Pancakes and Evil Laughs

For breakfast I made gluten-free pancakes!!

This is a victory!!! These are the best pancakes I've ever made, gluten-free or otherwise. You may ask, "Pam, what exactly makes these pancakes better than any other ones you've ever made?"

And I will respond, "Well there are several components to these pancakes that only the best gluten-free chefs know about." The real secret is: cook them all the way through, watch them while you're cook, don't set the smoke detectors off, beat the eggs before putting them in, add maple syrup instead of regular on top at the end, have confidence in your awesome chef skills, top off your coffee, and do a victory dance preceding an evil laugh.

And speaking of awesome chef skills, later today I am going to attempt gluten-free cake cookies for Shakespeare's birthday party tomorrow in my literature class. I'm going to use this recipe from Cookin' Cowgirl and substitute a GF Betty Crocker mix. You know, if they don't turn out, people won't know that it's just my cooking; they'll chalk it out to it being a gluten-free problem. Maybe I won't tell them that they're gluten-free!!

P.S. Happy birthday Shakespeare!!

Fettuccine Attempt #2

Tonight for dinner I attempted to make Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo, again. It was still a lot of work, but nothing exploded or set off the fire alarms--all round a pleasant experience.

This time I used a quick recipe I found on allrecipes.com: Buttery Alfredo Sauce. I edited it a lot, since the actual recipe isn't GF. Instead of 1 cup of butter, I only used 1/2 cup. I couldn't justify using so much butter in one recipe, and if you look at the calories for the recipe, it says 771. No thanks!! Instead of fresh garlic, I substituted garlic powder. For flour, I used Carol's Sorghum Blend. I used 1% milk because it was what I had on hand, and  I completely forgot about the salt and pepper. It seems that only the cheese was from the original recipe! My interpretation recipe probably didn't amount in 771 calories, but it still seemed awfully fattening.

After making the sauce, I cooked some chicken breasts that were halved and then cut into cubes, and starting cooking the fettuccine in a pot that was entirely too small. After all the cooking, I added each ingredient separately on the plate, without stirring it all together. That ended up to be a pretty decent idea, because there was a lot of leftover sauce. I put the sauce in an old spaghetti sauce jar and shelved it in the fridge for a quick topping on my next spaghetti attempt.

Overall, this was a good experience. I altered the recipe without any problems. I probably won't make this recipe again for another year, but at least I have one good experience from it.

Gourmet Mac N Cheese

For lunch today, I made gourmet mac n cheese. This is a simple throw-it-in recipe. (I'm beginning to really like these.) Make mac n cheese according to the box. Meanwhile, sauteed some veggies in a nearby skillet. I threw the veggies in before making the cheese, but I think next time I will make the mac and then add veggies before serving--to myself. It's a pretty easy recipe; I think I will make it again.

In Awe of Eggs

Why is it that I love eggs so much?

It's because they're so darn easy to make. You just throw whatever you have in your fridge in your skillet, and it tastes amazing. Or just average. But edible! After midnight, it seems I have a propensity to cook- anything! Today I threw in a quarter of a tomato I had in my fridge, chopping up a bit, and some onion that had been in the fridge for roughly a week. It probably could use some salt, but otherwise, it's quite good.

My favorite throw-into-eggs ingredient is deli ham. You know- the stuff that's supposed to go on sandwiches. Somehow it doesn't make it on many of my sandwiches. Throw it into a skillet- and yum. Of course, this is only a college kid meal. Please note that any throw-into-eggs dish will not come from a restaurant. It could only be a trend in Boulder.

Thank you, that is all.

Fettuccine Alfredo w/Chicken: Recipe Manipulation

I've just manipulated spaghetti to a pleasant tasting recipe that I really like--a mix from my mom's recipe and the run-of-the-mill ones you can find on allrecipes.com.

So the next step to eating something other than my spaghetti recipe for every meal is to try to improvise 3 different Alfredo recipes in order to make a good gluten-free recipe. It's pretty dangerous for me to mix recipes, but I am going to keep trying fettuccine alfredo until I make something good.

The first Chicken Alfredo recipe is from allrecipes.com, by Ragu. Because I'm not a very good cook, I try to stick exactly to the recipe. When I picked this recipe, I wanted to try it because it looked easy. But I also noticed that it was given 3/5 stars, and a lot of the people who commented said that a real Alfredo sauce would make it much better. (Sorry Ragu.) So my second recipe is just an Quick and Easy Alfredo sauce. This scares me a little because it might require some cooking talent, but it was rated highly and only takes 5 minutes preparation. I figure that I can substitute the real Alfredo sauce into Ragu's recipe. My third recipe is the "Fettuccine Alfredo" from the book, "100 Best Gluten-Free Recipes" by Carol Fenster. Carol's recipe seems to be a Alfredo recipe with real Alfredo sauce, but without chicken. She also says that it's low-calorie.

I want to try Ragu's Alfredo recipe first, since it seems the easiest. I don't know if Ragu's Alfredo sauce is gluten-free (something I should find out anyways), but the Quick and Easy Alfredo could easily be. The Ragu recipe uses gluten pasta, though, so the first try will probably not be very good since I will be substituting, of course.

I will post the other recipes later.