Sickness and peanut butter

It's finally happened.

Our little one has gotten sick.

He almost made it 10 months without any illness! Alas, for my hubby caught a cold or something from his employee, and that made it's way to That Boy. We've been mostly battling just a fever. But still, a fever of 102.8 is still quite a new thing to battle! He's been handling it ok-ish. As long as I'm constantly holding him. And as long as he has his paci. Or is nursing. ...it's been a long few days.

Mama's little sickie

But my hubby is doing a bit better! His fever has been fluctuating a LOT, and all our Tylenol expired ages ago. (we use it sooo often. Our bottle expired in 2009 and we haven't used it since then to even notice!) Thankfully I've been doing more homeopathic stuff, and we've discovered that for sleeping purposes, a damp washcloth with lavender and peppermint essential oils dabbed on it help to reduce the fever and relax him. Huzzah for that!

So what's a Mama gonna do, with two sickies in her house to take care of? How is she supposed to keep functioning?

Well, I've discovered Pinterest. Finally. And I found the most amazing recipe EVER. Averie of loveveggiesandyoga has this amazing, amazing recipe for peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies. And they're naturally gluten free! No flour! I want to share them with my neighbor, but her daughter is allergic to eggs. I'm stubborn, these cookies are amazing, and they MUST be shared! So I altered the recipe.

Behold, the tweaked recipe for egg free scrumptiousness!

1 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup applesauce
1 TBSP vanilla
1 tsp baking powder
4 tsp coconut flour
4 oz dark chocolate bar

1.) Preheat oven to 350
2.) Mix all but the chocolate together well.
3.) Chop chocolate in chunks.
4.) Mix into batter. Pour into a container and fridge it for a minimum of 2 hours. (you can fridge it up to 5 days)
5.) Roll dough into balls and drop onto a cookie sheet that's covered with a parchment paper.
6.) Bake in preheated oven for 13ish minutes.
7.) Cool for 5 minutes.
7.) ENJOY



And here's the original recipe, so you can peruse her blog of yummies! Go make these cookies. Now.
http://www.loveveggiesandyoga.com/2013/01/peanut-butter-chocolate-chunk-cookies.html

Orange Honey Nut Chicken (of gastronomical goodness!)

Oi!

So after searching the house, both cars, my purse, we have not yet found the camera cord. But we HAVE found a random cord in TBG's car that seems to fit our camera well enough to transfer pictures. Hallelujah! I had sincerly hoped and planned to post this recipe earlier last week, but I have issues posting recipes without pictures. Call me OCD if you want, but for the record, it should actually be CDO, because that's the proper order of letters...

Moving on to more important things.

See that? All my hubby. His recipe, his cooking, his presentation. I am a blessed woman!

This was his late night idea that he finally made-and it's a winner in our family. Recipes like this are a great reminder that gluten-free cooking is not difficult, is not scary, is not overwhelming. It requires a bit of creativity sometimes, and a willingness to eat foods that are not your every day casserole/chicken tenders/same old recipe rut. It broadens the horizons of our tastebuds-and we get to sample and enjoy more of what foods we've been gifted with. God made us and blessed with tastebuds-time to use them and praise Him for his lovely creations!

Now, I'm posting this recipe as he gave it to me. So remember, these are man measurements..

Orange Honey Nut Chicken

3-4 oranges
honey
4 chicken breast (our's were rather small, fyi)
1/2 cup or so of chopped walnuts

1.  Juice about 2-3 oranges and pour into a small saucepan. Add one heaping spoonful of honey. (I'm estimating it about 1/8 cup of honey) Combine, and simmer on low heat.
2. Remove sauce from heat.
3. Place the chicken in a bowl or ziploc bag, and pour the sauce over the chicken. Marinade for as long as you can. (we marinaded ours from morning to evening, about 10 hours) 
4. Spray a medium sized pan or butter it in preparation for cooking chicken. Place the chicken in the pan so they don't overlap at all. Pour the marinade in with them. Cook on low heat, flipping the chicken over occasionally. Knife test to make sure chicken juices run clear.
5. Going back to that small saucepan! Juice 2 oranges and combine that juice with about 3/4-1 cup of honey. Simmer it until it reaches the desired thickness and consistency you desire. Taste test it for appropriate sweetness levels. 
6. Take another orange, peel it, and slice it horizontally, so you have rings of orange. Set aside.
7. Once the chicken is cooked, serve it on a plate next to a bed of steamed brown rice and steamed carrot slices. Lightly drizzle the sauce over the carrots, and spoon lovingly over the chicken. Sprinkle chopped walnuts over the chicken. Take those orange rings you previously sliced and cut in half. Set the orange half-moons around the chicken. 
8. Enjoy. 

 We liked cutting the orange half moons and having a piece with each bite of chicken. The tang of the orange, the crunch of the nut and the sweetness of the honey blended so well with each bite of meat! Oi, we're having that again soon...

And the chicken is just as wonderful cold over a spinach salad, orange honey sauce drizzled over the greens with chopped nuts and orange chunks! Delightful!

 Feel free to play with the recipe. We know some who prefer it really sweet, as more of a honey/orange glaze. Other's prefer it with more citrus, as an orange/honey sauce. It's up to you. Either way, the flavor blend is marvelous!

Such a lovely meal!

A taste of what's to come

So, we're not ready to post this recipe yet, we want to perfect it a little bit more. But I just HAVE to mention it now. It is amazing.

It's a recipe that TBG came up with himself, while we were talking about food and falling asleep. (want a little tidbit about our personal lives? Our typical pillow talk each night: food, nerdy stuffs, Heaven, or our fluffy kids) But we were discussing innovative dinner ideas, and he had this idea- chicken, honey, orange juice and walnuts. I confess it-I was bit skeptical at first. But that could also be due to the fact that it was past my bedtime, which means it was past 10pm, and my brain does not function too well after that hour.. But I give all credit to him!

I've noticed recenty that I typically feel rather ill in the afternoons/evenings-and that's typically when I've not eaten for a couple hours. I think it's because my blood sugar is dropping. But that happened again this evening, complete with headache, mild nausea, dizzyness...ugh, it was not fun. So TBG was in the kitchen by himself, making dinner for us, while I laid in the living room, staring at the ceiling, praying desperately that I'd feel good enough to eat dinner. The Lord answers prayer! I felt just good enough to try a few bites of what was put in front of me-and then I proceeded to inhale the contents of my plate. My headache disappeared, my nausea a thing of the past, dizzyness faded. Yeah, thinking it may be time for a blood test... >_<

But my issues aside, the food! Oh! Tender chicken, with a sweet tang to it. Slices of oranges served with it, and chopped walnuts to add texture. Cooked carrots, drizzled in the honey/orange glaze, brown rice to serve as a flavor anchor carb-and as something to absorb more sauce as desired! My husband makes such amazing food!

 We can't find our camera cord, or I'd post a picture of it now, just taunt. (just kidding. kind of...) I'll post the picture and recipe soon. And I must say, I'm looking forward to leftovers! Slices of chicken over a fresh green salad, chunks of fresh orange and chopped walnuts layered in the green, glaze drizzled lightly over it all...oh yeah, I'm looking forward to lunch tomorrow!

Come back in a day or two, and hopefully we'll have found that camera cord-and pefected this recipe to our satisfaction!

Honey Nut Bread

Oh my has it been forever!

Thankfully this week will end job number five, and I'll have a bit more free time! Of course, that free time is going straight to job number four, but still, it's something. *chuckles* I feel bad when friends complain that they can't find a job anywhere, and here I am, with five different jobs in five different places!

It has been interesting though, working at the bookstore again. First, I didn't realize how much I've missed hanging out and watching and listening to the interactions of my friends/co-workers. That was enjoyable. And I also didn't realize how many other gluten-free people I'd meet! A couple co-workers, several customers that came through my line, and even a person or two who came in specifically to talk to me because they'd heard of me via word-of-mouth. ...it's almost creepy. But it's also thrilling-to be able to share all that I've discovered and learned over the last couple months, to help relieve some of the what-can-I-eat stress and to give some hope...it's priceless. I'm thrilled the Lord put me in such a position to minister in that way. It's food related, and it's people oriented. I love it!

For tonight I'll just post a quick recipe for bread. If I get chance later this week I'll post tonight's dinner: Tomato garlic pesto chicken with noodles and foccacia bread and veggies...Mmmm...

But on to the bread!

Honey Pecan Bread! Of insane goodness! Perfect quick bread, pefect consistancy, taste, texture, oh was it heavenly! TBG and I practically inhaled it. It was a lovely side to our scrambled egg breakfast-and equally lovely as a snack. And you can totally omit the nuts if you want. It originally called for walnuts, but I didn't have any on hand, so I used the pecans instead. Soo good!

1 cup honey
1 cup coconut milk
1/4 cup coconut sugar
1/4 cup butter
1 unbeaten egg
2 1/2 cup TG's all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup+ pecans or walnuts (or both!)

1. Preheat oven to 325
2. Combine honey, milk, sugar and butter in a saucepan. Slowly heat it until the sugar is dissolved and the butter melted-not too hot, just enough for those two things to happen. Take it off the heat and cool it down.
3. Add egg and beat smooth. (this is why step two with the cool is important)
4. Sift dry ingredients together and add to the milk and egg mixture. Blend. Add nuts!
5. Grease your loaf pan(s) and pour batter into it/them. (I used three smaller pans instead of one large pan)
6. Bake for 75-90 minutes. Or bake 30-50 minutes if using smaller pans. When an inserted toothpick comes out clean, it's time to take it out!
7. Cool for 15 minutes and remove from pan. It'll be a lovely rich brown color when fully baked.
8. Enjoy as it is, or slather some butter on it. TBG loves to add crystalized honey to his.

This has become one of our favorite breads ever. I found the recipe in a cookbook from my Grandma from years ago. It's no longer in print, and can't be found anywhere that I've looked. It's basically a cookbook that all the recipes have honey as a major componant. I love it! It covers breads, sauces, dinners, desserts, everything. And they taste amazing. It's just a bit more challenging when converting some of the flours because the honey moisture content will react differently to different GF flours. (for example, coconut flour wicks up moisture ALOT, and I would need to compensate that in my ingredients) But all in all, it's a great cookbook to have. There's a couple recipes that are absolute keepers-and this is one of those recipes!

Well, I'm off! Time to be HOME for a bit. Yay!