sausage, egg, cheese muffin breakfast sandwiches

This morning we made our breakfast sandwich that we love. You can make this in several ways. I just use an approved sausage from the Feingold food list but you can find plenty of recipes for sausage if you want to buy plain ground pork and make your own.
Today I used rolls made from an approved frozen dough but we've used bagels, homemade rolls, or homemade biscuits. Use gluten free if needed.
We do normal scrambled eggs with salt
And, sometimes a slice of always acceptable cheese, most of the time we skip the cheese but I thought I'd put it here as an option.

Just assemble and eat.

These satisfy that fast food craving and they're so yummy on a cold day. They're also very portable IF you assemble them while the eggs are still a little moist and HOT. As they cool they'll stick together well enough to stay in the sandwich.

A half post, streusel filling for pop tarts

I don't have the rest of this post yet cause I'm not a pie maker but this was posted on a GFCF list as a filling for pop tarts. The egg is so the filling doesn't soak through into the pastry. If you have already made these please leave a comment. I don't like to post things until I've made them.

Cinnamon Streusel Filling for myo "pop tarts"

1/2 c brown sugar
1 to 1 1/2 t cinnamon, to taste
4 t flour
1 large egg, to brush on pastry before filling (we used 1/4 c sweet
potato or carrot puree)

Beef Enchiladas with tortillas

This post is a work in progress because I can't find my recipe for enchilada sauce. I just make it cause I remember how but I couldn't give you proportions yet.

So, first you cook a roast in the crockpot all day long. The longer you cook it, the more tender it will be. I just barely cover with water, then add 2 tsp of salt, garlic, onion, and carrots.

When the roast is done pull it apart and set it aside.

Make the tortillas (or use approved)

4 cups flour or GF flour mix with xanthan gum
1 tsp salt
4 tsp baking powder
2 vegetable shortening or coconut oil (if it's coconut oil warm it a little)
1 1/2 cups warm water or more if needed

Mix this all up into a dough, press in a tortilla press or grill for a minute on each side. You can make this without shortening but they won't be as tender.

Sauce

My sauce uses chili powder but no tomatoes so it's lower in salycylate than you might be used to. It's a darker brown style sauce instead of the Americanized tomato sweet spicy sauce.

Dissolve 2 TBSP flour (or gluten free flour mix) in 2 cups of water. Add 2 TBSP of chili powder and 3/4 tsp salt. Cook this over medium heat until thickened. If you're adventurous and know how you can brown the flour in oil first, then add the liquid whisking very quickly. It takes a little practice and sometimes I have to vita-mix it smooth but the browning gives it an extra flavor.
If you're used to canned sauce you can add 1 TBSP sugar to even it out. Add more salt if needed.

To assemble, dip a tortilla in sauce, put in a little beef and shredded cheese if you want. Roll up and either put it on a plate with extra sauce and condiments or put in a casserole dish to freeze or serve. Add extra sauce and sprinkle with cheese.

I like to serve this with homemade pinto beans and salad.

mmmm pumpkin spice or anything else muffins

These are a staple of ours. They are one of the few gluten free baked items that I like so far. Sometimes we skip the pumpkin and add applesauce or another fruit or something else that's a little wet. These muffins are moist so they freeze very well. I freeze them in freezer ziplock baggies and get out as many as I need to thaw. If I need to go quickly I'll thaw them in the oven for 10 minutes at 350 degrees but it dries them out a little. Try to set them out the morning before instead. Since it's a staple the directions are all over the place. Just make sure your batter looks like muffin batter (sort of thick, barely beat it, lumps are good) and that you grease or oil the muffin tins so it comes out ok. I usually double the batch.

2-4 eggs, beaten

1 cup milk, water, or coconut milk

1/4 cup approved oil, approved shortening, or coconut oil

3 cups flour, all purpose, wheat, GF baking mix, or any flour. Millet, brown rice, and white or garbanzo bean is a good combination. If using coconut flour decrease a little, it absorbs liquid like crazy.

1 cup sugar, or 3/4 cup agave or honey, or 1/2 tsp pure stevia plus 1/4 cup other sweetner, or if you're used to stevia 1 tsp pure stevia.

4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp sea salt or other salt

1-2 cups of anything moist like pumpkin, applesauce, or thickly pureed fruit

1-2 tsp spices to go with it. My spice is a combination including cinnamon, ginger, allspice, nutmeg, and corriander.

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Grease muffin tins with an approved oil or butter. Beat eggs and add all wet ingredients. Mix in remaining ingredients just till flour is moistened. Batter should be a little lumpy.
Fill muffin tins 2/3 cups full. Bake 25 minutes or until done. Immediately remove from pan. If freezing, let cool, then package, then freeze.

Give me a break!

Why do people want to fight the Feingold program? Why? Why do people who want nothing to do with Feingold read the blogs about it? Why do people care if someone says symptoms rather than diagnosis? Symptoms sounded right to me and I'm not a linguist. Why can't people understand when others see things happen right before their eyes? They still feel the need to fight. I'm not going to fight with this person. I feel no need. I started this blog to help people and I will continue to help people. If they choose to be offended maybe they should turn off their computer or at least not read my blog.

Menu #1

I decided that as long as I was doing my own menu I might as well post it here. Some recipes will not work with the always acceptable ingredients but I'll post it anyway. You can always make adjustments as needed. If you're veggies, just sub beans or tofu for the meat. We are gluten free at this point but I haven't made notes of gluten free items. You can make them yourselves or buy gluten free items where needed. Sub what you need to, for instance, instead of bagels use bread etc etc.
I won't always have time to link the menu to the recipes but in the top left corner there's a search box. Just put in a key word and see if I have a recipe.

Monday

(Thaw chicken)

Breakfast
Pancakes, home canned cherries, Fresh squeezed orange juice

Lunch
Pasta and veggies (pasta, butter, salt, garlic, bag of frozen veggies), home canned peaches

Dinner
Spring rolls (rice wrappers) with chicken and veggies, sweet and sour dip, fried rice (rice, bag of frozen veggies, scrambled egg, braggs aminos), fruit salad (if using canned fruit use approved or just fruit and sugar or it's own fruit juice)



Tuesday

(freeze leftover muffins for Saturday, start roast in crock pot, save roast for Wednesday’s enchiladas, make bread if needed)

Breakfast
pumpkin muffins, fruit smoothie

Lunch
Pb and jelly sandwiches, apples

Dinner
Crock pot roast with carrots, mashed potatoes, green salad, canned peaches


Wednesday

(make rolls if needed, make tortillas if needed, start rice)

Breakfast
Breakfast sandwiches (rolls, scrambled egg, approved sausage), fresh squeezed grapefruit juice

Lunch
Fried rice with veggies and scrambled egg

Dinner
beef enchiladas, red rice, green salad, canned cherries

Thursday

Breakfast
approved cereal and milk

Lunch
Bento lunch: approved ham and swiss bagel sandwiches, fruit, approved chips, gummi candy

Dinner
Lentil soup

Friday

(thaw muffins for Saturday’s breakfast)

Breakfast
Oatmeal with pie spice

Lunch
Salmon nuggets with sour cream dill dip, canned fruit

Dinner
Homemade pizza, green salad


Saturday

(thaw chicken for lunch, thaw hamburger and/or beans for taco salad)

Breakfast
Leftover pumpkin muffins, smoothie

Lunch
Chicken soup

Dinner
Taco salad (lettuce, beans, ground beef with garlic, onions, cayenne, and cumin, approved or homemade salsa, approved chips to crush over the top, homemade ranch dressing.), apple crisp

lentil soup

One of my favorite comfort foods for winter is lentil soup. It's on our menu at least once a week in the winter.

2-3 cups lentils
3 potatoes
2 carrots
1 tsp salt
1 bay leaf
water or homemade or approved chicken stock, enough to cover previous ingredients plus a couple of inches

I just put all of this into a pot, cover with water or chicken stock, and cook for about an hour. Sometimes it goes in the crockpot till dinner, usually it's in the pot. Just make sure it doesn't burn on the bottom. Lentils absorb a lot of water.

Good additions are onions, garlic, spices, sour cream (added at the end), butter, tomatoes, or any other veggies you can think of.

Serve alone, with breadsticks, or with a salad.

Valentines Day

Here's another beautiful cake. This one is the chocolate cake recipe from the Feingold binder. The frosting is regular buttercream but with raspberry juice instead of the milk. MMMMMMMMMM I can smell it now. Thanks Suzanne.

Also, a Valentine's day tip that people use for any holiday with treats. Let your kids leave their bad candy near their bed. Have the Feingold fairy trade it for good stuff in the morning.

A response to a letter

My response to a very negative letter. I post these things because it helps you all to know the kind of opposition that's out there. This is the reason laws don't pass. So many people really think these things. I wish we could educate everyone.

Her letter...

Why does it matter SO much about the petroleum you take in through your mouth? What about the petroleum that's in everything around us, including the water that comes from our taps and the air we breathe? Wouldn't those have just as much of an adverse affect, if not more so in some instances, than the teensiest bit of petroleum one might find in a certain food product's container? I do understand not wanting to take into our bodies things that are unnatural and unhealthy, but it seems that Feingold is taking it to the extreme.

If a person truly wanted to be free of petroleum (and other pollutants) they would be like some people who live in homes out in the middle of nowhere, with special air filters, special foods, special clothing, etc. Of course, they never leave their homes. How do you buy gas, drive on the road, deal with the inversion, keep your water clear, insure that your clothing, furnishings and other finishes are petroleum-free, etc.? How are your sure you've had a reaction to food and not something else in the environment? How do you determine that a child's hyperactivity, or other undesirable behavior, is a result of petroleum and not just normal, age-related behavior?

(Also, as a side note, just because an organization says it's 'non-profit' doesn't mean the people running it aren't making a huge salary. It just means the organization itself doesn't make a profit. Credit unions and most hospitals are non-profit and the people running them are very wealthy. Which reminds me of another question: Don't Feingold members get a discount if they bring other people on board?)

I do find it enormously suspicious that something so important as Feingold claims to be is also very expensive and very exclusive (you're not supposed to share recipes, etc.). My personal experience with truth is that it's available to everyone and it's free. Do Feingold's claims override the inspiration parents are entitled to for their own children, especially when it comes to treating them for specific conditions?

And, my response...

Maybe I should send you Jane Hershey's phone number so you can meet her and see how rich she is. $80 for a whole year, for a book that has to be updated monthly, 12 issues of a magazine to keep US updated, and a free internet forum for support with no other advertising to make money sounds great to me. Many of the people I know paid $40 for all of that or got it free depending on circumstances. Feingold members do not get anything for "bringing people on board". We get nothing, the products in the book get nothing. We do not get a discount of any sort unless we are financially unable to buy the program.

I just looked up weight watchers last night and it cost $40 a month. That's $480 per year.

The reason we can't share product names, (not recipes) is because that's what the money goes towards. It takes months to research the products within the products to get approved. Hours on the phone that have to be paid. Hours more to make sure the product stays the same. If everyone just gave away the product names there wouldn't be enough money to keep the program going.
And for a program that saved my son's life and his social ability yes, it's absolutely worth $7 a month to have a book and magazines that tell me which products are safe for my kids without me having to do all that personal research.

As for mattering what we take in our mouth, it's the molecular structure of petroleum from coal tar dyes that hurt my children and give my son asthma. We also do not use petroleum on our skin. And believe me, every time the inversion comes around (with pollution petroleum) my son gets a cough again. He is just recovering from a terrible asthma episode because he played outside on a day that I didn't realize was a red day. I wish we could move where the air was clean but unfortunately we can't. Yes, we have air purifiers. We also have a reverse osmosis water system. I care about my son enough that once a month in the hospital and steroids for life just didn't cut it for me. If something is broken, you fix it any way you can. Does any advice anywhere override a parent's inspiration? Feingold is just another piece of advice and I have been inspired to follow it. This truth is available to everyone and it is free if you are willing to call the manufacturer of everything you eat and expect said manufacturers to be honest with you without being made to sign a truth agreement like they have to in order to be in the Feingold list. They may or may not listen to you or answer your question because you are a single person rather than an organization.

The reason I care about a teensy amount that's found in a box is because it absolutely affects my son. I can't "make up" peeing the bed or asthma when we have it, even if I could possibly make up behavior issues. Somehow the people at co-op and church know when to ask me, "gee has he had petroleum today?" after he's punched 2 people in the stomach and is running around like a wild man and go figure, we had something the night before that wasn't approved. I called Feingold and we found out that it had TBHQ in it.

There is also dirt in everything, we can't get it all out, but I don't see you serving it in a bowl to your kids for dinner.

Yes, you can decorate a cake!

This cake was decorated by Karen on the Feingold list. She used all natural coloring and it's Feingold safe! I just wanted to post this as an inspiration to let you know that you don't need little bottles of petroleum to make a cute cake.