Walking for a cure

The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network
Walk for Food Allergy: Moving Toward A Cure™

Dear Family and Friends,

I will be participating in the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network’s (FAAN’s) Walk for Food Allergy: Moving Toward A Cure. The event will be held on September 06, 2008, in Houston, TX . The FAAN Walk for Food Allergy is designed to raise funds to find a cure for food allergy and to educate others about its impact.

Please support my fundraising efforts with a donation. Your tax-deductible donation will make a difference in the lives of many! It is faster and easier than ever to support this great cause - you can make your online donation by clicking on the link at the bottom of this message. If you prefer, you can send your tax-deductible contribution to me (make check payable to FAAN), and I will send it in.

Any amount, large or small, helps FAAN continue Moving Toward A Cure! I greatly appreciate your support and will keep you posted on my progress.

Sincerely,
Traci


To make a donation online, visit my personal fundraising Web page.
To send a donation make all checks payable to FAAN mail to: FAAN Walk for Food Allergy11781 Lee Jackson Hwy, Suite 160Fairfax, VA 22033-3309
If mailing in a donation please include a note indicating the walker and location to which the money should be credited.

Hell yeah, chocolate brownies!

I had to give these brownies a big, Texas, Hell Yeah! Last night I tried Pamela's Products chocolate brownies mix. Oh. My. Gosh. These are to die for. They are super easy to make from this mix. I really enjoyed that it looked like brownie mix, the dough looked like brownie mix and it baked...yep, just like a brownie mix.

It was my first time to use Pamela's Products and after the taste of these brownies it will not be the last. My kids commented that they liked these brownies better than "the old one's."(they mean the ones with flour) I am very pleased that after you bake these they re-heat beautifully and most important they taste good cold. A lot of gluten free products HAVE to be warmed up or softened in the microwave and that is not the case with these brownies. And on the web site they have an awesome suggestion to use the mix to make chocolate waffles. I am trying that this weekend!

I do think they should snazz up the name a bit and hope they consider the name in my title. lol

I give these a 4 out of five *'s

A new start and a better attitude

Note: I apologize for the funky pictures. Something is up with my camera and it needs to be replaced.

Today I decided to put up lunch and dinner. I have been skipping lunch because I was not interested. I am being a copy-cat cook this week and found some great recipe's on other blogs I wanted to try.

The mom at YummyAllergenFree has a great recipe for Asian lettuce wraps. I had to go school shopping today so I cooked this early this morning to eat for lunch at a park. I do not feed the toddlers lettuce so they had the turkey with rice. I loved the taste of this! The meat was so flavorful that I did not miss having a tortilla for the wrap. Everyone loved the meal so I am very pleased it turned out so well. The only thing I changed was to use mozzarella cheese instead of cheddar.

Dinner is beef stew. I cooked this in my crock pot using my own recipe. I have a family of seven so you could adjust the amount for your own family.

Ingredients:

2 1/2 lbs of grass fed beef cut in stew chunks-I just use mine frozen and do not have to thaw this-easy peasy.

6 small red potatoes cut in chunks

10 carrots cut in chunks

6 tomatoes from my mothers garden

1 large onion

1 small can of tomato sauce.

2 cups of frozen green beans

sea salt to taste

pepper to taste

1/4 cup chopped fresh basil

1 tablespoon garlic powder

Potato flour-added last as a thickener

I chop all the veggies and put them in the bottom of the crock pot along with the spices. I add the meat on top and put the crock pot on for 6 hours. I add the green beans the last hour and a half of cooking.

Even frozen the beef always turns out tender. To thicken the stew I used one cup of cold water and mixed in 1/2 cup of potato flour. I mixed this in 30 minutes before serving. Everyone loved dinner and asked for seconds. :)

When the passion fizzles

With any great love affair there can come a time when things can fizzle out. Well, I have lost my passion for food.

I have always been a foodie. I have great memory recall and remember specific times as a young child trying new foods for the first time. I had a Grandma that made everything homemade and from scratch. I clearly recall the taste of her egg noodles with chicken soup and hot waffles with sausage and eggs.

I remember the first time I tried oatmeal from a package. I was three years old and we were at a friend of my mother's house. I think we were staying there and one morning we had apple cinnamon oat meal.

At five I tasted fried veggie sticks in the school cafeteria and I have many, many more memories of my first tastes of food.

Not too long ago when I was having trouble conceiving my third child, I discovered my passion for cooking. To relieve stress I would make two or three loaves of bread everyday. I was a dedicated fan of the food shows and owned over fifty cook books. I would research exotic dishes at the library and put my own spin on them when I could not find the ingredients I needed at local markets.

I used to have a pretty sophisticated palate for someone who was not well traveled and cooked things I wanted to try on my own. Now I eat chips and salsa for lunch. For three days in a row I had the hubby go to the local Mexican Taqueria to buy me chicken tacos with corn tortillas for dinner. Granted, these are some great tacos, and one of the only ready made foods I can eat at a restaurant-but I miss cooking!

I think I am having a food mid-life crisis. I created this blog in the hopes that it would force me to get excited again. My kids love my cooking and have actually been complaining that I have not cooked all week. They are sick of Chick fil A and say their poor little tummies are hurting from all the junk food.

I miss my love affair with food. I miss that enthusiasm I had. And, I want. it. back.

I vow to research this weekend and at least try two new dishes using foods safe for me. I want at least one Wow! And one Ohhh, from the family. I want the feeling of peace I had that I was helping to provide good and nutritional meals for my family. I know I am very fortunate to have the luxury of being able to cook for my family, I am fortunate in so many, many ways in spite of these allergies. There are people that are much more restricted than I am.

I vow to get back that loving feeling!!!

No such thing as quick

So I tried to buy store bought potato salad. Big mistake. I need to get it through my stubborn head that there is no such thing as quick and easy anymore. :(

I wanted to have an easy meal to prepare for July 4th. My hubby made grilled chicken, grilled corn and I bought potato salad. My stomach was so upset and just plain yucky for 2 days afterward.

I did not think it would be a big deal since I do not have dairy or potato allergies but evidently there was something in there that did not agree with me.

It is very frustrating to think that I can't even have one convenience store bought food, just one time.

Okay bitching session officially over.

Blondies have more fun!

I wonder if I will get any hits to my blog just because of the title of this post?

Anyway, I have been excited about trying to make a gluten free desert from a mix. My kids love cookies and cookie bars and I could make them with flour since the kids do not have allergies-but it is just easier to cook everyone the same thing isn't it?

I used a mix called Blondies from Namaste Foods-It says the mix is free of Gluten, wheat, soy, nuts, potato, corn, dairy and casein.

I followed the package directions and mixed with eggs, oil and water. (if you make these using egg replacer please post how they came out or I am happy to link to your blog or website or even post your review.)

They dough looked a little strange to me. It looked a little runny and not-well doughy like I expected. I let them sit about ten minutes and the consistency seemed to improve. These were super easy to make and I just put them in the pan and baked them.

They came out of the pan pretty easy and held together in the bars I cut them in. I can't recall having blondies before so this was my first taste of these. If they are missing something I would not know it. Here is the finished product.

My review: I give it a four out of five *. First because they were easy and second because they were darn good. The corner pieces were crispy on the edges like you expect and chewy on the inside. I bet they are so good as a base for ice cream or even making ice cream or rice cream sandwiches. Best of all everyone asked for seconds so it passed the kids and hubby's taste test as well. I am excited to see if my local grocer has other Namaste products to try! I am off to hide the blondies so we do not eat them all.

Fried Chicken...please work!

Let me start by saying...fried chicken is really important to me. I know, I know, but I am southern-is that an excuse? I love to cook and I love to cook fried chicken.

When I could have wheat it was a big process. I would let my chicken sit overnight in a the flour mixture to get the crust just right. I took it very seriously.

So I was a little leery of cooking this chicken as I did not want to be disappointed. I used the Kinnikinnick Gluten Free Crispy Chicken Coating Mix. Note: Produced in a facility which uses Sesame Seeds, Soy, Eggs, and Tree Nuts.

I rinsed the chicken and put it directly into the coating mix. The coating seemed to cling nicely to the chicken as you can see below.

As I started to fry the chicken in canola oil I was a little sceptical as there seemed to be a lot of separation of the coating from the chicken. This might have been because there seems to be a lot of paprika in the mix but not sure. The oil was pretty gritty right off.

After 6 minutes the chicken got pretty dark, so I decided to take it out and finish baking it in the oven. I did not want burnt looking chicken! I did not mind the extra step as long as it tasted good. The above picture was the chicken after cooking for six minutes.

And the picture above is the finished product after baking in the oven. I was a little disappointed but I am thinking maybe if I used some type of egg wash first it might turn out better. The chicken was not crispy and the mix did not add any special flavor. It needed a little sea salt as well.

So my review for the mix is a 2 out of 5 * but I will give it another shot.

Note: I got lazy after having to do the two step cooking for the chicken and did not make my green beans. lol