The Road to Debt-Freedom: Review of Simplified Dinners

Amanda Pelser — July 20, 2012 — Leave a comment

Road-to-Debt-Freedom

When you’re on the road to debt-freedom, you have to examine every budget category and find ways to cut back. One of our biggest budget categories in our home is food. Allow me to introduce you to a resource that will help you streamline your cooking and minimize your food waste… and save your sanity.

Mystie Winkler has created Simplified Dinners to help you!

First, Mystie gives you a master pantry list. These are ingredients that you could call staples. These are the foods that she recommends that you keep on hand. To save money, watch for stock up sale prices on the non-perishable items.

Next, Simplified Dinners is packed with recipes. What is so great about these recipes are all the variations. After the main recipe is laid out for you, Mystie gives you multiple options for changing up the recipe.

I’m always on the look out for new gluten-free friendly recipes. Simplified Dinners is not purposely written to be allergy-friendly, but most of the recipes are easily made gluten-free with little to no modifications. I’m looking forward to trying out the Chicken-in-a-Pot 40 Cloves of Garlic recipe! I think that one will be a big hit with my guys.

Pick up Simplified Dinners for $9.99. Take your next step in saving money on your road to debt-freedom!

{Material Disclosure: I was given a copy of Simplified Dinners in exchange for an honest review.}

This post contains affiliate links.

In Gluten-Free, Motherhood/Women/Homemaking, Recipes books, debt-freedom, recipes

My husband Josh loves cheese. But, there’s a problem. Cheese doesn’t like him. He falls asleep and I can’t wake him up when he eats cheese. He usually has digestive discomfort too. After much disappointment for him over the last few years and a lot of research for me recently, I think we have found the problem: microbial rennet.

In simple terms, rennet is what makes milk into cheese. Rennet is usually made from animals. As we’ve done with everything these days, “we’ve” messed up what God created and made a substitute. Most cheese in the US is now made using microbial rennet. Microbial rennet is made using mold. By the way, it is usually genetically modified in some way too. If you see just the word “enzymes” in the ingredients for cheese, there’s a good chance it’s this microbial rennet.

Finally! The answer! It’s mold. Mold makes Josh very sick. So, then I began to search for cheese made with true rennet. It’s hard to find. If you’re looking to buy cheese made with real animal rennet, we found that Trader Joe’s cheese is very well labeled. If a product is marketed as being vegan or vegetarian, it is most definitely made with microbial rennet.

Then I started looking for information on how to make my own cheese. I found that one of the easiest cheeses to make is ricotta. It’s a very mild cheese and doesn’t require any fancy ingredients. True ricotta is made from whey leftover from making cheese like mozzarella, but the following is a recipe for a simple ricotta made from whole milk. It’s a little drier than traditional ricotta, but it can still be use in place of ricotta in most recipes.

Homemade-Ricotta-Cheese-Title

10 Easy Steps to
Homemade Ricotta Cheese

Ingredients

1 quart of whole milk
1 1/2 Tbs white vinegar
Kosher (or non-iodized) salt to taste (about 1/4 tsp)

Directions:

How-to-Make-Ricotta-Steps-1-4

Heat the whole milk to 200° in a pot.
Add white vinegar and stir.
Bring the temperature back up to 200° if it dropped. You will see white pieces floating in the whey at this point.
Remove heat, cover it.
Let sit for 15 minutes.
Line a colander with fine cheesecloth, butter muslin, or a clean tight woven dish cloth or pillow case.
Place colander over a bowl or pot. Pour cheese and whey into the cloth covered colander. Be careful! It’s hot!
Tie ends of cloth together and hang to drain over the colander and bowl for about an hour.
After draining, place in a bowl. Add salt to taste.
Use immediately or refrigerate for up to a week.

Don’t throw away that leftover whey! It has tons of leftover healthy stuff in it. (Like that technical term?) Use it to cook your pasta.

This would be an easy recipe to get your kids helping in the kitchen. They can measure, pour, and stir; just be careful with the hot milk!

Have you ever made your own cheese? If you try this recipe, please share your thoughts! I’d love to hear how your’s turned out!

Gluten Free Banana Bread and Muffins

Amanda Pelser — May 15, 2012 — 9 Comments

I made some gluten free banana bread and muffins this weekend. The boys were so excited – to help and to eat. Jonathan and Jacob stood on the stool together watching, dumping, and stirring. I’m sure there was batter licking going on when I wasn’t looking. I’ve had this recipe from Josh’s mom for many years, but I’ve tweaked a couple things recently as I’ve experimented with new-to-us gluten free flour options.

Gluten Free Banana Bread and Muffins Recipe

Ingredients

½ C. oil
½ t. salt
1 C. sugar
1 ½ t. baking soda
4 eggs, separated
1 t. baking powder
1 C. mashed bananas (2-3)
½ chopped nuts (optional)
2 C. brown rice flour

Instructions

In a small bowl combine dry ingredients and set aside. In a large bowl mix together the oil, sugar and egg yolks ? reserve the egg whites in a medium sized bowl. Beat the egg whites until stiff and set aside. Add the mashed banana to the sugar mixture with the beaters. Mix in the dry ingredients. Stir in the nuts if desired. Fold in the stiffened egg whites. Pour into a greased loaf pan. Bake 325 for 1 hr. 15 minutes or until done. May also be made as muffins.

Modifications

I substituted 1 cup of sorghum flour for 1 cup of the brown rice flour. This in combination with using good baking powder made the bread rise well and have a great texture. Josh’s litmus test is always how gluten free baked goods compare to their gluten counterparts and this sorghum substitution passed with flying colors!

Jonathan approved:

Jacob climbed the stool and helped himself to this second muffin. I think he approved too.

My boys love banana bread! Do you have a favorite banana bread recipe? Have you ever baked with sorghum flour?

In Gluten-Free, Motherhood/Women/Homemaking, Recipes Gluten-Free, recipe

Kids in the Kitchen: Gluten-free, Dairy-free Peanut Butter Cookies

Amanda Pelser — March 6, 2012 — 3 Comments

These are our favorite cookies right now. It only takes a few minutes to whip up a batch and it’s so easy for Jonathan to jump up on his stool to help with these. Plus, these cookies are gluten-free and dairy-free. {But definitely not sugar-free!} I make this whole recipe by hand; just one bowl and a fork.

GF/DF Peanut Butter Cookies

Ingredients

1 egg
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup chocolate chips (We use Trader Joes because they are DF.)

Follow Jonathan’s instructions…

This is most easily done with your hands; roll small balls and slightly flatten them. Bake at 350 until slightly browned. (Takes about 11 minutes in our toaster oven.) Cool slightly and then… Eat!

Linking up with Kelli – visit her blog for more ideas to help you get your kids in the kitchen.

In Gluten-Free, Motherhood/Women/Homemaking, Recipes baking, cookies, kids, recipes

Gluten-Free Cinnamon Rolls, Graduations, and Silly Boys

Amanda Pelser — December 23, 2011 — Leave a comment

Random moments to remember, silly boys, and thankfulness:

Yummy gluten-free cinnamon rolls.

These made my Joshua very happy!

I used this recipe, but because we’re no longer dairy-free, I used regular milk and I used butter in place of the shortening. There’s no yeast in this recipe so there’s no rise time and they have a little bit more of a biscuit texture. Make note that there’s also no salt in this recipe. Definitely needs a little salt.

I think these will reappear Christmas morning at our house.

Seeing Grandpa graduate.

The boys and I watched Josh’s dad graduate with his Master’s in Science and Religion from Biola University. The ceremony was streamed live from Los Angeles and we watch from our home in North Carolina. Technology is amazing. I took this picture with my phone of the computer screen when we saw camera catch Grandpa (on the end right up front).

Silly Jacob under my desk.

This is one of Jacob’s favorite places to play. At my feet. Under my desk. He doesn’t seem to care that he hits his head repeatedly when he stands up.

More spicy bean dip, please!

Jacob polished off his own beans the other night and started handing his chips to Daddy for more bean dip. This boy loves flavor and spice.

I made my bean dip with homemade pureed pinto beans and mixed it with homemade salsa made from tomatoes out of our garden this summer. The salsa had a generous amount of jalapeños. And still Jacob asked for more.

Jonathan? Well, he had plain beans with his chips.

What are you remembering, thankful for, or bragging on your kids for?

Linking up with?