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....

Well, how do you like THEM cucumbers?

Dinner tonight was a medley of all that sounded good while grocery shopping this weekend: sausage because I had a coupon, Nooodles because they have no calories, and cucumbers because they were great for beating the bloat during pregnancy (the ONLY time I've EVER tolerated those horrid things!)- mixed with some Cali Fine Foods seasoning, dried onion flakes, and cheese.

When I put it all together, I anticipated posting an update on Facebook about the mess ending up in the trash and offering the remaining cucumbers to any takers. I was scared of taking that first bite. Being that I'm not the chef of the house and my husband doesn't do much online, I think it's safe to say I won't be telling him about it, even though..........

...........it was..................

......................................................................................................................................................good!

I can't even just say that it was the individual pieces of this concoction that were good- it was the entire package. Really. When it was gone and I looked at the empty bowl, I realized that I ate the slices of cucumber without any protest, hesitation, or grimacing. Where did they go? Did I really eat them??

So, in spite of myself, dinner was a win.....

....well, except for the sausage my daughter snuck into the trash can when I left the room.............

Do you have any surprise success stories of GF meals that you've invented?

NoOodles!

Meijer recently started carrying several new gluten free products. Among them was this curious little bag of precooked noodles floating around in water waiting to be served. I bought one, not knowing what to expect, but expecting very little. For as convenient as it seemed, there was no way that it could be any good. I used the excuse of my blogging duties here to sacrifice and try these things myself.

I missed the part on the package that said it has zero calories.

Today I decided to try these silly little noodles for dinner, fully intending on cooking a backup meal when they ended up a disaster. The package says to rinse them very well. I wasn't very concerned about that until I smelled them. Backup dinner, get ready...  I rinsed. I cautiously tasted. I liked. NoOodles are good!

So now what? What do I have in my kitchen to make these into a meal or something? I mixed in some Herb Medley seasoning from Cali Fine Foods. Ooh, wonderful! I opened a can of mixed veggies, threw it in the microwave for a minute, and then mixed in some cheese. It can't be that bad, can it?

It was awesome! I really enjoyed my dinner, my one-year-old had fun with the noodles, we both ate our vegetables, and I didn't feel guilty about stuffing myself with something gluten free...... which of course then required some rewarding with leftover Apple Spice Cake made from a 1-2-3 Gluten Free mix.....

The new challenge is to venture back out and discover how much I paid for this stuff. If it's cheap enough, I just may have another tool to use in losing a few (many) pounds!