This Week's Menu - Pantry & Freezer Meals

It's the end of the month so we're trying to be lean with our groceries this week! We're eating from the pantry and freezer!

Breakfasts: boiled eggs, Homemade Whole Grain Teff Muffins, Chocolate Hemp Shakes made w/ almond milk

Lunches: leftovers -or- sandwiches + apple slices and/or carrot sticks with hummus

Snacks: greek yogurt, apple slices w/ peanut butter, carrot sticks w/ hummus, babybell cheese, 1 oz. raw almonds or walnuts, 1 slice homemade gf toast w/ peanut butter & honey

Quick Dinners for the Week:

• Monday: Baked Almond Halibut (Basically I am simply going to cover the fish filets with sliced almonds, drizzle with olive oil, salt & pepper and bake) will serve with green beans or broccoli (if I have any in the freezer).

• Tuesday: Homemade chili (made using leftover homemade hotdog chili, a can of pork & beans, leftover veggies from the freezer, and leftover brown rice) 

• Wednesday: One pot meal made with leftover beef soup/stock from the weekend to cook brown rice or quinoa, ground beef or ground turkey, and canned veggies

• Thursday: Super quick meal tonight since we have errands: sandwiches w/ apple slices or breakfast for dinner

• Friday: Homemade GF Pizza night -or- Homemade tuna salad for favorite tuna melts

• Saturday: FIELD TRIP to the GF Whole Foods Bakery with our Gluten Free Support Group! Hopefully gluten free pizza out for dinner!

• Sunday: Roast a chicken, serve with baked potatoes or sweet potatoes, spinach salad and/or green beans & almonds, my favorite baked apples

Check out more great menus that are gluten free at Angela's Kitchen and a crazy huge roundup of menus of all kinds over at Org Junkie!

Gluten Free Whole Grain Teff Muffins Recipe

At a recent local gluten free support group meeting one of our wonderful members presented a program on different gluten free flours and how to use them. She brought a delicious batch of gluten free teff muffins from a Bette Hagman cookbook. The muffins were incredible. Deeply rich and distinctly tasted like the whole wheat bran muffins I remembered from my gluten days.

I decided to try the muffins this morning with my own personal revisions (since apparently it's impossible for me make ANY recipe as is... lol)

I am so impressed with these muffins. The only type of teff I could find locally was a bag of whole teff grains. The are TINY grains -- I believe they might be considered the smallest grains in the world. I pondered what exactly to do with them and then realized I could probably grind them in my vitamix since they were so small! I poured about 1 cup of grains into the vitamix and ground them slowly for a minute or two. The end result was a soft, slightly grainy flour.

It worked! I made a large batch of muffins so I could take them to work this week for breakfast. the texture of these muffins is incredible. It really does remind me of bran muffins by texture and taste! I am low on eggs at the moment, so I used Ener-G Egg Replacer and additional oil in place of eggs. It made the muffins not rise quite as high as they would have otherwise, but it didn't affect the flavor one bit! I also left gums out of these muffins and added my favorite ground flax seeds which means additional healthy fiber and omega-3's!

I've also started measuring my flours by weight in addition to volume for those of you who prefer to measure ingredients by weight. I'll always be a cup & teaspoons girl myself, but it is fun to see how much the different flours each weigh separately. I hope this will be a helpful addition my recipes.

Gluten Free Teff Muffins
free of gluten, dairy/casein, soy, corn, gums, potatoes, eggs
adapted from a Bette Hagman recipe from, "The Gluten Free Gourmet Cooks Comfort Foods"
(I made a large batch so that I could take these for breakfast this week)
Makes 18 regular sized muffins
printer-friendly recipe

Dry Ingredients:
1 1/3 cups (228 gm) teff flour
2/3 cup (80 gm) arrowroot starch
1/4 cup (28 gm) ground flax seeds
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 cup (102 gm) sugar

Wet Ingredients:
4 eggs -OR- 1/2 cup (145 gm) warm water + 2 tbsp. EnerG egg replacer whisked together
1/2 cup (95 gm) oil
1 cup (240 gm) non-dairy milk (I used almond milk)

Optional Add In's:
1/2 cup chopped nuts (55 gm) -- I used chopped walnuts
1/2 cup raisins (76 gm)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 cupcake/muffin pans with paper liners or spritz with non-stick cooking spray. (I was able to make 18 of them). In a large bowl whisk together all dry ingredients. In a smaller bowl mix together all wet ingredients and pour into dry ingredients. Mix just until thoroughly combined. Fold in chopped nuts or raisins. Fill cupcake liners 3/4 full with muffin batter. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the muffins comes out clean. The muffins with be dark brown -- almost "chocolately" in appearance. If you use eggs the muffins will have tall domed tops, if you use egg replacer as I did, they will just reach the top of the muffin liner and have a flat top -- either way they are still delicious!! Allow muffins to cool 10-15 minutes before eating. If they are not allowed to cool properly they will have a taste slightly gooey.

Nutrition Information Per Muffin using egg-replacer (18 Muffins):
171 calories, 9 grams fat, 2 grams fiber, 2 grams protein

Carrie's Ingredient Notes:

• Flours: I used teff flour as my main whole grain in this recipe. The flour gives these muffins the distinct bran-like flavor they have, but feel free to use the same amount of your favorite whole grain flour, although know they will have a slightly different taste. I use arrowroot starch exclusively as my starch of choice, although you could easily sub this with cornstarch, potato starch, or white rice flour.
• Sugar: In this initial recipe I used regular white sugar. You could also use brown sugar, coconut sugar, date sugar etc... feel free to use the sugar you like best. You could also reduce the sugar by a 1/3 in this recipe without having a big difference in the flavor of the muffins.
• Oil: I generally use canola oil or olive oil in my recipes. Feel free to use the oil of your choice. It should not adversely affect the texture or taste of these muffins. You could also use 1/4 cup oil + 1/4 cup applesauce to cut back on both fat content and calories.
• Ground Flax Seeds: These serve several purposes in this recipe. First they add a nuttiness and a lot of healthy fiber to the recipe. Secondly when ground flax seeds are introduced to a liquid they start to gel slightly, so they take the place of using xanthan gum for texture in this recipe. I don't advise leaving them out of the recipe. You could use 2 tbsp of ground chia seeds in place of the flax if you prefer.
• Non-Dairy Milk: Use regular milk or your preferred non-dairy milk. I always use almond milk since I can find it locally.

Gym Hamster - Week 8 Update

Bad to the Bone!

THIS is a cool hamster!! :-)

It's week 8 at the gym. That's hard for me to believe. It seems like more of a habit now than something I'm forced to go too! I'm proud that I've made it 3 times this week and I'm going again after work today!

One thing that stands out to me this week is I'm starting to gain some confidence in myself and my abilities. On days that I cardio alone, I do a full 60 minutes. I started with 20 minutes!

I'm pushing myself harder, I'm trying more activities, and I look forward to the gym (well, most days anyway! )

My attitude is better than it has been in years. I've lost 12 pounds since January 1... it's slow progress, but I'm okay with that. I hope that slow progress means permanent progress!

The past few weeks I've also had the help of nutritionist Cheryl Harris. She's been coaching me each week on the positive progress I've made and focusing on challenging areas I can work on. This week we talked about mindless eating. She recommended reading "Mindless Eating" by Brian Wansink. Amazingly with Amazon Prime my copy came in one day, so I've started reading. So far the book has started talking about the "cues" that we don't think about that can encourage us to eat more without thinking about it: a larger plate or container, a fancy label, other people eating/drinking around us, etc... It's been a really interesting read so far and it's really making me think about why I eat more than I should at times.

And you. Thank you for reading these updates. I know recipes have been few & far between lately and I really appreciate all your support in this journey I'm making. I know eventually I'll be able to make time again to focus on baking and creating recipes... but I so appreciate your patience as I figure this healthy living lifestyle out! Knowing I have a huge group of cheerleaders behind me is huge and makes a world of difference.

I appreciate you!

This Week's Menu - A day late

I've learned over the past few weeks that my body seems to handle small amounts of white cheeses & greek yogurt very well. I'm thankful for this as it's an additional source of gluten free lean proteins in my diet. 

Breakfasts this week:

My nutritionist of awesomeness Cheryl Harris' Millet Cereal, soft-boiled eggs, rice and/or hemp protein shakes. The chocolate shakes, I simply mix the protein with almond milk & a few ice cubes. For the berry shake, I like to make Ashley's Morning Smoothie and just add a few tablespoons of this protein powder. It's delicious!

Snacks: 

Walnuts, Pecans, Almonds, Babybell Cheese and/or cheesesticks, greek yogurt, apples, bananas, carrots & hummus, rice and/or hemp protein shakes

Lunches: Dinner leftovers or gluten free sandwiches + apple slices

Dinners: I've got the ingredients for all these dinners this week, so we can pick and choose which dinner we want! Somehow we're eating a lot of turkey this week! lol

• Turkey Burgers on homemade GF buns with green beans, and carrot sticks
• Grilled Halibut? (I think that's the fish I bought?? lol) with broccoli & steamed brown rice or millet
• Mock Chicken Parmesan with Angel Food chicken and spaghetti sauce. Served with green beans or salad and brown rice pasta
• Turkey hotdogs (since I made gf hotdog buns this week!) served with baked beans & homemade coleslaw
• Breakfast for Dinner: scrambled eggs, fruit salad, gluten free toast, turkey bacon 
• Friday Homemade Gluten Free Pizza night! 
• Easy Tuna Melts using my husband's tuna salad of awesomeness. Served with an easy spinach & mandarin orange salad. 

Sunday night preparations for the week:

1. Made 2 batches of dough of my honey oat bread. With the first batch I made an actual loaf of bread. After it cooled, I sliced it, wrapped it in plastic wrap, placed it in a ziplock bag and then froze the entire loaf. With the second batch, I made 4 hamburger buns using english muffin rings (or you could use emptied & washed tuna cans) and I made 4 hotdog buns using heavy duty foil shaped into oblong rings (like this great example). 
2. Placed my frozen fish & frozen turkey burgers in the refrigerator to defrost so they would be ready for cooking any night this week. 
3. Sliced 4-5 apples and placed them in bags so we could just grab them in the mornings as we headed out the door. 
4. Prepared the millet cereal & the boiled eggs in my rice cooker and then placed everything in sealed serving containers so I could just grab these items for breakfast as I headed out the door this week. 

What's on your menu this week? What have you done to make meals easier to prepare for your family this week? 

Gym Hamster: Week 6 - Learning to Breathe

I love this little contemplative hamster! Life has been challenging this week. I've made it to the gym... but stress hit an all time high on Tuesday. I had to deal with a family crisis. In the past I'm not sure I would have been bold enough to share about this publicly... but we all need to share our struggles. While details can still be private... it's important to know we aren't the only ones who deal with very hard and very personal family challenges. Alcoholism is a silent disease that is all too often ignored or avoided. It's time to stop avoiding the issues and face the problems that alcohol can cause.

Alcoholism has deep roots in my family. It's the reason I hate the smell of beer or liquor on anyone's breath. It's the reason I get nervous around anybody who's drinking. Alcoholism can tear families apart. It causes unnecessary worry, stress, and health problems. Even (maybe especially) when you're not the one drinking. It's like a cancer that just will not go away... It's especially hard when it effects the people closest to you. It's hard not to blame. It's hard not to be angry. It's hard not to want to shake sense into somebody... even though you know that's not really possible. It's hard to realize sometimes people are absolutely responsible for their own actions and they have to learn how to deal with the consequences. It's hard to realize that sometimes people do not want to change. And as much as you want to help them and as much as you wish things were different... you have to deal with life as it is and always hope for the best.

The crisis hit Tuesday night. We were supposed to head over to a GF support group meeting, but it was disrupted. I spent a good part of that evening on the phone with family members until I knew things were okay for the moment. Often incidences like this can move me into a panic attack. While I'm in the midst of the situation I can be calm, controlled, and directive... but once the wind has blown and settled... the panic can set in. The anger, the frustrations, the sadness, it all can just come to a head...and all those emotions balled up into one can result in some serious emotional eating. That's my alcohol... the food.

But with the help of my husband... I took a different approach that night. I did eat a few chips (it was 9 -I counted! lol) for some crunch action. Then I stopped and thought about what I could do to immediately help myself deal with the situation. My husband made me a cup of hot tea sweetened with honey... and I pulled out the laptop and went online to a wonderful site called "Step Chat" which is an amazing site that provides free, online "AA" and "Al-Anon" meetings. These meetings are held in online chatrooms, but they are run by volunteers in a very, very professional manner and it was exactly what I needed. By God's amazing timing there was a meeting just a few minutes after I logged onto the site. I felt such an immense sense of relief after sharing my story with the support group that I just felt the frustrations and stress simply release away. If you know me well you know I'm a very private person... it's hard for me to share such deeply personal things... but I wanted to share this with you because it was so healing for me. I will continue to attend these online meetings several times a week if I can.

I was proud of myself for not immediately turning to food. I was proud of myself for being willing to deal with the situation right then and there and not ignore it. I was proud of being able to be strong enough to cry and know it was okay. I know that's a huge step for me... and I'm thankful for friends who have been brutally honest with me about getting help with my emotional struggles.

So I've done a lot of breathing this week. A lot of listening to my body. In a way I'm thankful for the crisis that happened this week. Sometimes we don't know how strong we can truly be until we are put to the test and have the patience, strength, and faith to get through it. Breathe.

It's been a great week at the gym. While I don't officially have a weigh in until Saturday I know I'm down at least a pound this week! A WHOLE pound! I was really stalling there for a few weeks so to see that kind of progress is incredibly encouraging and invigorating.

I've also turned to exercise this week not only to get healthy, but to get serious stress relief. Punching it with every step on the treadmill, every turn of the recumbent bike, every knee lift with the ark trainer I dealt with some serious issues on those machines. And I'm thankful. And I still deeply love my family despite the struggles.

I'm breathing.  I'm blessed and I AM STRONG.

Favorite Gluten Free Pancakes for Shrove Tuesday

It's Shrove Tuesday... I actually forgot... but here's a quick roundup of my very favorite pancake recipes. Pick one to try tonight to share with your family just for "Pancake Day! Enjoy!

• My Dad's Best (Gluten Free) Pancakes - REVISED for a thickener batter without gums
• Whole Grain Yeasted Pancakes - a thick & delicious pancake with a wonderful flavor and texture! Great for using up leftover sourdough starter from Amy's Gluten Free Sourdough Bread!
• Master Baking Mix Pancakes - Super Easy & Quick using my Gluten Free Master Baking Mix -- Homemade "Bisquick." 
• Elana's Almond Flour Pancakes - Yummy low glycemic option!
• Gluten Free Girl's Whole Grain Pancakes
• Celiac Teen's Fluffy Gluten Free Pancakes
• Art of Gluten Free Baking's Pancakes
• Lexie's Kitchen Saturday Pancakes
• Gluten Free Homemaker's GF Pancakes
• Gluten Free Goddess' Pumpkin Pancakes

Now go make some Gluten Free Pancakes! Enjoy!! 

This Week's Menu - More One Pot Meals & Cooking Ahead

I've been trying to plan more meals lately so that I can be a more prepared "Gym Hamster!" Here's what I''m cooking in our kitchen this week! I'd love to know what you're making too! 

You can also find more wonderful gluten free menus with The Gluten Free Menu Swap... hosted this week by Celiac Family. 

Breakfasts this week: Made ahead in the rice cooker -- cooked rolled oats with stevia, raisins, slivered almonds, ground flaxseeds, applesauce, and cinnamon. Made a big batch in the rice cooker last night and divided into 4 containers for breakfasts. Boiled eggs for my healthy protein. 

Lunches: Either leftovers or sandwiches with sliced apples.

Monday: Made Ahead One Pot Meal -- Chicken baked with "Spanish" Rice -- made this with 5 ingredients: defrosted one bag of precooked brown rice I made last week... mixed it with frozen peas and leftover salsa. Poured half of it into a greased casserole dish. Placed 3 frozen chicken breasts on the rice mixture, and then placed the remaining rice & peas over the top. baked at 350 for about an hour. I prepared this last night to serve today. 

Tuesday: Errands & GF Coffee break night, so we'll have sandwiches on the sourdough bread I made yesterday, along with apple slices and carrot sticks. We're adults.. really, we are... lol

Wednesday: Made Ahead One Pot Meal -- Ground Turkey & Quinoa with veggies casserole. Made this last night: Basically cooked 1 cup of dry red quinoa in the rice cooker. Once cooked, I placed it in the bottom of a greased casserole dish. Browned ground turkey and cooked it with onions, garlic, green pepper, and a frozen bag mix of different types of green beans & wax beans and carrots. Then added some drained & rinsed large lima beans. Poured this mixture on top of the cooked quinoa in the casserole dish. Made a quick "sauce" to pour over everything with unsalted chicken broth, thickened with arrowroot starch. Poured it over everything and covered the casserole dish. For dinner on Wednesday night all I have to do is pop the casserole in the oven at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes. Dinner Ready!

Thursday: Leftovers or Breakfast for Dinner -- Hubs' favorite GF Pancakes, Turkey Bacon, and Scrambled Eggs

Friday: Pizza night! We love to make simple pizzas on Food For Life Brown Rice Tortillas. I like to top mine with homemade pizza sauce, onions, green peppers, turkey pepporoni, mushrooms, pineapple, and daiya cheese!

What's on your menu this week?

Gym Hamster - Week 5 Update

It totally cracks me up looking for hamster pictures for this series! If you have a hamster and want to share a picture of your pet, please send them to me!

So this is my 5th week hitting the gym... I'm slowly increasing my activity from 30 minutes to 45-60 minutes of cardio 3-4x a week. I am trying to work in my strength training routine at least twice a week. I'm beginning to challenge myself a little bit more each time I go to the gym with cardio. I jogged for the first time on the treadmill yesterday. It was only in one minute increments, but i did it. It's slow... but I know we'll get there.

My frustrations this week lie not in the gym routine... but in my eating. It is SO easy to revert to mindless eating. I've realized it's literally going to take months to make a "permanent" change in my eating habits. A few moments of weakness can can really hurt the scales at the end of the week. My "trigger" foods are chips and chocolate, and just eating too much of them... usually mindlessly.

For instance on Tuesday night I got home after the gym, I was starving and over the weekend on a trip I bought a bag of gluten free pretzels. (A purchase don't make often, because I know the consequences!) While standing in the kitchen chatting with hubs, having our daily catch up, I munched 2-3 servings of pretzels without even thinking about it. Then after that I munched on some lunch meat that I was preparing for a salad. Then I munched on a few gluten free cookies (agreeing to review gluten free foods for companies is an evil thing to do!) When I added up my calories after dinner, my mouth hit the floor. I had done so well during the day... it wasn't until I was famished after the gym that I just munched, munched, munched mindlessly and added an additional 900+ calories to my day's total. That's over half of my daily calorie allotment. Which of course completely blew up my total calories for the day. I was so utterly frustrated with myself. I couldn't believe I had let my evening snacking/mindless eating get so out of control in ONE afternoon.

I'm going to work hard this month to reach my calorie & protein goals. I really want to get under the 200 lb. mark by April. I'd love to knock the socks off of my Nurse Practicer for my May appointment. That would be an awesome reward at the end of the month.

I think what makes this journey different than every other weight loss journey I've had in the past is that I'm NOT going to give up. I'm paying too much at the gym to give up! lol Seriously though, I know this is going to be hard... it is hard. I know it may take a year or more to reach my goal... but I WILL get there.

It may be a long struggle to conquer my bad eating habits, but I'm determined to make it a lifestyle. And I lived an unhealthy lifestyle for most of my adult years... so it won't change overnight... it won't change in a week... it won't change magically in a month... there will be a lot of steps backward on the journey forward. But I'll get there.

Don't give up. Eat more carrots. Be a Gym Hamster.