Monday, November 14, 2011

30 day hands-on play challenge

I've been struggling feeling like I'm doing what I want with the kids which is interacting and having fun. A friend told me about a 30 day hands-on play challenge here. My friend has older kids, but figured who doesn't love play dough! We sure enjoy it! Especially when we were able to make a gluten free playdough free from what we had in the house! I love doing new things without having to make a trip to the store!!
And I thought we would do it. The first thing to do is to make the goals, but since I never do things in order (hardly ever-rebel that I am :) ) I grabbed a gluten free playdough recipe from here and made that first. Then the kids and I went in the yard and found all sorts of nature things to make faces in playdough. I took pictures and will get them up shortly. So now that I've done that, here are my goals :)

To spend time enjoying each other's company and having fun
Learning something
Exploring items I have in my stash that need to be used to have fun instead of staying hidden in "the stash"

Gluten free playdough
  • 2 Cups Baking Soda (1 box)
  • 1 Cup Cornstarch
  • 1 1/2 Cups Water
  • Color (we skipped this for white)
  • Scents (optional): We added Orange Essential Oil

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Dairy free Cheese recipe for Mac and Cheese

I will be posting a bunch of gluten free recipes that we use regularly around here. I've had several requests for these so here is the first. A Dairy-free Gluten-free Cheese that is great for over Macaroni or on Potatoes or as an Alfredo sauce. You can make it thicker or thinner but the cooking time. If it gets to thick, wisk in some more water.

Chreese recipe

Ingredients
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup unbleached flour(for gluten free use equal amounts of garbanzo bean flour)
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/8 teaspoon dried yellow mustard powder
• 1 cup water
• 1 1/2 tablespoon soy margarine (we use earth balance)

Directions:
Mix dry ingredients, add water, wisk till clumps are gone.
Put in pot with margarine, and heat on medium till thick.
This is a very thick "sauce" as it is best suited for things like Alfredo,
macaroni and cheese, etc.. It shouldn't get as thick as mashed potatoes,
though, so be careful :) You can add more water if you make it too thick, but
it's supposed to be pretty thick.
Mixing salsa with this for nacho cheese with chips is great; adding onion
powder and extra margarine works great to use in a scalloped potato recipe.
Extra garlic, margarine and parsley for Alfredo. Try scoops of it on vegan
pizza ;)

I also like to throw peas in it over gluten free pasta (I like Trader Joes brown rice pasta best!)

This table isn't coming out well but these are the ratios of the items if you want to make a big mix and then measure out the amount you need. It's just a bit over 1/2 a cup per one serving of mix.
servings 1 2 4 8 16
yeast ¼ c 1/2c 1c 2c 4 c
salt 1t 2t 4t 8t 16 t
flour ¼ c 1/2c 1c 2c 4 cup
Garlic ¼ t 1/2t 1t 2t 4 t
powder
water 1 cup 2 4 8 16 cups