Sausage and Kale Pizza

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I love pizza. It is probably one of my favorite foods that I could eat daily. We have pizza around here at least once a week. My favorite crust mix is one made by Namaste Foods. They have the best pizza crust mix and pancake/waffle mix that I have found. If I’m in a hurry my favorite go to frozen pizza is Freschetta Gluten Free frozen pizza.

My family is a pepperoni pizza kind of people. That’s all they want. Me, I like to try different ways of making pizza. So the other night I made them a frozen pizza (everyone was hungry and it was late) and I made myself some fat head dough and decide that sausage and kale sounded really good.

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Roasted Cauliflower and Garlic Soup

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So now that we are back in the saddle, so to speak, I have a bit more time to spend in the kitchen. Summer seems to always keep us so busy that the last thing I think about on daily basis is cooking or baking.

Faith has started her 5th year of homeschooling, and is now in 6th grade. Grace is off to high school, which means early mornings and late nights. She is so busy with various activities that I am not sure what she is doing or where she is half the time. I just drive her there.

For the longest time, I have wanted to try broccoli soups and also cauliflower soups, but I have had the huge fear of failing. That they won’t taste good or look pretty, not that looking pretty matters, but it does! Presentation is everything when it comes to food. I mean people have to want to eat it and if it looks bad then they won’t even want to try it, no mater how wonderful it tastes. Especially, when it comes to soups that you have never made before for your family, who is really picky about what they are eating. So I have learned over the years that if I make it look really pretty for my family then they will at least try it because it looks delicious.

My first attempt at these two soups was a few weeks ago. School had started back up and I had purchased my emulsion blender, and really wanted to try it! I mean really wanted to try it, so much so that I am cooking soup when it’s 99 degrees outside and the humidity is like 89%. I mean really who wants to eat soup when it’s that hot outside, but I didn’t care. At least I knew I would eat it. Long story short, I made a successful broccoli and cheddar soup that day! Sorry, all I didn’t know how well it would turn out so I didn’t do pictures that day, but I promise, soon I will post the recipe for the broccoli and cheddar soup, because I loved it. Even though it was 99 degrees outside. I sat at my bar and enjoyed every bite of my broccoli and cheddar soup that day.

Now that I felt successful in making the broccoli soup I decided to tackle the cauliflower soup. First of all, I am not a cauliflower fan. I have tried to eat it over the years and I just don’t love it! I will eat it, but I don’t love it or choose it as a side dish! So we don’t eat a lot of cauliflower around  here. When I came home with 2 heads of cauliflower everyone looked at me like I was insane and probably a bit scared and worried about what I was going to make them eat.

Anyway, yesterday was the day…the big day of making my cauliflower soup. Here it is….I hope y’all like it.

INGREDIENTS:

  • 1 head of cauliflower
  • olive oil
  • 5-6 garlic cloves (some for the sheet pan and a few for the pot)
  • 1/4 of a chopped onion (optional)
  • 1 tsp thyme
  • 1 carton (32oz) chicken stock or broth
  • 1/2 cup half and half
  • a sprinkle of red pepper flakes (totally optional)
  • 1 cup cheddar cheese, shredded
  • 1 cup Monterey jack cheese, shredded

I decided to roast my cauliflower along with some garlic cloves. I love garlic! I took my cauliflower florets off the stalk and threw as much of the stalks away. I’m sure I missed some! I coated a sheet pan with olive oil and spread the small pieces of cauliflower and garlic cloves all over. I broke open the garlic cloves and left them whole on the pan to infuse the cauliflower a bit and the olive oil.

Set the oven 425 degrees and throw the cauliflower and garlic into the oven for about 20-30 minutes, until the cauliflower is roasted just a bit, browned around the edges. While the oven was roasting the cauliflower I put together everything in the pot.

Add a little bit of olive oil to the bottom of the pot and throw in finely chopped garlic (about 2 cloves here) and onion. Let those sauté for about 4-5 minutes. Add in thyme.  Turn the heat down to low and just let simmer. Once the cauliflower and garlic are done roasting in the oven, pull that out and simply dump into the pot on the stove with the onion, garlic, and thyme. Let it soak in all those flavors and mix it all together.

Turn the heat up, add in chicken stock; bring to a boil. Once the soup has boiled, use an emulsion blender and blend it up. I left a few chunks of cauliflower, but not much. If you don’t have an emulsion blender, simply take a few ladles at a time and add to a blend and blend. Be careful, it will be hot. Once you get a consistency that you like, add in your half and half. Turn the heat to low and let simmer for about an hour. Right before you serve this wonderful, delicious soup, add in about 1/2 cup of shredded cheddar and 1/2 cup monetary jack cheese. Stir until melted and serve!!

Reserve some of your shredded cheese for the top of the soup. I like to serve mine with bacon bits, either from fresh cooked bacon or just some in a bag. I also served mine with some cooked sausage on top!

Another great variation, depending on if you like spicy, would be to add a few sliced jalapeños.

I have to be honest, the whole time I was spooning this into the bowl I was quietly saying to myself, “Please let this be good, please let this be good!” It was so yummy! Totally hit the spot yesterday. Oh, and by the way, it was only 70 degrees here yesterday. Rainy and overcast! Perfect day for Roasted Cauliflower and Garlic soup! Well obviously I thought so!

Have a great day and enjoy!!

 

Gluten Free Fathead Bagels

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Summer has officially started and things have been incredibly busy here. I have been trying to find time to cook, make recipes and post them for you all! Between swim team practices for Faith and horse shows for Grace I haven’t had much time in the kitchen let alone time to sit down at my computer and just say hello to anyone!

We have also been working on a few home improvement projects since the weather has been nice. We now have a new roof along with new metal trim. Now it’s time to paint this old house, which is something we have been wanting to do for several years now. Currently the house is a peachy color, which I have never really liked. Soon it will be navy blue with the red brick along the bottom, white trim, and black roof. I am super excited! Can’t wait for it to all be done! So in my spare time I have been looking/experimenting in the kitchen.

I have been searching for a great gluten-free/low carb bagel recipe for a long time now. Faith is highly allergic to not only gluten but yeast also. So we have a hard time finding breads for her, especially something like bagels.

So I have been experimenting with a few different types of recipes and adjusting some that I have found scouring the internet. Here’s what I’ve come up with and really enjoyed the most. I love this recipe not only is it simple but you could easily make some small adjustments and have garlic bread sticks. Simply add a bit of garlic salt or powder to your dough mixture and make bread stick. Also, this would make a good pretzel dough too.

Also, mix up the toppings. You could easily add a bit of garlic butter to the bread sticks, some sesame seeds to the bagels, parmesan cheese…….anything really!

I made these and took them with me to the last horse show that we went too and were perfect for breakfast and snacks throughout the day!

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Lemon Ricotta Cake

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This is an awesome little, great tasting cake. Super simple and easy to make. Perfect for any little gathering, a mid-day snack, or a quick simple little desert for when company is coming over.

The first time I made this cake was for Easter this year. It was the perfect desert for Easter Day, and it was perfect after a big dinner! It was light and airy! Read More

Zoodles and Sausage

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This is the first time I have ever made anything with zoodles, zucchini noodles! Let me say, they were amazing. I am not a big zucchini fan, unless it is shredded in a cake and I don’t even notice that it’s there. Last night I decided that I was going to make zoodles. I have owned a little sprializer for quite some time and keep thinking I am going to use it and make theses zoodles that everyone talks about and loves, but I never do.

I had some sausage in the fridge and my original plan was to have the ground up sausage with some gluten-free pasta noodles, along with a cream sauce (may have to try this out sometime). Obviously, that’s not what happened. I had bought a few zucchini the other day and decided that we were going to use those instead of the pasta noodles. My kids were less than thrilled by the way. This was the absolute most simplest of dinners, ever! It took me maybe 5-10 minutes to cook and even less time to eat.

I ground up my sausage on the stove top in a cast iron skillet (love cast iron skillet). Added a few finely diced up onions (really didn’t need the onion, but I like a little onion for crunch and flavor). Once all of that had come together, and while it was I was spiraling my zucchini, I threw in the zucchini noodles. Stirred them into the sausage and onions, until they were coated with flavor and cooked through just a bit – that was it! Plated it and ate it! Seriously, the easiest meal I have made in a while.

 

 

Mini Chocolate Chip Muffins

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I decided to try a new low carb sugar-free muffin recipe this week. They started out being blueberry, but decided to go a different direction about half way through the recipe when Faith said she wanted chocolate.

These were very easy and came together quickly. Like I said I altered the recipe at the last-minute to make them chocolate chip muffins instead of blueberry. Which was very simple, I just decided not to add lemon juice and blueberries.

Here we go….

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter either a mini muffin pan or a regular sized muffin tin, which every you prefer. I used mini at the last-minute, I thought they would be cute and more fun to eat!!

  1. Round up all your ingredients
  2. In a medium bowl mix together wet ingredients and then in a larger bowl mix together dry ingredients, don’t add your chocolate chips or berries until the end.
  3. Add wet ingredients mixture to the dry ingredients slowly. Mix until well combined.
  4. Once well combined, add in chocolate chips or berries.

INGREDIENTS

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  • 2 cups almond flour
  • 2 tbsp sugar or sugar substitute (I used Monkfruit) Splenda or Truvia would work great too
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 4 eggs
  • 1/2 cup butter, melted (I used unsalted)
  • 1/2 cup heavy cream
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 cup sugar-free chocolate chips

If you want to do blueberries I would suggest adding 1 tablespoon of lemon juice ( which is why you see the lemon juice in my above photo!!) and then 1 cup of frozen blueberries, if you use fresh berries just be careful not to smash them while folding them into the batter.

Scoop the batter in muffin pan and bake for 18-25 minutes (depends on size of muffins). For the mini muffins I baked for 18 minutes. For larger muffins, bake for 20-25 minutes.

 

Low carb, low sugar double chocolate chip cookie/brownie

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So while every one has been sick this week, I was craving some chocolate. Plus it was Valentine’s Day, so I wanted something different and something chocolate. But it had to be sugar-free, or at least low in sugar and it had to be low carb! So I started searching and searching for something to make or at least something that would give me an idea of what to make.

I ran across one of my favorites, Peace Love and Low Carb. I started scoring their recipes to see if something would pop out at me, and guess what, these little guys did. This recipe is so simple and easy. I will say I did change it up a bit, but not too much. They are more like a little brownie bite than a cookie, at least for me they are. You do have to be careful not to over bake these, otherwise they become chewy. I know this because some how on my second batch the timer got turned off on the oven!

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