I have to admit, one of the things that I love to do most when I get back from a trip is housework. I have done countless loads of laundry in the past couple of days as well as a lot of cooking. In a effort to save both time and money I’ve taken to cooking large batches of goodies then freezing whatever I don’t think we’ll eat within a week.

This winter I’ve been in chili mode. Mainly turkey chili that I make in the huge crockpot my mom gave me a few years ago. (I never thought I’d have such a need for so large a pot but it has certainly come in handy.) The day we got back we went to the store in the evening to get groceries including turkey chili stuff.

I just spied Alicia’s dad’s chili (yum) which I’ll have to try the next round of chili-making (and once I locate liquid smoke, something I haven’t been able to find at the market yet).

I have yet to make the same recipe twice. I wanted something a little spicier this time and yes, in my opinion, I would say this was a medium spicy which can be hot if you plan on eating a big bowl of it! This version is also low sodium and low fat as well as onion and gluten-free. That being said, I thought it was pretty good with some sea salt and cheddar cheese!

“Jen’s Healthy Turkey Chili”

Ingredients:

2.5 lb lean ground turkey

.25-.5 lb pork roast, trimmed of fat and de-boned and cut up

1-28 oz can whole or diced tomatoes (with juice)

1 small can tomato paste

1 can whole corn (with juice)

2 chipotle peppers in adobo, de-seeded and chopped

1/4 c white cooking wine

2 T maple syrup

4 large cloves garlic, crushed

1 T chili powder

2 t oregano

1 T ground coriander

2 t ground cumin

1/4 t cinnamon

1 t bacon salt or regular salt (optional)

1 bay leaf

1 T (heaping) ground unsweetened cocoa

1/4 c cornmeal

Optional garnish: sea salt, shredded cheese, chopped red onions, sour cream…

Directions:  Brown pork in a skillet and add to crock pot. Brown turkey in the skillet, drain (optional if you are using lean meat - I personally don’t drain this, only skim off any foam if it comes up) and add to crock pot. Add the rest of the ingredients to the crock pot and stir. Cook for 4 hours. Serve and garnish. (Wasn’t that easy?)

And for dessert, some gluten-free dark chocolate chip and hazelnut cookies:

This was also an experiment. (Ok, so most of my cooking could be categorized as such.) I bought some gluten-free Trader Joe’s brownie mix, halved the oil and mixed in dark chocolate pieces and chopped hazelnuts. I turned the brownies into drop cookies, used parchment paper on the cookie sheet and baked them for 14 minutes. They are pretty good and very rich (chocolate-wise) .

If anyone tries my turkey chili recipe I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Cold and bright sunny days are so good for baking. I love spending time in my little yellow and green kitchen whipping up some goodies.

I’ve been doing a little experimenting in this department. I’m not sure what is going on but I’ve been finding myself having some digestive disagreements (Don’t worry, this blog won’t turn into my daily log of ailments!) and I’m beginning to suspect that it’s something specifically that I’m eating. So I thought I would remove some foods from my diet (namely [wheat] gluten and dairy, the usual suspects) and see how things go.

But for someone who loves to bake this could be quite the problem. But I know there are lots of alternatives out there and I’m determined to have my gluten-free cake and eat it too.

I found some gluten-free chocolate chip cookie dough mix at Whole Foods (a house brand). It’s basically a box of the dry ingredients (stuff like rice flour and sugar) to which you had the wet ingredients. I did a little substituting here as I’ve had gluten-free cookies before and they are not always, err, good.

My boyfriend’s step-mom got this delicious vanilla extract from a recent trip Belize (I think…although it says product of Mexico). I doubled the amount which always seems like a good idea. I also used walnut oil instead of margarine since it’s not hydrogenated and is loaded with healthy omega-3s.

I added an extra egg too for protein and bindy-ness. (That’s a word, yea?)

The dough was quite gloppy and sticky but as you can see from the first pic, they look like regular cookies and tasted pretty good too as long as you ignore the slight sandy texture of the cookie part.

My next test would be some gluten-free cupcakes. I recently gathered up all of my liners into this cookie jar so I can see all of them and how pretty they are. They are also tempting me, so I’ll have to keep you posted on this next attempt; I know a lot of folks out there have similar issues with gluten and dairy.

Have a sweet Tuesday!