This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links. Thanks for your support! Listen up my gluten free friends! How many of you found out about your gluten intolerance and spent months, or maybe even years eating gluten free pasta that falls apart until it turns into a rock? Or how about those hamburger buns that just start out as dry cardboard and end up as a rock? I know others still who spent so much time trying to come up with the best gluten free flour blend, but still, that homemade bread just doesn't taste... quite the same. I've heard, and tasted, all of this and more. Quite frankly, to find out your gluten intolerant can be a little depressing at first as you brave this whole new world of gluten free dining. Well, not only am I here for you, Bob's Red Mill is here for you too! The first time I tried this Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free 1 to 1 Baking Flour I was nervous. I was making pumpkin bread after all. If you remember anything about me, let it be that I am someone of integrity, who loves pumpkin. This flour does exactly what it says it'll do! Take ANY recipe you love and no longer eat because of the gluten free burden you carry. Swap out the regular all purpose flour in your favorite cookie, muffin, or bread recipe for this. There is no guess work, and guess what?!?! You don't get rock hard, crumbly, cardboardy gluten free sadness! I am only singing it's praises because I have tested it over and over again and it has never let me down. It's a 1 to 1 ratio so you literally don't have to change a thing. The xanthan gum is already mixed in as well. Trust me guys, just do it that way. When I have added it separately it gives my dough a weird taste. The taste isn't there after baking but honestly, who doesn't like to sneak a little cookie dough? Although... I am trying to eat healthy... Nevermind that, if you're going to give yourself a little treat (because really a healthy balanced diet will include an occasional treat) then you deserve a bite of cookie dough! Except today. Today we are making gluten free banana bread. Why gluten free? Because I want you to love this flour as much as I do! I think everyone probably already has their favorite banana bread recipe. If you don't, you will now! The best banana bread contains the basics of butter, eggs, brown sugar, vanilla, and slightly browned bananas. Whatever recipe you use, I want to give you a few tips for your banana bread. Tip #1: Use brown sugar! Brown sugar will give your bread a depth that you just can't get from white sugar. You're getting lighter sugar from your bananas. Let the brown sugar draw out that sweetness so the banana flavor shines through. Tip #2: Avoid using multiple bowls. Most recipes tell you to mash the bananas before adding them to your mixture. I am all about minimal clean up. After you cream together your butter and sugar place your bananas on top and mash them there before you mix them in. It should look something like this: See how the mashed banana has hardly any brown sugar in it yet? Once they're mashed like this you can mix them in with your creamed butter/sugar combo. I don't recommend skipping the mashing because science. Mashing the bananas helps draw the sugars out even more. Then you can use a fork to mix them in with the sugar and butter and you'll get a nice flavor from your bread. You can use this same trick if your recipe calls for your eggs to be beaten before mixing. Just break them right on top and beat them with a fork before stirring them in. Bonus tip: if you use beaters to mix your recipe your bread will be taller anyway (also science.) So you can also go that route, but beating the eggs just a little bit on their own will also help with this. Tip # Ilosttrack: If your recipe doesn't call for vanilla you really need to add it anyway. I don't trust any baked good recipe that doesn't call for vanilla. Just sayin'. I don't know why you wouldn't want it in there. Always add a teaspoon of vanilla to all of your baked goods and you will never be sorry. You're welcome.
Now this time around I fully intended to zest an orange rind into the batter but then I completely forgot. I am including it in the recipe anyway, but just know that with or without it, the bread is amazing. This banana bread turned out moist and sweet with the perfect crust. When he had a bite PH said, "this is gluten free? Wow!" What better affirmation do you need than that?
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This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links. Thanks for your support! I have narrow windowsills. In some cases, my windows have no sills at all. It makes it very difficult to have plants that will live when there is no place to set them in sunshine. My only success story has been this orchid that I received as a gift. It fits on one of my narrow windowsills and it blooms and blooms and I only have to water it once per week. I love it! Well, I came upon my project to brighten up my other skinny windowsill completely by accident. Do you remember these cute cream bottles that I want to use in a project? I had decided that I wanted a basket that would act like a milk crate that I could use with them to make a country style table centerpiece. I went to Hobby Lobby and found this little wire basket for only $5! I loved it because the bent wire reminded me of barbed wire, without the barbs! I snagged it (pun intended) and brought it home. Lesson learned? Always measure or take the item with you to check the size. The cute cream bottles are too big to fit in the basket! Well, I have other ideas for those now, but what to do with the basket? A few days later, i went to Walmart and was looking in their garden section and I found these tiny clay pots for just about .37 I think. (I just saw that Dollar Tree has them 3 for $1!) I can't resist tiny cute things very well. So I picked up a half dozen of them and brought them home. Guess what! 5 of them fit in the basket perfectly! Guess what else! The basket fit on my windowsill perfectly! A new project began to take shape. I decided that I needed to paint the pots and give them a Springtime feeling and to mimic the flowers that I was going to use in them. I had picked some up at Hobby Lobby for 50% off the day I bought the basket. My couch and love seat are brown with turquoise accents, so I bought turquoise flowers. Here is the color palette that I used to paint my little pots: You have to be careful when choosing Spring colors that you don't only use pastel blues, pinks and yellows or your finished product will look like it belongs at a Baby Shower. That is why I added a brighter yellow and green and a deeper lavender. Plus, the base colored blue is like a lighter turquoise than the one I decided to use for the flowers around the rims of the pots. I painted each pot with the body one color and the rim another. I used 5 colors for five pots and mixed and matched them. Then, to tie them all together, I used a tole technique to paint flowers on the rims all in the same color turquoise. Don't be afraid to try to paint the flowers freehand. It is an easy technique. You can practice on paper before painting it on the rims of your pots. Here is a short video demonstrating the technique of loading your round paint brush with paint, laying it down and then pulling and lifting as you pull to get a petal shape. Next, just transfer that technique onto the rims of your pots. Then, use the end of the handle of your brush, or the tip of a pencil to add dots. Dip the point of the handle in the paint, then make dots. The dots will be a little smaller each time, which gives a nice effect. After these were dry, I cut floral foam to fit tightly into the bottom of each little pot. Then I put 3-5 flowers in each pot. I wanted an airy effect. Then, TA DA! Here it is on my skinny windowsill! It fits perfectly! It was a fun little project! I hope you aren't afraid to give things like this a try when the idea strikes you. I will get back to you about the those cream bottles! Spring is the time to be creative. Have a creative day!
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Last Saturday was April Fool's Day, and Alicia cracked us all up with her post giving 3 housecleaning tips. If you didn't get a chance to read it, you really should. My kids are all comedians at heart. But, seriously folks, this is the time of year when all of our thoughts turn to Spring Cleaning and so that is the theme of today's Friday Fave question:
What is your favorite housecleaning tool?
Alicia worked her way through her undergrad years in college as a custodian on campus! That is also where she met her husband. She picked up some good cleaning tips in that job. Today she is sharing two favorites!
First, microfiber cloths are something she loves to use for cleaning. She got me to start using them, and they are great! In the photos above,she is using only water to get those windows looking gorgeous. She says:
Microfiber cloths are great for dusting, they pick up the dust very well. The texture of the microfiber saves on elbow grease when cleaning other areas of your house and helps you have streakfree windows. They are soft enough for TV screens and computer monitors as well. Here are a couple of resources for microfiber cloths:
Alicia's second choice is her vacuum cleaner. She points out that a good vacuum is really useful. She vacuums everything, cabinets, the fridge (dry crumbs), and when she sweeps, she uses the vacuum to clean up the pile she makes. She loves her vacuum, although it was fairly inexpensive. She has had it 5 years and it's easy to clean and to keep it working well. It is the Bissell Rewind Smart Clean. It currently has 4 stars on Amazon. I am in the market for a new vacuum, so I will have to check this one out. Alicia gives it high marks.
I have tried out a new product for cleaning TOILETS that I am really liking! I live in an older house with older toilets. (They are on our list to replace.) Cleaning them is never fun. They stain easily. Then, one day I noticed on ibotta that there was a $2.50 rebate for the Clorox Toilet Wand. I decided to give it a try! I really like how it disinfected and cleaned so easily and my toilets looked whiter than they had in a long time! Also, you just push the button and the head gets thrown in the trash (not in the toilet!) and you don't have to touch anything gross!
Have you tried the ibotta app yet? It is an app that gives you rebates on groceries and other things that you normally buy. For example, here are a few of this week's offers: Sargento Cheese Shreds are on there, as well as Freschetta Frozen Pizza, Ruffles Chips, and Nesquik Powder. I have already gotten well over $200 in rebates so far. I always get mine in Amazon Cards so that I can use them to shop there. I bought a bookcase with some of my rebates! If you click on this link, you can join and get a $10 rebate to get you started! (I will get $5, so thank you!) So, I was able to get a $2.50 rebate off of the already fairly low price of the Clorox Toilet Wand!
Lindsey, who also worked as a campus custodian for part of her undergrad years, claimed Mr Clean Magic Erasers as her favorite cleaning tool. She says, and I concur, that they seriously do work like magic! When she worked at the giant basketball/event center called The Marriot Center at BYU, they used them there and they did a great job! In her recent move, as she cleaned to show the house they were selling, Magic Erasers were life savers, keeping walls and doors clean and shiny. I have used them after my grandchildren, cleaning up pencil and crayon marks off of walls, hand prints off of everything and I have used them on my stove top as well. Mr. Clean Magic Erasers are amazing! If you haven't tried them yet and you are a mother, these will save your sanity!
You can get a case of 24 from DollarTree.com, and that is fine with Lindsey because she says she wants a year's supply of them. You can get free shipping from them if you have them sent to your local store. You can also get a smaller number for a really good price from Amazon.
Maddy has chosen a book that she read that is going to help her be more organized. It is called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo. Madalynn says it is fascinating how she simplifies things and doesn't have you clean just one room at a time, but organizes the entire house at once. We have big plans to implement her methods in our home. I am excited to have a much more organize house! You can grab her book here.
Well, now that I have spent so much time getting this post written, I guess I had better start my own cleaning! Let me know if you have any tools that make your life so much easier! Thanks for stopping by Friday Faves this week!
Don't forget to subscribe to get our newest freebie! This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links. Thanks for your support! It's been a rough week guys. It's been the kind of week where things are hard and you are tired and sad and the last thing you want to do is make dinner. Heck, the last thing you have time to do is make dinner. When I have those weeks, they make me sad, because I don't like rough weeks, and I do like to cook. That was this week and I felt at a loss as to what to make you for dinner, you, our loyal readers. Enter, the mango salsa. I was at the grocery store the other night to pick up some items for a brief California trip PH and I took to celebrate his mom's birthday, as well as one nephew's birthday, and one sister's in law birthday. While I was there I saw this mango salsa by Sabra. I love mango salsa. I should force my mom to make me some in her fancy new blender. Well, when I saw the salsa the light bulb over my head turned on and I decided it was a fish tacos kind of night! Fish tacos are really so fast and easy. It doesn't take long to cook the fish, and it tastes so fresh, who need's Rubio's when you can just make it at home? One struggle I always have with PH and I is that it is hard to get ratios right when I am only cooking for two. Buy tilapia that is individually frozen, that makes the fish portions easy. However, it's the cabbage, yogurt, and onion that cause me trouble. Fortunately the grocery store by our house sells half a head of cabbage. It is twenty cents more than a full head, I guess they need to pay the people that went to the trouble to slice it in half for me. It's worth it though because cabbage isn't really something I use a ton, so it all ends up going bad. I also just bought a small single serving of Fage greek yogurt for the white sauce. That way there would only be enough for the two of us. When making fish tacos it really works best to have a husband who will chop up the veggies and make the white sauce for you. However, they will still taste good if you don't have that thing, and you will still be happy to be eating them.
So, doesn't it feel like a fish tacos kind of night? |
Creators of Hot Cocoa Bombs! (copyrighted)
Author
Helen Reynolds: Mother of six children , grandmother to eleven! I love to cook, craft and create things and I especially love doing that with my family, So, when my lawyer daughter, Lindsey, my artist daughter, Madalynn, and I came up with the idea of Hot Cocoa Bombs, this blog was born. Then, one more daughter, with her technical and science skills, plus creativity has joined in to round us out! Read more about us here! Archives
April 2024
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