 |
| The W.H.O.L.E. Gang Buffalo Chicken Mini Burgers |
Snowy days, below freezing temperatures and a spin-out on a snow-covered country road influenced my menu last week. There were two pots of slow cooker soup for lunches, some bangers and mash substitutes for shepherd’s pie and an impromptu pizza party on a snowy Saturday night. One of the favs last week was Diane’s Buffalo Chicken Burgers on Schar ciabatta. These are in her e-book, The Gluten-Free Diner Cookbook filled with satisfying, yet healthy and gluten-free diner classics.
I decided to cancel my night class due to snow and a little incident that left me in the ditch. I came home and needed a little comfort food to calm my nerves and made bangers and mash inspired by Ina Garten’s trip to London. My mash was just really good, organic Yukon Golds with a bit of butter and salt and pepper and a splash of milk roughly mashed by hand. The bangers were Aidells Chicken and Apple roasted on a rack in the oven for 15 minutes. These were served with Stephanie O’Dea’s Best Brusseles Sprouts made in a slow cooker with Dijon mustard. This was soo good.
 |
| Silvana Nardone Chocolate Birthday Cake Recipe |
We also had a long-overdue family dinner. I was going to make a Blueberry Lemon Tiramisu, but my source for gluten-free ladyfingers was too far away for a quick trip on a snowy day. Seems there is a big mouse in the pantry that ate the package I was saving. Hmmm. Plan B was the Chocolate Birthday Cake from Cooking for Isaiah. Okay, the kids are still talking about the weird meatloaf from this book, but the cake was moist, rich, chocolatey and made from ingredients I had in my pantry and made on short notice. As far as I’m concerned, the meatloaf incident is forgiven after the success of this cake.
I made cupcakes and used every holiday sprinkle we had to decorate them. We had Valentine hearts, Halloween black and orange, Christmas sprinkles and birthday rainbow stars. I had the artist in the house make some cupcake toppers with an Easter egg, a turkey and a jack o’lantern. This was topped by a chocolate doughnut because I had extra batter and wanted to try out a new doughnut pan and the cupcake tower needed 13 cupcakes and I had 12. Birthday candles topped the doughnut. Finally, the table was strewn with New Year’s confetti. This centerpiece represented all the holidays and birthdays we had missed in the past year and was a humorous, but gentle reminder to all of us that we lived 50 minutes away, but had been too busy to see each other for all those holidays. Here’s hoping we do better next year, little brother.
 |
| Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef Pizza Crust with Kale, Feta and Sun-Dried Tomato |
