Meat Sticks

When I make up a recipe, sometimes I get upset. It doesn't always turn out. But I've learned...when I try something new, ALWAYS have a backup meal!!!

This time though, I found something worth posting!!!! I found a recipe like it in a magazine. It called for veal, corn flakes, eggs, breadcrumbs oh my! I had no veal and the rest was out. I changed the recipe so much, I can't even say I "tweaked" the original.

This is what I did. This will make about 6 meat sticks.

3/4 pound ground pork
1/2 cup Erewhon crispy brown rice
2 TBS ketchup
2 TBS onion flakes
Salt and pepper to taste

Crumble cereal and combine ingredients. Form onto popsicle sticks. Meat should be about 3 inches long.

For the crust, dip meat on stick in milk substitute. I used hemp milk. Then dip into crumbled rice cereal.

Heat pan with oil. Fry meat on sticks on all sides till lightly brown. Wrap meat in foil (including stick) and bake on 375 till inside is 170 degrees. This can take 10-20 minutes.

These are great by themselves or dipped in ketchup.

As an camping alternative:

Form meat on long sticks and cook over camp fire wrapped in foil!

Chocolate Pudding

                

 Our daughter just had her tonsils removed and I needed some good allergy friendly recipes for soft food.  I searched the internet and my cookbook stash for some chocolate pudding recipes.  The closest I could find was in “Vegan Diner” by Julie Hasson.  It is called “Lotsa Chocolate Pudding.”  The only issue is…I don’t like “lotsa” chocolate!  And the recipe calls for cornstarch.  I tweaked it a bit and this is what I came up with.

Chocolate Pudding

¾ cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup Unsweetened cocoa powder

¼ cup tapioca starch

3 cups hemp milk (I used my homemade hemp milk)

In saucepan, whisk together first 3 ingredients.  Add 3 cups of hemp milk or whatever substitute you’d like.  Bring to a slow boil on medium and reduce heat to maintain simmer.  Simmer till thickened.  With the amount of fat and protein in hemp milk, this literally took 1 minute.

Put into serving dishes and top with whatever you’d like.  I used Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips!

Beef BBQ

                Here’s a quick and easy weekday meal.  Growing up in Lancaster County, PA, we called this beef bbq.  I later found out the rest of the country calls it sloppy joes.  I, of course, had to work with the recipe to make it allergy friendly.  

BBQ Beef

1 pound ground beef (or turkey if you’d like)

1 cup ketchup (we use O Organics)

1-2 TBS brown sugar

1 TBS apple cider vinegar

I precook my beef.  I buy a big package of it at Costco.  When I get home, I set aside about 1/3 of it and package it.  The rest I cook.  Then let it cool and separate and freeze.  When you need beef for this recipe, taco bake, tacos, chili, etc, just take out the bag and throw all ingredients in.  It thaws quickly right there on the stovetop.

Whisk together last 3 ingredients and adjust to taste if you need to.  Put ground beef in pan and either cook it or thaw out the frozen precooked package.  Pour ketchup mixture over it and warm through.

 

Here I made beef bbq sandwiches on my gluten free flat bread.

Teriyaki Pork (or Chicken)

 

Teriyaki Pork

I discovered a teriyaki sauce recipe in Cooks Country Magazine. I modified it to better suit our taste and needs (calls for soy sauce and I have to make our own). We can't have chicken, but this is equally good on chicken! It is also very good on fish, just brush the sauce on the fish instead of using the method I will use for pork/chicken.

For the soy sauce:

4 cups (one box) of Kitchen basics beef broth (or vegetable broth-I prefer taste of the beef)

1-2 TBS sea salt (depending on taste. I like my soy sauce low sodium. And I like to use less because I can always add more salt later if needed)

1 TBS molasses

2.5 TBS balsamic vinegar

1 tsp ginger

1 tsp garlic powder

Simmer for about 40 minutes until reduced to 3 cups. I put mine in a mason jar, label and stick in fridge for a while. Not sure how long because we use it up pretty quickly!

 

For Teriyaki sauce

You can make this ahead too…

1 cup soy sauce

¾ cup sugar

1 TBS rice vinegar

1 tsp each ginger and garlic

2 tsp potato starch

Whisk ingredients together in bowl.

 

There are a few ways to make this. I will start with the "quickest."

1. If you buy your meat in bulk (like I do) and you take it out of the original packaging to divide it up for your family's use, put what you need in a freezer bag. In that freezer bag, add one recipe of teriyaki sauce and freeze together. In the morning, simply put frozen meat/sauce in crockpot. You can do this on low all day, or if you forget (like I do), put it on high at lunch time for a tasty dinner!
   
2. Use the freezer method. Take meat/sauce out in morning and thaw. Put into baking dish and bake at 375 degrees for an hour.
   
3. Brown both sides of meat in a pan. Then pour sauce over meat and simmer till done.
   

 

Week 2 Menu

		Monday		Tuesday	Wednesday		Thursday	Friday	Saturday
Breakfast		Burritos (brown rice tortillas with diced potatoes and sausage with salsa)		Chocolate cake (oh yeah, we can have cake for breakfast!)	Waffles		Hashbrowns with bacon	Biscuits or toast with homemade strawberry jam	Pancakes
Lunch		Mini pizzas		Teriyaki Pork and fried rice	Spaghetti		BBQ beef (aka sloppy joes)	Hot dogs	leftovers
Dinner		Balsamic pork		Taco bake	Pizza		Fish	Chinese pork lettuce wraps	Taco salad

Brown Rice Squares

I was a cookaholic today! I baked the goldfish crackers, but what I was really in search of was a granola type bar. Along with the top 8 and corn, we also cannot have oats. Which makes it that much harder to find recipes for decent granola bars.

I found one that kind of fit what I wanted. It was close, but not perfect. So here it is; perfected.

3 cups crispy brown rice cereal (I used Barbara's Brown Rice Crisps, but Erewhon makes a good one
as well)
1/2 cup brown rice syrup
1/2 cup sun butter(or whatever butter you can use. If using peanut butter, I suggest starting with 1/4 cup brown rice syrup and adjust to taste)
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup assorted dried fruit
1/2 cup Enjoy Life chocolate chips

In pot, melt together syrup, sun butter,vanilla and cinnamon.

Take off heat and add crispy rice cereal. Coat well. Add dried fruit and a handful of chocolate chips.

Pour into greased glass baking dish. I used an 8x8. Pat down and sprinkle rest of chocolate chips on top. You can use more. I'm just not a huge sweets fan.

Put in microwave for 45 seconds or so and spread melted chocolate evenly on top.

Refrigerate till cool. Cut into squares or rectangles. Wrap individually. Keep in fridge or on counter if your house isn't hot.

Yummy!

Trevor's Goldfish Crackers

I remember goldfish. The perfect combo of cheese, salt and crisp. Our daughter would eat them by the fist full. Until we found out that's what was contributing to her behavior issues.

She is now 6 and we haven't seen the likes of a goldfish cracker in our house in 5 years.

And I missed them. In fact, I missed all things cheesy. She reacted to every cheese substitute on the market at that time, so we gave up. We got used to cheese free pizza and no goldfish crackers. We later found out she has a soy allergy which explains why cheese subs weren't tolerated.

But around 3 months ago, I stumbled across Chreese. You read that right! Cheese with an R.

Road's End Organics makes it and I can get it on Amazon! It's about 89 cents per packet. It is gluten, corn, soy and many other items free. You can use it to make mac n chreese! And it actually tastes decent. It is also great in meatballs and sprinkled over pizza.

But I still missed goldfish. After searching recipes and a few bad batches, this is what I came up with...

1/2 cup brown rice flour
1/4 cup potato flour
1/2 tsp arrowroot
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
2 TBS chreese powder (cheddar flavor makes them more yellow-orange)

Mix and set aside. In separate bowl, mix
2 TBS oil
1 TBS honey
1/2 TBS cider vinegar
2 TBS milk sub

Pour liquid into flour. If needed, add more milk, one TBS at a time. In dry Arizona, I used 4 TBS milk (homemade hemp and flax).

Set oven to 350^.

Lay plastic wrap on counter. Form a ball of dough and top with another layer of plastic. Roll out fairly thin. It doesn't have to be see through, but not too think either. 1/8-1/4 inch. (Like I have a ruler out to measure!)

I used a fish cutter, but any shape is fine. It'll taste the same. Trust me.

Let your 4 year old cut out fish.

You will need a Trevor to make Trevor's Goldfish!

Put on baking dish lined with non stick foil (best invention ever) or parchment paper. Bake for 4-6 minutes until golden. Flip and cook 4-6 minutes again.

I made 60 fish with this recipe. On the final picture, on the very bottom is a Pepperidge Farm fish so you can see size difference.

I bought cutters on amazon and they were sold as "clay cutters).