Free Free Free Oatmeal Cookies

Freedom!

So last week I found myself hours before our big preschool general meeting for parent teacher training, with no time nor energy to hit the grocery store with three tired and grumpy little men, and a promise to be fulfilled of a gluten free dairy free nut free treat for the meeting that night. A local pie shop had donated pies, so I was filling a void in the refreshment table. I had planned to make oatmeal cookies...but dairy free meant no butter. And then when I got going I realized that we had eaten all of the eggs that morning. So now we're looking at a gluten free, dairy free, nut free, egg free dessert. Mouthwatering, right?

Turns out, these Free Free Free Oatmeal cookies are thankfully not free of deliciousness! If you have eggs in the house you can sub an egg for the chia/water combo. I probably will - but it's handy to know that you don't have to have eggs on hand to make a totally yummy cookie!

Free Free Free Oatmeal cookies (adapted from the Non Dairy Queen)

1/2 cup white rice flour

1/4 cup millet flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

8 TBSP softened coconut oil

6 TBSP packed brown sugar

6 TBSP coconut sugar

1 tbsp chia seeds rehydrated in 3 tbsp water until gelled (or an egg)

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/4 cups gluten free oats

1/2 cups raisins

3/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Stir the flours, baking soda, and salt together in a bowl and set aside. Cream together the coconut oil and sugars until light and fluffy. Beat in chia gel and vanilla. Dump the flour mixture into the sugar mixture and beat just until combined. Remove bowl from mixer and stir in the oats (you can chop them a bit in the food processor to have less a chunky texture, but don't grind them into oat flour), raisins, and coconut just until combined. Scoop small balls of dough onto Silpat sheets or Parchment paper about 1 inch apart. Press just a bit on the dough balls so they form a nice looking round cookie. Bake until they are golden brown but still soft to the touch (about 16-18 minutes). Don't overbake - they will crisp up more while cooling. Cool on the cookie sheets and then transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling completely. Try not to eat them all before the meeting....or double the recipe.

Yummy Basic Tomato Sauce

This is a chicken coop, my favorite item in the whole show. That's right...surrounded by multi-million dollar homes,
but I covet the lovely, fancy chicken mansion filled with the world's smallest chickens.

Yesterday I spent 2 1/2 hours at the Northwest Naturals Street of Dreams with my oldest son, Gabe. Basically they build a bunch of super fancy multi-million dollar tricked out houses and then let the general public wander through them barefoot for weeks before some lucky person gets to buy them and move in. Although, I don't think I'd want to have to clean all that lovely fully decorated space. If anyone wants to help me build that chicken coop though...

Gabe is a sweet, odd duck child who actually really loves touring real estate. We discovered this interest when we were shopping for our home and he was cracking up the realtors with his exclamations over closet space and storage options. Two and a half hours of look but don't touch with Ben and Max would've killed (me), but Gabe was pretty much thrilled with everything. These homes had secret rooms, waterslides, guest casitas, and really big bathrooms. One shower had a actual rock in it, like the big ones around man-made fountains. I told him he can have a rock in his shower when he grows up and buys his own house. He especially loved how every room had 1...or 2 or 3 TVs. In the first home we toured he entered the Master bedroom and exclaimed...very loudly, "They can DO IT in here!!". I asked him (quickly and loudly for the sake of snickering adults all around me), 'Do what, honey?" "Watch TV!!" he shouted with glee!

Since we were just a few minutes from my favorite veggie stand in Milwaukee, Gabe and I took a jaunt to Justy's, where I bought about 70 pounds of tomatoes that were ready to can, grown in Justy's own no spray garden for $48. Because after spending the hottest part of the day hiking up a hill to tours huge houses that all seemed to have a minimum of two staircases to climb, hauling 70 pounds of tomatoes to the van so I can cook tomatoes all afternoon and evening sounds like fun, right? Whatever, the tomatoes were purchased, so it was time to put up some sauce.

I actually did most of them as diced or crushed tomatoes to use in cooking, stored in pint jars. Spaghetti sauce takes real time, and I'm kind of impatient about getting onto the canning. Just cook the crushed toms down a bit with a little salt, jar them up with a TBSP of lemon juice and can them...fastest way to get tomatoes in the can, ready for you to make something out of them later. You'll totally have more time later! Right? Bueller?

I normally do up spaghetti sauce with tons of stuff, but I kept it pretty simple this time, sicne it was already 3 in the afternoon and I was pretty tired. I think we actually like it better this way! The sauce was so tasty - I think I'll can it this way from now on, and add extra stuff later when I'm actually cooking the dinner...with all that extra time I'll have. Sweet!

Basic Tomato Sauce
15 lbs of tomatoes cored and quartered
6 onions peeled and quartered
6 (or more) cloves of garlic smashed and peeled
3 ribs celery
3 carrots (or two big handfuls of baby carrots...ahem)
Italian herbs to taste - I did two handfuls of fresh basil, a palmful of Italian Seasoning, a half palmful of oregano and a palmful of dried basil.
Extra palmfuls of Onion Powder and Garlic Powder if you are so inclined (and I am)
3 TBPS salt (I use this kind)
Maybe a pinch of Red Pepper flake if you like a bit of bite in your sauce
2 tsp. Xylitol (or you could do 2 TBSP of regular old sugar)
Bottles lemon juice or Apple Cider vinegar

I do not peel tomatoes. Like ever. So I blitz the tomatoes a few at a time in my food processor until they were pureed and added them to my biggest pot...and them eventually my two biggest pots. I need a bigger pot. If you care, go ahead and blanch and peel those tomatoes first. You'll add hoursok maybe not hours to your prep time and our sauces will taste the same.

Keep those tomatoes simmering away and reducing while you blitz the onions, garlic, celery, and carrots. I bring them to almost puree point too. Add about half to each of your pots. Keep on simmering, stirring occasionally. Add herbs and seasonings...keep on simmering. We added a bit of Xylitol, which is a sugar alcohol, but you could use sugar or honey - it helps to mellow the acid bite of the sauce.

I simmered my sauce, stirring occasionally for over 2 hours. I made a batch of salsa and started canning it during that time. The sauce changes color, becoming gradually darker and thicker the longer you cook it. I'd like to cook it even longer, but I'm too impatient. Next time I'll have to try the slow cooker!

Finally, for my texture issues boy, I give it an extra blitz with my stick blender to make sure that it's nice and smooth.

When I water bath can it I add a TBSP of bottled lemon juice to each hot jar (to help ensure the PH is up where it should be for canning). Fill with sauce leaving 1/2" at the top and process 25 minutes for pints and 35 for quarts. Try not to eat it all at once.

Who's ready to Salsa?

Hello, friends and family! I'm back - and I know it's been like a year since I blogged for you...I'm a Facebook instant update slacker. And an Instagram addict. It's shameful, but there you have it, mostly because it's instant and I can do it from my phone with little chance of the boys getting out of hand. I have been doing a good job on regularly blogging about my stamping shenanigans over at Stamping Rules!, so I am (once again) going to try really hard to be a better life blogger over here. 'Cause I'm not so sure that all my stamping buddies want my crazy boy stories and recipes like I'm going to share today.

Gratuitous picture of boys playing in a fountain for friends and family who haven't seen them lately.

Today we are talking Canning, canning salsa in particular. In a few days we'll be hosting a few friends for a canning party! One Mom is going to wrangle the kiddos (nine of them, yep - we're nuts!) while three of us can salsa as fast as moms can move, which is pre-tty darn fast. Since this is one friend's first time canning, she needs help (plus it's way more fun to be hot and sweaty over the canning pot with lots of friends and snacks made with bacon jam), so I needed to share my recipe. When I do that 6 people will want it from Facebook (since I'm constantly posting Instagrams of food and boys there). So I decided to blog it for posterity...and next year's canning efforts. Last year I did 4 different recipes to see which we liked best...and this year I have no idea what any of them are. Sigh. So this week I canned salsa in preparation for Salsa Day. Totally scientifically just for that reason and not because we ran out of salsa in April and I've been dying to make more.

Here's a bit of info on why I do salsa this way. Remember, I am not a food scientist, so I do not know it all, but I do read a lot, study a lot, and cook A LOT, so take it all with a grain of salt...or a squeeze of lime!

In canning, the way I understand it, you heat the tomatoes to kill off any current undesirable residents of your salsa making efforts (i.e. wee beasties that'll make you ill...). You have the acid in place to prohibit the formation of new wee beasties as it sits on your pantry shelf waiting to be eaten. All good so far...but I really, really dislike a vinegary salsa. I did one batch last year with the fully recommended amount of vinegar, and Salsa Batch #2 was not popular. I read that as it sits the vinegar taste will mellow...but not enough in my opinion. I want to eat SALSA, not salsa flavored vinegar. And I love lime. Notice John doesn't get a vote. When he spends days tending a steaming canning pot to make a years worth of salsa, he can vote on the flavor. For now he can just eat the salsa...which he does...without complaining to me. Ahem.

Anyhow, the bottom line is that in my research it seems that the final pH of the jar is important, and processing it long enough is important, but the vinegar...weeeelll, that seems to be important because natural citrus varies in pH so you can't guarantee 100% that your salsa will be acidified enough, even though probably, likely it's fine. We ate 40 pounds of salsa put up mostly sans vinegar last year and we were fine. gluten kills us, but the salsa didn't hurt a bit!

This year, after another year of research and much salsa recipe reading, I did mine per the recipe below. It's got a ton of lime, a smidge of vinegar to hedge my bets, and plenty of processing time. If you're nervous, double the vinegar. Want more spice? Scroll down to the bottom. Hate cilantro? It's a shame, but just leave it out!

This makes a thinner, restaurant style salsa - if you take the time to chop things chunkier or reduce it down further you'll get a thicker texture. But then you can't drink it right out of the jar...if you are so inclined. Which I am...chips just get in the way! And if you're planning to eat it fresh right away (like you need gallons of salsa for a party) just leave out the vinegar. Yum!

Super Mild but Flavorful Salsa Recipe (makes about 12 pints with a bit extra for testing)
15 pounds tomatoes, washed and quartered
1 large bunch cilantro
6 Anaheim Chiles or bell peppers or something mild
6-12 jalapenos - get big ones if you want them mild, I use 12, but you can do less
1 head of garlic cloves, peeled
4 large onions, peeled and quartered
4 TSBP Salt - I like Real Salt
Juice of 4-6 really juicy limes...I did not measure...if you get a dry one, add another
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar - I used Braggs 

I used a food processor to chop everything. I didn't skin my tomatoes, just gave them a good wash and quartered them. We didn't find the skins to be a texture issue for us, so I just saved a step. If you want to be all proper you can peel your tomatoes...have fun with that!

Core and quarter your tomatoes a few at a time. Process until well chopped in small batches (makes it easier and faster for the processor to do more smaller batches) and pour into a fine strainer over a glass bowl. The goal is to drain off the juice/tomato water. Save it though - you can reduce it down and add it back in for a tomato flavor boost!

Cook the tomato juices in a large pot until reduced by half. I just kept adding the juice to the pot every so often as I chopped the tomatoes. Solids into one pot, liquids in another. Get everything cooking over low heat - and keep an eye on the juice, because it will can foam over.

Yum...tomato water... if you don't feel like cooking it down you could drain the tomatoes and dump the juice.
You'll get less salsa per batch, but I won't tell.

Get back to chopping - chunk up your mild peppers (not the jalapenos yet), the garlic, the onions...everything gets a turn in the food processor, then added to the pot of tomato solids. Toss in handfuls of cilantro to process with other things - it's easier to process a bit at a time.

Jalapenos need extra safety instructions. You should use gloves to avoid getting jalapeno in your eyes, which is not good. But I'm a rebel, and I do not have gloves at my house. So I use a fork and knife to slice off the outer cheeks of the jalapeno and remove most of the seeds/ribs. I'm not super picky about it, and the salsa is still mild. If you want more kick, leave in the seeds and ribs and just use the knife/fork combo to slice off the stem. Transfer to the food processor using the knife and fork - do not pick it up with your fingers and risk the burning eyes!

Once everything is finely chopped and in the pot I add the salt, juice the limes in, and the vinegar. Bring it to a boil. Hopefully your tomato juice is also boiling and reducing. Stand around stirring your pots until the juice is reduced to a thin, tomato sauce type consistency. Stir the sauce back into the salsa. While you're waiting, prep your jars for canning.

I only own a big old-fashioned pot for canning. It has a jar rack and I have the jar lifting tongs, so it works just fine for me. You can sterilize your jars in the boiling canning pot, which for me does 8 jars at a time. Mmmm hmmm. Or you can load all your clean jars, brand new lids (no reusing last years lids), and rings into the top of the dishwasher and run a load with no soap and the drying cycle on to get your jars hot and ready. You've got your big canning pot filled with water and bubbling away, right?

There are tons of resources on the web for canning tomatoes and salsa, so I'm just going to do a brief overview. Once my jars are hot and my salsa is bubbling away at a nice consistency (which is up to you...I leave mine pretty loose, but you can reduce it down to your favorite thickness), I set up a filling assembly line. I use wide mouth jars (so I can freeze in them without cracking if need be - they get used for lots of things around here). I pop the funnel onto a jar, and ladle in the salsa goodness leaving a half inch of room at the top. Wipe the jar top clean if need be (but the funnel helps a LOT with keeping the jar clean on top), and pop on a fresh lid. Secure with a ring, using a towel to keep from burning my hands.  Line up the freshly ringed and lidded jars in groups of 8 or whatever your canning pot will hold.

Once the first group of eight is ready I put them into the pot right away. Set a timer (ALWAYS set the timer!!) and process for 30 minutes for pints and 45 minutes for quarts. I do pints so I can drink out of them without making a mess of myself, like a spicy Mexican gazpacho. You do what you gotta do. If I forget to set the timer, then I just start it when I remember it and do the 30 minutes anyways - we're killing wee beasties here!

While waiting I keep working on making more salsa, filling more jars, playing Bejewled Blitz on my phonewiping up tomato juice, you get the picture... Once the timer beeps I Pull the jars out to line up on towels I've laid across the counter top to cool. I usually leave them there overnight, just for convenience. I check the seals in the morning - the lids should all have sunk in and be firmly attached to the jars. If so, I take off the ring, toss it back in my ring basket, and load the jars back into the original boxes from whence they came for easy storage in my pantry. OK, not in this pic, but really I do - no sense in buying tons of rings when you don't need them for storage. Anything that didn't seal (which has never happened yet, knock on wood) can get eaten that day go into the fridge to be eaten in the next couple of weeks. I try to put up a pint (or two) for every week until the next tomato season, depending on time and budget. Put up more than you think you need - you'll eat more if it's there and this good. Really.

Whoa, Lady, what about the spicy salsa? 
Ok - You can do a few things to amp up the spiciness of the salsa easily. Pick your poison.

1. Use the whole jalapeno instead of just the cheeks.
2. Instead of jalapenos, use serranos. Or habaneros if you want to go crazy.
3. Add more peppers in general - but if you up the overall pepper/onion/non-tomato content, you'll need to up the acid content...which means more vinegar, my nemesis.
4. Or my favorite way is to add dried chipotles. I love the bit of smoky flavor, and the fact that it doesn't add more peppers (i.e. volume) per se, so it requires no additional acid. I rehydrate two or four dried chipotles (or however many you need to burn your tonsils off...or you can get some way hotter dried peppers too) in a ladleful of the tomato juice we are reducing. After ten minutes or so I blitz that in the food processor until it's good and fine and pour that into my salsa to add the heat. I'm still keeping it pretty chill - not quite medium with 4 chipotles to a batch I'd say, but the heat is there, pleasantly building in the background. 
5. Or you could be lazier still and blitz up a couple of chipotle in adobe sauce from a can. No rehydrating, and spicier in the sauce than the dried. 

And now a few more random shots of the boys for friends and family who did not know I was going to write all about salsa today. I'll try to blog at least once a week. Maybe with recipes...we'll see how it goes. Miss y'all and sending lots of love!

Max and his Koch rooster friend. It's not our statue and I don't know where you can buy one.

Ben finger painting...before he got messy.

Gabe got in the fountain and got wet. Yippee!

GF Chocolate Cupcakes

So before Max was obsessed with Day of the Diesels, he loved Elmo, which is why we planned the Elmo theme for his party. But when I trotted off to the party stores locally looking for Elmo swag for his party, the shelves were bare. Apparently you are supposed to plan ahead for parties and order stuff weeks in advance. I'm like - it's just a two year old birthday party, not a wedding dudes! So I grabbed the last couple packs of (overpriced) Elmo plates form the shelf and crafted a bunch of Elmo's using my Cricut. You can find more on the Elmo craft here at my Stamping Rules blog. What we really want to chat about here is cake!


We've experimented with a bunch of GF cupcake recipes in the last year. All have been...ok. The texture is...ok. The flavor is...ok. I wouldn't not eat them, but what we really missed was a yummy, chocolate-y cupcake. And now we have one. This is a cupcake I'd eat whether or not it's gluten free!


Chocolate Cupcakes with Vanilla Creme Filling 
(Adapted from Cakes N Bakes)


Cupcakes:
1 cup GF Flour Mix (I used Gluten Free Mama's Almond Blend)
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 tsp xanthan gum
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk, room temperature
3/4 cup Coconut sugar
1/3 cup melted Coconut oil
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract


Filling: 
6 Tbsp unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup + 2 Tbsp confectioners’ sugar
3/4 tsp vanilla extract
pinch salt
1 small jar GF marshmallow fluff ( I said tasty and GF - not healthy)

For the cakes:
Preheat oven to 350°F and line a 12-tin muffin pan with paper liners.

In a medium bowl, thoroughly whisk together the dry ingredients. Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat together buttermilk, coconut sugar, coconut oil, and vanilla for 1 minute on medium speed. Turning down to low speed, add the dry ingredients in 3 separate additions, making sure the mixture is fully incorporated after each addition.

Fill muffin liners approximately 2/3 full with batter and bake for 18 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a cake comes out clean.

Cool cupcakes for 5 minutes in pan before transferring them onto a wire rack to cool completely.

For the filling:
In a medium bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until smooth and creamy. Add in vanilla and salt. Mix in the marshmallow fluff, beating and scraping down mixture frequently until fully incorporated. Cover filling and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

I like the Pampered Chef Easy Accents Decorator for filling and frosting cupcakes. As a matter of fact, I plan to get a second one so that I don't have to clean it out between steps! Fill your pastry cone (or the Decorator) and pipe the filling into the cooled cupcakes. You want to be sure to get enough in there - the power of the Decorator makes that part easier). I like to look for the top of the cake to rise up a bit, and you should be able to see the filling at the top.

Frosting: Cakes N Bakes did a Hostess cupcakes style chocolate ganache for the topping, but around here we lean towards a cream cheese/buttercream combo frosting for pretty much anything that's not nailed Down. yum!

Our Favorite Frosting:

1 package cream cheese, room temp
1 stick of butter, room temp
2 1/2 cups Powdered sugar
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

Beat butter and cream cheese together until lumps are gone. Add in powdered sugar and vanilla and beat until smooth and creamy. Frost away!

Better than Goldfish Cheese Crackers

My boys love cheese crackers. When we went gluten free, cheese crackers were one of the biggest sticking points. And not just any crackers...goldfish crackers. How did goldfish become such a childhood staple? Even when Gabe wouldn't eat a bit of other food, he's accept a goldfish or two. I think if you tested the carpet in my van it would be 40% goldfish cracker. There were fine with no more PB&J sandwiches, didn't make a peep about giving up their favorite cookies...but the whining over the goldfish was never ending.

 So I started checking out how to make crackers on the web. Gluten free, tasty cheese crackers. After a few batches of experimentation, we've hit on a combo of recipes that works really well for us, and the boys love them! It's a bit of work, and certainly not as inexpensive as buying goldfish crackers...but now when  give them a handful of crackers as part of their snack, I know what kind of ingredients are in there, and I can feel good about that. Plus a small handful (ten or so) of these fills them up in a way that the never ending self-serve snackie cup of goldfish never did! Now if I could just find a teensy tiny goldfish cracker cutter... 

Better than Goldfish Crackers

4 oz shredded cheese (we use a combo of cheddar and Kerrygold Dubliner - strong is good here)

4 tablespoons cultured butter

3/4 cup cornstarch or potato starch or arrowroot

1/4 tsp salt

2 tablespoons milk or half & half

Optional: salt for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a backing sheet, or I use a silpat instead.

Combine all ingredients except milk in the food processor and pulse until it is fine crumbs. Pulse in a little milk at a time until you have a smooth dough.

You can roll them out on a lightly greased surface (the dough is sticky) but I've had good luck splitting the dough into two gallon sized bags and rolling it out there. Then I put the bags into the fridge for 30 minutes to an hour (or until I remember I was making crackers). You slit the bag down the sides and there's your nicely shaped square of dough.

I've just been taking a sharp knife and cutting the crackers into squares. I've found the boys like the crackers best at about 1/2" squares. Larger sizes are less crispy but very tasty. After cutting the squares, take a fork and pierce lightly all over the dough, then sprinkle with your favorite sea salt if desired. We use a brand called Real Salt.

Then I transfer the crackers to the silpat in batches and bake off for 9 minutes or so, until the crackers a lightly golden brown and crispy. Watch it closely; they can go from not quite done to burned in a heart beat or at least in the time it takes to break up a tussle over who gets that Buzz Lightyear doll. You want to pull them before they are really browned or you'll get burned crackers anyhow. Transfer to a rack to cool completely and store in an airtight container to retain crispiness.Try not to eat them all the first day, and watch for little poachers on the cooling racks!

Best Pot Roast Ever!

Oh my gosh. I've been cooking pot roast once a week or so for months now. This week we finally hit on the perfect recipe for us. The seasonings are based on Ina Garten's company Pot Roast recipe. I made it in the crock pot, and it was so tender and yummy. The boys scarfed it down with none of the usual whining (not that they don't like roast, it just seems like dinner time is whiny time). Max had a double helping. John, who professes to not like beef, admitted it was tasty. And best of all, Gabe ate his WITHOUT KETCHUP...and no, that wasn't a pig that just flew over my head. This is now my go to method for cooking a pot roast. Yum!




1 (4 to 5-pound) grass fed beef roast
Real sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Coconut Oil
4 rough chopped carrots

2 chopped yellow onions

4 stalks rough chopped celery

2 rough chopped parsnips (or turnips or whatever root veg you like)

5 large cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed

1 cup red wine

1 jar tomato sauce (I used Trader Joe's Bolognese)

2 cups chicken stock, preferably homemade

1 tablespoon dried thyme

1 teaspoon dried rosemary


Heat some coconut oil in a cast iron skillet. Pat the beef dry with a paper towel. Season the roast all over with salt and pepper. Add the roast to the pan and sear for 4 to 5 minutes, until nicely browned. Turn and sear the other side and then turn and sear the ends. This should take 4 to 5 minutes for each side. Remove the roast to a large crock pot. Toss in veggies, tomato sauce, and dried herbs.

Add chicken stock to the pan and deglaze. Pour into crock pot over roast and veg. Cook on low 8 hours or until falling apart tender. Shred meat and serve with Crock pot juices and stewed veggies. Enjoy!

Banana Pudding "Pie"



Little blast from the past: Gabe & Ben in November 2009

 In our first ever gluten free Thanksgiving, I am testing and saving recipes to use for years to come. It's a little bittersweet, giving up the old traditions (good bye pie crust and rolls), but it feels good to know that I'm giving the boys treats that are better for them. Plus since we all tend to have intestinal issues when exposed to gluten now, it's a big plus to know we aren't going to spend the hours after our feast feeling terrible and dealing with clean-up-on-aisle-twelve!

One thing my hubby loves at the holidays is Banana Cream Pie. That was an easy enough fix - just ditch the crust. But since we are avoiding processed foods too (gluten contamination, too many chemicals), we wanted to make the "pie" from scratch. I pulled together a couple of recipes, and came up with this. Thank you to Paula Deen for the addition of the butter...yum-o! Now if we can quit "testing" the pie, maybe there will still be some left after dinner!

Ingredients:

3/4 cup coconut sugar

2 tablespoons cornstarch or arrowroot

3 cups whole milk or half n half

4 egg yolks

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 ounces (1/2 stick) pastured, cultured butter

4 medium bananas, squashed (or pureed)

2 medium bananas, sliced

Mix together sugar and starch then slowly blend in the milk. This probably should be cooked in the top of a double boiler, but I cooked it over very low heat, stirring constantly until it thickens a lot--do not leave it unattended (especially at the end). Slightly beat egg yolks and temper with a small amount of the hot custard; stir well. Blend egg mixture into custard pot and cook 2 more minutes. Remove from heat and add vanilla and butter plus 2 of the squished bananas.  I always let the boys squish bananas in baggies so they are "helping". Let cool. Lay sliced bananas in the bottom of a 9 inch pie plate or baking dish. Top with the squished bananas - like a banana crust! Pour in custard and let set in the fridge. Add whipped topping for serving, if desired.

Chinese noodles are delicious!

One of the boys' favorite things to eat is Chow Mein Noodles. It's the go to choice if we're out at any type of food court setting - they will always eat the noodles, and they both love broccoli, too. But the fast food stuff is so bad for you - so I've been experimenting with making Chinese noodles at home. It's been a big hit! It's way lower in fat and I load it up with lots of veggies. I use a mandoline to slice at the veggies super thin. They wolf it down with nary a complaint - a nice change of pace where Gabe is concerned!

Tonight Baby Max got in on the noodle action. He shoveled in as many noddles as he could at once, so I had to give them to him a couple at a time to prevent suffocation by Chinese noodle, but he ate almost as many noodles as Gabe did! Since he's mostly rejecting the sippy cup and baby food, it's nice to know there's something the little guy can eat without spitting up!

Here's our recipe:

1/2 cup Chicken or veggie broth, divided in half
1 tbsp cornstarch
2 tbsp canola oil
1/2 cup cashews
1 pinch crushed red pepper flakes
8 ounces sliced mushrooms
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
4 green onions, sliced
2 carrots, finely sliced
2 stalks celery, finely sliced
1 zucchini, quartered, then finely sliced
1 tbsp garlic, minced
1 tsp ginger, minced
1 bunch broccoli, steamed and chopped into small bites
1/2 head napa cabbage, shredded
4 tbsp soy sauce (low sodium)
2 tbsp mirin or rice wine vinegar
1 package chow mein noddles - not the crunchy ones for salads, the white steamed ones in a cake

Boil off the noodles and drain; set aside.

Combine half the broth with the cornstarch; set aside.

In a wok or a large pan (I use my biggest soup pot), saute mushrooms in canola oil until browned. Tosh in cashews a minute or so before the mushrooms are done. Transfer mushrooms and cashews to a bowl.

Heat sesame oil in same pan. Toss in all veggies except cabbage. Stirfry for a minute or so to soften veggies. Add cabbage, garlic, and ginger, cook one minute more to wilt cabbage. Stir in remaining broth, red pepper flake, soy, mirin, and cornstarch mixture.  Cook stirring until sauce coats veggies, about a minute. Add noodles and toss to combine.

I usually grind a bit of black pepper over the adult portions before serving. You could probably just toss on some bottled teriyaki stuff too to save the effort. Yum-o!