A week of Gluten Free Dinners

What are you having for dinner tonight?  When I first went Gluten Free that question nearly sent me into a panic attack and I just wished I could type Gluten Free Dinner Tonight into Google and actually get some real world answers.  Now, with almost a year under my belt I still have days it throws me for a loop but I have lots of tried and trues to go to now.  So I thought I would share and hopefully make someone else's transition a little easier.

This week we had:

Monday: Rosemary Chicken and Apples

I tried my hand at cooking a whole chicken for the first time!  It turned out great.  I started with the recipe on Elana's Pantry (a great resource for GF cooking and especially baking) for Rosemary Chicken with apples.  My indgriedeints were a little different, though.  I put squezzed the juice of one tangerine into the chicken cavity and then put the rinds in there as well, I also put a bouquet of dried rosemary, sage and thyme from my garden into it.  I then rubbed butter under the skin and sprinkled the top with a tbls of GF soy sauce, 2 tbls of Herbs de Provence and 2 tbls of honey.  Then I added half an onion with the apples.  I baked it at 350 for the 90 minutes the recipe called for. 
I also mixed up our favorite side dish; a big baking sheet of potatoes, butternut squash, onions, carrots and garlic with a couple of tbls of olive oil, tony's seasoning and a tbls of curry powder and roasted it for the same amount of time in the same oven.  (don't forget to save the bones to make chicken broth and the left over chicken is going into chicken salad for lunches)
Dinner was amazing!! We talked about having it for Christmas this year :)

Tuesday: Beef Stoganoff

Tuesday's are crazy at my house, my husband almost always has to work late, we pick up out fruit and flower CSA box, the traffic on the way home is horrible (we share a car and Tuesday's I have to have it during the day, so O and I pick Matt up from work) and then I have to go to orchestra.  So I am always on the look out for great, easy GF box mixes.  Let's just say that Mrs. Leeper's Gluten Free Beef Stoganoff, made with organic ground beef was a huge hit with everyone!  So don't be afraid to pick up a mix and try it every once in a while...sometimes you just need something quick!

Wednesday: Pork Medallions

I saw this amazing recipe on one of my favorite sites, No Take Out and just had to try it.  Sauteed Pork Medallions, served with Maple Sage Acorn Squash.  The only thing I would do a little differently is to add some more maple syrup to the squash, cook it a bit longer and spread the syrup all over not just in the middle.  Otherwise, everyone, even Orson and my feeling sick husband loved this.

Thursday: Crook Pot Spaghetti

Clean out the fridge Crook Pot Spaghetti with Spaghetti Squash Noddles and Chebe Bread frozen rolls.

This is so easy, look through your vegetable draw and find what is about to go bad or your Hubby doesn't like on its own (Thursday's is my clean out day to make room for the CSA box we get on Friday).  This time I found, onions, garlic, spinach, carrots, mushrooms and broccoli (and from the freezer I added my frozen Italian tomatoes I made about a month ago) and chop and then dump them into the crook pot, add spices you like in spaghetti sauce, set the pot for 8 hours and forget it.

1 1/2 hours before meal time, turn the oven on 375, cut the Spagetti Squash in half and seed it, put the face down in a baking dish with a 1/4 inch of water in the bottom and stick it in the oven.  When it is done, take it out, let it cool a bit and then using a fork remove the squash from its skin.  You should have a pile of squash that looks like noddles!  GF and so good for you. (oh, and pop your rolls in around now too)

Mix the squash into your sauce and let it sit for a little while (soaking up that yummy juice) and then serve.

For dessert I made ice cream earlier in the day with my son using the 5 minute ice cream trick, this time I used a bag of organic mixed berries from Trader Joes and a small lime from my garden!  Yummy!

Friday:  Quesadillas

Mozzarella and Turkey Quesadillas.  This is another of my favorite "go to" meals.  You will need:
Trader Joe's Gluten Free Brown Rice Tortillas (corn just doesn't do it for me) or your favorite GF tortilla
GF sliced turkey (we get ours at Costco, just make sure it is gluten free, deli meats can have hidden gluten, ours says GF right on the packaging);
spinach and cherry tomatoes
mozzarella
spices out of my garden (recently I have been using spices that I have dried, including basil, rosemary, thyme and oregano). 
All the ingredients are to your taste, add, subtract and experiment.
To cook, rub a none stick pan with butter and heat up, put a tortilla in the pan and top with all your favorite ingredients, let cheese melt (I like to put a see through pan top over the tortilla to speed up the melting).  When cheese is mostly melted, fold tortilla in half and then toast for a few more minutes.  Let cool, slice and serve.

So 5 dinners later, hopefully becoming GF will be a little less stressful.  Next time I will remember to take pictures!   Everything was so good, we forgot and just dug straight in.