Vegan Scalloped Potatoes with Mushrooms

DAIRY FREE/GLUTEN FREE/ COCONUT OIL/VEGAN/VEGETARIAN

My husband loves scalloped potatoes and I haven’t made it in a while because my recipe is cheese based. For some reason I had a hankering for them yesterday and looked up some dairy free recipes. I didn’t much like my options, and remember a cauliflower ‘Alfredo’ sauce I had pinned, and decided to use it in my attempt at dairy free scalloped potatoes.

Oh, and I added sautéed mushrooms for fun. J

Framed Earring Organizer

I was feeling in a bit of a crafty mood the day I made this. Not looking to make something for my jewelry specifically, but just feeling like making something, not food, with my hands. I have a bunch of 4x4x6 frames I used for my wedding table seating. They were not terribly expensive so I had no qualms about tearing them apart for a project, even if it didn’t work. Walking around the house looking for inspiration I finally decided to try my hand at an earring organizer. There are a number of jewelry organizing ideas on Pinterest, but none did quite what I wanted so I had to pick a little from here and a little from there to come up with my final product.

Vegan Chili

VEGAN/VEGETARIAN/GLUTEN FREE/DAIRY FREE

Switching to vegan chili wasn’t so hard. The real key is having enough chunky ingredients to make you not even notice the lack of meat. Also mushrooms…mushrooms help to add a little meaty flavor and texture. I’ve found a few different vegan chili recipes, most of which require tofu (yuck and not that good for you) so I’ve just gone with my original meat recipe took the meat out and added some more veggies in.

Chili Powder

My husband kept raving about a chili he had at work and so I had to figure out how to top that. J I tried out a few different recipes, with different combinations of seasonings and he liked them all (usually). 

Then I had a challenge, my first chili cook off. It wasn’t official or anything, just a small fundraiser. I took the competition seriously and made four small pots of chili, each with a different set of ingredients and had my husband try out each chili. He liked them all, but the one he liked the most was the combination of all four. 

Puppy Crate Mattresses

So we have these 2 adorable shih-poo puppies. Just 20 weeks old. In the beginning of the process of owning dogs one must do quite a bit of shopping to make sure they’ve got all of the required supplies. One or two of the things you need to start out is a crate (if you are crate training) and bedding for the crate. I found a couple of cute doggy beds for cheap that we kept in their crates.

Banana Oat Muffins

DAIRY FREE/GLUTEN FREE/ COCONUT OIL/VEGAN/VEGETARIAN/EGG FREE OR NOT

This was a scary experiment at first. I found a great recipe at a time when we didn’t eat eggs or dairy (still don’t do dairy) and tried to replace those ingredients. Instead of a cup of Greek yoghurt I used cup coconut oil and instead of eggs I used baking soda and white vinegar. I also used coconut sugar in place of regular sugar, and added almond milk to reduce the thickness of the batter after replacing the yoghurt with coconut oil. 

Banana "Ice Cream"

DAIRY FREE/GLUTEN FREE/VEGAN/VEGETARIAN/PALEO

My husband absolutely loved this! It has the same perfect texture of ice cream and is so easy to make. My favorite part…it makes use of over ripe bananas so I don’t have to throw them out.

The original recipe had one step that I changed. That was how to freeze the bananas. I usually purchase more bananas than I need for the sole purpose of making oodles of banana bread for bake sales. I break them up when get over ripe put them into Ziploc freezer bags until the next bake sale comes up. 

Pinterest Connoisseur (May 2013)

It’s always frustrating when a new recipe adventure goes awry. You’re all excited to find a recipe that meets your needs in a particular moment, and convinced that the ingredients will be so awesome when they come together and then BOOM! Turns our you were wrong, your exciting was unwarranted and you’re out a few dollars in expensive ingredients. Welcome to my world. J

Here are some recipes I found on Pinterest that were not all they were “Pinned” up to be. I didn’t hate the results, but I’ll probably never make them again.

Oh, and just so this is the most disappointing blog I put up one Pin that I really did enjoy.

Coconut “Doughnut Holes”

VEGAN/PAELO/VEGETARIAN/DAIRY FREE/GLUTEN FREE/COCONUT OIL

I found the original recipe for this on Pinterest. The name for these was “coconut lemon melt-aways”, but thanks to my husband’s strange humor he convinced several of our paleo-eating friends to call them doughnut holes, because it annoyed me. Now it doesn’t annoy me and because I changed the recipe…by accident I’m ok with calling them doughnut holes now.

Normally when I “follow” a recipe I never follow it perfectly. I’ll add something extra and substitute something else. In this case I had not intentions of going off the recipe, but realized only on my third time making these I forgot a critical step. Turns out, the step wasn’t so critical because when I made them the correct way they didn’t taste as good.

A Few of My Favorite Kitchen Things - Part 3

Here are some more of my favorite kitchen things.

1. Electric Tea Kettle - I have a stove top kettle that works fine, but I prefer the electric one for ease of use. This one is also especially perfect because the kettle can removed from the electric stand for easy pouring.

2. Ceramic Frying Pan - Love this pan! I don't know if it's healthier than the traditional non-sticks for certain. It's almost a a guarantee that somewhere somebody will determine the material causes cancer, but for the time being I'll enjoy it true 'non-stickiness'. I am tempted to purchase a whole set of pots, but I have no room and I really like the ones I have already.

PF Chang's Copy Cat Asparagus

My husband and I love hitting up PF Chang's for some good vegetarian/gluten free options every once in a while. Our favorite dish is the asparagus, so I had to see if I could make it on my own. i found the link below and except for switching out the oil for coconut oil and doubling the recipe everything remained the same, and turned out wonderfully.

The only problem was not having enough left overs for lunch the next day. Hee hee hee.

Original Recipe

Greek Potatoes

DAIRY FREE/GLUTEN FREE/COCOUT OIL/VEGAN/VEGETARIAN

This is one of my favorite ways to make potatoes. It had been a while since I had them, and last Easter I was looking for a new way to cook potatoes to go with a lamb roast I was making. Every time I looked up the best potatoes to go with a lamb Greek kept coming up in my searches.

The only changes I made to the recipe was to replace the olive oil with coconut oil, and the first time I made it with red potatoes and kept the skins on.

Clam Chowder Dairy & Gluten Free

DAIRY FREE/GLUTEN FREE/SEAFOOD/COCONUT OIL

Tried this out last night. My husband loves clam chowder, but since we don’t usually do dairy I’ve never ventured to try out any recipes for it. I got inspired to look for a good dairy free recipe last week when I accidentally discovered a tomato clam soup.

Unfortunately, I’m the only one who ended up liking this particular recipe when it was all done. So I’ll be eating it myself for the next couple of days. I should have trusted my instinct when I thought I should only make half. Oh well. I think it tastes great!

Curried Fried Rice (With or Without Eggs)

This was an experiment gone awesome! I cook rice about 3-5 times a week. Usually it’s brown and usually it’s organic. For the last few months I’ve been buying an organic brand from Costco that tastes very good. Normally, we eat it plain, but every once in a while I add a little flare, with a twist of the West Indies or twist of Asia. Today, I introduce you to a common flavor of the West Indies.

For this recipe and just about any fried rice recipe I prefer to use brown rice because it doesn’t hold has much water as white rice does. This helps keep the oil popping factor down and also makes mixing easier.