Easter Ham Leftover Stew

As a family we are trying to be less wasteful. This is not easy, especially with kids, but one way that we are are doing this is with food. We are making a conscious effort to use up leftovers and (hopefully) not throw them away. We would always save leftovers, thinking they would get eaten, but more often than not and more often than I care to admit, we were throwing food away. Over the course of a year it ends up being a lot of food.

 So we are menu planning, and using what we have before we buy more. And at least one meal a week is cooked using leftovers. This week it was leftover Easter ham.

For Easter, my youngest son had requested that my husband cook a boiled dinner and as this is easy, fairly inexpensive, and something the whole family likes, we readily agreed. Yes, my husband cooks for holidays. I am spoiled, I know and as I tell him often I am the luckiest girl in the world, and yes he cleans up after himself too! Anyway, we had a TON of ham and a ham bone leftover. None of us care for pea soup, so what to do???

Make my friend's Slow Cooker Ham & Bean Stew of course!!! It was delicious, easy to make, and used up a lot of our leftovers! I used a combination of Kidney and Pinto beans and everything we already had in our pantry. You could easily add more veggies to this and make it to fit your families tastes. I found it smelled wonderfully like baked beans but was definitely more of a stew. It was very filling and as it was a cold blustery spring day here in Maine, it was perfect having a nice hot stew for dinner. There's just something about soup that warms the soul on a cold day, don't you agree?

So head on over to cook.can.read, tell her Amy sent you and find a delicious new recipe to cook and a great book to read! 

Cookies and Cream Frosting

Anyone that knows me knows that I love frosting. It's one of the few things that I can actually still eat! I love cake and frosting, but mostly the frosting. Buttercream=Joy.

I have made frosting for a long, long time and every once in a while I get adventurous and add something, but nothing, NOTHING beats just your basic Buttercream frosting.

Last Wednesday was national Oreo cookie day and I also had a small office birthday party that day, so was able to make some Oreo goodies and celebrate my coworkers birthday all at once. I made chocolate cupcakes (gluten free of course) along with the cheesecake bars in my previous post. I wanted to do an Oreo frosting, but all the recipes I found were for cream cheese (not good for the lactose intolerant) and Oreo's. So, I adapted the basic (Wilton's) Buttercream Icing recipe and made my own version of cookies and cream frosting. YUM.

Ingredients:
1 cup shortening
1 cup of butter or vegan butter like earth balance
2 teaspoons of vanilla
2 pounds confectioners sugar
4 tablespoons of milk (soy or almond work as well)
10-14 Oreos or gluten free Glutino brand chocolate cookies smashed up into small pieces.

Directions:
1. Beat butter and shortening until well blended.
2. Add vanilla and mix well
3. Slowly mix in confectioners sugar a cup at a time on low speed. Add milk a tablespoon at a time and mixing well in between.
4. Add chopped cookie pieces and mix with a spatula.

**Please note that If you are planning on using a decorating bag you will want to chop Oreo's in a food processor into small pieces.

Yield: enough for 24 cupcakes or approximately 4 cups.































Enjoy!

GF Rosemary Chicken Pot Pie

I am gluten free. Not my husband and not my boys. So, as you can imagine dinner is an obstacle at times. Although gluten free food and recipes have come a long way, many times it is still very bland and blah. It usually has a different texture and tastes a little off. On many nights we have ended up making two different meals, one gf and one regular. It's a problem. Needless to say, when I find a recipe that everyone in the house likes and asks me to make again, it's a keeper. Here is one of our favorite gf go to meals. It is the perfect snowy day comfort food. For our family of four (mainly because I have two boys that eat more food than most small countries) I have doubled the original Pot Pie part of the recipe it is enough to fill a 3 qt. baking dish. 

GF Rosemary Chicken Pot Pie

Prep time: 20-30 min.

Cook time:20-25 min.
Servings: 8-10

What you need:
2c cut up cooked chicken
4c chicken stock
1c carrots-diced
1c celery-sliced
1/2c onion-minced
1c peas
3/4c GF flour mix like Pamela's or Bisquick
4-6 tsbp water
1/2c cream or nondairy substitute
2-3 sprigs fresh Rosemary (discard stalk after removing leaves)
1/4c fresh parsley-chopped
Salt and pepper to taste


One Biscuit Mix recipe to top the pie. You can use any recipe you like for the biscuits. But I usually just use the GF Bisquick.


Preheat oven to 375°.
Cut up chicken and set aside. Place the chicken stock in a large saucepan and bring to a boil; add carrots, celery, and onion and cook for 15 minutes. Stir in the peas and chicken and cook for 5 minutes longer.
Mix the flour mix to a thin paste with a few tablespoons of water. Thicken the stock with the flour paste and cook on low for 1-2 min. Stirring constantly, add the cream and season with salt, pepper, parsley, and the rosemary.
Pour the cooked pie mixture into a 3 qt. baking dish or individual casserole dishes and top with dropped biscuit dough (I use approximately 1/2 tablespoon for each dropped mound and leave about 1/2" in between them). Bake on top of a cookie sheet for approximately 20-25 min. or until biscuits are browned and pot pie filling is bubbly.

Enjoy!

Gluten Free Snow Day Blueberry Muffin's

It's a snow day here in Maine today! They are calling for 2 ft of snow and blizzard conditions, so naturally we are all home in our jammies.

What a lovely treat it would be for my children to have homemade blueberry muffins on this cold and dreary day! OK, great idea, but wait I want some too!! As the Gluten free mommy here, it's always hard to make cookies and treats that I can't eat. So I decided I would try to figure out a way to make them using what gf ingredients I had in the pantry{'cause there is no way I am venturing out to the supermarket in this!} And I dont' know about you, but I always seem to feel like I am experimenting every time I cook gf.... 

So here is what I used 

• 2 1/2 cups GF Bisquick
• 1 cup packed light brown sugar
• 3/4 cup milk
• 6 tablespoons butter melted (can use vegan butter or margarine)
• 2 tablespoons vanilla
• 2 eggs
•  2 cups organic whole frozen blueberries

• Heat oven to 375°F. Place paper baking cup in each of the 12 regular-size muffin cups.

• In medium bowl, stir 1 1/4 cups Bisquick mix and the brown sugar with whisk. Making sure the brown sugar is well blended (No clumps).  This pastry tool actually worked really well...

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• Make a well in center of the mixture. In small bowl, stir milk, butter, vanilla and egg with whisk until well blended. Add to dry ingredients, stirring just until moistened. Stir blueberries into batter; spoon batter evenly into muffin cups. The batter will be thick and will not rise as much as regular muffins, so fill to top of muffin cup.

Bake approximately 15 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool 5 minutes. Remove from pan to cooling rack. Serve warm.

Enjoy!!!

XOXO

~amy