Happy Easter!

Happy Easter Everyone! Jesus is Risen! Today, the culmination of our Christian faith has been fulfilled. Jesus conquered death and the tomb is empty! All for His intensely powerful love for us!

yum!

So today, after Mass, we had our Easter Brunch! It was filled with a delectable spread — both vegan, and meat friendly!

The Hubba-Hubba non-vegan stratta complete with bacon and LOTS of cheese!

For the non-vegans, there was an amazingly delicious stratta, which was my sis-in-law’s famous recipe. Some of the ingredients are: a stick of butter, cream of mushroom soup, a bag of cheddar cheese, and bacon! Yum! So decadent! There was also a Honey Baked Ham, and bacon.

look at that GF, Dairy-Free deliciousness

For the G-Free-ers, there was another stratta, which was healthy — made with GF bread, eggs, a little vegan cheese, and LOTS of fresh veggies! YUM!

melty cheeze, chewy mushrooms, and crunchy peppers!

Here’s what you need:

5 pieces of GF bread
4 whole eggs + 4 egg whites
splash of plain, unsweetened almond milk
1/2 onion, diced
1/2 can on green chilis
red pepper, diced
mushrooms, sliced
vegan Monterey Jack cheese

Saute your onion and green chilis in 1 tsp EVOO with salt and pepper. Spray a casserole dish with EVOO and tear your bread into pieces into the dish. Press them down a bit. Then, combine your eggs and milk in a bowl and whisk together. Stir in your cheese and all veggies. Pour over your bread. Cover with tin foil and refrigerate overnight.  Then, in the morning, sprinkle the top with a little more vegan cheese and a drizzle of almond milk, and bake for an hour at 350 degrees. YUM!

a plate full of goodness!

This stratta was so amazing because the bread had soaked up all the delicious egginess overnight, and the flavors all married together. The green chillies gave it a little flare, and the jack cheese definitely kicked it up a knotch. It was like a decadent, savory bread pudding! So decadently delicious, yet surprisingly healthy — made with half egg whites and veggies!

yum yum GF muffins! So incredibly moist and tender!

There were also delicious GF muffins. These were from a box mix ::sigh:: but so outstanding. GF baked goods are notoriously cakey, dense, crumbly, and chalky. But these! Wow! They were moist and delicious! Light and fluffy!

so moist and light! No one could believe they were Gluten Free!

My entire family was blown away by these muffins! The mix I used wasMeredith’s Marvelous Muffins! It’s basically a blank canvas that you can turn into banana nut muffins, blueberry, carrot cake, zucchini muffins, anything really! So I made cinnamon raisin. I added about 3/4 cup raisins and 3/4 tsp cinnamon! And instead of using butter, I used canola oil (dairy-free). They were so good!

the fruit salad to end all fruit salads!

We also had a GORGEOUS fruit salad, with fresh berries, pears, green apples and honey crisp apples, mango, cantaloupe and bananas. Succulent! The apples were sweet and tart and incredibly crunchy! The mango was a little tart but sweet, the banana was creamy and rich, the blue berries and strawberries were so fresh and the pears were spicy and sweet while the canteloupe was sweet and refreshing. MMM!

look at that AMAZING fruit salad!

I made way too much, because my eyes are bigger than my stomach when it comes to fruit — but that’s ok, because we’ll have fresh snack access for the next few days :)

fresh pressed organic orange juice!

And we washed it all down with fresh-pressed, organic orange juice from our juicer! We juiced organic oranges with 1 lime and 1 green apple. It was mouth-watering fantastic! This was a spread fit for a king!

gorgeous stratta with fresh veggies and an OUTSTANDING gluten-free muffin!

This weekend has been so wonderful. It has been so great having the family all together. I haven’t laughed this hard in a long time! Everyone let loose and had a great time. We will cherish these memories forever. The delicious food was just icing on the cake of a fantastic weekend:)

This juice...let me tell you...was outstanding. It was literally like drinking an orange! The bottled kind can't hold a candle to fresh pressed juice. Since juicers are a bit of an investment, I did a lot of research and found that Breville makes the best juicer. There are so many health benefits of fresh pressed juice. I  drink a green juice every morning! Here's the one I use and highly recommend.

The BEST GF Pesto Pizza & a CPB Krispie Bar!

Pizza is one of those foods that bring people together :) Super Bowl Parties, Friday Movie Nights, Birthday Parties, Bowling Nights, Elementary School Clean Classroom Winner Parties (remember the bribery?!), Poker Nights, Oscar Parties….the list goes on and on. Well, lets add to that list — because this AMAZING gluten and dairy free pizza brings both GF-ers, and non-GF-ers together with its fantastic crust!

I served it with tasty marinara sauce!

Well let me just say, this crust did not taste gluten free.  The texture, the flavor, the crunchiness and chewiness made this crust 100% delicious.  I will go so far as to declare that I am no longer looking for a crust recipe — this is my #1. The outside of the crust was that crunchy, golden texture that everyone loves. Then the center maintained that crisp-chewiness. It was not at all dense, crumbly, cakey, or sandy like most GF crusts. Just good.

that's my mom and I from the 80s in the back:)

I’ve made this delectable pizza before, but I’ll refresh your memory!

It was pretty easy to make…in fact, this was more like making a quick bread batter than dough.

happy tummy pizza!

This makes enough for one medium-ish pizza–it fed 3 people. If you’re feeding 4, you’ll definitely want to double the recipe and make 2 pies. We made ours in a stand mixer, but a hand mixer would work just fine. Here’s what you’ll need.

1 cup tapioca flour
1/2 cup sorghum flour
1/4 cup brown rice flour
1/4 cup GF AP flour mix (I used Bob’s Mill)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp xanthan gum
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 1/2 Tbsp light brown sugar
1 cup warm water (not boiling, but warm)
good pinch of sugar
3/4 tsp active dry yeast
1 Tbsp olive oil (You can use 2 Tbsp, but my tummy only likes 1)
1 beaten egg
1/8 tsp apple cider vinegar

under a blanket of vegan cheese!

Here’s what you do: Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Add all the dry ingredients and sugar to your mixer and mix them all together. (Use a hand whisk to make sure they are well incorporated). Then proof your yeast in 1 cup of warm water with a good pinch of sugar. It will foam–let it sit for about 10 minutes.  While the yeast sits, combine your beaten egg, oil, and vinegar in a separate bowl. Then, with your mixer on low, slowly pour in your yeast water, and egg mixture. Beat for about a minute on medium until it becomes smooth and batter-like.

Then, pour your batter onto a parchment-paper-sprayed-with-olive-oil lined pizza pan. (That was a mouthful!) Using a silicone spatula, spread it out until it is nice and thin. Then, let that sit by the oven for about 15 minutes.

olives and mushrooms and peppers, oh my!

Bake it for 10 minutes, then take it out, spray it with EVOO, and return it to the oven for another 15 minutes until it is golden — keep your eye on it! You now have the most amazing pizza crust to top with whatever your heart desires! Put your toppings on and pop it back in the oven until the cheese melts.

gorgeous emerald pesto on an outstanding crust!

Here’s how I topped it — WITH VEGAN PESTO!

1 cup fresh basil
1/2 cup toasted pine nuts
2 garlic cloves
juice of half a lemon
1 Tbsp EVOO
3-4 Tbsp water
salt to taste

Whirl those in the food processor until you get your gorgeous, emerald, creamy pesto!

refreshing and fantastic pesto

So the pizza had a pesto sauce instead of a red sauce.  This was the absolute correct decision. Then I topped it with:

1 onion, 6 sliced mushrooms, 1 red pepper — all sautéed together with 1 tsp EVOO, 2 grated garlic cloves, S & P.

sliced kalamata olives, chopped sun-dried tomatoes

Veggie Shreds Mozzarella Style Vegan Cheese

Oh. My. Gosh. This was AMAZING! The crust texture was phenomenal: crunchy but a little chewy, and sturdy enough to hold the toppings! The pesto was packed with fantastic basil and garlic flavor — so bright and lovely! The olives were salty, while the sun-dried tomatoes were intensely sweet. The mushrooms were earthy, while the red peppers were sweet and crunchy. All combined to pizza perfection :)

SO good!

Finally, I rounded out the meal with CPB Krispie Bars! CPB, for those of you who aren’t as obsessed as myself, stands for Chocolate Peanut Butter! This is my go-to dessert flavor combo. These bars weren’t outstanding…they were just ok. They tasted great, but the texture was lacking….welcome to the world of GF experimentation!

Gluten and Dairy Free!

I beat 2 egg whites with 1/4 tsp Cream of Tartar and 1/4 cup sugar until they formed stiff peaks. Then, I sifted in 1 cup of powdered sugar and 4 cups of Rice Krispies cereal. I put it in an olive-oil-sprayed baking dish and baked it for 15 minutes at 325. I then drizzled a mixture of semi-sweet, dairy-free chocolate chips, peanut butter, about 3/4 cup of powdered sugar, almond milk and vanilla extract. I warmed it in the microwave so I could melt and stir it, so it could drizzle.

not fantastic, but delicious

These were just alright — the texture just didn’t blow me out of the water. What happened – I think – is that the very porous krispies absorbed a lot of the egg white mixture, making them very hard to chew. My jaw got a workout eating that bad boy!! I enjoyed it, but will probably stick with vegan marshmallows in the future!

Oh well, a tasty mistake! The pizza definitely made up for it!

Let this healthy and delicious pizza bring G and G-Free together!

To whip the egg whites for the krispie bar, I used my KitchenAid stand mixer. It is truly an amazing appliance. It makes whipping up the egg whites a breeze! And you can do so many different things with it! From make cookies to pasta dough! We just got my sister-in-law a kitchenaid with the pasta making attachment. You can find these amazing tools here: