Sunday, March 27, 2011

Is Gluten Making Us Fat? | Fitbie

In my opinion, it isn't gluten, carbs, or fat that's making us fat, it's lack of activity.

"So even if you stick to a gluten-free diet, it can actually lead to weight gain. A 2006 study in the American Journal of Gastroenterology followed 188 people with celiac disease (half of whom were overweight or obese) on a gluten-free diet for 2 years and discovered that 81 percent of them gained weight."

Is Gluten Making Us Fat? | Fitbie

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Pictures of St. Patricks Day Dinner & A Friends Yummy dinner.

Our St. Patrick's Day dinner turned out great.  The lamb chops were marinated in olive oil, basalmic vinegar, garlic and rosemary.  The potatoes, were "smashed" by my youngest and loaded with butter, garlic and whole milk, and the peas were steamed.  Here's how it all turned out:


And now for some mouthwatering pictures of my friends St. Patrick's Day Dinner - She's recently discovered cooking her corned beef in a slow cooker - Seems it turned out perfect.........




You can fined the recipe for the Slow Cooker Corned Beef with Horseradish Cream, Carrots, Red Potatoes and Cabbage here at Yumsugar
And here is a picture of the Irish Onion Soup that I hope to be making myself soon.  It looks incredible! 



Doesn't that make you hungry looking at it?
If you feel the need to make this for yourself you can find the recipe here at Yumsugar.

The lovely lady who made this delicious dinner has a wheat free family, so she made this recipe her own by substituting her homemade almond flour focaccia for the regular crusty bread this recipe calls for.  I'll be trying to get that recipe from her and post it here for anyone who is interested in a wheat free option.
Hope everyone had a lucky and delicious St. Paddy's Day - Happy Spring!

Sunday, March 13, 2011

2011 St. Patricks Day - Not like any other for me

Last year, I pulled out all the stops and put on an amazing St. Patricks Day dinner.  I brined my own beef brisket, cooked it up with potatoes and cabbage and made my favorite bread pudding recipe for desert.  I love brining my own Corned Beef, it's far superior to anything you can buy, and you can skip the nitrates.  But, this year is a whole different situation.  I have since left my married life and I'm living as a single mom off and on as I share custody with my ex.  A full corned beef would be a crazy amount of food for me and my girls.  But I figured, what the heck - plenty of sandwiches later.  But, the economy being what it is, and the divorce doing what it has to my own personal economy, I can't justify buying an entire brisket to corn when I have just $60 to make it to the next paycheck.  So what to do.

I decide, while I'm feeling sorry for myself, to pick up one of my favorite books, in the spirit of St. Patrick's Day.  Angela's Ashes.  Frank McCourt's memoir of his extremely challenging and poor childhood in Ireland and the U.S.  This book always makes me feel grateful for what I have, and points out to me the hell that human beings can survive.  After re-reading the part in chapter three about Frank's mother, Angela, managing to get a pig's head for Christmas dinner.  That's all they could afford, and they were lucky to get it.  To top it off, there isn't enough coal to cook the pig's head, and the boys and their father have to go out on the streets to scrounge for coal to get their Christmas dinner cooked.  I won't even begin to go into the hell that their living conditions were.  I will just say, that's enough to make me stop whining about not being able to have corned beef and cabbage for St. Patrick's Day. 

So - I decide to thoroughly go through my pantry and figure out just what we can have for St. Patrick's dinner - I have managed to find 6 lamb chops left from the 4-H sheep Cordelia raised a couple of years ago, and I decided to take with me when I left my married life - tightly wrapped, and due to be used.  There are 3 potatoes in the bottom of my fridge needing to be boiled up and mashed up with some butter and milk, and, hello!  A bag of frozen peas in the back of my freezer.  Voila!  St. Patrick's day dinner is good to go, and I'm counting my blessings!  Lamb chops!  Yum! 

Hmmm - and desert?  I know apple pie doesn't sound Irish - it's all American right?  Well, apples were a big part of the Celtic diet, and I already have the apples sliced and frozen in my freezer.  I just need to make a pie crust, put the apples in it with sugar, butter, cinnamon and a little lemon zest, all of which I have on hand, bake it, and we have a traditional Irish desert for St. Patrick's day. 

Hopefully I'll pull of of this off, and hopefully everyone else out there will have a wonderful, nourishing, and plentiful St. Patrick's Day. 


'Beannachtam na Feile Padraig!'
Happy St. Patrick's Day!

P.S. - when the money situation lightens up a bit, I still plan to corn that brisket and have myself a belated St. Patrick's Day dinner.