Vegan Pumpkin Pie - Wheat/Gluten, Dairy, Soy, and Egg Free

  The gist of this recipe came from LunchBoxBunch. To be honest, the first time I made this it wasn't so hot, but that was my own fault. I put the cashews in water to soak and then a whole lot of things came up and, well... they ended up soaking for nearly 3 days. That results in gummy cashews that don't lend themselves to blending smoothly. So it was gritty and tasted awful, plus I think I didn't use enough syrup (because I tend to eyeball measurements more than maybe I should).
  But THIS time, following the recipe a tad more closely and with only a few minor tweaks, this pie was YU-U-UMMY!

Vegan Wheat Free Pumpkin Pie

Pie Crust
1/4 cup almond meal flour
3 tsp organic sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup melted soy free Earth Balance or coconut oil
2 tsp ice water
Oil or more melted Earth Balance to grease pie pan

Pie Filling
1 1/4 cup raw unsalted cashews
about 2/3 cup water (see directions)
15 oz pumpkin puree (NOT pumpkin pie mix)
1 cup maple syrup
2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1/8 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 400.
Combine almond flour, sugar, and 1/4 tsp salt in a bowl. Stir in melted Earth Balance or coconut oil with a fork until well combined. Slowly add in  ice water and stir until dough forms a firm ball. Wrap in wax paper or plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, in a blender, add cashews and just enough water to cover cashews, about 2/3 cup. Blend until smooth and creamy, (I used the Dip/Sauce button on my Blentec twice, if using a regular blender this may take several minutes.) Add pumpkin puree, maple syrup, pumpkin pie spice, and salt and blend again until well mixed. You may have to stop and scrape the sides several times. Set aside.
After 30 minutes, you can roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface  to form a crust or just press it into a 9 inch greased pie plate.
Pour pumpkin pie filling into pie shell and cook for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 and bake another 30-40 minutes, until outer edges of pie filling are puffed and fluffly looking and slightly darker than the rest of pie. If edges of crust start to get too dark, use strips of tin foil to cover. Remove from oven and allow to cool about 30-45 minutes, then refrigerate for 2-3 hours.
Serve with vanilla coconut ice cream. Mmmm!

Super Easy Spiced Cranberry Relish

  It's almost Thanksgiving, hooray! I still haven't been posting much since I lack the ability to upload and/or edit photos and that sort of takes the wind out of my sails. BUT I stole my husband's iPhone and it takes semi-decent pictures, so here is one of my favorite new recipes! This recipe makes about a cup, which is plenty for our small gathering, but could easily be doubled or tripled.

Just a note, though this is called 'spiced' and it contains cayenne pepper, it is not spicy hot at all. The pepper just really brings the sweet flavor to a new level, it's absolutely delicious on roasted turkey!

Spiced Cranberry Relish

1/4 cup organic sugar
1/4 cup water
1/2 a large orange, peeled and chopped
2/3 cup fresh cranberries
1/8 tsp cinnamon
a dash ground cayenne pepper (more to taste)

In a small saucepan, heat water and sugar over medium heat until sugar is completely dissolved. Add oranges and cranberries and simmer, covered, over medium low heat about 15 minutes until cranberries are burst and easily smashed with a spoon. Add cinnamon and cayenne, cover and simmer another 5 minutes. Use a spoon to mash cranberries and orange pieces against the side of the pan until they are mostly all smooshed. Allow to cool for about 30 minutes and then place in an air tight container and chill 2 or 3 hours (or serve warm, if that's your style!) Sauce will thicken up as it cools.

Turkey and Dumpling Soup - Dairy, Egg, Soy Free with Wheat/Gluten Free Option

Dumpling soup is such a yummy comfort food that was always one of my favorites as a kid. It's often made with condensed cream of chicken or cream of mushroom soup, and the only dairy free recipes I could find were very involved, calling for more than an hour worth of cooking. There is no need for that! This recipe was delicious and you'd have no idea it wasn't 'regular' dumpling soup.

Butterball makes these yummy little turkey breast loaves that my husband loves. I like the ease of being able to bake them from frozen because I have the darnedest time remembering to thaw anything out. Aaaanyway, we had one on Wednesday night and had a little less than half left over, so I used to rest to make dumpling soup. Yum!



Turkey and Dumpling Soup

1 medium onion, chopped
32 oz vegetable broth
1/2 cup plain unsweetened almond or other non dairy milk
1 1/2 Tbl cornstarch mixed with 1/4 cup water or non dairy milk till lump free
1 1/2 cup frozen mixed vegetables (corn, carrots, peas, and green beans preferably)
1 1/2 cups or so cooked turkey breast and thigh meat, cut or torn into pieces
1/4 tsp celery salt
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper

1 cup Bisquick or Gluten Free Bisquick
1/2 cup plain unsweetened almond or other non dairy milk
sprinkle of paprika (optional)

In a medium large stock pot, saute onions over medium heat until transparent. Add vegetable broth and bring to a boil. Stir in 1/2 cup almond milk and cornstarch/water mixture. Return to a boil, then reduce heat to low. Add frozen vegetables, turkey, salts and pepper.

In a medium bowl, mix Bisquick and non dairy milk together into a sticky dough. Using a spoon, scoop about 1/8 of the dough mixture out of the bowl and drop it into the soup pot (be careful not to drop it from too high so as to avoid splattering yourself with hot liquid!). Repeat with the rest of the dough. Cover and cook about 10 more minutes, turning the dumplings over once midway through cooking.
Serve sprinkled with paprika and enjoy!

Turkey Cheeseburger Pie - Dairy, Soy, and Egg Free with Gluten/Wheat Free option

  A lot of things have happened in the past month, but one of them is that we decided to try to reintroduce wheat into Jack's diet for two reasons: 1) he is officially in remission of eosinophilic esophagitis, having scoped clean even off of steroids. This does NOT mean that he can start eating any of the foods he was found to be allergic to and the disease will not come back. In fact, it almost certainly WILL come back if we added them back in. Which brings me to my next point 2) he hasn't actually tested positive to wheat in the last two skin prick allergy tests. So we started out with these teeny tiny graham cracker bunnies (the only graham product I could find that was still vegan and soy free), 3 on the first day, 5 the next, and 7 the next. When he had no reaction, drop in appetite, or unexplained crying episodes, we made him a quesadilla with wheat tortillas (omg, SO hard to find soy free tortillas!!), Diaya cheese and Earth Balance Soy Free spread. He loved it! So after a three week trial, we've decided he may be ok, but we aren't completely letting our guard down.
  Anyway, we bought a box of Bisquick and have been going wild making biscuits, pancakes, and waffles using non dairy milk and egg replacer. Such a normal thing had brought so much joy to our lives, who knew!

  For those of you who are gluten or wheat free, Bisquick makes a gluten free mix that you can substitute in here 1:1. We could not use it though since it's main ingredient is rice flour.

Anyway, all of that to tell you that this recipe is super tasty! We will definitely be making this again, it was so easy!

Turkey Cheeseburger Pie

1 lb lean ground turkey
1 medium onion, chopped
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
optional: 1 Tbl Worcestershire sauce, 1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp olive oil
1/2+ cup Diaya cheddar shreds
1/2 cup Bisquick or Gluten Free Bisquick mix
1 cup unsweetened plain dairy free milk
Ener-G egg replacer for 3 eggs
optional: 3 slices turkey bacon, cut into small pieces

Preheat oven to 400. Pour olive oil into a 9 inch pie pan and spread it around with a paper towel.
In a medium skillet over medium high heat, add ground turkey and onion. Cook, breaking up turkey, until completely browned and onions are transparent. Add salt and pepper (and optional Worcestershire sauce and garlic powder, if using,) and stir until incorporated. If there is any liquid in the pan, drain it off or raise heat to high for 1-2 minutes, stirring constantly to cook it off.
Place turkey mixture into pie pan. Sprinkle with cheese shreds and set aside.
In a small bowl, mix bisquick, egg replacer, and non dairy milk until lump free. Pour over turkey and cheese.
At first it may look like you don't have enough bisquick batter but just gently shake your pie pan or even pat the top of the mixture with a spoon and it will soon incorporate the entire mixture. If using, sprinkle the top with turkey bacon pieces.
Bake for 25-35 minutes, until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean and top just lightly starts to brown. Allow to cool and set 10 minutes before cutting and serving.

Serve with ketchup or barbeque sauce as you would a cheeses burger, or enjoy on it's own!

Chocolate Pudding - Dairy/Soy Free, Vegan, Raw

  My very first post on this blog was for vegan chocolate pudding. Now, you must understand that I was just starting to cook Jack friendly and though I had a lot of heart, I didn't have many tricks up my sleeve. I thought that that pudding was good because I had set the standard for allergy friendly food very low, assuming as most do that it all was going to taste a little off, be unsatisfying, or require me to stop shaving my armpits and start growing my own veggies to enjoy it.
  It's been nearly a year since that first post, and boy have things changed! My standards for allergy free foods now are just as high if not higher than they are for foods with the 'right' ingredients. I love to see the shock and surprise on people's faces when they realize that Jack's food is actually... food!
  So here is my new chocolate pudding recipe. I will add the picture later, I just don't want to forget this recipe!

Chocolate Pudding

1 cup raw cashews
1 cup coconut milk
1 heaping Tbl unsweetened cocoa powder
1 Tbl chocolate syrup, such as Hershey's Genuine Syrup (optional!)
1 heaping Tbl sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth, about 3 minutes in a regular blender or 45+ seconds in a high power blender like Blendtec or Vitamix. Place into an air tight container and refrigerate for 30 minutes to set. Enjoy!

Boneless Buffalo Wings - Dairy, Wheat/Gluten, Soy Free

  It's football season...hooray. I guess marrying the man I did and then having two boys I should have known it wasn't going to be all Mystery Diagnosis and The People's Court on tv all day long but come on, man! It's baseball 24/7 until it's Football 24/7, until it's Baseball season again, with brief periods of golf and hockey in between. Oh yeah, and Nick Jr. Can't a girl get a break?!

  *Fwew* Glad I got that off my chest! So anyway, we wanted to try to make some sort of hot wings to eat while we watched the game, but since it seems almost impossible to get turkey wings around here (plus they'd be huge), I used turkey cutlets cut into chicken nugget-sized pieces. These were really tasty though the breading of course is not exactly like wheat breading. I'm not a fan at all of pan frying things, and I'm terrible at it, so you can pan fry these at your own risk but I can't tell you how, sorry.

  Also, Frank's Buffalo Sauce is vegan (it contains "natural butter type flavor" but when I called their 1-800 number I was assured that it is dairy free) and gluten free... its basically vinegar, cayenne, and butter flavor. But if you would like to make delicious vegan buffalo sauce from scratch, here's a great recipe.

Boneless Turkey Buffalo Wings

1 lb turkey cutlets, cut into 1 inch strips or nugget size pieces
1 cup corn meal (or use 1 cup Zatarain's Crispy Southern Fish Fri and omit the lemon pepper seasoning from the recipe)
1/2 cup GF All purpose flour (Bob's Red Mill)
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp lemon pepper seasoning, optional but recommended
3 Tbl FRANK'S buffalo sauce
*Optional 1/2 cup plain unsweetened almond milk

Preheat fryer to 375.
In a shallow dish or pie pan, stir together fish fri, flour, salt, and lemon pepper.
Toss turkey in flour mixture until well coated. We've found you get a slightly crunchier crust if you squeeze the turkey in your palm after flouring and then let them sit a few minutes before frying, but this is no way necessary. Fry in batches for 3-5 minutes, until just browned and crispy. Drain on a brown paper bag.
In a medium mixing bowl, toss fried turkey in buffalo sauce.
Serve hot, with carrot sticks and celery and dairy free soy free ranch.

*If you prefer a thicker, crispier crust, after tossing turkey in flour mixture, dip into almond milk (or other dairy free milk or melted Soy Free Earth Balance buttery spread) and re-dip in flour mixture before frying.

Potato and Sausage Breakfast Bake - Wheat/Gluten, Diary, Soy Free

 We needed breakfast and had some left over produce laying around that needed to be used before it went bad (I HATE throwing away money by letting food spoil!), so I threw this together this morning and it was so yummy I had to share!

Potato and Sausage Breakfast Bake

I sprinkled mine with fresh cilantro and ate it with salsa!

1lb ground turkey sausage (We use cheap ol' Jenni-O in a tube)
4 medium russet potatoes, scrubbed and cut into 1 inch cubes
1/2 medium white onion, diced
1/2 green bell pepper, seeded and diced
1 tsp olive oil
6 (or so) white mushrooms, washed and sliced
1 cup Daiya cheese shreds (pepper jack or cheddar)
1/2 tsp salt
4-5 cracks of fresh ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 375.
In a skillet heated to medium-high heat, add turkey sausage, onion, and bell pepper. Break up the sausage with a wooden spoon, and cook stirring occasionally until all the sausage is browned and onions are translucent. Drain grease thoroughly.

Add the olive oil to a 3 qt casserole dish and spread it around with a paper towel to evenly coat the bottom. Place potatoes, mushrooms, Daiya, , salt, and sausage/veggie mixture into casserole dish and stir until well mixed. Sprinkle black pepper on top and bake for 40 minutes.

Turn broiler on to  high and broil for 2-5 minutes, until tops of potatoes are browned and crisp.

Great on it's own or with salsa.