Mexican Rice Casserole-the Angela Can Eat It Version

I secretly love casseroles.  Maybe I should be booted out of Portland for saying it, but I do.  So it is a bummer having to cut dairy and soy, because most casseroles contain both.  Here is an easy recipe that I adapted from here to make it soy and lactose free.  This one makes a good make ahead meal.  Cook the meat and rice and mix everything up in the casserole dish and leave in the fridge until you want to eat it, then do the baking part.  I have also made it in a foil pan to take to someone with a new baby.  

Ingredients
1 lb ground meat (I usually use lean grass fed beef or lean ground turkey)
1 cup rice
2 cups water
1 16 oz jar salsa
1 11 oz can corn
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cumin

Optional ingredient:
1 cup "cheese" (I tolerate hard cheeses that have aged more than 2 years, so I sometimes use Tillamook Vintage White Cheddar.  You could also use a cheese substitute)

Place the water and rice in a sauce pan and bring to a boil.  Reduce to a simmer, put on lid and set timer for 20 min.

Preheat oven to 350

Brown meat and drain.  

Once the meat and rice are done, put all ingredients in a large mixing bowl and mix with a spoon until combined well.

Spray a 2 qt casserole dish with cooking spray (I use olive oil in my Misto).  Put mixture into dish.  Cover with lid and bake for 30 min.

If you want to melt the "cheese" take off the lid and add it and bake uncovered 5 more minutes.  Usually I skip this step because the kids won't eat my "cheese" so I just put the different types of "cheese" on the table and let everyone add their own or not.  When I'm making it for someone else, I ususally just include a bag of shredded Mexican cheese.  

Sausage Gravy

Had to have something to go with my biscuits...

1 lb sausage (sometimes I use turkey, sometimes pork, sometimes reduced fat, sometimes hot)
1/4 cup flour (I use unbleached)
2 cups Almond Milk or Lactose Free Milk (If you care about looks, the lactose free milk makes the gravy white instead of tan)

Cook and crumble the sausage over medium heat until browned.  Add flour and mix until dissolved.  Gradually stir in milk.  Cook until thickened.  (The lactose free milk makes a little thicker gravy.)  Serve over biscuits.

This batch was made with lean hot turkey sausage and almond milk.

Amazing "Buttermilk" Biscuits

I LOVE biscuits.  Especially canned biscuits.  Unfortunately, between the dairy and the soy restrictions, it has been a long time since I've had any.  I scoured the internet to try and find a recipe that had neither dairy nor soy.  I never found one.  So I took a vegan one and added lard.  It came out amazing!  Here it is:

2 cups flour (I used unbleached)
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup lard
3/4 cup almond milk
1 tsp vinegar

Preheat oven to 450
Add vinegar to milk and set aside.
Put dry ingredients into a bowl.  Using a pastry blender blend lard into the dry ingredients until you have a course mixture.  
Add milk mixture and stir
Put dough onto a silpat silicone cookie sheet (or a floured countertop) and knead until dough is smooth.  If the dough is sticky add flour.
Put another silpat on top of the dough and use a rolling pin to roll to about 1/2 inch thickness.  (If you don't have a silpat, then just roll it out carefully.  I'm lazy so I use the silpats.)  Remove top silpat.  

Use a drinking glass to cut out rounds. Place the rounds on a third silpat on top of a perforated baking sheet (or if you don't have the fancy equipment any ungreased cookie sheet) Then gather up the extra into a ball and roll again and cut out rounds again.  Then gather up the extra and make an amoeba biscuit by piling it into a generally biscuit shaped blob.  (Can you find the amoeba biscuit in the photos?)  

Bake for 10-12 minutes.

Easy Citrus Dijon Chicken

What can I say?  I am a lazy cook.  I don't enjoy cooking things that take forever.  But I like dishes that are delicious.  This one fits both requirements.

1.5 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts cut into bite size pieces.
1.5 Tbsp lime juice (I use the stuff from the bottle.  See comment above about laziness)
3 Tbsp lemon juice (Again, from the bottle. Juicing fruit is not my thing) 
1/2 cup Dijon mustard
creole-style seasoning to taste (I usually just use a pinch because my kids don't like to have flaming breath.)

Place chicken in a skillet over medium heat.  Pour in lime and lemon juices and stir in Dijon, and creole seasoning.  Cook, turning chicken with tongs until the chicken is done (about 15 minutes).  I serve it over rice with a veggie.

Dairy Free, Soy Free French Bread Pizza

I LOVE pizza, but my guts hate it.  During the dairy free years, I learned that taking a loaf of french bread, adding margarine and garlic salt and baking it, then dipping it into Boboli pizza sauce would kill the craving.  I even experimented with making french bread pizza using soy "mozzarella" with good results.  Once I started on soy restriction, I began to brainstorm ways of getting my pizza fix when the french bread at the store had soy, margarine had soy, and the "mozzarella" had soy.  Here is what I came up with:

French Bread Pizza (serves 2-4 depending on how many are teenagers)

2 loaves French Bread (I know it takes 3 hours, but so far, I haven't found an alternative.  I use unbleached flour rather than bread flour.  One recipe makes 2 loaves or 4 pizza breads.) When you finish making the bread, leave the oven on (450 F) and the pizza stone in the oven.

1 envelope Boboli Pizza Sauce (I really wish that I liked a different brand of pizza sauce because I always fee bad at how much packaging is in this product.  The problem is I think it is the perfect pizza sauce.)

1/2 to 1 bag daiya mozzarella shreds  (They are dairy, lactose, casein, gluten, soy and cholesterol free.  I have no idea what they are actually made out of.  I personally think they must be made out of magic. Safeway carries them.)

Once the French Bread has cooled enough to slice, cut it in half lengthwise.  

Spread sauce on each of the 4 halves.  Put cheese on top.  

Put the pizza breads back in the oven for about 5-10 min or until the "cheese" melts and the bread is toasted on top.

Generally, add more sauce than usual, because the "cheese" overpowers it.  Also for being a vegan product, the "cheese" is really filling. 

Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

The fact that my cupcake recipe makes a number of cupcakes (15) that is divisible by neither 12, 4, 3 nor 2 drives me insane.  (Is using neither/nor grammatically allowable when the list is more than two items?  English is weird.) So I decided to experiment to determine if I could easily come up with a recipe that divides up better.  I happened to have some left over dairy free soy free chocolate chips (I had a 10 oz pack of enjoy life mini chips and used 1 cup of them to make cookies.) I dumped those chocolate chips (about 1/2 cup) into tr cupcake batter after everything else was mixed.  Then I filled 24 cupcake liners 1/2 way.  I set the timer for 12 min and it was almost too long.  Next time I'll check them after 10 min. The bad news is the chips settled to the bottom, but the good news is the cupcakes are delicious!  

The Dairy Free, Soy Free, Gluten Free, No Beef, No Egg Dinner Challenge

So I cant have lactose or soy. And we were having a friend over who cant have dairy, gluten, beef or egg whites. So I decided that there must be a way to make a complete meal that wouldn't make either of us feel like a freak. So here is the menu:

Appetizer:
Tostitos Scoops
Vegan "Queso"
Salsa

Dinner:
Chicken Salsa Verde
Refried Beans
Store Bought Tortillas
Salad

Dessert:
Cookies (Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free using egg free directions and butter flavor Crisco and water in place of butter) for my friend (these meet all his requirements but have soy)
Cowboy Cookies for me