October Starts Tomorrow!

When you buy a house, you suddenly get a whole bunch of catalogs that you've never heard of, that mostly contain items you can't afford... but you  look through them compulsively every month anyway.  Yesterday, we got a new catalog from Plow & Hearth, which mostly sells expensive things for the outdoor living room room no one in the northeast has.  BUT, it also had these, and I think they're AWESOME!  I might actually buy them! $17 for both isn't so bad... if only they came with the pumpkins!  Not sure about the name though... what's so spooky about being cross-eyed?

Spooky Spider Pumpkin Holders

Crock Pot Adventure!

Tis the season!  Here's what's in the pot:

1 onion, chopped
2 carrots
half a red pepper
half a green pepper
4 or 5 chopped garlic cloves (did you know in spanish, they call them teeth?)
beef stew meat
1 sweet potato, chopped
3? small red potatoes, chopped
half a zuchinni, chopped
Red cooking wine (1/4 cup?)
Beef broth (1 or 2 cups?)

I added them in the order listed above, but saved half the garlic to put directly on top of the meat.  For some reason, I took the effort to brown the entire frozen slab of stew meat (it's chunks, but they were so frozen solid that they never broke apart), and then deglazed the pan with a tiny bit of red cooking wine and beef broth, and poured that into the crock over the beef.

Who knows what it will taste like, but it sure was colorful!  And gluten free!  And my 6 quart crock was quite full.

UPDATE:  It was really good!  The sweet potatoes and meat all fell apart when stirred, and made a nice thick, sweet stew.  I sprinkled a little bit of "pasta sprinkle" and black pepper on before serving.  It was ugly though, so no photo.

To Wheat, or Not to Wheat...

I'm doing an experiment.  It all started with a giant bowl of pasta.  Followed by weird stomach pains.  I don't really know if these pains were caused by the size of the bowl, by the pasta itself, or maybe they were just coincidental.  But it happened a few times... hence my experiment.

I'm attempting to go 2 weeks without consuming gluten. 

THIS IS HARD!!

Do you know what gluten is?  I knew it as "that stuff that makes bread dough...doughy."
But it's also a magic ingredient that's in just about everything!  Cookies, chicken broth, soy sauce, cookies, cookies... did i mention cookies?

So, in preparation, i did my research and stocked up on some gluten free cookie supplies.  Here's what you need to know:  packaged gluten free cookies are pretty gross.  Homemade gluten free stuff is DELICIOUS!  I even found a "cookie" that I can claim is breakfast.  Here's a scone recipe, right off the package of baking mix!  IT'S DELICIOUS!  (I'll be honest, the only scones I ever baked before were weight watchers... and therefore a huuuuge dissapointment.  but not these!!)

Here's how good these are: I went to take a picture of them, and ended up eating half of one, even though I wasn't hungry!! Mmmm.

Click Below for Recipe 

Praying for a good harvest

This coffee is so disappointing!  I could say that about most of my food over the last 24 hours, since I'm "eating healthy" after a weekend full of cookies and holiday food.  Then again, I had a hot dog for dinner.  Guess I'm taking the gradual road to eating healthy... also, my hot dog was not disappointing.  Neither were the cookies.  Have you seen the commercials for the "whonu" cookies??  They're pretty good!  But Husband ate half the box in one sitting like he usually does with Oreo's (how is he not fat?).... we'll see how he handles all that fiber he didn't know he was eating, muahaha.   

Speaking of fiber, my garden isn't dead yet!  It looks dead, but I've got a few green tomatoes and baby peppers, so there's life yet!  Look at this guy I found while cutting down my spent sunflowers this weekend!  I never saw a praying mantis disguised as a stick before...

And here's what my sunflowers looked like!  They were ENORMOUS!!