Please Don’t Gluten Me, Grandma!

My mom brought home 2 trays of homemade baked beans from my grandma’s house yesterday, and of course I had to scrutinize the ingredients. You can’t avoid gluten and not be a thorough label or recipe-checker. Turns out, they are gluten-free and made with a very short list of ingredients. Yay! Because they are deeeeelicious. I’ll get to them in a minute. First, I want to talk about my impromptu walk with Dustin.

It was around 5:30PM and we hadn’t been out of the house all day except to check the mail, so I asked Dustin if he’d like to go for a walk. I intended to just get a little fresh air, maybe a 20-30 minute stroll around the ‘hood, but we ended up walking for 1.5 hours! The weather was so beautiful even though rainclouds were looming. Eventually, it was nothing but clear, sunny skies and a cool breeze. My kind of weather. We dipped off of the road at one point to follow a path to a clearing in the woods. It was a lot of fun walking through the shady forest, dodging bunny poos and hoping bears don’t decide that we’d make a nice after snack. We decided that we’re going to pack a lunch sometime this week and go for a hike through the trees. If we didn’t attract bears with our scents alone, our lunch is sure to, LOL.

We worked up an appetite covering about 5-5.5 miles or so. Throughout the day, I had a small bowl of my lentil and cabbage soup, plus olives, gluten-free Mary’s Gone Crackers, and Barbara’s gluten-free rice Puffins with a bit of goat’s milk. By dinnertime, I was ravenous. After a much-needed shower, I started on dinner with help from mom.

Dinner menu:

• Grilled bone-in chicken thighs with OrganicVille gluten-free BBQ sauce
• Boiled white potatoes
• Roasted Brussels sprouts
• Grandma’s baked beans with bacon

After discarding the skin and bones, the chicken has about 2oz of meat on it, so I loaded up on plant-based sides, which suits me just fine! Plants rule. Truthfully, I would have been in my glory with just the veggie side dishes; I wouldn’t have missed the chicken, maybe the BBQ sauce, though.

My potato was the smallest one, probably 100g before-boil. Topped with a bit of lactose- and casein-free ghee, garlic sea salt, and black pepper.

I bought 2 packages of Brussels sprouts at Hannaford the other night that were ready to be cooked; washed, seasoned with olive oil, black pepper, salt, and garlic. I typically skip those pre-prepped overpriced veggies, but they looked too good to pass up for $3.49 each.

Grandma’s gluten-free baked beans:

Ingredients: Pre-cooked canned pinto beans, bacon, black strap molasses, white onion, brown sugar, and Heinz ketchup.

I believe she chops, then cooks the bacon and onions together, then mixes them with the beans, molasses, ketchup, and brown sugar, then bakes them until the top is just a little crispy. They are they best baked beans EVER! Yum!!!

I may have gone a little overboard on the legumes and cruciferous veggies yesterday. Cabbage, lentils, beans, Brussels sprouts—’nuff said, lol.

For dessert: A few bites of Purely Decadent gluten-free, dairy-free cookie dough “ice cream” straight out of the container. I’m classy like that.  Do you eat ice cream out of the container?

The weekend is coming up on us quickly. Do you have any plans? Me… just working and our yard sale, weather and energy permitting. My father died almost 19 years ago when I was 12, so we might bring flowers to the cemetery if we have time—it’s an hour away. Tonight is going to be a long night. So much work to do. But you gotta make that jangle! No banker’s hours around these parts, we work around the clock. hehe

Tagged as: baked beans, BBQ, beans, brussels sprouts, chicken, ghee, gluten-free, grilled, potatoes