Store bought paleo bread

Guess what Costco has, BREAD! I personally haven't tried it yet but the girls really dig it in french toast and sandwiches. As soon as this food challenge is over I'm making some for me, and maybe Andy ;).  It comes in a  two loaf pack for a little over $8.00, not a bad deal. Blake says he likes the homemade almond bread better, but for our house this works in a pinch.

LASAGNA!!!!!

Branden has been asking for month for me to find a clean lasgna recipe becuase he misses it so much, so here it is, and it's amazing!!!!

 

LASAGNA

 

 

INGREDIENTS:

CHEESE:

    1/2 c almonds

    1/2 thinly sliced onion

    2 cloves garlic

    3 tbsn oregano

    1/8 tsp nutmeg

    1/8 tsp salt

    1/2+ c water

Put all ingredients into a food processor and blend until smooth. I should have gotten a picture of that texture for you but I was so eager I forgot. It should look like a ricotta cheese.

 

LAYERS:

1 lbs ground beef browned

1 can clean speghetti sauce

4 large mushrooms, sliced

2 large zuchinnis, thinly sliced (mandolins work great for this) These are your noodles

fresh spinach leaves

 

Brush the zuchinni "noodles" with a light coat of olive oil and grill. I used my broiler pan and my oven at 375 but on the BBQ would be so much better.

 

With all your ingredients start making your layers in an oven safe baking dish. Beef, spinach, mushrooms, zuchinni noodles, and than smear the "cheese" on the "noodles" and cover with a layer of sauce and start all over until your pan is full, ending with the sauce on the top.

 

 

Bake at 375 degrees for about 20-30 minutes and serve. It is by far best hot but still great as leftovers.

You need to try this one you're going to love it, kid tested and approved!!!



 Another great this with this cheese is with the left overs I made an omlette the next morning. Spinach, onions, mushrooms and almond cheese it was so good!!!

Shepards Pie

If you haven't noticed yet there is another food challenge going on this month, and there will be another next so come prepared. In order to help those of us on the challenges stay focused I am going to try and provide all of us with some new options (more often) for meals.

Today's addition is one I've been wanting to do for a long time and really have had no excuse as to why I haven't.  We tried it with sweet potatoes and yams, I preferred the sweet potatoes, better consistency  and flavor (in my opinion) but overall this recipe was a keeper in our household.

SHEPARD'S PIE INGREDIENTS:

Ground Beef (we used 1/2 of a Costco package)

3 handfuls+ diced baby carrots

6 stalks diced celery

 1 diced sweet onion

2 cloves chopped garlic

1 C. beef broth

4 large sweet potatoes (or yams)
coconut oil
4 large sliced mushrooms
oregano, thyme, parsley, salt and pepper

COOKING DIRECTIONS:

Scrub and cube the sweet potatoes and put in a pot and a steamer and steam until tender. You can do this in the microwave as well, I just like the consistency of the steamed vegys better. When they are steamed, mash to your liking. I like it smooth and creamy so Andy had to mash for awhile :) 
Set oven to 400 degrees.
While the potatoes are steaming, heat coconut oil in a large frying pan. Add garlic, onions, celery and carrots, cook until tender. Add mushrooms and cook until tender, put aside.  Add the ground beef to the pan add all the spices to your liking ( I do about 3-5 shakes of the bottle with each, I know not very helpful I'll try to remember to measure next time.) Cook until fully browned.
Mix vegys and meat together and spread out in a baking dish, cover with beef broth. You can choose to boil the broth with some coconut flour if you would like, some say it thickens it, however, I think it changes the taste and texture, I wasn't to fond of it. Cover the top with the mashed potatoes (this is very sticky so push a little into the meat mixture to get the potatoes to stay in place.) Place in the oven and bake for about 15 minutes, until the broth starts to boil and the potatoes look slightly browning on the edges.
we didn't even wait for it to cool we dug right in, everyone loved it!!!1

Just in time for the Food Challenge...

OK so no not just in time, I am posting this too late for any of you to actually use this in the first week of our challenge, but to make up for it I have added 5 recipes and I am hoping to be able to post a clean stuffing recipe before Thanksgiving (fingers crossed for Tuesday.)

 

 

So I actually saw this idea on a facebook post from a CrossFitter friend and I though what a great idea, now we can't use the excuse that eating clean is too time consumer or that the paleo food is boring. I took the idea and ran with it. Below are 5 choices for freezer bag, crockpot meals. I haven't tried any of these yet, we just prepared them today and we are using them to keep up on the challenge so I will let you know in the comments of this post how they turned out.

 

Easy, simple, add all the ingredients to the bag, date it, titled it, put any cooking directions on it and stick it in the freezer. To cook them, pull them out of the freezer throw them in the crockpot and come home in the evening to a hot and ready meal!!

 

***Cook all of these in the Crockpot on low for 6-8 hours

 

BEEF STEW:

1 onion diced

2 garlic cloves

1/2  of the large bag size of baby carrots

2 celery stalks chopped

2 yams cubed

1 can V8 juice (and yes these are clean but not all of them so read your ingredients, remember no added sugars for the food challenge.)

1 can diced tomatoes

1/2 C beef broth

1 tsp basil

1/2 tsp thyme

1/2 tsp pepper

stew meat.

 

 

GOULASH:
1 bell pepper diced
1 onion diced
1/2 of a large bag of baby carrots
2 garlic cloves
stew beef
6 0z tomato paste
3 zuchinnis sliced
2 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp pepper

MANDRIN CHICKEN:
1 C. V8 juice
2 fruit cup snack packs of mandarin oranges (1 with the juice 1 without)
brocolli
garlic powder
6 chicken thighs

TERIYAKI CHICKEN:
1/2 of a large size bag of baby carrots
1 onion chopped
20 oz pineapple with the juice
 garlic cloves
3 chicken breast cubed
1/2 C soy sauce
1/4 tsp grated ginger
1/2 C water 
(The original recipe calls for 3 tbsn maple syrup and 1 1/2 tbns arrowroot)

 

 

BBQ PORK RIBS:

*This one has some extra directions*

1 package boneless pork ribs

1 capri sun apple juice pouch

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp pepper

slow cook for 6-7 hours, drain juices and cover with BBQ sauce and cook on high 1 more hour



 

 

 

My freezer is full and ready for the week, can't wait to try them. Let me know if you try them as well, post on the comments of this post and we'll fine tune them together !!

 



Zucchini Chocolatey goodness

OK so the picture is blurry but the bread is sssooo yummy!!! We made chocolate zuchinni bread and it was great, the friends we had over for dinner couldn't tell the different.

BIG THANKS TO THE PALEOMG.COM site for the foundations of this recipe!!!

 

Ingredients:

1 med zucchini, shredded (about 1.5 cups)

2 eggs, whisked

3/4 cup nut butter (almond, sun etc)

1/3 c. honey

1/4 C cocoa powder

2 tbsn coconut flour

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 c. pineapple (tidbits drained)

pinch of salt

 

Preheat the oven to 375.

After shredding the zucchini dry on papertowels and add to all other ingredients. combine well.

put in greased bread pan, I used my stoneware pan which is great, no greasing needed!

Bake for about 30 min. But check often, the top can burn quickly and the middle will seem raw only because it is a little spongy until it cools. If you stick a toothpick or knife in the middle to check it, it should come out fairly clean, no raw dough but the inside is very fragile until it's cooled so it could take small peices with it when you're checking it.

Cool and serve.



Non-parmesan chicken

 This was a last minute dinner idea that turned out great! Quick, easy and tasty, my kind of dinner, unfortuately I didn't make enough to satisfy the whole clan, oops. I'll know better for next time.

Ingredients:
3 chicken breast, sliced into long strips
1 jar Classico spaghetti sauce (or your favorite sauce)
2 eggs lightly beaten
1/2 C almond flour
1/2 C coconut flour ( **you can use a whole cup of one or the other if you don't have both, if you're going for the nuttier, crunchier feel use the almond if you like the sweeter more like wheat flour texture go with the coconut)
To taste: garlic powder, salt, pepper, onion powder

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a bowl lightly beat the eggs until fully blended. On a plate mix all the dry ingredients.Take one slice of chicken at a time, coat with the egg and than roll in the flour mixture. I use a fork because it gets pretty sticky and messy.

Lightly cover the bottom of a frying pan with olive oil and heat on med/high. Once the oil is heated place a few battered pieces into the oil and brown on all sides. Be careful not to turn them too much the batter will fall off.  You may have to add more oil as you go to keep the chicken from sticking to the pan.











Next, cover the bottom of a baking dish with about half of the sauce. Lay the battered chicken on top of the sauce, cover the top with more sauce and place in the over to cook for about 20 minutes. Checking as you go to make sure the chicken doesn't over cook.








Remove and serve. It is hard to dry out the chicken with all the sauce in the pan, but can be done, other than that, this was an easy and delicious meal that we all enjoyed. Maybe next time we'll add some zucchini or spaghetti squash noodles to go along side.

"Butter my butt and call me a Biscuit"!!!

 So, apparently I am on a grain bread substitute kick because this next post is for biscuits.
And a side note, we have been using a lot of substitutes for flour lately and I know it gets spendy, but, if you're willing, Huckleberrys in Spokane on Monroe (South Hill) has almond and coconut flour in bulk much much cheaper than what you can buy in the small little pre-packaged bags at the local stores.

I got this amazing recipe from the one and only Robb Wolff the man who introduced me to Paleo and changed my families life forever!!! (For the good of course.)

Ingredients:
1/2 C. Coconut flour
1/4 C Almond Flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tbsn coconut oil (cold so it's solid but soft)
6 egg whites

(*The egg whites are a bit of a downer becuase I always feel like Im wasting the yokes, but we save them and scramble them with breakfast or in other baking goods.)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Blend all of the dry ingredients.  For this next step I used my pastry cutter, but you can use a food processor on pulse or 2 knives between your fingers. Cut in the cold oil until it looks like even little balls or course sand.

 Next, whisk the egg whites until completely frothy, you can use a food processor or hand blender for this, I guess I was feeling kinda "frothy" my self and did it by hand. (Ha). 

Gently fold the egg whites into the dry ingredients just until nicely blended, don't stir vigorously or roughly.



















Leaving a rather sticky but light and fluffy dough.

Distribute the dough evenly on a cooking sheet. If you have the luxury of using a cooking stone great if not make sure to grease the sheet so the biscuits don't stick.

Place in over, cook about 15 minutes or until the tops are golden brown and enjoy warm or put in a tupperware in the fridge for later.

We used them with Ragu (a recipe about 2 months ago) to soak up the broth and the next morning for sausage and egg breakfast biscuits and also found delicious with honey!!!!! If you visit Robbs site robbwolf.com he's got a recipe added to this one for biscuits and gravy haven't tried it yet but promises to be a winner.