I'm moving to a new blog title!

Since I'd like to help people who are looking for Gluten-free recipes and ideas actually FIND my blog, I've decided to republish it under another name.
So, my new blog title: Gluten Free Food and Fodder, can be found by clicking here:

http://glutenfreefoodandfodder.blogspot.com/

I've moved the entire contents over so it's the same blog with a better name. Thanks to all those who are checking out my blog and hope you keep checking it out! By the way, this one will be available for another 2 weeks before I take it down so please go to the new one and follow me there or bookmark the new blog page. Thanks!

Carolyn

GF Chicken teriyaki stir fry with brown rice

When looking for GF products, sometimes the best place to go is a store dedicated to just that. Portions in Guelph has plenty to choose from but the best by far is walking in an smelling their fresh baked bread that they make right on the premises. Aside from that they make frozen dinners and their own teriyaki sauce. So tonight, after taking in the great smell of baking cinnamon rolls, I thought I'd give the sauce a try.
I was not disappointed!
The great thing about a great sauce is that you don't need any other seasoning which cuts down on the work of cooking. Check out your GF aisle at your local supermarket or take a serious look at some specialty stores for GF sauces and spice combos to add to your cupboard.
To check out Portions in Guelph, click this link: http://www.portionscanada.com/

(iPhone photo - not too shabby!)

GF Chicken Teriyaki Stir fry with short grain brown rice
Ingredients
2-3 medium chicken breast, sliced into 1/2 inch strips 
1 bunch broccoli
1 red and 1 yellow pepper seeded and sliced into thin strips
1/2 red onion cut into thin strips 
1 cup sliced water chestnuts (optional)
1 tsp. sesame seed oil
3-4 tbsp. GF teriyaki sauce
4 tsp. GF soya sauce
4 cups cooked short grain brown rice.

Directions
Cook rice according to package directions - it takes about 45 minutes.

Portions GF baking and products

Meanwhile, cut chicken breasts and vegetables. In a large skillet, heat oil on med-high heat for about 1 minute. Add chicken and cook until lightly browned on all sides, which will take about 3-4 minutes. Turn heat to med-low. Add water chestnuts and peppers. Stir occasionally for 3-4 minutes. Add broccoli and cover for about 3 minutes to steam broccoli. Uncover and add teriyaki sauce and stir to coat well. Remove from heat.
To plate, use a 1 cup measuring cup and press in 1/4 of rice into cup. Turn over onto plate. Repeat with the rest of rice to cover 4 plates. Drizzle 1 tsp. of GF soya sauce on each pile of rice. Spoon 1/4 of chicken teriyaki stir fry beside rice on each plate.
Serve immediately.

Makes 4 servings.

Crispy Rice Wraps and Tomato Soup - all GF!

Okay, I know, it's been awhile. I promise to get back to it. At least one a week.
So I have talked about my favourite brown rice wraps in a previous post. I still haven't found anything better. Today, I'm pairing the wraps with a delicious cream of tomato soup that is gluten-free but not flavour-free. It's delicious. See the photo of the box. I love to promote great products when I find them. I found this one in my local specialty food store, The Stone Store in  Guelph. If you don't have a specialty market, you can always ask your local supermarket to order it for you, at the very least, or even carry it in their store.

Ham and cheese crispy rice wrap with tomato soup
 4 Food for Life brown rice wraps (straight from freezer)
8 slices lean deli ham or lean turkey
1 cup shredded cheese (choose cheddar, mozza, swiss, soy... whatever you like!)
Canola or Olive oil spray
Sprinkle of salt

In a medium skillet, spray just enough cooking spray to coat pan. Heat to med-high. Add a wrap, put ham and shredded cheese on one half. Fold the other half over when it's thawed (about 30 seconds) enough to do so without cracking. Put another wrap in pan overtop of the other, putting your meat and cheese again on the half and folding over when thawed. It will look like you have two half circles in your pan. Turn heat to med-low. Let heat through for about 4-5 minutes then flip over to crisp the other side for another 4-5 minutes. At this moment, you can ad a sprinkling of salt. When crisped and cheese melter, remove to plate to cool and repeat with last two wraps.

Meanwhile, in a saucepan, add entire contents of tomato soup. Heat through according to package directions.

Cut your cooled (5 minutes, tops) wraps in half and serve with soup.

To write in your soup, scoop a few tablespoons of sour cream or soya sour cream into a piping bag or icing dispenser using a med. round tip. You can also use a ziplock bag and just cut a tiny triangle bit off the corner to use as your piping bag. Write 'SOUP', draw a heart or write a name in the soup. It's fun for kids of all ages and adds great flavour to your soup.

Enjoy!

Chicken soup with Quinoa

When you've got leftover chicken, and it's winter time, I like to make soup. This soup is very hearty and good for you and tastes delicious. You can add whatever veggies you like. I like to use up those little bits and bobs from the freezer, and whatever else is begging to be used out of the veggie drawer in the fridge. Adding quinoa (a tiny gluten-free grain which cooks up much like rice), in place of pasta or rice, makes this a very wholesome soup adding extra protein and fiber. It's great for those cold evenings, very simple to make, and stores well up to 3 days in the fridge.

Leftover Chicken and vegetables with quinoa soup

Ingredients:
1 tetra pack of chicken stock (President's choice organics or Campbells are both gluten free)
1/2 cup quinoa
1/2 cup water
1 cup diced leftover chicken (give or take)
1 - 2 cups diced vegetables (green beans, broccoli, cauliflower, corn, onions, celery and/or carrots)


In 1 quart pot, add chicken stock, chicken and vegetables. Bring to a boil. Turn heat to low and add water and quinoa. Let simmer for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and let sit for 5 minutes before serving. Makes 2 healthy meal servings or 4 small starter servings.

A toast to Thanksgiving

I'd like to make a toast: A weekend to thank all those who have helped me get where I am today, would mean that I have to thank everyone I've met. That's right. It's not just your parents and relatives that form who you are, your friends and your teachers, but every single person you've met.

Whether they've been there supporting you for your entire life so far, or they tailgated you for 5 minutes on the expressway and you don't have a clue who they are, all of those people, near or far, have influenced who you are today. How do you treat people, whether you know them or just pass them on the street? How do you react with that tailgater, the begger on the street, the teenaged cashier who can't make change?

These people all teach you patience, understanding and most of all, teach you more about yourself than you realize. So let's make a toast, one to all of those who have influenced our behaviour to date, and hopefully, have taught us patience and understanding (I need to work on the road-raging vulgar dialogue, caused by the tailgater...!).

Thanksgiving Toast Mocktini

Ingredients:

Orange wedge and 1 tbsp. sugar to rim glass.

1 oz. vanilla vodka

1/2 oz. grand marnier

2 oz. cranberry cocktail

Rub orange wedge along martini glass edge. On plate, sprinkle sugar and lightly shake to spread sugar on plate. Dip glass rim in sugar to coat. In martini shaker, ad 3-4 ice cubes, and all other ingredients. Shake well. Pour into sugar-rimmed glass. Put 2-3 fresh cranberries on a toothpick and put in glass to garnish. Makes 1 serving.

Stir fry San-J style

I love to promote tasty Gluten-free products when it makes cooking dinner a breeze.
San-J makes a great Thai peanut sauce - gluten-free of course - that will make your tastebuds sing.
They also make a lite Tamari Soya Sauce that has a great flavour, more brewed flavour rather than a dark, salty flavour. This one is good for adding to all sorts of recipes that call for soy, but is best on rice.
For this dish, I used ready-cut meats that I find at my favourite little market in my hometown of Guelph called 'Market Fresh'. Saves lots of time and they also have stir-fry veggies, ready to go. I grabbed some local beans, however, a head of cauliflower and picked fresh peppers from the garden for this one. Can't beat the taste of growing your own.
Aside from the sauces and the ready-to-go meats and veggies, I think the best part is the rice. I use Linburg certified organic and gluten-free rice. Their short-grain brown rice is very tasty and I like to spoon it into a 1 cup measuring cup, pack it down then turn it upside down onto a plate when I'm plating this dish.
No professional photos this time, but I hope you get the jist!
Skip the meat for the vegetarian or you can replace meat with a firm tofu marinated in a splash of soya sauce.

Ingredients:
• 1 cup green and yellow beans, chopped into 2 inch pieces
• 1/2 cup red onion, sliced 1/4 inch thick then loosely chopped
• 1 cup cauliflower florets
• 1/2 each red, yellow and green pepper (or one or combination to make up 1.5 peppers)
• 2 med. boneless chicken breasts, thinly sliced
OR 6-8 oz. sirloin, slice thin
OR 6-8 oz. firm tofu, chopped into 1 inch pieces
• 2 tbsp. San-J GF Thai Peanut Stir-fry sauce
• 1 tbsp. San-J GF Light Tamari Soya Sauce
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 tbsp. honey or agave nectar
• 2 tsp. sesame oil, separated
• 2 cups Lindburg short-grain brown rice, cooked using packaged directions.


Bring 4 cups water in saucepan to a boil. Add rice and turn heat to low. Cover. This rice takes 50 minutes to cook, but it's worth it.
When rice is half cooked, in a bowl, add meat or tofu and add 1 tsp. soya sauce, 1 minced garlic clove, 1 tsp. oil and honey or agave nectar. Stir to coat well and set aside. Meanwhile, chop up all of your vegetables.
In a large skillet, grate or finely chop remaining garlic into pan. Add remaining oil. Turn heat on high and stir garlic until it starts to bubble. Turn heat to medium and add vegetables. Stir constantly until veggies are just starting to wilt, about 6-8 minutes. Add a bit of water to pan, 1 tbsp. at a time to keep from burning. Push vegetables to sides of pan and turn heat up to med-high. Add meat or tofu. Let sizzle for 1-2 minutes before stirring. Turn meat over to sear the other side and let sizzle another 1-2 minutes. Turn heat to med-low and finish cooking meat for another 2-3 minutes. Add peanut sauce and stir all ingredients together, then allow to simmer for 2 minutes.
When rice is done, remove from heat and set aside, covered, for 5 minutes.
With a 1 cup measuring cup, fill cup with rice and lightly pack it into the cup until it is levelled off. Turn upside down onto plate. Rinse cup and repeat this step with remaining rice.
Lightly sprinkle rice with 1tsp. each of soya sauce.
Spoon 1/4 of veggy and meat/tofu mixture around rice.
Serve immediately.

Makes four healthy servings.

Roasted Squash Soup

This is one of my favourite winter warm-up soups. It's so simple to make and only a few ingredients. One thing I tried that was different this time was using a smoked salt in place of regular sea salt. What a difference! It added such a nice flavour without overpowering the great taste of the roasted squash. You can find flavoured salts at gourmet food stores.
This is a great soup for serving guests as well. It's a bit thicker, which allows you to add a garnish on top without it sinking into the soup.
I like to put sour cream in an icing bag or dispenser (you can use a ziplock bag, fill halfway with sour cream, then cut a 1/8" tip off the bottom corner to use as your icing bag) and write the word 'Soup' in the soup. For kids, a happy face, heart or their name and for the upcoming holidays 'Peace' or 'Noël' is nice too. Toasted pepita seeds or a little grated nutmeg look great sprinkled on top of the soup as well.

Add a name, a heart, a swirl... just have fun with it!
Photography • Mathew McCarthy

Ingredients:
• 1 med-large butternut squash
• 1 tbsp. olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 tetra pack boxes of chicken stock (Presidents Choice is gluten-free)
• 1 to 2 cups light cream (I like 5%, but 10% works well. 18% is very rich!)
• 1-2 tsp. smoked sea salt (or regular coarse sea salt)

Preheat oven to 425˙F. Cut squash in half. Dig out seeds and discard. Lay halves, cut side up, on baking sheet. Brush with olive oil, making sure no flesh is exposed without it. Sprinkle with a little salt and pepper. Roast for 1 hour. When done, top should be lovely golden brown. Let sit for an hour to cool or cover and refrigerate overnight.
Scoop squash out from skin and put in large (at least 4 litre pot) stock or soup pot. Add both boxes of chicken stock. Bring to a boil then reduce heat to med-low for about 10 minutes. Turn heat off. With a hand blender, blend squash thoroughly until there are no lumps. If using a blender, do it in small batches with middle of lid removed to let steam escape and to avoid burns. Once soup is well blended, stir in cream and add smoked salt.
Serve immediately.
This soup can be refrigerated for up to 5 days.