Apple Banana Muffins ~ wheat free recipe

My friend Annette does a weekly recipe linkup and this week she featured some Banana Apple Bran Muffins. Her pictures looked so yummy! I just had to try them but since they featured bran and included wheat flour, I obviously had to sub some things out.

So, what did I do? Simply left out the bran and wheat flours and subbed in almond flour in the same amount. I felt I would probably have to add additional dry ingredients (and was planning to add some ground flax seed and/or coconut flour). I ended up deciding against that after it was all mixed. I also put in more cinnamon (about 3 tsp) and did not measure the nutmeg since we use fresh and grate it into the bowl directly. I left out the sugar altogether and used one banana, since that was all we had. It made six tiny ones and six large ones. The large ones I baked in parchment paper liners and the small ones I just sprayed the muffin tin. Either way seemed to work just as well as the other.

I loved these. Tasty and yet healthy and will stick with me for a while. Another bonus? The girls who tried them enjoyed them also. Wheat free and the girls don’t always go together so them liking these is a definite win!

So my final recipe looks like this:

Ingredients:

1 1/2 C oats (I used one minute oats and did not grind them at all)

1 2/3 C almond flour

3 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 – 3 tsp cinnamon (as you like it)

1/2 tsp nutmeg

2 eggs, stirred up well

4 tsp water or oil

2/3 C milk

1 – 2 mashed banana(s)

1 large apple, grated with peel

Instructions:

Mix all dry ingredients together. Add the egg, water, and milk. Mix together well. Add the mashed banana and mix. Add the grated apple and mix well. Mixture will be very wet.

Add mixture to muffin tins that either are lined with parchment paper liners or have been well greased.

Bake in 350 oven for 20-25 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

Make 6-8 large muffins or 12 medium muffins.

Thanks, Annette, for such a yummy recipe!

Blessings,
At Home.

Linking up with the recipe linkup on A Net In Time.

Waffles – wheat free recipe

Not long ago, Miss J bought her own little waffle maker. She used some birthday money and has been happily making waffles since then. She can use it on her own and she is very pleased with her purchase.

One morning, she wanted me to eat waffles with her. So, I looked up a couple of waffle recipes and realized I needed to modify to make my own. Most wheat free recipes call for a prepackaged, gluten-free baking mix. Lots of the baking mixes still contain corn so they are not for me.

I have, however, come up with a pretty consistent replacement for the baking mixes and so I just modified that a bit, modified the recipe a bit, and made some super yummy, VERY filling waffles. I got to eat waffles with the girls! YUM!

Wheat Free Waffles

Ingredients:

• 1/4 C almond flour
• 2 T coconut flour
• 2 T flaxseed meal/ground flaxseed
• 1/2 t xantham gum
• 1 t baking powder
• 1-2 t sugar, to taste
• 1 t vanilla
• 1 egg
• 1/4 C milk
• 1 t olive oil or coconut oil (melted)

Directions:

• Mix the dry ingredients together.
• Mix the wet ingredients together.
• Add the dry mixture to the wet and combine well.
• Cook in a waffle maker. This should make one large waffle or three mini-waffles.
• Top as desired.

Enjoy breakfast treats with the family while sticking to the healthy diet you need! These are so good, you feel like you are indulging yourself. At least, I did. 🙂 If you make these waffles, I would love to know how they turn out for you. I am constantly tweaking recipes so feedback is helpful.

Blessings,
At Home.

Linking up with A Net In Time and the weekly recipe link-up happening there.

Linking up with the Homeschool Review Crew and the weekly link-up.

 

Unit Study on India

We recently studied India as our family’s country of choice for the International Feast Night we had with some other homeschool families. We had a blast and learned so much about India. We kicked it off by reading The Hidden Village by Bonnie Rose Hudson. Read my review to learn more about that book.

After learning about Manju and the world he lived in, we watched some videos. These videos taught us a lot about West Bengal, the part of India that the book was set in. We learned about Bengal Tigers, jute harvesting, the uses of jute, mangroves, markets in West Bengal, foods, mongoose, and more. There are a lot of things to learn about.

We also learned that West Bengal is just one of the part of India, which is extremely diverse. To learn about other parts of India, we used several resources from SchoolhouseTeachers.com. This is a site that we use often through the year and it provided us lots of good information on India. From the video titled India Unveiled in a series titled Trek to the Holy Land to a history study titled A Splash of Geography with a section on India, we had access to lots of good information and images. We looked at, but did not use, lapbooking sets on the rhino and the Bengal Tiger, both available at SchoolhouseTeachers.com. By far, the best resource on this site was Asia: Trade Route Safari (also by Bonnie Rose Hudson, who wrote The Hidden Village that we kicked the study off with). We learned a ton from the India sections of this study.

We used an art project that is available as a lesson from ArtAchieve. In level 1, there is a study of wood block printing in India. This is how they print fabric for the saris. Miss J created this print using the techniques of this art lesson and some videos from their cross-curricular materials.

Miss L studied the sari and decided to duplicate it with material on two of our 18 inch dolls. They were adorable.

We also used a set of notebooking pages from Hip Homeschool Moms titled Around The World Notebook Pages. These were neatly put together. The girls were able to research information for them easily and it was easy to for them to complete the pages.

As this was a feast, we took food from India that we had cooked, as well. Our menu consisted of:

• Butter Chicken
• Picnic Rice (rice with curd/yogurt)
• Apple and Raisin Chutney
• Naan
• Gajar Halwa Ladoo (Carrot and coconut truffles)
• Bhapa Doi

The recipes came from these two food blogs from India – Chef de Home and Fun FOOD and Frolic. There are tons more recipes on these two blogs and I would definitely like to try a few more.

At the feast, the girls set up a display table with their information and projects. Each family also took a few minutes to talk about what they learned, giving each child a few moments. (Great public speaking practice!) The students also had to introduce their menu and describe each of the foods so that everyone could know what they were eating. This was a fun night.

Hopefully, this will give you some resources for your own study of India. This is a very large, diverse country and we have barely touched on it. Perhaps we will cover some more during the springtime when we need a diversion one day. So much more to learn!

Blessings,
At Home.

This post is included in the Homeschool Collection at the Homeschool Review Crew. Click the image below to see the entire collection of posts for March 2019.

Parmesan Crusted Chicken

And this is all that was left!

 

For dinner, we had pan fried parmesan crusted chicken. It was lots easier than I expected and better, too. You see, a while back, we had bought these Parmesan Crisps which were marketed for snacking. They were not good but they cost about $10 so I didn’t want to just toss them. I decided to use them as the coating for chicken. And it turned out good.

 

 

 

Parmesan Crusted Chicken

chicken tenders, thawed and dried
1 egg and a splash of milk, stirred up
about 1 1/2 C crushed Parmesan Crisps for every 5 tenders
olive oil for frying

Heat pan well. (If it isn’t hot and well oiled, the coating will stick to the pan and come off of your chicken.) Place a piece of chicken in the egg mixture, turning to coat. Move to the crushed Parmesan Crisps and coat all over. Place in hot pan. Cook about 5 minutes on one side. Using tongs, turn carefully. Cook about 5 minutes on the other side, checking to ensure the the chicken is cooked through.

The girls all enjoyed this so I think I know how to use the rest of these crisps up. An easy and yummy dinner! We served it with cucumber slices, mashed cauliflower, green beans, and broccoli.

Enjoy.

At Home.

Everyday Cooking ~ a Crew review

Picking up a cookbook and reading through it is just such a fun thing for me to do. When I picked up Everyday Cooking by Vicki Bentley, I felt like I was reading recipes my mom would have written down and tidbits of information from grandma. What a wonderful treat this book from Everyday Homemaking is.

Vicki Bentley is a mom who understands quality – in love (just read her blog!), in family, in food, in instruction. From picking out recipes that feature healthy foods to ones that are inexpensive to make, this is a cookbook that can be shared or given as gifts, knowing you are giving them a useable cookbook. So many cookbooks out there, while they cover interesting and yummy sounding dishes, are just not practical, whether it be due to cost of ingredients or time required in the kitchen. Everyday Homemaking provides a cookbook that gives you both – ingredients you can afford and probably already having most of in your kitchen AND recipes that do not require an overwhelming amount of time to prepare so we can get on with the real tasks – loving our family.

An important feature of Everyday Cooking is that it provides instructions that are so clear and so easy to do that the children can easily help in the kitchen. All of my girls have used this cookbook to assist with food preparation over the past few weeks. Only once did I have to clarify anything and it was a term that you learn by doing (I think it was mince).

A feature of the book that I am excited to begin using in full is the list of dishes for the girls to learn. Included in Everyday Cooking is a short unit on cooking and it looks wonderful. Using it, plus all of the other tips, instruction, and materials other than the recipes, (and a tad bit of work on my part to plan and document) it will serve as a foundation for a home economics credit when they hit high school.

Some of the other materials included in the book are basic shopping lists, how to menu plan and a sample or two of how to do that, descriptions of basic kitchen accessories and equipment. There is a special section for low-carb and gluten-free helps, as well as a section for cooking with an electric pressure cooker. (This is where I learned that the Instant Pot is just a pressure cooker! My mind was shocked!)

Now, while all this other stuff is wonderful and helpful and quite a benefit, the real depth of Everyday Cooking is its recipes. Categories in the cookbook are:

• breakfast ideas
• appetizers and dressings
• bread and grains
• main dishes & soups & sides
• desserts & snacks
• low-carb and gluten-free helps/substitutions
• pressure cooker (tips and recipes)

The only thing I think would have made this easier to use would be to cross reference some of the substitution recipes. For example, when the CreamOSoup recipe is needed as an ingredient for another recipe, it would be nice to have the page number for CreamOSoup listed in that recipe. I have gone through my book and cross referenced those I found easily so that when I am using a recipe, that is one less thing I will need to locate.

Over the past few weeks, we have pulled this cookbook out a number of time and used many recipes. One of the first we used was Spiced Apples. Miss J did this recipe and we enjoyed it tremendously as it was very similar to a recipe we were already making.

We made her brownie recipe and Hawaiian Chicken for pot luck with our church. The Hawaiian Chicken did not work out so well for us, as we avoid flour in main dishes (I am allergic to wheat), and I subbed coconut flour in the CreamOSoup part of the recipe. It did not thicken well and when it cooled, the coconut flour got grainy. I will be playing with that CreamOSoup recipe to see what we can do with it without using flour. There are plenty of options; I just need to find the right one. The flavor of the Hawaiian Chicken was good, though! We definitely will try it again.

The brownies were very different tasting than our norm but they turned out good. They were easy to prepare and they were enjoyed.

Other recipes we tried included the Chicken Broccoli Braid, pancakes, skillet chicken recipes, potato soup, and more. I have several others that I would like to try.

We also braved the Eggplant Lasagna, without the pressure cooker. Turned out lovely. We did not use the recipe for the sauce in the book because it is almost exactly like we do it from scratch without a written recipe. And that really sums up what appeals to me about this book – so many of the recipes are extremely similar to what I learned growing up and have been teaching my daughters.

Learning to cook to taste and from scratch – that is what Everyday Cooking by Vicki Bentley is about. Visit her website Everyday Homemaking plenty of tips, ideas, and other recipes. She also offers The Everyday Family Chore System for families, as yet another tool to help your home run smoothly and efficiently. Some of the Crew members were using this program so don’t miss their reviews.

Interested? Mrs. Bentley is offering a coupon code for my readers to use to get 10% off the purchase of The Everyday Family Chore System and/or Everyday Cooking (print or e-book) through Labor Day! The code is TOS10books — apply it to as many books in your cart as you would like, but you do need to shop first and apply the 10% discount code last due to what Mrs. Bentley described as “eccentric cart functions.” Expires Sept 5, 2017. This cookbook would make some good Christmas presents!

At Home.

Quick festive dessert

Want a fun, easy dessert for this evening? Here you go . . .

I made a sugar cookie recipe and baked it in a bar pan until done. Now, you can just do that according to your normal, favorite recipe. Or you can go buy a roll of sugar cookie dough and roll it out in the pan. Or you can do what I did: modify a recipe so everyone in your family could eat it.

My modification? Instead of flour, I used a half and half combination of Pillsbury Gluten-Free flour blend and almond meal/flour. I chose the half and half because with the Pillsbury brand, I have found the cookies crumble really easily. Adding the almond flour really adds some strength and some flavor.

After the cookie was cool in the bar pan, I made the icing. I combined one block of cream cheese, 1/3 cup of butter, 1 tsp vanilla, and enough powdered sugar to get it to an easily spreadable consistency (about 2 1/2 cups).  {My girls have approved the icing. In fact, they would have enjoyed just eating it all by itself but thought it was really good with fruit dipped in it as well. So that’s another way you could use this. A bit thinner and use it for fruit dip. Hmmm. . .}

Spread that over the cookie as thick as you want.

Add fresh fruit. I added washed and dried blueberries and strawberries.

We will eat it after lunch. Yum!

Enjoy!

At Home.

I shared this recipe with a LinkUp at A Net In Time, so you can hop over and read some other great recipes… I know there is a great one for Lemon Loaf and one for cookies that are flour-free!

 

Cooking Necessities – Middle School Monday

Miss L (I cannot believe she now fits the definition of a middle school student!!!) has been expressing a desire to learn how to cook more things lately. So, I have been trying to make a more intentional effort to bring her into the kitchen often to help prepare dinner.

Some of the things she has been learning how to cook:

• bread (we use a bread maker so it is really quick and easy)
• rice
• dessert apples
• potatoes
• eggs (boiled and scrambled)
• pizza
• veggies (steaming them)

These are some of the more intentional items and dishes we have been working on in the last few weeks.

Since we love dessert apples, I thought you might like the “recipe.” I call it a recipe very loosely because it is really simple and you add things to the amount your family would like. 🙂

For our family of 5:

• 5 small apples, diced
• 3-4 T ground cinnamon (this is really a “to taste” measurement – change it as needed)
• 1/2 C brown sugar (again, this is “to taste” – adapt as desired)
• 1/2 – 3/4 C raisins

Combine all ingredients in a microwave safe bowl. Cover and microwave on high for about 8 minutes, stirring halfway through. These are best served warm.

At Home.

Simple (and quick) Meatloaf Muffins

So we have been trying to get the house picked up and cleaned up from all we have let go recently. We were busy much of the day at church, then came home and began working. All of a sudden, it was almost 6 pm. That is late for me to realize that I have not begun dinner. Add to it that we really need a grocery run. Illness recently has prevented it but we did have a few little things and so I threw them together. Easy and quick dinner.

Ingredients:
1 – 1 1/2 lbs ground turkey (or any ground meat)
1/2 red bell pepper, minced
1/2 green bell pepper, minced
1 egg
3/4 c cooked rice (I had this leftover so I tossed it in)
salt, pepper, garlic granules, chili powder – to taste (sorry  but I just eyeballed it)

Mix it all real well. Divide into balls that fill a well in a muffin tin. Grease the wells of the tin beforehand. Cook in a 425 degree oven for 30 minutes. If you are using a mini muffin tin, you will want to reduce the cook time.

We added some steamed broccoli and some corn, along with homemade bread for a complete meal. It was on the table in about 35 minutes from when I looked up. And all that was left was in this picture. I had 18 of these to begin with!

At Home.

Smores Pizza

Several years ago, the girls’ grandpa bought a smores pizza while we were visiting. Miss L thought it was THE. BEST. THING. EVER. No discussion. She has remained adamant since that smores pizza the best and it is extremely high on her list of favorite foods. Once in a while, we make one just for fun. They are simple and yummy and the girls adore this special treat with special memories.

So, your recipe is basically this:

1 recipe of your favorite sugar cookie dough

1 – 1 1/2 C of your favorite brand/flavor chocolate chips (we used a combo of semi sweet and milk chocolate)

1 1/2 C of mini marshmallows

Spread the cookie dough into a 9 x 13 pan with a rim. Don’t get it too thick. We made our dough and it made a bit too much so we were also able to do a 9 x 9 pan. Cook it according to directions. When you take it out of the oven, sprinkle the chocolate chips over it and put it back in for 30 seconds or so. Pull it out and use a spatula to spread the chocolate around. Sprinkle the marshmallows on top. Stick it in the oven again and watch to see them puff up really cute and fun. When they are good and puffy, pull it out and spread the marshmallow as best you can. This is difficult to do but it doesn’t have to be lovely. Just yummy. Cut and enjoy.

We also made a 9 x 9 pan and tried it with cinnamon chips, which you can sometimes find in the baking aisle. I watch for them because they aren’t there all year round. They didn’t spread as well as the chocolate did but it worked okay.

At Home.

 

Tortillas – Middle School Monday

This is late so it may show up as Tuesday. Oh well. Life happens, right?

A couple of days ago we had not yet gone to the grocery store but I knew that tortillas would go great with our lunch of 15 bean soup. So, I pulled Miss E into the kitchen and had her make my grandmother’s tortilla recipe. It was a quick and fun way to prep lunch together and there were several stories to tell about eating these yummy tortillas when I was growing up.

The recipe is simple but the tortillas are nothing like you expect from a store. These are thicker, chewier (it’s a good thing, believe me!), and much more filling than the thin tortillas that are store bought.

Miss E mixed up the dough and then split it into balls. She then rolled each ball out as thin as she could get it. We cook these on an electric griddle that fits four at a time.

We enjoyed them with our soup and then with some butter and honey for dessert. YUM!

The recipe:

• 4 C flour
• 6 T powdered milk
• 2 t baking powder
• 1 1/2 t salt
• 3 T shortening
• 1 C warm water

Cut the shortening into the dry ingredients and then add the water. This will make a softish dough but dry enough to roll out. Separate into 16-20 balls and roll as thin as you can on a floured surface. Cook on a hot, dry griddle. I used an electric griddle on 400 degrees. Cook until the side has some brown spots but not burned. Turn over and do the same.

Enjoy!

At Home.