Kitchen Adventures

First off, I am not a cook. I never was before I had to go GF, and while I may be a little more open to learning new things now, the bottom line is that it better be easy. I don't have time for fancy recipes and special ingredients, and my toddler had better enjoy eating the food too.

I planned to make salad for dinners this week. I bought some chicken and that was going to be my fancy cooking- cutting it up and cooking it on the stove with a little olive oil and Italian dressing.

While my chicken was cooking, I pulled out my other salad ingredients so I could start putting them together. I opened up the head of lettuce and there were some bad leaves on the outside. I peeled them off and found a few more. So I broke that away and there were still more..... yeah, I had a bad head of lettuce. Now what? It's not much of a salad without the lettuce, and I am NOT going back out to the store. So once again it was NoOodles to the rescue!

I threw two packs of NoOodles in with the chicken and started tossing in my other salad ingredients: mushrooms, cucumbers, tons of tomatoes. I even got adventurous in my salad planning and bought bean sprouts, so in they went as well. I dumped in the rest of the dressing and let it all cook.

Here's where I'm not so much of a chef..... all those tomatoes are mostly water. Now I have soupy mess. I don't want soup! Hmm.... what is the best thing I have that can soak up the extra water? Sure, I could thicken it with GF flour, add rice, drain it..... no, I added Notta Pasta noodles. I found out one time- quite by accident- that if you leave them in the water you boiled them in, they will eventually soak it all up AND not turn to mush. I actually like them better that way than following the directions on the package and draining them. So I tossed them in and let it simmer. They worked their magic and I no longer had soup!

I thought it could be fun with cheese too- I mean, that WAS going to be a part of the salad. Another win:

The only problem with this dish is that it's too complicated for my kid. She likes each of the individual ingredients, but this is too mixed-together for her and she got frustrated after a while. I love it though- and it's so much better than the salad would have been.

I had another win in the kitchen the very next day. I had a leftover Udi's hamburger bun that had to be on the verge of stale if it wasn't already there. You know we can't let that go to waste! I decided to make a turkey sandwich with it and use the microwave to save me from the bun's age. I opened up the bun, put a little Miracle Whip on each side and a slice of cheese, and microwaved it for 30 seconds. Then I added my turkey and closed it all up. WOW! I wish I had more buns to make another one of these today. I will be trying this with the bread. Silly me, I always just made my sandwiches cold! This really was amazing- and yes, it received toddler approval. I do believe it's now time to go make some lunch....