My Grain Free Breakfast

I know that I need to take the time to write a post about why I am grain free and on this crazy diet, but the explanation is a lengthy one, and I would like to take my time and explain it the right way. If you are really interested go over to gapsdiet.com and check it out for yourself, but for now just trust that I know what I am doing, and roll with me on this one. Finding a variety of grain free breakfast recipes is really hard. I love eggs and could eat them all the time, I am really not sick of them, and I know that they nourish my growing baby, however sometimes something else sounds good too. This morning I snapped a few shots of my breakfast and really it looks pretty good! It tasted pretty good too!  I made tomato egg cups with cheese on top, and butternut squash pancakes ( totally grain free)  They really were very good! I love fresh tomato, I happen to find a few good ones at the store, and that's hard to find this time of year. My kids loved the pancakes, Andrew however, thought the texture was a bit off.  They really can't complain to much, the pancakes were smothered in cultured butter, and real maple syrup.

All the photos are before baking and cooking, everything was gone before
I could snap any after photos.  

Look how beautifully orange my butternut squash pancakes are!

Almond Flour Cranberry Orange Scones

Being on a restricted diet is really hard, but I do have a few tricks up my sleeve. I am not eating any grain right now, so when I want something that is bread like, I have turned to coconut or almond flour. Almond flour really makes a great bread product. In fact my husband has a hard time telling the difference. So I thought that I would share some of the recipes that I come up with in case you want to give them a try.  If you want to know where to get some of the ingredients I use check out my resource page.


3 c. blanched almond flour
1/4 t. sea salt
1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. ground cinnamon
1/4 c coconut oil or melted butter
1/4 c honey
3 large eggs
1/2 c dried cranberries
1/4 c freshly squeezed orange juice
zest of one orange

Preheat the oven to 350
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a large bowl combine almond flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, orange zest.
In a separate bowl, combing eggs, honey, oil, orange juice
combine the wet and dry ingredients and mix well, add cranberries and mix well.
Scoop scant 1/4 c, 2 inches apart on baking sheet.  Bake 10 - 15 min.  until golden brown.
enjoy!

Merry Christmas

Before the day ends, I wanted to hope on my blog and post a merry Christmas greeting to everyone who reads or follows my blog! I hope and pray that you are having a wonderful time with your family and enjoying all the wonderful gifts that you have been given.  We have had a wonderful Christmas day. We did all our running around in the three days leading up to Christmas, and have been able to stay home with our children and play games, and watch movies, and really just enjoy each other all day today!  I love watching my kids open their gifts, I was so in the moment this morning that I forgot to grab my camera and snap some shots. I really like it when you hit the nail on the head, and get that perfect gift for your children. I also enjoyed finding the perfect gift for my husband, and of course I myself made out like a bandit!  I know that Christmas is not about the presents, however, to me it seems like I celebrate Jesus all year round. Through out the year, I think about what a gift Christ is to us, and how awesome our creator is to have stepped into human flesh and join us down here. I like to think of not just his birth, but his life and his death. He is the greatest gift of all, and the real reason for Christmas!
 I managed to snap off some pictures of some of the day, Here is what I have so far. This was breakfast.

Part of our breakfast this morning, fruit salad.

Grass fed, Organic, Beef Sausage Sliders from
U.S Wellness Meats.
There website is in my link section

Farm fresh scrambled eggs, thank you Shrum family!

Here were some of the kids before bed last night, in the new pj's they got from Grandma, and Aunt Aura. The girls had so much fun matching! 

How sweet they are!

To all of you, my readers, friends and family, have a blessed day, and enjoy what is left of Christmas! 

Popcorn

When we sit down for a movie with the kids, the snack of choice is usually popcorn. I am not sure when the popcorn movie connection happened, but we all know that movies and popcorn go together hand in hand.  When I was growing up, you would not find a bag of microwave popcorn in our house. I think because of the cost difference. I remember standing on a stool and watching the air pop machine that my mom had spit out the golden goodness. Mom poured melted real butter all over the top, some salt, and a glass of ice water ( you get thirsty eating popcorn ) When I first got married, I did not have an air pop machine, and grew out of the habit of having popcorn with movies, then I found microwave popcorn, and started buying that. Then of course as our diet evolved to a healthy way of eating, and I became increasingly interested in how my food was prepared, throwing away the microwave popcorn was a given. I started buying whole organic popping corn. I did not have an air pop machine or one of those whirly pop pots, but it turns out you don't need any of that. Just a pot, a lid, some oil ( we use coconut oil, a very healthy choice ) some popping corn, and heat.
It takes about 5 min total, and the kids love watching it pop. You can't walk away from it because you could burn your popcorn pretty fast, but it really is not hard at all.   Here is some quick info about microwave popcorn that I bet you did not know.

popcorn bags contain chemicals such as perflourooctonoic acid(PFOA) which is present in the lining of the bags which vaporize on microwaving and studies have shown the chemical being linked to infertility and causing cancers.

That is just two of the major problems with microwave pop corn, I am not going to go into the ingredients list, and the fact the the corn in genetically modified.  By the way stove top taste much better anyway! Try it out.

Use about 1/3 c  coconut oil
Because we live in Ohio, this time of year our coconut oil is solid at room temp, so you will need to let that melt in the pot, before adding the popping corn.
Use a little over 1/2 c popping corn
Pour that in the pot, and turn the heat up to med high, put a lid on it, and watch it go.
You will know that it is done when you hear the popping slow down and you see the pan fill up!
Make sure you pour lots of real butter on top of that, we also like lots of sea salt.
Here are some other ideas, try using a homemade taco seasoning mix sprinkled over the popcorn, or while it is hot, grate fresh Parmesan cheese over the top of it, or sometimes for a treat, I will drizzle real butter, and then real maple syrup over it. Yum!

Homemade Crackers

I don't know about you, but it seems really difficult to me to keep healthy snacks on hand for my kids. I usually don't like the ingredients in store bought crackers and snacks, even the organic ones have oils, or sugars I don't like. I started a very restrictive grain free diet, and try finding any cracker that is grain free. Gluten free products are all over the place in the store, but grain free? You aren't finding any!  I miss crackers! I like to eat my chicken salad on crackers, or spread peanut butter on them. There great to have around for some salty crunchy snack. My kids can go thought a whole store bought box in one sitting which really makes them cost prohibitive. So I have been experimenting with recipes, and thought I would share one of them with you.  All the recipes I have used have started with someone else recipe that I just adapted to our liking, so after the recipe, I will name the source so that you can look up the original recipe.

The crackers above are pumpkin seed crackers
1c pumpkin seeds
1/2 hulled sesame seeds
1/2 sunflower seeds
( Its best to soak the seeds for a few hours, and dehydrate them in the oven or dehydrator, it makes them more digestible, if you don't feel like going to that trouble, the recipe will work fine with out that step. )
3 cloves fresh garlic
1 tea sea salt
up to 1/4c water

In a food processor with the blade attachment, process pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, garlic and sea salt, into a course flour, add sesame seeds and process a bit longer, its ok to have whole sesame seeds. Little by little add water a tablespoon at a time until mixture forms a ball.  once mixture has formed a ball, remove from food processor, and knead for a minute to blend it all together a bit more. take the mixture, and roll it out between two sheets of parchment paper, ( do not use wax paper for this ) roll to about 1/4 inch thick. using a pizza cutter, cut the flattened dough into squares, but do not separate, the crackers will break apart after baking.  transfer bottom parchment paper with squares onto baking sheet and bake in a preheated oven 350 for about 10 -15 min.  remove from oven and allow to cool.  The crackers crisp up after they have cooled a bit.  If you have any left over, store them in an air tight container for up to a week.
Enjoy!

The original recipe came from Health, home and happiness, a blog I follow.  

Daily Insperations from Joseph Prince Ministries

Everyday in my inbox I get an email from Joseph Prince Ministries. I enjoy these emails, and have often gone to his website and downloaded free audio teachings or watched free video of his messages. What I like about Josephs ministry is that he focuses on the Person of Jesus Christ. He often times is speaking of Gods grace for us. His love and mercy.  After listen to him for some time now, and really all he is doing is presenting the word of God through the scripture in the bible, I have really come to think of God differently. I now see his mercy and grace, above all else. I use to only see what I did wrong all the time, and how I was not measuring up.  I learned through his word that after he sent Jesus to die for me, and pay the pentalty for all my sin, that he sees me as right standing with him. When I feel guilt and condemnation over a situation, I now try to make it my habit to remind my accuser that he has no right anymore, and if he wants to look at me, he needs to take a closer look at Jesus. I have his right standing! God gifted it to me. This really excites me, and I enjoy talking about the details of my freedom, it builds my faith.  The Bible says in Hebrews 11 that with out faith it is impossible to please God. Here is that verse from biblegateway.com  Taken directly from the King James Version of the Bible. 
Hebrews 11:6
But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

This tells me that its not what we do, so much as what we believe that pleases God!  He loves us so much and really just wants us to trust him like a father!  Here is another wonderful verse.

Romans 3:28
Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.

This tells me that the law has been fulfilled by Jesus the one and only, and all that is left to do is believe that he has got your back!  The bible also tells us that  the law was given by Moses but that Grace and Truth came by the person of Jesus Christ. The law was given, but Grace came. Grace is a person, his name is Jesus. This is exciting new, good news, gospel new in fact!
This is the perfect time of the year to be dwelling on this subject, although I think it will do everyone good to remember this everyday, but Christmas time is a time of celebrating that Jesus was sent, and we don't have to wait until Easter Sunday to enjoy that fact that on the cross he died to take our place. He did it anyhow, you might as well thank him and accept his free gift!  Merry Christmas!

I have put a link to Joseph Prince's website over in my link section at the top right hand of this page, take a look around his site, and see if it does not encourage you! 

What do you think of my new design?

To be honest, I really don't know what I am doing when it comes to blogging, the content I know what to do with, but the settings and how to make recipe tabs and change the layout, that kinda stuff I am lost on. I fiddled around with it last night a bit and this was the result. Tell me what you think? Do you love it? Does it overwhelm you? Do you hate it? Its always subject to change, especially when I learn more about what I am doing.
SO... Comment please!