Keeping Up with the Capra's: Weekend Trips, Food Blog Angels, and a Talented Sister

Happy Friday!

It's already the third week in November... crazy!

This week has been a hectic one, mostly consisting of catching up on late homework (oops) and avoiding my sink full of dirty dishes (double oops), but it's been a good one! Jon has off this weekend, and that was unplanned. So I'm looking forward to finishing my homework this afternoon and then enjoying the rest of the weekend!

Wanna know what else we've been up to this month?

Gluten Free Pineapple Upside-Down Cake : By the Cupcake Queen

Hey, I'm Amy (A.K.A., the Cupcake Queen)!
I'm Casey's little sister, and I'm ten years old. I'm guest posting because Casey's in Colorado!

I'm writing about Pineapple Upside-Down Cake. The reason we started making this, is because Casey wanted something scrumptious before she left ;) It's a simple little recipe that the whole family loved.

Gluten Free Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

Ingrediants:
Parchment paper
6 tablespoons of unsalted butter
3/4 cup lightly packed brown sugar
12-16 whole maraschino cherries
1 can crushed pineapples, reserving 1/4 cup of the juice (looks prettier with sliced pineapples)
1 package yellow, gluten-free cake mix
1/4 cup (1/2 package) vanilla instant pudding mix
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

** we also added 2 eggs to make the recipe less dense.

Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. (Rack should be in the center of the oven)
- Grease a 9x13 pan
- Place parchment paper on the bottom of the pan, and set aside

- Melt butter in saucepan over low heat.
- Remove from heat and stir in brown sugar until blended.
- Pour brown sugar mixture onto the parchment paper; spread evenly.
- Arrange pineapple and cherries to your liking over the brown sugar mixture (if you are using slices, like we did, arrange as follows).

- Beat cake mix, pudding mix, sour cream, oil, reserved 1/4 cup of pineapple juice and vanilla well (this is where we added the two eggs). Scrape down the edges of the mixture with a spatula periodically (lick if you must;)

- Carefully smooth batter over pineapple.

- Stick it in the oven for 38-42 minutes, or it's golden-brown and springy.
**if cake browns too quickly, shield with aluminum foil.

- Let the cake cool for 2-3 minutes when ready.

- Run a knife around edges of the pan, and flip onto serving plate. Peel off parchment.

- The recipe says to let cool for 20 minutes before serving, but we only waited 2-3 minutes ;) Sometimes they exaggerate ;)

- Serve with ice cream, cool whip, or whip cream (it's so good, though, you could eat it by itself!)

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Thanks for letting me share!!
Until next time,

The Cupcake Queen 

Amy is one of ten kids, and an avid lover of baking...which includes her favorite: Cupcakes! She also enjoys playing with her cousins and siblings, and being crazy. She has a great sense of style, and is a fantastic dancer. She likes fluffy little puppies and acrobatics and making people laugh. She also believes in mis-matched socks. 

Game Food : By Rob Flora

Note from Casey: This is one of my all-time FAVORITE foods EVER. Totally worth trying, in and out of football season. :)

Two of my favorite things to do are watch football and eat game food!  What is game food you ask?  Well it’s whatever you want it to be.  Some of my favorites are wings, buffalo chicken dip, and spinach artichoke dip!  So I though I’d share one of Casey's favorites with you guys.

Hot Spinach Artichoke Dip

Ingredients:

1 - 16oz can of artichoke hearts

1 - 10oz package or frozen spinach (I only use half the package, it’s green and I’m a guy, so green stuff is yucky!)

1/2 cup of sour cream (non of that low fat junk!)

1/2 cup of mayonnaise (once again full fat baby!)

1 cup of shredded parmesan cheese (we like to call it “farmer john” cheese)

2 minced garlic cloves (sometimes I like to put in 3, love me some garlic)

1 - pinch of salt

1 - pinch of black pepper

Directions:

Drain the juice from the artichokes and chop the mess out of them.  One of those hand choppers is perfect.  Nuke the spinach in the microwave for about a minute and then break off half (unless you are making this for a bunch of spinach loving people, I for one am not) save the other half for something else.  Make sure to squeeze the excess liquid from the spinach, too much spinach juice makes for loose dip. Add the sour cream,mayo, garlic, parm cheese, salt, and pepper.  Mix it all together and bake at 350 for 25 minutes.  Serve with tortilla chips.

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I'm Rob, Casey's favorite uncle. I am a devoted Christian, husband to my bride of 15 years, father & school principal to four brilliant homeschoolers. Following my full time job at home with my family, I am a 9-5er computer network engineer, but my love is photography. I shoot as much and as often as I can as a part-time side business with hopes of, one day, making it a full time reality.

Gluten Free Cookin' : By Mother Dearest

Today I wanted to share with you 2 cookbooks that I really have enjoyed using in this last year and a half adventure of being gluten free in our home. 

Now here is my disclaimer… I don’t know much about this! The recipes/cookbooks that I like may not be the healthiest that there ever was, but they work for us. My children do not have Celiac's Disease, so we do not have to worry about cross-contamination and all the other very specific needs of that disease. 

So with that said, here are the 2 cookbooks that I wanted to share with you.

The first is Free For All Cooking by Jules Shepard. I also buy her flour mix. I have found her flour mix to be versatile and very convenient. I first started  on this journey, mixing all of my own flours and it was very time consuming for me. With 10 kiddos, I need quick and convenient, yet homemade at the same time (come on…Sandra Lee has made a whole empire out of that attitude). 

There are so many recipes that I haven’t tried in here yet…but there are a few that I really like. The pancake recipe is what I use for all of our pancakes and waffles. Yummy. Her zuchinni bread recipe is really good. She even has a reipe for homemade poptarts. Tried those! Pretty time consuming but my son really liked them.

Now, talk about convenient… The Cake Mix Doctor Bakes Gluten Free  by Anne Byrn is my next one. I always have Gluten free cake mixes in my pantry. ALWAYS! So far, I have found them to be the cheapest on Amazon on their  Subscribe and Save program. Through that program, I have the cake mixes delivered every other month right to my door. From coffee cakes to bundt cakes, I can throw something together in a matter of moments. We all know how it feels when someone invites you over at the spur of the moment and you want to bring something. This book has saved me many times in just that circumstance…

Just for the record, she has  a regular Cake mix Doctor cookbook too.  Give it a try… gluten free or not, you can’t go wrong with these cake mix cookbooks.

Have a great day!

____________

Carrie Heard is a fantastic mother of ten kids (as of now;) that range from the ages of 18 and  6 months. She homeschools, cooks, cleans, and does all the practical things a mom should do, but balances the loving and disciplinary work extraordinarily well.

She loves trying new styles, thrifting, and decorating her home tastefully on a budget.

Bottom line, she's fantastic.

Best. Mom. Ever.

Belly Flop

Two things you wouldn't know about me unless you've lived with me:

1. I like eating from mugs.

2. I like drinking from mason jars.

I don't eat much, though, or often. This wasn't really a problem until I started exercising a lot. 

Now I need more protein, but I still don't eat much. 

So I've been trying to incorporate more protein in my meals without adding to the portion size and without cheating my dairy, egg and gluten allergies. 

The Result?

A weird pasta, that was almost a success.

- brown rice spaghetti noodles

- refried beans

- chicken breast

- crushed tomatoes

- salt and garlic

It was pretty good, considering it consisted mainly of leftovers..

The only problem was, it was a bit flavorless. If I knew more about spices, I probably could have fixed it. 

But hey, I'm learning :)

GET FLUFFY

I am a firm believer in the notion that the holidays are a time to celebrate, be with your favorite people and get fat.
Yup.
It's a time to throw out the diet and simply enjoy yourself.
This does absolutely nothing to my self-esteem, considering all the added layers brought on by the cold already make me feel a bit more rotund, but what else are New Year's resolutions for?

Just sayin', I think this is gonna be my first January with "Go to the gym" on my resolutions list... haha!

But for serious. This fattening season has encouraged me to find some goodies that are scrumptious but also don't tempt me to toss my allergy symptoms out the window.
Which is lame. I can disregard the calorie content, but not the ingredients. :/

So, in light of this ramble, my goal is to find some fattening gluten-, dairy-, and egg-free lovelies.

This is the first one: GF Magic Bars are what they're called,
and yes,
they are magic.
Alas, that is why I had to steal these pictures from Life as Mom, because I finished the whole pan so darn fast....

Double Chocolate Magic Bars (original recipe here)
1 & 1/2 cups Oreo cookie crumbs (we used crushed gluten free graham crackers)
1 stick melted butter
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup unsweetened coconut flakes
1 can sweetened condensed milk (I have found easy recipes for soy and almond sweetened condensed milk, but have not tried them yet)

- Pour melted butter into a 9 x 13 pan, and combine with cookie (or graham cracker) crumbs.
- Press lightly to form a crust-like layer.
- Sprinkle the chocolate chips on; then the coconut.
- Cover with sweetened condensed milk.
- Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.

Super easy; super fattening. Which makes it great for getting fluffy over the holidays ;)
Also, these beauties freeze well, too, cut into squares and layered in a container with wax paper.
Honestly, though, after you've tried them, they'll be gone as soon as you've cut them ;)

Try 'em out, and let me know what you think!
And GET FLUFFY ;)
Love,
               Casey

Turkey +Bacon Wrap

Most days, I totally draw a blank on creative ways to make lunch yummy, so I thought I'd share this "stroke of brilliance" that my brother and I stumbled upon. Just in case there are any other people like me who "draw blanks" on a semi-daily basis;)
Hunter and I had a bacon craving (which shouldn't surprise anyone who knows us... these cravings come pretty regularly;) so we took up the challenge to make something delicious and mostly healthy for lunch.

The result?

Hunter made his with just cream cheese and turkey, but I made mine with avocado, goat cheese, turkey, and corn tortillas. It was sooo good!

Hope your Tuesday is grand; full of victories in the Lord, and full of small things that make you smile!
`Casey

Dinner

My motivation for making dinner came from two different sources. Since Mama's pregnant, she cannot stand the smell, sight or taste of meat (which I consider to be a necessity to my survival;). She doesn't get sick, but gets realll nauseous and tired in the afternoons.... still she's no slacker! She's been really good at still cooking for us, but I figured I'd give her a break.

And I figured I'd better start learnin' how to cook NOW, so my future husband doesn't have to suffer through many experiments, failures, and TV dinners one day;)

So, the experiment? Slow Cooker Garlic Chicken and Vegetables.
The result?

What I consider a successsss;)

This is after my fam attacked it;)

One of my litter brothers, Hudson (a.k.a, Huddy;) wanted some Casey time, so he helped with the salad. I'm pretty sure his love language is quality time, so it was great having some extra help AND knowing I'm filling my lil' bro's love tank at the same time.

He made sure he got his lettuce-slaying weapon in the picture;)

 All we did for the salad was chop lettuce, tomatoes, and carrots, add some sunflower seeds and a raisin mix, and finished her off with some feta and goat cheese! It was superb with Orange & Cranberry Vinagrette.

Wyatt helped too, but he didn't feel like smiling for a picture, haha;)

Was it my favorite meal ever? No. Kinda bland. But I'm super proud of myself for trying;) I told Mama that when I get married one day, I'm gonna have to re-learn cooking; this recipe alone I had to quadruple!! I'm going to be so used to feeding an entire army, that I'm gonna be cookin' a lot of leftovers until I get used to a family of two;)

I've decided I love family dinner times. There were so many smiles sitting around my table today, and it wasn't cuz the food was good. They were just all happy. It was lovely:)