Q-pons, good news, and a gluten free recipe!

Happy New Year! I hope you all had a great holiday break and have already started 2012 off to a great start. I just recently got some great news from Shelf Reliance. Some of you might remember that Dec 31st, 2011 was the last day to purchase their discontinued items previously announced - dehydrated bananas, dehydrated pineapple, dehydrated sweet potatoes, dehydrated mixed bell peppers. I was particularly bummed about losing out on the mixed bell peppers, and apparently I wasn't alone, because the demand came back so strongly that while the others are still discontinued, the mixed bell peppers are staying in the catalogue! Woohoo!

It's a new season, and as such, the winter sale prices have been announced, effective today. I've updated the price list link on the right hand side of this blog, or you can click here to see the new winter prices. The price list will be effective for the next 3 months. But for the month of January, there are a few special deals on top of the regular winter prices. For Q club members, Freeze Dried Sweet Corn is on sale for only $12.19 for a #10 can. Not Q club member? Just talk to me and I'll help you become one!

For everyone (Q Club members and regular customers), the following items are also on sale for January:

 FD Banana Slices, Black Beans, Pinto Beans, Cheeseblend, Chicken TVP, Mango Passion Drink, Elbow Macaroni, FD Ice Cream Neapolitan Bits, FD Green Peas, Freeze Dried Roast Beef, Sour Cream powder, and Hard White Winter Wheat.  To see all the prices for these sale items, click here. And when you know what you want to order, just contact me.

THRIVE Sweet Corn is awesome. My son loves to eat it straight out of the can. He thinks it tastes like the Corn Pops cereal, which I love, because there's no added sugar or anything else, so I don't mind him snacking on it at all. And I love how wonderfully and easily it reconstitutes in recipes.

I did a party for a friend who has gluten allergies, and needed a recipe that would work for her to eat as well. So I came up with the following Chicken Pot Pie filling - gluten free.

Here's the recipe:

Gluten Free Chicken Pot Pie Filling

1/4 cup THRIVE FD Onion

1/4 cup THRIVE FD Celery

1/4 cup THRIVE Carrots

1/4 cup THRIVE FD Sweet Corn

1/4 cup THRIVE FD Potatoes

1/4 cup THRIVE FD Green Beans

1/4 cup FD Peas

1 cup THRIVE FD Chicken Dices

2 1/4 tsp THRIVE Chicken Bouillon

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 Tbsp Gluten free Cornstarch

4 cups water

Combine all the ingredients in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 10-15 minutes.

This filling goes great over rice, or if you have a gluten free pie crust recipe, this would fill it perfectly.

For my party, I saved half of this recipe out for those with Gluten Allergies, and the other half, I put in a stuffed loaf recipe. I can't find the recipe I used for the whole wheat bread, but when I do, I'll post it. But the idea might help inspire your own creativity - make some white or wheat bread dough, roll it out into a rectangle, spread the filling of your choice down the middle length-wise, then fold the other sides over so it's all wrapped up inside, and bake with the seam side down.

Once its done, you slice it up, and it made for a great presentation. My camera battery died while this was baking, so I didn't get the end result photos for you. But next time I do another stuffed loaf, I'll be sure to get all the recipes and photos for you.

Chicken Salad

This recipe is another from the Sample Pack Recipes given to consultants. I made it for a party on Saturday (again, dead camera battery, so forgive the cell phone pictures).

Ingredients
1 ½ cups Thrive freeze-dried chicken
½ cup Thrive celery
1/3 cup Thrive onion
3 cups water
½ cup mayonnaise
Salt and pepper

Directions
Combine chicken, celery, onion and water in a sauce pan over high heat. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to low and simmer until reconstituted (about 10 minutes). Put the mixture into a colander and let the water drain for about 10 minutes. Make sure to get all excess water out. Set aside in the refrigerator until cool.
Combine the cooled chicken mixture with mayonnaise. Season the chicken mixture with salt and pepper to taste. Spoon onto bread or crackers.

Review
This is not made with TVP, but actual white meat chicken. The freeze-dried chicken looks like this in the can.

Don't eat it straight out of the can. It really needs to be rehydrated to taste good.

Stir the meat and veggies occasionally as they cook, so that the stuff on top gets equally hydrated. But the cooking process is so simple. Just pour it in and simmer. Doesn't get much easier than that.

Once you drain it, you're left with small chunks like this.

When you add the mayo, some of the small chunks remain, and some shred up, so its really nice. I really like the texture of it. Overall, I think it makes a great simple salad. It's a good starter recipe in my opinion, fully customizable. It would be good with dried cranberries in it,  apples chunks, nuts, grapes, whatever else you want. Maybe change up the seasonings with some garlic. All depending on what you're in the mood for. Dustin can't rate this recipe, because I made it for a party and he didn't get to try it. But everyone at the party said they were pretty impressed with it, and they ate it all up, so that's the best kind of review you can get, isn't it?