Saturday Gluten-Free Cooking Spree

Saturday Gluten-Free Cooking Spree

This past weekend I went on a gluten-free cooking spree. It’s the last weekend before Christmas and my husband and I didn’t have many plans except to finish doing our holiday shopping, relax, and wrap gifts. We had a couple of last minute gifts to get and we discovered on late Friday night that Macy’s was going to be open 24 / 7 all weekend long. Now, this was music to our ears because A) We don’t like crowds and B) We especially don’t like crowds at malls during the holidays. My husband woke me up a little before 8am on Saturday and told me to quickly get dressed so we could make it to Macy’s before 8am. Luckily we live very close to the Macy’s in Manhattan Beach so it wasn’t tough to do – I threw on a pair of workout pants and my favorite Patagonia jacket and we were off. We spent about two and a half hours running errands and by the time we were done, we were pooped. But lucky for us, it was only 10:30am. We decided to have a cup of coffee and relax.

Soon after that I was inspired to get to work and cook up a Saturday gluten-free cooking storm. First, I made Oven Roasted Brussel Sprouts with Truffle Oil. I bought the brussel sprouts on the stalk earlier this week at Trader Joe’s because I thought it looked cool. I made brussel sprouts on Thanksgiving and they turned out really well. So I decided to make them again. They turned out great again. It’s such an easy recipe and so healthy. If you’d like to check out the recipe I have posted it here.

Once the brussel sprouts with truffle oil were finished, my husband and I were both hungry for lunch. We recently signed up to receive a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) box of mixed fruits and veggies delivered to our home. I have been hearing about these services for awhile and they had a booth at the Santa Monica Christmas Run earlier this month so we decided to sign up and check it out. We received all different types of lettuce as part of this box so I decided to mix up a salad with all the different lettuces we had – mixed lettuce, butter lettuce, radicchio, kale, and spinach. I added carrots, chicken breast, and dried cranberries to the salad and topped it off with the truffle brussel sprouts. I used Dr Bragg’s Healthy Vinegarette salad dressing and half of a fresh squeezed lemon for the dressing. Wow. It was good and chock full of greens – healthy vitamins and minerals. Plus we had plenty of brussel sprouts to save and pop in the fridge for snacks or another meal.

After the salad I took a short cooking break and cleaned the kitchen before moving onto my next dish – Gluten-Free Spicy White Chicken Chili. I had seen a variation of this recipe several weeks ago but it had heavy cream in it and I’m not really down with that. It was a bit of trial and error because initially the ingredients I had made the dish seem very bland. I asked my husband if he would run down to the market and grab me a couple ingredients to spice up the chili and give it more flavor- jalapeno, cilantro, and lime juice. Wow, they did the trick. This chili was SO good. I was so proud of myself because I recovered from what could have been a gluten-free cooking fail and I ended up with a great dish. So now I will post this recipe for you all to enjoy here.

While the chili was in the slow cooker, we geared up to go out on a run. We were only going for 30 minutes so I decided to do sprint intervals. It made me twice as tired in half the time. My focus right now has been on this type of training and I am really feeling a different. After our run was finished we came back home and did a home gym workout. And by home gym, I mean rolling out our yoga mat and doing some pushups, planks, and kettle bell swings. I was feeling the burn and I am pretty sore today from it. Intense.

As we waited for the Spicy White Chicken Chili to cook in the slow cooker, we poured a glass of wine and had a snack of Spicy Baked Kale Chips while we watched Steve Nash’s return to the Lakers and celebrated our 3 month wedding anniversary. We got married on September 22nd of this year and it’s been so wonderful. Plus the Lakers had a very exciting game that went into overtime. It felt like we were watching the playoffs – it was so intense! My husband and I are both LA natives and love our Lakers, Dodgers, and The LA Galaxy. I am sure I will post more about them over time because they are AWESOME but for now I will leave you will all my recipes from Saturday’s gluten-free cooking spree.

• Oven Roasted Brussel Sprouts with Truffle Oil
• Spicy White Chicken Chili
• Spicy Baked Kale Chips [coming soon]

This was a lot of cooking for me and I am thankful for our new kitchen gadget that helped made the cooking process smooth and easy. We received a mini food processor as a wedding gift and it is seriously the best thing ever. It has changed the way I cook. Everything is SO much easier. If you don’t have one of these I highly recommend it for chopping and grinding food. I was doing all of this by hand before and I’m amazed at how I can chop and grind an onion now in less than 10 seconds vs 10 minutes before. I love efficiency!

This onion went from whole to chop chop in less than 5 seconds.

Over and Out,
LT

Did you cook this past weekend? Make anything good? Post in the comments and let us know. For those of you who celebrate Christmas, Merry Christmas! I hope you all have a wonderful holiday today.