Homemade Chinese Food

My mom's birthday fell on Chinese New Year's this year and my sis and I decided that she needed a homemade Chinese Food Feast for her Birthday dinner.  I remember my grandma used to always make Chinese food for my mom for her birthday...sweet and sour pork, beef and broccoli, and egg rolls.  All of mom's favorites! 

I think I get my food allergies from my mom.  She has anaphalaxis reactions to shrimp, which pretty much eliminates going out to many restaurants.  She can't even eat something that has come into contact with shrimp or she could die. Super scary! 

Of course, I decided that I would make the stuff Grandma used to make...sweet and sour pork, beef and broccoli...plus noodles, fried rice, lemon chicken and three other chicken dishes. And of course, they would all be gluten free so I could eat them.  And, because it would be a feast with leftovers for the week to come, I would make double, triple, or even quadruple of each recipe.  

Did I mention that I have slowly been recovering from pneumonia lately?  

That I hosted a Super Bowl Party the week before while I was just getting over the worst of being sick and was totally exhausted for days afterwards?

  That there was going to be 13 people for dinner at my house?  

That I got totally overwhelmed looking at all the groceries and the menu I planned that I started to have an anxiety attack?  

 You could say that I tend to take on too much...  I'm slowly learning that the hard way....

Luckily, my mom, being the sweet angel that she is, volunteered to come help me cook her own birthday dinner. We spent 4.5 hours chopping, stir-frying, boiling, baking, and deep frying a feast that, that when it was all done, would have fed a small country. Dave was amazing and totally cleaned up the house to make it "company ready."

One thing I did do, was cheat and buy a few pre-made seasoning packets for the chicken dishes.  I did my best to find ones that were free from MSG, visible gluten, and all the gunk you usually find in pre-made foods.  They tasted good, but they aren't a part of our diet and are something I only would buy when having a big dinner party like this.  The did taste EXACTLY like your local take out.

I did, however,  make sweet and sour pork, beef and broccoli, noodles, and fried rice all from scratch.  

First, I made the beef and broccoli from this yummy recipe from Iowa Girl Eats.  In my haste, I forgot to marinate the meat, so I just added some Braggs Liquid Aminos (gf soy sauce replacement) while the meat was cooking and it still turned out fantastic.  

I also made Iowa Girl's fried rice.  It was great and tasted just like takeout. Minor changes....I used white rice instead of brown, frozen peas and fresh diced carrots in place of the frozen mixed veggies, and liquid aminos in place of the soy sauce.

Then I made my version of Garlic Noodles from Crepes of Wrath.  I'll post my version of that soon! 

And finally, I made my  grandma's "famous" sweet and sour pork.  Mom and I figured out how to make the batter gluten free.  It was so tasty, exactly like Grandma makes it.  That recipe will be coming soon as well! 

In the end, everyone loved the food, the family had some quality time together, and my mom had a great birthday.  And to top it all off, my mom snuck over to my house the next day while I was at work, and finished cleaning up the kitchen.  Who does that?

Mom, next year, I think I'm going to scale back dinner, or just take you out for a steak and let the professionals take care of everything.

Spaghetti Squash Casserole

I discovered this adorable tiny little farm stand out in the country when I went to pick  up the last of the chickens from the now closed Soul Food Farms.  

Can we please have a moment of silence?  

I had a nice conversation with the farmer, Michael, and got a little star struck when I found out he sells his produce to Alice Waters at Chez Panisse. The little stand is set up on the honor system complete with a scale and a money jar. Love love love! I was so excited to find that they sold organic winter squashes for a really good price. Usually organic anything is expensive, so I had to stock up and walked away with 3 giant spaghetti squashes.

I, like so many other people, have a bad habit of buying winter squashes and letting them sit on the counter until the bottom rots out.  I love them, but they can be time consuming.  I do not have the patience to cook a squash for an hour after I get home from a 12 hour work day.  But not this time.  I immediately cooked it up, ON THE WEEKEND, using my friend's tutorial as a guide.  It came out perfectly and we ate it that night with spaghetti sauce.  

But I still had a ton of squash leftover and no sauce left.  What to do, what to do.  

Normally, I would just put butter and parmesan cheese on the top, but the pesky dairy allergy is keeping that from happening.  Booooo.  

So I searched on all my favorite cooking websites and blogs and finally came across this yummy sounding Spaghetti Squash Casserole from Peas and Thank You.  Doesn't it look mouthwatering? 

I changed it up a bit to fit our tastes and added some organic, grass fed and finished hamburger because it just sounded good.  It was so yummy and made a huge dish.  I made this on the weekend, covered and refrigerated it and then cooked it during the middle of the week.  The leftovers were even better, and I portioned out half of it into single servings and froze them in microwaveable containers for work lunches.  

Spaghetti Squash Casserole

Yum!  I want to make this every week!!!

1 large organic spaghetti squash

Coconut oil

1lb organic, grass fed and finished hamburger

1lb sliced mushrooms

15-16 oz tomato sauce (home canned or organic brand)

1/4 c chopped fresh parsley

8oz non-dairy cream cheese (organic cream cheese if not dairy-free) 

1/4 c. nutritional yeast (Parmesan cheese if not dairy-free) 

2 c. non-dairy shredded mozzarella cheese (organic mozzarella if not dairy-free) 

Prepare spaghetti squash and set aside.  

Preheat oven to 350*.  Heat a large skillet over medium heat.  Add coconut oil and melt.  Add hamburger and cook completely and crumble.  Remove hamburger from pan to a bowl and set aside. In the same skillet, add a little bit more coconut oil, if necessary, and cook the mushrooms until they are completely cooked but not yet beginning to caramelize.  Add the hamburger back to the pan with the mushrooms.  Add the tomato sauce, non-dairy cream cheese, and nutritional yeast.  Cook until the cream cheese has melted down and the sauce is warmed throughly.  Turn off heat.  Mix in spaghetti squash and parsley.  Transfer to a large oven safe baking dish (like a 9x13) that has been greased.  Top with mozzarella cheese.  Bake uncovered for 30 minutes until cheese is melted and dish is bubbling in the middle.  Makes 6-8 servings.  

If you are making this ahead of time, do not bake.  Just cover and put in the fridge or freezer.  If frozen, thaw overnight in the fridge.  Then bake for about 45-60 minutes until bubbling in the middle.  

Grandma's Steak Marinade

I feel so lucky that I grew up with a mom and a Grandma that are very good cooks.  Aside from the red label soup casseroles, almost everything I grew up eating was from scratch, which I now realize is very rare.  When my friends were eating their Lunchables and Twinkies and McDonalds every day, we were eating sandwiches on homemade bread and desserts of homemade oatmeal cookies. 

Little did I realize that my mom was saving us from all the chemicals and preservatives that were starting to emerge into the American Diet during my childhood. Whether she did it because she wanted to feed us right, or we were simply to poor to buy all the prepared and fast foods, or a combination of both, I am really grateful that we got started out on right foot.  I didn't have to learn how to like healthy food as an adult, because I wasn't raised on a strict diet of Hot Pockets, Stouffer's Lasagna, and Hamburger Helper.

As a full-time commuting employee and a wife, I really struggle to find a balance between cooking healthy meals or relying on prepared foods and take out.  Many of the convenience foods that we find today are easily made at home in less than a few minutes.

We had the privilege of being able to buy a locally raised grass fed and finished cow at the beginning of this year.  It has really helped our food budget, as well as help us have a freezer full of healthy beef at a fraction of the grocery store price. 

I love to take a cheaper cut of steak and marinate it for a day or two and grill it to a nice medium rare.  Since I've had to be so careful about what I eat now, I was appalled at the ingredients in most steak marinades that we had been blindly buying.  They were full of HFCS, MSG, and all sorts of other ingredients that I cannot pronounce.  How can I expect to benefit from the health values of a grass fed steak when I'm slathering it with the very ingredients that I know are harming my body???

Then I remembered the steak marinade that I carefully copied from my mom's handwritten cookbook from my Grandma.  A simple steak marinade. No yucky ingredients, no MSG, no HFCS.

Don't you just love stained cookbook pages???

Because of my restrictions, I've made a slight change to grandma's recipe and I now use coconut amionos in place of the soy sauce.  I always let my steaks marinate 24-48 hours and marinate in a Ziploc so that the marinade is always covering the steak and there is no need to constantly flip the meat. Let your steak rest at room temperature about 30 minutes prior to grilling.

Enjoy!!!

A nice London Broil ready to grill

Shared on : Creative Thursday's

Happy National "Sneak Some Zucchini on Your Neighbour's Porch Day!"

My sister texted me the other day.

How do you make stuffed zucchini?

Right now, everyone's garden (except mine) is overflowing with monster zucchinis.  My coworker went away for a couple days and came home to zucchini so big, you could carve them into a canoe.  She put them up for adoption, and I generously welcomed them into our home.

I remember mom would grow zucchini or get them from grandma's garden when we were kids.  All summer long we would eat zucchini.  Boiled zucchini with dried basil.  Ew.  Sauteed zucchini with onions.  Yum!  Zucchini bread. Mmmmmmmm!  Stuffed zucchini.  Yes, please. When we got zucchini that was too big to cook, or we simply had to many, she would shred it up and make zucchini relish or freeze it in containers for wintertime zucchini bread cravings.  

Mom would hallow out a zucchini, stuff it full of a meat stuffing mixture, top it with tomato sauce, and then right before it was done, top it with slices of American cheese, and broiled the cheese till it was all melty and browned.  Summer wasn't complete without eating stuffed zucchini until we were sick of it.

I sat in the (parked) car, texting my sister the recipe.  Not so much a recipe as a general idea of what you need to do.  Even though I had just eaten, my mouth was watering for stuffed zucchini.  I decided I had to take the smallest zucchini canoes and stuff them.

My favorite things about stuffed zucchini is that it makes great leftovers all week long and it freezes well for a quick dinner next month.

I started out by browning and crumbling two pounds of ground meat.  I used one pound grass fed ground beef, one pound organic 99% lean ground chicken.  You could use whatever ground meat you want and it would taste great. Since I used very lean meat, it did not need to be drained after it was cooked.  If you use fatty meat, be sure to drain it, or it gets too greasy. 

I chopped up two onions (one red, one yellow) and added them to the meat and cooked them till they were translucent.

I chopped up some fresh basil and oregano from my garden and added  that to the pan.
  

I also added a home canned quart size jar of drained, diced tomatoes, and two cups of leftover cooked rice.  I warmed everything up, added salt and pepper to taste and set it aside.

I took two giant zucchinis, washed them, and cut them lengthwise.  I scooped out the center where all the seeds are and make my boat.  I discard the seeds, but I remember mom would save it and add it to the ground meat to get more veggies in our diet.

I places the zucchini boats into a baking dish and carefully spponed the ground meat mixture into each boat.  I had enough leftover that I got a couple bell peppers and stuffed those as well.

Then I slowly poured some homemade tomato sauce all over the top of the zucchini and peppers.  

I put the lid on the peppers and put those in the freezer for later.  I put the zucchini in the oven and baked it for about 30 minutes, until the zucchini was soft.  Finally, I topped the zucchini with some shredded goat cheese mozzarella and put it under the broiler, until the cheese was all melty.

 

It was so tasty.  It was just like mom used to make, just slightly modified mom's original recipe to make it allergy friendly for me! (Mom would add seasoned bread cubes in place of the rice and top it with American cheese.)

Stuffed Zucchini

2-3 large zucchini (or bell peppers)
2lbs of ground hamburger (or chicken, lamb, pork, turkey, or your favorite combination)
2 onions, diced
2 tbl fresh chopped basil
2 tbl fresh chopped oregano
1 15 oz can diced tomatoes
2 cups leftover cooked rice
salt and pepper to taste
1 15 oz can tomato sauce
 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese (I used goat cheese)

In a large skillet, brown and crumble ground hamburger over medium heat.  Drain if needed. Add onions and cook until translucent.  Add basil, oregano, tomatoes, and rice and warm throughout.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.  Cut zucchini (and/or peppers) lengthwise and scoop out seeds. Place in a baking dish.  Spoon hamburger mixture into zucchini.  Top with tomato sauce.  Cover tightly with foil and bake at 350* for about 30 minutes or until zucchini is tender.  Sprinkle with cheese and place under broiler until cheese is melty and browned, about 5 minutes.  Serve hot!

***This dish can be made ahead and kept for a day or two in the fridge or frozen for up to a month or two.  Just cover tightly and thaw in the fridge overnight prior to baking.  It will take a bit longer to cook, approx 15-20 minutes. 

Crockpot Shredded Peperoncini Beef

Ever had a week so jam packed that it feels like you go to work to relax?  Me too. 

Every.single.week. 

Being on a restrictive diet complicates things so much.  No longer can I grab take out and skip cooking.

But what about when you don't have time to cook, but you want to eat more than a Larabar?

You cook with your crockpot!

I love my crockpot so much.  It frees up so much of my time.  Who doesn't love coming home to a hot dinner waiting on the counter?

It's so hard to find recipes for the crockpot that don't involve cream of something soup or a bunch of packaged mixes.   When you have dietary restrictions like I do, you have to stay away from most prepared foods. Not to mention those soups and mixes are terrible for you, full of nasty ingredients like MSG.

In 2008, when Stephanie O'Dea started her 365 days of crockpotting blog, I was excited!  I found her early into her adventure, and was excited to see recipes that weren't full of the soups and packets, but actual real recipes.  Her family eats GF, too, so I knew it would be a little bit healthier than most recipes I typically see. 

When I started eating GF, I already knew a little bit about eating GF, thanks to her blog.  It made it seem less overwhelming and I eased right into the new lifestyle.  Now that I'm even more restrictive, I can still find some recipes that I can eat! 

This recipe is great because it takes about a minute to prepare before you leave for work.  And if you are like me, that one minute is a huge deal.  It's 2 ingredients, and the leftovers can be used multiple ways.  I usually use a 4-5lb roast and 2 pints of homemade pickled peppers. i usually just serve it alone with a couple veggie sides or a big salad.  Thank you, crockpot 365, for such an awesome recipe!

 Shredded Peperoncini Beef

1 chuck roast, about 2 lbs
1 16 oz jar of peperoncinis

Place roast in the crockpot.  Leave the fat on the roast while it cooks.  You will discard the fat after it cooks.  If you trim off the fat now, the meat will dry out in the crockpot.  Add entire jar of peperoncinis, including liquid.  Put lid on crockpot.  Turn on low.  Set timer for 8-10 hours.  When you are ready to serve, shred the meat, discarding the fat, and peppers, if desired.  Add some of the juices to keep the meat moist. 

 

Pre-cooking.  I was so hungry, I forgot to take a picture when it was done.  My peperoncinis are red and green because they are home grown and home canned.  The peppers actually turn red at full maturity...and are way spicier too!

Changing traditions

Every July, Dave and I make our way to Chevys Fresh Mex, so he can indulge in their fresh Watermelon Margaritas.  I'm the DD and indulge on chips, salsa, and steak fajitas while he drinks watermelon margarita after watermelon margarita after watermelon margarita. 

Source

While Chevy's isn't nearly as good as our local Mexican places, I do love getting the fajitas...the sizzling platter of meat on a pile of grilled veggies, surrounded by all the tasty "fixins"....that dollop of sweet corn tamalito served on a dried corn husk....the piles of soft, fresh flour tortillas to use as a vehicle to get all that deliciousness in your mouth...

Chevy's summertime watermelon margarita trips were pre-food allergy diagnosis.

Now that it's July, and watermelon margaritas are back in season, I can't join my hubby in our summer Chevy's date.  I'm allergic to wheat, soy, cumin, coriander, and a bunch of other things that are typically in Chevy's food.  While they do have a limited GF menu, I still have all the other allergies and just can't eat there, at least for now.  It makes me really disappointed to not be able to continue our summer tradition this year.  Hopefully, by next summer, my stomach will be tolerating many of those foods again and I'll be able to join him.

But for now, I cook at home, using ingredients that I know won't make me sick.But I still wanted our Chevys date.  What should I do?  I don't want to eat myself sick, but it's hard to not do things you love to do...

I remembered a few years ago, Chevy's put out a cookbook of some of there most popular items.  I did a quick search and saw that Chevy's was also kind enough to share many of their famous recipes online.  I found the recipe for their famous steak fajita marinade called "Aqua Negra" or "Black Water." I decided we were going to have our own at-home edition of Chevy's steak fajitas that would be safe for me to eat.

When you have food allergies and sensitivities, any time you make a new recipe, you need to look over the ingredient list and see if everything is safe for you to eat.  If there are things that aren't safe, then you need to ask yourself if there are safe versions of that item you could swap with, if there is something similar you could use instead, or if you could just leave the item out without ruining the recipe.

For example, if you want to make a quiche, but are allergic to wheat, you can use a gluten-free crust.  If you are allergic to cow's milk and the recipe calls for cheese, you could use goat, sheep or soy cheese, or just leave it out.  But if you are allergic to eggs, you may want to rethink making that recipe, and find something that would be easier to make with your restrictions.

The recipe called for soy sauce.  I'm allergic to both wheat and soy.  Most soy sauces have wheat in them, and all of them obviously have soy.  My friend who eats a Paleo style diet introduced me to a product called coconut aminos.  It's a wheat and soy free soy sauce alternative.  It's actually really good and tastes way less salty than regular soy sauce.  I've recently re-introduced cumin into my diet and haven't had any negative reaction, so I'm using that sparingly in my diet from now on.  I revamped their recipe and made a safe one for me to enjoy!

First, I thawed out my meat. Safely. In the fridge.  Please don't thaw your meat on the counter and get food poisoning.  And never in the microwave, because it makes it rubbery and gross.  

I buy my beef in bulk from a local ranch.  It comes individually wrapped and labeled.  It can be frozen for up to a year.  Much better prices than buying it on an "as-needed" basis at the grocery store. 

Next, I mixed up my marinade in a Ziploc bag.  I don't mix it in a separate bowl.  Why dirty another dish?  I think that the bags are much better for marinating than in a container becuase you use less marinade yet the marinade is always touching the meat.  

Meat marinating for 48 hours

I added my meat, squeezed out as much air as I could, sealed the bag, and squished everything around. Then I let it sit in the fridge for 2 days. Every 12 hours, I turned the bag over and squished things around to make sure the meat was soaking up all those yummy flavors! 


The night you are ready to eat the fajitas, start by prepping all your fixing.  The meat will grill up in no time.

all the "fixins"

fresh sliced heirloom tomato

 Then grill up your meat to a medium rare. 

Any more, and it will get overcooked, tough, and dry.   

 

Grilled carne asada

Now it's time to assemble all your ingredients and eat!  

Que aproveche!!!

Fajitas!

 Carne Asada Fajitas

1.5 lbs organic, grass-fed carne asada

1/2 cup coconut aminos
1 cup crushed pineapple in 100% juice
1 tablespoons ground cumin
3 cloves minced garlic
1 lime freshly squeezed

Your favorite "fixins":  shredded lettuce,  chopped tomatoes, beans, rice, salsa, crema/sour cream, guacamole/sliced avocados, shredded cheese, salsa, cilantro, diced onions, tortillas, etc...

Combine all ingredients in a Ziploc bag.  Add carne asada. seal, taking out as much air as possible.  Lay flat in the fridge, turning every few hours.  Marinate at least 1 hour and up to 2 days.  

Remove carne asada from marinade.  Discard marinade.   Cook carne asada on a hot grill until medium rare, about a minute or two on each side, depending on the thickness of your meat.  Chop carne asada into strips or bite size chunks.  Serve hot. 

 

We grilled up a tray full of sliced onions and bell peppers, a tub of fresh pineapple spears from Costco, and slices of fresh yellow squash.  We wrapped everything up in a gluten free corn tortilla that had been softened in coconut oil.  You could definitely serve this without the tortillas or put on top of a salad!  

It was delicious.  It was the next best thing to going to Chevys. 

Actually, it was probably way better for us. 

Except....

I forgot to make the watermelon margaritas for Dave. 

The watermelon is still sitting on the counter.   

Oops! 

Next time.

I felt so bad, I took him to happy hour after work today
so he could have his watermelon margarita.  I stuck to a Sprite
and cooked us dinner at home.