste, teriyaki sauce and lime juice.
_Toss the dressing with everything else. Plate the salad and top it with a handful of toasted almonds.
Enjoy!
We love tomatoes at our house so we decided to grow a plant of our own. Did I mention we live on the 11th floor of a downtown Chicago high-rise?
Bonnie, our tomato plant, has been growing in a pot of organic soil on our balcony since early June. At last count, she has about eight baby flowers that should eventually become tomatoes. Fingers crossed.
The adorable feline in the picture is our cat Ruby.
I combined two Cooking Light magazine recipes to come up with a quick and easy dinner: grilled chicken breast sandwiches dressed up with a fabulous apricot-fig chutney and avocado spread.
I followed CL’s chutney recipe, although I did omit the fresh cilantro and added some water during cooking to adjust the consistency. I also tweaked the chicken sandwich recipe by using breasts instead of thighs and I made a simpler avocado spread.
Here’s how you do it:
Apricot-fig chutney recipe courtesy of Cooking Light with my changes included:
_3 cups dried apricots chopped in half
_1/2 cup dried figs quartered
_1/2 cup white wine
_1/3 cup sugar
_1/4 cup golden raisins
_1 1/2 tsp chopped fresh thyme
_1 tbsp honey
_1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
_1 tsp ground mustard seed
_1/2 tsp ground cumin
_1/2 tsp ground ginger
_1/4 tsp kosher salt
_dash of ground pepper
_1/2 jalapeno seeded, finely chopped
_1/2 shallot chopped
Combine everything in a pan and cook for 15 minutes. I slowly added some water as it cooked to get it to the right sticky consistency.
Here’s how you make the grilled chicken sandwiches:
_Cut 1 lb of chicken breasts into four pieces. Pound them thin, season with salt, pepper and fresh lemon juice.
_Grill until done. Toast four g-free hamburger buns on the grill.
_After they’re toasted, cover the bottom of the buns with an avocado spread made of 1 smashed avocado, 1 tbsp fat-free sour cream, salt and pepper.
_Put the chicken on top the avocado spread and top the chicken breast with chutney.
Enjoy. We did.
Hallelujah! There’s real g-free baseball food at White Sox park. Gone are the days when Amy had to eat hot dogs without buns and drink wine instead of beer. Really, who drinks wine at a baseball game.
Here are your choices:
_Bard’s Tale g-free beer
_Chicago style hot dog on a g-free bun at the Comiskey Dog stand
_Roast beef, corned beef or roasted turkey on gluten-free, multi-grain bread at the Triple Play Carvery Stand
_Nachos with your choice of topping including beef barbacoa or chicken carnita at the Tex Mex stand
_Vanilla and chocolate soft serve ice cream at the Winning Ugly is Sweet Stand
I found our new favorite summer salad. It’s a jazzed up version of Cooking Light magazine’s shaved summer squash salad with prosciutto.
My main change was to add about 10 stalks of blanched, chopped asparagus to the salad and to increase the prosciutto to a 2-ounce serving per person. I also added about 6 dried figs cut in half.
The really refreshing part of this salad is its zingy dressing simply made with mint, lemon zest, lemon juice and olive oil. The whole salad is finished off with a sprinkling of feta cheese.
Here’s what you need:
_Use a vegetable peeler to shave three medium zucchini into a medium-size bowl. Discard the seeds. Toss the shaved zucchini with salt.
_Crisp up 4 ounces of sliced prosciutto in a nonstick pan.
_Mix 2 tbsps of thinly sliced fresh mint, the juice of half a lemon, the zest of one lemon, about 1 tbsp of olive oil and a dash of fresh ground pepper. Toss the dressing with the zucchini.
_Blanch 10 stalks of asparagus until just tender and chop. Add to zucchini mixture.
_Add the crisped prosciutto. Toss in about 1/4 cup of crumbled feta cheese.
_Makes 2 dinner servings. Enjoy!
The dishes are done and our bellies are full after another successful g-free holiday meal at the Walsh-Bellandi household.
Here’s a close look at what we had and how you can recreate them.
Introducing a star of the brunch: Gruyere, tomato and green onion fritatta. The savory dish was the perfect pairing with our g-free spiral ham from Trader Joes. The fritatta is crazy easy to make: combine a dozen eggs, 1 pound of grape tomatoes cut in half, 1/2 cup of chopped green onions and about 8 ounces of shredded Gruyere cheese. Combine it all in an oven-proof pan coated with cooking spray. Start cooking it on the stove until it’s about half done and then finish it off in a 300-degree oven.
The co-star of the brunch was this fabulous g-free spiral ham from Trader Joes. It was moist, lean and very flavorful. 
We paired it with fried potatoes and blanched asparagus. The potatoes were simply prepared with salt, pepper and tarragon.
Happy Easter, everyone. We’re getting ready for brunch at our house.
Here’s the menu: spiral ham, egg-gruyere-green onion-tomato fritatta, blanched asparagus, fried potatoes, salad with a whole-grain mustard dressing and fluffy rolls.
For desert were having my mom’s famous pineapple-upside-down-cake, cupcakes I made yesterday in a baking class and an assortment of other sweets.
I’ll update soon with pictures of the results and recipes.
It’s that time of year when corned beef comes in preseasoned vacuum packs and I struggle to figure out whether it’s gluten-free because I can’t decipher most of the ingredients.
To be safe, I started to make my own corned beef after Amy got celiac. This year I tweaked a Weight Watchers’ recipe because I wanted to use a leaner piece of beef (a beef round) instead of a brisket.
I cooked the 1.5 pound beef round in a crock pot with a head of cabbage, a pound of red potatoes and some baby carrots. Here’s the seasoning mix I used:
_3 bay leaves
_1 tsp salt
_1 tsp pepper
_1 tsp ground coriander
_2 tbsp yellow mustard
_1 tsp cinnamon
_1 tsp apple cider vinegar
_1 tsp ground ginger
_1 tsp ground cloves
I love pancakes more than Amy and I miss that we don’t eat them at home. Since she’s just lukewarm about them, I don’t work hard at finding a good gluten-free mix. But I spotted a Maple Grove Farms mix at the grocery store recently and I picked it up. What a pleasant surprise: they were light and fluffy like real pancakes. I jazzed them up with fresh blueberries and they were a great weekend addition. 
