It's been several weeks now since grocery store shelves around Chattanooga started looking empty and I had to adjust how I feed my family. I'll admit that the first couple of weeks caused me a bit - ok A LOT - of anxiety. As someone who is used to feeding a large family in a particular way, having that system shut down was stressful to say the least. Dietary restrictions make matters even more difficult, but I think we are finally settling in to a routine. 

Since I'm starting to get a handle on "cooking during the apocalypse," I thought I'd share what's been working. 

Online grocery ordering is no longer the simple process it used to be. For years I sat down on a particular afternoon, with my meal plan in hand, searched for the ingredients I wanted, added them to my cart, and picked them up within a few hours. Ah, the good old days. I now grab a pickup time days in advance and add items to my cart a little at a time as they become available, knowing that what I order may not be available on the day I pick up. I order simple things as much as possible - meat, veggies, fruit, and pantry staples - so that I have options when I pick up the groceries and only get half of what I ordered. Think: chicken, broccoli, gluten free flour; not chorizo, fresh garlic, and cassava. 

Once I pick up my groceries I look at what I have and plan our meals from there - the opposite of what I've done most of my adult life. Yeesh. 

This week, I created a Google doc and added a table, listing proteins, veggies/sides, etc. Then I simply combined a protein with a couple of sides to come up with meals for the week. Here's what I came up with!

Dinners: 

• Spaghetti
• Bbq chicken with baked beans and mashed potatoes
• Roasted turkey, sweet potatoes, green beans
• Hawaiian chicken (with pineapple), steamed broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots, baked potatoes
• Pizza
• Ground beef nachos
• Buffalo chicken stuffed potatoes
• Chicken parmesan, steamed veggies
• Buffalo chicken sandwiches with chips and fruit
  
  
  It's not exactly what I would've planned if I'd been able to do all this the other way around, but it's certainly better than I was doing when this all started! How are you doing with menu planning? Grocery shopping? Life in general? Give me your best tips (or just vent about how hard things are!!) in the comments. 

Gluten and Dairy Free!

I figure if I'm going to stress-bake, I might as well share my recipes! This is an old favorite that I've adapted to our food intolerances. With practice, I've made the altered version taste even better than the original!

Ingredients: 
- 1 stick of plant butter (I just tried Country Crock Plant Butter and the consistency is amazing!)
- 1 1/4 cup sugar divided (sorry, but real, unhealthy sugar is the best for this recipe. It's a treat. Just go for it.)
- 2 large eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup gf all purpose flour
- 1/3 cup almond flour
- 1 1/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 6oz vanilla Greek yogurt (even with our dairy sensitivities, we do ok with Greek yogurt, but a soy or coconut milk yogurt would work just as well)
- 2 1/2 cups strawberries (fresh or frozen - thaw first if using frozen, slice if using fresh)

Directions
Add sugar and plant butter to a large mixing bowl. Mix with electric mixer until fluffy. My Kitchenaid mixer with the whisk attachment is perfection. Add eggs in one at a time and continue to mix until incorporated. Add vanilla. 
In a separate mixing bowl mix together dry ingredients. Add 1/2 of the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix. Add 1/2 the Greek yogurt and mix. Repeat. 
Add strawberries to batter and gently fold in with a spatula. 
Spray a large glass rectangular baking dish with cooking spray and add batter. Top with extra strawberries and sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 350 for 35-45 minutes or until top is golden brown and set. It will continue to cook once removed from the oven, so don't worry if it isn't completely done in the middle!
Let sit in warm baking dish for 30 minutes. Serve warm. Or cold. Its good either way.