Honeyville Almond Flour

Whether you eat gluten-free, avoid carbohydrates on a high protein diet, or are simply an adventurous cook, I bet that you have cooked with almond flour.  The recipes in my cookbook, Texas Homesteader Wheat-Free Cookbook, depend on almond flour.  But as I found out while experimenting for my cookbook, not all almond flours are created equal.

On the gluten-free aisle in your grocery store, you are inundated with different flours.  From garbanzo beans to potato starch, the choices can make your head spin, especially if you were only familiar with refined white flour and whole wheat flour before.

Almond flour is high in protein, low in carbohydrates, and high in fiber.  Almonds are also high in copper, iron, and vitamins.  To read more about the health benefits of almonds, click here.

Some companies use the term almond flour and almond meal interchangeably, but there is a difference.  Almond flour is made from grinding blanched almonds without their skins while almond meal is made from grinding the whole sweet almond.  The consistency is the difference.  Almond flour is more like flour while almond meal is more like corn meal.  If you bake much, you know that consistency and texture matters.

In my baking and in my gluten-free recipes, I use almond flour.  I do a lot of baking; therefore, I order it in bulk.  In fact I order as much as I can afford.  The more you order, the cheaper it costs you per pound.  Almond flour keeps well in the freezer so you can order more than you can use at the moment.

Honeyville Grain is the best almond flour available in my opinion.  It is a consistent product and yields absolutely delicious baked goods.  On the Resources and Links page in my cookbook, I write, “(Honeyville Grain) is a great source of high-quality blanched almond flour in bulk for a fraction of the cost in the grocery stores.”

If you sign up for the emails, they will send you a 10% discount code for your next order.  Regardless of how much blanched almond flour you purchase, the shipping is only $4.49.  If you want to try incorporating almond flour into your diet, order from Honeyville Grain.  You won’t be disappointed by the quality of their product.

The garden was the hardest to get back under control.  The tomatoes have gone crazy.  The squash died.  The peppers were producing in force.  Our potatoes needed to be pulled up.  Weeds were also growing like mad.

Usually I find harvesting to be the most rewarding part of gardening.  Literally  eating the fruits of your labor gives you a sense of accomplishment.  But, sometimes you harvest so much that the quantity of vegetables is overwhelming.

You don’t want to waste your produce.  You have worked too hard for that.  You give away what you can, but most of it you want to put up for the rest of the year.  I love to make things with my vegetables or can or freeze them so that I can enjoy them year round.

First, I made pickles.  I made dill and bread and butter pickles both in spears and in slices.  My son ,Jake, and I put up 12 quarts of pickles.  That will be one quart of pickles a month for the rest of the year.  I don’t know about your family, but that sounds about right for us.

Then, I made salsa with my fresh tomatoes, jalapenos, and green peppers.  I added onion and cilantro from the store.  One of the perks of making your own foods is that you get to customize your goods.  The salsa recipe that I was following was making chunky salsa.  My husband prefers the restaurant-style salsa that is very liquid.  He dislikes chunks of tomatoes.  So, after the salsa had cooked together the correct amount of time.  I took my hand-held blender to the mixture in order to make my salsa the correct consistency for my husband.

Lane is very pleased with the salsa.  Actually he is impressed that it tastes so good and that most of the ingredients came from our farm.  When he tried it out for the first time with tortilla chips, he said, “Move over La Casita!”  I could not have been more pleased since La Casita is an awesome Tex-Mex restaurant in Navasota.

I canned 6 quarts of crushed tomatoes, which I use throughout the year making sauces, adding to soups, or putting in chili.  Tomatoes had always intimidated me with the additional step of peeling, but I did it and realized that tomatoes are not so hard to can.

Plums are ripe, too.  We have been eating so many I was surprised when I still had enough to give away and make 12 pints of plum jam.  I cannot wait to tell you  how I did it later this week.  It tastes out of this world.  I am so excited.

Today is my daughter’s 11th birthday.  I have to make her a gluten-free chocolate cake.  I am happy to be back to writing.  I hope that you are too.  Wednesday I will write about plum jam and on Friday I will let you know how my children did at the fair.

To everyone who ordered my Texas Homesteader Wheat-Free Cookbook during the sale, I want to sincerely thank you.  Thank you for not only supporting my book, but for supporting me.

To receive the coupon for the discount, email me at lndehaven@aol.com and I will send you the e-coupon. It is only good if you order through Lulu, the publishing company.

I want to send a special “Thank you” to my past customers.  I really appreciate the business.  And to any future customers, allow me to say, “Thank you,” in advance.

The Texas Homesteader Wheat-Free Cookbook is also available on Amazon.  The coupon is not for any purchases at amazon.com; however, you can leave a review of my book, if you are so inclined.

I wanted to let everyone know about the 10% discount.  I hope everything is going well.  I will return to writing soon.  The Grimes County Fair is almost over.  It sure has been a long week!

My husband loves to make sausage.  His favorite is link sausage and mine is pan sausage so he makes both.  With pan sausage, you can make breakfast patties.  I love to use it instead of ground beef in lasagna, meatballs, and spaghetti with meat sauce.  Venison is so lean that Lane combines it with pork.

Because of the lack of fat, my husband injects the venison ham with melted butter and wraps it up tight with heavy duty foil before he smokes a venison ham on his pit.  Smoked venison ham is delicious.  It will last us a few days.

We also cut the shoulder or ham into thin slices.  I pound them out with the bottom of a glass.  We like to grill these slices with jalapenos and cream cheese wrapped in bacon.  They are simply delicious.  They make a good appetizer or dinner depending on how many you make.

We cut the backstrap and tenderloin into palm-sized slices.  We fry them as chicken-fried steak and serve it with mashed potatoes and cream gravy.  This is my family’s favorite dinner.  I included both the grilled venison popper, chicken-fried steak, and cream gravy recipes in my cookbook, Texas Homesteader Wheat-Free Cookbook.  I know that you will enjoy them.

At times we have smoked venison ribs, but that is my least favorite way to eat this healthy meat.  We grind up whatever is left and combine it with beef fat to make ground venison.  You use it just like any ground beef.  Make venison burgers, tacos, meatloaf, etc.  Venison is very versatile.

Some people wrinkle their noses when they hear the word venison.  They usually think two things.  One that venison is gamey and two that it is tough.  It can be, if you do not properly handle the meat and process it correctly.  Guests at our house are usually surprised that they are eating venison because it is neither of the two things.

You must gut the deer as soon as possible.  This is mandatory!  My husband and boys quarter the deer and put it on ice for at least one week.  This ensures that the meat will bleed out.  Every morning Lane drains the cooler and adds more ice.  Then we process the meat for consumption.  We weigh out the sausage and ground venison.  Then, we either use our food saver or wrap the meat in white butcher paper.

When I was a little girl, the show “Dallas” was really popular.  I remember one episode towards the end of the show when JR went deer hunting in Arkansas.  He tied the deer to the hood of his car and drove back to Dallas.  It is so ridiculous!  He could not have used the meat or the hide.  You would think that the show’s writers would have done just a little research.  Whatever you do, do not model JR’s treatment of the deer.

Since deer are wild animals, they are not given antibiotics, growth hormones, steroids, or any other additives.  They live in the wild with the occasional hunter feeding them some corn.  Consequently, venison is very lean and low in cholesterol.  Venison is an excellent source of iron, zinc, vitamin B3, B6, and B12 as well as riboflavin.  If you don’t believe me, click here for venison’s nutritional facts.

Take advantage of deer season to harvest your own meat.  Venison is very healthy to eat and versatile to prepare.  Venison is a great red meat.

The Texas Homesteader Wheat-Free Cookbook is in print.

Hoping to bring the joy of food into the lives of those who cannot eat wheat, I decided to write the Texas Homesteader Wheat-Free Cookbook.  I know what it is like to receive the diagnosis of a food allergy.  It is a sad moment.  I have said it before, but you truly do go through a grieving process.  You begin thinking about all the bread, cookies, and cakes that you will no longer be able to eat.  You stress over meals, especially when you are away from home.  The holidays with all the different traditional foods like dressing, dinner rolls, and pumpkin pie seem completely off-limits.

Now you can look forward to special occasions and holidays again.  It has been a labor of love.  I have spent so much time converting my family recipes into ones that my family could still eat after being diagnosed with a wheat allergy.  I grew so tired of wasting money at the supermarket buying expensive name-brand mixes and products only to find out that they were inedible.  The last time we purchased a chocolate cake mix and made it, I could not finish it.  When I cannot finish a piece of chocolate cake, then you can rest assured there is something majorly wrong with it.

At that moment, my husband really encouraged me to write my own cookbook.  He said, “People like us (with food allergies) need to know that they are not deprived.”  You can still enjoy waffles, pancakes, and biscuits for breakfast.  You can still have dinner rolls and bread.  You can still enjoy cakes, pies, brownies, and cookies.  With my combination of blanched almond flour and sorghum flour, you can enjoy the foods you thought you would never eat again.

The Texas Homesteader Wheat-Free Cookbook not only includes delicious and easy to make recipes, but it includes holiday menu ideas, resources, links, and my favorite gluten-free items.  Months ago when I announced that I was working on a cookbook in “Writing an E-Cookbook,” I explained why I did not call it a gluten-free cookbook.

Most of my recipes are gluten-free.  Just a few include oats, which is a controversial grain for anyone with Celiac disease.  There are gluten-free oats available to purchase.  I do not want to argue either side; however, you know what you can tolerate.  If you cannot eat oats, then there are only a few recipes in the entire book to avoid.  If you can, then enjoy each and every recipe.

As promised, I will be sending my first 10 subscribers their e-cookbook free of charge this coming week.  Thank you for supporting me from the beginning.  For a hard copy or a downloadable e-book, click here or go to my “Fresh from the Farm Store” page.  You can also go directly to my Texas Homesteader’s Storefront on Lulu.

If you do not have a problem with wheat, then please be excited with me.  I would appreciate any support either through a kind word through my e-mail or comments or spreading the word for me.  Word of mouth has tremendous power.