Enjoying Gluten-Free Life

Navy Wife Makes Every Home Joyful – and cooks up some great gluten-free food

I’m participating in the Adopt a Gluten-Free Blogger event this month for the first time. Participants choose another blog, try a recipe or two (or three) and share with everyone what they’ve done. All of these recipes are from Emily’s joyfulabode.com. She’s a Navy wife with a toddler and another baby on the way any day (or here). And she has cute buttons on her blog like the one above :) While I don’t have any little ones at home, this is a great site for parents who want to make food without refined sugar even if your family isn’t gluten-free.

Emily also has craft and home & garden projects on her blog. But we’re here to eat.  So many of her recipes suited our tastes that I had a hard time choosing. Tip: She has a “grain-free” category, not gluten-free, so look for that. (For those new to gluten-free – or exploring the idea – gluten is only found in some grains, so as long as you verify that your other ingredients such as seasonings are gluten-free, these are naturally gluten-free recipes.)

This is my lunch to go:

First, I made her orange flavored Good Chicken Salad with Grapes and Pinenuts. My husband loves anything with orange in it, and I had about 2/3 of a beautiful organic orange left from another recipe so this was a perfect choice for us. (Plus I love chicken salad. See the avocado version I made for the Gluten Free Recipe Box interview.) I added the fresh squeezed orange juice until the mayo tasted like orange, so it was a bit runny but once combined with the chicken, it worked perfectly. I almost bought grapes for this recipe but remembered I had some strawberries in the fridge so I hope Emily doesn’t mind the switch. I had enough time for this to sit in the fridge for about 1/2 hour for the flavors to combine. Then I topped it with sunflower seeds instead of pine nuts because I had them and the texture was similar. The flavor was wonderful! I had mine on lettuce with tomatoes and avocado. My husband had his as a sandwich on his favorite Rudi’s bread.

I also made Emily’s Yummus Hummus which was my first attempt at using tahini. There are just the two of us so I cut the recipe in half – except for the garlic which we love. She said to add herbs to taste so I added basil and cumin (because I can taste cumin in the hummus I enjoy at the local gluten-free restaurant.) She also said it was really good with red pepper thrown in, and my husband loves that variety of hummus so I threw in some roasted red peppers. I like to dip carrots into hummus so here’s the photo:

I also made the Grain-Free Gluten-Free Sugar-Free Cookies of Awesomeness. I had to try a cookie with a name like that. I tried them twice. The first time, I was out of almond butter so made some with my blanched almond flour. This was creamy but without the stronger taste that regular almond butter has, so it didn’t have much flavor. To give these a chance, I bought my usual brand, Justin’s Classic Almond Butter, and tried again. They have an unusual texture, not quite cake-like but similar. I used mini chocolate chips but think I would prefer these cookies with chocolate chunks. I added quinoa flakes, cinnamon and some vanilla to part of the batter and liked those best. I think a creamer almond butter would result in a moister cookie.

I didn’t have time to make all of the recipe’s on the Joyful Abode site that appealed to me. Her Paleo Banana-Pecan Waffles make my mouth water but that will have to wait for another day. Thank you, Emily!