Bacon-studded Honey Mustard Snaxx

This month’s Improv ingredients are pretzels & mustard. I love making mustard (like I did here) but one must do that not-at-the-last-minute for a challenge!

Anyhow, the wonderhubs has a life-long aversion to pretzels, & I am currently (involuntarily) participating in an aversion to gluten. My solution was to come up with a gluten-free snack mix, where he could pick around those nazzzty pretzel pieces.

I’d been seeing “Muddy Buddies” & “Chex Snack” mixes done in the crock pot on various blogs. That sounded so much more exciting to me than heating the oven/house for an hour or two while toasting the mix. (If your slow cooker, like mine, does not have a vent, you will need to use a towel to absorb the “perspiration” that comes off the mix as it cooks.)

Here’s my recipe:

¼ cup mustard powder

¼ cup water

½ cup butter

½ cup honey

3 cups Corn Bran Crunch™ cereal

3 cups Rice Chex™ cereal

3 cups Honey Nut Chex™ cereal

3 cups gluten free pretzels

2 cups gluten free rice crackers

1 cup sliced almonds

1 cup bacon crumbles

Mix mustard powder with water and let sit to thicken 10-15 minutes. Melt butter and stir in honey. Add thickened mustard and whisk until smooth.

Combine remaining ingredients into crock. Pour over honey mustard mixture and stir gently.Cook on “Low” for 2 hours, carefully stirring every 30 minutes.

Pour onto parchment paper to cool.Devour!

This makes you wish for a larger crock…

…because you want to TRIPLE the recipe!

Check out what my friends did with their pretzels & mustard:

An InLinkz Link-up

gluten free carrot bread (the slow-cooker way…)

I had to defrost my big freezer last week and I found several containers of (cooked) carrot pureé that I needed to use. Made me decide to experiment with my gluten-full carrot bread recipe using GF flours. I also had heard talk of baking quick breads in the crockpot, so I wished to try that as well.I mixed the dry ingredients into a large bowl:

• 1 1/2 c. GF flour
• 1 T. psyllium
• 1 t. baking soda
• 1/2 t. kosher salt
• 1 t. cinnamon
• 1/4 t. nutmeg

In the mixer, I blended the following:

• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1/2 c. sour cream or plain yogurt
• 1/2 c. honey (I actually used half molasses & half honey this time)
• 1 c. carrot pureé

Stirred the dry ingredients into the liquids.Scraped the batter into my prepared loaf pan.Placed it in the crockpot & covered with a few layers of paper towels under the lid (to absorb the steam droplets that collect on the underside of the lid…) Set it on the “high” setting and walked away for about 3 hours. Smelled so wonderful I had a hard time letting the bread cool.Very nice texture.Awesome with cream cheese!

Sunday Dinner

We live a little over half an hour from our church. Before we met up with Dave Ramsey we used to stop at a favorite Mexican- or Chinese-food restaurant on the way home. ahhhhh -- how simple life was when we were abusing our poor little credit card...

Now, I actually have to plan ahead & have dinner pretty much fixed before we head out the door in the morning. Since it is summer time (ie oven-less cooking time...) I like to have something in the slow cooker. Some days we come home to a roast & fixin's, sometimes it will be spaghetti sauce or a casserole...

This Sunday I started out with three frozen large chicken breast portions.

I added four cups of brown rice, eight cups water, olive oil, a couple tablespoons chicken bullion, a few cloves of garlic & a handful of fresh basil, snipped.

When we arrived home I turned off the crock and added Parmesan cheese then replaced the lid while we readied the rest of dinner.

I have to say, there was a little left; but that was because Keith was called into work... (He ate his share that night!)

Raspberry Peach Crisp (gluten-free)

And, I might add, cooked in my crockpot with no added sugar!

Having guests for dinner tonight... 


I wanted to fix a dessert that would please my gluten-free palate, delight a near diabetic & be suitable for someone with lactose intolerance. As I meandered through Winco, I found some gorgeous peaches on sale. Suddenly I had a hankerin' for a peach crisp.


As I headed to the freezer to get some vanilla bean ice cream to top it off, I spied a bag of frozen raspberries. Suddenly I was hankerin' for a raspberry/peach crisp!


Since it's supposed to be 106° this afternoon, I wondered if I could cook this in the slow cooker instead of heating up my kitchen with the oven. Did a little research & found that the trick seems to be the paper towel under the lid while the cooking's going on...


OK -- so here are the deets:


     stir into crock pot:
          8 cups fresh sliced peaches
          12 oz. frozen raspberries
          1/4 c. white rice flour

     mix together & drop on top of fruit:
          1/2 c. butter
          1/2 c. honey
          1 c. ground almonds
          2 c. rolled oats
          1 T. cinnamon
          1 t. kosher salt

     dollop on top of fruit in crock

     Cover crock with paper towel, then lid. 

     Bake on low 4-5 hours.

     Serve with your favorite vanilla bean ice cream!

SPROUTS' chicken sausage

If you're reading this before dinner, please stop.

The boys were with me when I shopped Sprouts this week. They always manage to steer the cart over to the meat counter. They always manage to get me to look at the tremendous variety of sausages. Chicken sausages were on sale, so we bought a pound each of two different varieties.

First on our list to try was the Basil.

We like to roast sausages with a variety of vegetables in the oven. I dislike using the oven during summer, so into the slow-cooker (on high)the chopped links went 

(with a bit of olive oil, because chicken sausages tend to dry out...)

I stirred occasionally to keep it all browning nice and even.

We let the meat brown for a bit, and then added our two chopped red bell peppers & an onion.

About an hour before serving time I started my Garlic Brown Rice. 

I start that by putting olive oil in the sauce pan to coat the rice a bit. 

I add my granulated garlic & ever-present bouillon to the rice. 

I heat that over medium-high until I can smell the garlic and the rice starts to sizzle slightly & brown. I add hot water, then simmer until done.

Because I'm lazy To save on dishes to wash To make sure no one hogged we had an even distribution of meat & veggies to rice & eater, I stirred the rice into the crock pot with the sausage chunks. 

(If you have none of the above concerns, you may simply plate the rice then spoon the sausage, onion & peppers prettily over the top.