Chicken and Black-eyed Pea Chili

Ingredients: pound of dried black-eyed peas, 2 quarts cherry tomatoes, 3 boneless chicken breasts, 2 diced green apples, punch cumin, tablespoon olive oil, half of a really hot dried pepper that my friend grew, dash cinnamon, and salt and pepper to taste.

Directions will be available later.

Homemade Cake Mix

I've been looking for a cake recipe that's as easy as a box cake mix, and I think I've found it. Surely if Betty Crocker does not have to cream the butter and sugar and separate the eggs, the home cook can get away without doing it all of the time too.
http://iambaker.net/homemade-yellow-cake-mix/

...Packages Tired up with String. These are a few of my favorite things.

Mostly I eat food that do not come in a package. I eat a low-sulfur, low preservative diet; however, I do eat some things that have a brand and come in a package that do not make me sick. Here are a few of my current favorites:

Walker Shortbread Cookies
These have butter, sugar, and flour in them. That's it! They are currently available in cool holiday shapes.

Ghirardelli Gourmet Milk Chocolate
This is one of the riskier packaged foods that I eat, but it is so good! These bars contain sugar, cocoa butter, whole milk powder, unsweetened chocolate, milk fat, soy lecithin, and vanilla. That is a longer ingredient list than I usually digest, but did I mention that this is chocolate? My favorite way to eat the delicious squares in the place one on the Walker Shortbread Cookies and eat it like an open faced sandwich. Mmmmm...

Zeiglers Organic Apple Cider
This is a new product for me that my local organic market started selling. Its ingredients include the following: apples. Yep, that's it. I called the company to find out if anything else is possibly added at any point, and the nice woman who called me back says that the bottles have apples in them--nothing else. She even called her bottle manufacture to make sure they didn't add anything.

Plain Chobani, Oikos, and Taste of Inspirations Greek Yogurt
I eat a lot of yogurt. Usually I add a bit of local honey to a plain greek yogurt that contains no flavors or thickeners.

Organic Valley Grassmilk
My local organic market has recently been selling "Grassmilk." The flavor is deliciously fresh and creamy. I'd read that milk from grass fed cows has less harmful fat than milk from grain fed cows. I'm not sure how valid those studies are, but the milk sure tastes good.

King Author Brand Flour (All Purpose and Bread)
This is the flour from which my husband's glorious yeasty confections arise.

Friendship Farmer Cheese
This is a fresh cheese that resembles a low moisture ricotta. I think that it is pretty low in sulfur because it didn't make me sick when I made a lasagna with it.

Nancy's Cultured Cream Cheese
Really, really delicious cream cheese make the old-fashioned way before Kraft. I made a cheesecake with it, but it's also great on crackers.

McCann's Quick & Easy (5 minute) Steel Cut Irish Oatmeal
The Quick & Easy style doesn't take as long as the original, but provides the same texture as the original (not the complete mush of the instant). Do not try cooking it in the microwave even though it has directions for microwaving on the label. There was less oatmeal in the bowl than on the sides of the microwave. I like to add honey, butter, and banana chunks to mine.

Food Lion Nature's Place All Natural Chicken
This chicken tastes good and is always available at one of the local Food Lions. I admit that it is not as good as the Amish organic chicken that my local organic market sells or the organic Farm Fresh chicken, but it has the advantage of always being on the shelf. It is nice being able decide, "I want chicken for dinner," and actually be able to go out and by chicken, while Farm Fresh and the organic market were often sold out. Another bonus is that this chicken doesn't seem to make me ill.

Aquafina Bottled Water
A lot of bottled water contains sulfur. Spring water can pick it up naturally by flowing through sulfur rocks. Some companies (Coke) add sulfur to bottled water. Aquafina seems to have a low enough sulfur level to not make me sick. Plus it tastes much better than distilled water. I've been reading about sulfur in tap water and water filters that add sulfur, so I'm back on bottled water until I do more research on that subject.

Whole Food Bulk Mozzarella
One summer I got sick and wasn't getting better. After a while, my husband and I figured out that the store brand of mozzarella cheese had changed. We also noticed that it was taking much longer to go bad in the refrigerator. I think the company started adding sulfur to preserve the cheese, and it was making me sick. We switched to eating cheese in the ball form, and I got better. My husband uses the cheese to make pizza, and I use it to make lasagna and steak and cheese subs.

Really Simple Allergy Friendly Apple Stuffing

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I caved. I know that I said I wasn’t making stuffing this year, but I love it too much to forgo it even though it is a lot of work. Instead of giving up the stuffing, I simplified my recipe a bit and did not make the cornbread this year, making it with only two types of bread that I already had in my freezer.

Ingredients:

5 cups of cubed bread*

1 green apple, diced

1 red apple, diced

2 tablespoons of olive oil

8 tablespoons of olive oil or butter

½ cup cooked sausage, diced or crumbled*

1 to 4 cups quality chicken or turkey broth*

Salt and pepper to taste*

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Arrange bread cubes on a large baking sheet. Place bread and oven and bake for 5 minutes. Then turn down the temperature to 200 degrees and prop the oven door open. Dry the bread this way for about 30 minutes or until no longer moist.
2.  Meanwhile, sauté the apple in 2 tablespoons of olive oil until the apples are slightly soft. Add the sausage and cook until warm. Turn down the heat to low and add the remaining olive oil or butter. Salt and pepper to taste.
3. Mix the apple mixture and the bread cubes together in a large bowl until the bread cubes are oily.  Add one to two cups of the broth and allow the mixture to rest in the refrigerator for at least one hour. After one hour, add 1/3 cup more broth if the mixture isn’t soft yet. Stir and allow the mixture to rest in the refrigerator for another hour. Continue adding broth 1/3 cup at a time and waiting an hour until the bread cubes are no longer hard. My most recent batch took 2 2/3 cups broth, but each batch will be different based on the kind of bread used and how dry the bread was before adding the liquid.
4. Once the stuffing has reached the desired moisture level. Oil or butter a baking pan and press the stuffing into the baking pan. If you have an olive oil sprayer, spraying the top of the stuffing will cause it to brown prettily, but if you don’t have a sprayer, it’s okay to skip this step. Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes to warm through and brown the top. Alternative, you can press the stuffing into muffin tins to make individual portions and bake for only 20 minutes.  This recipe should serve 8, but let's be honest, it will probably serve 5.

Note about Bread: You can use nearly any type of good quality bread—gluten free, white, whole wheat, or corn. I recommend homemade or deli bread, not the cheap mass-produced stuff. The recipe works best if you use at least two types of bread. I recommend a quick bread like biscuits or soda bread and yeast bread. Cornbread is also good to throw into the mix. I keep chunks of homemade bread in the freezer for recipes such as this one. If you don’t have food allergies, you can also buy toasted bread cubes at many grocery stores.

Note about Sausage: I used my homemade chicken sausage recipe that I have provided in an earlier post. You could use a vegetarian sausage as a replacement or any store-bought sausage if allergies and intolerances are not challenges for you and your guests.

Note about Broth: I cooked an organic chicken the week before. Then I simmered the left over bones, meat, and skin in my slow cooker with a quart of water for 2 days. You could substitute vegetable broth.

Note about Seasonings: This recipe would be even better with freshly chopped sage, oregano, parsley, chives, and the leafy parts of celery. I am not sure of my allergies and tolerances for these seasonings, so I have left them out for now. Feel free to add a tablespoon or any or all of these to enhance the flavor.

Best Sulfite Intolerance Website

Tracy has the best website I've found so far that explains which foods may contain sulfites on her website Hold the Sulfites. I wanted to share this link with any fellow sulfite intolerance sufferers.

Overnight Slow Roasted Organic Turkey with Gravy

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The centerpiece of Thanksgiving is a deliciously roasted bird. Mmmmm.

My body doesn't like most commercially processed poultry for some reason. Therefore, I secure an organic or less processed "natural" bird for my table. These birds are often tougher than the massive commercial birds. Therefore, I find that the slow cooking method gives me the most tender and flavorful bird. I use regular wheat flour in my turkey bag and in my gravy because the gluten-free flours make me ill. However, King Author's Gluten-free Multi-purpose Flour works as a substitute in this recipe. Not all gluten-free flours work for making gravy, so you may want to do some trial runs if you are using a different variety of gluten free flour than this one.

Turkey

Ingredients:

1 twelve to 18 pound organic or natural turkey

Salt and pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 rib celery, halved

1 apple, halved

1 carrot, halved

1 tablespoon flour (wheat for me, but any kind for those with glutton allergies)

Turkey bag and large roasting pan

Directions:

1.     Make sure to thaw the turkey completely. Partially frozen turkeys are dangerous to cook using this method. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Add 1 tablespoon of flour to the turkey bag and shake. Remove giblets and organs from turkey cavity.  Salt and pepper outside of turkey and rub with olive oil.  Place celery, apple and carrot in turkey cavity. Place turkey in turkey bag and then place in a roasting pan. Cut several holes in the bag.

2.     Bake turkey at 400 degrees for 30 to 40 minutes. Then turn temperature down to 200 degrees. Roast at 200 degrees for 10 to 24 hours (Avoid opening the oven for the first 10 hours).

3.     Remove turkey from oven. Allow turkey to rest for 20 minutes.  Remove turkey to platter.  Reserve drippings for gravy.

Turkey Gravy

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil

Drippings from roast turkey, strained

2 tablespoons general-purpose flour (wheat for me or King Author Gluten free Multi-Purpose flour for those with a gluten allergy)

1 to 2 cups chicken broth (I usually cook an organic chicken the week before and freeze the broth for this purpose).

Salt and pepper

Directions:

1.     Skim fat from turkey drippings and add to a saucepan with olive oil.  Turn heat to medium and add flour, stirring constantly. 

2.     When flour is brown and is free of lumps, add the rest of the turkey drippings. 

3.     Continue stirring until gravy thickens.  Add broth or water to get the amount of gravy you need.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.

One-Hour Chicken and Potatoes

This recipe yields a delicious, tender roasted chicken with crispy potatoes.

Ingredients:

1 organic whole chicken

1 lime, halved

4 tablespoons cold butter or olive oil

4 potatoes, cut in 8 wedges each (russet or Yukon golds)

1 tablespoon olive oil

salt and pepper as desired

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Place chicken beast side up onto a large baking pan. Don’t forget to clean the innards out of the body cavity. Place the lime and the butter in the chicken cavity. Use olive oil instead of the butter if you have a dairy allergy. Tuck the wings tips behind the body to stabilize the chicken. Bake for 10 minutes
2. Toss the potato wedges in oil. After the chicken has cooked for 10 minutes, use a spoon to move the chicken around so that it won’t stick. Then add the potatoes to the pan. Place the pan back in the oven and bake for 15 minutes.
3. After the potatoes have baked for 15 minutes, use a spatula to unstick them from the pan. Bake an additional 15 minutes. Then use the spatula to unstick them again. Bake for another 15 minutes.
4. Remove chicken from oven check for doneness (I always jiggle a leg to see if it is loose and see if the juices in the body cavity run clear). If the chicken isn’t done, return it to the oven for an additional 10 minutes.  Allow the chicken to rest for 5 minutes before serving.