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:

New Year, New Leaf

Sorry to have disappeared for the last couple of weeks. We were out of town for Christmas/New Year’s holidays and while gone, I had a fun trip to the ER. Turns out that I had a bad sinus infection and bronchitis. That hung around for about 2 weeks. I’m finally on the mend, just the annoying cough has hung on, but eve it is better. I hope that you all had a fantastic Christmas and that your New Year is turning out to be wonderful.

It’s a New Year, and like many other people, I’m turning over a new leaf and making some changes in my life. It wasn’t just because of the the New Year, I wanted to wait until after all the temptations from the holidays were past before starting to make changes. So here it is, the beginning of 2013 and we as a family are making some major dietary changes. My husband and I are both over weight. While our diet wasn’t too bad, we ate pretty well most of the time, we had slowly slipped back into some bad habits. Mostly going out to eat and eating convenience foods. So after being encouraged to read the book, Wheat Belly, we have decided to cut out all grains from our diet.  This is something we’ve been talking about doing for a while and the book just reinforced that desire.  Not only are we cutting out all grains, but we are also cutting out sugar and processed foods.

How It’s Going To Go

For the first 4 weeks, we are going to be really strict on the diet, and then after that we will start allowing in SMALL amounts of gluten free grains.  Small amounts will be probably 1 time a week or less.  As for sugar, unless it’s sweetened with stevia or honey, I will avoid it and even honey sweetened foods will be limited (stevia will be used as the main sweetener–which is what I already do).  As for the convenience foods, I’ve cooked from scratch mostly for the last 10 years so it’s really not going to be that big of a deal.

To make things even easier during this first 4 weeks, I’ve created a simple repetitive menu that is easy to create (no thinking), with many items that can be prepared ahead of time, and is full of meals (slightly altered) that my family already loves.  Here is the menu:

Breakfasts (as you can see, my husband is not a fan of fruit in the morning):

1. egg muffins with sausage patties (homemade sausage)
2. berry smoothies (for boys and I) and egg muffins for husband
3. egg muffins with sausage patties (homemade sausage)
4. fruit salad (for boys and I and egg muffins for husband
5. fruit salad (for boys and I and egg muffins for husband
6. egg muffins made with veggies
7. berry smoothies (for boys and I) and egg muffins for husband

Lunches:

1. spaghetti with meat sauce and zucchini “noodles”
2. hamburger patties on a bed of salad
3. tuna salad with veggie sticks
4. mini quiches (egg muffins with broccoli and chicken)
5. berry smoothies and salad
6. veggie plate/salad
7. veggie plate/salad

Dinners:

1. taco salad
2. meat loaf with 2 veggie sides
3. chicken enchiladas (made with cabbage leaves) with 2 veggie sides
4. chicken stir-fry
5. Salmon patties with 2 veggie sides
6. egg and sausage scramble (homemade sausage
7. Big salad meal

Snacks & Beverages:

Snacks will consist of a limited amount of nuts and seeds, veggies & dip (homemade), cheese, hard boiled eggs, limited fruit, and some meats.

Beverages will be mostly water, but will allow some tea and milk.

The Nitty Gritty

Last year, I was able to lose about 25 pounds,  Went from 209 to 185 by eating low carb.  I was happy with that, but I reached a plateau and nothing I did would knock me off of it.  I flat stopped losing weight.  I upped my exercise, ate less, and still nothing would work.  At that point I got frustrated and went back to our normal diet.  The weight came back (and then some!).  By the weeks before Christmas 2012, I had ballooned up to 225.  YIKES!  That was about 2 weeks before Christmas.  Between then and now, I’m down to 205.6.  The only change being that I cut back how much I was eating and was sick for 2 weeks.  The majority of the weight loss was due to the illness.  But still, I have lost 20 pounds in about a month.

To make weight loss even harder, I’m having issues with my hormones.  I’ve reached perimenopause and my periods and hormones are severely out of whack.  I’ve started taking progesterone cream, along with red raspberry leaves, maca, and vitex.  Not to mention that I’m taking several other supplements which include a good food based vitamin and will begin taking fermented cod liver oil/butter oil blend as soon as it arrives.

So staring out with these dietary changes, I do have some issues working against me.  But I’m not going to let that get me down.  I have 65-75 pounds to lose to get to my goal weight of 130-140.  I’m not trying to get down to a certain size, I’m more concerned with getting to a healthy weight.  We officially started last night on the diet with this yummy venison taco salad:

More than just diet, I kind of fell off the exercise bandwagon.  I will also begin walking again to help encourage weight loss and overall health.

What to Expect

Over the next few months, I will begin to share my weight loss journey here on the blog.  I won’t let the blog become over run with diet posts though.  The focus will still be on real food, natural living, and frugality.  But I do plan on sharing my progress each Monday and occasionally at other times.  I will definitely be sharing recipes I’ve created along this journey, as well as other things I may try.  2013 promises to be a beautiful year and I have lots of stuff planned for the coming months.  In fact February I will begin a series here at Real Food Real Frugal where I will make the big switch from purchased cleaners and hygine products to 100% home made.  I’ll be running a challenge and be sharing some recipes.  Ought to be fun and I’d love for y’all to join me!  So start getting prepared for that.