Potato Corn Chowder (Vegan)

As the weather gets colder, I love looking for yummy soups for my family. This week's soup, potato corn chowder was from theveganchickpea.com. The only thing I did different in this recipe was use rice milk instead of soy and it turned out great. My girls thought it was great as well. It is super easy and relatively quick to make. There is a 35-40 minute wait while the soup cooks, but preparation was a cinch. I hope you enjoy as my family has. Sorry I don't have many pictures. I decided this one needed to be posted at the last minute. 

Potato Corn Chowder (Vegan)

Igredients:

 -1/2 vidalia onion, finely chopped 
-2 cloves garlic, minced
-1 tablespoon olive oil
-1 teaspoon salt
-1/4 cup vegetable broth
-4 cups unsweetened soymilk (I used rice milk)
-8 yukon gold potatoes, peeled and cubed into 1" pieces
-3 cups frozen corn
-1 cup carrots, chopped (I omitted these as my girls are not a huge fan.)

Method:
1) In a large soup pot over medium heat, combine olive oil, onion, garlic, and salt.  Saute until onions are translucent.  

2) Pour in vegetable broth to de-glaze the pot, and quickly stir mixture.  Add soymilk, potatoes, corn, and carrots.  Stir well.  

3) Allow the soup to begin to bubble, stirring every few minutes.  Reduce heat, and allow to simmer for 30-45 minutes, or until the potatoes are soft. 

4) Remove 1 cup of the soup and transfer it to a blender.  Puree until smooth and then recombine with the rest of the soup, stirring well. 

5) Ladle soup into bowls, salt to taste, and enjoy! 

Gluten Free Tortillas

It is amazing how much better my daughter feels after being off gluten for about two months. Since changing her diet to gluten free, we have found that there are many products out there for her, but in reality they don't taste very good or totally different from what she was used to. One of her favorite things to eat were tortillas. She would run to the snack drawer and pull out a tortilla just to eat. We tried the Udi's tortilla, even though they were similar consistency, she found they smelled funny. She refused to eat them. I was then in a bind. Being vegetarian we eat a lot of beans and usually use them in burritos and taco salads. I had to find an option for her that she could eat when the rest of the family had tortillas. Not fun to watch your baby upset because she can't have what everyone else is eating. I then decided to venture out and look for a tortilla recipe. I have tried two recipes and both were a flop not to mention very detailed and time consuming just to make two tortillas. I recently found one that looked much more simple on Yammie's Gluten Freedom blog. After making these, I made plenty and it took half the time. The taste? Super good. I would say they are pretty similar to the gluten ones and the consistency is the same. An A+ in my book. This will become a regular recipe in our family. I hope you enjoy it as well.

Gluten Free Tortillas

Ingreditents:

1/2 cup white rice flour
1/2 cup brown rice flour
1 cup tapioca flour
1 tablespoon white sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt 
2 teaspoons xanthan gum
2 tablespoons shortening 
3/4 cup water

Method:

1) Mix together the rice flours, tapioca flour, white sugar, baking powder, salt, and xanthan gum.

2) Mix in the shortening with your fingers until well combined. Add the water and mix well. If the mixture is still dry, add a little more water.

3) Heat an ungreased skilled on medium-high heat. Roll out tortillas and cook each one on the hot pan until it begins to bubble. Then flip it and cook until the bottom has some brown spots. They're the best if you stack them on top of each other as they come out (this softens them up a bit). 

4) You can also throw a slightly damp towel over the top one. These keep pretty well in a plastic bag in the cupboard. 

Minestrone Soup

Since fall is upon us, I have been in the mood for soup! Yay! I love soup, but for some reason I enjoy them more in the cooler temperatures. With that said, I wanted to make some soup for my husband as the girls and I were not going to be home that evening. I didn't want him to be without supper, so I knew that soup would be a great option to place in the crock-pot and could remain warm until he got home. I wanted to try something new so I checked out Pinterest for some recipes on Minestrone soup. There are a ton of them. I found a recipe that was simple enough to have my girls help me. Its from the blog, My Life in Food. I made it just like it says. I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we did.

Minestrone Soup

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 medium yellow onion, minced

1/2 cup chopped zucchini (about 1 small)

1 cup fresh green beans, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

1 stalk celery, minced

4 teaspoons minced garlic (about 4 cloves)

4 cups vegetable stock (do not use chicken broth)

2 (15 ounce) cans red kidney beans, drained

2 (15 ounce) cans white beans (great northern or cannelini), drained

1 (14 ounce) can diced tomatoes, left un-drained

1 medium carrot, chopped finely

1/2 a small can of tomato paste

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon dried basil

1/4 teaspoon dried thyme

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon onion salt

1/4 teaspoon celery salt

3 cups hot water 

4 cups fresh baby spinach

3/4 cup small or medium shell pasta

Method:

1) Heat three tablespoons olive oil over medium heat in a large soup pot. Saute onion, celery, green beans, zucchini, and carrots in the oil for 5 minutes or until onions are translucent. Add garlic and cook another minute, stirring.

2) Add the 1/2 can of tomato paste and stir in with the vegetables. Add the vegetable stock to the pot, then add hot water, tomatoes, beans, spices and Parmesan cheese rind if using. Bring the soup to a boil, then reduce heat and allow to simmer with the top on for 30 minutes.

3) Add spinach leaves and pasta and cook for an additional 20 minutes or until desired consistency. Taste and adjust seasonings accordingly. It may need more salt or herbs depending on your preferences.

NOTE: This can be made gluten free by getting GF vegetable broth and GF pasta shells. 

I also needed to keep it heated for awhile, so I completed steps 1 and 2 but did not let it simmer. I poured it into a crock-pot and put the uncooked pasta in it to cook. It turned out perfectly. If the water starts to go down, you can always add more to meet your desired consistency. 

GF Egg Gravy

I have been craving some comfort food lately. With that said, a friend of mine gave me 5 boxes of a gluten free biscuit mix. I was in heaven. Today, I decided that is was a good day to break out one of the boxes. Even though it was not as easy as the Bisquick biscuits, they tasted pretty good. I then needed a gravy to go with it. I usually make a white gravy and put some form of soy meat in it, this time I couldn't use that meat so I chose to make egg gravy. I am not a huge fan of eggs, but I knew my girls would like it. Since it turned out yummy, I have decided to share it with you. This is my own recipe, out of my own head.

1-2-3 Gluten Free Southern Glory Biscuits

Gluten Free Egg Gravy

Ingredients:

6 Tbs. Earth Balance Butter

2 Tbs. White Rice Flour

2-3 c. Rice Milk

1/2 tsp. Black Pepper

Salt to taste

2 Eggs

Method:

1) Melt butter in pan and add white rice flour. 

2) Allow rice flour to bubble for 1-2 minutes while constantly stirring with a whisk.

3) Slowly add rice milk and constantly stir until gravy thickens. You may need to add more milk to get the desired amount of gravy. Always make sure it thickens. If you add too much milk, simply let it boil down. Then add black pepper and salt to taste

4) After gravy gets to the right consistency that you desire take off heat. Scramble the two eggs until well done and mix into the gravy. 

5) Serve over hot biscuits.

Olivia

Juliana

TVP Meatless Meatballs

Juliana has been on a gluten free diet, I just put us girls on it as well, but we make an exception for daddy. Tonight I wanted to serve spaghetti and meatballs. I had viewed a recipe on this site for TVP meatless meatballs. I noticed I didn't have the rice it called for and altered it a lot to work for what I had on hand. As much as I wanted to make these vegan, I couldn't. I needed a binding agent so I used 2 eggs. Surprisingly they turned out really good. I would have served these in tomato sauce but Juliana is also allergic to tomatoes. So the pictures you see are the plates for my children. I hope this helps with some of you that are looking for some new GF recipes.

TVP Meatless Meatballs

Ingredients:

1/2 cup hot water

1/2 tsp dried basil

1/4 tsp dried oregano

1/2 tsp onion powder

1/2 tsp garlic salt

1/8 tsp cumin

3/4 cup Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP)

2 eggs

1/4-1/2 c. gluten free oats (lightly processed in processor)

1/4 tsp ground black pepper

1/2 c. Vegan cheese of choice

Method:

1) In a mixing bowl add the water, dried basil, oregano, onion powder, garlic salt, and cumin.  Add in the TVP to soak up all the flavor, let the TVP to sit for about 5 minutes. 

2) Mix all ingredients in bowl. If you can let it sit for 30 min. you may get a thicker consistency. I however did not have the time, so this recipe did not sit. 

3) These meatballs were fried in about 1 Tbs of Olive oil. Allow for the meatballs to brown on one side before turning them over. 

Olivia

Juliana

Cashew Roast

There are so many great recipes that I have gotten from my family. I had to go back and see if I can start changing them into gluten free and vegan for myself and girls. Yes, that does mean my poor husband will have to endure the change until I have it down. The recipe I chose tonight was one from my mother-in-law, Beverly Colburn. She once made a cashew loaf and I enjoyed it so much I asked for the recipe. I have altered this recipe to make if fit for my family, so I guess this is my own recipe now but inspired by the one my mother-in-law shared with me. This too has been kid tested and approved. It is a small roast and it only fed my family of four. Double the recipe if you need too. Enjoy.

Cashew Roast

Ingredients:

3/4 c. raw cashews, coarsely ground
1 c. rice milk
1 tsp. onion powder or finely grated medium onion.
1 c. corn chex cereal, lightly crushed (this is to replace breadcrumbs)
1 1/2 tsp. Italian seasoning
1Tbs. GF Soy sauce
1/4 tsp of celery salt
2 Tbs. dried parsley or 1/4 c. fresh.
1/2 c. GF rolled Oats (lightly ground in food processor)

Yum!

Method:

Mix all ingredients
 
Pour into a bread pan

Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes or until firm and lightly brown.

I chopped the loaf up for my girls to eat. 

Burger Pizza Bites

Today was a long day with school and doing errands, I wanted something that I could make for the girls that was quick and still left me with time to spend with them. I remembered that I found a recipe for quinoa pizza bites by Morgan Berg, who has a blog of her own. For that recipe visit her site here. I took the recipe and changed it to make it fit to my family. As much as I love quinoa, my girls are not huge fana, I also did not have enough for the recipe. I decided to make TVP pizza bites. For those that don't know what that stands for, its Textured Vegetable Protein. It is used in a lot of vegetarian meat products. I buy it in bulk because it is gluten free and great for putting in chili. I also used onion powder as onion baked does not get completely soft unless I saute it before putting it into a recipe. I guess I could have grated it, maybe I will try that next time. The other option I would have done differently was put the bites in paper cupcake liners. This would prevent me from having to wash the cupcake pan and prevent it from possibly sticking. Well, I hope you all enjoy this recipe. The girls ate all of the bites. A true winner in my opinion. 

Kid approved!

Burger Pizza Bites

Ingredients: 

1 c. hydrated TVP 

2 large egg

1/2 t. onion powder

1 c. Veggie Mexican Blend Vegan Cheese

1 t. minced garlic

1 T. dried basil

1 t. dried oregano

1/2 t. salt

Method: 

1. Hydrate TVP (7/8 cups of boiling water to 1 cup dehydrated TVP). Let sit 5 minutes.

2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine all of your ingredients in a mixing bowl until it is well mixed.

3. Lightly spray the bottom of a mini-muffin tin with olive oil spray or place paper liners in muffin tin. Using a Tablespoon scoop into each muffin tin. I did heaping tablespoon in each one.

4. Bake them for 20 minutes and let cool.

Whole Grain Gluten Free Bread

I would say that gluten free cooking is a whole new world for me. I recently started cooking and baking GF for my daughter, who is 3. She was expreiencing some GI problems and we decieded to take her off of gluten to see if this was the problem. Since then she quit complaining that her tummy hurt and eats all her food at each meal (which she wouldn't finish before.) It's great that she is feeling better, but this way of living is tough for a Mama who has cooked gluten/wheat for everything. I was even told that wheat was so good for you that everything should be 100% stone ground wheat. So as you can imagine, I baked and cooked that way for a very long time and have become frustrated at starting something basically from scratch. 

So, my current mission was to find a bread that wasn't hard around the edges (Udi's) and tasted similar to gluten bread with the same kind of texture. I didn't think it was possible. I started researching the internet and after a few days I found a recipe that I wanted to try. It came from gfrealfood.com. The author of this recipe (Kim) has made this bread amazing. I made it for the first time by her instructions exactly and the bread came out perfectly. It tastes great, texture is unbelievable, its bigger than the store bought brands and its whole grain. My husband who is a very particular about texture said it was pretty close to gluten bread. He didn't want to compare taste as there are different breads out there. His response was, "it tasted like bread." Great! Now its time to share it with you. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. 

Whole Grain Gluten Free Bread

Ingredients:

3 large eggs lightly beaten
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup oil of choice (canola, olive, corn, coconut, grapeseed etc)
1 1/3 cup milk of choice – unsweetened (rice, hemp, almond, cows) warmed to about body temperature
1T +1 t honey
3 T brown sugar
1/2 cup millet,sorghum, quinoa, amaranth or buckwheat flour  (choose one)
1/2 cup second choice of flour – millet, sorghum, quinoa, amaranth or buckwheat flour (choose one)
1 cup multi grain rice flour, brown rice flour or my favorite teff flour
1/2 cup tapioca flour
1/2 cup corn starch (potato starch works too)
3 t xanthan gum
1 1/2 t salt
2 1/4 t dry active yeast
optional add ins:
flax seeds
sesame seeds
sunflower seeds
add in a total of about a 1/4 cup

Method:

1) Put the first 6 ingredients in a kitchen aid mixer. Mix on low speed for a few seconds just until it was all mixed. 

All the dry ingredients combined and then added to the mixer.

2) Add everything else with the exception of the flax seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds and yeast. 

3) Mix for 2 minutes on medium speed.

4) Add the remaining ingredients and mixed for another 2 minutes while occasionally scraped down the sides. 

5) Spray a glass bread pan and let it rise in the oven with the oven off but the oven light on. 

6) Let it rise for 40 minutes.

7) Take it out of the oven and preheat the oven while it continued to rise.

8) Bake it for 35 minutes at 350 degrees. 

I chose to leave the seeds out this time to make sure my kids liked the taste first. LOL

Super Yummy. 

Mini-Loaf Zucchini Bread

It has been awhile since I posted anything on this blog. I have been really busy this summer with my ever growing twin girls. Today, they wanted to make bread for Daddy's office, but fell asleep before they could help me make it. I found the recipe for the bread on Miss Laura's Kitchen website. I did adapt it to fit my needs as I am vegan now and have chosen to bake and cook without eggs.

Zucchini Bread Mini-Loaves

Ingredients

• 1 egg ( I used 1 TBS of flaxseed to 3TBS of Water)
• ⅓ cup vegetable oil
• ⅔ cup sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1 cup grated raw unpeeled zucchini
• ¼ cup nuts (optional)- I omitted these. Not sure if anyone had an allergy.
• 1 cup flour
• ¼ tsp. baking soda
• ¼ tsp. nutmeg
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• ½ tsp. baking powder

Method

1) Preheat oven to 350°

2) Grease loaf pan(s).

3) Sift all ingredients from flour down and set aside.

4) Using hand mixer beat egg until foamy (I mixed the flaxseed and let sit until gel like.); add sugar oil and vanilla mix well. Add zucchini, stir in set aside dry ingredients mix until all flour is incorporated.

5) Add nuts; pour into prepared pan

6) Bake for 45-50 minutes until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. Cool for about 10 minutes then remove from pan & allow to cool completely on rack.

7) Wrap in foil and for best results allow loaf to sit at least 8 hours before slicing. ( I wrapped mine in wax paper.)