GF Recipes and Writings

I started out this morning wanting apple butter. Actually, I’ve been craving apple butter for the last couple of weeks. I was dismayed to find, however, that my local “Mart” store did not carry apple butter, but only a tiny fancy bottle of apple-pecan butter that was far more than I was willing to spend. What? How could this be? It appears that you are not supposed crave apple butter in the Spring. Who craves apple butter only in the Fall? Who are these people? Whoever you are, you will not prevail. I will triumph!!!

I started with cans of fruit. No one is eating them at this time of year when fresh fruit is so readily available and inexpensive. So I opened pears, peaches, and apricots and got to work.

You will need:

6, 15 oz. cans of sliced pears

4 , 15 oz. cans of sliced peaches

3, 15 oz. cans of apricot halves

2 cups apple juice, separated

1 Tablespoon of ground cinnamon

2 teaspoons of ground nutmeg

1 cup sugar

Open all of the cans of pears and dump them in a colander. Rinse the pears. Add about half the pears and 1/2 a cup of apple juice to a blender and blend until smooth. Dump the mixture into a 6 qt. slow cooker. Process the rest of the pairs with another 1/2 cup of apple juice and add to slow cooker.

Next open all the cans of peaches into the colander and rinse. Add all the peaches and another 1/2 cup of the apple juice and blend well. Add the peaches to the pears in the slow cooker.

For the apricots do the same and blend with the last 1/2 cup of apple juice. Add the apricots to the mix and stir together.

Add the cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar and stir well to combine. It should look like this before

And this after stirring.

Cook in your slow cooker on low for 10 hours. You could also do this overnight and have a yummy fruit butter to put on your gluten free toast or English muffin. If you’re like me, however, you’ll want to put it over your ice cream and make it look like this:

As the weather turns warmer, our tastes in food modify. Most of you are familiar with pasta salad. You see it in your deli’s offerings, in tubs at the supermarket, in boxes with packets for a dressing that you make at home. When I was a child, my family didn’t have much money for extras. So, when my mom discovered the boxed pasta salad, she tried to figure out a way to stretch it to feed our hungry mouths.

What she did was add quite a bit of regular salad items, like lettuce, tomato, and black olives to the box mix. With the Italian dressing, it was fantastic. That was during my pre-celiac days.

When I found out I had celiac disease, while pregnant with child #2, I craved this salad creation that my mom had discovered. So I went about recreating it. First, I found that my favorite brand of brown rice pasta worked really well. Second, I added salad fixings and Italian dressing. This worked well until my children decided they didn’t like Italian, but preferred ranch. Yikes. These days we eat it with whatever dressing we have on hand, but the current favorite is creamy ceasar. Here’s the recipe:

3 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken breast*, chopped into 1″ chunks and fried with

2 Tbsp. safflower oil and

Salt & pepper to taste

Cook over medium heat until fully cooked

1/2 pound of your favorite small gluten-free pasta noodles cooked to package directions, rinsed and cooled

1 head romaine lettuce, chopped

3 cups fresh spinach

1/2 large cucumber cut in 1/4’s and chopped

1/2 can large olives, sliced

1/4 cup pepperoncini slices, chopped

1/3 cup pickled pepper slices, chopped

1/2 dill pickle, sliced into 4 spears and chopped

1/4 cup pickled jalepeno slices chopped, optional (child #2 is the only one who uses these! Hot!)

1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese*

1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes – wait to add these

Mix all your ingredients together in a large bowl. Use a circular blade cutter to chop your salad further. If you don’t have one, you can just chop up your ingredients on your cutting board before adding them to the large salad bowl. When everything is chopped to your satisfaction, add the cheese and the tomatoes. Add the chicken and rinsed and cooled pasta and toss well. Serve onto plates and top with your favorite dressing. Yum!!!

*NOTE: For our vegan and vegetarian friends, this salad can be made without the chicken and cheese. Black beans would be a great replacement for the chicken. Modify away and enjoy!

Chorizo. Ah, chorizo. A spicy, Mexican sausage. I have found no other taste like it. You might not have ever used it before, but it is a tasty, spicy, full of flavor sausage that adds great flavor to a variety of foods.

Child #2 is my jalapeno child. She is the only one of us who will put jalapenos on chili, nachos, and a variety of other foods. She is my spicy-food-lover. She made up this recipe and we tried it last night (I wasn’t home the first time she made it.)

Here we go. This is what you need:

One, 24 oz. bag of gluten-free waffle fries

2, 9 oz. packages of chorizo – your choice of mild or spicy

2 cups of shredded sharp cheddar cheese

1/3 cup canola oil

Preheat oven to 450° F.

Line a 12″ x 18″ jelly roll pan with foil.

Spray with cooking spray.

Spread out the waffle fries.

When the oven is ready, drizzle the oil over the fries and put them in for 15 minutes.

In the mean time take your chorizo out of the the packaging and place it in a frying pan. Cook it on medium-low heat for about 15 minutes (while the fries cook), stirring often.

Take the fries out of the oven and sprinkle the chorizo on the fries. It should look like this:

Next, sprinkle the cheese on top to look like this:

Pop back into the oven for five minutes or so until the cheese melts and looks like this:

Enjoy!

Note: If you have problems with cheese, you could always leave it off and have Chorizo Fries. Yum!!!

I have made a difficult decision. My beautiful, tiny Church is opening for Mass tomorrow, Pentecost. I am torn by the indecision to go or not to go. On one hand, Mass has always been the best hour of my week. I love the prayers, the music, the homilies, everything, including seeing my neighbors.

But I’m scared. With my underlying conditions, if I contract COVID-19 I could be dead in a week and a half. It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I have a strong and abiding faith in God and while I’m far from perfect, Jesus is my three o’clock friend. What I mean by that is that I can call upon him in the middle of the night and He never gets mad. He’s just glad to hear from me, at whatever hour.

I am the choir director at our small church, yet we are not allowed to have a choir because of COVID-19. Even though these people are my friends and neighbors, it is still terrifying. Even if I didn’t have celiac disease, I still have two other risk factors, so no. I won’t do that to my children. My kids depend on me. As a single mom I am all they have. Two would be o.k., but two are far too young to lose me. So I can’t, in good conscience, risk it.

That is my final decision. It’s not that I don’t love God or my Church and don’t for one minute think that I won’t be praying and watching Mass on TV. I just can’t take the chance that I will get sick and my kids will lose even more than they already have. So I will make peace with it, and wish you all peace as well.

This morning I woke up full of vim and vigor. I wanted to make brownies; but not just any brownies. I wanted to figure out a recipe for Black Forest Brownies, since a friend of mine had given me a bag of dried cherries. Yum!

I decided to start with gelatin blocks. I mixed up the peach and pineapple gelatin and prepared to put it in a jelly-roll pan. Mmmhmm…it helps if your pan isn’t ancient and warped. No. It just was not going to cooperate!

I poured the gelatin back into the bowl and popped the whole thing into the fridge. So it won’t be in blocks? It will still taste great topped with whipped cream.

So, the brownies…first I was stymied with the lack of baking chocolate bars at my house. There was only one where I thought I still had two. Darn! I needed two for my brownies. I decided to try a conversion. For four ounces of bitter chocolate I needed 12 tablespoons of cocoa, otherwise known as 3/4 of a cup, and four tablespoons of butter.

The brownies came out looking awesome and the smell amazing. Here’s what I did:

Preheat oven to 350° F.

Prepare your 9″ x 13″ pan by spraying it with cooking spray and setting it aside.

Roast the chopped pecans in a separate, shallow pan lined with foil for seven minutes in a 350° F oven, stirring halfway through. Cool.

Turn oven down 325° F.

20 Tbsp. butter

4 oz. bitter chocolate (1 bar)

5 eggs

1 1/2 C brown sugar

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

1 C coconut flour

1 C tapioca starch

1 tsp. baking powder

1 Tbsp. xanthan gum

3/4 tsp. salt

1 1/2 C toasted, chopped pecans

1 1/2 C dried cherries

1 1/2 C semi-sweet chocolate chips

Whipped cream for dressing!

Put butter and chocolate in a microwave safe bowl and melt in microwave stirring in 30 second increments until smooth. Set aside.

Mix eggs and brown sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and mix well. Add dry ingredients of cocoa, coconut flour, tapioca starch, baking powder, xanthan gum, and salt, mixing gently. Add cooled chocolate mixture until thoroughly combined.

To dough, add dried cherries, chocolate chips, and roasted pecans. Mix well.

Put dough into prepared pan and push into corners with a silicone spatula.

Bake for 25 minutes at 325° F oven. Let cool in pan. Cut and serve with whipped cream (or ice cream). Enjoy!

The best reaction I saw for these was child #4’s reaction. Her eyes got really big and she smiled around her bite topped with whipped cream. That smile said they were pure bliss!

Yum!!!

Just a note: The gelatin was also fantastic!

A few days ago child #2 and I were cutting the lawn. We don’t have a functional riding mower, but rather must cut our one acre plot with a push mower. We make this more bearable by taking turns around the yard with every two passes.

While I was awaiting my turn, I rested under the white angel crabapple tree. This tree is a descendant of one that my father planted for my mother on an anniversary at the farm.

The blossoms were about spent and a gentle breeze sent them skittering to the grass. I was in the middle of a flower shower! I couldn’t help but compare it to a snow shower. Much more warm and fragrant, though both are white and breathtakingly beautiful.

If only I could bottle the beauty of the warm Spring shower for a bitterly cold day in January!

So I tucked this precious time in my memory for a day when my heart needs a lift. I pray that you will savor these times that bring your heart joy. Hold them dear when you are low and they will gladden your heart!

Today has been a very long day. However, at the end of it all we have a cleaned out, organized garage. We have much to donate, much to recycle, and much to pitch.

The most interesting find of the day? Well… between the old, rusty brake pads and rotors, the broken detritus, the poop from the good Lord only knows what animals, and the crud ton of sheet metal parts, the decision is difficult. However, I think the clear winner, by pure virtue of the amount in there would be the sheet metal parts. Ah, we just thank God that there is no longer a reason to keep all of this crud!

However, when we were cleaning out, my oldest noticed our not so nice next door neighbor taking pictures. I know in my heart that she will be up at the town office to complain. Then someone from the office will come by to take another picture and send it to me with a notice that I have 10 days (at this point only about 5) to clean it up.

Here’s the thing, though…by the time the 10 days is up, the garbage guys will have picked up the trash. That’s what’s so frustrating…the whole thing is such a waste of time and town resources. Why do they have to torture our family? I’m a single mom who was able to escape an abusive marriage. I am now unemployed because of COVID-19. Why would you want to torture someone like me?

So, beside the Chicago Style hot dogs kid #2 made for dinner, I am not in the mood to cook. I am in the mood to fall asleep on the couch while watching a movie with kid #3.

This had become our tradition. Each kid is assigned a day of the week. Said child picks out a movie or game to watch/play with me. The child is allowed to invite any or all of her sibblings to watch with her. There are special treats and snuggles if they’re wanted.

I promise to get back to baking soon and get you some awesome recipes! Those recipes on my radar: the most fantastic chocolate-coffee frosting, cream cheese citrus frosting, onion rings, and on and on and on. Mmmmm…wipe the drool away! So stay tuned…

I was informed this morning of the passing of our priest and friend, Fr. Mike. Since we are a tiny parish, the Archdiocese does not have enough priests to have one just for us. So, our deacon finds available, retired priests, who would like to help us out and say Mass for us on a Sunday, two, or as many as they can. Fr. Mike has been helping us out for the last couple of years.

Being in Fr. Mike’s presence you knew you were beside a holy and humble man. He was truly one of the good priests. At 95, you wouldn’t expect him to stay forever, but I was still heartbroken when I heard. He was not perfect, as no man can be, but he was so very good. He always thanked everyone, the servers, readers, choir, etc. for all of their contributions. It was beautiful, as living in a small town, you truly do need everyone to come together to make things work.

I love my tiny church. I love the presence of God I feel there. I love the people that make up the congregation and my choir. I loved Fr. Mike. He may have gotten repetitive in his last sermons, but it was for a purpose. He knew he was repeating when he told us to pray as soon as we got in our cars in the morning. The reason? So we did not get caught up in the day and forget to pray! He had a great love for his church, Our Father, His Son, His Spirit, and all of the saints, especially our Blessed Mother.

Rest in Peace, Father Mike. I can’t think of anyone who deserves more than you to go straight into Jesus’ arms for a big hug. Give Him one for me, ok?