Month: October 2014

So can you tell me who my son is dressed up as?

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My kids are so looking forward to Halloween since it is October now. And rightly so, LOL. Who doesn’t like trick or treating.

Anyhow, for the last four halloweens I have dressed my kids up in the same themes and this year will be no different. Last year they were Izzy, Jake and Cubby from Jake and the Never Land Pirates, the year before we had Tinkerbell, Captain Hook and Peter Pan. When my youngest wasn’t quite a year old — he was a horse and my daughter was an Indian Princess and my other son was a cowboy. And when there were just two kids I had Dorothy and the Lion. So I LOVE THEMES. This year we’ll have Elsa, Olaf and ….. does this even look like the character I am going for????

My mother-in-law Sherlyn and I spent about 4 hours working on this tunic. I recommend never working with faux fur… it is horrendously messy like a shedding animal. ACK! Anyhow, she did the sewing machine work and I did most of the hand sewn work on this outfit. Hope it looks like the character it is suppose to look like.

Aden1 Aden2

Italian Sausage, Garlic and Basil Pasta Gravy

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I don’t normally buy sauce in a jar just because I can make it better and it is more affordable if it is homemade as well.

Add a caesar salad to go with your pasta and you have an awesome dinner!

Italian Sausage, Garlic and Basil Pasta Gravy

Italian Sausage, Garlic and Basil Pasta Gravy

30 oz tomato sauce
6 oz tomato paste
8 oz mushrooms
1 lb Italian sausage, sliced
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp dried basil
4-6 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp salt

Heat a deep skillet or medium heavy bottomed sauce pot over medium high heat. Add 1 tablespoon, 1 turn of the pan, extra-virgin olive oil to pan or pot. Brown sausages 2 minutes on each side, transfer to cutting board. Slice. Add back to pot with garlic, mushrooms, tomato sauce, tomato paste, basil and salt. Bring sauce to a bubble, then reduce heat to a simmer. Simmer sauce until ready to serve over your favorite pasta.

Pumpkin Muffins (just like eating a cupcake)

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With fall in the air — and pumpkins ripening on the vine in my backyard — it makes me think of making pumpkin muffins. Add a little cream cheese frosting and you are in heaven!

PumpkinMuffins

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Plum Jelly

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I was going through the fridge and tossing questionable containers when I came across several baggies of Chinese Plums. TheyIMG_7957 had been sitting in the refrigerator since we picked them weeks ago. It was either toss them, too, or make something immediately with them.

I love Plum Jam and was — yeah I can do that. So I had a little over a pound of plumbs. The kids and I had already pitted them, so all I needed to do was chop them up.

Unfortunately – I made a HUGE mess of the kitchen with this little batch of Jam. I placed them in the food processor, yet it didn’t chop as fine as I wanted. Next I pulled out the Blender and pureed them instead. Perfect!

When I tossed the pureed fruit, water and sugar in the pot and started to boil — I noticed there was what looked like nuts in the mixture floating to the top. AGH! There must had been a pit in one of the plums that we missed — so now I had to get out the sieve to retrieve the pit particles. Unfortunately that meant my jam will now be less chunky as well. Oh well, it will still be really tasty nevertheless!

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To give your gluten free baking the extra protein and bounce it needs….

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I was having a great conversation with a friend of mine this morning about adding protein powder to gluten free baking to give her bread more fluff, bounce, etc. This comes from my findings awhile back when my husband wanted me to listen to a Science Friday segment on Baking Bread by a American Test Kitchen Chef.

Of the whole segment about 3 minutes were dedicated to Gluten Free Baking. And what I learned was amazing. It stated that wheat flour is spongy because of the “protein content” and that Gluten Free Flours lack that amount of protein.

As an example:

Protein Content: Wheat flour contains slightly more protein than rice flour, with 16 grams per cup, compared to 9 grams per cup in rice flour. Wheat flour contains a protein called gluten and rice flour does not contain that gluten at all. (info researched from http://www.livestrong.com).

To help add extra protein to your Gluten Free Flours it was recommended to to build your flour protein up by adding gluten free unflavored protein powder, eggs or even milk powders including buttermilk powder.

So the next time you make bread — just add a little extra protein and see the difference!

Fried Shrimp Tacos…

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I had a bunch of shrimp left over from making my Sushi dinner last night and decided since I won’t be heading to the Mexican Restaurant for Girl’s Night Out as planned, I will have it come to me instead. So I made shrimp tacos for dinner. Tacos_Shrimp

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