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.

Black Bean and Lentil Chili

In light of my husband's gall bladder removal surgery, I have been busy hunting for some no or low fat main course meals, and since he's still not supposed to lift more than 10 pounds (and our five month old is double that) I need them to be meals that can cook themselves, because I don't have a lot of time or extra free hands to be cooking with. Just when I thought I would never be able to make the needed adjustments, who should come to my rescue, but THRIVE!

I had an idea for some chili, and threw a whole bunch of my THRIVE ingredients into our big pot.

 I added water, and let it simmer by itself while I dealt with my kids and other household obligations. When it was done, I dished up a bowl for my hubby, he said, "Wow. That's really good." I don't know why he always has a surprised tone to his voice, he should know by now that if I'm making it with THRIVE, it's going to be good. I forgot to ask him to rate it, but since he's been depressed about his restricted diet, and he actually smiled and complimented this dish, I'd say it rates pretty high up there. We put a little fat free sour cream on top, but the flavor was so nice, we didn't even really miss the shredded cheese that normally dons our meals.

Personally, I'd rate this recipe an 8.5 for taste, a 10 for nutrition, and a 10 for ease. Dump it all in a pot, add water, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 50-60 minutes. And done. It doesn't get much easier then that. And as far as health goes, a 1 cup serving of this has only 200 calories, less than 1.5 grams of fat, over 14 grams of fiber, and more than 15 grams of protein. It is also completely vegetarian, thanks to the TVP.  So it is quite a good-for-you dish as well. You might want a little extra salt - I know a lot of people are trying to watch their sodium, so I always err on the side of not enough salt in my recipes, and let people add more to their individual bowls if they want.

Anyway, here's what I put in it. This yielded about 10 cups of chili, so feel free to halve it if you need:

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups lentils (THRIVE sells lentils, but I needed to use up some others I still had, which is why they're not pictured below)
• 2 cups THRIVE Instant black beans
• 3 tbsp THRIVE  Mixed Bell Peppers
• 1/3 cup THRIVE Freeze-Dried Chopped Onions
• 3/4 cup THRIVE Freeze-Dried Sweet Corn
• 1/2 cup THRIVE Taco TVP
• 1/3 cup THRIVE Tomato Powder
• 1 tsp Ground Cumin
• 1 tsp Salt
• 1/4 tsp Chili Powder
• 11-12 cups Water

There you have it. Dump the ingredients in the pot. Add your water (start with the 11 cups, and add 1 more at the end if you don't want your chili as thick). Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 50-60 minutes (that's how long it takes the lentils to cook). It's important to use THRIVE's INSTANT Black Beans, not the regular black beans. Regular Black Beans will take hours to soak and cook. The Instant Black beans have been par-boiled, which eliminates the need to soak them, cut cooking time down to 20-30 minutes, and yet still preserves the shelf life at 25 years. My kind of beans. :-) And just so you know, these are whole beans, not bean flakes that only turned into refried beans. Here's what they look like.

For those wanting the full nutritional value, I plugged my recipe into livestrong.com's recipe creator (I'm using their daily plate feature to count calories and try and lose weight). Here's the breakdown:

This recipe is also the first, of what I hope will be many, of my "Freezerless Meals". I've got a friend who makes some great freezer meals to have on hand, and I've enjoyed going to her classes and making those meals. But I don't have room in my freezer to store anymore ready made meals. I do have room in my pantry though. Because everything gets added to the water at the same time and cooks together, this a meal you can make ahead of time, throw in a ziploc bag, write the water and cooking instructions on the outside, and leave in the pantry for future need. It takes just as long to cook it as thawing and baking a freezer meal (if not less time), and you could also halve the recipe, put it in a tall mason jar with some decorative ribbon, and now you've got a great gift for just about any occasion (who doesn't love food?) 

To order your THRIVE foods for this great recipe, just contact me at ThriveWithHemsath@gmail.com or call me at 714-683-7562.