Cranberry Sauce Without The Ick

First things first - this is not my original recipe. All credit for the inspiration goes to Kelly at No Empty Chairs (noemptychairs.me), even the picture is from her blog - I'm sure you all noticed that the picture looked a lot more professional than mine ever do!  With all my medical issues as of late (at least I've a valid reason for not updating this time) I haven't been able to tinker in the kitchen much, instead I scoured the internet for a recipe that was as close to my old, filled with sugar one, that used a natural sweetener like stevia or agave since I've tightened the reins on our diet. No wheat gluten, no artificial anything, no preservatives, no GMOs (as much as I can tell), no anything chemically added to make it pretty that our bodies just flat out don't need. Anyway, with the holidays rapidly approaching, and me without the use of my right arm, it's very tempting to just get a can of the scary cranberry glop stuff rather than making my own like I've done since I started cooking thanksgiving dinner. It may have been tempting, but after I came across this recipe it wasn't anymore.  Big thanks to Kelly and No Empty Chairs for helping a (literally) broken girl out! (I made a few adjustments to make it closer to my old recipe, but I still believe Kelly should get the credit here.)

1/4 cup water 
3/4 cup fresh orange juice (use the orange that you get the zest from - you can play with the oj/water ratio, as long as you have 1 cup of liquid you'll be fine)
1 cup stevia (I use Stevia In The Raw, I think Truvia is the most recognized brand though)**

1 tsp Knox gelatin (if using sugar substitute)

1 cinnamon stick

1 tsp fresh grated orange peel
2 cups fresh or frozen cranberries
Optional - dash of ginger, additional ground Saigon cinnamon. 

Place water in a medium saucepan. Sprinkle gelatin over water and let stand 5 minutes. Heat to a boil. Stir in orange juice, stevia, cinnamon stick and orange peel. Return to a boil; boil 5 minutes. Stir in cranberries, return to a low boil until cranberries pop. Remove from heat and remove cinnamon stick. Serve warm or cold.  I personally prefer to make it a day or two ahead of time and serve it cold, it allows the flavors to really come together that way and nothing is better than a bite of warm turkey with cold cranberry sauce on it. Mmmmm. 

**NOTE: Sugar substitutes vary a lot in sweetness, especially stevia. Start on the low side, a tablespoon at a time; taste cranberry sauce and add more to your taste, if necessary. You can also use part sugar/part stevia if you prefer - Truvia makes a 50/50 stevia/sugar blend called Truvia baking blend that's great to start with if you've never used stevia before. I used that for about 2 months to step us off sugar and artificial sweeteners before going to just stevia. It is a different kind of sweet than refined sugar but now we all (even the 3 year old) prefer the stevia sweet to sugar sweet. 

Black Rice Pudding

At the commissary the other day I noticed black rice.  We use rice fairly often since it's GF and I'm always looking for a new way to make it interesting so I grabbed a bag.  While reading recipes a couple of days later I came across a recipe for black rice pudding.  It sounded interesting so I thought I'd give it a go.  Rice pudding is great for a quick breakfast or a nice treat when you want something sweet - which we all do from time to time!  I read through about 15 different recipes and this is the one I frankensteined together which has received rave reviews around here.

Ingredients:

2 cups uncooked black rice (I used Hinode brand)

1/2-3/4 cup sugar (I use organic cane sugar)

1/4 teaspoon of salt (or less)

1 can of coconut milk

1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg

Cook rice to by package directions.  After rice has cooked and cooled down a bit (I cooked my rice the night before and put it in the fridge overnight.  I don't know why but all the recipes suggested cooling it first, so I did) add all ingredients and stir together well. Allow mixture to come to a boil then reduce heat to low, cover and cook for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until thickened.

I don't have any pictures for this one and I'll be honest, while it was cooking it did not look appetizing - it reminded me a bit of flies in milk.  However, after cooking together it looks nothing like that.  The final product is a dark purple color and tastes uh-mazing!  We had it for breakfast this morning and I'm seriously considering having it for a snack now after typing this up.

Pan Seared Flounder with Garlic Basil Cream Sauce and Zucchini Fries

This is never going to make it on to a list of super healthy meals, however, it does qualify as "clean" (I picked all the herbs and seasonings from my garden and got the closest thing to fresh fish you can get here which is to say I got frozen, wild caught [hopefully] fish) and it was so tasty I almost wish I were able to eat more at one time!  The sauce was my creation and the zucchini fries recipe is one that's been floating around my Facebook feed for the last week or so, I thought they'd pair well together and they did.  Flounder was the first fish I saw in the freezer, was just good luck that it worked out so well.

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Zucchini Fries
Ingredients:

• 1 lb fresh zucchini
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese (I used Parmesan/Romano because that's what I had on hand)
• 2/3-1 cup Hodgson Mill Gluten Free Seasoned Coating Mix (the original recipe calls for one packet of Shake N Bake, I had to improvise a bit to make this GF)
• 1 medium egg

Heat oven to 450 F.  Clean and trim zucchini then cut into 1/4 inch sticks.  Mix cheese and coating mix together in ziplock bag (or shaker bag if you're using the Shake N Bake) and shake gently to combine completely, set aside.  Whisk egg in a medium bowl, add zucchini and toss to coat.  Use tongs (or wear gloves and use your hands.  I swear I use as many gloves in the kitchen as a doctor does in surgery) to place 1/4 of the zucchini in the shaker bag; close bag and shake to evenly coat.  Remove coated zucchini and place on baking sheet lined with parchment paper (or sprayed with cooking spray if you prefer), repeat with remaining zucchini.  Bake 12-14 minutes, till golden.  Turn pan 180 degrees to ensure even baking.

Flounder and Sauce
Ingredients:

• 2 lbs thawed Flounder
• 1/2 stick unsalted butter (I use Challenge brand butter, and yes I ONLY use butter, never margarine)
• 5 small/medium garlic cloves (the ones from the garden are never huge like the ones you see in stores
• 1/3 cup finely diced onion
• basil, basil, basil!  I used a combination of Greek, Sweet, Thai, Boxwood and Genovese (we like basil quite a bit, I've got tons of it growing here)
• lemon thyme - I diced the basils and thyme together and the amount was about 1/3-1/2 cup, used equal amount of each herb
• apx 2/3 can fat free canned milk (Pet milk)
• grapeseed oil

Melt butter in medium skillet, add whole cloves of garlic and let cook on low heat till soft enough to easily smash with a fork (I think I let it cook about 10 minutes).  Once garlic has softened remove from butter, smash and return to butter, add onion and cook for 2 minutes.  Onion should be diced small enough that it softens and cooks quite quickly. Add the basil/thyme combination and cook for 1 more minute before adding milk.  Increase temperature and stir continuously till it just begins to boil then remove from heat.  The butter and milk will separate as soon as you stop stirring, this is fine just stir again before serving. 

While garlic is cooking sear fish in a separate skillet with a bit of grapeseed oil, turn once then cover to cook through, about 4-6 minutes - fish cooks very quickly.  I cooked 4 pieces at a time and was done about the time that the garlic had softened for the sauce.  

The butter obviously makes this not the most healthy way to eat but with all the basil only a bit of goes a long way and the basil/thyme seasoning adds a flavor that was unbeatable.  Planing on using the leftover sauce tomorrow with some GF Orzo pasta for dinner tomorrow.

Shrimp and Crawfish Étouffée

Ingredients:
 1/3 cup vegetable oil
 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
 1 small green bell pepper, diced
 1 medium onion, chopped
 2 cloves garlic, minced
 2 stalks celery, diced
 2 fresh tomatoes, chopped
 2 tablespoons Louisiana-style hot sauce
 1/3 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper (optional)
 2 tablespoons seafood seasoning
 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
 1 cup fish stock
 1 pound crawfish tails
 1 pound medium shrimp - peeled and deveined


Directions:

1. Heat the oil in a heavy skillet over medium heat. Gradually stir in flour, and stir constantly until the mixture  turns 'peanut butter' brown or darker, at least 15 or 20 minutes. I use a large fork with the flat side to the bottom of the pan in a side to side motion. This is your base sauce or 'Roux'. It is very important to stir this constantly. If by chance the roux burns, discard and start over.

2. Once the roux is browned, add the onions, garlic, celery and bell pepper to the skillet, and saute for about 5 minutes to soften. Stir in the chopped tomatoes and fish stock, and season with the seafood seasoning. Reduce heat to low, and simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

3.  Season the sauce with hot pepper sauce and cayenne pepper (if using), and add the crawfish and shrimp. Cook for about 10 minutes, or until the shrimp are opaque.


NOTE:  If you are not from the south or unaccustomed to eating spice food reduce the Louisiana-style pepper sauce to 2 TEASPOONS (or less) and omit cayenne pepper

Honey Roasted Peanut Butter Cookies

Yeah, I know.  It's not gluten free, or sugar free...  But peanut butter is high in protein and sometimes you just need a treat!  If you use bread flour rather than traditional all purpose it'll raise the protein count a smidge more.

INGREDIENTS
- 1 cup light brown sugar
- 3/4 cup honey roasted peanut butter (Peter Pan)
- 1/2 cup butter, softened
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
- 1 egg
- 1 1/2 cup flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
powdered sugar (to coat fork when you press dough balls flat)

DIRECTIONS

- Preheat oven to 375.
- Line 2 ungreased cookie sheets with parchment paper.
- Beat together sugar, peanut butter, vanilla, butter, and egg on medium     speed until creamy.
- Blend in flour and baking soda on low speed until well-blended.
- Shape dough into 1-1 1/2 inch balls. Place dough balls onto cookie sheets.
- Flatten in criss-cross pattern with a fork dipped in powdered sugar.
- Bake for 6-9 minutes or until set.
- Cool on cookie sheet until cookies can be moved (about 2 minutes).
- Move to wire rack to finish cooling.


I do mine in 2 batches because I've only got one true cookie sheet (no sides) and it turns out fine.  When these come out you'll think they're not done because they are VERY soft and have to set up for a couple of minutes before you remove them from the pan, I believe it's due to the honey roasted peanut butter being softer than regular peanut butter.  Bob's Red Mill All Purpose GF baking mix should sub in perfectly, I just didn't have any extra to play with and that stuff costs a fortune.  The parchment paper is a must with as soft as these are.  I bake them for about 7.5 minutes but every oven is different.  I don't know anyone that won't eat a peanut butter cookie even when it's a little overdone anyway.

Chicken Wings & Blue Cheese Dressing

I'm a bit strange, which most people already know. One of my stranger quirks is that I can not stand to eat meat off the bone.  Any time I do I start to all I can think about is tendons and muscles and... Ugh, it's all downhill from there.  Due to this, the fact that blue cheese is a fairly nasty migraine trigger and a Denny's experience that I won't make anyone suffer through I've never really given much thought to coming up with any sort of blue cheese dressing recipe.  Since cutting gluten completely out of my sons diet I've come to find that gluten is almost EVERYTHING, including most salad dressings and sauces.  I may not like chicken (even when it's not on a bone, I don't much care for it), however, my family are all nuts for chicken in any form but wings seem to be their favorite.  Any fool can make chicken wings, seriously.  Snip the tips off the end of the wings (toss those in a bag to put in the freezer to boil for chicken stock when you've gotten enough of them), season them and pop them in the oven. Some of the preferred seasonings around here are garlic, ranch, parmesan (garlic powder, Hidden Valley Ranch seasoning powder and parmesan cheese), sweet and spicy (Frank's Red Hot Sweet Chili Sauce - most of the Frank's products are GF) and good ole fashioned BBQ sauce (there are several that are GF and even a few of those are HFCS free as well - Mc Cormick Grill Mates fits that double bill and tastes amazing).  Put the seasoned wings on a cookie sheet, even just a lil salt and pepper works, stick them in a preheated oven at 400 for 45-60 minutes.  If you line the sheet with foil or parchment paper it makes clean up a breeze!  Earlier this week I was asked to get some blue cheese dressing to go with wings, of course, everything available at the commissary had gluten in it so I went to work reading recipes and what I came up with was considered one of my best creations yet.  Even I liked it, and after the Denny's incident I never thought I'd even attempt to eat it again.


AWESOME GLUTEN FREE BLUE CHEESE DRESSING/DIP

1/2 Cup Mayo (not salad dressing, real mayo - it's a breeze to make)
1/2 Cup sour cream
2 Tbsp buttermilk
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp fresh chopped chives (or 1/2 Tbsp of dried chives)
1/4 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1/4-1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp fresh ground black pepper
1/4 tsp garlic powder
2 oz blue cheese crumbles (heaped up half cup)

Combine mayo, sour cream and milk until smooth. Stir in vinegar, Worcestershire, sugar, salt, pepper, chives and garlic till well blended. Fold in cheese crumbles. Transfer into container with a tight sealing lid and chill until serving time.  The longer it chills the better it is.  Dressing will keep for about a week in the refrigerator.

Creamed Corn / Corn Pudding

I'm terrible at measuring when I'm tossing things together in the kitchen, so this is just a guestimate on the amounts here but after the first time I made this it's been often requested.  It's so easy and it can be converted to a good rib-stickin' breakfast on cold mornings, so I don't complain about it.  Back when we lived in Tennesucky I could get fresh corn from an Amish fruit & veggie stand for almost nothing and it was SO amazing that I would buy up tons of it, roast it, but it off the cobs and freeze it for later use.  When I got up to about 12 gallon size freezer bags I decided I needed to come up with something to do with all of it, so voila! Creamed corn that turns into corn pudding for breakfast.  As I said earlier, I'm horrible at measuring on the fly, I'd use about 2/3 of the bag - probably about the equivalent of about 4 drained cans of whole kernel corn.  If you're going with canned get the yellow and white mixed vateity, it has the best flavoring of all the canned corns in my opinion.

3-4 cans of whole kernel corn, drained
3 Tbsp butter (or non-dairy equivalent)
3 Tbsp GF all-purpose flour
2 cups milk (I use one can of Pet milk and 1/2 cup of regular milk.  I've used almond milk to make sausage gravy before and it worked like a champ so I'm sure it'd work well for this as well.
1/2 tsp of honey
salt and pepper to taste.  I find that a dash of cayenne pepper, dash of white pepper and a dash of Worcestershire black pepper

1.  Melt butter in saucepan, stir in flour and blend well.
2.  Add milk, about 1/2 cup at a time, and blend with whisk.
3.  Cook over medium heat until thickened.
4.  Stir in sugar, salt and pepper.
5.  Add cooked, drained corn.
6.  Stir together and let cool before serving.

To turn this tasty dish into an even tastier breakfast the next day it's quite simple.  There are no set measurements since there is no way to determine how much left over there will be so I'm going to guess this for having half the recipe left over from the night before.

Put cold cream corn in deep skillet, add 2 Tbsp of brown sugar (I prefer dark, but light works just as well) 1/2 - 3/4 tsp Saigon cinnamon, 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg and 1/8 tsp of ground cloves.  Mix together while warming corn, serve when brown sugar has dissolved.  Since the amount of leftover corn is always unknown these are just suggestions and should be adjusted to your tastes.