Make ahead meals

Earlier this week I found a recipe for a prosciutto covered pork loin roast in a Hy-Vee grocery store Seasons magazine. I had left over prosciutto in the refrigerator and decided to try it. Fareway had a 2.5# pork loin roast on hand and I cut it half, freezing part for another day.  

Prosciutto covered pork loin, tied with cotton twine

Cabbage and cherry topped with sliced pork loin roast

Instead of serving up the side they suggested, I used Ellie Krieger's Weeknight Wonders cookbook,  cherry and cabbage recipe which she paired in her cookbook with a pork tenderloin. The sweet potato I had baking at the same time as the roast wasn't done in time for dinner. It was a HUGE sweet potato.  That was okay, we'll have it later in the week!

This weekend I'm heading out of town for Little Rock to spend a weekend with a sibling and walk the half. I really want to run the full one day--it has a medal about as wide as my chest. For now, I'll settle for walking thirteen point one and having that future goal.  Since I'm leaving The Mike for the weekend, I am making him up reheatable meals. Serves several purposes:  1. He has a home cooked meal when he wants; 2. He is getting pronounceable ingredients; 3. He says it's better than buying a spendy lunch at work.  (psst, I still expect he'll get something from Caseys this weekend--a tenderloin or pizza). In asking what he wanted for meals, he said 'hot pockets'.  Hmmm, I thought I had made something like this before but couldn't find a recipe in my books. Then I looked at Chebe's website and couldn't find a recipe.   Thus, I had asked Chebe on FB for a hot pocket recipe. I had seen one before, but when I looked at the webpage I was coming up empty.  They suggested this recipe http://recipes.chebe.com/gluten-free-hot-pocket-sandwiches/  by Simply Gluten Free.

Mexican Lasagna:  Layers of Frontera enchilada sauce, corn tortillas cut to size, refried black beans, ground beef, corn, cheese.  Bake at 350 for about half an hour. Cool and top with a little cheese.

A new recipe The Mike thought sounded good was a Cornbread jalapeno chili one out of a cookbook I purchased from my old yoga place.  I made half the recipe and it looked fabulous when done.

Cornbread with jalapeno and cottage cheese (interesting!) on bottom and top, in the middle is beef, kidney beans, black beans, salsa.  

The recipe Chebe sent me suggested to cut the dough into six pieces. I think next time, I'd do longer, skinnier pieces, so I could just fold over and have three seams instead of four.

Pepperoni and cheese, Ham and cheese, and Broccoli Chicken and cheese. 

My crimping job wasn't too bad. I tried to do a couple like a pie and it didn't work out well. I then just decided to use a fork--worked perfectly!

 Finished items:

Cornbread chili 

Hot pockets 

All labeled and ready for the refrigerator.

I did put the hot pockets on a cooling rack to cool completely, then wrapped each in a piece of parchment paper in order to make handling/reheating a bit easier.  Put each inside a ziploc bag. I hope The Mike enjoys the hotpockets. I wanted to make more to take with me, but that's not the best since I'll be flying.  I have Mama Chia fruit packets, a couple wrapped eggs, Chobani, string cheese, and Tanka bars!

Flour mix!

In the past I have always mixed some of this and some of that when I am making something from scratch.   The flours have included Tapioca  (light, fluffy), Brown Rice (nutritious, but still a bit of emptiness), Sorghum and Teff (nutritious and nutritious).  It has always worked well, except for banana bread which I have not been able to make well from scratch as a gluten free cook.  I can do it with mixes, but I hate buying mixes for something that is essentially a way to use up left over-and soft- bananas.

Last Christmas Quirky received a gift card to Barnes & Nobles. I went off to buy a book by Ellie Krieger and came home instead with a cookbook, Gluten Free Artisan Bread. . .  . YUM!   I bought more bags of flour in order to mix up the flour blends needed for these recipes.  In the end, I always stuck with making the Peasant Bread recipe as I like the hard edges and dense inside.  Sure, I miss the fluffy french bread but it was always a special treat when I was growing up, and not a staple. Whole wheat bread was the staple in the house---which is funny now as a celiac/gluten free/soy free person :-)   Don't fret on the missed Ellie book. . . I did get it this summer :-)  

This year I also broke down and bought my first bag of a cup for cup flour blend. I loved the simplicity of it, but I didn't like the amount of corn starch in it, nor the dry milk (family member has lactose intolerance), not the lack of nutrients in it. I shouldn't be upset about the last, I mean, plain white gluten flour isn't all the nutritious either.  A lot of times, I just make up for this by adding milled chia to the baked goods. This works for cakes, pizza, but not so much for cookies.

A while ago I asked some celiac friends for their favorite gluten free 1:1 flour recipes from websites. I was given four.  They are (in no particular order):

http://www.livinghealthymom.com/gluten-free-flour/

http://www.glutenfreeandmore.com/resources/food-allergy-substitutions.html

https://glutenfreegirl.com/2012/07/how-to-make-a-gluten-free-all-purpose-flour-mix/

http://www.foodphilosopher.com/assets/docs/glutfree.cfm

I looked them over, and eliminated one off the bat. The other three, I printed out for my binder cookbook collection, and decided on one to make--The Gluten Free Girl recipe.  It was the easiest to view with types of flours put into categories and the amount of flour of each type.

I was wanting to make brownies and cookies as the Quirky freezer was bare.  I long ago went to freezing at least half of sugary treats so we wouldn't get in that mode after a hard workout where you just want food/sugar/energy NOW!  Not to mention that when we're in training mode for a race coming up none of this stuff is premade.

I made up a small batch of flour and cooked up the brownies. I loved how it worked with the recipe. (The recipe did the same thing as last time and took forever for it to cook in the middle. I remembered to write in the gluten free cookbook to use a 9x13 instead of 8x8 and maybe cook it longer if needed, but to go with the suggested time in a larger pan. I also left out the chocolate chips. Cocoa and melted chocolate chips in the recipe was strong enough on the chocolate front.)  Then I made up the a batch of cookies actually using the Cup 4 Cup recipe on their sack :-)  They turned out very well.

While I didn't take photos of any of the baked goods, I wanted to share the recipe and have it here in the future. Go to Gluten Free Girl's link above for all the flour options to use.

I don't like bean flours as I feel they leave an after taste. I don't use nut flours because I have a niece and nephew who are allergic, and why get great with a flour mix that could severely impact a loved one?

200 grams of Brown Rice Flour
175 grams of Sorghum Flour
25   grams of Teff Flour (It's not much, but Teff cooks up a lot differently than other whole grain flours, and I generally just use a little bit here and there for this reason)
300 grams of Tapioca Flour
300 grams of Potato Starch (I had this on hand for the artisan bread book recipes)

I mixed this up in a tall quart plastic container (like this) I purchased earlier this year at the kitchen supply store.  After I was done baking, I was able to use one of the former flour storage containers to store my read to use 1:1 flour blend in the refrigerator. I opened up a bit of space emptying the jars I had used to store the flours in the freezer and refrigerator.

Shrimp pizza and a beautiful sunrise

Tuesday I had wanted to have shrimp for dinner and planned to use Ellie Krieger's  Baked Shrimp with Tomatoes and Feta dish.  We've made this recipe several times since I discovered it in a magazine a few years ago.

I did some grocery shopping and then came home and put my feet up. I didn't really want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Then inspiration hit, and I decided to make the recipe for a pizza. On one prior occasion we thought to make it a pizza, but it was too liquid-y.  I had the regular Chebe roll mix on hand and used that for the crust, rather than the pizza crust as I didn't want the pre-seasoned mix to not compliment the feta/dill seasonings.

I sauteed half a red onion and three good size portabello mushrooms (which have potassium as well as Vitamin D), added in the full garlic the recipe called for and then added just one can of diced tomatoes.  I added about two tablespoons of dried parsley and a tablespoon of dried Dill.  I brought that up to a boil so the liquid would reduce. Then I added in the medium size shrimp to cook up a bit.

While the onions and mushrooms were cooking down  I prepped the Chebe mix. Then, when the product was reducing down, I rolled out the dough on parchment paper to cook on my pizza stone.  I tried to get most of the tomato mixture on the crust and then place the shrimp on most of one half of the pizza (so the left overs wouldn't have shrimp on it).  Then I placed what feta cheese was left in my house on the top, along with torn pieces of provolone slices. 

Just out of the oven

Dinner is served

In order to make the dinner a little better for us, I sliced up a cucumber. We didn't plant any and our neighbor is getting sick of them, so we are getting some garden fresh cukes for free (yeah!)

Dinner ingredients: Tomatoes, mushrooms, red onions (antioxidants), shrimp, with feta and provolone cheeses, atop with a tapioca crust. Cucumbers.

 

My return from yoga Tuesday morning brought me the sunrise (off to the right of the photo) with large green katydid-like bug.  The back end is more pointy like a grasshopper.  I'm not sure what this bug is, but we had one on our screen door Monday and this one on the bridge on Tuesday.