The thing I love about weekends off is the extra time to try new recipes and eat good food.

I couldn’t stray too far away from the basic meat & potatoes my Dad is used to but I provided him Cinnamon & Orange rolls so I bought myself a tad of freedom.

Friday night was Life Group and since my Mom & Dad were taking the kids out on a date I made a recipe that I’ve wanted to try for a looooong time.

Pastor Ryan’s Mexican Lasagna

I love this recipe for tons of reasons.

1. It can easily be made gluten & soy free
2. It was super easy to make
3. It made 2 (gigantic) pans – I used one for Life Group and the other I froze
4. I have my own Pastor Ryan – and he quite enjoyed this dish

Okay maybe not tons…but at least 4 reasons.

Saturday morning I was up early (4am – because I went to bed at 10 – I know I have issues) getting a head start on my day and jumped on another PW recipe I’ve been excited to try.

French Toast with Berry Butter

It was delicious. No one other than my Mom and I liked it but kids are fickle like that sometimes.

And my Dad wouldn’t even try it. He’s fickle like that all the time.

Saturday night I made an attempt at brisket. I call it an attempt because while everyone ate it (other than me) and ate it till it was gone they all said it was chewy.

I made some super yum mashed potatoes, however. Butter & whole milk – the best ingredients on earth.

Sunday night we were having so much fun doing projects around the house (like really having fun) we decided not to stop to cook but just to pile our dirty selves in the car and head to Longhorn Cafe. One of my Dad’s favorite Texas restaurants.

Everyone says their burgers are to die for but I haven’t ate a hamburger in 15 years and have to reason to start now.

I had the turkey burger. That, in my opinion, is one of the best turkey burgers in town.

The restaurant was packed and service a bit slow last night. That didn’t bother me one bit because I was in no hurry. Other patrons, however, took it upon themselves to tell the employees how useless they were.

I really, really hate that.

Working retail for so many years has made me intolerable of that sort of behavior towards retail working folk . I looked back there into the kitchen (which you can see everything at this restaurant) and saw them working their tails off.

So after an older man screamed how “hacked off he was” I took it upon myself to thank each of the workers for their hard work and apologized for the jerks who don’t know how to treat other human beings.

Because it’s not about food. It’s about loving others as you love yourself. End of story. Amen.

Ry and I rationalized since we do live in America…..

And even though this really isn’t our thing…

There’s something to be said about making some good food…

And sitting down all together….

to eat and watch a football game on television.

Because some rules are made to be broken…Newcom Rule #14: TV is never on during a meal

And because sometimes watching football isn’t so painful after all when you are doing it for the children’s JOY.

A night like this totally deserves a new dessert during half-time. This is my Gluten Free version of PW’s Apple Brown Betty.

Let it be known:

Our television (and our children) have experienced their first Super Bowl.

Now they can never come back to us in 20 years and tell us how we destroyed their lives because we deprived them of watching the Super Bowl as a kid.

I was all set and ready to make the infamous Pioneer Woman cinnamon roll recipe when I was suddenly motivated to attempt them Gluten Free. I figured the only thing I would be out if I failed was my time and $10 in ingredients.

I had to at least try once.

During this first attempt, I simply substituted my GF All-Purpose flour for the wheat flour called for in the recipe. I also added some Xanthum gum as I do whenever I sub the GF flour. The dough, however, had me slightly concerned.

It didn’t rise a whole lot and was very loose.

I trudged on and rolled it out.

I couldn’t get the dough to roll out very big without separating though.

X took these pictures….I think she was trying to focus on the cinnamon and couldn’t figure out how. Because next I found this picture:

and then finally this one:

Yes. I still need to touch up paint in my kitchen and put the finishing edge on the countertop. Don’t judge.

I have fingers growing out of my stomach.

I think I may have added some extra butter in attempt to make up for my shortcomings with the dough. Butter makes everything better.

I also add brown sugar as well in addition to the granulated sugar the recipe calls for. And then the cinnamon – and lots of it.

This part sucked. Just being honest. It was really hard to keep the dough together as I rolled it up.

I did get slightly better the second batch around because I didn’t roll the dough out as thin.

They started to fall apart as I cut them and put them in pans.

Some of them were looking mighty pathetic.

even after they were cooked – I was feeling pretty defeated in this attempt.

The second batch started coming out better though.

Load ‘em up with icing and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference by looking at them.

I think this would classify as swimming in icing.

And the taste…well, it tasted great – but gluten-free. It had that dense texture that is common in GF products. But – they were still yummy.

And my hubby was happy. And he ate lots of them.

As in, 3 of the 8 packs before I could get them into the freezer on 12/26.

I think I’ll attempt them again but I need to seek some baking wisdom from my baking mentors in Florida.

It’s a good thing I’m heading  there in 2 days!

It was the Saturday night after Thanksgiving. I hadn’t thawed any meat from the freezer for dinner, it was nearing 6:00pm – everyone was hungry, and I had 1 zucchini leftover from the Thanksgiving feast.

I flipped through my recipe binder looking for something yummy when I stumbled upon this recipe that I had yet to try. When I looked over the ingredients I quickly realized I had no Greek yogurt, or sour cream – a viable substitute. I figured, what the heck – try it anyway.

As I talked myself into and through the recipe X sat on one of the bar stools cautiously watching me – as she added items from the James Avery catalog to her Christmas wish list – to see if I’d be ruining dinner.

My base was this King Arthur pancake mix. I love all of these mixes. They are amazing – and made in a dedicated facility.

I added:

• 2 eggs
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 5 tablespoons melted butter
• 1/8 cup sugar
• 1 shredded zucchini (I would have done 2 but I only had 1)
• 1 cup of skim milk

I figured if Pioneer Woman can use heavy cream and butter in all of her recipes – I could certainly too.

Don’t forget the butter on the griddle too!

At this point – I’m getting pretty excited about these pancakes. I have some hashbrowns and eggs going on the stove as a backup but I’m beginning to think it won’t be a problem.

X got tired of watching me cook and started playing Just Dance (2) on the Wii.

I’ll have to write more about our Christmas tree later – I don’t want to digress from the pancakes.

My excitement was building.

Oh. My. Goodness.

I cut one of them up into a Star Wars shape for E and stole some bites from excess of his shape. Holy pancakes – they were amazing.

I named them Zucchini muffin pancakes because everyone in my house loves Zucchini muffins. I feared a little freak out when they saw green in their pancakes. All was well when I referred to them as similar to the muffins.

I unhealthy-ly ate 4 of them. That were covered in Maple syrup. It was heaven.

You need to try them.

I subscribe to Maggiano’s emails. A lot of times they will send me coupons – which I love – and sometimes they’ll give recipes – which I equally love.

Buried deep within one of the emails I found their recipe for Pumpkin Cheesecake. They admitted to omitting a few ingredients that make it uniquely special for them but overall provided the base of the recipe.

Clearly, I am a huge fan of anything pumpkin. I had to give this a try.

The recipe called for Ginger Snaps for the crust. I was determined to make it Gluten & Soy free so I used Cinnamon Chex.

At this point, X was done playing for a while and decided she wanted to do the baking and have me take the pictures (this was the day after she photographed me making Pumpkin donuts.)

So we mixed an entire can of pumpkin

Some brown sugar (which I missed capturing it as it was falling it, thus disappointed X with my photography skills).

3 eggs, 2 blocks of cream cheese, pumpkin pie spice, & cinnamon.

Some Frangelico. It drives me crazy how kids want to make pouring something into a bowl fun by bringing it up really high or pouring in circles – I just want to scream – JUST POUR IT IN ALREADY! But I don’t because I know, this too shall pass.

And finally some vanilla.

At this point X got distracted playing and left me. And I forgot to take pictures of the rest – which really wasn’t that exciting (not that the other parts were either, I suppose).

The recipe called for cooking at 325 for 45 minutes. Yeah right. I cooked mine for nearly 2 hours.

And boy, oh boy, did it come out SUPER looking.

We served it for dessert when our friends Aaron & Breanna came over, which was a superbly wonderful time….Ryan and I could have stayed up talking to them till 2 am but alas, 10pm was as much as all our kids could handle.

The cheesecake had awesome, awesome flavor. The consistency was not that of a normal cheesecake but didn’t taste weird at all. I read some comments on the recipe’s web page that say the same thing so I’m thinking that maybe it wasn’t just me.

Here is the recipe. Enjoy this for Thanksgiving, the day after, and the next day too!

**note** I used my standard GF all purpose flour for the 2 tablespoons needed in the topping.