A new challenge!

Life is an adventure. God is good.

This summer has been full of unexpected expenses. My car's AC compressor blew up. (literally. Blew up. Huge metal shard and all!) That Bearded Guy's truck got broken into at work, and his window got smashed. Our oven is on death's door, as it now is losing it's temperature sensor, and will heat up. And heat up. And heat up. And cookies that were placed in there at 350 for only 3 minutes are smoking as they get hastily taken out... Our fridge is making sounds that don't encourage the heart either, and seems to be going the way of the oven. ....and our garbage disposal felt lonely, and now won't work either.

My perspective on this? God is good. We have running AC in the house. We are healthy. We have money for our weekly groceries. TBG still has a job. I'm still working Pampered Chef (albiet, not very much, anybody need to order anything???) and I'm still sewing. We can afford the roof over our heads. We can afford a new fridge with some creative budgeting. Don't need the garbage disposal-I'll just change my tactics for kitchen sink use. And as for the oven?

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!

I shall survive FINE without the oven! I will find a way! We have a working stove top! We have a toaster oven! We have a microwave! And, most importantly, WE HAVE CROCK POTS!!!!

Ladies and gentlemen, this is my new challenge, and I will CONQUER IT!! *Bohahaha!*

How will I make cookies? Parchment paper lined on the bottom, high heat, watch to learn how long.

How will I make banana bread? Use my larger crock pot, fit the bread pan in it, bake on high for 3ish hours.

How will I make dinner? BAH! Same as always before! Toss it in and walk away!

How will I make breakfast? I will show you.

With some easy preparation, and my knowledge that I'll be getting up at 1:30 this morning to feed That Boy, breakfast was a cinch. This morning, when TBG got up for work, he had Apple-Berry Crunch for breakfast. Hot, delicious, easy. All he had to do was spoon it out of the crock pot. In a couple days, I plan we'll having banana bread. Wait for that bit of fun!

How did I make this? I prepared all my ingredients before bed, so when I woke up at 1:30, all I had to do was chop my apples, and put everything in! Easy!

Ingredients

• Filling:
• 2 apples, chopped
• 1 package mixed berries, frozen
• 1/4 C. firmly packed brown sugar
• 1/4 C. frozen orange juice concentrate (thawed)
• 2 Tbs. AP GF flour
• 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp salt

• Topping:
• 1 C. oats, uncooked
• 1/2 C. firmly packed brown sugar
• 5 Tbs. non-dairy butter, melted
• 2 Tbs. AP GF flour

Path to Yum

Spray crock pot with cooking spray. For filling, mix all together. (I mixed all but the apples and berries, and added those in the wee hours of the morning) Once mixed, add to crock pot. Mix topping, sprinkle over berry mixture. Turn crock pot on to low, walk away for at least 2 hours. Return to eat some yum.

Super easy. Delicious!

Still debating on what I'll make for dinner. It'll either be BBQ chicken, slow cooked and then shredded for sandwiches, or it'll be salsa chicken. If I do salsa chicken, I'll make it with of extra meat, and then I'll slow cook some chicken enchilada's tomorrow night. Oh decisions, decisions!

Muffins!!

We've been enjoying any type of easy breakfast possible since that That Boy has arrived. ...which means now that these awesome gluten free boxed muffins are around, we've been making blueberry or chocolate chip boxed muffins almost weekly. And boxed muffins are expensive! $5.99 a box! (unless they're on sale, but still!) After so long of coughing up money for a box mix, I finally had the time to sit down and figure out a recipe for muffins. No more box mixes!

What I basically needed to do was mix a flour blend that I could use as all purpose flour to sub into a pre-exsisting muffin recipe. I looked at the box mix, wrote out all the ingredients, and figured which ones I wanted in my recipe. My flour blend is (what I think of as) simple.

3 cups white rice flour
1 cup brown rice flour
1 cup millet flour
1/2 cup teff flour
1/2 cup oat flour
3 cups tapioca startch
1 1/2 cup potato starch
2 TBSP xanthan gum
1 TBSP salt

Mix it all together, and you have ready made AP flour for these muffins! Sooo good!

Chocolate Chip Muffins of Yum

1/2 cup (8 TBSP) non dairy butter
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
2 cups AP gluten free flour blend
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup almond milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 375°F.
2. Cream non-dairy butter and sugar, add egg one at a time
3. Sift together flour, b. powder and salt. Add to the creamed sugar, then add the milk and vanilla.
4. Fold in the chocolate chips. Eat a few chips on the way into the bowl.
5. Spray muffin tins with non-stick spray, then pour in muffin batter. 
6. Cook for 20-25 minutes (mine took 18 minutes, actually) Allow to cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then turn over onto a cooling rack. 
7. ENJOY!

We're looking forward to trying this recipe with blueberries soon. The chocolate chip muffins turned out amazingly good. Just the right bit of firmness on the outside, soft melty-ness on the inside, ooh, they are good!

 In other news, That Boy is a little over a week away from being 4 months. Where did the time go!? I'm amazed with how time is flying by. He's smiling, 'talking', rumor has it tonight that he giggled at the grandparents house...That Bearded Guy and I were at a wedding while he was at my parents house, and during the wedding I was struck with the thought that's going to be so very soon until his wedding. He's already almost 4 months. I can't blink, or he'll be in grade school, high school, college, married, giving us grandkids...

OOh! Thinking of grandkids! That Bearded Guy told me he *thought* he saw a silver hair in my hair! Yay! I hope so, I'm sad that since we dyed our hair for the Anime Expo this year, my few silver hairs got dyed too. Unlike all the crazy people who have gorgeous hair of wisdom, I LIKE my silver/gray hairs! And I welcome them as friends. ^_^

Learning to pet and be gentle with Malificent

A bit uncertain about the music playing at the time. I think it was something 'pop' like...

There's only 940 Saturday's from birth to age 18. I plan to enjoy each Saturday as much as possible!