St. Patrick's Day Feast with Corned London Broil

I love St. Patrick's Day. It's one of my favorite holidays. I like to remember my heritage and listen to Gaelic music. This year for our St. Patties Day feast I made my standard colcannon, corned beef, and Irish soda bread. To see what I made lasts year and to get the recipe for the colcannon click here. The newest addition to my menu is the Irish soda bread. I use the recipe from Gluten Free Girl and The Chef, we ate ours with Earth Balance spread and honey.  This year I did something different for the corned beef.

I was shocked at the prices of corned beef so I thought I would make my own, but the price for brisket was worse. So I thought that maybe I could corn a different cut of beef. So I got a London Broil, it's a cheap cut of meat that can be used in many ways so I thought way not give it a try. I bought a London Broil that a good amount of fat and I used the recipe from this site, click here. I adjusted the recipe to fit the size of my London Broil. It took 5 day for the beef for brine and become corned beef. I cooked it in the crock pot and it worked great. It sure tasted and smelled like corned beef. It worked! It wasn't as tender as brisket, maybe if I cooked it for longer then 3 hours it might have started to fall apart, but nonetheless it turned out well and even the picky toddler ate it. It's good to know that we can have corned beef for St. Patrick's Day with a cheaper cut of beef. It wasn't a hard process at all, the beef sat in the fridge and did all the work for about a week.

Traveling and Seeds Conference

I apologize for not keeping up on my blog during my travels like I said I would. I didn't realize how jammed packed our schedule would be and that I wouldn't get more then a few minutes to my self. So here is the review of what I ate on the road and a critique on the items that I made and brought along and of what I learned at the conference. 


If you missed the previous post here is it: Trip Preparations 

Church on the Move: Seed's Conference

 
Day 1
We left at 5:30 am to drive all the way to Tulsa. The snack food that I packed was much appreciated and my mom made some Pamela's chocolate cupcakes for us to take along too. The food was mostly shared between two of use gluten free people and one other that was in our car, but between all of us we had food to share from dried fruits to sausage and cheese to the stuff I made. The items that I made that had to most success in consumption were the Spiced Pumpkin Muffins, Pamela's cupcakes, and the Doughnut Holes. We did discover that the best tasting doughnut holes were the ones that were rolled in sugar. The cereal bars got completely smashed, they tasted great but didn't hold up to craziness of travel. The Larabars were good, but not many of them were eaten. 


For lunch we stopped at Subway were all we could have were salads. 


For dinner that night we went to Chuy's Mexican restaurant. Everyone seemed to like it, but we were dead tired by the time we got dinner at 9 pm that I don't think anyone would care too much about what they ate. I had a grilled chicken salad with avocados, it was good, but could used more avocados. There were other GF person on the trip got corn tortilla quesadilla. I should have taken advantage of the other items on the menu, and you'll see why in a minute. 

We had an awesome speaker Wednesday night, I can't remember his name except his first name was Steve and he is a very young pastor. He talked about how we need to make room for God's miracles and do some work. We just can't expect things to happen if we don't do the leg work for God to more. He used the example of 2Kings 3:9-17 of the army digging ditches to prepare for the rain they desperately needed, but there were no clouds in the sky. No one saw the rain come, but the ditches and valley were filled with water in the morning. This seemed to be a theme throughout the conference. 


Day 2
We had continental breakfast at the hotel. I ate one of my muffins and a banana. They had a good spread...if you could eat it. They had oatmeal and waffles and eggs, but the eggs looked powdered and microwaved. 

For lunch Church on the Move did the most awesome thing. You can could buy lunch there for $5. It included a lunch of three choices: sandwich, wrap, or salad, and then a drink of your choice. Each meal choice came with apples slices, trail mix or crackers or chips. For the salad bag always came with crackers. These crackers were an awesome find. They were multigrain GF crackers made with quinoa and sesame seeds and flax seeds.There were a new favorite by most people in the group.

We spent the majority of our day going to workshops and learning how to be better leaders, creating a creative and worship culture and the importance of culture. Our guest speakers for this day were Lee Cockerell who ran Disney World and Ed Young the senior pastor of Fellowship church of Dallas and Miami areas.  They both has some very good values and lessons on working with the right people to create the vision you have and leadership. 

For dinner we were suppose to all meet up at a burger joint, but me and one other gal got lost and we just decided to get Chick Fil A. I got grilled chicken strips and fries. I was very happy to get something other then a salad at this point. I heard that the salads at the burger place were bad and over priced and that Chick Fil A's were better and bigger.  


We concluded the evening with some awesome worship and a performance of their version of the drummer boy - Micheal Jackson style, very cool.

Day 3
This day was much like the first one, breakfast at the hotel and then another salad lunch by the wonderful people at Church on the Move.


This day was our half day, we had to leave after the afternoon workshops so we could drive home at a somewhat decent time (3 am).  The workshops for this day were more Q&A style with different departments and learning what they do and how they do it and how they make working relationships work between different departments, very good information. 


For dinner we stopped in the middle of no where and ate at Braums; it's like a Wendy's only a bit more homegrown with their ingredients. We tried to find a fast food place on the drive that might have options other then a salad for us GF people. I am very thankful to my worship pastor who tried to figure out what his only 2 GF people could have out of 9 people. He tried and I am very much appreciate his efforts, unfortunately there isn't much options on the road in the mid west. I did get a salad (Have you noticed the theme yet?) that was a grilled chicken salad that was actually quite good. It had big think pieces of chicken and mixed greens instead of just ice burg lettuce. 


So after a few days on the road in a part of the country I've never been to I have to say it wasn't too bad. People didn't ask "what is gluten?" when we asked, but there weren't much in the way of options still. Making my own food to take along with a good idea and life saver on the open road, I might have made too much, but that is ok I can snack on them now at home. I am tired of salads. I've had 5 in the last 3 days. I might have eaten healthy, but I would have given anything for Red Robin burger. 


If you plan on traveling this summer I would highly suggest making some goodies to take along and coordinate with others. Things like dried fruit, apples and even chips make great snacks that all can share and enjoy. If you come to a place to eat that has more then salads as an option - take it and eat it! Save your salad meals as your last resort if you have to stop somewhere that doesn't have anything else to offer people like us. I don't believe in making others eat where only you can eat, majority rules when it comes to picking a place to eat. Nonetheless, show your deep appreciation to those why try to find a restaurant that fits your needs, even if it doesn't work out. It's hard to find happy mediums in life, so take what you can get and don't dwell on it and move on. If I focused on this trip from a food allergy point of view it would be remembered as a miserable time, but remembering what I saw and learned and who I shared that with are the memories I was to keep.

Trip Preparations

From Stock.xchng

I'm preparing to go on a road trip that will cross a few states. I am going to the Seeds Conference at Church on the Move in Tulsa. This is my first road trip since my new diet lifestyle. I'm not the only GF person going, which is a comfort on many levels, so I've been busy preparing a bunch of snacks for the road trip. I'm making a few recipes that I found off of Pinterest that I did pin to my recipe board. Here is a complete list of what I am making, and hopefully this will help some of you that might be going a trips this spring or summer.

I made these cereal bars from Tessa the Domestic Diva. They are really simple and easy to make, and I think I'll keep making these again in the future and keep a stock pile of flavors in the fridge.

I also made these no bake Larabars. I hope these turn out well. I haven't tried them yet. There are a lot of good looking and healthy recipes from this blog that include chocolate.

I also made these no bake oatmeal and carrot balls. They smelled really good and I can't wait to eat one of these on the open road.

I also made doughnut holes from Pamela's. A few of these are already missing from my stash for the trip, everyone likes these and I love how easy they are to make.

I am also bringing along my own creation, Spiced Pumpkin Muffins. My daughter has already snagged one of these fresh from the oven. These will be great for breakfasts. I know the hotel will have breakfast, but you never know what is safe in those situations.

I am freezing all of my creations before our trip and then we are are taking a cooler of goodies for the trip. I'm also thinking of making and taking, salads in a jar. I saw them on Pinterest and they look like a nice and easy way to bring salads along on a road trip.

I plan on documenting my meals as we travel and report what I find; the good, the bad, and hopefully the yummy. So stay tuned for some road side adventures in the next few days.