Kitchen space, deep fryers and cupcakes. But not all at once.

I am so behind on the recipe and food posting! So sorry! Let's see, where to start? Umm...

Yesterday was our anniversary, and this Thursday is my birthday, so my poor hubby has to get me two items for presents for both occasions. (I keep telling him he can combine into one to make it easier) This year he decided to have a theme, and stayed consistant to it: a french fry cutter and a deep fryer! Now I can have non-cross-contaminated fries whenever I want! Yay! So far, we've had regular french fries and sweet potato fries. I love it.

We had to rearrange the kitchen to make space for our new appliances. (well, I had to, he wouldn't have cared too much either way) So we went out and bought a cute little cupboard to put large items in, and it gives us a top shelf for stuff, and it helps clear off our counters! Win/Win!

Cute little holder for all my mixers and boxes and whatnot!



I never showed a before picture, but now I have counter space again!



So I've enjoyed having counters again and space for all my baking/cooking/mad scientist moments. ^_^ Which is especially great right now, considering how much baking I'm doing! Today I'm trying out a box mix *le gasp* for cupcakes, and I'm making the frosting from scratch, as finding sugar-free frosting is impossible. This makes my life easier, as tomorrow will be cupcakes again, Thursday maybe something special for my birthday-undecided as of yet, Saturday I'll be making 2 french bread loaves, ooey gooey PB brownies, a pasta dish and a fruit dish for a friend's welcome-back-party, and then Sunday I need at least one baked good for the morning...but I'm debating between banana nut muffins, blueberry muffins, and pumpkin/apple muffins...or all three. We'll see how time runs on THAT. *manic laugh*

 Once I've perfected the frosting, I'll post about it and the cupcakes. I need to check if this mix is any good or not. I'm very skeptical of boxed mixes nowadays...

Did I mention yet, we made pumpkin pancakes! Sooo good!



Waiting to be flipped



I used the pancake recipe I posted earlier. I just added half a can of pumpkin to it, some cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, mace and cloves, and kept adding coconut milk until it was thin enough to cook all the way through! I discovered if you don't add milk to thin out the batter, the pumpkin makes it so thick, the batter has trouble cooking thouroughly. It'll look done-but it really isn't. Thin them down to the point where the batter is runny-ish, and you're ready to go! Cook like pancakes. Add butter and maple syrup and enjoy! Soo delicious!




A later batch that's flipped-MMMmmmm!!!!



Breakfast!

So this is actually for the last two days...I've been so busy with work that I haven't had time to update appropriately with each new thing. Apologies.

 Friday morning we had some leftover bell pepper from our fajita's the night before, and even though I can't have our breakfast burrito's anymore, I wanted something similar-ish. So I diced up the bell pepper halves, grilled them on the stovetop and added them to our scrambled eggs. Twas really good! Granted, it was a bit more bell pepper than we needed for 5 eggs split between two people, but it was yuummmyyy!

Two and a half eggs, half a bell pepper and one and a half bacon strips

So that was Friday's breakfast. And it was good. Having eggs for breakfast really helps to keep us filled up so we can last longer between meals while at work. And its rather easy for us to go through a lot of eggs, because TBG's Mom has chickens, and she gives away eggs to us. We love getting eggs from K-Mom! They come in all sorts of cool colors-two different shades of green shell, brown shell and the occasional white shell. So fun and different!

But that breakfast was yesterday.

Today is a new day. New foods to be consumed, more time to spare for making foods to be consumed!

What to make?

I've been craving pancakes for awhile, but finding a good pancake recipe that's wheat free, dairy free, sugar free is kinda difficult. But this morning, I wasn't about to take "no" for an answer. I'm gonna make it work! ...and to my surprise, it worked!

That Bearded Guy said if I had just served them up and he didn't know I had all these dietary restrictions, he would have thought they were regular pancakes from Bisquick or one of those other amazing regular brands. *SCORE!* Now that I have a regular pancake mix recipe down, I can start playing with it more...maybe next time add cinnamon, or blueberries, or (if I ever get allowed chocolate again) chocolate chips or something! Either way, I'm pleased. They look good, they smell good, they taste good!

TG'S Joyful Pancakes

1 cup rice flour (I used white rice flour today)

3 TBSP tapioca flour

1/3 cup potato starch

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp xanthan gum

2 eggs

3 TBSP applesauce

4 TBSP coconut milk

1 TBSP agave nectar

1 cup water

Mix all the dry ingredients together well. Because it's a bunch of different flours, you want to make sure they are all well blended. Who would want a sudden bite of just potato starch? O_o

Add in the eggs, applesauce, milk and nectar. Blend together, adding water as needed to get the desired consistancy.

Heat up pan on the stove and spray with Pam, or lightly butter the pan, whatever you desire and have on hand. Pour about 1/2 cup to 2/3 cup batter in the pan for your first pancake. (or whatever size you prefer) Now, these won't bubble like typical pancakes do when they're ready to be flipped. So just watch the edges for the tell-tale signs of ready-to-be-flipped. To be honest, I don't even know how long I let each side stay there, I just used my internal timer for flip time.

Both sides will brown really nicely, and they're great with a bit of butter and pure maple syrup! At least, that's what I had, TBG had the other fake maple syrup that I can no longer have...but either way, no matter what you put on it, these are pancakes are lovely to enjoy!

Just the right consistancy for us!

If you spray Pam between the pancakes, you'll get this speckled look, just FYI..

Just flipped it, see that beautiful color?

Some pancakes, some bacon, a lovely Saturday morning breakfast!

The pancakes are roughly 70 calories and 13 carbs apiece..