New Adventure--Homemade Breadcrumbs

Today I am joining Try New Adventures Thursday over at Alicia's Homemaking with the story of my first ever attempt at making my own breadcrumbs. Why would you ever want to make breadcrumbs from scratch when they sell them at the grocery store? I suppose you could do it to be frugal or to be fresh/organic/pioneer-y. I, however, did it to be wheat-free. As you know, my son is allergic to wheat. For months we've been buying him his own gluten-free bread, but he hates crust, which leaves at least two pieces of bread at the end of each loaf, and these are expensive loaves of bread so I hated to throw any of it out. So I've been keeping the heels in my freezer and in the back of my head thought I might one day make breadcrumbs.

Then came the moment of truth. I had mayonnaise chicken (just a breaded chicken recipe we like) coming up on my menu and it was time to do my little experiment.

I had to go to the web to find out what to do. I got my basic instructions here. Is it sad that I needed instructions? I had frozen bread and I didn't know if I needed to bake it, toast it, defrost it, or leave it to out to get stale??? So I googled it and got the help I needed. Love the internet! So it turned out I did need to bake the bread to dry it out. Here are the heels all lined up on my cookie sheet, I just used as much as fit on one sheet, it left me just a few slices to put back in my freezer for next time.Once the bread was done, I whipped out my fabulous Magic Bullet blender. I put in only a few chunks of bread at a time, then poured the crumbs into a bowl and fished out any un-blended chunks for the next go-round and so on till everything was nicely ground up. And voila, homemade wheat-free breadcrumbs!

I put the breadcrumbs in a ziploc bag and when it came time to make my chicken, I poured some out as usual, mixed them with spices (I normally just buy the Italian breadcrumbs already seasoned, so this time I had to add that step) and proceeded as usual--and the chicken turned out great. My husband thought it was better than usual, I thought it was pretty much identical in flavor, so either way that was a win. (I used almost all of this batch, and kept what was left in the pantry till next time.)

The verdict: super easy! I will definitely keep doing this so we always have wheat-free breadcrumbs in the pantry.

For more Adventures, be sure to check out Alicia's Homemaking.

What new things have you tried lately?

New Adventure--Homemade Lasagna

I'm excited to be participating for the first time in Alicia's Homemaking Try New Adventures Thursday link-up. I tried something new last weekend (New Years Day to be specific)--homemade lasagna! In case you didn't know, I hate to cook, I mean really hate, like washing-the-dishes hate. {Don't even get me started on the irony of me ending up as a housewife.} But I do it anyway, so I'm mostly drawn to quick and easy non-recipes. Therefore, it was a big step to make lasagna by myself.

Back in the day, we would eat Stouffer's frozen lasagna. Easy and yummy. But then they changed it or something and it became less yummy, plus we'd eaten it too often and we were just DONE. And we never really replaced it with anything. I have a baked penne recipe I like to make and I've made manicotti a few times, but it's been a long time since we had lasagna.

Meanwhile, my BFF has made homemade lasagna for a long time, but she also makes her spaghetti sauce from scratch, so clearly she's way ahead of me. But I was talking to her recently and she was saying how easy it is. So I asked for her recipe and she says she does it the way it says on the box of noodles (plus she doesn't even make her own sauce for it!).

I was thinking of taking the plunge, but of course L can't eat wheat. So do I make lasagna with gluten-free noodles?! First, we had to check the store (we shop at Sunflower, it's like Whole Foods but better). Hubby did the shopping and came home with what he found: no boil rice pasta lasagna noodles. But the recipe on its box was for Southwestern something lasagna--not helpful. So I found this recipe off the Barilla website, and got to work!

Basically it was super easy--I don't know what I was afraid of. I browned ground beef {I used ground beef instead of sausage in hopes the kids would like it} and added it to a jar of marinara sauce and then used extra sauce to coat the bottom of my pan, then layered noodles, cheese mixture, meat mixture and so on. It didn't take long because I didn't have to boil the noodles (I timed it, it took me 35 minutes to get it ready for the oven). That is not a picture of my creation. I took a picture, but couldn't wait to upload it, cuz that might take a while. This photo is from Barilla.

The bad news is the rice pasta was gross. Nasty! I couldn't eat it (I just ate the beef and cheese, but not the pasta) and the kids didn't like it. Hubby was a trooper and said it was good and ate it up. We decided next time to just use regular wheat noodles (and par-boil them) since L didn't like it anyway. (Also next time: sausage, yum.) I also thought it was heavy on the cheese so I might tone that down next time. But there will be a next time--really it was easier than the baked penne and manicotti I usually make.

So that was my lasagna-making adventure. Sorry there's no picture--I took one but if I waited till I uploaded it, well it might be June. For more adventures, go here.