Gluten free 5 ingredient peanut butter cookies

I had the wonderful opportunity to host a Caza Trail & Grove Square house party last night.

For a dessert to enjoy with the selection of coffee or hot cocoa, I made these peanut butter cookies for the first time. They turned out wonderful.

Gluten free peanut butter cookies:

1 cup peanut butter, creamy or crunchy

1/2 cup sugar

1 large egg

3 semi sweet chocolate baking squares

Crushed dry roast peanuts

Mix the peanut butter, sugar, egg in a bowl. After mixing well, place into the fridge for at least 30 min.

After removing from the fridge, roll into balls of dough. Place on a non greased cookie sheet. Using a fork flatten the cookie dough in a cris-cross pattern. Bake in a pre-warmed oven at 350 degrees. Bake for 18-20 min.

After cooled, melt the chocolate baking squares in a small glass bowl in the microwave. Melt them at only 15 seconds at a time, stirring each time until the chocolate is smooth. Then dip each cookie in the chocolate and then in the crushed peanuts.

As you can see above I started dipping 2 sides of the cookie, but that was messy. So I then took a spoon and placed the chocolate on the top of the cookie. That was much faster and less messy.

Above is a couple photos from my house party, this is my 8th party. You can go to www.houseparty.com to sign up to host your own house party.

Game night

Last night was full of volleyball games, so the awesome husband grilled steak and chicken for supper with steamed green beans. I was hoping to get a photo of that wonderful meal but my pager went off, so I enjoyed my meal at room temp. 

For those that is now wondering about my pager, I am on a volunteer department called the First Responders. We live in an area that is 10-25 minutes away from an ambulance response. That time depends on which station our ambulance is coming from. Since we are so far away, we get paged out at the time of the 911 call and we respond and provide life saving measures till the ambulance can arrive. I am a registered EMT. 

Anyways I by the time I got home most of the food was gone, so I didn't get a photo for you, but I did get some of my daughters volleyball team, so Im sharing one of them with you.

Crockpot veggie stew

Feeling a little lazy being a Monday, so I grabbed a nice sized chuck roast out of the freezer. At first I wasn't to sure what I was going to make out of it, I just stuck it in the crockpot on the low setting with 1 1/2c of water and my secret to an awesome roast, Chex mix flavoring packet. Thank you to a very good friend of mine that told me I need to try that to season my roast, I will never make one without it ever again.

I took off to work. By the time I got home the cool front had moved through and the rain had started. So I decided that a good stew fit the weather. I pulled the roast out of the crockpot and placed on a platter to cool. Mean while I placed one of my quart bags of the mixture I made this summer with the stewed tomatoes, onions, green peppers, and okra. I just cut the plastic bag away, and placed the frozen mixture in the broth from the roast, turn the crockpot on high. I came back about a half hr later, flipped the half thawed mixture over in the crockpot and started to shred my roast. After that was done i threw it back in the crockpot. 

When ever I open a large can of tomato juice if I have leftovers I freeze them in a ice cube tray for later use. well today i used about 8 of those tomato cubes. I tossed them in the crockpot, I used a small can of tomato sauce as well.

Then I added 4 cans of mixed veggies that I get from Walmart. I buy the ones that does not include potatoes, just to cut down the carb level some. I also added a can of rotel. Sometimes I will use the frozen mixed vegetables, its just which ever I have on hand at the time.

Then I sat back down on the couch and enjoyed some TV. Yes, today I'm having a hard time getting motivated to do much, even though I know I have company coming this Friday and badly need to clean the house up some.

After a good hour later the crockpot had heated everything up good, and we enjoyed supper.

This provided us with plenty of leftovers also for school lunches for my daughter and I.

The photo above was took after we all ate supper, so as you can see there is plenty of leftovers.

My squirrel storing mode

During summer I took any fresh veggies I could find to store them up for winter.

My grandpa, and some friends gave me lots of tomatoes, I also grew some but not many. I was also given okra, zucchini, onions, green peppers.

My most favorite thing to put up for the winter is a mixture of tomatoes, onions, green peppers and okra. I peal and dice the tomatoes, dice the onions and peppers, slice up the okra and stew it all in a huge pot for a while, then I cool it down and freeze it in full quart bags.

I love this mixture so much, there is several things i do with this. I use this in veggie soups and stews. I also make a wonderful chicken & cabbage soup that includes a bag of this mixture. I will add cooked, crumbled Blue & Gold sausage and some gluten free macaroni for a meal.

I have added a small amount, not the whole quart bag, into my meatloaf. Sometimes we will just eat it alone as a side veggie. I'm sure I will add more meals later using this as well...

I also grated up zucchini and froze in bags, I will add that to just about any meal using hamburger, it makes a great filler to help the hamburger go farther. Also sneaks in the extra veggies in my teenage daughters diets.

My youngest daughter

My youngest has suffered from migraines for the last several years. We have tried everything, increasing her fluid intake, using natural supplements like fever few. Took her to the doctor, she was thinking due to her age, that it could be hormone related. She was then put on some meds like a bedtime muscle relaxer and phenergan to control the nausea during the migraines.

The summer after my discovery of being gluten intolerant, after lots of researching about gluten intolerance, we decided to put her on a gluten free diet as well. It wasn't that much of a difference for us anyways, since by now I had eliminated anything with gluten in my home already. Her only exposure to gluten was her school meals. During 2013 summer just eating my cooking, her migraines went away!!  In the first part of July she was babysitting a friends children for a week, while he went to work. over there she ate all kinds of items that had gluten, like pizza's pastas, breads. by the second and third day she was back having migraines again. At that point she choose to never eat those items again.

She's just like me, we both miss those old foods we used to eat. Every once in a while she will get in the mood that it isn't fair, she wants to eat like everyone else, but then I remind her of how she felt during that week of babysitting. She still misses those foods, but always decides to not eat them. I'm very proud of her, cause I know how hard it is to pass up those foods.

about me

I had "tummy issues" for several years, but I didn't think much of it, it had became part of my life. Then after they started getting worse I asked a doctor to look into a few things. The first thing they choose to look at was a colonoscopy. My first colonoscopy showed I had 3 pre-cancerous polyps, which they removed and told me to come back in a year for another test. Well due to things going on in life I actually didn't get back for that test for 16 months. I went in had my second colonoscopy and when i woke up I was told that I had a mass that was blocking 50% of my colon. Well then came the stress of surgery. They removed 8 inches of my large colon. The biopsy results said it was not cancer, but the dr said if I would have not discovered it, that it more than likely would have turned into cancer.

For a while after my surgery I felt great, no tummy issues, but they slowly started coming back, so I again requested for them to get to the bottom of it, which called for another colonoscopy that came up negative, thank God!! At that time I was told I had IBS, and they put me on some medicine to try to help, which didn't work. Meanwhile at home my husband who was overweight decided to do some research and figure out the best way for him to lose some of the lbs he had put on. He tried calorie counting, and that helped some, then he tried a low carb lifestyle, eventually he talked me into following the diet with him. Thats when my life changed.

With no carbs in my diet I had eliminated wheat, therefor gluten. Within just a couple weeks all my "tummy issues" was gone. Praise The Lord I was pooping normal, that was something I hadn't done in years. While talking about this all with my husband, he got to thinking, something that I had eliminated was causing my problems.  Which after some self trials it quickly became obvious that it was gluten that was the issue. That was the summer of 2012. I have been gluten free since then.

a look at our tiny garden

I tried something new this year, my garden is planted in straw bales. It is actually doing better than I expected and we have enjoyed several cucumbers, green peppers, yellow squash, several cherry tomatoes, and 1 zucchini so far. I can see the bigger tomatoes hanging on the vines, so I am patiently waiting for them to ripen. I also can see a few spaghetti squash growing. Above is a couple photos of our garden. I am hoping to make this garden bigger and better next year!! I also have 2 patches of mint/spearmint planted that has done really well this spring. I dehydrated several mint leaves to enjoy this winter in tea.
I have visited farmers market several times already this year enjoying all kinds of wonderful produce but I hope to grow more of it myself next year. I also have had a couple wonderful friends give me zucchini and yellow squash so I have been able to put a few bags of it in the freezer to enjoy this winter.