Gluten Free Menu Swap 9/15-9/19 & the Autumn Moon Festival

Finally the Full Moon, originally uploaded by jalalspages.

Happy Autumn Moon Festival, All!

Today we are celebrating the Autumn Moon Festival with a little pomelo, Asian pears and apple slices under the moonlight.  The paper lanterns are lit and glowing softly and our stone garden lantern is aglow with the flames of a tea light candle.  Oh, it is a beautiful night.  My love is gearing up to take some nibbles of his two-yolk moon cakes (Sadly, moon cakes are not gluten free.  I’m glad I got to try one in my previous gluten-filled life.  But right now?  I’m completely satisfied by the Asian pear and apple slices.)

Autumn Moon Festival is a harvest festival that is especially enjoyed by children.  My mother-in-law told me fun stories about her childhood when the adults would bring the kids to the park at night with paper lanterns that hung from a stick on a string.  Each lantern was a unique shape (her favorites were a rabbit and a butterfly).  And into each lantern, they would place a small candle.  The kids would then run and chase each other around the park with the glow of the lantern as their guide – and give away!  I asked her if the lanterns often caught fire as it seemed rather dangerous to me.  She laughed and said that yes, she remembers feeling mighty remorseful over a couple of her lanterns catching fire and quickly burning out.  (And she quickly reminded me that they were only allowed to play with these lanterns on THIS particular night and OUTSIDE only.  LOL)  Today you can still buy lanterns in a wide variety of fabulous shapes, but you are more likely to find them with LED lights that hang from a flashlight grip.  A tad more Smokey-The-Bear friendly, if you ask me!

Autumn Moon Festival has quite a wide variety of legends woven in to it.  The first thing you need to know is that Chinese people talk about a GIRL on the moon – not a man.  And she often has a rabbit (or hare) with her.  In my mother-in-law’s case, she remembers a version of the legend in which the girl has to run away to the moon to escape an excellent hunter/archer who also happened to be an emperor.  (You can read the legends here on Wikipedia.  My mother-in-law relates the legend found labeled as #5.)

We searched through several Chinese markets today but failed to find a rabbit lantern for the house.  I’m a little bummed, to be honest.  It was fun to hear the memories and joy that my mother-in-law had of this holiday as a child.  I guess my search for a rabbit lantern will have to continue a bit longer.

We’re also on the look out for a dragon’s gate – but that’s another story all together and you guys came here for the food, huh?  LOL  Ok ok… here’s the plan:

Monday:

• Lunch:  Nori-wraps with smoked turkey, avocado, cucumber and a salad.
• Dinner:  Baked tostones and taco salad

Tuesday:

• Lunch:  Crab & Cucumber salad
• Dinner:  Roasted organic chicken with gingered-carrots

Wednesday:

• Lunch: Cherry & Almond salad with banana chips, carrots and hummus
• Dinner: Grilled chicken breasts, caesar salad

Thursday:

• Lunch: Chicken salad wraps, Asian pear slices, almonds
• Dinner: Roast pork loin with apples and fennel, rice and black bean salad

Friday:

• Lunch: Nori-wrapped crab salad sandwiches, salad, cantalopue
• Dinner: Plantain empanadas, grilled flank steak and shredded napa cabbage slaw with apples

Thank you, Asparagus Thin, for hosting the GF Menu Swap this week!  The chosen item for this week is plantain.  It’s a perfect excuse for me to make the plantain empanadas again – this time I will bake them.  Oh MAN they were so good!  I’ve been thinking about them lately too.  And the tostones are an easy plantain goodie that we enjoy frequently too.
And it is with thanks to Seamaiden that I found OrgJunkie who also has a FABULOUS menu swap!
Be sure to check them both out.

Happy Moon Festival, All!
And may you have many happy Gluten-free meals to share with your loved ones this year as well –
Kate

GF Menu Swap & Meal Plan Monday 9-8 through 9-12

Forgive this tardy post…. I’ve been awash in memories and faces of the new school year. Here’s my lunch & dinner menus for the week. 🙂

Thanks for hosting the GF Menu Swap, Natalie.
Sorry my post is so stinkin’ late! And thanks, Orgjunkie for hosting Meal Plan Mondays.
It really has been helpful to stay on top of my menu planning.

Monday:

• Lunch: Caesar Salad with Shrimp, zuchinni muffin (mmm!), an asian pear
• Dinner: Korean chicken thighs, brown rice, peas and strawberries for dessert!

Tuesday:

• Lunch: Leftover chicken and rice, salad, apple-pear
• Dinner: Flank steak with yam oven fries with cinnamon or curry (Undecided…LOL)

Wednesday:

• Lunch: Salmon salad with cherries and pumpkin seeds, zuchinni muffin and a banana
• Dinner: Roast Pork Loin with Garlic and Basil, corn and black bean salsa, mangoes for dessert

Thursday:

• Lunch: Black bean and corn salsa (leftovers) with corn chips, shredded lettuce salad and fruit.
• Dinner: Beef brisket with yams and carrots, slow roasted. Mango chutney.

Friday:

• Lunch: Tuna & Egg Salad sandwich, apple slices with cinnamon peanut butter and a peach
• Dinner: Grilled Chicken taco salads with mango-peach-jalapeño spicy salsa

Ahh…school/work. It always throws me for a loop in the beginning to be back balancing it all again. Sorry for getting this up so late!
I hope your week is going well!
-Kate

GF Menu Swap, August 25 – 29

Tomorrow is the first dread day of meetings for teachers in my district.  And by dreaded, I’m not joking.  I may even be making an understatement.

Tomorrow at 7:45AM, 1,200 teachers will gather in our high school auditorium and watch several PowerPoint presentations. And every word on each slide will be read aloud to us… for the next FOUR HOURS.  OMG. OMG. OMG.

Shoot me now.

Okay – don’t shoot me.  Just have pity on me.

I am getting anxious for all that I have to get done in the next few weeks and my mind is not really wrapped around all of it.  That’s a problem.  However, after 4 hours suffocating in an auditorium (the fans/air circulation is ALWAYS turned off!), I will be shocked back into my working reality and hopefully the ideas will come flowing.

I’m set for lunch ideas. (See these posts if you want some ideas about packing lunches or what to put in your gluten free bag lunch).  Now I just need to get motivated to get back to work!  I’ve been enjoying my summer vacation and have become a whole, balanced human being.  Something rarely seen in the hallways of a high school (especially in June).

To finish up my summer, my sister and her boys have spent the weekend with us.  They showed up on Friday to deliver a crib and have spent every minute and night here since.  Fun, huh?  (To really comprehend this, you must know that she lives 3 miles from me.  LOL)  The Wii has gotten a workout this weekend!

All of this joy and happy kid sounds in the house make me excited to have our own child arrive soon!  I can’t wait… but we have to.  🙂

Here’s the menu plan for the week:

Monday:  Leftover madness (Chicken tenders, ginger-spiced squash and onigiri)

Tuesday: Steamed fish and veggies

Wednesday:  Salmon Chowder

Thursday: Taco Salad

Friday:  Pozole

Thank you, Fresh Ginger for hosting the GF Menu Swap this week!  And I’m also submitting this to OrgJunkie.com for the Meal Plan Monday there.  It’s great to get ideas…. my brain is leaky with the return on school and 18+ hour days.  I can use all the help I can get!

Happy Monday, All.
-Kate

GF Menu Swap – August 11th

We had a great trip to the local Farmer’s Market today. My fridge is bursting with fresh fruit and vegetables. The blueberries I picked up for breakfast are seriously wonderful. I thought about making something with them, but to be honest, I think just popping them in my mouth fresh and cool is the absolute best. So baking with them? That idea has flown out the window completely.

The other gorgeous food I picked up today were some incredible beets. My mom loves beets – a little fact I never knew until just last year. She picked up some beets at our Farmer’s Market when she was here and I swear there were stars in her eyes. She brought them back to our house and boiled them… staining her hands in the process. Something she swore was completely worth the redness. My dad wasn’t looking too convinced. And when I saw my dad’s face, I knew why I had never eaten beets in my lifetime. She never made them because he doesn’t really “appreciate” them much. Ah ha. Mystery solved.

Needless to say, I’m not a boiled beets fan. However, when I can get fresh beets from the Farmer’s Market, I adore them roasted. And I’ve solved the red-dyed hands look too. It’s as easy as a pair of latex gloves. Yeap. I keep the painting gloves handy during beet season. I, for one, do not appreciate reddened-fingers.

Oh, and the beet greens? They make for the perfect base for a roast beet salad. And that is exactly what I plan to make with them this week.

Ah yes. I love the Farmer’s Market.
It’s the best place to go for inspiration for your menu!

And this week Natalie of Gluten-Free (the originator of the Gluten Free Menu Swap) chose tofu for this week’s main ingredient. And while we do enjoy tofu in our house, I have only one recipe that highlights it this week. I learned how to make this incredibly delicious tofu with ginger and soy when my in-laws were in town. I guess this is the time for me to finally get around to making it. Tofu is actually a very budget-friendly – and incredible versatile.

Tofu comes in many forms. If you are a tofu-neophyte, little reading about the types of tofu and how to use them are all you really need before you get started. Wikipedia has a great summary here and here is a basic page with a chart that lists the basic tofu substitutes. Even if you are not planning to substitute tofu (we don’t, we just cook the tofu to eat that.), knowing what type of protein you can replace will give you a better idea of cooking, etc.

I recently made Inari-sushi which is made from fried tofu packets that are opened up and filled with sushi rice. And Oh. My. Goodness. They are great! Believe it or not, they are the perfect slightly-sweet treat for a lunch box for me sometimes. In honor of Natalie’s choosing tofu, I’ll post that recipe this week sometime.

In the meantime, I want to thank Jyesika at Wheatstate Celiac for hosting this week’s menu swap. And I will also be submitting this to Menu Plan Monday on Orgjunkie.org. It was incredibly helpful and motivating for me to participate there are well.

Here’s the plan, Sam. Let’s see if I stick to it!

Monday: Peach-sweetened Chili with Pita Chips

Tuesday: Carne Asada with Leaf Lettuce Wraps

Wednesday: Grilled Pork and Peaches

Thursday: Roast Beet and Carrot Salad with Grilled chicken breasts

Friday: Baked meatballs and spaghetti, garlic bread and a huge salad

Happy Monday, everyone!
Kate