Gluten Free Thanksgiving Dinner - Yum!!!

Well, Thanksgiving is all over with. We had a great time with family and lots o' food. Here are a few pictures from our meal.



We had cheese and crackers and deviled eggs for appetizer. Tim and I were really looking forward to the special cheeses. We had creamy havarti, dill havarti, Dubliner, Gruyere, and blue. Of course, most blues are started on wheat bread, so be careful about eating blue cheese.






Then we started the meal out with a fresh julienne veggie salad with a homemade raspberry vinaigrette and popovers. I used the popover recipe from the Gluten Free Gourmet Bakes Bread. They didn’t “pop” a lot, but they tasted just like their glutenful partners.




We got out our china for this special meal. I just love the look of our accent plates!




The main course consisted of too much food. We had a beef roast with lots of onions, mashed garlic sweet potatoes...




green bean casserole...




Carrie’s sweet corn pudding, cranberry salad...




and cranberry sauce.






Then, much later in the day, we had our dessert: raspberry cranberry pie and chocolate pie. Can you tell that we like cranberries in my family?




For breakfast this morning we had fruit soup (a family tradition) and a Swedish coffee cake from the Gluten Free Gourmet Makes Comfort Food that really turned out great! I’ll definitely be making that recipe again!




I hope you had a great Thanksgiving, too. And don’t forget to give thanks!

Thanksgiving Menu

Sorry I’ve been *absent* recently. I have so much to do to get ready for Thanksgiving!

My mom, sister, and great-aunt are coming down tomorrow to stay through Friday. I’m glad I’ll have a bunch of extra hands to help in the kitchen!

I’m so excited for our Thanksgiving meal! We’re already prepping some of the food and I just want to eat it all right now!

Here’s what we’re having…

Appetizers
Cheese and crackers
Deviled eggs

Dinner
Julienne veggie salad with raspberry vinaigrette
Pot roast (I know, I know, it’s not turkey, but it’s still so good!)
Garlic mashed sweet potatoes
Green bean hot dish
Carrie’s sweet corn pudding
Pineapple salad
Popovers
Cranberry sauce

Dessert
Cranberry raspberry pie (with this pie crust recipe)
Dark chocolate pie
Ice cream

Oh, I’m getting hungry just typing this out.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll know that my family members have unusual diets. I don’t eat gluten, my sister’s a vegetarian and doesn’t eat tomatoes or peppers, and my mom doesn’t eat wheat, potatoes, and corn. It’s a challenge to cook for all of us, but I think I have enough here to satisfy everyone.

I’ll post some pictures and recipes later this week.

My Thanksgiving guests will be leaving Friday afternoon, and then my cousins and two of their friends will be coming Friday evening to stay through Sunday. I’m pretty sure I won’t have too much blogging time; I’ll be having way too much fun!

Thanksgiving

I’m getting excited for Thanksgiving. We’re having my Mom, sister Rae, and Great-aunt Cheryl down for a few days. They’ll be here the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, so I’m going to put them all to work in the kitchen helping me prepare the big meal! I’ll be glad to have the help!

I really enjoy planning out a special Thanksgiving meal. I’ll post our menu and food pictures next week. I should tell you that we’re going to have a raspberry cranberry pie to whet your appetite!

Tim and I have been setting aside some extra money each week to help fund our Thanksgiving meal; we couldn’t afford such an elaborate meal on just our $50.00/week grocery budget.

It’s nice to have the extra money in cash so that we know how much to spend and don’t over spend. And it’s nice that it doesn’t all have to come out of our checking account in one fell swoop.

Here are just a few things I’m thankful for:

Tim
My family and in-laws
My church and pastors
My friends
My job
My home

Really, this list could go on and on.

Thank you, Lord, for all of your blessings!

Chicken Soup Variation

I had a semi-failed experiment last week. I had a great idea, but looking back, I should have realized that it wouldn’t play out quite like I intended it.

I thought that I should make sweet potato dumplings to go in my chicken veggie soup. So I made some mashed sweet potatoes and dropped them into the boiling soup by spoonfuls.

Of course, they dissolved!

The end result was still very good. The sweet potatoes thickened up the broth and made it a little creamy.

Sometimes “failed” experiments can end up with good results!

Chili

I made a huge crockpot full of chili on Monday. Chili is so easily gluten free! Here’s what I put in it:


Beef broth
Tomato sauce
Diced tomatoes
Ground turkey
Carrots
Celery
Onions
Turnips
Corn
Black beans
Cumin
Chili powder
Paprika
S&P
(And a little Franks to my individual serving, of course!)


It’s a little thinner than most chilis, but I like that it’s full of veggies.

And the turnips are a nice substitute for potatoes. You can hardly tell the difference!

The corn bread that I made was actually the recipe from my Betty Crocker cookbook. I subbed a mixture of sorghum, brown rice, and white rice flours. It turned out crumbly, but so good! I think I’m going to use that recipe from now on.

Yummy Fruit!

We had a few dollars left over in our food budget this week, and since Wal-Mart had pomegranates on sale for $1.88, I thought I’d get one.

It was quite juicy and flavorful, although after I finished getting the seeds out of it, I was full of red juice!

Soup Menu

I’m still recovering from my wisdom teeth removal. I’m brushing and rinsing 4 to 6 times a day, as recommended.

I mixed together water and tea tree oil to make a mouthwash, since tea tree oil has always helped me heal super quickly! It does taste pretty gross, though.

We’re sticking with soups this week because of the afore mentioned reason, and since it’s in the 30’s outside, if we’re lucky. It went from very nice out to very cold in just a few days!


Sunday dinner – tomato soup
Monday – chili with corn bread
Tuesday – chicken veggie soup
Wednesday – chili served over mashed sweet potatoes
Thursday – chicken veggie rice soup
Friday – split pea chowder
Saturday lunch – spaghetti
Saturday dinner – small steaks


Soups are such a nice way to warm up on a cold day. Another nice way to warm up would be a hot water bottle, but I can’t find one to purchase anywhere! I’ve mentioned before that our microwave died months and months ago, and we never replaced it. Apparently the only hot packs that you can buy now are one you have to heat in the microwave. I’d love to put a hot pack on my cheeks to help the swelling in my jaw go down, but I think I’m out of luck until I come up with a microwave-less alternative.

Let me know if you have any ideas!

Check out Gluten Free Goodness for some great gluten free menus.

There's more menus at Org Junkie, as well!

Frito Bars!

Here’s that frito bar recipe I promised. I made them for our election party on Tuesday, and they were just about finished off. Luckily I saved one for a picture!

I’m sure I got this recipe from somewhere, but I couldn’t find it anywhere online, so sorry I’m not giving credit for it.

Frito Bars

10.5 to 12 oz. bag of frito corn chips
1 cup white Karo syrup
1 cup sugar
1 cup peanut butter, crunchy or creamy
Chocolate chips to top, at least 1 cup

Spray a 9x13 pan with non-stick cooking spray. Crunch up the chips in the bag and spread them in the bottom of the pan.

In a medium saucepan, bring the Karo syrup to a boil. Add the sugar and simmer until the sugar is dissolved. (Don’t you love dissolving sugar in sugar!) Remove from heat and stir in the peanut butter.

Pour over the chips and mix together. Melt the chocolate chips and spread over the top of the bars. Cool, and enjoy!

Thanks!

Thanks for the well wishes everyone. I survived my wisdom teeth surgery. I had a pretty hard time coming out of the anesthesia, like I went under at 8:15 am and didn't fully recover until 8:00 pm, and that was after throwing up 13 times!

Needless to say, I had a pretty miserable day yesterday. Tim was so sweet; he stayed home with me all day and helped me in every way possible. He's the best!

I'm feeling a TON better today. I'm still not up to par, of course, but I'm on the way. I've still got dry sockets and infections to worry about.

I hope to post about my favorite Frito Bars tomorrow!

Weekly Menu, Again

I'm having my wisdom teeth out on Thursday. Not really so fun. But it definitely affects our menu for this week. I'm not planning on having a ton of food on Thursday and Friday. I'll probably just stick with jello and split pea soup.

So Tim's in charge of cooking whatever he wants to eat. That makes menu planning a little bit easier.

Here's what we've got in the works:

• Monday - Veggie Beef soup, leftover from last week
• Tuesday - Election Party at a friend's house, Go McCain/Palin!
• Wednesday - Squash, and something with 1/2 lb ground turkey
• Thursday - Tim - Mac'n'Cheese, Sarah - Jello
• Friday - Split Pea soup, if I'm up to it
• Saturday lunch - Sunday school Barn Party
• Saturday dinner - Something with the other 1/2 lb of ground turkey

How's that for a specific menu? It's at least a rough outline. I don't really know what to expect when I have my teeth out, so we'll just roll with the punches this week.

I like having a menu with naturally gluten free foods like squash, soups, and meat. Of course Tim get's the special treat of having "real" mac'n'cheese since I'm not sharing it with him; and by real I mean Kraft (obviously anti-gluten free)!

As usual, you can find tasty menus at Org Junkie.

Pie Crust

Thanks to Tenille for posting about this great pie recipe! (Or, should I say "Awesome")

I’m planning on making a raspberry cranberry pie for Thanksgiving, but I hadn’t found a pie crust that I liked yet. I tried this one out a few weeks ago, and it was very good!

I made it with a top crust just because I like it that way. I'm sure the crumb crust would be nice too.

I definitely would recommend it.