• World's Best Hot Chocolate Recipe
    Recipes

    Homemade Hot Chocolate

    What’s the weather like in your neck of the woods these days? We have been iced and snowed in for nearly a week here are our house. This kind of weather is very unusual around here, so we’ve enjoyed the chance to slow down a little. The kids have spent so much time out sledding and playing that they are falling into bed at night and sleeping in late in the mornings. As homeschoolers, we could press on with a normal school schedule if we chose, but all of the children that live near us have schedules dictated by one school system or another and they’ve all been off and itching…

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  • Applesauce Bread Gluten Free Quick Bread
    Breakfast,  Recipes

    Gluten Free Applesauce Bread

    There’s just something about applesauce bread. It’s warm and comforting. It smells FANTASTIC while it’s baking. It’s wonderful plain, it’s delectable with butter, and I love it with peanut butter! It even makes a great sandwich for lunch with peanut butter and possibly a little bit of honey. Yum! Now that I’ve typed all this, I need to go and make some more.  NOW. Gluten Free Applesauce Bread Ingredients 1 1/2 cups Gluten Free All Purpose Flour* 3/4 cup Rapadura or Sucanat (or 1/2 cup honey**) 1/2 teaspoon xantham gum 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg 3/4 cup applesauce…

  • Gluten Free Biscuit Recipe
    Breakfast,  Recipes

    Gluten Free Biscuits Recipe

    This is our family’s FAVORITE recipe for Gluten Free Biscuits! It goes together quickly and easily and the recipe can be adapted to use more than one starch or flour, so you can tailor it to what you have on hand. So, with no further adieu, I offer you (drum roll, please!) . . . Gluten Free Biscuits Ingredients 1/2 Cup Starch (Potato, Tapioca, or Cornstarch . . . I typically use a combination of Potato and Tapioca) 3/4 Cup Flour (Brown Rice or Sorguhm) 1 3/4 teaspoons xanthan gum 1 tablespoon baking powder 1/4 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon sugar 1/3 cup cold butter, cut into chunks 3/4 cup buttermilk, whey from making yogurt, or milk Directions Preheat the oven to 375°F…

  • Quick Dinner Fried Rice
    Entree,  Recipes

    Quick Dinner Recipes: Egg Drop Soup and Tuna Fried Rice

    One night this past week, I went to the freezer to pull out the salmon to make for dinner, per the Menu Plan, only to discover there was no salmon there. ACTUALLY, there WAS salmon there, but I couldn’t SEE the salmon because it was buried in the chaos of my freezer . . . and that should be the subject of a whole blog series in and of itself: creating order from chaos in the freezer. I’ll get right on top of that. In the meantime, here are the “save the day” quick dinner recipes that got us through that evening: Quick Dinner Recipes – Egg Drop Soup and Tuna…

  • Gluten Free Pumpkin Muffins
    Breakfast,  Recipes

    Gluten Free Pumpkin Muffins

    Mmmmm . . . Fall and pumpkin . . . they just go hand in hand. Truthfully, I like pumpkin just about anytime, which is why I keep a lot in my freezer year-round. I like to decorate with pumpkins that roast well and look good – Fairy Tale and Cinderella Pumpkins have been my favorites over the years. Using my decor for food later makes me feel SO much better about spending money in the fall on some pumpkins to sit around the house. And, as long as you don’t make them into Jack-o-lanterns, they usually last the full season and leave you plenty of time to roast them…

  • 3-Ingredient-dinner
    Entree,  Recipes

    3 Ingredient Dinner in a Flash

    Okay, so you know how there are those days were absolutely nothing goes as planned and suddenly you look up and realize that in order to actually feed your family before it’s time to put the kiddos to bed that you really should have started dinner an hour ago? What? That never happens to you? Well, it happens to me. All.the.time. Waaaay more than I care to admit, actually. So, I won’t. I’ll just tell you that this is one of those recipes that you can throw together in a pinch with ingredients you tend to have around and no one will really know that you cannot manage your time…

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  • Gluten Free Pancakes
    Recipes

    YUMMY and Simple Gluten Free Pancakes!

    We eat pancakes pretty often.  Consequently, after my husband was diagnosed with Celiac earlier this year, we spent several months on the hunt for a good gluten free pancake recipe. We ate through many a dud before finding this recipe and making some minor changes to make it really work for us.  This recipe has a good “mouth feel” and isn’t too dry.  The flavor is really nice. This is a gluten free pancake tht I will happily serve to guests who aren’t accustomed to eating gluten free because it really doesn’t taste all that different from the pancakes we used to eat. Ingredients Dry Ingredients: 1 cup brown rice…

  • Recipes

    Magical (Maybe) Healthy (Definitely) Chocolate Chip Oatmeal

    Once upon a time, there was a sweet little girl who loved oatmeal.  The only decent tasting oatmeal her mother knew how to cook came in a box with individual packets inside. Add water or milk and microwave. Easy cheesy. The little girl LOVED oatmeal.  She would happily eat it for breakfast every.single.day. At first, her mother patted herself on the back, because her daughter loved oatmeal. Oatmeal just sounds so . . . healthy.  But, over time, the little girl’s mother began to be concerned about the amount of sugar in the little individual packages. And then there was the fact that the little girl would eat it EVERY.SINGLE.DAY.…

  • Recipes

    Granola Bars . . . or Super Swim Bars!

    I love a good granola bar. The kind that is a little chewy and still a little crunchy. I like them to be sweet, but not so sweet that they have that “burn” that sometimes comes from too much sugar, or especially too much honey. This summer, we needed some snacks to take to swim meets (hence the alternate name, SUPER Swim Bars!, by which they will forever be known around our house), and I found a recipe for granola bars that I liked, but didn’t quite love.  Now, with a few tweaks, I’m really happy with it and it’s been a hit with the whole family. Granola Bar Recipe…

  • DIY,  Recipes

    Making Yogurt at Home

    If, you’re not making your own yogurt at home . . . well, that’s okay.  I make lots of stuff from scratch, but I’m not of the mindset that you’re really falling down on the job if you choose convenience over the extra time it takes to make stuff from scratch.  We’re all trying to find a balance that works for ourselves and for our families.  I think that balance is probably different places for different people. I like to make stuff from scratch. Partly, because I just like to know that I can, and partly because I really do like knowing more about what’s in my food. It makes…