Paleo Popcorn Chicken

Our family loves chicken nuggets and chicken strips. My husband and I often got chicken strips in college at the food court. Since my allergies, it has been more difficult to find good chicken strips or nuggets and then on top of that to find ones as a decent price. We always bought separate ones because #1 my allergy friendly ones are expensive and #2 none of them taste up to par for my husband. I really enjoyed the Purdue brand of gluten free ones and they are especially great because the strips are soy free last I checked, which was a while ago, so they worked for my daughter too when we discovered her soy allergy. Now that I have kids who LOVE chicken nuggets and strips I need a much more affordable option. We started making our own chicken strips but found we like homemade popcorn chicken better. I mastered our popcorn chicken recipe about 3 months before we decided to try this diet. Of course my gluten, dairy, egg and soy free recipe was not Paleo friendly so I altered it to match this current diet and it's delicious! Enjoy my Paleo friends!

Popcorn Chicken
Serves 4

1 lb. chicken breast, cut into cubes
Unsweetened Almond Milk (I use Silk brand.) - Need about 2 cups depending on your dish.
1/4 cup arrowroot flour
1/4 cup almond flour
1/2 cup coconut flour
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
Oil for frying (Given our current mix of Whole30 and Paleo diets, I used canola.)

Directions:
Cube chicken breasts into 1 inch cubes and place in a shallow dish. Cover or mostly cover chicken pieces with unsweetened milk and let sit on the counter for 10-15 minutes. Meanwhile, combine arrowroot flour, almond flour, coconut flour, onion powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper in a bowl and mix well. Add enough oil to a deep skillet to be about 1 inch - 1.5 inches deep. Heat oil over medium - medium-high heat. For even coated chicken, dip chicken pieces into the flour mixture one at a time and drop into the heated oil. Cook about 10-15 pieces of chicken at a time depending on the size of your skillet. Cook chicken until no longer pink inside and breading turns brown. Place a paper towel or two on a plate and use a slotted spoon to place hot chicken onto plate to remove excess grease before serving.

Note: If you don't care as much about an even coating on the chicken you can do the quick method that I do given our busy kids. Place the flour mixture in a Ziploc bag. Strain milk off the chicken cubes and place chicken cubes into the Ziploc bag with the flour mixture. Shake the bag around until chicken is evenly coated. Scoop chicken pieces out of the bag and cook in oil per the above directions.

A delicious and beautiful shower for the bride to be! - Take 1

Ah! I had a feeling that the wedding would be over by the time I had the chance to write this. It has been a busy few months for us personally and then also with two sisters getting married. I figured I better get this written though before the next shower....well that didn't happen either so you will be seeing another shower post shortly. The end of April we threw a beautiful shower for Rosanne, who just got married Memorial Day weekend. Her colors for the wedding were peacock blue with a yellow accent so my mom capitalized on that for the shower decorations. We chose to do a Pampered Chef shower which turned out to be a great way to stock Rosanne and Tom's kitchen. Thankfully our consultant was super respectful, not pushy at all, and let us run the shower the more traditional way that we wanted to. We also played Bride Bingo, had a devotional from my grandma, a prayer time for Rosanne and Tom and of course watched her open some gifts. A beautiful soon to be bride with wonderful family and friends, pretty decorations and of course....delicious food.

Speaking of food...here was our menu. Please note, my sisters can eat dairy so we did have some cheese, however, the bride to be is allergic to peanuts so this was a peanut free meal!

Caesar Chicken Sandwiches - These sandwiches are awesome! I used Cybele Pascal's dinner roll recipe from her Allergen-Free Baker's Handbook. If you don't own this book already, you should! There are so many great recipes in it. Even the gluten guys in our life love these rolls during the holidays. I also used a modified version of this dairy free, gluten free slow cooker Caesar Chicken Sandwich recipe that I found on once a month meals' website. My only modifications are half the pepper and half the lemon juice!

Fruit Kabobs - Easy and elegant! We bought a variety of fruit that was on sale that week along with some kabob sticks and made some beautiful fruit kabobs that made for easy finger food.

Meat & Cheese Tray - It's really important to find gluten free meats so I relied heavily on Aldi's packaged deli meats that were labeled gluten free and Land O Frost, which are my normal go to options for deli meat. We used ham, turkey, and Hormel pepperoni. I personally didn't get to try the cheese given my allergies but I bought my cheese from Aldi too because I've found they have the best prices for the small quantity of cheese I'm typically looking to purchase.

Crackers & Hummus - I used a variety of gluten free crackers including Aldi's sea salt version, Van's Lot's of Everything crackers, Back to Nature's multi-seed rice thin crackers and Food Should Taste Good's roasted red pepper brown rice crackers. I like all of them but the roasted red pepper crackers were by far a favorite for the gluten and non gluten eaters. For the hummus, it's been difficult to find soy free hummus at times. Some of Aldi's flavors are soy free though so that has been a good resource as well as Minnesota's own Holy Land Hummus!

Raw Veggie & Dip Tray - While the veggies met my allergy needs the dip didn't....sorry. If you need a good dip maybe try some hummus instead. Again we just bought a variety of veggies that were on sale that week. For the dip we used sour cream with a ranch packet so it certainly was not dairy free! It went over very well with the guests though.

Salt and Pepper Cashews - As I mentioned above, the bride to be has a peanut allergy. Did you know that almost every cashew on the shelf at Walmart contains peanut oil? Do they not realize that tree nut and peanut allergies are different and not everyone has both? Apparently not. It's very difficult to locate peanut free cashews as a result but I did finally find some. I found them at Aldi of all places! While most of Aldi's cashews are not safe, their salt and pepper flavored cashews were safe! Yay!

Cream Cheese Mints - These were not dairy free but I bet you could make some with some Daiya cream cheese. I haven't tried yet because these dairy ones were time consuming enough the week I was making them for the shower. I may have gone a little overboard though with how many I made. I used this recipe I found online. I didn't have any molds so I made balls and flattened them with a fork which worked just fine.

Cupcakes - I used the same vanilla cake recipe I found for Oliver's birthday party for these cupcakes and again it went over well, except for one little cousin who doesn't like gluten free cupcakes! I also used the buttercream frosting recipe from Oliver's birthday. My mom did the decorating and she did have to add some powdered sugar to the recipe in order to get the frosting to hold well and work with the cake decorator bags. We found a picture on Pintrest to arrange the cupcakes to resemble a wedding dress.

Grandma's sugar cookies - I don't have her recipe but while they are egg and gluten free I know she does put butter in them so I haven't tried them. I hear they are awesome though and I'm very thankful she brought them to add to our menu.

Punch - My mom made some yellow banana, pineapple, and 7-up punch that she has always made for our graduation parties and whatnot. It was delicious as usual!

Grandma gave a devotional for Rosanne. This is a picture of grandma explaining how the devotional relates to the quilt pattern she made for them.

Disclaimer: It is always important to read labels because brands frequently change their ingredients. These ingredients and brands work for my family but some may be processed in the same facility as wheat, soy, dairy and/or eggs and therefore depending on your severity may or may not work for your family.