{Gluten Free Review} Steaz Iced Teaz

I don't drink a lot of sodas... sadly not for a noble "green" or dietary reason... sodas just aren't something I grew up drinking a lot of. When I got married my husband couldn't believe I didn't know how to make tea. I think southern sweet tea is literally running through his eastern North Carolina veins. We soon bought a tea-maker because he wasn't too fond of my early attempts with a pot on the stove... and he's right -- a tea-maker brews tea evenly and it's never too strong or too weak. Michael (my husband's) special blend of decaffeinated green & black tea is still my absolute favorite tea to drink.

However, I stumbled upon this canned "iced tea" a few weeks ago when I was on my lunch break at work. I went to the local grocery store to pick up a salad for lunch and I saw these teas in the refrigerated section. Honestly, I was a bit skeptical. Most store bought teas are WAY too sweet for my taste and they often have a very "canned" and/or "fake tea" taste to them.

I am SO glad I took the chance on Steaz! This tea is absolutely delicious. It is very lightly sweetened and this flavor has just a hint of mint. The mint flavor is refreshing and light and only 80 calories for 16 oz! I LOVE this tea. It tastes like authentically brewed tea. It doesn't take like the "powdered" alternative and it doesn't have a "canned" taste at all. On days when I need to pick up my lunch at the grocery store, I'll definitely be treating myself to this tea to go with it!

And I "spoke" with a Steaz representative on Twitter earlier this week and they verified that all Steaz products are indeed gluten free! I hope they will update their website soon with this information.

Do you like tea? What's your favorite kind? Do you brew your own tea at home?

{Recipe Review} The Gluten Free Homemaker's Zucchini & Sausage

When Linda of The Gluten Free Homemaker posted her recipe for "Zucchini & Sausage" on Monday, I knew I had to make it! (So much for my menu plan this week! lol!) This is the kind of recipe I love. Super simple, one dish, and really it could be a meal all in itself!

I actually didn't change a thing to Linda's recipe (really, I didn't! I promise! lol). I even had fresh basil in the yard that I threw in at the last minute. This recipe makes me wonder why in the world we don't eat sausage for dinner more often. My husband and I both love fresh summer zucchini and the sausage (we buy locally made fresh sausage since we live in a major pork producing area) is just an incredibly flavorful addition.

Honestly, this might be my favorite way to eat zucchini now. We actually had three perfectly sized zucchinis from our backyard garden this year (not surprisingly about the only thing that survived the summer heat and crazy weeds -- I think zucchini plants would survive a nuclear blast... lol)

We served the zucchini & sausage with fresh corn and slices of a beautiful home-grown, vine-ripened tomato from a good friend who has a much greener thumb than I do! lol

Linda, thanks for such an easy and delicious recipe for summer! We loved it!

Green Onions... and how to save them for later

Did you know you can freeze green onions for later use? Every time I've bought green onions in the past they always went bad in my produce drawer before I had a chance to use them.

I can't remember where I saw it online a few days ago, but someone froze freshly sliced green onions in a plastic soda bottle in the freezer and simply poured them out straight onto a dish when they were called for in a recipe. And why hadn't I thought of that? I love the flavor that green onions add to just about any dish, but I didn't use them often in the past because they always went bad so quickly!

So this week I bought two large bunches of green onions, chopped them finely and put them in a plastic bag to freeze. I can't wait to throw them on an omelet or a baked potato later this week!

Do you use green onions a lot? Share one of your favorite recipes that uses them!

I'm adding this post to a roundup of gluten free kitchen tips, part of Wendy's (Celiacs in the House) new series on gluten free kitchens. Make sure to check out Wendy's post about her beautiful split level home with her cozy kitchen and her recent tip on making almond milk.

{Gluten Free Review} Barney Butter (Almond Butter)

The first person to really introduce me to the joys of almond butter was Heather of "Heather Eats Almond Butter." After seeing the gorgeous pictures on her blog of oat bran drizzled with almonds butter, muffins made with almond butter, cookies made with almond butter, etc... I really wanted to try almond butter. I probably started reading her blog about 3 years ago and ever since if I see a new brand of almond butter on the shelf I have to try it.

At Food Lion not too long ago I saw Barney Butter on the shelf. I picked up a jar and brought it home. Since I have about 5 OTHER jars of  almond butter that are slowly being eaten, I really didn't want to open it up. But curiosity got the better of me and I tried it out.

This a very creamy almond butter. The texture is like JIF peanut butter. Personally it wasn't my favorite brand of nut butter. The texture was so smooth it seemed very processed. My favorite brand thus far (and one that's very easy for me to find) has been Maranatha almond butter. Justin's nut butter is also a favorite if I feel the need to be decadent!

I think this would be a great alternative for kids who are used to the very processed texture of JIF peanut butter and they can't have peanuts anymore. I think this brand is probably geared more towards a child's palate than adult palates. It is not overly sweet, but it does contain evaporated cane juice to give it just a hint of sweetness (again very similar to Peter Pan or JIF peanut butter brands). To create such a smooth texture this brand also contains palm oil -- which I am not against -- I love baking with palm shortening... but personally I enjoy the texture of all natural brands better.

I do LOVE that this brand is clearly marked gluten free and is processed in a completely peanut-free facility which is really important for those with peanut allergies!

What's your favorite almond butter? Do you ever drizzle it on oatmeal or ice-cream? If you don't you're missing out!

This Week's Menu - Meals from the Freezer

Today I'm hosting the gluten free menu swap called "Menu Plan Monday" -- this even is headquartered at Cheryl Harris' blog, Gluten Free Goodness. If you are interested in hosting this weekly event, please visit Cheryl's site to find out how to join us!

My own menu this week is filled with leftovers from the freezer! I didn't have a lot of time to prepare meals or use my slow cooker, so I'm relying on leftovers that are frozen. We had the wonderful opportunity to go sailing with friends on Saturday. It was a beautiful trip and I had an amazing time! I had never been sailing before so the day was filled with lots of "firsts!" I can't even explain what an awesome feeling it was, when the sails were released for the first time! It was exhilarating! :-)

I don't have a list of my breakfasts & snacks this week, but it's very similar to most of my weeks: fruit, nuts, boiled eggs, protein shakes, peanut butter on rice cakes, etc...

This Week's Dinners: 

• Sunday - A super quick MICROWAVE skillet meal: cubed, cooked turkey breast & gf gravy mixed with peas, corn, and brown rice. -- This will also be lunch for several days!
• Monday - Meaty spaghetti sauce served over gluten free pasta along with green beans. 
• Tuesday - Pan grilled cod (from the freezer) with a tomato & cucumber salad
• Wednesday - "Fried eggs" served over sauteed kale, onions, and mushrooms with turkey bacon
• Thursday - Salsa chicken OR ground beef chili (leftovers from the freezer) -- served in taco shells
• Friday - PIZZA night -- I'll be having gluten free pizza on Udi's crusts and hubs will order out
• Saturday - out for dinner

Your Gluten Free Menu Plans for this Week: 

• Simply leave a comment below or send me an email (gingerlemongirl at gmail dot com) to include your menu in this roundup of gluten free menu plans!  

• Renee of Beyond Rice & Tofu shared her menu for this week. She'll be "cooking for one" this week and decided to make meals that were easy to make on a small scale more as snacks and appetizers. Great ideas Renee! 

{Gluten Free Review} Mesa Sunrise gluten free cereal

Don't you love really bad photography of gluten free cereal boxes? You're welcome. That's the 1960's picnik treatment of my cereal box. The rounded edges are beyond cool!

Had a hankering for something sorta sweet after having a very early dinner on Monday night. I decided to open up this box of Mesa Sunrise cereal I had in the very back of the cabinet. I bought it on sale at Big Lots a few weeks ago.

Personally I wasn't really a fan. One of the main ingredients was corn and it definitely had a very strong corn flavor... which I'm not really fond of in breakfast cereal. The cereal also became soggy REALLY quickly. That's one thing I miss about "Grapenuts" cereal - it was so crunchy and stayed that way the whole time you were eating it!

Overall I think it's a healthy cereal. The ingredients are mostly organic and whole grain. One serving contains 3 grams of protein and 3 grams of fiber... which can definitely be hard to find especially in gluten free cereals. Sugar (or evaporated cane juice in this instance) is the 3rd ingredient -- still a lot of sugar, but not nearly as much as many "kids" cereals. If you want a whole grain gluten free breakfast cereal, I would definitely recommend Mesa Sunrise. Just eat it fast so it won't get soggy! :-P

Have you tried Mesa Sunrise? Did you like it? What's your favorite gluten free breakfast cereal?

tomatoes from the garden

It's the first year we've had anything close to being called a "garden" -- but quite sadly the weeds quickly took over because I stink at gardening... yet we have managed to get a few tomatoes & zucchini from the now heat-tormented plants.

I love ripening vegetables on a window sill... so here are a few of our tomatoes. These are quite small... about the size of cherry tomatoes.

I think next year I'll just use these hanging tomato planters instead of torturing the plants with weeds!

Have you had any success at gardening? What's your favorite summer vegetable?

A crackin' good burger - gluten free style

One of my favorite cookbooks is Jaime Oliver's "Food Revolution." His recipes are basic, healthy and are usually quite easy to make. Many of them are also naturally gluten free. A definite plus.

I have been meaning to try Jaime's recipe for 'Crackin' Good Burgers" since last summer! We finally had a chance last week. Michael mixed up the ground beef & spices and instead of using crackers as called for in the recipe, we used gluten free tortilla chips that we smashed in a bag to make crumbs. A seriously delicious decision! I used my infamous grill pan to cook the burgers on the stove. Michael added cheese to his burger along with turkey bacon and tomatoes.

These burgers were awesome! We served them on Udi's gluten free whole grain hamburger buns and it felt like a real summer cookout!

What's your favorite burger recipe?

A frugal gluten free gift idea

Here's a super easy & frugal gift idea for you.

For Father's Day I decided to give my Dad a bunch of my homemade gluten free chocolate chip cookies. It may seem silly since he doesn't follow a gluten free diet himself... but he loves these cookies! Why not make a gift out of them? I also gave him a jar of homemade pickles I canned last summer and some of my favorite cooking seasoning.

I found an old tin that I was about to recycle and I colored a label on white paper with cookies on it. I glued the label to the tin. Taped an additional label on top and made a batch of my gluten free chocolate chip cookies. I made the cookies super small -- bite size really -- so the whole batch would fit in the tin without being smashed or broken. It worked great.

Michael and I also made homemade cards to go along with all the other homemade treats and I think for my Dad it was one of the best gifts I had ever given him.

So when you can't think of anything to give, or if you need to give someone a gift but don't have a lot of money to spend... make a batch of bite-size gluten free cookies! The people you love will be so impressed at how much time & thought you put into their homemade gift.

What are your favorite types of frugal, homemade gifts?

{Secret Recipe Club} Jason's BBQ Adventures

This month for the secret recipe club, I was paired with Jason's BBQ Adventures. I have to admit it was a challenge for me because we don't do much BBQ'ing around here. I'm the cook in our house and it's very rare for me to fire up the grill. We only have a little charcoal grill and I'm usually too impatient to wait for the coals to get hot enough... lol

So I decided for one of Jason's recipes I would use our stove top grill pan. We LOVE this pan. We use it for burgers, for salmon, for panini's, etc... it's a great pan and it's easier to clean than the George Foreman. lol...

I chose an easy chicken recipe from Jason since I knew it would probably work well with the grill pan. I loved this chicken. I've never made my own barbecue rub before so that was really fun! I'd definitely love to make more of Jason's recipes and maybe even fire up the charcoal grill to try them!

I served this chicken with steamed mixed vegetables and mashed sweet potatoes. We really enjoyed this meal and I like Jason's idea of making a bunch of this chicken at the beginning of the week to serve with meals when you need a healthy protein.

Make sure to stop by Jason's BBQ Adventures for great chicken, pork, beef, and sandwich recipes!

If you'd like to join in on Amanda's Secret Recipe Club, please visit her blog and sign up!

This Week's Menu - Veggie Crazy

I've made two batches of raw vegetable juice in the past two days. I watched this documentary and really felt like I needed up my veggie intake. I could eat fruits all day, but veggies? No, thank you. Sure, I'll eat a salad and steamed broccoli or frozen mixed veggies, but honestly, I have a hard time getting enough vegetable servings a day. After watching the film I thought surely it wouldn't hurt to juice a few veggies every day or every other day and sip them down... right? The first "juice" I made was a mixture of 2 celery stalks, carrots, spinach, and an apple. I used this method with my vitamix to make juice.  Here are a few super simple veggie juice recipes if you would like to try them.

I also thought I'd add more veggies to our meals this week by planning two vegetarian dinners. For a few of our meat-based meals, I used recipes from Stephanie O'Dea's Make it Fast, Cook it Slow (I'm using the slow cooker overnight for two meals) and I used several vegetarian recipes from the Quick & Easy McDougall Cookbook. I learned that following a strictly vegan diet does not work for me, but I enjoy the McDougall cookbook for great vegetable recipe ideas! You can also find several of the McDougall recipes available here from Google Books.

Breakfasts & Snacks This Week:  chocolate hemp shakes, rice cakes with peanut butter, boiled eggs, "ants on a log", ham & avocado wraps, homemade veggies juices, mixed nuts, almonds, peaches, sliced roasted chicken for snacks w/ rice crackers

Dinners this Week: 

• Sunday - Gluten Free Spaghetti & Salad
• Monday - Crock Pot Salsa Chicken served with avocados, black beans, and corn tortillas
• Tuesday - Summer Vegetable Bisque from the McDougall Quick & Easy cookbook
• Wednesday - Crock Pot Ground Beef Sloppy Joes on GF Buns and fries
• Thursday - Black-Eyed Pea Scramble from the McDougall Quick & Easy cookbook with a salad
• Friday - Gluten Free Toast Pizzas with steamed broccoli
• Saturday - Out for Dinner (or) Ham & "cheese (daiya)" omelets with fruit salad
• Sunday - Roast chicken (or) homemade hot dog & baked beans casserole with steamed veggies

Hello Chuck, we meet again...

In high school I wore a pair of turquoise all stars. I LOVED those shoes. A few weeks ago Heather shared that she had bought her first pair of converse all stars. First pair. I had to smile. I missed my turquoise chucks. They were part of my quiet personality. They showed a little bit of my spunky side that I didn't feel comfortable sharing through my voice. 


Saturday hubs & I had a movie day. We saw "Green Lantern" and being total superhero/graphic novel geeks, we really enjoyed it. On a side trip we stopped by Ross' to see if I could find a pair of flip flops. It's amazing how quickly I can wear out flip flops. But then I happened upon this pair of super cool pink all stars. I had to have them. I didn't need them. I wanted them. 


It's amazing to me how often I used to feel this way about food. Foods that were not healthy and that I didn't need. I still have those days. Days when I don't need it and I just want it and I still give in. But more often than not, I'm making better choices. And isn't that the key? 


More often than not. 


The choices we make really give clues to the values we hold. To "splurge" on clothing, shoes, movies, what I consider "stuff"... I always feel somewhat guilty about -- things that are not practical, that I don't "need"... it's always a long process to debate and decide whether to purchase them. 


But spending money on food? I often don't give it a second thought. Granted these days, it's USUALLY healthy food... and when I do spend money on healthy foods I know it's a valuable investment in our health. 


But what about when I spend money on junk food? Food that will only give me pleasure temporarily. Why is it worth it? These pink all-stars will make me smile every time I put them on... they won't add any inches to my waistline, they are probably worth it. But the junk food? I know it's not. I know it will actually cost me more money in the long run with health problems, prescriptions, doctors visits, etc... but I never think about those things when I just WANT that food. 


Some days the chocolate IS worth it. It would be silly to admit that it's not. But I am trying to be more aware of the days that I don't need it. The days I don't need the chips, I don't need the sugar, the junk food... and that it's not really worth it. Not in the long run. 


Buy the shoes instead. Or the books. Books are good. :-) 


What are the daily choices you struggle with?