Gluten Free Raisin Spice Cookies

We are still going along on our journey of eating less wheat, which still has me in the kitchen experimenting with rice flour. So far we are really enjoying the fruits of my labor. My boys are happy because Mom experimenting in the kitchen means far more sweets than usual. I’ve had a house full of happy little taste testers! I have LOVED using my Wonder Mill grain grinder. It makes using fresh grains quick and easy and it runs like a dream and is pretty quiet, which really impressed me.

So, my husband requested some sort of gluten free raisin spice cookies. Oatmeal raisin cookies are his favorite, so I thought I’d play around with the rice flour a bit more and see if I could make a tasty treat for him. This recipe does not call for oatmeal, it is strictly rice flour only. And so the recipe for Gluten Free Raisin Spice Cookies was born, I will be sharing the recipe with you at the end of this post.

I learned a few things about cooking with rice flour in the process of making my first batch of rice flour based cookies that I want to share with you. First of all, rice flour creates a very dry and crumbly cookie. Not anything like the ooey-gooey cookies my family enjoys. The second issue was that the cookies came out a bit gritty. The rice flour cooks up that way, not a big deal unless you have a kid who has problems with food textures (like I do). So, I played around with the recipe and discovered a couple of work arounds for both of the issues.

For the dry and crumbly texture, I found that if you added the cornstarch and some plain gelatin, that the cookies come out soft and cake-like. The perfect ooey-gooey goodness my family likes. To get rid of the gritty texture, I put the dough in the refrigerator for an hour to “soak” and was thrilled to find that got rid of a lot of the gritty texture. I would imagine that the longer you let it “soak” in the refrigerator the less gritty the texture.

So I grabbed all the ingredients and my favorite little helper and got to cooking!

My boys and husband were pleasantly surprised at how yummy these were. My husband was beyond thrilled that I created a special raisin cookie just for him. A husband treated to his favorite cookie is a happy husband!

They came out absolutely perfect with a nice cake-like texture that we all enjoyed. The next time we make these, I’m going to try making them with dried cranberries or apples. I think that would be a yummy addition!

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Linking With:

Mexican Cauliflower Casserole

My family has really gotten into cauliflower lately!  Their favorites so far are the Mashed Cauliflower and the Cauliflower Mexican Rice.  So the other day, I was thinking about what to fix for dinner and the boys had been bugging me for some Cauliflower Mexican Rice.  We were all in the mood for Mexican food but didn’t feel like having tacos, our usual Mexican fare.  So I decided to create a Mexican casserole using the Cauliflower Mexican Rice as a base, an voila–Mexican Cauliflower Casserole was born.  This recipe got such rave reviews from my fellas that I’m sure it will be requested again and again.  It’s not hard to make and it’s really tasty!

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Gluten Free Spicy Chocolate Chip Cookies & Get Real Frugal Friday Blog Hop #5

I love fresh ground grains and have been rather sad that my old Nutrimill stopped working.  Recently I received a WonderMillgrain grinder and I am in love with it!  It is SO much quieter than my old one and grinds grains like a dream.  It makes using fresh grains quick and easy. After owning 2 different grain mills, the Nutrimill and the WonderMill, I have to say that I prefer the WonderMill.  First of all, the Nutrimill was loud, second of all it died on us after only 3 years.  I expect a machine that I paid that much for would last a lot longer.  The WonderMillis quieter and has handled everything we’ve thrown at it.  It grinds flour beautifully and I couldn’t be happier with our WonderMill.  I would love to hear about which grain mill you prefer!

Our family is trying out the wheat free lifestyle and so I had a hard time figuring out what to grind first.  I decided on grinding brown rice to make cookies.  I’ve never cooked with alternative grains before, so this was a new adventure for us!  Several members of Marty’s family are trying out the “Wheat Belly” diet and have been telling him about it.  So he’s been trying to eliminate wheat from his diet and since I do the majority of the cooking, I felt that I should do some experimenting with alternatives to help him out.  We’ve decided, as a family, that we would try being wheat free for the next few months.   Since I had a TON of brown rice, I thought I’d begin experimenting with brown rice flour.  I was so please to see how well the brown rice was ground in the WonderMill.  The flour was beautiful and so fine.  I couldn’t wait to get busy and create something with it.

So I did a little experimenting and searched my cabinets.  I decided to try making cookies first of all.  We dubbed them Spicy Chocolate Chip Cookies, and I’ll share the recipe at the end.  I learned a few things about cooking with rice flour in the process that I want to share with you.  First of all, rice flour creates a very dry and crumbly cookie.  Not anything like the ooey-gooey cookies my family enjoys.  The second issue was that the cookies came out a bit gritty.  The rice flour cooks up that way, not a big deal unless you have a kid who has problems with food textures (like I do).  So, I played around with the recipe and discovered a couple of work arounds for both of the issues.

For the dry and crumbly texture, I found that if you add the arrow root and some plain gelatin, that the cookies come out soft and cake-like.  The perfect ooey-gooey goodness my family likes.

So, I managed to get the cookies softer and less crumbly, now I needed to get rid of the grittiness.  I pondered the situation a bit and thought that maybe if you let the dough soak for a while that the liquid in the recipe would soften up the rice flour.  I put the dough in the refrigerator for an hour and was thrilled to find that got rid of most of the gritty texture.  I would imagine that the longer you let it “soak” in the refrigerator the less gritty the texture. No that I got those kinks worked out, I grabbed my little baking partner and started whipping up these really yummy cookies!

I started off by using my favorite cookie recipe and made the adjustments needed for the brown rice flour.  Aren’t they pretty!  The rice flour cooked  up wonderfully and the cookies turned out fantastic.  My little baking helper got his first bite and declared them delicious!  They were such a hit that they were gone in less than 2 days.

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Get Real Frugal Friday is a blog hop hosted here at Real Food Real Frugal. The focus is on tips and ideas to help you live the real food and natural living lifestyle on a budget. Eating real food and living a natural lifestyle does not have to be break the bank! Come by each week and share how you are making better eating and lifestyle choices in a frugal budget minded way! Get Real Frugal Friday is a place to share money saving tips, ideas, and recipes for:

• Real Food (made from scratch, not full of processed foods)
• Allergy Conscious Diets (gluten-free, etc.)
• Natural Living (make-your-own cleaners, homemade hygiene items, etc.)
• Home Remedies and cures
• Self-sufficient Living and Homesteading
• Homemaking and Menu Planning
• Stretching Your Hard Earned $$

In short, Get Real Frugal Friday is all about how to save money while sticking to a more healthy and self-sufficient lifestyle. I hope you’ll join us!

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Featured Posts:

Each week, I will feature 3 posts from last week’s entries. These posts will be determined by the readers. The 3 entries with the most visits will be featured. If you’ve had a featured post here on the Get Real Frugal Friday, then you are welcome to post our “Featured at” graphic below on your blog. It’s just a fun little way that we want to recognize you for your excellent featured post.

If you’ve been featured, please feel free to download this graphic for your website/blog.

Featured Posts for 02/08/13

Congrats go out to the following people for the most viewed posts shared in last week’s Blog Hop!

Justyn over at Creative Christian Mama is in the #1 spot this week!
She shared her post Affording Real Foods by Shopping Online

Connie over at Frugal Living on the Watkins Ranch is in the #2 spot this week!
She shared her post My Favorite Homemade Cough Syrup

Dawn over at Small Footprint Family is in the #3 spot this week!
She shared her post The Super Cost of Superfoods

I want to thank everyone of you who have linked up with us today and in the past. You are what make this blog hop a success! I also want to thank all our reader that help to pick out who we feature each week! Now on to the HOP!! Add your links below:

Linking With:

Spicy Chicken Eggplant Stew

I have never in my life eaten eggplant.  There I said it!  Eggplant was just not something served to me growing up.  For years I continued on in ignorance of this funny little purple vegetable.  Until, my brother-in-law started raving about it.  THEN, my husband decided that it was time we gave eggplant a try.  I have to say, I’m happy we did, because everyone LOVED it.  Now the only problem with eggplant, is that most of the recipes were for Italian dishes…Houston we have a problem!  My husband is not a big fan of Italian food, so it’s not something that I serve very often.  So I decided to try for a more Mexican flavor.  If you’ve read my blog for any length of time, you will see that a LOT of my recipes have a decidedly Mexican flavor.  Hey, we live in Texas where Tex-Mex is king!  That and my family just loves it!  So, the day before, I had just finished cooking up a whole chicken, half of it went into another recipe (sharing on the blog on Monday), so I decided to make a chicken dish.  Originally, it was going to be Chicken-Eggplant Enchiladas, but it came out too runny.  So instead, I named it Spicy Chicken Eggplant Stew.  While not what I originally planned on it being, it still turned out REALLY yummy and my fellas chowed down on it.  Makes this momma happy 🙂

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Linking With:

Cream Cheese Crockpot Chicken (grain & gluten free)

Cream Cheese Crockpot Chicken is absolutely one of the easiest recipes to get together and do. It’s yummy and quick, a great combination for busy moms! I love using my crockpot, it makes preparing dinner a snap. I can just dump in all the ingredients and let it cook until dinner. The crockpot, in my house, is an essential kitchen tool. I probably use it more often an any other small appliance in my home. This recipe came about because I had 3 pounds of frozen chicken breasts in my freezer. My husband is not a fan of baked chicken breasts, but he loves anything with a Mexican flavor. This was one of those kitchen experiments that went right 🙂 I was going to post today about a really special grain free dessert I’ve been working on…but that one went wrong! So I had to switch gears and figure out something else to post about. I made this chicken last Sunday for our church potluck so I already had pictures ready. It’s always nice to have backups! The recipe itself is grain and gluten free.  You can control what you serve it on by your choice of how to serve it.  You can serve these with flour, corn, whole wheat, or spouted tortillas. Whatever kind of tortillas your family usually uses. But if you are grain free like us, you can serve it on a leafy lettuce leaf. It’s yummy no matter how you serve it!

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Linking With:

Salmon Patties (Grain Free, Gluten Free, Dairy Free)

Well, our grain free diet continues and it has been going really well.  The only time I’ve “cheated” is at our weekly church potluck, where I eat what is available.  Sometimes there’s lots of grain free options, sometimes there’s not.  But I figure that doing the best I can is better than nothing!  Besides, I eat well during the rest of the week and I try to take options we can eat to the potluck.  Last Sunday, I took lasagna made with zucchini “noodles”, mashed cauliflower, and berries with a vanilla yogurt “dressing”.

Today, I’m sharing with your my recipe for Salmon Patties.  These are grain free, gluten free, and dairy free.  I made these last night for dinner and they are always a hit with my fellas.  The picture shows them served with homemade mashed potatoes, which is our preferred accompaniment, but since we’re cutting out starchy foods as well, this isn’t how I fixed them last night…it’s an older picture 🙂  Last night we had them with an Asian Broccoli Slaw, which turned out yummy!  The kids and hubby also have to have them with ketchup, which means that I have to get on the ball and try my hand at making fermented ketchup—or at least making my own ketchup from scratch so I can control the ingredients.  So many things to do!

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Cauliflower Mexican Rice

There are just some things that I really do miss while on this grain free diet.  One of them is Mexican rice.  It’s my favorite part of going out to eat at a Mexican restaurant.  I just love the stuff.  So the other day, I decided to fix grain free enchiladas (I’ll post the recipe at another time, I still need to perfect) and I had a hankering for Mexican rice to go along with it.  Well I had heard about people making mock rice with cauliflower, so I thought I’d give it a try.  I have to say that my Cauliflower Mexican Rice turned out well and was a hit at dinner.  Everyone raved over it.  So, I’m happy to have another winning recipe and another way to replace a favorite grain dish with a grain free one!

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Chicken and Rice Soup

Normally, today, I would be posting my Thinner Me Monday post about how my diet is going. But instead, I am sick with some sort of stomach thing and just plain ol’ didn’t feel like it. I’ll continue the posts next week, but for now, I’m taking it easy. So instead, I decided to share one of my family’s favorite gotta-eat-when-sick soup,–Chicken and Rice soup. This is an really easy recipe and it’s one of those comfort foods we enjoy when we’re not feeling well. This is much more nutritious than the stuff you get in the can and it tastes better too!  My boys just love this soup on cold winter days. It’s nice and filling and served with sandwiches, makes a favorite lunch.

I use my nourishing chicken bone stock in this recipe, along with fresh vegetables and the meat from a pastured chicken that we get from my friend, Summer, over at Mesquite Hill Farm over in China Spring Texas. I love their chicken and eggs because not only are they pastured but they are soy free as well!  Later I think one of the most important things you can do for your health and diet is to KNOW WHERE your food comes from.  I know that is not always possible, but getting to know the people who produce your food can lead to some really wonderful friendships and can save you money as well.  Shopping directly from the farm allows you to get the best prices on fresh produce and even special prices when they have an abundance of an item.   This week, I will also be sharing my recipe for the nourishing chicken stock, as I’ll be making a batch.

Anyway, on to the Chicken & Rice Soup recipe!
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Gluten-Free Mac & Cheese

My boys love macaroni and cheese so I have been on a quest for yummy, homemade, gluten-free Mac & Cheese. I grew up on those boxed mac & cheese mixes with the powdered cheese and later on the ones with the pouch of Velveeta cheese. My Mom has a special homemade bake macaroni and cheese recipe, but it was usually only served at holidays (It’s yummy though!). I think most kids love mac & cheese, I know my boys do…even my pickiest eater, Riley. I created this recipe because I wanted something healthier for my kids, yet wasn’t too complicated. It does take more time than the box, but the cheese sauce is so much healthier than the powdered stuff that I’m more than happy to spend an extra few minutes at the stove.

I have yet to find a source for grain-free macaroni.  I’ve found some grain-free pasta, but it was all stuff like spaghetti and other long thin pastas–no macaroni.  So, the best I could figure out to do was to go with a gluten-free pasta, such as rice, quinoa, or gluten-free.  At least I could go wheat/gluten-free.  Seriously…someone needs to create some grain-free macaroni—there is a market for it!  Everyone loves mac & cheese and many families no longer eat it due to the lack of options for the pasta.  Gluten-free pasta in any form (rice, quinoa or gluten free) is not cheap, you’re looking at at least $4.00 for 14-16 ounces.  Then when you add in the cost of the other ingredients, well healthy, gluten-free Mac & Cheese could no longer be considered a “cheap” lunch.  But kids (and adults) all over the U.S. crave this yummy comfort food, so sometimes you just have to spurge and even considering the cost, it’s still much cheaper than many other real food based meals.

Over the years, we’ve played around with this recipe a lot. So, we’ve created several variations which change it up and can also make it more like a full meal. Mac & cheese makes a great start for a meal, just add your choice of meat and veggies and you can make it go from a side dish to a full fledged main dish casserole. I’ve added so many different things to this recipe and nearly every one was a big hit with the family.

Some additions to make this a full meal or change it up a bit.

Add ¼ cup salsa
Add 1 cup tuna and ½ cup green peas
Add 1 cup shredded chicken and ¼ cup salsa
Add 1 cup chopped broccoli
Add 1 cup diced ham and 1 cup chopped broccoli
Add 1 cup left over taco meat and 1/4 cup salsa

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Thinner Me Monday – #1

As I spoke about in my post New Leaf New Year, I am in the process of changing my diet and trying to lose weight. And, as promised, I’m posting my first Monday update! I was really expecting some weight-loss this week, but because of a weird incident with our scale, I’m not sure if my starting weight, as posted in the New Leaf New Year post is accurate or not. It seemed one of the little legs had come off from the scale so it wasn’t sitting flat on the surface and therefore wasn’t weighing accurately. It was about 9-10 pounds off. So when I posted last week, the weight I posted was 205.6. Instead, it should have been more like 215.6. So from today forward, I”m going to use 215.6 as my official “starting” weight. Anyway, we got the little foot cap back on (it was under the bed where we store the scale). I got on the scale this morning and my official weight is:

Starting Weight: 215.6
Today’s Weight: 213.8
Weight Loss This Week: 1.8 pounds

Hey, slow and steady wins the race.  I’m hoping that next week there will be a bit higher number in the pounds lost.  When cutting out all grains like we have, it takes a little while for you body to adjust.  Early in the week, I found that I was eating a lot, because my body was so use to having to quickly replace all those grains/carbs that it usually had to burn up quickly.  Now by the end of the week, I was getting full faster and staying full longer.  For example, on Saturday, I age 1 egg, 1 piece of ham, and 3 slices of bacon at about 9:00 am.  I then went and did all my errands, which usually burns a ton of calories for me.  If I had eaten my normal breakfast that was high in grains, I would have been STARVING by the time 1:00 rolled by.  But with the grain free breakfast I had, I still wasn’t hungry AT ALL!  Instead, I was able to get all my errands done, come home and put up the groceries, and still not be hungry at 4 p.m.  I was still satisfied with the breakfast that I had nearly 7 hours ago.  Finally, around 5:00 p.m. I started getting a little bit hungry and ate a handful of almonds.  We were going out to dinner after our amateur radio club meeting which was at 6:00 pm, so I didn’t want to eat a full meal.  We ate at about 7:00 p.m.  So I am really seeing how my body is starting to not feel the need to eat every 3-4 hours any longer, because the food I’m, eating is more substantial than the grain/carb full diet I use to eat.

So just what did I eat this past week?  Let me share a few photos of my meals (sorry for the kind of lowsy pictures…used my iPhone instead of my good camera):

Are you trying to lose weight or experimenting with a change in your diet?  I’d love to hear what you’re doing!  Join in the discussion by leaving a comment!