Gluten-Free Cheesy Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Ingredients

  • 2 cups water
  • 3 tablespoons butter, cubed
  • 1 tablespoon garlic powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon pepper
  • 3/4 cup milk
  • 2 cups mashed potato flakes
  • 1/2 cup cheddar cheese

Directions

  1. In a large sauce pan, combine the water, butter, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. bring to a boil.
  2. Turn the stove off, add milk.
  3. Stir in the potato flakes with a fork.
  4. Stir in the cheddar cheese.

Story Time with the Chronically Ill Chef

I wanted to do a side for the leg of lamb recipe I made a few weeks ago, so I decided to make this side.

Grocery Shopping Checklist: MiniTip XXIII

TL;DR

Make a checklist (either paper or electronic) of groceries you need and cross them off as you get it at the store.

This week, find a recipe that you think you can do. Take a picture and share it with me on Facebook or twitter at @ill_chef

Tip Expanded

Another seemingly obvious one that I am pointing out. As a chronically ill person, and, if I’m being honest, as a person even before chronic illness, my memory of the important things wasn’t the best. Since becoming chronically ill, my memory has become a lot worse.

So if I go to a grocery store even to get one thing, I will probably forget what I went there for when I get distr- “squirrel.” So I go with a list.

I use an app that I found out about when I was doing my bachelors in special education called Remember The Milk. I was using it at the time for assignment due dates, but it was originally designed for groceries.

Call to Action

This week, if you go out of the house to grocery shop (which at the writing of this post may be inadvisable due to the coronavirus), make a list.

This week, find a recipe that you think you can do. Take a picture and share it with me on Facebook or twitter at @ill_chef

My Baking (Mis)Adventures: Flourless Gluten-Free Brownies

Messed up the twitter thread again. I don’t think I will ever be able to do it right. It’s difficult because it won’t let you edit posts that you have messed up, and it won’t let you take a picture to a reply to a thread. So, I end up messing up. Maybe I will eventually get it right, but it will probably be a very long time. At this point, it should probably be called “My Twitter (Mis)Adventures of trying to make a thread,” though that seems a bit long for me.

Here’s the recipe if you want to follow it.

Cook Sides or Sauces on Days you Reheat the Main Meal: MiniTip XXII

TL;DR

To save on energy, cook side dishes on days where you are just going to reheat a main meal.

This week, find a recipe that you think you can do. Take a picture and share it with me on Facebook or twitter at @ill_chef

Tip Expanded

You are chronically ill or just came back from work and don’t have much energy left. What do you do? Reheat something, but if you have a desire to cook, but a limited amount of energy, try cooking a simple side to your main dish.

Sometimes the side recipes can get complicated, more so even than a main dish, but that’s not always the case. So find a recipe and try making it on the days you are just reheating something.

The side recipe could be a salad or a chocolate salad also known as a brownie.

Call to Action

This week while you are self quarantining and social distancing, try finding a good side recipe and make it.

This week, find a recipe that you think you can do. Take a picture and share it with me on Facebook or twitter at @ill_chef

Crunchy Balls

Ingredients

  • 1 pound hamburger
  • 1 cup crushed cereal
  • 1 tablespoon dried parsley
  • 1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • 1-3 tablespoons dried minced onion

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
  2. Mix all of the ingredients and form into round balls
  3. Put balls into a 9×13″ cake pan
  4. bake in oven for 20-25 minutes, testing with a meat thermometer to see if they’re done.

Story Time with the Chronically Ill Chef

This was a recipe my mom and I created during the year that I was gluten free. We generally serve them as buffalo wild crunchy balls. We make them according to this recipe and either buffalo wild wing them immediately or freeze them and buffalo wild wing them from frozen.

Note that the cooking times are different for fresh to frozen if you are buffalo wild balling them.

Slow Cooker Shredded Leg of Lamb Roast

Ingredients

  • 3 1/2 pounds leg of lamb, bone out
  • 1/2 cup olive oil
  • 1 cup lemon juice
  • 12 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 2 teaspoons dried oregano
  • 2 teaspoons nutmeg
  • 1/8 teaspoon peppermint extract
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

Directions

  1. Place the leg of lamb into the mixture and cook on high for 6-8 hours or low for 8-10 hours until it is falling apart
  2. Mix the oil, lemon juice, garlic, oregano, and nutmeg in a bowl and pour over the lamb.
  3. Before serving, mix together the mint, sugar, and vinegar and microwave for 30 seconds until the sugar melts into the mint vinegar.
  4. Remove meat to a large bowl and pull apart with forks.
  5. Slowly add the juice from the slow cooker into the shredded meat until it’s the consistency you would like. This mixes the flavor into all of the meat.
  6. Drizzle mint vinegar sauce over the shredded as desired.
  7. Serve by itself or on bread.

Story Time with the Chronically Ill Chef

A few weeks ago, we got a leg of lamb. I don’t even know how or where we got it, but we did, so I set about trying to figure out what to do with it. So, I made this recipe. You can probably use this recipe with any kind of roast that you have in your pantry.

How to Reheat Food: MiniTip XXI

TL;DR

You can use the microwave or stove to reheat your food. A good tip is to defrost everything until it is at least cold, but not frozen, then cook each on high until they are as warm as you want.

This week, find a recipe that you think you can do. Take a picture and share it with me on Facebook or twitter at @ill_chef

Tip Expanded

This may seem like an obvious one, who doesn’t know how to reheat? Well, when you’re chronically ill, it can help to have the obvious spelled out for you. And I’ve found that it is actually more complex than one thinks, at least if you are reheating food for more than one person or more than one thing at a time.

So, when I big batch cook (and there are leftovers), I like to freeze the leftovers in plastic Tupperware containers. Here is my main tip for reheating frozen leftovers: Get everything to cold, but not frozen, first, and then heat it up to the temperature you want.

When you have several things you have to reheat, put them all in the microwave and defrost them. Usually, there is a defrost button on the microwave, if there isn’t, then there should be a power level, then you want to switch the power level to 50%. I don’t know how to do that, but I think most microwaves of the 21st century have a defrost button. You want to defrost for about 10-20 minutes, depending on how full it is and what it is.

After the first defrost, use a fork or spoon to mix it up, put anything that is still frozen in for another 5-10 minutes on defrost, leaving the stuff that isn’t frozen on the counter for now. After the microwave’s done, check the things and see if they are unfrozen yet. If they aren’t stick it again for 5-10 minutes on defrost.

After everything is unfrozen, switch back to 100% or just cook the food on high until it reaches the temperature you like.

Call to Action

This week, find a recipe that you think you can do. Take a picture and share it with me on Facebook or twitter at @ill_chef

Measure Ingredients before You Start Cooking: MiniTip XX

TL;DR

Measuring your ingredients before you start cooking can relieve a lot of the stress involved in cooking.

Tip Expanded

So you found a sauce recipe that you want to make, but it is one where you put things into the pan one at a time. First the oil, then the onions, then the garlic, mis-time by just a hair and it will burn. Or at least that’s how it feels when the oil and onions are crack-i-lackin’ and you haven’t even measured out your next ingredient.

I have found that I am incredibly frazzled when cooking on a stove. Because it does feel like you may burn it if you don’t hurry the hell up. But if you do hurry up, you forget what you are supposed to do. And by you, I mean me, so why didn’t I just use me? Good question, I don’t know, maybe it’s a rhetorical move to try and invite you into understanding what cooking over the stove without measuring ingredients is like for me.

So, I have begun to measure out the ingredients before I even start cooking on the stove. I have forgotten, but I find that it is much more relaxing when I don’t have to stress out that I don’t have the next ingredient ready. It’s no fun trying to measure and continue to stir, I can tell you that.

If you have watched any tasty video (the ones where the camera is above the dish being cooked and you watch it be made), you will notice that they measure out all of their ingredients before hand and put it into small or big bowls and just dump it in. I don’t have those cute little bowls, but i do have cereal bowls (and a whole hell of a lot of them), so I measure into those and then just dump them in.

Where possible, I combine. For example, I diced onions and ginger yesterday (without cutting myself, I might add proudly) and combined them in the same bowl because they were going to be cooked at the same time in the sesame oil and leftover sardine fat (I’ll be posting that recipe at some point, I don’t know when).

So, try measuring out your ingredients before you cook. Who knows, you might find that it relieves some of the stress of cooking, which may make it easier to cook.

Call to Action

This week, find a recipe that you think you can do. Take a picture and share it with me on Facebook or twitter at @ill_chef

Chicken Curry Sandwiches

Ingredients

  • 3 cups cooked chicken chunks
  • 2 teaspoons butter or margarine
  • 2 teaspoons curry powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
  • 1 can of condensed cream of chicken soup

Directions

  1. In a large skillet, melt butter and cook to heat the chicken chunks, curry, and onion powder on medium heat for 4-5 minutes.
  2. Add soup.
  3. Heat and simmer for about 10 minutes
  4. Serve on bread or buns.

Story Time with The Chronically ill Chef

This isn’t really story time, it’s more like note time.

This recipe isn’t gluten-free (unless you can find a can of condensed cream of chicken soup that is gluten-free), but I will be doing a recipe similar to this that is gluten-free, but it is served over rice instead of on bread. There may be a way of making condensed cream of chicken soup on your own that is gluten free, but I haven’t tried it yet, so I’m not going to share it at this time.

However, I will give the gist with the caveat that I don’t know if it will actually work. Apparently, if you add flour (gluten-free) to chicken stock and let it simmer uncovered for a while, it will thicken and become condensed soup.

State of the Kitchen: Coronavirus & Chronic illness

This is a scary time for many. For me, I know that I will probably die if I get the Coronavirus, to show how I feel about that fact, I wonder why Coronavirus is one single word. Shouldn’t it be two words? Whatever, I’ll just go with whatever wierd spelling they have (see what I did there with the spelling of weird? Aren’t I clever?).

But I am in many of the risk categories, I have diabetes, I have a chronic illness (unknown at this point), I have heart failure, and I often have a hard time breathing (air hunger). The only boxes I don’t tick for Danger Will Robinson is I’m not over 60.

I’m not afraid of getting it because I’m not really afraid of dying. I know that people say I should be, but I’m not. I liken it to the Three Brothers story from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I’ve embedded the video below, but the gist that relates to my philosophy is a guy who gets an invisibility cloak that hides him from death. He gets really old and passes it down to his child. And I want to go out like this quote when I do go, whether that is now or a long time from now.

“He then greeted death as an old friend. And went with him gladly, departing this life as equals.”

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Film

So many people are afraid of death, but I think we should celebrate it, make it less scary and terrifying. Look at how death is portrayed in most films and most of the time, it’s generally terrifying: think Final Destination. Now that I have looked at it and actually watched a few videos, I can’t back that up with statistics because there are some amazing versions of death: from funny in Bill & Ted’s Adventure, to mysteriously creepy in The Last Action Hero, to Brad Pitt in Meet Joe Black. There are good versions, but I still feel like it is usually portrayed as terrifying.

What I cooked this week.

Morbidity, I guess that’s the theme of this week. So, I cooked one thing this week, and it didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped. I had some canned spaghetti sauce that is as bland as bland can be, so I added some chicken, curry, and peanut butter to it and served it over noodles. I am not sure I got the ratio of sauce to noodles right or if it just needed more time, but it wasn’t all that great. But it has promise, so I am going to keep working on it.

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