Biscuits and Mushroom Gravy

The baby decided to go back to sleep this morning at 7 am-ish, so I decided to get creative with our breakfast.  Biscuits sounded good, then my husband requested gravy to go with them.  So our breakfast this lovely Halloween morning was fried eggs with biscuits and gravy (and yes on our real plates, the biscuits were covered with gravy!).

The biscuits were just a basic recipe from my Betty Crocker cookbook.  I just replaced the all-purpose flour with whole wheat pastry flour and the milk with soy milk.  They tasted ok, a little dry.  Since they aren't anything to shout about, I'll skip that recipe.  And yes, I used a heart shape cookie cutter.  An odd choice for Halloween morning, no.

The mushroom gravy was an adaptation from this fantastic mushroom soup recipe.  I highly recommend trying this recipe, it is SOOOOOOOOOOO good.  I was never big on mushroom soup before going dairy, used it in some recipes but that is about it.  This homemade one is so good I can eat the whole pot of soup by myself!!

Mushroom Gravy
1 cup plain coconut milk
3 Tbs dairy free margarine
1/4 cup onion, chopped
1/2 cup fresh mushrooms, chopped
3 Tbs flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/8 tsp black pepper

Heat the milk in microwave while you saute the onions and mushrooms in margarine in a sauce pot until onions get translucent.  Whisk in flour, salt, onion powder and pepper.  Cook over medium heat until bubbly, stirring constantly.  Slowly add the milk, whisking constantly to make a thick creamy gravy.

Enjoy!

Jen's Super Cookies

I like love to bake.  I always have.  However, I don't generally like to eat what I bake.  I'm not a huge sweets person; savory for me please.  Luckily, I have a wonderful husband that is more than willing to take my baked goods to his workplace and "force" them on his co-workers.

Now that I have a 3 year old though, I find she not only wants to help with the baking, she wants to actually eat what we bake.  With her allergy, letting her eat my baked goods meant coming up with new recipes and/or adapting those that I already used.  I've found this endlessly fun, to be honest, and my husbands co-workers don't notice the difference.  Win - win I say.

That said written, I also find myself not wanting my children to consume mass quantities of sweets.  So healthy alternatives are my goal, and my daughter certainly eats her fair share of fruit and vegetables.  But... kids like cookies.  So here is a relative healthy cookie option for your kids.  I've added notes where things can be adapted for different allergy needs (at least when avoiding the top 8 allergies).

Jen's Super Cookies
2 cups oats (You can find certified gluten free ones)
1/2 cup ground nuts or nut butter (I used the leftover ground almond from my fresh almond milk.  Got a nut allergy? try sunflower seed butter)
3 Tbsp ground flax seed
1/4 cup shredded coconut
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
3 Tbsp raw Cacao (or if you don't have that 1/4 cup chocolate chips is nice)
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 cup apples sauce
1/3 cup honey (or maple syrup if your vegan and don't eat honey)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Mix the dry ingredients in one bowl, mix the wet ingredients in another bowl.  Pour wet into dry bowl and mix together.  Place about 2 inches apart on cookie sheet and bake for about 20 minutes.  Cookies will look dark and dry, but they are actually very chewy and quite delicious!

Giveaway @ Dinner at Christina's

Another cookbook giveaway.  Head on over to Dinner at Christina's to enter to win two fabulous cookbooks; Go Diary Free: The Guide and Cookbook for Milk Allergies, Lactose Intolerance, and Casein-Free Living, and My Sweet Vegan: passionate about dessert.

The Ultimate Breakfast

Or at least I like to think so.  I try to incorporate vegetables in all of our meals.  This is one of the simplest ways for me to get veggies into our breakfast.  Use whatever vegetables your family likes (and in season), simply saute them and have them with scrambled eggs (or scrambled tofu if you can't have eggs).  Below is my favorite melody, but for my daughter; olives and zucchini only please.

My Ultimate Breakfast
1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup zucchini, chopped
1/4 cup red bell pepper, chopped
2 Tbsp red onion, chopped
1/4 cup artichoke hearts, chopped
2 Tbsp black olives, chopped
1 large egg

Heat a pan on medium heat, add oil.  Add zucchini, bell pepper and onion and saute till onion is close to translucent (about 2 minutes).  Add artichoke and olives and saute another minute.  Remove to plate.

Add egg to pan and cook to your preference (scrambled in picture).  Place on top of veggies and enjoy.  I will often add some hot sauce to my plate after cooking as well, because I like a little spice.

Chocolate Chip Granola Bars

I'm always looking for ways to cut costs in our grocery budget.  The cost of food has gone up substantially in the last few years, add to that an allergy, and your looking at a pretty large food bill.  What's a budget conscience girl to do?  Homemade goodies as much as possible of course!

With this in mind, I have been in search of a great granola bar recipe.  One that is dairy free (of course) and not to costly to make.  Buying items in the bulk bins can bring costs down, and will certainly beat out any pre-made goodies.  This recipe is a hodge podge of different recipes that I've found over the last few months and makes a good replacement for pre-packaged granola bars.

Once baked, I cut the bars up and put them in an airtight container.  They are tasty, though a bit crumbly.  My husband likes to break up a bar and eat it as cereal.  Play around with the ingredients to find your families "perfect" granola bar.

Chocolate Chip Granola Bar
4 cups old fashioned oats
1/3 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup almond butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup chopped almonds
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Spread oats and coconut on a cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Let the mixture cool completely.  Mix all the ingredients together then add the cooled oat mixture.

Spread mixture into a greased 13 x 9" baking dish, pressing it firmly down.  Bake about 25 minutes or until it is golden brown.  Cool completely before cutting.

Almond Milk

I don't have a picture for today's experiment, but.. I mean... you know what milk looks like right?  I realized yesterday as I emptied the last of the soy milk into my daughters cup that I had not bought enough soy milk for the week.  What could mommy do?

Sure I could go to the store and buy more, but I'm trying not to make extra trips to the grocery store since they ALWAYS result in un-needed purchases.  I admit it, I'm an impulse buyer.  I always find something we could use it seems.  As we I am trying to 'reel' in our grocery budget, I decided to try something else.  I knew I had raw almonds in the cupboard, we use them for snacks.  Is it possible I have enough ingredients to make a decent almond milk?  After a quick google search and a peruse of a couple recipes, I decided this was a possibility.

The milk turned out fine.  Although I wish I had a finer strainer for it since I did still end up with some pulp.  If I were to make a habit of making my own nut milk, I would purchase a nut milk bag.   I like the idea of making my own nut milk, it is a great way to control what is in it.  However, unless I can find some source of very cheap raw almonds, it is definitely not economical.

Almond Milk

What you need:
1 cup raw almonds
4 cups water
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
natural sweetener to taste (I used honey)
a really good blender
a strainer of some sort

Soak the almonds in water overnight.  After almonds have soaked for at least 8 hours, drain and rinse until water runs clear.  Put almonds, 4 cups of water, vanilla extract, and sweetener into blender and blend on high until you stop hearing rattling.  Pour milk through your strainer into your storage container and there is your milk!

I read that you can keep the pulp for other purposes so I am doing that and am looking for something to make now.  So watch for that post.

Sneaky Mommy

I love being able to sneak veggies that my daughter would not normally eat into her food.  This morning, said daughter woke with a cold.  I am hopeful it isn't the flu, she only seems to have the sniffles.  Regardless, I knew meals PACKED with healthy fruit and veggies were the best thing I could do for her today.

This morning, instead of just a fruit smoothie, I whipped up a green smoothie.  Good tasting fruit with some healthy greens in it.  It consisted of mango, raspberries, kale and zucchini (with some coconut milk as my liquid).  Pretty tasty.

But that isn't what I am featuring in this post, my spur of the moment veggie - noodle soup that I made for my daughters lunch.  Not only did she proclaim it was tasty, but she did indeed eat the whole thing!  The inspiration came from my new blender.  I had a pretty poor blender that died on me last week, and purchased a new one that I am extremely happy with.  I purchased this Oster blender.  It can blend anything compared to my old one, haha.

Quick Veggie-Noodle Soup

3 cups stock (I did use chicken, but I think vegetable would be great too)
5 baby carrots or one regular carrot roughly chopped (I only had baby)
1 large kale leaf
1/4 of small onion, roughly chopped
1/2 a small zucchini
1 oz rice noodles
And a good blender!

In a pot, bring stock and veggies to a boil.  Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer for about 10 minutes.  Remove soup from oven and pour into blender jar (I'd only do this if you have a glass one, if its plastic let the soup cool).  Puree the soup until its all liquid again.  Put soup back into pot and bring to a boil again.  Once soup is boiling, add the noodles and cook until they are done to your preferences.  Enjoy.

Best Bars & Brownies Contest

The Mixing Bowl is sponsoring a brownie contest, deadline is 11/13/09.  Show off those baking skills and enter today.  Winner gets $250.  Head over to The Mixing Bowl with your best original recipe (and a picture of it).

Huge Gift Basket Giveaway

They have another giveaway going over at One Frugal Foodie.  A new online specialty food shop has opened for business: Dairy Free Market.  They have put together a big gift basket of dairy free products and this is your chance to win it.  Head on over to One Frugal Foodie and leave your comment.

Gingerbread Men

I like to include my 3 year old in my cooking endeavors whenever possible.  Its a fun activity for the two of us, and can be a great tool for learning to follow directions (and later on math practice).  We mostly stick to baking; as one, in general, sticks to precise measurements.  We count out the cups, 1/2 cups, etc, together, I fill the cup, she empties it into the bowl.  She does some stirring, then I do the real stirring; she rolls out the dough, then I do the real rolling; etc.  It's a great activity.

This week, we have been doing a gingerbread man theme.  You know the story "Run, run, as fast as you can, you can't catch me I'm the gingerbread man."  So we baked gingerbread men (we truly ended up with an army!) as another part of our theme.  These are, of course, dairy free gingerbread men.  Make them with your kids!

Gingerbread Cookie Dough

1/2 cup molasses
1/4 cup sugar
3 Tbs non-dairy margarine (we use Earth Balance)
1 Tbs coconut milk (you can use any milk substitute you have on hand; rice, soy, almond, etc.)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice

Heat molasses to boiling over medium high heat, stirring constantly to prevent burning.  Stir in sugar, margarine and milk, remove from heat.

Mix dry ingredients in a bowl.  Pour molasses mixture into bowl and stir well.  Make the dough into a ball and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Roll out the dough on a floured counter and cut into shapes.  Bake the cookies on a non-stick cookie sheet, 5 to 7 minutes.  Remove from cookie sheets and let cool on a rack.  Decorate with frosting and/or candies.

Soup is On

Its that time of the year, fall has hit and I'm craving soups.  Well, to be honest I'm not that into soup, but I love making it.  I would love to think of myself as a foodie, but really I'm just really into cooking.  Luckily, I have a husband that enjoys good food (I put the word good in there because he will NOT eat my failures, lol).

Back to soup, as the weather is turning colder, I get the urge to fill the house with the good smell of soup and fresh bread.  This will be my first soup season that everything will be dairy free and I am excited to find some new recipes (and changing old ones).

So my question to my readers (all one of you, thanks to my dear husband!) is what are some great dairy free soups to try this fall/winter?  I'd love some suggestions.

Giveaway

Passing on the word about this awesome giveaway from One Frugal Foodie.  I find vegan cookbooks so helpful on our dairy free journey.

So head on over and enter to win the entire Sweet Vegan E-CookBook Collection by Hannah Kaminsky.  Entries will close at noon on Tuesday, October 6th.

Chimichangas

On a whole, we don't often eat beef.  It tends to feel like a gut bomb in my stomach, and my husband says the same.  When I try a new recipe, though, I usually feel I should follow it exactly the first time through before I make changes.  So I go out and buy the exact ingredients the recipe calls for, only to end up changing it as I go to fit our tastes.  I don't in general think there is anything wrong with adjusting the recipe, I just wish I would plan for it ahead of time.  So I can say that when I make these again, I will be using ground turkey instead of beef.

The recipe itself is from the book Don't Panic - Dinner's in the Freezer.  Like I said above, I made a few changes, so that is the recipe I'm posting.  One thing I did that I wont write in the recipe is make some special ones for my 3 year old.  She is not a fan of spicy things, so I mixed the beef mixture with just the sour cream and then made her chimichangas with that, then put in the rest of the ingredients for the adult chimichangas.  She enjoyed them just as much as my husband and I, so I can say its a winner meal.

Chimichangas

1 tsp salt

1 lb lean ground meat (beef, chicken, turkey or pork would work)

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp crushed oregano

1/2 cup canned green chilies, chopped

1/2 cup taco sauce

1/2 cup sour cream * I use tofutti brand sour cream, which is soy based

2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar

10 - 7 inch tortillas *use corn for gluten and wheat free

enough vegetable oil to get about 1/2 an inch depth in an 8-inch skillet

Sprinkle salt in medium skillet.  Place over medium heat.  Add meat, garlic, and spices.  Cook until meat loses pinkness.  Stir in remaining ingredients.  Remove from heat.

In an 8-inch skillet, add oil and heat to medium heat.  Place 1 tortilla at a time in skillet and "fry" for about 5 seconds a side and let cool on the side.  Mound filling on the center of the tortilla.  Fold tortilla in envelope fashion.  Place seam side down in ungreased 11x7 baking dish.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees.  Bake until crispy, about 15 minutes.  Optional toppings; soy cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, avocado and additional sour cream.