Category Archives: grain free

Grain free Friday

Thanks for the congrats on the car. We will be picking it up on Monday.  It actually will be arriving at the dealership on Friday night, but the financing person won’t be there until Monday.  Booo….  Would have been nice to tool around in it this weekend.  I guess we can always go sit in the lot and admire it.

Some people don’t eat meat on Friday. I don’t follow that, but I decided to make Friday one of my grain-free days.

Breakfast started out with coconut flour waffles

coconut flour waffles

Today was one of those weird weather days.  The sun would come out.  Then it would start snowing these big fat flakes of snow.

flag

I don’t even have the heart to change my winter flag to the spring one yet because it is too depressing.

I was craving almond butter today, so I had that with a pear for lunch.

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One of those times where I could sit there with the jar and  a spoon and eat it straight up.   I didn’t do that, but it was tempting!  It’s funny what things I want to overeat at times.

Like these:

nuts

A few nibbles like this add up fast.

I took a couple of walks today when it wasn’t snowing.  🙄  It’s in the mid 30s.  I was thinking how different the mid 30s feels in March than it does in October. It feels warmer now – although not warm enough (stupid spring).

Toasty latte snack and dried pineapple.

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It’s so wonderful to have lighter evenings now, isn’t it?  I am loving that right now, even if the weather isn’t quite  cooperating.  Dinner was easy for a Friday night.  Leftovers!  I made up some balsamic chicken and tomatoes yesterday, so that was on the menu for dinner.

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With a heap o’ sauteed broccoli!   Woo Hoo!

We don’t have a lot of plans for the weekend since trying out our new car is off the table 😀  Have to find something else to do.  I will have to work some (car payment and all), but we have to find something fun.  We cal always play Annoy the Cat!

j and p

My snack tonight is some chocolate!

chocolate

Two squares because I know how to live it up for the weekend. (nail polish is Tokyo Pearl by Sinful Colors).

Turns out there is corn syrup in these, so my grain-free wasn’t totally grain free, but the spirit of it was there.

The salmon patty that wasn’t

Grain free day today.  It was going along swimmingly.  Banana pudding for breakfast:

brekkie

Yum!

Greek yogurt for lunch with apple topping and flax meal.

lunch

Da latte and dried pineapple.

latte

Extra snack of cashews, presented by Pixie.

pix

 

Then along came dinner.  In our meal planning we did on Sunday, we had 3 meals chosen.  One of them was salmon patties.  Long time readers know how I struggle with the fish.  Fresh salmon has been okay, but John wanted a change.  This recipe called for canned salmon.  This was a big step for me. Canned tuna went off the menu after I got a scale in my mouth and that was probably a year ago since I last ate tuna? Anyhoo, this was a grain-free salmon patty that just called for 3 ingredients:  unsweetened coconut, egg and a can of salmon.

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Easy enough, right?  I was just going to do a half batch. I actually was looking forward to trying these with a little triple ginger sauce to dip in.

Well, I opened up the salmon can and I see this:

salmon bones

Effing spinal vertebrae!!  EWWWWWW!!! They were  all attached  in a little line, too, which made it somehow worse.

I know some people eat the bones. I just couldn’t do it.  Not gonna happen. I don’t even want to pick these out.  I covered the can and put it in the fridge.  I guess Pixie will get a nice treat for meals this week.  That put me off any canned fish probably forever.

So, it was to plan B, which is always an omelet.  Overloaded on broccoli, but whose counting, right?

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Much better.  No bones.

Grain-free Parmesan Almond Meal Crackers

Crackers! When you go grain free, sometimes the thing you miss are the crunchy type of things like pretzels and crackers and the like.  I have seen grain-free cracker recipes and always just assumed they were hard or time consuming.  I was incorrect.  I was inspired by this recipe from Elena’s Pantry, but I wanted to add flax and give it cheese!

My version is Parmesan Almond Crackers

Only 6 ingredients, including the salt!

Ingredients:

  • 1-3/4 cups of almond flour
  • 1/4 cup (26 grams) ground flax seed
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 ounce of  parmesan cheese (I had shredded)
  • 1 tablespoon oil (I used macadamia, but you could use olive)
  • 1 egg

Preheat the oven to 350 F.  In a large bowl, combing the almond meal, flax meal, cheese and salt and mix well.

In a small bowl, beat the egg and oil together.  Then add to the dry.

Mix this really well.  You might want to use your hands to make sure it is thoroughly mixed, but I just worked it with a rubber spatula. It will be lumpy, like so:

Get 2 large sheet sheets of parchment paper out.  Place the dough, which I pressed into a ball, onto one sheet.

Then cover with the other sheet of parchment paper and roll it out to 1/8 inch thickness.

The top layer of parchment keeps the dough from sticking to the rolling pin, which it will, so do not just try to roll it out.  You could use cling wrap if you don’t have parchment, but you definitely need something on top or you will have a rolling pin full of mess.

What  country does this look like?

Using a pizza wheel, cut the dough into strips to the size of cracker that you want.

I made my crackers this size, maybe an inch?:

Move the parchment sheet onto a cookie sheet and place into the oven.  I had the baking stone in the oven, so I just slid the parchment paper onto the preheated stone.  Using parchment means you don’t have to try to transfer the dough, which would be hard because it is sticky.

Bake for 15 to 17 minutes or so.  It will depend a bit on how thick you have rolled the cracker dough.  After 15 minutes, I removed some of the thinner edge pieces that were getting more brown and put the rest back in the oven to finish off.  You want them lightly golden brown.  These will crisp up a bit as they cool as well.

Remove from the oven and let them cool completely. Then break up the pieces.

These are crispy and flavorful.  John thought they tasted just like grain crackers, which they do.  Yum!   They really are Crack-ers because it’s like crack eating them!

I must say that I am totally patting myself on the back for these.  I never knew cracker making was so easy.  This took maybe 15 minutes to get in the oven.

I might try doing a sweet version of these with some cinnamon as a pseudo graham cracker.

Now, these are a little higher in calories because of the nut meal, so don’t go to town on them… ooops…

The best I can do for the calories is to calculate the whole batch.

1566 calories, 127 fat grams,  29 fiber grams,  44 carbs, 72 protein grams.  Low carb and gluten free to boot.

Now my batch yielded about 11 servings of crackers at 1 ounce each. Like so:

This is approximately 142 calories. This is maybe a bit smaller than say an ounce of pretzels, but so tasty.

I am definitely making more of these – – and soon!

Recipe: Banana Flaxjacks!

So, you all know how I love my 1-minute muffin and all it’s permutations, right?

Well, I got thinking about using a banana it to make more of a pancake batter and a little on the sweet side.  The result?

Grain free and gluten free.  Now there are a couple tricks with this recipe, so maybe be drinking a cup of coffee while you prep breakfast.

Serves 1.

Ingredients:

  • 1 ripe banana
  • 1 egg
  • 26 grams of ground flax meal (about 4 tablespoons, but please weigh)
  • 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder
  • cinnamon to taste.  I use about 1 teaspoon!
  • 1 tablespoon of water (optional)

First, a note about flax meal.  I have found there is a difference in flax meal between brands, therefore the water may not be needed.

Bob’s Red Mill brand seems to be a little less absorbent than the brand pictured, so you may not need the water if you use Bob’s Red Mill.

Preheat a nonstick skillet over medium heat while you assemble the ingredients.

Mash the banana really well in a small bowl.  When I say mash it, I mean mash it liquidy – like this.

If your banana is not super ripe, pop it in the microwave for 20 seconds or so and it will soften right up for mashing.

Add in the egg and cinnamon and mix well:

Now add the flax meal and baking powder:

Mix well.

Add the water if you need to make sure you have a loose batter. Now is the point you want to work quickly.  Flax will thicken up as it sits.

Give the pan a quick spray with nonstick spray. Pour the mixture into 3 relatively equal cakes (I seem to have problems with this).  Spread the batter a little to make the cakes thinner so they cook all the way through.

Keep the heat medium so that you cook the cakes throughout without burning them.  You may be tempted to raise the heat.  Don’t do it.  Check the bottom of the cakes with a spatula and flip them when lightly browned on the bottom.  Be gentle!

Cook for another couple minutes on this side until cooked through.

Plate up and enjoy!

These are moist and sweet and very banana tasting.  Top as you like.

Nutritional stats for 3 flaxjacks (the entire batch)
Calories: 245, 14 g of fat, 23 g of carbs, 11 g of fiber, 13 g of protein.

Note, there will be a bit of variation in calories depending on the size of your banana. (no jokes, please).

If you don’t want to bother with making pancakes, just spread the batter into a waffle iron!

Meatless Monday – “Meatless” Balls

I don’t normally follow Meatless Monday on purpose, but sometimes it happens that I do all vegetarian meals.  We were out yesterday for breakfast and there was Rachael Ray’s magazine there, so I was reading that. I have never read her magazine before and there sure are a lot of recipes in it! LOL.  Anyway, I saw this one and thought just the meatball portion would be good.  She calls for grinding almonds in a food processor and thought “Why not just use almond flour?”  Especially since I have a 5 pound bag of it!  :mrgreen:  I also left out the lemon zest.

These are gluten free and grain free! They came out good.  I had mine on GF pasta:

They were quite easy to make.

Ingredients:

  • 2 oz of almonds, ground fine in a food processor *or* 2 ounces of almond flour.
  • 1 can of chick peas (15 oz), drained and rinsed
  • 2 eggs
  • 3 oz of shredded mozzarella cheese (3/4 cup)
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon pepper

Preheat oven to 350 F.

In a bowl, mash together the eggs and chick peas with a potato masher until just some chunks remain.

It will be mostly liquid with small chunks of chickpeas.  Kind of like oatmeal, I guess?

Now add in the almond meal, cheese, salt and pepper:

Mix well.

Line a baking sheet with foil or parchment and spray with cooking spray.  Divide the mixture into 12 equal portions and form into balls.  I weighed out about 40 grams for each meatball.

Place onto baking sheet.

Mist lightly with cooking spray.  Then bake for 25 minutes.

The texture of these is very much like meatballs, especially when covered with sauce.  I liked these quite a bit.  Very mild in flavor and I think you could do some fun things like adding green chilies or sun-dried tomatoes.  2 meatballs makes a good and filling serving amount.

Nutritional Stats:

Makes 12 meatballs. Per meatball:  108 calories, 4.5 grams of fat, 4 grams of protein. 

Getting better!

Happy Monday to all!  I took a rest from the gym today.  See, I can be a good girl if I put my mind to it.  My foot feels so much better.  It actually only hurts if I press on the top of it, so obviously I will not be doing that anymore.

Mondays are grain-free days, so I opted for the banana bread pudding.

I topped it with peanut flour and orange marmalade.  John peered over at my plate and said, “That will make a pretty picture.”  It tasted even better.

I have been taking some anti-inflammatories twice daily per the Urgent Care visit to help  with both my foot and my wrist.  Know the funny thing? It actually relieves pain!  I almost never take anything, ever.  The last antibiotics I took were about 7 years ago.  Not that I wouldn’t take them, but I have not needed them.  I think I must have a higher threshold for pain because it just doesn’t occur to me to take anything except when I have a headache. Sometimes I might take a tylenol PM if my back is acting up, but only a half dose.

Part of it is just fear of overdoing it if I take something.  I am one of those that if it doesn’t hurt, I must be fine and then I go do things.  When I first hurt my back last year, I took an advil gel cap right when I hurt it and then proceeded to get on the bike.  By the time we were almost home, I couldn’t even pedal with my left leg and had to do it all with the right.  Then I couldn’t stand up straight and had to basically crawl up the stairs. Kind of scary. I wonder if I hadn’t dulled the initial pain if I would have gotten on the bike at all.  I don’t know if I did harm by riding, but the damage was probably already done and I will never know.

Anyway, with taking the anti-inflammatories regularly, my wrist doesn’t hurt and my foot feels good.  How nice to have it be that way! For someone who is pretty intelligent, sometimes I am surprisingly slow.

Lunch time:

What is that frothy stuff you ask?  Soup.  My roasted red pepper and tomato soup.  For some reason I had the brilliant idea of adding whey protein isolate to it.  Now I had tried that before with oatmeal and figured soup would be different.  Not!  Also,  brilliant Lori mixed it in with our milk frother.  So,  not only was the whey protein curdled, but foamy as well.  The taste was fine, so I ate it anyway.  I just didn’t look at it.  🙄

The bread on the side was a recipe from Elana’s Pantry for a grain free bread.  Quite tasty, I might add.

I took a shorter, slower walk today to not overly stress my foot, and if felt fine.  Especially in my new walking shoes!  They are so comfie.  They have an elastic top and strap in the back, so there is absolutely no pressure on the top of my foot like with regular shoes.  This will be one of 2 pairs I will take for walking around Disney come January.

I got back just in time for lattes!

It was a fairly busy work day.  Things will probably slow down a bit as we get closer to the holiday, so I will just make sure I work hard now.  I am still waiting to see the bill for the Urgent Care visit.  :mrgreen:

Dinner time and I had the same thing I did last night because I enjoyed it!  Baker with laughing cow and some ground turkey cooked with BBQ sauce.

Plus sauteed brussel sprouts.  That was 2 veggies today with the veggie soup and the brussels!  Doing pretty well on that challenge.  Weekends seem to be the hardest.

Done with work tonight and since I am also done with chores, that means relaxing and football with my snack, which is a pear and some cashews.

Plus my lap warmer.

I hate to get her up to get my pear!

Lifting move and planning ahead.

How is the time change treating all of you? I am having a little trouble adjusting as I want to get up too early. At least it is light out going to the gym now! I had the forethought to write out my workout ahead of time.

(Those are my legs back there in the mirror, I see.)  😀

It really makes it easier when I do this, but I forget most times and write it down as I go.  I will use paper like this 4 times (each side of the folded paper) and I can refer to it to see what I did previously.

Exercise Set/rep/weight Muscle worked
Full deadlifts 3 sets of 10 with 65# bar Lower Body
Seated Lat Row 3 sets of 10 at 50# Back
Incline Chest Fly 3 sets of 10 with 15# DBs (30# total) Chest
Reverse Crunch 3 sets of 12 Core
Reverse Lunge with Forward Reach 3 sets of 8 each side with 8# DBs (16# total) Full Body
Arnold Press 3 sets of 10 with 10# DBs (20# total) Shoulders
Kickbacks 3 sets of 10 with 15# DBs (30# total) Triceps
Standing calf raise 3 sets of 10 at 80# Calves
Lower Back Extension 3 sets of 10 at 80# Low back

The reverse lunge/forward reach is from New Rules of Lifting.

This is a great move for the whole body and getting your heart rate up.  For some reason, reverse lunges are much easier on my knees than forward lunges.  I need to keep this move in more regularly.

After a bit on the treadmill, I headed off to home for a grain-free day! I started with coconut flour waffles.

I also found out when I got home that I won the football picks again this week!  Poor John. I have to say that I really am really feeling bad about how I keep winning, but not so bad that I am willing to give up my dinner choice.  😈

Lunch included some egg salad and an almond flour biscuit.  I will probably post the recipe for this tomorrow as it turned out pretty good.

Work was very busy today and I have busy couple of weeks coming up here.  My training for the literacy tutoring starts tomorrow and is Tues and Thurs nights for 3 hours for the next couple of weeks.  That eats up a lot of time during the week.  I have already planned out my workout schedule and eating plan (very important when doing grain-free days). Plus, I worked some on Saturday so I don’t have to stress about getting in all my lines with work those couple of days.  Planning ahead really can make a big difference in stress levels.  The only thing that might suffer is my guitar practicing on those 2 days.

John made up an almond milk latte for me this afternoon, which I paired with some dried pineapple.

That is a yummy snack!  I also went out for a walk in the afternoon to finish out my 3 miles.  It was so nice out and I didn’t want to wait until after dinner when it was dark out.

I cooked up a bunch of chicken to be used this week (part of planning!).  I will have to pack dinners for Tuesday and Thursday to bring with me.  This plate was large and satisfying for dinner.  4.5 ounces of chicken because it was a lifting day.

Yum!  Although, the strawberries were watery tasting.  I complained about that to John and he said, “You take that chance with out-of-season strawberries.”  Touche.  I should have had a pear.

I need to get practicing the guitar and actually write this week’s plan out.  I have it in my head, but it certainly would be a good idea to make it concrete!

Question:  Do you plan ahead when you know it will be busy?

Recipe: Country Captain Chicken

Another new-to-me recipe this week! I pulled out a Weight Watchers cookbook that I won in a giveaway.

Here is the Amazon linkie for that if you want to get this book. It actually has some good recipes in it!

Today’s choice? Best-Ever Country Captain Chicken.

I am not sure who the captain is or if this really is Best Ever, but we really enjoyed this.  Apparently this is a southern dish, but it seems more Indian to me.  Don’t be afraid of this combo of ingredients!

Normally I tweak recipes a bit, but I just followed this one pretty closely.

Ingredients:

  • 2 teaspoons of oil
  • 1.25 pounds of boneless chicken breast cut into bite-sized chunks
  • 1 small onion (or diced frozen onions like I use – easy!)
  • 1 Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored and diced. (We used a red apple because that is what we had)
  • 1 bell pepper chopped (or diced frozen for the lazy people like me!)
  • 1 teaspoon of chopped garlic
  • 1 tablespoon grated ginger
  • 1 tablespoon of curry powder
  • 1/4 tsp of cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1 can of diced tomatoes (15 oz can)
  • 1 cup reduced sodium chicken or veggie broth
  • 1/4 cup of raisins
Cut up the chicken into bite size pieces.
In a pot or dutch oven with a lid, add 1 teaspoon of the oil over medium high heat. Add the chicken and brown, about 5 minutes:
While the chicken cooks, peel and chop the apple and grate the ginger.
We buy the fresh ginger and keep it in the freezer wrapped up. That way you always have fresh ginger available!
Remove the chicken from the pot and set aside. Add the other teaspoon of oil, then put the apple, ginger, onion, pepper and garlic into the pot and cook over medium heat for about 5 minutes.
Add in the cinnamon, curry powder and salt and cook for another minute or so.
Now add the broth, the canned tomatoes with the juice, raisins and the chicken. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat, cover and simmer for 15 minutes.
This serves 4.
The flavor is complex. A little savory and a little sweet.  Chunky and delicious! I think crusty bread or some brown rice would be great with this.  The recipe also calls for 1 tablespoon of slivered almonds over the 4 servings, but we didn’t have any. That’s only like 3 slivers on each bowl, pfffft!
Nutritional Stats:
Each serving is about 1.5 cups.  Per serving:  Calories: 309, 8 g of fat, 24 g of carbs, 4 g of fiber, 35 g of protein.
This took about 35 minutes from start to finish.  Grain free and gluten free!
**addendum** Reheated the next day and it is even more flavorful!

August Wrap Up and the return of Bagel Wednesday!

Where the h-e-double-hockeysticks did summer go?? 😯  I can’t believe I am doing the monthly wrap up post already.

John asked me to get him up when I got up so we could get an early start on the day because we both have a lot to do today.  I requested no whining when I did so.   It was a gorgeous morning, nice and cool.  We headed out on the path, which was so quiet in the early morning.  We actually saw 3 deer on the path! They bolted before I could get a picture, though.  I said to John, “See how nice it is to get up this early?”.  His answer, “No.”  😈

After 6 miles, we arrived at our destination.

Check out the temperature before 8 am:

I had a wheat bagel with cream cheese and a cuppa joe!

The weird thing? Chewing the bagel.  I have not had any bread product in 3 weeks and there is no other food that has the chew of crusty bread or bagels.

I’m happy now. 😀

So let’s review goals, shall we?  I had 2 goals for this month.

1. Begin C25K.  In progress.  This is a 9 week program, so obviously I am not finished.  I am uncertain as to whether I will finish the program.  The run intervals have been short and I notice little niggling things with my leg, but I have completed the first 4 weeks without incident.

2. Go grain-free for 21 days. I did it!  I might have ingested some accidental grain products, like when I had a few marshmallows (corn syrup), but other than that I did stellar.  And you know what?  It was not that hard.  The hardest thing was eating out.  And let me tell you – going grain free is a lot harder than going gluten free!  Corn is in everything.  Everything!

I did find out some interesting things about me going grain free.  It eliminated pretty much all my cravings for bread products and for sweets.  Not that I didn’t eat sweets, but it really curbed my penchant for over snacking.  Which is a good thing. When I did snack, it tended to be on nuts pretty much.  I ate a *lot* of nuts.  Sometimes fruit as well (especially dried pineapple :mrgreen: ).

I also found I didn’t need grains to get in my fiber.  I averaged 25 to 30 grams of fiber a day. Coconut flour, flax,nuts, and fruits and veggies gave me what I needed.

Was the food I ate boring for 3 weeks? You tell me.

And now, the part I know you all reaaalllly wanted to know.  Did I lose any weight? Yes.  I did.  In those 3 weeks I lost 6.5 pounds.  😯  Now, I do  take 2 pounds of that with a grain of salt because I weighed myself after a long bike ride, which always results in a couple of pounds of water retention.  So even if it was 4.5 pounds, that is an enormous amount of weight for me to lose in 3 weeks!

I have decided I am going to keep grains lower in my diet for the time being because to not have the cravings for food is really so, so nice. It pretty much took care of PMS cravings as well. They were minimal at best.  I am definitely using this strategy for the holidays and letting the grains I eat during that time be the treats and such.

I am so pleased that the no-grain challenge did exactly what it was supposed to do, which was to get me on a better choice path because I was veering off it a little bit. Weight loss was a bonus.

Now I have to come up with some new challenges for September!

Storm tracker

Thanks for all the thoughts on my little bike tumble.  Truth be told, I have had much worse.  About 20 years ago, I had a head-on collision with another biker.  I was covered in bruises from that one!  My chest is quite sore today with a bit of a bump.  I actually noticed it most with my C25K training today because it hurt with each step.

After doing the run, I came in for breakfast.

What is that, you ask?  It is waffle integrity fail.  I cooked the coconut flour waffles too long and that makes them stick to the waffle iron and crumble.  Taste = good, appearance = bad.

Another mess?  My lunch!

This was Fage 2% with strawberries, flax, and honey.

I have to say that I am starting to become a little alarmed about Irene.  I don’t like the look of the models.

We have so many trees in the area that just aren’t going to be up to a huge storm.  They don’t bend in high winds, they break.  We figure we will be losing power.

John calmed me down with a latte.  I took a picture sitting down and he is as tall as Paul Bunyan!

Guess that would make me Babe…

We both had long work days today, so we decided to go out for dinner.  Stopped at O’Tooles.

It was quite busy there and a little later than we normally eat.  They now have a dedicated gluten-free menu and a separate fryer.  Isn’t that nice?  Of course, gluten-free doesn’t mean grain-free, so I still had to pick around the menu.  I decided on a baker with chili.

I ate about 3/4 of this potato and I am full now! They have such a huge menu there and you can watch any sporting event on TV.  I like eating here and we probably should do it more often.

After eating, we stopped for a few staples for losing power and such.

Lots of toilet paper, non perishables and nuts!  We also filled up the gas tank.  Yes, early – but we don’t drive very much and figured we would avoid any crowds as the weekend draws closer.

Project Runway *and* football tonight!

Question:  Do you like the bigger pictures or no?