Now That is a Lunch

Today, I chopped vegetables for salads so I can quickly pack lunches this week (short work week yay!).

Mixed greens, carrots, radish, cucumber, snow peas with homemade creamy dressing.  I had planned to make a creamy buttermilk dressing, but wouldn't you know, they were out of buttermilk at the store, so I improvised.  Gluten free Kinnickinnick sandwich bread, spicy brown mustard, smoked turkey, swiss cheese, tomato sandwich.  Delish.  Spicy Thai Kettle Chips.  Diet Dr. Pepper-wanna be drink from home soda maker.

Creamy salad dressing:
1 individual container fat free plain yogurt (they only had fat free, which I don't normally buy)
about 1/2 as much low-fat sour cream as yogurt
splash of milk
about 1/2 Tbsp to 1 Tbsp mango balsamic vinegar
about 1/2 Tbsp to 1 Tbsp dijon mustard
about 3/4 cup parlsey
about 1/2 cup dill
(you can tell I'm big on measuring ingredients carefully!)

Blend or process until smooth and creamy.  Salt to taste (and it does need salt, it was bland until I added quite a bit to mine.  It's a lot of dressing, don't hold back!).

Banana bread, peanut butter cookies, and the end of LOST

Banana bread with chocolate chips based on this recipe from Simply Recipes.
I used two previously frozen bananas, two fresh bananas, and substituted 1/2 cup high protein flour mix, 1 cup all purpose flour mix, and 1/2 Tbsp (1 1/2 tsp.) of xanthan gum for the wheat flour to make it gluten free.  The flour blends I use are from an old issue of Living Without.  I added 1/2 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips as well.

Peanut butter cookies made from 1 cup peanut butter, 1 cup sugar, and 1 egg.

While watching LOST we had Trader Joe's chicken lime burgers with mayo, tomato, red onion.  I had mine on a Gillian's gluten free roll, which was really good.  The Big B picked them up for me at the grocery store!  (I had 1/2 a roll the next day for lunch too, topped with egg salad.)  The bun-burger combo, however, was kinda bland.  It definitely lacked for something zesty.  Like queso (Rotel dip to some of you).  Thankfully, that was our side dish for dinner!

Scotcharoos

1/2 batch of scotcharoos made with

4 cups Erehwon rice twice
1/2 bag marshamallos
1/2 cup peanut butter
2 Tbsp butter
1/2 cup butterscotch chips
1/2 cup chocolate chips

And, we've made pizza a few more times recently.  This one was made with the Olive Oil Bread recipe from Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a Day.  The dough was miserable to work with - extra sticky, tore constantly.  I ended up just pressing it onto a half sheet pan and baking it that way.  Worked just as well, I think.  I wonder if it was because I couldn't find corn starch at the store and used potato starch, which I had on hand, instead?

Tomato sauce, onion, sun dried tomato, dollops of olive spread, chicken, mozzarella, romano.

For Future Reference

gluten-free chocolate-chip bars made without xanthan gum will be crumbly. Delicious, but crumbly. Still good in a bowl with vanilla ice cream.

Snow Day!!

I love waking up to snow! In celebration of the snow, we started the day with chocolate chip pancakes.

Some of us had peanut butter chocolate chip pancakes:

Yum!

After a long, busy day of chores, we had a quick and delicious supper of "Wisconsin Mac & Cheese" from the Bon Appetit recipe-a-day calendar. Trader Joe's frozen green beans on the side. Delicious! And probably dangerous to have a 10-minute stovetop mac & cheese recipe in the arsenal.

Made with Sam Mills corn pasta (elbow macaroni), gluten free all-purpose flour (no xanthan gum), and 2% milk.