gluten free

Paleo-ish Caramel

Hey, y’all. 🙂

Happy Monday. 🙂

It’s so cold here (low 50’s) and I’m freezing to death. It’s been a couple days and I’m ready for my summer back.  🙂

I finished up most of my Christmas shopping this weekend. Mostly online so now just have to wait on it to show up here.

I’ve been waiting on a bottle of peppermint oil to show up since Tuesday. I’m losing my patience, Amazon.

Love this so much. 🙂

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I’ve gotten some questions about the Follow Your Heart dairy free cheese I wrote about last week so I’m going to try to remember to take pics when I use it with different meals.  This one is to show the melt. We had hamburger night and that one was mine.  I didn’t have the fries…that night…but I do allow potatoes a couple times a week or when eating out. The cheese melts great with some things and not so great with others.

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Are y’all familiar with cheese chips? It’s a low carb staple. You take a slice of American cheese and fold it in half then half again and once more til you have 8 pieces. Then microwave til crisp. I tried it out with the Follow Your Heart Pepper jack and oh my gosh y’all. This is my new addiction.  🙂  These actually crisp up better than real cheese and they don’t burn.  In my micro it takes 2 minutes and they are perfect.

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Cashew cream, lemon juice and salt = diary free sour cream.

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Lunch.  Avocado, dairy free sour cream, salsa and pepper jack chips.

Here’s an example of where the cheese doesn’t melt super great. Chili with cheese and cashew flour tortilla chips. Tastes great but doesn’t melt in the chili like it does on a hamburger.

Teacher of the year. 🙂

I’ve been trying to figure out some sort of Paleo version of a Christmas time treat to try.  I really want to stay away from a lot of treats but I also don’t want to miss out on some holiday traditions.  One tradition we have that is really specific to my immediate family is toffee.

So I decided to test out some of the components…starting with caramel.

I had 1/3 cup of So Delicious coconut cream left in the icebox so I used it plus 1/3 cup Ideal plus 1 tsp coconut sugar.  Put it in a Pyrex measuring cup and cooked in the micro for about 4 minutes…stirring every 2o seconds. Then stirred in a 1/2 tsp ghee and a splash of vanilla.  IT WORKED.  🙂

I learned thought that I really really hate the taste of coconut sugar so if I make it again I will just use a 1/2 tsp of molasses. The carb count would be miniscule and would taste a million times better.

I say this is paleo-ish because Ideal contains Splenda which Paleo peeps thinks is the devil.  I do not and do use it. To make it textbook Paleo use all coconut sugar or xylitol or stevia or a combination of the three.

Reminder: I’m just me. I’m not paleo or anything else. I’m keeping carbs below 25 / day with the occasional spike…with the spike coming from completely on plan foods. My plan. Not yours or anyone else.  Keep the food policing to yourselves.  Thanks.  🙂

So once I had the caramel I had to do something with it.  I decided to test out some chocolate.  This didn’t go quite as well as the caramel and it’s still a work in progress.  I used the recipe for chocolate in Kelly’s Paleo Chocolate Lovers’ book and it was good but just not exactly what I’d want for my toffee…too grainy.

Like I said before…I’m not doing a lot of treats right now so I’m not sure if I’ll keep experimenting or not but it’s nice to know it can be done.  🙂

Some before and currents…

Shirt the day I bought it (in the dressing room) and 5 weeks later. 🙂

(white out because no bra) 🙂

Santa shirt 2015 and Santa shirt 2016.

Isn’t ’16 Santa so cute? It says Merry Christmas Y’all. 🙂

Red shirt comparison from last year to this year. (the white out is just covering up one of those horrible huge blood spots I had last year…don’t want to look at those anymore).

Ok that’s all for now.  Y’all have a great week…stay safe and warm and I’ll see you soon.  🙂

 

Thanksgiving Hodgepodge

Hey, y’all. 🙂

Did y’all have a nice Thanksgiving weekend?  Do a bunch of shopping?

We had a good one.

And I did it, y’all.  I stayed 100% on plan. No grains, sugar or dairy.  🙂

If you’re not spatchcockin’ your turkey you don’t know what you’re missing. 🙂  This was the best turkey I’ve ever had in my life.  SO moist and juicy.

Don’t y’all wanna know how that bible study class went down.  😉

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I made the Parker House rolls from Every Last Crumb and they were really good. I couldn’t believe something made with almond flour could be that soft.  Highly recommend this one (but trust me…add some salt to the dough).

Made the ‘cornbread’ recipe in Danielle Walker’s Against All Grain Celebrations and then gave it to Mama B to make some dressing for me. Everybody else had regular dressing but she takes my Mema’s dressing recipe and makes a celiac safe version for me.  Last year I was able to have real cornbread but since I’m not doing any grains right now I had to try something else. It was good. Not great…but then my Mema made the best dressing in the world 🙂 so it’s kind of hard for nut bread to live up to that.

Blurry pic of my plate. Turkey, dressing, roll and green bean cass.

Everybody else had regular green bean cass but since I’m not doing dairy I had to make something safe.

Enter…

My new favorite thing. 🙂 Follow Your Heart vegan cheese.

Now let’s be real clear here…I will never eat vegan. 

I mean this is Texas after all. 😉

But cutting out dairy has changed my life and I’m determined to keep it up.  I miss it A LOT  though so in order to stay strong with cutting it out I had to find something to keep me on track. I tried several other brands and they were horrible…not to mention expensive.

GO VEGGIE was the worst of the worst.  I tried it and was almost ready to give up then I found the Follow Your Heart at Whole Foods. I was like ok if this Follow Your Heart doesn’t taste good either then a dairy free life just isn’t for me.

Thankfully it was good.  It doesn’t melt as smoothly as I wish it would but the taste is great and it completely hits the ‘I need some cheese right this minute’ spot in my head.  Also let me add here that I’m only eating the ones labeled “New”. They don’t have any soy. I can’t speak to any of their other products but the new cheese slices are excellent.

I keep a bowl of cashew cream in the icebox at all times.  It’s so versatile.  It’s just soaked cashews, water and salt pureed til completely thick, smooth and creamy. I’ve used it in protein shakes, to make ‘sour cream’ and…as the ‘cream of chicken’ to make my green bean cass.  I took a little bit of cashew cream and mixed in some chicken broth base and then heated it up with some of the Follow Your Heart cheese til it melted then added the green beans and baked as normal.  It was my second favorite part of the meal after the turkey. 🙂

Everyone else had regular desserts and I attempted a safe one for me but it wasn’t good enough to blog.

Overall I was very happy with my totally on plan holiday meal. 🙂

I’m not sure what I’m going to do about Christmas. I’m leaning towards taking the day off and just eating regular stuff but we’ll see.  I said from the beginning I just wanted to make 100 days and then reevaluate so that’s what I’m going to do.  14 days to go.  🙂

Got the decorations up. Decided to do an all red, white and green theme this year. Thank you, CA for my beautiful poinsettia tree skirt quilt from Hawaii. I love it so much.  And you.  🙂

Ok that’s enough for today.  Y’all have a great week and I’ll see you soon.  🙂

p.s. don’t forget Giving Tuesday today.  🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Best Gluten Free Waffle Recipe

Hey, y’all. 🙂

How are y’all doing this week?

As y’all know things were rough for me last week.  I got to participate in a conference call with HRC (along with other campaign volunteers) though and am doing much better.

 🙂

 

Yeah. The #calexit won’t happen. But I mean…did we ever in our wildest dreams imagine we’d have an illiterate openly racist / misogynistic  dude as our president?  So just incase it does happen…I bought the domain for just a cali girl and her blog. 😉  Sister B wants to go to Canada.  I can’t commit to that but I think we all know I could commit to a California beach and an avocado tree in the backyard. 🙂

I almost had a heart attack last night. This thing was crawling on the wall right next to where I was sitting. It’s some kind of gross hairy spider with shiny green eyes and white spots. When it spread all the way out it was the size of a quarter. I f…uh…reeked. (But then caught it in a glass and let it outside…being a child of Charlotte’s Web and all…).

So we had breakfast for supper a few times (in a row…but who’s counting) 😉

120g Almond Flour, 70g Arrowroot, 2 tsp Baking Powder, 1 Egg, 1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp Cashew Milk, 1/4 cup Coconut Oil, 2 tbsp Sugar equivalent (I used Splenda),  1 tsp Lemon Juice, 2 tbsp Blueberry Preserves.

I adapted this from Brittany Angell’s Waffle recipe in Every Last Crumb.

Almost 2 years ago now I went to a book reading / signing that featured Brittany plus some other Paleo / gluten – free people.  At the time I was going to give Paleo a try and then instead spent pretty much the entire year of 2015 feeling like death with one health crisis after another.

Since I’m mixing in some Paleo ideas right now I decided to pull out those books.

She describes this waffle as crispy on the outside but soft on the inside. It was.  I loved it and can’t wait to make them again. She doesn’t use blueberries in her recipe but those are my favorites and I had some of those cooked down blueberries left from before so I added them.

One note from my own personal observations: The first two waffles were not crispy at all straight out of the waffle iron (they did crisp up in the toaster oven). The rest were perfect though. So plan on the first two to be a little more floppy til the iron gets supper hot.

I loved these so much and even though I’m about 2 years post purchase these alone were worth the cost of the book.

She says you can cook these straight from the freezer like regular waffles. I had 2 left over so I’ll let y’all know how that goes.

Related to the eating…went shopping for a little retail therapy this weekend. I’d tried this top on about 4 weeks ago (left) and it was on the clearance rack this weekend. Tried it on to check progress. I didn’t buy it because I’m going thru sizes so quickly I didn’t think it was worth it even on clearance.

Hope y’all have a great week and I’ll see you soon. 🙂

 

 

Hey There

Hi, y’all. 🙂

It’s been a while.

I spent the last couple months making some changes and just couldn’t worry about the blog right then.

I’m also running the business and doing volunteer work for the election.

Y’all know I’d been going thru a bunch of health stuff for well over a year.  On top of all of that my pain level was just off the charts. Because of my blood thinner and an allergy I’m limited in what I can take for pain. What I can take wasn’t working. At. All.  It was time to try something different.  It was time to try a little swap…

This grain / dairy / sugar loving girl has gone keto with a little Paleo mixed in for variety.

Yeah.

It was about as rough as you’d expect in the beginning. I honestly just wanted to go ahead and die for about 2 weeks.

But now I’m all in.  I won’t even pretend to profess this is gonna be a forever thing but right now I’m in.

My meals have looked like a lot of this…

Hamburger / guac / hot sauce (this pic has cheese and sour cream but I’ve since removed all dairy too)

and this…

BBQ plate from my fav local place (I didn’t eat all that at one time…and that’s homemade bbq sauce Mama B made me…it’s a de-sugared version of our family sauce so I can’t share the recipe)

and this…

‘Chili bowl’  aka hamburger meat / spices / broth / topped with guac.

And this…

Paleo almond flour pancakes / sausage / egg  / xylitol based syrup (plus a couple of spoons of cooked down blueberries…that’s where the Paleo comes in).

And a lot of chicken wings (don’t have any pics).

For the first month I ate the same thing over and over…hamburger patties / cheese / may0 / guac.

Then I started branching out and getting a little more creative.

Honestly let me tell y’all…after those first two weeks I was doing great…until I removed the dairy (specifically cheese) and then I wanted to kill somebody.  Anybody.  I thought giving up the sugar would be the worst thing ever but I’m finding it harder to stay out of the cheese than the candy right now.

I’m working on a solution to that and if it works out I’ll blog about it.

Let me add here that I’m just doing my own thing and not following a specific plan or book or whatever.  I don’t want a bunch of email telling me something I post isn’t this or that. You do you and don’t worry about me.

I’m using alternative sweeteners (splenda in my tea and stevia / eryth in baked goods).  My only rule is to stay under 20 net carbs.  Most days I’m way way below that but I have to have a little variety a couple of times a week.

I’m on day 61 today.

The black and white dress pic was on day 50

before-and-current-dresses-copy

The red dress was last year. I’d already lost some weight between red dress and starting in Sept but I forgot to take a pic the day I started.

So anyway…that’s what’s going on here.

I’m starting to feel like trying new recipes and ideas (I made some keto brownies today but haven’t tried them yet) and will share the more interesting ones but it’s really all kind of boring.

Ok that’s all for today.

(y’all vote if you haven’t already)

Hope y’all are doing well. See you soon.  🙂

 

 

 

Key Lime Pie

Hey, y’all. 🙂

Hope y’all are well.

I’m finally feeling better. Finally finished all the antib’s for the staph infection. Those things were rough on the stomach.

So this week I made…

…a pizza. Using gfJules of course. I used my recipe and her flour (but her pizza mix is really good too). Ps. it didn’t shrink up…I just didn’t make enough dough to fit that size pan.

 😉

I’m totally sick of the Colin Kaepernick flag / anthem junk but I’m feeling better so let’s pause for a little rant shall we…

Some people are so focused on the symbolism of a piece of colored fabric that they’re (purposely of course) ignoring the very real issues inspiring the protest. People are DYING right here. Right here in this great country…not in war…RIGHT HERE.

Just because this is the greatest place in the world doesn’t mean we can’t be BETTER. We don’t get to rest on greatness when MILLIONS of people in this country are being disenfranchised (and worse) every.single.second of the day. MILLIONS…African Americans…Hispanics…Muslims…the LGBT community…women…it goes on and on and on. We’re supposed to be better than this. But as usual instead of bothering to listen to the very real problems they change the topic and start whining about a piece of fabric or screaming about the military.

Are some people seriously so cognitively challenged that their brain can’t entertain two separate topics at the same time? You know…it IS possible to be angry about cop murderers while still supporting the GOOD cops. It IS possible to support those who join the military while still abhorring war. You CAN love this great country and still want us to DO BETTER.

For the record…I put my hand over my heart every time I hear the national anthem even in my home when there is no one around. But if you have a reason for not doing that yourself…then I totally support that too. Because THAT is what this country is SUPPOSED to be about. Not forced assembly or sing – song time. Oh and Ps number 2: The flag belongs to ALL of us. Not just the military.

Oh one more thing then I’ll move on…ya know what I find a kazillion times more offensive than someone choosing not to stand / sing? All the people wearing flag do rags and tube tops. A sight which can be seen every single week at white trash conventions all over the country…aka Nascar races. Funny how it’s totally cool for them to disrespect the flag by putting it on their bodies while chugging / spilling who knows what all over it.  But whatevs. Garbage in garbage out, y’all.

Weight loss tip for the long weekend. 😉

Speaking of…do y’all have big plans?

Here’s another recipe perfect for squeezing out these last few weeks of summer.

1 cup flour (regular or gluten free…I used gfJules). 1/2 cup sugar. 6 tbsp soft butter. 1 egg yolk. 1 tsp vanilla. Beat for about 2 minutes. Double or triple as needed.

Baked about 8 minutes in the convection oven.

Key lime pie filling.

Layered like banana pudding in individual bowls. I forgot to get a pic of the Whipped Cream and garnish on top.

So have y’all seen this Margaritaville Key Lime Pie filling? It doesn’t claim to be gluten – free but the only questionable ingredient is modified food starch…which they don’t specify the origin of…but no one in the Texas Girl household reacted to it so I think it’s  just corn.

Anyway…when I was growing up I lived on the Texas Gulf Coast and one of our family fav restaurants was a little shack right on the water and right across from the Naval Base. They had the BEST key lime pie. I still dream of that pie. This was the closest taste to it I’ve ever had. I don’t know if you’ve seen a lot of KLP recipes but almost all of them use Sweetened Condensed Milk. Which if you know me you know I’ve been known to drink out of shot glasses. 😉 So I love that taste…but not in Key Lime Pie.  I’ve always known without a doubt that the KLP that haunts my dreams didn’t have it in it. After tasting this I’m even more convinced. Another thing they used was a butter cookie shell. I was going to do that…thus the cookie recipe above…but I didn’t end up with enough cookies to make a pie shell so I decided to do individual servings layered like banana pudding. They were perfect.

Anyway…this was really good and our Walmart is clearancing the pie mix right now.  If you like KLP I highly recommend giving this one a try. They also have a coconut pie mix. I picked it up too and will maybe try it this weekend.

Y’all have a great / safe long weekend and I’ll see you soon. 🙂