Korean Beef

Ahhh! Is it already the end of August? Where oh where did summer go? I feel slightly like a chicken with no head this year. Everytime I sit down to do something on the computer I get distracted by my school timetable and feel the need to pick up my textbook instead of blogging/emailing etc. 

Last summer our meals consisted of a lot of hamburgers and hot dogs. This year buns (or any bread items) are such a premium item around here that we have strayed from that. I have had to find a few other meals that are quick, easy and don't need the oven turned on! 

I came across this recipe on the blog LizzieWrites, and have made it numerous time throughout the last few months. Hubby loves it, the kids gobble it up and it makes the house smell fantastic!! From start to finish this recipe takes approx. 20-30 minutes (and most of that time is waiting for the rice to cook!). All I've changed are some quantities because I found her sauce didn't make enough to decently simmer the meat in.

I've made this so many times and I keep forgetting to take a picture. One day I will learn, one day!

Ingredients

1 pound lean ground beef,

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup soy sauce (I use a GF one)

3 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 tsp ginger (1 tsp if using fresh ginger minced)

1 tsp crushed red peppers (or more if you want it spicier!)

1 Bunch green onions, diced (optional)

Rice, cooked as directed..

Brown ground beef with garlic. Mix brown sugar, soy sauce, ginger and red peppers in a bowl. Add to cooked ground beef. Simmer for 5 minutes to blend flavours. Serve over hot rice. Top with diced green onions if desired.

Gluten Free Chicken Nuggets

My son (and usually my daughter too) miss out on a few things that most kids take for granted...being able to stop in at (gag) McDonalds and have a happy meal, or even just being able to have chicken nuggets on a whim at home. I try my best to make sure if we go somewhere where other kids will be eating something (usually pizza at Christmas parties!), I bring 'exactly' the same thing for him to eat so he feels included, otherwise I don't usually let either kid have anything. They are too young to understand why one gets to eat something yummy in front of the other (I don't have any either if that's the case!). 

I've been kind of stumped on what to do for the inevitable McDonalds birthday parties. In fact, we went to 1/2 a birthday party earlier this year just to avoid such a problem (we played and had cake (the mom was nice enough to make a gf one!!!), and gave presents, but then we left when everyone else headed to McDonalds). Today I finally solved that problem!! I made some amazing (if I do say so myself) chicken nuggets. They were easy to make, freeze well uncooked and fry up in a matter of minutes. Don't look at me like that, yes, I deep fry things for my kids occasionally. Due to the high heat used and the minimal time immersed, I really do think they absorb less oil then if I pan fried them in 1/2" of oil. But I digress...I'm sure these would be tasty pan fried, or even baked. At least now I have an option that I could cook at home, bring to the party and let him eat along with everyone else. Yay!

I hesitate to call this a recipe, but here goes:

Ingredients
1-2 Cups Corn Flake Crumbs (GF)
2-4 Tbsp. Oil
4-6 Chicken Breasts
1 Egg
1/4 Cup Milk (If you need dairy free, I'm pretty sure water would substitute here just fine!)

Place Corn Flake Crumbs in a shallow dish and sprinkle 2 Tbsp. of oil over them for every 1 cup used. Mix up crumbs. Corn does not absorb liquid as wheat does, so this seems to be a necessary step to make it 'sticky'. (Although this may be a gf specific step, I'm really not sure...experiment!) Chop chicken breasts into nugget size pieces or strips. Mix together egg and milk in a bowl. Dip chicken pieces into milk/egg mixture, then roll in corn flake crumbs. Place on a baking sheet. When the baking sheet is full, place in the freezer.

NOTE: If you are making these from previously frozen chicken, you must cook all of the pieces once re-frozen to avoid becoming ill, if you are making these from fresh chicken then the freezer life (I think) would be the same as if you just froze the chicken.

When you are ready to cook, either bake in the oven (from frozen) at 425F for 20-30 minutes (I'm guessing here since I fried them!), or pan fry until cooked through. For deep frying, set your fryer to 375F and when the oil is up to temperature, place a single layer of frozen nuggets in the basket. Fry for 3-5 minutes (depending on size). When the oil stops making a lot of noise, generally whatever food is in there is done! That's my rule of thumb :)

I have not tried to freeze these after cooking. I have some leftovers in the fridge that I intend to re-heat in the oven tomorrow, but I think they would freeze ok.

In the words of my 3.5 year old "These are AWESOME Mommy!". I hope you enjoy them as much as we all did! :)

Note: I purchased my corn flake crumbs (see picture below) from amazon.com, and had them delivered in the states and had someone pick them up because I needed gluten free, however if you do not need gluten free Kellogg's has a corn flakes product that is available at any grocery store. It contains barley malt, so it's a no no in our house!

Gluten Free Blueberry Muffin Tops

I know I have been horribly absent this month. I am currently in the middle of a very heavy course, and it includes lab days which I have been prepping for. Hopefully it will be over soon and I can get back to some fun things in life! Summer is passing me by while I have my nose shoved into a textbook!

I bought 20lbs of blueberries last week and froze most of them for smoothies and winter baking, but kept 5lbs out for immediate use. I decided some blueberry muffins would be wonderful and wanted to try out my new muffin top pans that arrived from (where else!) well.ca this week! What are muffin top pans? They are shallow wide muffin pans that allow you to get mostly just the muffin top (the best part in my opinion!) of the muffin!!

This recipe from Gluten Free Frugally was a first attempt for me and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, but I would like to make some recipe changes since they are very sticky once cooked. It actually tastes quite 'normal' and is something I can actually make myself eat :)

INGREDIENTS
1/2 Cup Sugar
4 Tbsp. Butter/Margarine/Oil
4 Eggs
1 Cup Milk
1/2 Tsp. Vanilla
2 Cups GF All Purpose Flour Blend
1/2 Tsp. Salt
1/2 Tsp. Xanthan Gum
4 Tsp. Baking Powder
2-3 Cups Blueberries

Mix together sugar, butter and eggs. Once creamed, add milk and vanilla and mix well. Add dry ingredients (except blueberries) and mix on medium high for 4-5 minutes. Fold in blueberries. Scoop into pans and bake at 350F for 20-25 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Note: The way this recipe is composed, I would think if you left out the Xanthan Gum and substituted regular all purpose flour it should turn out as a great non gluten free muffin!

Apple Crisp

I often try to come up with desserts that aren't really desserts, but are good enough to classify as such. Although my kids do get sugary desserts from time to time, I definitely try to limit them (even then, I do try to find the healthier route to it, such as the Puffed Quinoa Squares). I never thought I would be the type of mom that would serve fruit for dessert, or that I would have the type of kids who are excited by apples and peanut butter, but here we are :) I decided today to spruce things up a little bit and make it a little more dessert-y. We eat a LOT of fruit in our house. Being gluten free limits a lot of things we would normally have for snacks, so by default we go to fruit for snacks (and tomatoes, but that's another story). The amount of bananas I buy would make you laugh, and the amount of apples in our fruit bin could cause a small avalanche. 

Today's dessert is apples. Apple crisp to be exact. Just a unique, very easy version :)

Ingredients
Apples, halved and core cut out (see picture)
Cheese
1/2 Cup of Butter, or Oil works too. Coconut oil would be delicious I think!
1/2 Cup Oats (make sure they are GF oats if you are gluten free!)
1/2 Cup Quinoa Flour (If you are not GF, use regular AP flour here)
1/2 Cup Brown Sugar
1 Tsp. Cinnamon
Pinch of salt.

Melt the butter (or if using oil just pour in!), and add oats, quinoa flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and salt. \Mix well until everything is moistened. 

Cut cheese into small pieces and place inside apple holes (see picture). 

Place the crumble mix on top of the cheese and apple. 

Place on a pan in the oven and bake at 350F for 20-30 minutes. 

Enjoy hot with ice cream or frozen yogurt, or just by itself. 

The measurements above made more then enough for 2 apples (4 halves), and I have enough left over for probably another 2-4 halves, depending on how thick you top the apples. 

The type and amount of apples and cheese is up to you. Cheddar does taste wonderful with apples though!

Slice apples in half and scoop out core.

Add cheese cubes to the holes.

Add crumble topping and bake @350F for 20-30 minutes.

Serve warm. With or without ice cream or frozen yogurt.

These have a really cute presentation and the cheese adds that extra little taste that makes them delicious!!

Chocolate Puffed Quinoa Squares

A wonderful part of being a kid (and an adult!) is biting into a chewy, gooey chocolate puffed wheat square. I've been searching high and low for a gluten free option (since puffed wheat is obviously not a good idea!), and I finally successfully came across a great substitute ~ If I do say so myself!

I went by this recipe and changed the amounts up a bit for the gf version. Something that was important to me was to be able to make them without *gag* corn syrup, and this recipe was perfect!!

I found Puffed Quinoa on Well.ca as well as Puffed Amaranth. For this recipe I have only tried it with the quinoa so far. (Reminder: If you are ordering anything from well.ca use coupon code 'kitchenaddiction' for $10 off your first order of $40 or more. Expires July 10/12). 

This makes a small recipe, but (of course) puffed quinoa is more expensive then puffed wheat, so I went with a small batch to experiment :)

Ingredients

3.5 Tbsp. Cocoa Powder

1/4 Cup Honey

1/4 Cup Brown Sugar, Packed

1/4 Cup Butter

2 Cups Puffed Quinoa 

Grease a baking pan. I only have a 9x13 so that's what I used, but the squares were quite thin, a square baking pan would be best. 

Ina  saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the cocoa powder, honey and brown sugar and stir until smooth. Boil for about 30seconds to a minute.

Pour the chocolate sauce over the puffed quinoa in a large bowl and stir until well coated. Pour into greased pan and smooth with a spatula. Let cool completely before cutting into squares. Store in the fridge, especially in the summer or they will start to melt!

They are not quite as chewy as a puffed wheat square, but they are very good. And they are a really good substitute if you cannot have wheat but are craving a puffed square! 

Meal Planning

I need help. 

There now that I've admitted it, it should get easier right? I hope so. 

I'm stuck in a rut of waiting until naptime, and then frantically trying to decide what to make for supper. The problem is that between 2 toddlers, trying to workout regularly, special diets, school work and all the regular household chores, I seem to end up throwing together the same thing over and over again. Then I get part way through the month and realize all the ground beef is gone, but there is lots of other meat left and I have to get creative again :) Also, I've been trying to workout and do some studying during naptime so that I can have a (small) life in the evening when hubby gets home. If I can get some studying done during the day then I only have to do an hour or two in the evening vs burying myself in a pile of books all night! But when I procrastinate all morning on supper prep I end up cooking at naptime and my time is gone! 

So these are my questions....

If you meal plan, how do you do it? Do you plan 1 week in advance? 2? A month? What is your system? Do you stick with it? Do you preplan everything or just the meat part? Do you find that even though you plan you deviate from your schedule? 

I have found multiple ideas on Pinterest that I want to make for a menu board (because I know myself, if I make something crafty I will actually use it lol), but I'm interested to know what everyone else does. I've done the chalkboard (write it up every month) menu on the inside of the pantry door and it ends up getting erased or I end up forgetting about it. So I want to do something fun and functional.

I've seen ones (like THIS) that are magnetic and allow you to add magnets for main, veggie and side separately. I can see this coming in handy with using everything in the fridge. Every time you go grocery shopping put the magnets on the board for what you have bought, then make sure you use all the magnets before shopping again :)

Other ones (like THIS) are simple and it's just a choice of a pre-decided meal. 

Then there are the over organized ones (like THIS & THIS) that would probably just give me a headache everytime I looked at it! Is anyone out there really this organized? 

Personally I am leaning towards one like the first picture above (the magnetic one) or one like THIS, recipe/ingredients are printed on the back with the name of the meal on the front. Printed on business cards with small nail holes punched into each one so they hang easily: 

What do you think? Please leave me a comment with what you do for meal planning, I need help! I've been up for 2 hours already this morning and would love to have supper already prepped or at least planned. However it's not happening! I'm thinking it's going to end up being a taco salad night...again!

Perspective

Just to put things in perspective....this bag of brown rice macaroni from Bulk Barn (so not even the good stuff) is over $10! Its not that big of a bag either. A regular bulk bag but I could have fit more in :)



Just thought I would share my frustration...also one of my reasons for being so frugal on everything else that I can!

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