Happy Sans Gluten Valentine's Day!!!

Valentine's Day is on a Monday this year so my hubby and I decided to stay low key by having dinner at home. One of our favorite dishes is turkey tacos. Super quick, delicious and sans gluten. I wanted to spice things up and get creative so I decided to make Turkey Taco burgers. Whenever I make taco I always mix the essential spices myself because a lot of the pre-made taco seasoning mixes have flour or some type of wheat derivatives in them. Argh!

The essentials spices I love to use for tacos are:
-Paprika
-Cumin
-Red pepper flakes
-Garlic powder
-Ground red (Cayenne) and black pepper

Instead of adding these spices to the ground meat as it cooks, I mixed them first then incorporated them into the turkey meat and formed burgers. Feeling especially creative tonight I also added in some mashed chickpeas. I thought black beans would have been delicious too but they weren't in the pantry.

As far as I'm concerned tacos are never complete without some guacamole! To 3 avocados I added some cherry tomatoes, salt, pepper, garlic powder and lemon juice. Yum!!!

Taco Turkey burger with guacamole and baby portobello mushrooms

Guacamole!!

Sans Gluten Mac n' Cheese

Everyone has their favorite food that has to be replaced with its sans gluten (gluten free) version. One of my favorites was mac n' cheese.  Yes there are fantastic pre-packaged mac n' cheese mixes but the nutritional value leaves little to be desired. An easy way to amp up the nutritional value in the sans gluten version is to add your favorite vegetable or two (make it vibrant!), part skim shredded cheddar and some non fat plain greek yogurt (excellent sources of protein and calcium) to the sauce. Adding more sans gluten pasta is a great way to double your volume and have leftovers for school or work the next day.  The mac n' cheeses pictured here have the broccoli on the side (top) and zucchini and shallots mixed in (bottom). So delish!