Gluten Free Fruit Salad Made Easy

You can never get enough servings of fruits and vegetables into your children's diet. They need all those nutrients and vitamins to grow strong.

Here's a delicious gluten free fruit salad perfect for a healthy snack or a side dish to school lunch. It is also a fun recipe to prepare with your little R.O.C.K. Star's help. The greatest part is that this fruit salad provides probiotic healing for tummies and can be adapted to whatever seasonal fruit is available. In late summer at the beginning of school we do mangos, grapes, pineapple, and kiwi. In the winter we change to apples, dried cranberries or raisins, and pears. And in the spring we do strawberries, raspberries and grapes (bananas are ok but can brown easily). But any mixture that fits your taste buds will do just fine.

Gluten Free Fruit Salad

2 cups of seasonal fresh fruit

1/2 cup of Stonyfield Organic Vanilla Yogurt with probiotics (we buy it at Harris Teeter grocery store)

1/2 cup of walnut or pecan pieces

1 teaspoon of squeezed Orange Juice

Directions

Cut and slice fresh fruit after washing. Place into large bowl.

Sprinkle Orange juice over fruit and stir (this keeps fruit from browning)

Cut any nut pieces into small chunks and place in bowl.

Mix in yogurt and serve:-)

Gluten Free Easy Cheesy Quesadillas

I ran across this great little treat purely by accident. One day I stopped into a Mexican convenience store that carried groceries. In the refrigerated section was some pure corn tortillas by the company

El Milagro. They have been making tortillas for over 50 years and the lady behind the counter assured me that they were much better quality in taste than any other brand available. The greatest part is they are only $1.99 at La Pasadita Mexican Store on Highway 115 in Huntersville where we live. They are offered at Food Lion grocery stores as well but were a bit more expensive and every penny counts:-)

There are 36 in a pack and I recommend freezing half of them so they do not spoil unless you plan on eating them every day.

Gluten Free Easy Cheesy Quesadillas

2 pure corn El Milagro tortillas

Your favorite cheese

Directions:

Simply heat skillet on medium-high heat. Place one tortilla in bottom and lay slices of cheese across the top of it to cover tortilla. Place the second tortilla on top of the cheese. Turn the cheese quesadilla over after 5 minutes and cook 5 minutes on other side or until cheese is melted.

We serve them with lettuce, tomato, onion, a dollop of sour cream, guacamole and some jalapenos sometimes for a dinner entree too.

Gluten Free Pepperoni Muffin Bites Revised

We are usually on the hunt for any pizza recipe that is easy and tasty for our Celiac daughter.

Alot of pizza doughs need to rise and take a little more time to make which deters alot of people from making them - and then there is always the issue of heating them up at school if your child does not have access to a microwave which is not contaminated.

However, we found a yummy quick recipe on Disney's Family Fun website that doesn't require alot of work and is good even cold.

We simply adapted the recipe to gluten free by substituting Jule's All Purpose Baking Flour Mix for the regular flour portion in the recipe. If you do not use a mix that has xantham gum or guar gum, you might want to add 1 teaspoon of it.

(picture from Family Fun we did not use paper liners due to GF batter sticking)

Gluten Free Pepperoni Muffin Bites

Total time to make: 30 minutes

Ingredients

MUFFIN CRUST

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour GF (we used Jule's)

1/2 cup House of Autry yellow cornmeal

1 tablespoon sugar

2 teaspoons Clabber Girl baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 large egg, lightly beaten

1 1/4 cups milk

1/4 cup vegetable oil

TOPPING

1/3 cup Muir Glen pasta sauce

1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1/3 cup finely chopped Applegate Farms pepperoni

Instructions

Heat the oven to 400º and spray muffin pans with non stick cooking spray.

Sift the GF flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, and salt into a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, blend the egg, milk, and vegetable oil. Make a well in the dry mixture and add the liquid. Stir the batter until smooth.

In a small bowl, blend the marinara sauce and Parmesan cheese; set aside. Spoon the batter into the muffin pan liners, filling them about three quarters full. Spoon about 1/2 teaspoon of the sauce-and-cheese mixture on top of each one, pushing it in slightly to make a well, then sprinkle with chopped pepperoni.

Bake the muffins for 15 - 20 minutes depending on size of muffins; they'll puff up and brown slightly around the upper edge. Cool in the pan for several minutes, then remove from the pan and eat warm or refrigerate and heat in microwave for 30 seconds. They can be eaten room temperature also.

Makes about 36 mini muffins and 15 regular size muffins.