Ginger Lemon Girl

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This Week's Menu (10/29-11/2)
2007-10-29 12:59:00
This week I have the honor of hosting The Gluten-Free Menu Swap (begun by Natalie over at Gluten-Free Mommy). Natalie's ingredient for this week is:Gluten-Free Menus This Week:Ms. GF (from Recipes for a Gluten-Free Life) has a warm and tasty menu this week! A few of things she'll be making: Rustic Chicken Soup, and her favorite Roast Beef (I really need to learn how to make a good roast!!)Mary Frances (from Gluten-Free Cooking School) has a superb vegetarian menu for this week including tantalizing dishes such as Sweet Potato Peanut Stew (perfect for this autumn weather!) and Cheese Tortellini with Tomato Bechamel sauce (we all can't wait for that post on your bechamel sauce Mary Frances!)Sea (over at Book of Yum) has an incredible menu of International meals for this week including: Vegetarian Ma Bo Do Fu (Chili Tofu Dish), Vegetable Pakora, and is making a delicious roasted broccoli salad! I love how vibrant your menu sounds Sea!Natalie (over at Gluten-Free Mommy) has a spi...

Cranberry Apple Muffins
2007-10-25 15:11:00
Along with pumpkins, winter squash (which, I?ve never cooked, but I?ll get to that soon thanks to Mary Frances), and fresh apples? one of my favorite things about fall is cranberries. Those beautiful, bright red, little round glistening berries with a spunky tartness! I love the boldness of cranberries. I?ll be sharing several more dishes with cranberries this holiday season, but I wanted to give you a sneak peak of the beautiful berry in an elegant little muffin. I like to make muffins because they are portable, baked in single servings, and are great for quick ?on-the-run? breakfasts. I usually make at least one batch of muffins a week. Our muffins vary from week to week: Some weeks we?ll use bananas that are hitting the expiration date, other weeks we?ll use leftover corn from dinner the night before. Muffin s can be sweet or savory, fluffy or crumbly, with a glaze or without? muffins give you a choice. I like that. For the muffins I made this week, I decided to first make a ...
More About: Apple , Cranberry , Cran

Apples and Thyme: My Kitchen Treasures
2007-10-23 13:40:00
*The 110 year old cast iron skillet that my great-great grandmother started housekeeping with. *My Nan?s mother?s silver biscuit pan. *An old antique wooden rolling pin, my mother gave to me. *My Dad?s old copy of the essential ?Joy of Cooking? cookbook, with a crease in the binding found on page with the chocolate chip cookies recipe. These are the things I treasure most in my kitchen. I use my great-great grandmother?s iron skillet nearly every day of the week. Sometimes I wonder at the life that skillet has seen, the foods it has contained. My great-grandmother made cornbread in that skillet nearly every day. She also made fried chicken, hamburger steak, gravy, sausage, and whatever else happened to show up on the farm. I?m blessed to know my great-grandmother, a beautiful woman with 97 years behind her. Her son and daughter-in-law live close by and with their help, my great-grandmother is able to continue to live on her own. A reminder of her strength is in that perfect...
More About: Kitchen , Apples , Treasure , Treasures

This Weeks? Simplistic Menu (10/22-10/26) -and- a Shoofly Pie for Ginger
2007-10-21 23:12:00
Sim·plic·i·ty (s?m-pl?s'?-t?)n., pl. -ties. The property, condition, or quality of being simple or uncombined.Absence of luxury or showiness; plainness. I love the word simplicity. I don?t necessarily agree with all the definitions of this word as given by ask.com. Simple can be extremely luxuriant, and it certainly doesn?t always foretell a lack of good sense. Mark Bittman would call this minimalist cooking? but I like the word simplicity better. It is calming, homey, usually easy, and much enjoyed. This will be a week of cooking simplicity. Delicious. Unpretentious. Plain good cooking. I have to admit, with a food blog, I am especially tempted to try new foods every night of the week. But Michael is a man of habit. He misses simple foods. While some days this makes me giggle, other days I feel sorry for him. I wish I knew how to cook the deep southern foods he grew up eating?and while I do cook some of those wonderful old foods... for the most part, we head ...
More About: Ginger , Menu , Weeks

A simple Amish breakfast...
2007-10-18 23:52:00
Oatmeal is one of my favorite foods. I ate so much of this stuff when I was growing up, you would think I'd never want to taste it again! But that's not the case. I guess there was enough of a variety with bagels, grits, and Dad's omelets to keep me from becoming anti-oatmeal.One of my biggest disappointments after going gluten-free was the fact that oatmeal could become so easily contaminated with gluten during processing, that it was off limits to most folks. I think I was more sad about oatmeal than I was about "gluteny" pizza crusts.One reason I like oatmeal is because I have family history of heart disease and high "bad" cholesterol levels (which unfortunately has trickled down to me!) and oatmeal is one of those foods that most people can eat without worry. It is actually good for your heart and even helps beat those pesky cholesterol levels.The other reason I like oatmeal is that it's just plain good. Warm. Comforting. Homey.When we were in Lancaster Co. a few weeks ago,...
More About: Breakfast , Simple

Baking away again in Marinara-ville?
2007-10-17 23:56:00
Please tell me you are Jimmy Buffet fans? I love Jimmy? when I?m having a rough day, or if I?m super stressed, Jimmy can always make me laugh and bring me back down to earth? it?s kind of odd. I don?t drink. I never have. Alcoholism runs in my family, as well as Michael?s, so except for the occasional dinner made with a wine sauce (which really doesn't count!), or my yearly fruitcake? we?re strict tee-totalers. But I still love Jimmy Buffet (sauced, as he occasionally may be!) He knows how to live with a lightness of heart that I admire. I think today?s recipe would meet with Jimmy?s approval. It?s easy, super quick, and extremely tasty! You can?t really go wrong with American Italian. This is a great dinner for a night, when you are way too busy to really cook. Toss it up. Throw it in the pan. Add some cheese. Bake for 25-30 minutes and you?re good to go. It doesn?t get much easier than that. I use this recipe usually the week after I?ve roasted a chicken and I have be...
More About: Baking , Ville , Nara , Marina

What's in a name...
2007-10-16 23:03:00
Slacker Mom (aka Mrs. GF) noticed this week that I'm posting a recipe for Ginger Lemon Muffins. She asked if that was the inspiration for the name of my blog. Good question! I guess it does need an explanation. No, the muffins aren't necessarily the reason for the name, although I must admit, they are delicious enough to name a blog after...Actually, I'm rather "Plain Jane". My absolute favorite kitchen spices are cinnamon and vanilla. (As you have probably already noticed in many of my dessert and baked goods recipes.) But my favorite cake is a simple Gingerbread with Lemon Sauce! Thus the name, Ginger Lemon Girl... in honor of my favorite cake. Truly, this simple cake with the warm, spicy sweetness of ginger and the tart, delicate lemon sauce, is the best cake in the world (in my humble opinion!) The gingerbread recipe that I have used for years will have to be revamped to be gluten-free, but I'm not worried, I think it will still be my favorite cake! I'll be posting a Gin...

This week's Menu (10/15 - 10/19)
2007-10-15 13:55:00
This the first week of Natalie's Gluten-Free Menu swap on Mondays! I'm glad to be a part of this great group of bloggers! If you have a gluten-free menu you'd like to share, please let Natalie, of Gluten Free Mommy know. Different gluten-free bloggers will host the swap each week! I can't wait to see what we all come up with!Natalie's secret ingredient this week is basil. I will be using sweet basil that I bought in Bird-in-hand, PA, in two of my dishes this week. I'm sure it won't be too hard to guess which recipes will include the sweet basil.I'll be spreading out some of the Amish recipes that I want to share throughout the next few weeks. I didn't realize some of the ingredients I needed for these recipes would be hard to find around here! Apparently ground ham and fresh beets aren't high priorities on shopping lists in eastern NC! But I still have quite a few great recipes I am going to share with you this week! I hope you will enjoy the recipes and the menu! (The rec...

An apple? I mean a quince, a day?
2007-10-12 18:35:00
A slice of Apple Quince pie served with low-fat vanilla ice-cream I grew up close to the mountains of Southwest Virginia. The staple fall crop in much of the area was apples. Freshly picked, sweet, and crisp apples! They were wonderful! I can name at least 3 apple orchards that were close to where we lived. Those old stores were always full of their newest apple crops, freshly made jams and jellies, local onions, potatoes, locally cured hams, bacon, and local clover honey. I loved going into those shops every year. Near the first of October pumpkins were also on the scene, but it was the apples that drew you to these wonderful orchard stores. If I close my eyes, I can still see the old wooden plank floors. I can still smell the unique warm and fragrant aroma of the apples that were picked that day. It was usually cold and often they had fresh hot apple cider waiting for chilled customers. I miss those old apple orchards. I?ve never seen one like them down here in easter...

Cannellini Beans to the rescue?
2007-10-11 20:14:00
Yesterday was the first day I really didn?t like being gluten-free. Normally, I?m happy-go-lucky, I love the challenge, and I bask in the neatness of eating gluten-free. Not yesterday.Just getting back from our trip to PA, I didn?t have anything readily available for lunch. Michael?s lunch meats and fake sandwich cheese lurked in the meat drawer? but they just weren?t appetizing (not to mention probably full of gluten)? So I ate a piece of GF bread from last week and guzzled an apple juice. Not so yummy. It was the first time in this GF journey that I just wanted to run out and get a pizza, or a bucket of KFC like we used too?*sigh*While, I truly was in no mood to cook, I was determined to make something easy and delicious for dinner. I wanted something vegetable-y and homey. I hadn?t eaten an enormous amount of vegetables on this trip?and sometimes you just want good cooked veggies. At least I do.Once back from the infamous weekly trip to Walmart, in which we always end up getting ...
More About: Beans , Rescue

Autumn, In the land of the Amish (pt. 1)
2007-10-10 18:09:00
A granny square quilt hanging made by a local Mennonite woman.We bought this at a quilt shop in Bird-In-Hand, PA. I'm embarrassed to admit that my only familiarity with the Amish before last weekend was from watching the movie ?Witness? with Harrison Ford. I remember watching the movie as a child and being in awe of the Amish people and the way they lived.I have always loved reading historical fiction and non-fiction books about living in the early 18th century. I?ve always loved museums, living-history villages, and old houses. If it weren?t for modern bathrooms, medicine, and the internet, sometimes I?ve wondered if living as the Amish do, would be a lifestyle that I would enjoy. I truly respect and honor the way the Amish and Mennonite people live, raise their children, and contribute to their community. Our 3rd Anniversary!Over the weekend, Michael and I traveled to a little town called Quarryville, PA. In the midst of celebrating our 3rd anniversary, we were acquainted with t...
More About: Land , Autumn

Eric's Lemon Butter Chicken
2007-10-05 14:00:00
It?s not often you make a friend that you know you will have for the rest of your life. You just know. They will stick with you no matter the situation. When you?re in trouble and when things are going well. They love you even when you?re not lovable. Jodi is one of those friends. On the outside we?re as different as can be. Jodi grew up in Jersey, and she?s proud of it. I grew up in the foothills of southeastern Virginia? about as far away from a Jersey lifestyle as you can get! I?m shy, usually calm, timid in a crowd, and usually a tee-totaler. Jodi is loud, feisty, isn?t afraid to say what she thinks, and enjoys a cold brew. Jodi runs 2-3 miles a week and has golden-brown, naturally olive-toned skin, and doesn?t need to worry about weight. I have freckles, skin so light that Jodi?s dad calls me ?Snowflake?, and I will always have issues with weight. But we are friends for life. We?re stuck. Jodi and I can make each other laugh more easily than anyone I know. We?ve supported each ...
More About: Lemon , Chicken , Butter

One Dish "Bake and Rise" Pizza and Bob's Red Mill Brownies
2007-10-04 15:26:00
Sometimes a girl just needs pizza.I love pizza. A good doughy, buttery pizza crust is probably one "wheat" item that I will truly miss, especially at good restaurants. My husband and I are pizza connoisseurs. We ate pizza either at a restaurant or at home at least every other week before going GF!Last week I saw an "Amy's Rice Crust GF pizza" in the freezer at a local grocery store that has started to carry a very SMALL selection of GF products. I rejoiced at the sight of that rice crust pizza and I had to buy it even though it was nearly $9.00! So I put it in the freezer for an "emergency dinner night" when I absolutely didn't want to cook.Last weekend though, after discovering that I could indeed make a great gluten-free loaf of bread, I thought... well heck, why couldn't I just make a pizza crust?As if it were fate, our local newspaper's weekly food column posted a yummy looking one-dish pizza recipe last week. Of course, the recipe called for wheat flour, so it would take so...
More About: Pizza , Brownies , Rise , Dish

Give us this day our Daily Bread
2007-10-02 23:31:00
Five Flour Yeast Bread drizzled with extra virgin olive oil(Click on this picture for a more enhanced view)I have missed bread. I had no idea how much.About 5 weeks ago when I started this gluten-free journey, Michael and I headed to the closest Whole Foods store about an hour from where we live. I was overjoyed when I arrived and saw all the wonderful gluten-free options that were available. I never would have been able to walk into a grocery store in the small town we live in and find gluten-free breads, cake mixes, cereals, pizzas, pastas, etc... I felt wonderful to be surrounded by such loving food.On the ride home, after my sighs of contentment had settled... another thought came to my mind... I was going to have to trudge to Raleigh at least once a month to buy frozen gluten-free breads, flours, etc... I didn't like the thought. It felt strange to think that I would have to rely on a grocery store 50 miles away for our food. I don't mind Raleigh so much... but I commute to w...
More About: Daily , Give , S Day , Our Daily Bread