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.

Ham Fried Rice

This next recipe comes straight from the THRIVE Sampler Pack recipes sheet. It calls for THRIVE rice, but I used some regular rice I have in my pantry that I need to use up before opening any new cans. 

The THRIVE ingredients I did use were: TVP Ham, Whole Egg Powder, Freeze-dried Onion dices, Carrots, and Freeze-dried Peas.

 

Start by cooking 1 1/4 cups rice in 2 1/2 cups water. For those who don't cook rice often and need a reminder: put rice in water, bring to boil, once boiling, reduce heat and simmer with lid on for 15-20 minutes. All water should be absorbed. If the water is all gone but it hasn't cooked, you can pour in more water a little bit at a time to make sure the bottom doesn't burn. If the rice is done and there's too much water, remove the lid so the water can evaporate. 

While the rice is cooking, in a large pot, put 1/4 c carrot dices, 1/4 cup onion dices, 1/2 cup peas, 1/2 cup TVP and 4 cups water. Bring to a boil, then reduce and simmer for 10 minutes. It will look like this:

While the rice and veggies are simmering, add 2 Tbsp egg powder to 1/4 cup water. Mix well, then fry up in a pan like scrambled eggs. Set aside.

Once the rice is done, set aside. Once the veggies are done, drain the water. In large skillet, heat 1 Tbsp vegetable oil. Add 3 T soy sauce, 1/2 tsp salt, veggie/TVP mix, and rice. Stir well to coat with flavor and blend ingredients. Gently fold in scrambled eggs. Serve warm. It makes a ton!

Here's what it looks like close up!

Notes: 1. The carrots and the onions are FINELY diced. So small, I couldn't use my colander to drain the veggies, and had to carefully hold the lid over the pot and attempt to drain that way. I need to invest in a strainer with tight mesh to keep working with these. But, it is nice to have them so small, because it makes them less noticeable to kids, and thus easier to incorporate into their foods.

2. When my hubby tried it the first thing he said was: "Hey, those eggs are surprisingly good. Are they made with real eggs?" The answer is yes! They're not just made from real eggs, they are real eggs, just with the water added back in. However, there weren't enough eggs in his, or my, opinion. So next time I make this, I would double the eggs (at least) to 4 T powder and 1/2 cup water.

3. The Ham TVP didn't seem too flavorful to him, and I think I know the problem. When boiling the meat and veggies to reconstitute, a lot of the flavor went into the extra water, which was then drained off. In the future, I think I will add less then 4 cups of water to everything since I think I drained off 1 or 1 1/2 cups afterwards, OR, I will boil the veggies (the peas were just fine and didn't lose any flavor) and then reconstitute the TVP separately by pouring just enough boiling water onto the TVP in a small sealed container and letting it sit. If you get the water amount just right (I think a 1:1 ratio should be good in the future) then you wouldn't have to drain off any water, and should retain all the flavor.

4. It needed more salt/pepper according to my hubby's taste, but even with that, and

with the egg quantity and TVP flavor issues that need to be improved on, he still gave this a 7/10 for every day eating, and said he wouldn't mind if I made it on a regular basis. (He gave it an 8/10 for emergency eating). I'm not a big rice eater myself, but I still enjoyed the dish. It made so much that I was able to take half the batch to a party afterwards, and everybody there seemed to really enjoy it as well.

From start to finish, this took me 30 minutes to make, and it was a filling all in one meal for our family. Here's the original recipe, with asterisks to remind you of what I would change.

HAM FRIED RICE

2 1/2 c. cooked rice

2 T Thrive egg powder plus 1/4 cup water* (see note 2)

4 cups water* (see note 3)

1/4 c Thrive Carrot dices

1/4 c Thrive FD Chopped Onions

1/2 c Thrive FD Peas

1/2 c Thrive TVP Ham

1 T vegetable oil

1/2 tsp salt* (see note 4)

3 T soy sauce

Combine TVP and veggies with 4 cups water (see note 3). Bring to boil then simmer for 10 minutes. Drain excess water (see note 1).

Combine egg powder with 1/4 cup water, mix, and fry up as scrambled eggs. Set aside.

In large skillet, heat oil, add rice, meat/veggie mix, soy sauce and salt. mix well and stir fry for about 2 minutes. Gently mix in scrambled eggs. Serve warm.