Tortilla soup

I uploaded this picture months ago and forgot to finish the post. And I can't believe I forgot it because it's one of my favorite meals! Borrowed from a friend, this recipe is great because it is really easy to leave out the dairy until the end, and let my hubby enjoy it as is, then add some cheese for the little ones who really enjoy the stringy yumminess of melted cheese. We sometimes leave out the chicken for a meatless meal.















Chicken Tortilla Soup
½ c chopped onion

2 C. cooked chicken, torn or cut into small pieces (I use canned chicken)

1 pressed garlic clove

1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, undrained

1 can (4 oz) chopped green chilies, undrained

1 c frozen corn

1 c zucchini, thinly sliced

4 tsp snipped fresh cilantro

½ c (2 oz) shredded cheddar cheese

¼ tsp each: chili powder, ground cumin

2 cans (14.5 oz each) chicken broth

1 (5.5oz) can of Spicy Hot V8 juice

4 thick slices each: fresh lime, avocado

Cook chicken, onion, garlic, chili powder, and cumin for 2 minutes. Add broth, tomatoes, chilies, corn, zucchini and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes.

In individual soup bowls, add cilantro, tortilla strips, ladle full of soup,  top with cheese and garnish with lime & avocado. Serve warm. Enjoy!

EASY Apple/Pear Crisp

This is a real quick recipe for a delicious dessert. It uses canned pears and apple pie filling so there's no peeling and slicing which makes it quicker than quick. I think I got this recipe originally from A Soft Place to Land several years ago.

Recipe:

4 15 oz. cans sliced pears, drained

1 20 oz. can apple pie filling

1 1/2 C. gluten-free oats

3/4 C. GF flour

3/4 C. brown sugar

3/4 t. ground cinnamon

3/4 C. butter (or we use Smart Balance Light since it's dairy-free), cut up

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Pour the pears and apple pie filling into a 9"x12" pan.

Mix the dry ingredients together, then mix in the butter using your fingers until it resembles coarse crumbs. Crumble the topping on top of the fruit.

Bake for 30-35 minutes until the fruit is hot and bubbly and the topping is crisp and browned.

Enjoy. With some vanilla ice cream if you've got it on hand.

I've made this in an 8x8 pan, too with half the fruit, but the same amount of topping, which I like better because then the topping is a bit thicker and covers it better. Have some for dessert, then eat the leftovers for breakfast, because really, it's just fruit and oatmeal. And sugar. :) Enjoy!!

Pancakes

For a while, every time I wanted to make pancakes I would do a google search for gluten-free pancakes and pick a new pancake to try. Until last summer when my Grandpa's wife made us some pancakes using her regular recipe, just substituting rice flour in and they turned out just right. No xanthan gum or anything. So now I use my former whole-wheat pancake recipe as my new gluten-free pancake recipe.

Pancakes

1 ½ C. GF flour mix

2 T. sugar

2 T. baking powder

½ t. baking soda

1 t. salt

2 C. soy milk

1 egg (optional)

Mix it all together. I really don't measure the milk, or if I do, I usually end up adding more water after until it reaches the consistency I like.

These behave just like any other pancake: pour them out thin-ish, then wait until the bubbles on top have popped, flip and cook the other side, and enjoy.

I can't tell any difference between these and "real" pancakes.

Happy breakfasting!

Cowboy pasta

This one is always pretty quick and easy and is a nice spin on the traditional pasta dish. 

Cowboy Pasta

GF Pasta

chopped onion

green pepper

chili powder

black beans

corn

salsa

tomato sauce

Saute onion, pepper and chili powder. Add equal parts salsa and tomato sauce, beans, and corn. Simmer.

Toss with pasta and top with shredded cheese.

Sometimes I'll throw in a little cooked chicken, too, but most of the time we leave it as a meatless meal, since it's pretty hearty as is.

It's always a hit here! Enjoy!

Super nachos

Super nachos are, well, super! I guess some people call them loaded nachos, but we like the Super term. This is one of our go-to meals when I don't feel like cooking, or when we're hungry right now.

It's so flexible, you just use whatever you have on hand. Usually we use:
green onions

green or red (or both) bell peppers

black beans

canned chicken

Spread tortilla chips on a cookie sheet, sprinkle a little bit of shredded cheese over them, then layer whatever toppings you want to include. If you add tomatoes, probably wait until the last minute or so of cooking time. After all your toppings are on, sprinkle more cheese over top generously. Stick it in the oven on broil for about 5 minutes, then enjoy! Great for a regular dinner, or whip some up to snack on during a football game.

Corn chowder

Now that Labor Day is done, fall has unofficially started, right? Tell that to our weatherman--he keeps giving us 100-degree days! But in theory it'll be cooling off soon, and soups will be more fitting for the weather. Here's a real quick and easy corn chowder.

I found a bag of frozen stew veggies that had BIG chunks of carrots, potatoes, pearl onions, and maybe something else. I added some celery, corn, and more potatoes, 2 tablespoons of butter, and some GF chicken broth and stuck it all in the crock pot for about 4 hours on high (or 8-9 hours if you do it on low). About a half hour before dinner I added a cup of milk. It turned out real tasty. Enjoy!

Quick and easy black bean dip

I've been on vacation, then recovering from vacation, and now I'm back. At least for one post. I have lots of pictures of food waiting to be posted, so we'll see when I get around to that.

I thought I'd share this quick and easy and DELICIOUS dip.

1 can black beans, drained and rinsed

salsa

pepper jack cheese

Blend black beans and salsa in a food processor or blender, adding salsa a little at a time until you get the consistency you want. Pour into a microwave safe bowl, grate some pepper jack cheese into the bowl (or monterrey jack if pepper jack is too spicy for you, or leave the cheese out completely if you prefer), then microwave for 30 seconds-1 minute. Stir, and enjoy with some tortilla chips. It takes all of 3 minutes to whip this deliciousness up. Yum!

If you want to check out other quick and easy meals/snacks, check them out here!

Broccoli cheese soup

Here's a yummy, easy soup that's nice and quick. We had it on one of those "We need to eat in 15 minutes, what do I fix?!" days. Of course, that only works if you have potato flakes, or leftover mashed potatoes, otherwise it might be a little longer.

olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 bag frozen chopped broccoli
2 C. chicken broth
1 1/2 C. mashed potatoes (or more if you feel like it)
2 C. milk
1 1/2 C. shredded cheese
salt and pepper to taste

In a soup pot, saute onion in oil until translucent, then add broccoli and broth. Cook until broccoli is tender, then add mashed potatoes, mixing well. Heat for 5 minutes, then add milk and heat a little longer. Add cheese, stir, add salt and pepper, and enjoy!

Quinoa salad

I mentioned before that I don't really like quinoa as a straight substitute for rice. I add it to rice all the time as a nutritional and volume boost (it just about triples in size when cooked). But there is one recipe I love with quinoa as the main ingredient: Black Bean and Tomato Quinoa. Or just Quinoa Salad for short. I got the recipe here, then tweaked it a little to get the deliciousness and colorfulness that you see here:

• 2 teaspoons grated lime zest (I skip this half the time because I don't usually have limes on hand)
• 2 tablespoons lime juice
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 cup quinoa
• 1 (14- to 15-ounce) can black beans, rinsed and drained
• 2 medium tomatoes, diced
• 4 green onions, chopped (I only used 2 today, and it was great)
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro (totally forgot about this one this time! Oops!)
• about 1 cup of corn
• avacado (or two), diced

Cook quinoa in 2 cups of boiling water (or at least in the ratio 2:1 water:quinoa), covered, for 10-15 minutes until all the water is absorbed. While that's cooking, whisk together lime zest and juice, butter, oil, sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper in a large bowl.

Add quinoa to dressing and toss until dressing is absorbed, then stir in remaining ingredients and salt and pepper to taste. Let sit in refrigerator for 30+ minutes before serving. 

The birds have discovered our tasty tomatoes in the garden unfortunately, so we had less tomatoes than I'd expected--just a handful of cherry tomatoes, but it was good anyway. We had this with chicken tenders tonight, but it's pretty good on it's own, or throw in some tortilla chips and use it like a dip.

Even our youngest customer was a big (messy) fan:

Tostadas

Living in Tucson we eat Mexican food quite a bit. Lucky for us, Mexican food, except the flour tortillas, is usually pretty easy to make gluten-free. I wish I was better at Asian cooking, because that is usually pretty easy to make gluten-free, too. Instead we just settle for visiting Thai restaurants, which are usually almost completely gluten-free, or most meals can be adjusted to be GF.

Anyway, last night it was dinner time and I hadn't even thought about starting to make dinner and I was hungry. I looked around the kitchen and saw the stack of hard corn tortillas and thought "tostadas!" And about 3 minutes later dinner was ready. All I had to do was gather the ingredients on the table for everyone to make their own:

hard corn tortillas
refried beans
ground beef (I left this out last night for time's sake)
shredded cheese
lettuce
sour cream
salsa
avacado or guacamole
olives

The beauty of this meal, besides the quick and easy aspect, is that people can put on what they want and leave off what they don't. I try to have meatless meals at least once a week, and this is really easy to adjust to be meatless and still be filling.

Pasta Salad

It's summer, so we have a plethora of fresh vegetables from our garden. I'm loving it. There's something fulfilling about going out to my backyard and coming back in with a handful of food. :) Currently the highest producer is our yellow squash. We get at least one a day. To use some up I decided to make pasta salad.

We used this veggie curl pasta--my 3-year-old is much more likely to eat food that is 1.curly and 2.multicolored.

The pasta was a really good last night, but today for lunch I had leftovers and it was a little more al dente than I like, though still good enough. But it is better served fresh.

I just cut up the veggies I had on hand: yellow squash, cucumber, green onion, and carrots. I steamed the squash, carrots, and onion (I usually include red pepper, too, but didn't have any on hand), then threw those in with the drained pasta, added some chopped olives and cubes of cheddar cheese.

Top it all of with a few squeezes of Italian Dressing, mix it all together and stick it in the fridge for a little while to chill. Then, enjoy!

Sometimes I like to cut up some pepperoni and throw that in to the mix for a little extra flavor, but we didn't have any on hand, so we left it out.

Cheesy Potato Casserole

1 package hash browns (Ore Ida is GF)
1 pint sour cream
1 can GF cream of chicken soup
1/4 C. butter, melted
1/3 C. green onions, chopped
1 1/2 C sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
2 C. crushed GF corn flakes
2 T. melted butter

Mix the sour cream, soup, butter, onions and cheese together. Add in the hashbrowns, mix well, and put in a 9x13 pan. I decided to half the recipe today, since I didn't have enough sour cream, and with only 3 of us eating we don't need the whole thing.

Crush corn flakes. Or if you don't have GF corn flakes, you can use Corn Chex. They work just as well.

Put the crushed flakes in a baggie, add the melted butter and mix it all around, then spread on top of the potato mixture.

Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes.

We usually eat this with ham, but as we didn't have a ham on hand, we ate it with Oscar Meyer beef hot dogs. Soooooo good. Beef hot dogs are leaps and bounds better than regular hot dogs. We cut them up and mixed them in with the potatoes and they added a real tasty zing. Yum yum!

Potato salad

Luckily potato salad is naturally gluten-free. At least the way I've always made it:

Potatoes

Eggs

Pickles

Miracle Whip

Mustard

Pickle juice

Salt and pepper

Boil the potatoes until tender and eggs until hard boiled. Dice potatoes, eggs, and pickles, add miracle whip, mustard, and pickle juice to taste, mix together and add salt and pepper. Use more mustard than you think you should. Mustard and miracle whip are about equal portions. It makes it oh, so tasty.

I used 5 potatoes and 6 eggs. I think 3ish pickle spears. That'll make plenty for the 3 of us that can eat real food, with enough leftover for lunch for all of us tomorrow.

I think we'll have this with fried chicken tonight.