'Free' Wing Night!

That's right.  Free wing night.  In our (or your!) very own home.

How is it possible to have free wing night?

I can't take credit for this trick; my wing-loving husband came up with it.

Buy a whole chicken. (Buying a whole chicken is quite economical, especially if you can squeeze two or three meals out of it plus make broth with the bones.)

Cut off the wings when you use the chicken, however you use it.  But, cut off the wings. Cut them into their two separate pieces and cut off the wing tip. Save the wing tip to throw in with the carcass when you make broth. Throw the wings into the bag in your freezer that is designated for wings.

Now comes the hard part: wait until you have accumulated enough wings to throw yourself a free wing night. When the day comes, it's a party!  Chris and I look forward to eating wings after the kids go to bed. (Not every night..., although some weeks we want to!) Chris loves wings, and I craved them when I was pregnant with John. Chris loved that.  :-)

Tonight, we party!

This is the best way to eat wings!  The chickens I buy are organic, but when you order wings from a restaurant, they are far from it.  Not only are we saving ourselves the exposure to the anti-biotic GMO chicken that is served at restaurants, but we also are saving ourselves some money.  Do we still order wings from restaurants sometimes? Yes, occasionally.  But we appreciate it so much more-- the wings are tastier, the homemade blue cheese dressing is killer... when we save them up in the freezer.

So if you like wings, and you like to eat organic, or even if you just want to save yourselves some money, try this trick!  It is awesome! :-)

ps. be aware that wings off a chicken you buy at the store are smaller than the ones you get from a restaurant, so plan to make more than you would normally eat.

Lunch

This lunch brought to you by the color orange. And Sam.

(Cantaloupe, carrots, sweet potato, and a leftover piece of peanut butter banana pizza)

Recipe for the above pizza coming soon!

Paleo "snack lunch"

For our midmorning snack today, which I didn't serve until 11:10 for various crying child reasons,

A banana, a coconut flour muffin, a handful of penuts that I haven't soaked yet but at least I finally made it to Miller's to buy, and homemade coconut oil peppermint patties.

Food Journey Update 5.12.13

I just wanted to make it official that we took Ellie off of dairy in addition to gluten about two weeks ago.  Since then, her itchies have gone away almost completely.  It is amazing.  I wish I had taken pictures to show you.

As for what am I doing about milk?  I have been making her nut milks homemade and only using them with her.  The recipes I found online were pretty consistent:  1 cup nuts to 3 cups water.

I am in need of a nut milk bag, as I have been straining them with my fine mesh strainer, and they are a bit more gritty than they would be with a milk bag. But in general I am happy with it. Two years ago, I balked at making my own nut milks but now it seems like no big deal.

Why make my own verses buying the store brands?  Mainly, the extra ingredients in the store brands.  Many have added sugar, although you can buy unsweetened versions.  Also, there is the thickener carageenan in almost every nut milk on the market.  Carageenan is a known carcinogen that has been approved for use in foods, even organic ones.

 It is amazing the journey on which God has taken me with our food... I really feel that He used our time two years ago being gluten and dairy limited and also used the meal plan Chris bought me for Christmas to prepare my heart and my abilities to handle this. I am thankful that I can do this for the health of my family!  And I am looking forward to further refining our diet to be as healthy as possible! It is an ever-changing journey, to say the least!

Alphabet buckwheat pancakes

During this time of being gluten free, I have been so much better than last time at making things on the fly and much more laid back about the whole thing.  Last week I made some pancakes for breakfast.  They were buckwheat pancakes-- I actually had some sprouted dehydrated buckwheat in my cabinet already, so making sprouted flour was bonus! 

This may seem terrible, but I honestly can't remember if I looked up a 'real' recipe or if I just adapted my recipe for gluten free/ buckwheat. It sounds more like me to do the second.  I know I got xanthan gum right around the time we made these, and I suspect I wanted to try it out and see if it worked like it said it would. 

As it turns out, this batter ended up being more like crepes than pancakes, which makes me think I actually looked up a buckwheat pancake recipe, or maybe I just ran out of flour and didn't care to make more?  That's also my style.  Whatever the case, we ended up having a great time making the pancakes. The batter was really thin, and I let Ben make a few that he put decorative holes in by drizzling the batter all over the pan.  That, (of course) turned into alphabet pancakes, at which point we ran out of batter.  Luckily, all children got one with their first initial... Ah, it is all coming back now. :-) (this is what happens when you upload pictures to your blog from your phone and then forget about them and then come back to try to write the post more than a week later.... it's like stream of conscience blogging or something.) 

I made everyone their own letter pancake, but Sam waltzed into the kitchen, picked up his "S" without even noticing what it was, and ate half of it before I could even say, "stop! Look at the cool pancake I made for you!"  Only after he had eaten most of his did he notice Ellie with an E and Ben with a B and ask where was his S?  To which I replied, "You just ate it" To which he replied by wailing... <sigh>

It was then that we got out the kitchen scissors, and the creativity continued on the pancakes I had made into boring old fashioned circles-- Ben and I shaped them into some cool creations. (mostly letters)

We may have also dipped them in the leftover glaze from the glazed bananas I made for dessert the night before.  The glaze may have made some already delicious, slightly sweet nutty pancakes into pure awesomeness. 

Lentil Crackers ... my to do list

in the Hopeful Kitchen: Buckwheat, Seed & Lentil Crackers (Raw & Gluten-Free!)

Now that we are gluten free, I need to be on top of making snacks.  I found this recipe that looks great to try, but I haven't had a chance to make them yet.  I need to find some snacks that are easy to make, especially big quantities, so I can freeze them.  Gluten free snacks from the store are too expensive!

:-)

Will be posting soon on how our gluten free life is going this time around.  I will say it is much better than the last time we did this.  (I find it interesting that there is a cracker recipe in the post from two years ago!) I forgot about this cracker recipe and look forward to making it again.  I also recently made up some crackers that worked really well, and Chris and I even discussed if we could use it like a flatbread/ pizza crust. Of course I will have to post that another day.  :-)

Fruit and veggie lunch

We have no leftovers in the fridge today, but lots of fruits and veggies!
Sweet potatoes, celery, carrots, strawberries, banana, papaya.

Gluten free saturday morning breakfast

Gluten free brown rice pancakes
Two over easy eggs
Guacamole
Something distinctly GF about the pancakes I don't like... possibly the flour, but I was wondering could it be the xanthan gum?