Buffalo Chicken and Potato Casserole

When I made this dish, it was requested that I make it again tomorrow night! We really liked this one and you can increase or decrease the hot sauce to suit the taste of the family. My husband and I added more at the dinner table while the children liked it just like it is. All around family hit though. You can increase the amount of potato to stretch this meal without having to add anything else. I used 8 potatoes and one small serving of leftovers. 

Buffalo Chicken and Potato Casserole

Ingredients:

6 slices natural bacon, fried and crumbled

6-8 medium baking potatos, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1/2 medium onion
1/3 cup olive oil
1 tsp sea salt
1 T paprika
2 T garlic powder
1/4 c to 1/2 cup or more of hot sauce

2 large boneless chicken breasts, cut into 1/2 inch cubes

2 cups Sharp Cheddar cheese

*Annies Organic Ranch dressing (or blue cheese)

The How To's:

Fry your bacon, drain and set aside. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Chop up your potatoes and onion and place in a large bowl. In a measuring cup, mix olive oil, hot sauce  and seasonings together. Pour over the potatoes and toss to coat well.
With a large slotted spoon, remove the potatoes to a 13x9 baking dish, allowing remaining marinade to drain back into the bowl. Spread the potatoes in the baking pan and place pan in the oven. Place the cubed raw chicken in the marinade and toss to coat well. Set aside. Allow the potatoes to cook until tender and starting to brown. Remove from the oven and pour the chicken over the potatoes. Sprinkle with the chopped bacon and cheese. Return to the oven and bake approximately 15 minutes until the chicken is done and cheese is bubbling.

Serve with ranch dressing and celery sticks. Serves 4.
*We use Annies because most ranch dressings contain MSG or some variation of it. If you research MSG you will find that it is not a chemical you want to knowingly feed your family. If you can't find an organic dressing, you could always make your own. That will also ensure that your dressing is gluten-free.

GF Thai Meatballs

These meatballs meet all the family dietary requirements in our house. Dairy free, gluten free, and the kids love them. They can easily be made Paleo friendly by changing the peanut butter to sun butter. They are easy to make ahead of time and they go fast, so you might want to double the recipe.

Thai Meatballs

Ingredients:

1 T lard

1/2 red pepper, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 cup almond flour

1 t organic peanut butter

1 t texas pete hot sauce

1 T agave syrup

1 T fresh basil leaves, chopped

1 T lime juice

1 egg
1 T braggs liquid aminos
1 tsp sea salt

1 lb grass fed ground beef

How Tos:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Heat lard in a heavy skillet on  medium high heat. Add the chopped red pepper and saute until starting to brown. Add the garlic and continue to cook until garlic is brown and starts the caramelize. Remove to medium sized bowl. Add next 9(nine) ingredients to the bowl and mix well. Incorporate beef into this wet mixture, ensuring that the mixture is well combined. Form into 1" balls and place on baking sheet. Bake for 20 minutes. Rotate meatballs and bake 10 minutes more. Drain grease off to pot for cooking rice. Make your brown rice using the drippings as your oil/butter. Keep meatballs in a warming dish until rice is ready.

Easy Pumpkin Apple Spice Cake

This one is super easy and tastes so yummy. Smells just like fall!

1 box carrot cake mix

1 can cooked pumpkin(1 1/2 cups home canned)

1 apple, peeled, cored and chopped into 1/2" pieces(1/2 cup dried apples, chopped)

2 T sugar

Lightly grease a 9x13" pan. Mix carrot cake mix and cooked pumpkin until well combined. Mixture will be thick. Fold in apple pieces. Spread in baking pan. Sprinkle top with sugar. Bake 350 for about 30 minutes or until knife comes out clean. Allow to cool slightly and then its ready to serve. 

Crockpot Sesame Chicken

Chicken is inexpensive and versatile. I always have one or two birds in the freezer for a quick meal. This recipe was so simple and the results were fantastic. I served it over fried rice but it could also be ladled over toast or mashed potatoes or even eaten plain!

Ingredients:

1 3-5lb whole chicken, washed with giblets removed
sea salt
1 cup of raw honey
1/2 cup Bragg's Liquid Aminos
1/4 cup dried onion(1/2 cup chopped, fresh)
1/4 cup of ketchup
2-4 cloves of garlic, minced
red pepper flakes to taste(we like ours kind of zippy and used 1 tsp)
2 T cornstarch, dissolved in cold water
2 T Sesame seeds

The How To's:

Wash bird, sprinkle with salt and place in the crockpot. In a bowl, mix honey, aminos, onion, ketchup, garlic and pepper flakes. Pour over chicken. Cover and cook on low for 5 hours.
Remove chicken carefully to a platter or large bowl, allowing to cool enough to handle. Whisk dissolved cornstarch into the remaining liquid. At this point I tasted the sauce. You can add more salt or garlic powder to achieve the flavor you want. Even adding some chili paste for heat if you like!  Since the cooker is still on low, the mixture thickens into a rich, tasty sauce. With a fork, carefully lift meat off the bones of the chicken*, placing meat in crock pot with sauce. Stir gently and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Serve with rice, stir-fried vegetables or anything else you like.

*Once I have the meat I need for dinner, I then take the remaining carcass, and set aside. After dinner, I remove any remaining easily removed meat and put the chicken bones in another crock pot with water and make broth or, depending on how much meat I left on the bird, chicken soup. You can debone the bird prior to cooking, but this was much easier. The meat fell right off. You could also use boneless breast meat, but the flavor won't be nearly as rich and the cost would increase dramatically for this simple meal.

Pizza Night

Everyone in our house loves pizza so I try to make it frequently enough so that the temptation to go out for pizza is silenced. It is very inexpensive to make your own, healthy pizzas at home. Tonight was pizza night and once again I tried to photograph it and once again they were made, baked and consumed before I got many pictures. I suppose this is a good thing. It means they really like my pizza, right? Since we are dealing with multiple food allergies, I decided long ago to individualize the pizzas rather than making one that will fulfill all needs but that nobody will like very much. That means two crusts for starters.  A gluten free crust and then my regular, whole wheat crust...

Regular Pizza Crust
1 1/4 cups of warm water
1 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp sea salt
1/3 cup of olive oil
1 T yeast
1 T sucanat or honey
3-4 cups of freshly ground wheat

Pour the water in a large mixing bowl. Add the next 7 ingredients. Allow this to rest until the yeast begins to foam. Add the flour and stir in, mixing well. Using the kneading paddle on your dough or your hands, knead your dough for about 10 minutes or until it is smooth and elastic with a nice sheen to it. Cover the dough with a moist towel and put in a warm place. Allow the dough to rise until double in size. Punch the dough down and divide into portions that suit your family and pan sizes. Place on a greased cookie sheet and allow to rise again.  The entire process takes about 4 hours, so I usually make the dough when I am making lunch. That way its ready when I want to make dinner.

Ready to make dinner? 
Now you can sprinkle some flour on your clean counter and place one of the dough portions on the flour giving it a good dusting. Working from the center, use your fingertips to gently push the air bubbles out of the dough. Gradually working around from the middle out and gradually increasing the circle size. You can use a rolling pin at this point if you are not comfortable spinning a pizza. Since my father owned a pizza restaurant when I was in college I can toss a pizza pretty comfortably but will use the rolling pin on the rectangle pizza that goes to my son. ;-)

The Gluten-Free Pesto Pizza is ready to put in the oven

Place the prepared pizza crust in an oiled pan of your choice. You can dust the oiled pan with a little cornmeal if you like a crisper crust. I have one round stone(a Pampered Chef stone I found at Goodwill), a round steel pizza pan with holes in it and one rectangular "Medium Bar Pan" from Pampered Chef as well as a flat stone that stays in my oven. My gluten free crust is pre-made and goes right on that stone, so I prepare that pizza on a flexible cutting mat which makes it easy to transfer to the oven.

I allow the pizza crusts to rest in their respective pans about 20-30 minutes while I prepare the toppings. We use goat cheese, raw cheese, grass-fed mozzarella, which is grated into individual bowls. We chop fresh veggies, sometimes I will caramelize the onions and peppers, slice pre-cooked uncured sausage or open a jar of canned pizza sausage and open a jar of our homemade canned pizza sauce and usually pull out some pesto as well. As I mentioned, we eat pizza a lot, so I do can my own pizza sauce and when I can find a good deal on fresh, grass-fed italian sausage, I either can that as well or fry it up and keep it in the freezer. I also store hunks of mozzarella, goat cheese or any other pizza-related items in the freezer in what I call the "Pizza Bag" so I can just pull it from the freezer on pizza-making night. If I open a jar of pizza sauce or pesto, I just put the partially used jar in the Pizza Bag as well. That way, nothing spoils and I am not required to run to the store for ingredients everytime the mood for pizza strikes.

Four custom pizza pies make everyone happy

Once all the ingredients are prepared, it's time to make the pizzas. I preheat the oven to 450 degrees and everyone is free to make their own pizza, but since we do this fairly often, the novelty has worn off, and I usually have a daughter helping me and we make for everyone else.
Each person has different requirements and that's why we all have our own "pans." Once all the pizzas are made, I sprinkle them with some oregano and a little more garlic, brush the edges with a little olive oil, and pop them in the oven. The thicker ones take longer and are softer(for braces) and the little gluten-free pizza made on an Udi's Gluten free crust goes in last because the crust is precooked and it cooks fast.
Usually they take about 20 minutes to cook and I rotate them from top to bottom so they all get evenly cooked. When everything is ready, we sit down and quickly polish off most, if not all of the pizza in one meal. And that is what pizza night looks like at our house.

Catnip

Catnip is now available in our herb garden. Cut fresh to order. Catnip (Nepata cataria) is a member of the mint family (Labiatae), but it isn't just for cats....

Internal uses: 

The leaves of catnip have traditionally been chewed as a remedy for alleviating toothaches. The inhabitants of Southern Appalachia have used it since the eighteenth century as a remedy for colds. Tea made from catnip has been used to relieve intestinal cramps and gas discomforts. Recent research shows that consumption of teas containing catnip has anti-cholinergic(Antispasmodic) effects. Catnip has been used for relief of insomnia and prevention of nightmares, and has a mild anti-spasmodic effect and is used to treat cramps. The juice from the leaves was used to stimulate menstrual flow. It has been used in the treatment of children’s ailments, such as colicky pain, flatulence and restlessness. The herb has also been used as a cold remedy, for hives, to promote sweating(diaphoretic), and a pain killer(anodyne). (Please refer to an herbal dictionary like for further information on these terms.)Since it promotes relaxation it is also used to lessen migraine headaches.

External uses: 

Poultices made from catnip have commonly been used for toothaches, though they can be applied to any part of the body. It has been used to reduce swelling associated with soft tissue injuries, like bruises and recent studies have shown it to have antibacterial and antiviral substances. Poulices have been applied to sore breasts of nursing mothers and to the neck for tonsillitis. Thymol extracted from catnip has beneficial antiseptic uses on the skin and in the nasal and pharyngeal passages. Catnip oil repels insects and has even been shown to kill termites. The flowering tops of catnip yield up to 1.0 % volatile oil, 78 % being nepatalactone, the main attractant to cats.

Catnip is easy to grow and use. Research it for yourself and see if you can use catnip in your home.
One of my favorite herbal books. A referral link to Amazon is shown below. There are a lot of herbal books out there. Find books that you feel comfortable with, that list interactions with any pharmaceuticals you might be taking and always use caution when using herbs as medicine.

 *I am not a doctor. It is important that you exercise caution when considering using any herb for medicinal purposes; seek professional advice and do your own research before using them.

Hot n' Brown

This recipe is a big hit at our house. When I make it, I never have leftovers and usually despite the fact that there are five of us eating, all six english muffins get eaten. Its pretty easy to make and if the cheese sauce is doubled, you have plenty to make a mac and cheese later in the week, or to pour over grits or have welsh rarebit later in the week. It really is a good sauce and the combination is so yummy. I typically make my English Muffins since they are rarely on sale and will post that recipe later this week. This is a great summertime recipe since it requires tomatoes and when Earth fare has its thick cut uncured bacon, I will buy extra and freeze it in 12-slice portions so I can make this whenever its requested. 
Ingredients:

3 heirloom tomatoes, sliced

6 English Muffins, lightly browned

Sliced turkey or chicken breast

12 slices cooked, uncured bacon

Cheese sauce

Instructions:
First make cheese sauce: Melt butter over a low heat. Stir in flour and salt and slowly add milk. When almost thickened, blend in cheese. Blend well and set aside, keeping covered and warm.  Next, fry bacon and set aside to keep warm.  When ready to serve dinner, split the english muffins and arrange on a broiling pan, broil  them till slightly brown and toasty. Remove from broiler and top each English muffin half with a tomato slice(or two), then some turkey or chicken slices(lunchmeat works well for this). Return to oven to heat well, watching carefully so it doesn’t burn; just long enough to get it hot. Place muffin halves on a plate, pour cheese sauce liberally over top and criss-cross bacon on top. Serve with a sharp knife and fork. Devour!!

Cheese Sauce

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup all purpose flour

1 tsp salt

4 cups milk

3 cups grated sharp cheese