Gluten Free Quiche

Anyone who has tried to feed my quiche in the past 15 years is looking at the post stunned. I don’t like quiche, I don’t eat quiche, I am not a fan. And, while it’s still not my favorite dish, I did enjoy this quiche this weekend, so I will probably not turn my noise up at the idea of quiche if someone else tried to feed it to me.

When we woke-up on Saturday morning Hubs felt like he was coming down with a cold. I suggested we lay low all day, watch movies and I’d make soup and grilled cheese. Well grilled cheese turned into paninis and paninis turned into quiche. He was sick and has been working so hard lately I couldn’t say no, when we asked for a quiche.

I was just going to make the quiche for him, using a pre-made crust still kickin’ it in my freezer, but once we’d purchased all the yummy veggies (zucchini, cremini mushrooms, and onion) it started to sound more appealing. Then once I’d researched how to make the crust from scratch and thought, “I can totally do that!” it was on.

Here’s how I made it…

(Click recipe to enlarge)

What food do you usually refuse to eat? Would you try it again?

7 Links

As you may have noticed I took a bit of a blogging break for a month (or so). It wasn’t intentional, but things got crazy at work and that, combined with finals, gave very little free time and energy to blog. I have to thank Amy at The Nifty Foodie for tagging me in her 7 links post. I gave me the kick in the rump I needed to blog again.

So here are 7 links to posts I’ve done that I think you should check out…

#1 Most Beautiful - The Birdie Details

I loved the way the details came together at our wedding. When I went flipping through all my old posts, for this post, I loved looking through our wedding posts again. It reminded me how pretty, without being to bird themed, our wedding day turned out.

#2 Most Popular – Margarita Cupcakes
 
This cupcake recipe is BY FAR the best, most moist, recipe I have found. I need to spend sometime trying to make these gluten free, because they are a HUGE hit. I get a least 50 hits a week from this recipe.

#3 Most Controversial - Tricking our Wedding Guests

This is actually a post a wrote for Weddingbee. The start time on our wedding invitations was 30 mins earlier than the time our wedding was actually going to begin. Several readers were upset that we would trick our guests like that and make them wait that long considering many people arrive to weddings early. I could (and still do) see where they were coming from, but knowing our friends and family, I stick by our decision to have people arrive 30 mins early.

#4 Most Helpful - How to Make an Inspiration Board
 
Also a post I wrote for Weddingbee, but helpful none the less. When I first started wedding planning and blogging, I saw all these awesome inspiration boards and wanted to badly to make my own. I didn’t (and still don’t) own Photoshop, or anything fancy like that, so needed a way to do it with the software I already owned or downloaded for free.

#5 A Post Whose Success Inspired Me  - Reverb - Prompt 1
The comments I got from this post inspired me to fully embrace Reverb. It also gave me confidence in myself.

#6 A Post I Didn’t Feel Got the Attention is Deserved – My Christmas Green Beans


This is where I toot my own horn, because you guys has no idea how good these beans are. They take longer than cooking green beans should, but OMGoodness they are tasty!

#7 Most Proud Of – Five for Friday Series
When I started the blogging about planning our wedding, way back when, I started Five for Friday posts – posting five things I love about (or reasons I love) Hubs, every Friday. I’m proud that for the most part I’ve kept this up for the past 2 years and counting. I’m most proud that I’ve inspired other bloggers, that I love, to do Five for Friday posts as well! Other bloggers like: Jesstagirl & c'est law vie!

Have you participated in the 7 things blog post series? If so, please share your link with me in the comments, I’d love to read yours. If you haven’t, what are you waiting for? I’m tagging you!

Gluten Free Cheesy Biscuits

The other night at about 8pm I got a craving for biscuits. I hadn’t felt well earlier in the evening, so I didn’t have dinner, which meant I needed to make the biscuits right then because I was HUNGRY! Luckily, I had purchased a box of Gluten Free Bisquick a week ago for some pancakes I forgot to take pictures of and therefore couldn’t blog about.

I found a recipe on Betty Crocker’s website for Cheese Garlic Biscuits and altered it to fit my needs craving.

Here’s what I made…

(click recipe to enlarge)

What do you crave for a late night snack?

Copy Cat – Spaghetti Squash Casserole

It’s been a while since I posted a copy cat recipe, but I last week I went back to True Food Kitchen in Newport Beach and discovered a dish I really enjoyed that I knew it would be easy peasy to make at home. {Did you click on any of those hyperlinks? Go ahead, I’ll wait ;-)}

First off, if you live in Orange County and haven’t been to True Food Kitchen at Fashion Island yet, make a plan to go soon. You will not be disappointed! My sister and went (again) recently and I decided to try something new, the Spaghetti Squash Casserole.

I forgot to take a picture (bad blogger), but luckily Kay C. on Yelp took this…


Kay C’s actually looks a bit more tomatoey (What? That’s a word) than mine did, but you get the idea.

How do you make it? Easy, it looks like this…


You want an actually recipe? Sheesh, you’re picky ;-) Kidding of course, I would too.

(click recipe to enlarge)

Mmmmm, melty cheese…


Have you copied a recipe you’ve loved at a restaurant?

Gluten Free Corn Dogs

Hubs & I went grocery shopping together for the first time, in a very long time, on Sunday. Lately, while I’m in school we pretty much fend for ourselves food wise or eat out. It’s not the healthiest because I end up eating cereal and cheese and he eats Top Ramen. We’ve both decided we need to make and effort make more food at home. I’m really excited to start cooking again and make/discover more gluten free recipes.

While at the store we found pretty fancy hot dogs.


Hot dogs are one of my guilt pleasures, but the nitrates and other junk they add gross me out. Hubs found these fancy ones and I promised if he bought them for me, I’d make him corn dogs.

While researching things I can make with my Gluten Free Bisquik, when I came across this recipe for gluten free corn dogs on Live Gluten Freely.

How do you make them?

(Click recipe to enlarge)

They aren’t the fanciest looking corn dogs, but I used considerably less oil than I would have if I owned a deep fryer ;-)

Gluten Free Zucchini Pancakes

Hubs bought breakfast sausages at Trader Joe’s earlier this week and I immediately thought, “Score, breakfast for dinner!” We ate the healthy fish and salad then night he brought it home and I planned to make the sausage with some gluten free pancakes the next night.

On my way home from work on pancake night, I started thinking these pancakes needed to be a little more exciting than just plain pancakes. Blueberries? Raspberries? What should I add? Then it hit me, I should make them more nutritious too! I decided to attempt zucchini bread-ish pancakes and they turned out pretty tasty, if I do say so myself… and Hubs said so too.

How did I make them?

Click on recipe to enlarge

Mmmm, veggie pancakes :)

Flourless Chocolate Torte

Remember this picture?
It was taken the night I made this cake/torte, at the event I made the cake/torte for… Christmas Eve. Flourless chocolate tortes were one of my favorite restaurant desserts before I went gluten free. Thank goodness, I can still eat one of my favorite desserts without having to modify it in anyway – Yay! As much as I like them, however, I’d never baked one myself before. So, when Jane’s mom, Sandy, asked me to bring a dessert for Christmas Eve, my choice was easy.

My first step, of course, was to Google “Flourless Chocolate Cake”. Naturally, this resulted in hundred, if not, thousands of results. Ultimately, I decided on this recipe from Macrina Bakery , found on Gluten Free Girl.

(Click recipe to enlarge)

You guys, this cake is TO.DIE.FOR! DELICIOUS! and it look pretty, if I do say so myself. The only problem – I don’t think it was supposed the cave in like it did. Do you see the sides? They’re all caved in and the top is too.


I should probably do a little research to see if I did something wrong. Perhaps I mix things too much… or baked it too long. Oh, well! We all ate and enjoyed it :)

2010 Recapped

I was MIA around the holidays. I kinda stopped posting all the Reverb10 prompts, only doing the ones that really spoke to me and wouldn't repeat something I’d already talked about. I haven’t posted the gluten free dessert I made for Christmas Eve yet… etc. I’ve decided to do a recap post for 2010 a little later than most. Let’s be honest though, it’s only the 3th, so I’m not that behind.

I really liked the way KJPugs did her 2010 review, so I’ve decided to copy her. Don’t worry, I asked… although, I didn’t really wait for her to respond and say it’s cool. Anyway, here we go…

January we upgraded our TV stand and general appearance of our  living room.   

February I discovered two of my favorite “go to” recipes: Dark Chocolate Red Wine Cupcakes with Mascarpone Icing & Enchilada Casserole.
March Hubs and I went to Vegas for meet-up with the Bees and celebrate my bestie from college’s 30th Birthday. Of course, a trip to Vegas would not be complete without eating at Battista's Hole in the Wall.

April Joy from How Joyful redesigned my blog and created those adorable little birdies.

 
May I started making recipe cards for my recipe posts. The first two I made were for the salad I recreated from a local French restaurant & Margarita Cupcakes.

June I made several desserts using fruit from our local CSA, my favorite was the fruit pizza I invented with the help of Amy from Dandelion Paperweight.

 
July I turned 30 and made a kick-ass flag cake!

 
August Hubs and I celebrated our one year Anniversary and played travel roulette with some friends and ended up in Austin, TX.

September was a pretty busy month: I hosted a Giveaway from one of my favorite artists, I discovered  my local food truck meet-up and I took an allergy test and discovered I cannot eat gluten,

 
October I did my first guest post and rattled on about the wonder that is Jazzercise.

 
November I blogged every single day… errr, posted every single day. Let’s be honest sometime we blog more than once a day but schedule those posts out. I also discovered Chipotle,

 
tried Gluten Free Bisquick,

 
hosted a beautiful necklace giveaway from Honey My Heart 

 
and finally finished my wedding recaps.


And lastly, in December, I attempted Reverb10, made Potato Latkes and guest posted for Forty Twenty Four about my on-the-cheap/modern Christmas table setting.

  
Happy New Year everyone! I hope I have even more to recap for you at the end of 2011 :)

Caramelized Acorn Squash

Or really any kinda squash :)

Last week Jen at A Tale of 2 Monkeys sent me a recipe exchange. You know the type where you send someone you don’t know a recipe and then add your name to the bottom of a list and forward it to some friends? My friends Narda sent me her recipe for Caramelized Butternut Squash. It sounded mouth watering, so I decided to make it on Halloween.

Well, when Hubs and I were at the store I saw the Acorn Squash and thought, “oh, I need to buy this!” Guys, I didn’t realize until today when I was about to write this post that I bought the wrong kind of squash. *d’oh* Good news – it was still delicious.


As usual, I added a few things to make the recipe more “me”. I added nuts for some added crunch and chili powder for a little heat. Oh, and onions because I love onions!

How do you make it?

(Click Recipe to Enlarge)

I’m thinking this will be a good Gluten Free dish I can make for Thanksgiving at my FIL’s house. It’s Gluten Free without being obvious so I can ease them into my new diet :)

Easy Peasy: GF Mini Pizzas

One of my favorite carbs to eat before you know, was English Muffins. Mmmm I have always loved me some English Muffins. Anyway, one of my favorite, quick meal, things to do with them was make mini pizzas. It called for 3 things I usually always have in the fridge: English muffins, spaghetti sauce and cheese.

This weekend Hubs and I went to Henry's for some groceries and so I could check out their gluten free offerings. I found a lot of things I want to try, but only one thing I needed right away – Gluten Free English Muffins.

The week I learned I was gluten intolerant I went to Trader Joe’s a lunch one day to get a few things. There I found Gluten Free, Vegan, and Organic Spaghetti Sauce. I’ve used it on gluten free pasta a few times in the past 2 weeks and it is delicious. I decided this week for lunch I’d try to make mini GF pizzas for lunch.

Here’s what I brought…

AND


Daiya is the Gluten Free Vegan cheese I found at Whole Foods, last week. Although not entirely the same a real cheese (for obvious reasons) it is similar enough and tastes pretty good, too.

How I make them…

I put the spinach on before the sauce because I’ve found it helps the cheese lay better and it’s easier to eat after the cheese melts. I add the spinach to help make up for the calcium I’m missing out on by not eating cheese.

To melt the cheese, I just microwave the pizzas for about a minute. I guess I could stick them back in the toaster, but I like to avoid getting cheese allover the work toaster and the microwave is quicker.

Voila! Mini Gluten Free English Muffin Pizza :)

For the past two weeks I’ve been discovering more Gluten Free blogs and the GF Community. Several of my friends have been tweeting and emailing me links to GF recipes and websites (Thank you!). In the process I found JennCuisine, a gluten free food blogger. She is doing a round-up of Gluten Free Substitution recipes this week and I’ve decided to share my mini pizzas. They’re nothing fancy, I’ve definitely substituted something (if not two somethings) to make them better for me.


If you’re curious about more ways to substitute gluten free options in recipes you should check out her blog in the upcoming week so see what the others submit :)