Easy Mediterranean Chicken and Spinach Rice Bake

Easy family comfort food- chicken and rice bake with spinach.

Family Style Gluten-Free...

Looking for weeknight supper ideas? This super simple toss-together recipe is budget-friendly and versatile. If you don't have chicken on hand try using pieces of cooked turkey or your favorite sausage. 

Vegetarian? Use a can of white or black beans instead. The Mediterranean and Santa Fe- thanks to the fresh and unexpected spike from tomatillos- flavors in this fabulous recipe cozy up to a parade of proteins.

A family favorite from the archives, this is easy comfort food to bake and savor before the fall begins its alchemy, spinning green into gold.

A family favorite from the archives, this is easy comfort food to bake and savor before the fall begins its alchemy, spinning green into gold.

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Gluten-Free Pasta Frittata Recipe with Goat Cheese

Tasty gluten-free pasta frittata.

Pasta Frittata Magic


Have I got a simple and flavorful Mediterranean inspired gluten-free pasta frittata recipe for you. It is perfect for the upcoming weekend. Throw it together for a lazy brunch, or a languid late summer picnic. But first, a logistical update. We are back from LA, safe and as sound as two people can be jetting from the oxygen saturated beach of Santa Monica to the rarefied (read- bone dry nosebleed inducing) air of Northern New Mexico. My "of a certain age" skin is not decidedly not happy. My razor textured Floyd's cut now looks like a highlighted squirrel on a tequila fueled bender. And to add insult to follicle injury, there's a technical snafu that despite daily phone calls, shameless begging and patient (I assure you) correction of our physical street address (corrected three times by three different customer service representatives eager to assist you). That's right.

No Internet.

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Gluten-Free Carrot Cake

Lovely and classic gluten-free carrot cake 

with coconut, iced with lemon cream cheese frosting.

Karina's Gluten-Free Carrot Cake Recipe with Coconut and Cream Cheese Icing

Recipe posted June 2006.

Once in a blue moon I get a hankering for this old school classic. Lucky for me it translates well to gluten free. This recipe is based on one of my own [pre-gluten free] standbys. I changed it very little, except for the flour.

Please note: This recipe has no added leavening because it is using a leavened baking and pancake mix.

Ingredients:

3 large organic free-range eggs

1/2 cup light vegetable oil or Spectrum Organic Shortening

1 cup organic light brown sugar, packed

1/3 cup plain yogurt or coconut yogurt

2 teaspoons bourbon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon honey or agave (for added moisture)

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon Pumpkin Pie Spice, or Apple Pie Spice [or a mix of nutmeg, clove, ginger, allspice]

2 cups Pamela's Gluten-Free Ultimate Baking and Pancake Mix *see notes

3/4 cup flaked sweetened coconut

1 1/2 cups processed or finely grated carrots (about 4 medium carrots)

1/2 cup golden raisins or currants

1/2 cup toasted chopped walnuts or pecans

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Grease a 9-inch Springform cake pan.

In a mixing bowl beat the eggs; add the oil and beat; add the brown sugar and beat till smooth. Beat in the yogurt, vanilla, honey, cinnamon and spice. Add in the baking mix and beat till combined. The batter should be a bit thicker than wheat flour batter. Add in the coconut, carrots, raisins and nuts; stir with a wooden spoon to combine.

Spread the batter evenly in the cake pan; and place the pan in the center of a preheated oven. Bake until the cake is firm, and a wooden pick inserted into the center emerges clean, about 40 to 45 minutes or longer if necessary - I baked mine at high altitude. Cool on a wire rack.

Frost with your favorite cream cheese icing and sprinkle with coconut, if desired.

Cream Cheese Icing

Ingredients:

4 oz. softened cream cheese
2 tablespoons softened unsalted butter
1-2 teaspoons vanilla extract, to taste
3 cups powdered cane sugar- or more, if needed

A squeeze or two of fresh citrus, to taste- lemon, lime or orange

Instructions:

In a mixing bowl beat the cream cheese and butter until fluffy. Add the vanilla. Add in the powdered sugar a cup at a time; squeeze a little lemon or other citrus juice into the frosting and beat till smooth. Taste test. Add more sugar, if needed, to thicken; add more juice to thin.

Frost the cake.

Makes one nine inch cake.

Recipe Source: glutenfreegoddess.blogspot.com

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Karina's Notes:

For replacing Pamela's Baking Mix, I used to say just try another leavened GF baking mix or GF pancake mix- but I no longer believe all GF mixes/GF flour blends behave the same way. You'll need to experiment.

Gluten free cakes tend to dry out quickly. If you are not serving this cake the day you bake it, I'd advise chilling it to firm up the icing; wrap well and chill. For more than a day ahead, I would wrap and freeze it; thaw the day of serving (remove the wrap so the icing doesn't stick!) and served slightly chilled.

 

Chicken Curry Apple Stir-Fry Recipe with Art School Rice

Crazy Simple = Crazy Good

Just in time for the last hurrah of summer, I thought I'd share a crazy simple recipe favorite that is spicy and sweet, infused with curry. Because I love to mix up flavors (don't you?). I'm interested in how traditions influence, enhance and co-mingle. Perhaps because I'm an eclectic heritage bundle myself. 

And vegans, don't assume this recipe isn't for you. In fact, I make a vegetarian version of this recipe all the time. Use drained canned chick peas in place of the bird- or slices of gluten-free tempeh- it's a fabulous meatless and budget-friendly option.

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Karina's Gluten-free Peach Cake

A vegan peach cake perfect for a summer picnic.

Peachy Summer

Lazy summer days are sweet and sticky jewels studded with fresh cut fruit and juicy cakes. Farmers' markets buzz with color and scents. And peaches are the star. Get them while you can, Gentle Reader. Inhale their ripe velvet voluptuousness. Because all too soon they will be gone, and the stony, flavorless winter impostors picked well before ripening, thrown into crates and imported from far off orchards flirting with the southern hemisphere sun will be posing at your market as peaches. But they are not. And they know it.

They don't even try to pretend.

So grab your baskets and get thee to a local farmers' market. There is peach cake and peach crisp, and peach ice cream to be savored.

Some of you may recognize the basic recipe here. It's one I've posted and tweaked. It's not in my nature to follow directions or repeat a success without tweaking it, you see. I just can't do it. My brain chemistry switches to Bored Beyond Belief faster than you can mutter the words peach pancakes on a stick.

Let's just say I was a challenge in school. And in jobs (and okay, relationships) requiring a set routine or specific schedule. Rules and expectations writ in stone give me the itch to break free and play, What if? I just can't do the same thing over and over. I get too restless. I get punchy. And I'm also a big believer in change.

Change is good.

Change means I'm alive, growing and learning. Change means I'm curious, taking a risk, discovering something I didn't know before. Experimenting and sometimes failing or looking like an idiot often comes with the territory. Sure, I might end up feeling inept or totally stupid. Born too late. Or too soon. But will that keep me in my proper place and tame my wanton right-brained ways?

Not on your life, Babycakes.



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Watermelon Gazpacho with Lime

Refreshing watermelon gazpacho. Serve cold, cold, cold.

Happy August. The Dog Days of Summer are upon us. The Back To School Sales have commenced. Evenings are shorter, sultry and sticky and it's too damn hot to cook. Here in our sweet little Santa Monica sublet the modest act of baking two potatoes nudges our ambient temperature to a hot flash inducing tie-dyed t-shirt peeling UGG tossing fever pitch. I pace and prowl for air like the downstairs yellow cat who slinks into our kitchen unnoticed despite his thunderous girth. I stick my sweaty matted head out the kitchen door inhaling the hope of an onshore breeze.

My restless, itchy body you see is trying to ignore the calendar.

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