Coconut Pralines Recipe

Ingredients

2-1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup evaporated milk
1/2 cup corn syrup (I used Karo light corn syrup)
1/2 cup butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
2-1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (I used walnuts)
2-1/2 cup coconut flakes

Supplies

large pot
wax paper
wooden spoon

Step One:
Mix sugar, evaporated milk, corn syrup, and butter in a large saucepan.

Step Two:
Bring to a rolling boil. After the rolling boil begins, set your timer for 3 minutes and stir continuously. If you have a thermometer, boil until the mixture reaches 235 degrees. I don't have a thermometer, but the 3-minute timer works right for me.

Step Three:
Remove from heat and add vanilla.

Step Four:
Add nuts and coconut. Stir until the coconut and nuts are coated completely.

Step Five:
Drop by spoonfuls onto waxed paper. They will be gooey for the first 12 hours or so (the photo shows the pralines in their gooey state), but they will eventually dry to the consistency of pralines.

Tip: 
Don't use soft or fine sugar. Use regular granulated sugar.
Don't eat these if you need to lose weight. :-)

Low-sugar, gluten-free Snickerdoodles

Ingredients:

2 eggs (I used organic eggs)

1/3 cup Stevia for Baking blend

1/4 cup softened butter (I used organic stick butter)

1/4 cup shortening

2 cups Bisquick Gluten Free mix

Ground cinnamon

Steps:

1. Heat oven to 375°F.

2. In large bowl, mix together eggs, Stevia blend, butter and shortening.

3. Add Bisquick and mix until dough forms

4. Drop biscuits on cookie sheet that has been sprayed with Pam.

5. Sprinkle the top of each cookie with cinnamon.

5. Bake for 10-12 minutes.

Notes:

• This makes a cake-like cookie that is slightly sweet, but not too sweet. Tastes yummy with a cup of bitter black coffee!
• If you have never used gluten-free flour before, the unusual texture of rice flour vs. wheat flour may catch you off-guard at first. I like it though. 
• Usually snickerdoodles have a crisp texture, and have sugar sprinkled on top. These are a little different than the traditional snickerdoodle.
• My goal was to make something tasty that was (1) gluten free, (2) sugar free, and (3) used as many organic ingredients as possible. I realized after making the cookies that the Stevia Baking blend actually DOES have some sugar in it, but it is far less than I would normally use. I doubt shortening is a healthy ingredient, but I had no alternatives for that one.
• Stevia is natural … no artificial chemical sweeteners for me. (Fact: I gave up Diet Cokes on August 1, 2013.) These cookies have all natural ingredients.

Benefits of eating low-sugar, gluten-free foods:

• Reduces pain and inflammation for those suffering from arthritis, fibromyalgia, heartburn, or intestinal ailments like Celiac disease. I was in constant pain until September 17, 2013 when I stopped eating wheat and sugar products. The pain went away overnight.
• Besides all the things you already know about sugar, did you know that it feeds cancer cells? 

In China, I had no access to Gluten-free Bisquick or Stevia for Baking. For me to eat gluten free and sugar free, it meant a diet of meat and vegetables. That kind of diet helped me lose weight and reduce my pain tremendously.

However, since I'm in the U.S. for Christmas this year, and have access to a few more specialty ingredients, I thought I might make a batch of cookies -- ones that are not too bad for me -- to help me get in the Christmas spirit. I don't plan to make or eat them often, but it's certainly nice to have at least one recipe to turn to when the cookie mood strikes!

(By the way, I had no intention of being the organic, gluten-free kind of person, and was more of the type to make fun of those who were. I'm now of the opinion that there is really something to it.)

Homestyle chicken noodle soup

Ingredients:

one chicken breast, cubed or shredded
one large carrot, diced
2-3 tablespoons green onion, chopped
2-3 large celery stalks, sliced
1/2 cup uncooked noodles of your choice
1 can chicken broth
salt and pepper to taste
pinch of oregano
pinch of thyme
1 tablespoon olive oil
water
saltine crackers (optional)

Steps:

Put chicken, carrot, celery and green onion in soup pan. Add salt, pour olive oil on top of ingredients, then stir-fry for 2-3 minutes. Don't worry if the chicken is still a little pink, because it will cook thoroughly in the next step.

Cover ingredients with water plus about 1/2 inch more water. Boil at high temperature for about 10 minutes, until the carrots and celery are nearly tender. Add more water, bring to boil, then add noodles. Cook until the noodles are soft. While the noodles are cooking, add salt, pepper, oregano and thyme.

Then add one can of chicken broth, and heat for another minute or until the soup begins to boil again.

Crush six saltine crackers into a soup bowl and pour the soup over them.

Experiment with ingredients. You may want to add two cans of chicken broth for a more watery soup, or you may want to double the entire recipe so you'll have leftovers. Bigger veggie chunks and thicker pasta will take longer to cook than smaller/thinner ones (of course), so cooking times will vary. I used a green pepper in my soup, but next time I won't. Also, I use olive oil for everything, but other oils will work just as well. I don't measure the oil either, I just use what seems reasonable to do the job. I had green onions on hand, but if I hadn't had them, I would have chopped a regular onion.

Enjoy on a nice fall day! I think it tastes way better than Campbell's (just takes a little more time to prepare).

Backstory:

A small can of Campbell's soup at the import grocery store costs $4. I can't afford that. I love Campbell's soup and would love nothing more than to eat it twice a day (saving my other meal for chips and salsa). But that's all rather impossible in my weird little world.

I can buy Swanson's chicken broth at the import store for about $3.50. That's pretty expensive for one little can of broth. Well, I do have other options. I could go down to the village market (inside the city), choose a live chicken, watch them put the live chicken in something that looks like a small electric clothes dryer to tumble and defeather it, then watch them break the horrified screaming chicken's neck. Then they would bag the chicken for me, head and feet and all, and I could bring the thing home and boil it to make my own chicken broth, all the while wondering if I touched something at the market that will give me the bird flu. That night -- and frankly for the next two decades -- I would have nightmares. Paying $3.50 for a can of Swanson's feels traumatic, but it feels like the least traumatic of the options. Wouldn't you agree?

Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe

I don't know if you caught it at the time or not, but back in October, MH posted a comment to my blog giving a recipe for peanut butter cookies that require only 3 ingredients. I tried them out, and they are yummy! Like she says, they are crumbly, so make them and eat them before you clean the kitchen floor. :-) Furthermore, they have no flour in them, which I like since I get heartburn from eating things with flour in them (probably I have gluten-intolerance). This recipe is so easy you can probably memorize it. 

Personally I tend to bake with half the amount of sugar that recipes call for, as I have acquired the Asian preference for sweets that are less sweet. You may want to experiment with this.

Thanks MH!

PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES

1 cup peanut butter 

1 cup sugar 

1 egg 

Mix together, roll into 1 inch balls, roll in sugar (if desired), flatten slightly. 

Bake at 350 for about 10-15 minutes, until turning brown and edges are cracking. 

They make a very crumbly cookie, but are delicious! And even better if you can get a hold of some hershey's kisses to put in the middle after baking.

Cinnamon

Yesterday I made a slice of cinnamon toast. I buttered a piece of bread, sprinkled cinnamon and sugar (artificial sweetener, actually), and put it in the oven so the toppings could melt into a bubbly texture.

As I was putting away the bottle of cinnamon spice, I looked at it more carefully and noticed it was not cinnamon, but chili powder. Oops!

The butter wasn't melted yet, so I quickly got a paper towel, scrubbed off the added ingredients, and using the same piece of bread I started over.

So, today I made apple cider. The recipe called for apple juice, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. Whew, I got it right this time!

Cookies

I wanted some cookies, but I don't have many ingredients in the house right now. Furthermore, I didn't want to do anything complicated. I pulled out the Betty Crocker Cookbook and found a three-ingredient yummy solution:

Shortbread cookies

3/4 cup of softened butter (that's 1.5 sticks of butter)

1/4 cup of sugar

4 cups of flour (NOT self-rising flour)

Mix the butter and sugar together first, then add the flour. If it is too crumbly, you can add more soft butter so that you can make a ball out of the stiff batter with your hands.

The recipe says to roll it out and make shapes, but I didn't go to any such trouble. I made little balls in my hand, smashed them flat, and baked until I thought they were done.

I didn't care how they looked. I just wanted them to taste good with coffee ... and they did!

How easy is that?!