Pumpkin Spice Quick Bread

Do you ever find a recipe, print it out, plan to make it, but when you get right to the moment of truth, you punt and do something completely different?  No?  Is that just me?

The original recipe started out as Cinnamon Swirl Quick Bread.  When it came down to mixing and baking, I decided I wanted gluten free.  I then realized I didn't have the right GF flour on hand and I didn't have any yogurt in the house.  What's a girl to do!  The last bit I felt needed to be changed was the original recipe called for mixing water into the topping, which so was not what I wanted to do.

Punt.

Here's what I made and I can honestly call it an original recipe, given I changed, well, just about everything.

Pumpkin Spice Quick Bread

• 1 cup brown rice flour
• 1 cup GF pancake mix - I used Bob's Red Mill
• 1 Tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 cup almond milk
• 1/3 cup mayonnaise (or yogurt)

Topping

• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice

Icing

• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1 Tbsp vanilla
• 2 Tbsp almond milk
• dash salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease a 9 inch loaf pan with coconut oil.

Whisk together the flours, baking powder and salt  In a separate bowl, combine sugar, egg, milk and mayo.   Mix in the flour mixture until well combined.  Pour batter into prepared baking pan.

In a small bowl, mix together topping ingredients.  Sprinkle evenly over batter.  Use a knife and gently swirl into the top 1/3 of the batter.

Bake for 40 to 45 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

While the bread cools for 15 minutes or so, whisk the icing ingredients together until smooth.  Pour over warm bread and let cool.

Slice and devour.

It was really delicious.  Mister approved.

Post Mortem:  This recipe was super delicious after having cooled in the pan for over and hour.  Mister and I had it for dessert (yum!).  The next morning as I tucked into a slice with coffee for breakfast, I still thought it good, but, I wish I would have warmed it up.  It seems to have lost some of its initial "wow factor".  Also, the next time I make this, I will fiddle with the topping.  I'll cut in some butter or butter like substitute (i.e. Earth Balance) and/or add some oats or flour.  Something to give the topping more of a crumble texture rather than just sugary spices.  I think a really good alternative may be to pour half the batter into the pan, then pour in the topping then pour on the last half of the batter, swirl a few times with a table knife.  With the icing on the top and the "topping" in the middle, it may balance out a bit better.

Just my thoughts.
Ciao!

001 October Morning

Sunrise this morning, bouncing off the buildings was pretty and pink.

Me and Mine

Hello Blogger my old friend
I've come to blog with you again ...

This journal has been on my mind of late.  I've not had the impetus to actually come here and pick up where I left off.  I may have just found that little push I needed.  Time will be the judge of that.

I've spent the last couple years reading and doing my own personal studies on how I've been eating and how it effects my everyday sense of well being.  I've come to the personal conclusion that I feel better and my psoriasis is less active (for lack of a better way to put it) when I leave out grains from my diet.  In that vein, I have come across many blogs with many grain free recipes that are delicious.

So, back to the push I felt this very morning.  I recently purchased a cookbook by Danielle Walker of the Against All Grain blog (www.againstallgrain.com).  My plan, as of today, is as I cook and bake my way through this book of truly amazing looking recipes, I will blog about my results.  I know, not a novel idea.  I'm ok with that.

What do I hope to accomplish ...  Well, I hope to get back to writing and processing my thoughts on "paper" and to pick up my camera on a regular basis.  Yet another love of mine I've let fall to the wayside.

There you go.

Let's get started.

I've only really been doing much cooking on the weekends of late.  Seems there's just too much other stuff going on and when I do cook, I make enough to last a few days.

Yesterday, I made sarmales - Romanian style stuffed cabbage.  We are having them for dinner tonight, so I'm not sure of how they turned out, but they smell delicious.  That's not a recipe from the book, but have been on my food to cook bucket list.

From the book so far, I've made the marinara sauce.  It probably would have been just fine as written, but I added some of my usual ingredients because #1 that's how I roll and #2 we just like food spicier.  I added fennel, marjoram, thyme, more fresh basil, Braggs liquid aminos, honey and bay leaves.  I ate it over spaghetti squash and it was wonderful.

I've also made the chocolate chip cookies.  They were delicious straight from the oven and also a couple hours later cooled.  After day one, I was uninterested.  That could have been just me though as I'm not all that interested in any cookies after they have sat around for more than a few hours.  The exception to that rule would be my frosted sugar cookies.  I could eat those for days.

My thoughts are not all that organized right now, I'm ok with that, well sort of.  It annoys me actually, but I'm not motivated to change it in this first post.

So, I've not completely given up gluten and grains.  I try to eat relatively gluten and grain free.  I do also eat those on occasion when we out of the house and/or when I really just want to eat them.  If I keep their presence in my diet to a minimum, that seems to work.

I'm not here to tell anyone how to eat.  I'm here to blog about what I'm eating.

Until then ...

Cilantro Corn Tortillas

I have been 'mostly' gluten free for about a year now.  Not 100%.  Its  HARD!  I mean, Bread.  Come on!  Still, I endeavor to leave most of the gluten out of my day.  I just feel so much better without it.  I'm not celiac, but I seem to have an aversion to it.  Or, well my body does.  I would eat bread in so many forms each and every day if I didn't feel so horrible each and every time.  In that light, Mister and I have eaten mostly corn tortillas during that time, leaving the softer flour ones in the grocery store for others to enjoy.

I have had no desire to make my own tortillas.... until I saw THIS recipe for Cilantro Corn Tortillas on Make it Naked's (MIN) blog.

I immediately put these on my food bucket list and printed out the recipe.  Then serendipity stepped in and Mister needed Pho this weekend.  He bought all the ingredients which included cilantro and cooked up a mean pot of soup.  He is a bit of the soup master for some unknown reason.

Anyway, we had leftover fresh cilantro, so instead of waiting for some unknown date in the future, I made these tortillas.

Of course, no photos.  Mine were no where near as pretty as MIN's.  I think there might be a knack to making tortillas and since this was my first attempt, they were just ok looking.  I think I must have used more oil than she did as mine were darker.  Live and learn I suppose. 

I made the dough and fried up one, just to taste test.  I then added a bit more salt and some cayenne to the dough and left it at that.  They were very, very good.

I will try them again at some point.  Maybe the next time we have leftover cilantro.

Ciao Bellas!

PS - If you are looking for a non-gluten tortilla, we have recently discovered Teff tortillas.  They are our solid go-to now.  I prefer them over the corn actually.

Ok, night all.

Honey Mustard Baked Pork Chops

Hey there!
How are you?  Long time no see.  I'm still around.  Just not <> much.  I loved when I blogged regularly.  But, I burned myself out on it.  I don't know how other people sustain a daily/weekly blog for such long periods of time.  I'm glad they do though.

What's been up with me?  Well, I started a "list" of foods I would love to create in calendar year 2013.  I took several categories (breakfast, soup, pastries, etc) and am off and running.  So far, I've butterflied a chicken... have you ever done that.....weird and well, easy and delicious.  I made jambalaya, it was just ok.  I may try that again.  I've made cinnamon rolls twice, different each time and have a function in a couple weeks to which I will take the perfected version of those cinnamon rolls.  (shhhhh..... it has fig butter as an ingredient.... heavens and mercy me!!)  What else, oh, I cooked mustard greens on new years day.  A tradition in some parts of the world.  I found out, I prefer someone else to cook my mustard greens.  They take way longer to cook than say kale or spinach.

So, I have brined chicken for years.  It just takes chicken from, "oh, its chicken" to "mmmmm chicken" for me at least.  I had never brined pork.  I tried it for the first time last night.  The results were fantastic.  But, the precooked texture, strange.

Anyway....


I came across THIS recipe for Maple Glazed Chicken.

I decided it would be really good with pork chops.  As life works in my world, I only had about a tablespoon of maple syrup and since I keep it in the fridge, it was thick and stuck in the bottom of the bottle.  As per my usual, I punted and came up with the dish below.  It could have been that I was hungry by the time it came out of the oven, but I thought it was really good.  You could easily use the same amounts of sauce and more chops.  I only needed three.

Honey Mustard Baked Pork Chops

Chops

• 3 bone in center cut pork chops

Brine

• Water, enough to cover your chops
• Kosher Salt, 3+ Tbsp
• peppercorns
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 Tbsp red pepper flakes

Brine your chops for a couple hours.  After that, drain then pat dry.

Season the chops with s/p then brown in a dutch oven over medium high heat in a bit of olive oil.  Remove chops as they brown to a plate.  No need to cook through, we just want a nice crust.

Sauce

• 1/2 cup (or more) chicken broth
• 3 - 4 Tbsp dijon mustard
• 2 Tbsp thyme
• 1 Tbsp crushed garlic
• 2 Tbsp honey

Once the chops are all browned and removed, add all the sauce ingredients to the hot dutch oven and bring to a boil.  As soon as that is reached, place the chops back in the pot, cover and bake until cooked through.  I baked at 375 for just over an hour.  Timing will depend on your pot, your oven, your temperature, well, you name it.  It can depend on a lot of things.

I served this with baked potatoes and a green salad.

Yum!  I'm looking forward to leftovers in my lunch.

What have you been up to?
Ciao bellas!