Chicken Taco Soup

I love soup weather! 

Earlier this week my husband spent a day doing all the little things outside that need to be done in preparation for rainy weather as we watched the storm clouds roll in.  Meanwhile I stayed nice and warm inside making a nourishing comforting soup to greet him with when he came back inside.

I've never been very good at following recipes and my favorite way to cook is to look at what I have in the cupboards & see what I can make out of it.  The problem with that method is that if I happen to come up with something that my family loves I can never recreate it.  So when I put together this soup my hubby made me write down what I did so he could have it again.

Saute an onion in a little oil in a large soup pot. 

Add to the onion:
4 c. of chicken broth
1/2 c. of brown rice
1 can of rotel tomatoes
4 oz. can of ortega chilies

If you are starting with raw or frozen chicken put that in at this point also.  This time I made homemade broth & used the chicken from that for the soup.

Also add the following spices: 
2 T. Chili powder
2 tsp. each of onion powder, cumin, paprika, oregano & sugar
1/2 tsp. salt.

Let this all simmer together for about 45 minutes then add:

a chopped pepper, I prefer red for the color
1/2 head of cabbage chopped
1 can of black beans.

I also added the chicken that was already cooked from the broth at this time.

Let that simmer for another 20 minutes or until the vegetables are done.  Serve with a dollop of sour cream.

If you're brave, add a drop of Dave's Insanity Sauce to your bowl!

Chocolate Banana Cupcakes

I've never been good at baking.  I've been told you have to be very precise in baking or things will flop.  I've never been good at precise.  However, being that I am allergic to wheat, corn and soy, sometimes I get desperate enough to bake.

Today was my son's 6th birthday and I was in no mood to slave over some boxed cake mix only to watch my children eat it without me.  I needed something sweet to comfort me through the realization that my baby is now a little boy.

These chocolate banana cupcakes did the trick nicely.  And my kids loved them too!  They were wonderfully moist, had great texture & went exceptionally well with the cream cheese frosting I made.  (Moistness and good texture are hard to come by in wheat free baked goods.)  These are based on Martha Stewart's banana bread recipe, and I think the combination of coconut, sorghum & tapioca flours would make Martha proud.

Prepare a muffin tin by rubbing coconut oil in the cups.

In one bowl sift the following ingredients:

3/4 c. coconut flour
1/4 c. plus 2 T. sorghum flour
1/4 c. plus 2 T. tapioca flour
1/4 c. cocoa powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt

In a large bowl mix:
1/2 c. softened butter
1 c. sugar
3 eggs

In another bowl mix:
2 mashed over-ripe bananas
1/2 c. sour cream
2 tsp. vanilla

Once you have all these ingredients mixed in the 3 separate bowls, start adding the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar mixture a little at a time.  When it is fully incorporated add the banana mixture & thoroughly mix in.

Fill the muffin tins about 3/4 full with the batter then bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.  This makes about 15-18 average sized cupcakes or 12ish big ones.

They are also very good unfrosted as muffins.  Or slathered with butter.

Cough Syrup

For as long as I've known him, my husband has gotten bronchitis every winter.

Weeks of misery: trying to sleep sitting up to keep the phlem from settling in his lungs, lack of sleep from coughing through the night, achy body from the violent coughing... misery.

It would start with a cold- maybe the flu- and within a few days it was in his lungs and we were calling the doctor begging for a prescription for codeine. Even with the codeine, it would seriously last for weeks. But usually at some point, about a week into it, the codeine would stop being so effective, and sometimes it would even make him feel all wired and jittery, so he still couldn't sleep!

That all changed just a few years ago. Due to my allergies, health issues and phobia of doctors, I began looking for natural home remedies for various ailments. I began making my own cough syrup, which according to my husband is better than codeine! (And let me tell you, he was veeeery skeptical at first that anything I could make would be as good as the pharmaceutical stuff.) He actually has not gotten full -blown bronchitis since I began making it, because he takes it at the first sign of even a tickle in his throat!

Here's the recipe I've settled on after much research & experimentation:

In two clean quart jars put:

1/2 c. wild cherry bark

1/4 c. mullien

1/4 c. red raspberry leaf

2 T. lobelia

2 T. slippery elm

Stir all the herbs together then pour a little hot water over them to moisten. In one jar, pour in vodka, filling to the top, leaving about one inch headroom. In the other jar, pour in glycerin, also leaving about an inch of space at the top.

Put the lids tightly on the jars & shake. Store them in a dark place for at least 2 weeks (up to 6 months- the longer it sits the more "good stuff" you will extract from the herbs). Shake the jars once daily. Strain the herbs out using cheese cloth or a tea towel and discard. Be sure to squeeze as much of the liquid out as you can.

Mix the strained liquids together & pour into dark bottles.  Take as needed; one dose is about 1 tablespoon.

When I am fighting a cough, I will pour a "shot" to keep by my bedside. If I wake up coughing during the night, just one sip will usually stop it & have me back in dreamland in no time!

Note: Two good places to get herbs are More Than Alive and Bulk Herb Store.

My New FAVE!

I really miss chinese food.

About 8 years ago I found out that I'm allergic to wheat, corn, soy and peanuts. Sadly most chinese food has some or all of those ingredients. So when I recently saw a recipe on Pioneer Woman Cooks for sesame noodles I got a fierce craving. And then I got brave & decided to try it... with a few substitutions.

So the big one was the soy sauce. There really is no replacement for soy sauce, is there? It has it's own unique flavor that nothing else can replicate. But in the interest of bravery and... hunger, I decided to try... fish sauce. I know. Ewww. But like I said, it was a fierce craving. And the thing about fish sauce is that it's salty like soy sauce.

Let me tell you, it was DEEE-lish! My husband, who has no good reason not to eat soy, other than the fact that his wife won't use it, loved this meal & promptly demanded that it go on the weekly rotation. The kids even loved it despite the slight spicy-ness.

So here is what I did:

Cooked a 16 oz. package of rice pasta

In a pyrex measuring bowl I put:

a little less than 1/4 c. fish sauce

2 T. rice vinegar

2 T. sugar

4 cloves of garlic, finely minced

3 T. sesame oil

1/2 tsp. Sriracha hot chili sauce

Mix up the yummy sauce. Now take a little sniff: Mmmmm. Just PLEASE don't smell it before everything is in there. It takes ALL the ingredients to cover up that fishy smell. Just please trust me on this. Unless, of course you've used soy sauce, in which case I'm sure it smelled just fine all along.

At this point, Pioneer Woman has you mix the sauce with the drained noodles and add chopped green onions. I don't like raw onions. And anyway, they make my mouth feel all funny and tingly. So I grated a carrot, chopped a red pepper a half a white onion (cooked onions don't bother me), and sauted them all in a little sesame oil with some frozen spinach. I also cooked and cut up some chicken. After I rinsed the rice pasta in cold water to get off all the starch, I re-rinsed it with hot water to rewarm it, tossed it in the pot with the veggies, added the chicken and sauce and tossed it all together. I've also made it with leftover brocolli and chicken which is my kids' favorite.

Pretty easy and VERY delicious!

Time for an Allergic Retraction

A little allergy humor from The Customer is Not Always Right

Customer: “Can I have the breakfast sandwich without tomato, please?”

Me: “Sorry, sir, but the sandwich is pre-made. You can just take the tomato off it, if you want.”

Customer: “No! I’m extremely allergic to tomatoes. That could kill me!”

Me: “Well, if you want to wait five minutes or so, I’ll make you one special without tomatoes.”

Customer: “That would be great.”

(I go to the kitchen, wash everything that might have touched a tomato, and make the guy a sandwich. I come back out and hand it to him.)

Customer: “Thanks. You got any ketchup?”

In case anyone ever wonders... or cares

Several years ago my best friend gave me two pretty journals. She is an avid journal-er, using them to record her thoughts & prayers & to help her sort through the rough spots of life. I admire that about her. And I love pretty journals. Especially these pretty journals; feminine, soft colors, elastic bands...

I'm not sure why, but I've never been a journal-er, even though I've always wanted to be. It's not that I haven't tried either. Stashed in the back of my closet are a little locking diary from my childhood & a spiral binder, each with a few pages written in... then gaps -years long- and then a few more pages written, and then nothing but blank pages to the end.

I even have a jounal on my bookshelf... it has my name written in the front, and the date -sometime in the 80s- and absolutely nothing written on the pages. Sigh.

Back to these journals: A treasured gift from my journaling friend. And in one of them, she even wrote a note:


A journal with a purpose! Some direction! (My friend knows me well.)

She also knows that I am hopelessly disorganized & have a tendency to write notes, recipes, ideas, etcetera on random pieces of paper which get stacked in a pile with other miscellany, which my husband finally gets sick of & throws away! The journal was a perfect solution.

Except for one thing: I hate my handwriting!!! Seriously, it's uneven, inconsistent, just... messy. I can't let my messy handwriting sully those beautiful blank pages! That would just be wrong. I've actually written some of my recipes on post-it notes & stuck them to the pages, because that doesn't permenantly ruin it with my handwriting.

But then, last week I shared my cough syrup recipe with a friend of mine, and she said she would post it on her blog. And I thought, Hey! I could put my recipes, ideas, concoctions & whatnot on a blog! No handwriting required!

And here I am.

(I've posted my cough syrup recipe here.)