Let's talk about food...

We ended up cooking some sausage, too...which was a good thing because we were left with but half a hamburger when dinner was finished!

First, the new pie crust recipe was perfect! A little time consuming to press it into the plate, and I don't know how well it would work trying to roll and cut it into strips to do a lattice design on the top, but it was tasty. Our non-gluten-free guest said the pie was awesome, and Zach said excellent (which is saying a lot, because he loves apple pie). The recipe is Paleo Pie Crust from Elana's Pantry.

One thing that I loved about this recipe is the amount of ingredients - only 4! I really hate it when recipes call for 20 ingredients, often times only needing small amounts of things I don't have on hand. Or calling for ingredients that it doesn't really need...why do I need maple syrup in my pie crust? (I'm kind of stingy about certain things in the pantry; they can be so expensive and I hate using them unnecessarily.) 

MAYO!

After many failed attempts to make homemade mayo in the food processor (I had good luck for a while, but lately it has been a disaster), I did a little research on how to not screw up mayo. I went ahead and whisked it by hand, which left me with a tired arm, but that mayonnaise came out beautiful! It's very important that your oil and eggs are the same temperature, and that once you whisk the egg with the water/lemon/mustard/salt, you add the oil by single drops until it starts coming together. Hopefully I will get faster at it over time. 

This kid will not look at the camera for pictures. Unless he has an object in front of his face, of course.

Since I'm on the topic of gluten-free baking, I made pizza the other night. I don't think I have ever tried a pizza crust recipe; the couple of times that I've made pizza, I just used Bob's Red Mill GF pizza crust mix. Unfortunately, brown rice gives Tony and I tummy aches, so that's out.

I don't know how I came across this recipe, but I did somehow, and was excited because it called for quinoa flour. My Mom gave me a box of quinoa flour some time ago, and it was still untouched in my pantry. I had my wet ingredients all mixed together when I opened the box to find that the bag had already been opened, and some bugs had decided to move in. Google came to my rescue regarding substituting almond flour for quinoa. I ended up adding a half-cup more almond flour because it looked really soupy, but I don't know if that was totally necessary, because it was still kind of soupy, and baked fine. 

The end result was much like a focaccia, and Zach declared it the best gluten-free bread item I have ever made. I topped it with a homemade sauce, Italian sausage, and homemade mozzarella (!!). It was amazing. Tony kept saying "PEETZA!"

One of these days I will write about my adventures in mozzarella making. I've done it twice, making two batches on Wednesday. The final batch was the best so far. I have a bunch of milk in the fridge right now, so I'll probably be making more next week. I'm also thinking about making farmer's cheese, since it's so easy, but I'm not sure how I will use it. I guess it can be used like ricotta, but I rarely need ricotta. We'll see. Kefir is on the list, too, but that doesn't require any work.

For a parting recipe, here is a super yummy shake: Vanilla Chai Breakfast Shake. I buy a lot of bananas, and inevitably have some that get far too ripe for Zach, and even for me. Now I'm just going to toss them in the freezer when they're to that point and use them in this shake. Out of all of the spices, I just used ginger and cinnamon and it was awesome. 

Have a good weekend!

Love,

Jess