Ginger Crusted Baked Apples with Date Glaze

GINGER CRUSTED BAKED APPLES WITH DATE GLAZE
serves 2

ingredients:
2 medium apples (use eating apples rather than baking apples, otherwise they'll turn to mush - I used gala)
2 T almond flour
2 T unsweetened shredded coconut
1 tsp grated fresh ginger (or less if you aren't a ginger freak like I am)
1 egg white
coconut oil
2 T date glaze (recipe follows)

Preheat the oven to 425 Fahrenheit and line a baking sheet with foil and parchment paper.

Lightly whisk the egg white. Mix the almond flour, shredded coconut, and grated ginger together on a plate. Cut each apple in half and remove the core.

Dip the cut side of the apple into the egg white, then press firmly into the almond/coconut mixture. Make sure the whole cut surface of the apple is coated, including the cavity where the core was. Place the apple on the baking sheet. There should be just enough almond/coconut mixture to coat all the apples with none to spare. Drizzle with a tiny bit of coconut oil (or olive oil or macadamia nut oil - whatever you have).

Bake at 425 for 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and place 1/2 T of date glaze in each cavity. Bake for 3 minutes more. Serve!

Apples (minus date glaze) inspired by "Low Carb High Flavor Recipes Made Easy" by Fiona Carns.


DATE GLAZE (makes a lot)

ingredients:
3/4 cup chopped dates
1/2 cup water
1/8 tsp ground cardamom
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Put the dates, water, and cardamom in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Simmer for 10 minutes until thick and mostly smooth, adding a tablespoon or two more water if necessary. Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla.

Date glaze inspired by Moosewood Restaurant New Classics by Moosewood Collective.

Primal Challenge Day 2

I think I'm going to do most measurements weekly rather than daily, but I will track my weight daily.

weight: 135 lbs (-1.4)

breakfast: none


lunch:
salad - escarole, radicchio, endive, carrots, celery, cucumbers, bacon, balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil
topped with leftover steak from last night's dinner
roasted unsalted almonds
primal limeade - water, lime juice, stevia


snack:
chai - coconut chai teabag, heavy cream, stevia
homemade beef jerky
1 oz cheddar cheese


dinner:
barbecue skillet - onions and cabbage browned in ghee, kielbasa, chicken, pinch of bbq rub, 2T of bbq sauce, topped with shredded cheddar


dessert:
baked raspberries and peaches topped with grated dark chocolate and mint leaves; I used a 6oz container of raspberries and 1 peach for 2 people

exercise:
4.3 miles of strenuous walking, part of it uphill. Really got my heart rate up and the sweat was pouring off me!

Primal Challenge Day 1

Age: 26
Height: 5 feet 7 inches
Weight: 136.4 lbs
Waist at narrowest point: 27 in
Waist at navel: 30.5 in
Hips: 36 in

Breakfast:
none


Lunch:
Large salad - butter lettuce, radicchio, carrot, celery, squid, bacon, balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil
cherries
roasted unsalted almonds
primal lemonade - water, lemon juice, stevia


Snack:
Homemade beef jerky (this batch didn't turn out very well or I'd give you the recipe)


Dinner:
Beer marinated flap steak
Cucumber salad with parsley, mint, extra virgin olive oil and rice vinegar
Sliced tomato with salt, pepper and extra virgin olive oil


Dessert:
87% dark chocolate
peppermint/lemongrass/ginger tea

Exercise:
bodyweight workout that I modified from Son of Grok that I did for 7 minutes - 5 pushups, wall sit for 10 seconds, 20 jumping jacks, 5 stand ups, rest 30 seconds
walked about 1.5 miles

So, you may have noticed that sneaky little word in my big lunch salad...squid?! Well I was at Whole Foods yesterday and as usual I walked by the seafood counter on my way to the butcher case. I usually give it a desultory glance and move on. Yesterday, I noticed a pretty little pile of meat and tentacles at a shockingly low price and I felt a kind of madness steal over me. Before I knew what was happening I found myself telling the fish guy to give me half a pound of squid. I've never bought or cooked squid before in my life. I ended up broiling it, but I think I must have cooked it too long because it got a little rubbery. It was fine tossed in my salad though since I drowned it out with bacon and balsamic vinegar. :)

The steak recipe I used for dinner is reallllllly good. The marinade does include beer though, so if wheat=death for you it might not be your cup of tea.

Overall, I think day 1 has been a success. :)

One Local Summer Week 6 - Pork Chili Verde

I got busy with holiday stuff last weekend and missed out on making a One Local Summer meal, so I'm getting back into the swing of it this week. We have lots of good local food in the house right now - picked up a freezer full of meat from my Polyface Farm dropoff this weekend, bought some nice fruit at the Columbia Pike Farmer's Market today, and I still have a few things leftover from my CSA dropoff last Monday.



This week it seemed like the farmer's market was full of peppers, squash and tomatoes. I already had squash and garlic at home from my CSA, so I went with the peppers today and decided to make some chili verde. I got peppers and onions from Westmoreland Vegetables (couldn't find a website for them) and tomatillos from another farmer's market stand that didn't have a sign and I don't know what the name of the farm was. The lard, pork and chicken stock are all Polyface.


(the squash isn't in the picture, I forgot it in the fridge! it was green and just about the size of my forearm)

PORK CHILI VERDE

ingredients:
2 T lard
1 onion, chopped
2 poblano peppers, chopped
2 cubanelle peppers, chopped
2 Anaheim peppers, chopped
1 jalapeno pepper, minced
6 tomatillos, chopped finely
1 green summer squash, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 lb ground pork
2-4 cups chicken stock (depending on how thick you like it)
1 tsp cumin
2 tsp dried oregano or 2 T fresh oregano
1 tsp sea salt

Heat the lard in a Dutch oven and brown all the vegetables except the squash and garlic until they start to get soft. Add the garlic and cook for a minute until fragrant. Add the pork and cook until no longer pink. Add the chicken stock and seasonings, bring to a boil, lower heat, and simmer for 1 hour.

Some good non local toppings: fresh cilantro, diced avocado, lime juice



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For dessert I cracked open that big ole watermelon you see up top and cubed it up and we went to town. Seeds everywhere. Ugly, but good. :)

Coconut chicken fingers with spicy fruit chutney

One of the foods my husband and I really miss on the paleo or primal diet is breaded chicken. It's just soul satisfying comfort food for both of us. I do make a gluten free, grain free version of chicken fingers with almond flour sometimes, but tonight I thought I'd try something different. Keeping with the coconut theme I've had lately, I decided to dredge the chicken in unsweetened dried shredded coconut. I didn't want them to be naked, so I wanted to make a sauce, but pan sauce or gravy didn't seem right - so I decided to make a spicy fruit chutney. The result is a tropical dish that's just right for these hot summer evenings!



COCONUT CHICKEN FINGERS
serves 2

ingredients:
1-1.5 lbs boneless skinless chicken breast cut into large strips (4-5 per breast depending on if they have the tenders attached or not)
2-3 T coconut flour
1-2 eggs, beaten (start with 1 and use the second if you start to run out)
1 cup unsweetened dried shredded coconut
1 tsp sea salt
coconut oil for cooking

Set up a dredging station with 3 bowls, one for coconut flour, one for egg, one for shredded coconut. Season the coconut flour with the salt.

Dredge each chicken finger first in coconut flour, then egg, then shredded coconut.

Heat a bunch of coconut oil in a large heavy bottomed skillet over medium/medium-high heat. Cook the chicken fingers until golden brown on each side. Do it in more than one batch if necessary and keep cooked chicken fingers warm on a foil lined baking sheet in an oven set to the lowest setting.

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SPICY FRUIT CHUTNEY
serves 4

2 cups of diced and peeled plums or nectarines or a mixture of the two
1/4 cup lemon juice
juice of 1/2 a lime
1/4 cup chopped dried apricots
2 inches of ginger root, peeled and minced
2 small dried red chili peppers (or 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper)
1 cinnamon stick
1/4 cup sweet white wine
pinch of sea salt
pinch of stevia, optional depending on if your fruit is really sour (taste before you add!)

Mix everything together in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, lower heat, and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes until thick. Discard dried chilis and cinnamon stick. Can be eaten warm or cold.

Recipe adapted from The Garden of Eating.

Coconutty Fruit Salad

I've been enjoying coconut lately (as you can see from my coconut milk ice cream!), and I came up with this yummy application the other day. I hardly eat fruit at all in the winter since everything is out of season but apples and pears, so when summer comes around I like to have a little fun. I've used a specialty ingredient in this fruit salad, which is coconut butter. It's just like any other nut butter in that it's the whole nut ground up into a paste. The kind I get is Artisana raw coconut butter, which is ground at low temperatures and supposedly retains all the coconutness of the coconut (you know, enzymes, vitamins, fiber, etc). I don't even know if any other companies make coconut butter. Anyway, if you can't find this stuff, I would substitute some unsweetened shredded coconut and maybe a few tablespoons of coconut milk (or even better, if you get the kind of coconut milk that separates in the can into a thick cream and a runny liquid, use only the thick cream).



COCONUTTY FRUIT SALAD

ingredients:
2 heaping cups mixed fruit (pictured is a heaping 1/2 cup each of blueberries, strawberries, red grapes and pineapple)
2 T raw coconut butter
1/4 cup toasted almonds

Cut your fruit any way you want it. Roughly chop the almonds. Gently warm the coconut butter until it becomes runny, then immediately toss with the fruit and nuts. The coldness of the fruit will make the coconut butter harden back up and stick to it like a shell. Dig in and enjoy! I've had this as breakfast, snack, and dinner side dish in the past few weeks. :)

One Local Summer - Week Three

This week for One Local Summer I had a near miss that turned into a delicious hit! I love making great tasting food that's from local producers and also healthy and paleo - gluten and dairy free.



The star of dinner tonight was a roasted chicken from Polyface Farms. I rinsed and dried the chicken and then generously salted and peppered it inside and out. The outside I wrapped in bacon from EcoFriendly Foods and the inside I stuffed with two of the season's first peaches from Westmoreland Berry Farm. Into the oven at 425 for 30 minutes, then I reduced the heat to 350 and roasted it for an additional hour.

The plan was to end up with delicious bacon-wrapped chicken and some roasty peach chunks. My oven had other plans!

Now, I've made bacon wrapped chicken before and it's always turned out, but this time for some reason the bacon shriveled to itty bitty bacon cinders and became inedible. So not only did I have burned bacon, but I had flabby chicken skin. Erg. I removed the peaches from the chicken and noticed they were not roasty at all either. My plans had been foiled, but I thought there had to be some way to salvage this food. After a moment's pondering I set the bacon cinders aside and carved the chicken into two leg quarters, two breasts, and two wings. I put the chicken pieces on a foil lined baking sheet and put them back in the oven to turn the flabby skin crispy. What to do with the peaches...aha! Gravy!

To make the gravy, I took the peaches from the chicken cavity and heated them in a small saucepan with a good spoonful of drippings from the roasting pan and 1/4 cup sweet white wine from Rose Bank Winery along with a pinch of salt and about 1 inch of cinnamon stick. I put the heat to low, covered it, and let it simmer while I went to work on the veggie sides. I don't know if Rose Bank Winery can be considered local to northern Virginia, but we used to live about 3 minutes away from this winery and we bought a whole case of the wine that we're still working on! So it was local to us at one point. :)

To get our leafy greens in for the day I made some braised kale from Pleasant Fields Farm. First I sauteed some baby onions from our CSA in the chicken/bacon drippings, then added the kale and a little water, covered, and let it braise for about 15 minutes.

To add some freshness to the meal, I made a quick cucumber salad using crispy little Persian cucumbers from Toigo Orchards. They are so snappy and delicious! I tossed them with some chopped orange mint from Red Rake Farm, a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, and a splash of rice vinegar. Red Rake Farm is one of my favorite stands at the Arlington Farmer's Market. It's all organic and their produce looks more "real" to me than some of the other places for some reason. And the owner, Peter, is always ready with a smile and story. Much nicer than shopping at a grocery store!



Once the veggies were ready, the chicken skin was crispy and the peaches were nice and broken down for the gravy, and dinner was served! I think everything tied together very nicely - the crispy chicken skin with the sweet warm peach gravy, the tender kale, and the cool fresh cucumbers. My husband even ate the bacon cinders and said they kind of tasted like pork rinds. Success!

One Local Summer - Week One

Back in April I signed up for the One Local Summer event over at Farm to Philly. I thought it would be a neat way to challenge myself to really use more local and seasonal ingredients in my cooking. I'm excited to see what northern Virginia has in store for me this summer! We were pretty busy this weekend, so my first local meal was a pretty basic brunch we had on Saturday morning before heading off for the day.



We had bacon, eggs, and fruit salad with whipped cream.

The bacon I picked up at the farmer's market from a kind of local farm aggregate called EcoFriendly Foods. It comes from pastured pigs and is cured with just salt and sugar. It was definitely the best local bacon I've had so far, but not quite as good as the local bacon we used to get when we lived in New Jersey from Cherry Grove Farm.

The eggs were from Joel Salatin's famous and fabulous Polyface Farm. I joined their buying club a few months ago. Every month I place an order with them and pick it up from one of their northern Virginia drop off spots. I cooked the delicious dark yolked eggs in some of the fat left over from cooking the bacon.

The fruit salad was strawberries from Toigo Orchards and some not-so-local peaches (they came from Georgia via Whole Foods). I would have left the peaches out happily, but they were in my fruit basket and going bad, so into the salad they went. To top our fruit I whipped a little heavy cream from J-Wen Farm. Selling raw milk is illegal in Virginia unless you go through a cow sharing program, but the stuff from J-Wen is not homogenized and is just pasteurized rather than ultrapasteurized. The fruit was so naturally sweet that the whipped cream didn't require any sugar. I don't eat very much dairy at all, but I just had a hankering this weekend so I picked the cream up at the farmer's market.

And there you have it!

Lemon Curd Bars, Gary Taubes, and the Liberation Diet

I had a lot of foodie fun this weekend. This morning I had the pleasure of seeing Gary Taubes give a lecture on his book Good Calories Bad Calories and even got to meet him for a minute afterwards and get my book signed and a quick answer to a question. I asked him if he ever thought low-carb had a prayer of gaining mainstream acceptance and he said that if anything he foresees a cognitively dissonant compromise - that carbs are bad but that fat (especially saturated fat) is also bad.


Gary Taubes speaking.

After the Taubes breakfast my sister and I headed off to another lecture given by a book author, The Liberation Diet. by Kevin Brown. He was a pretty engaging speaker and spoke out very strongly against all forms of modern industrialized food. I spoke with him a little before and after his presentation and I may have an opportunity to work with some of his clients by helping them change their diets by coming to their homes and cooking for them! I'm pretty excited by this idea and I hope it pans out.

The Liberation Diet meeting was a potluck and the dish I brought was these Lemon Curd Bars which I found over at The Nourishing Gourmet. If you use coconut oil instead of butter, these bars make a great occasional primal treat. I would have a picture for you but the pan got devoured pretty quickly; rest assured they looked exactly like the original and tasted amazing! The lemon curd is simple, just five ingredients, but beyond delicious. Even if you don't make the nut bars to go underneath, the curd is really something special.

Strawberry Vinaigrette

Drive-by posting today. I had a very busy, yet fun, weekend getting together with my old high school crew who I hadn't seen in years. Getting back on track this week starting out with this interesting Strawberry Vinaigrette salad dressing I made today. It's so good it's making me look forward to salad this week!



I don't know if the picture does it justice, but it is super thick and creamy and it's a vivid pink color. I found the recipe here: http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/soupsandsalads/r/strawberryvinag.htm

Arugula and Walnut Cake

I was browsing Elana's Pantry the other day and came across this recipe for a spinach and pine nut cake: http://www.elanaspantry.com/cooked-veggies/community-supported-spinach-cake/ I thought it looked pretty fab so I set out to make my own using slightly different ingredients. Here is my result.

ARUGULA AND WALNUT CAKE

makes 9 squares

ingredients:
1-1/2 pounds arugula, thoroughly washed, very roughly chopped
1 cup walnuts, chopped
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 eggs, whisked
1/2 cup raisins
1 teaspoon celtic sea salt

1. Wilt arugula in a large covered saucepan, over low heat (do not add water), until tender.
2. Drain and cool, then gently squeeze moisture out of the arugula. Really, get all the moisture out you possibly can. I think this is the most important step.
3. Place arugula in food processor and pulse until coarsely blended, then set aside.
4. In a small skillet, warm 3 tablespoons oil, add walnuts and saute until golden brown.
5. Add garlic to pan of walnuts and saute together an additional minute.
6. In a large bowl, combine walnut mixture, blended arugula, eggs, raisins and salt.
7. Spread mixture in a very thin layer into a greased 7 x 11 inch pyrex baking dish.
8. Bake at 350° for 30-40 minutes.
9. Cut into 9 squares and serve.

I was home alone when I made these and I ate half the pan by myself right away they were so good! The raisins make them very sweet, so I think if I made it again I might reduce the raisins to 1/4 or 1/3 cup. This was great as a side dish with some steak. It was also good room temperature the next day for breakfast alongside some fried eggs.

What I've been eating: Feb 19, 2009

Once again I've been remiss in my blogging! My mom and little brother came down for a visit over President's Day weekend and they threw me completely out of my groove. That's ok, family wins out over groove any day! Anyway, the cooking has not stopped completely in the past week or so, so I'll dish out another bullet list of stuff we've been eating around here. Maybe I'll make this a regular thing!

Scotch eggs - Well, it's just me eating these. My husband wouldn't eat an egg if you paid him $20. Basically you hardboil some eggs and then encase them in raw sausage meat. Then you bake them in the oven until the sausage is cooked through. I grab two for a quick breakfast or lunch.

Shepherd's pie - Traditional shepherd's pie has a mashed potato crust. I made my crust with rutabaga and turnip and also added in some roasted garlic cloves. Yum yum. Sautee your veggies in a pan (onions, celery, carrots are good choices) and then deglaze with beef stock or red wine. Add in some ground meat and brown. Add some herbs for flavor (sage is good) arrowroot if you want a thick gravy. Top with your mashed root veggies and bake until bubbly!

Fruit crumble - As previously blogged here. This week's had blueberries, apples, and frozen strawberries. Topping was pecans, almonds, prunes, and a splash of pomegranate juice.

Pomegranate juice - As good as my eating is in other areas, I have yet to completely kick the diet soda habit. This week I finally found a drink that keeps the diet soda craving severely at bay. I fill a big glass up with water and then add maybe 1 oz of pomegranate juice. It's just enough to flavor the water but not enough to be too sugary. This drink helped me cut down from my usual one soda per day to maybe three sodas this week. Maybe soon it will be no sodas at all. :)

Pork chops and mashed celeriac - This is my favorite dinner we had recently. I coated some pork chops with grill seasoning and seared them in bacon fat. Then I made a gravy from the pan drippings with mustard, white wine, and some arrowroot to thicken. On the side we had mashed celeriac (celery root). I cubed a celeriac, boiled it until tender, and pureed it in the food processor with some roasted garlic cloves (I also used a little bit of butter, but if I wasn't going to use dairy at all I would have used more bacon grease or some olive oil). It was deeeeee-licious. The celeriac had a great texture, almost exactly like mashed potatoes but with a hint of celery flavor. We also had a side salad, but it was just filler for this meal. :)

what I've been eating

I don't have any structured recipe posts for you after the flurry of last week, so I thought I'd just write about the dribs and drabs of what we've been eating lately. Hopefully it can inspire someone!

Turkey Soup: Remember the big pot of collards I made last week? Well I took the leftover cooking liquid and simmered some chopped up vegetables (2 teeny tiny potatoes, carrots, celery, and okra) until tender and then added in all the turkey meat I shredded off the wing that also had cooked with the collards. I added some parsley too. It made a really nice soup that we've been having a cup of with dinner for the past few days.

Apricot Glazed Lamb Chops: This is so easy it's almost criminal. The hardest part is going to the store and finding some apricot preserves that are made with all fruit and no sugar. Once you have your preserves in hand, mix 1/4 cup of them with 1/2 tsp ground ginger. Take enough lamb chops for two people and coat with half the preserves. Broil 5 minutes. Flip, coat with other half of preserves, and broil 5 more minutes. Ta da! Here is a picture of that dinner:

Also on the plate are a simple carrot salad (shredded carrots with parsley and olive oil vinaigrette) and some braised mustard greens with shallots, white wine, and celery.

Skirt Steak with Beer: This one isn't technically paleo, but it was pretty awesome. If you're going to be unpaleo, this is the way to do it. I marinated skirt steak for 24 hours in a mix of wheat-free soy sauce, rosemary, garlic, mustard, worcestershire sauce, black pepper, and dark lager beer (thus negating the wheat-free soy sauce but oh well). Sear it to death in a skillet so it has a nice crust but is medium rare in the center. Yum yum. I think we had it with the turkey soup and a raw fennel salad.

Pork Breakfast Sausage: I finally got around to making sausage for my husband to take to work so he's not eating all the crap that is in the breakfast meat available at his office. It's just ground pork with various seasonings that make it taste like sausage (key ingredient: sage). It's really good. I'll do a proper write-up on it soon. We've been having that for breakfast this week along with blueberries and walnuts.

Apple Fritter Things: I have these in the oven right now and I'm not sure how they're going to turn out. It's shredded apples held together with ground flax seeds and an egg and flavored with lemon zest/juice and cinnamon. You bake them first and then turn the oven heat really low to kind of dehydrate them. They're still in the oven right now. If they turn out any good I'll post the recipe this week.

Fruit Salad: Blueberries have been on sale so we're eating them a lot! I have hit upon my favorite combination of fruits for fruit salad: Pears and blueberries with cinnamon and lime juice. Heaven in a bowl! We also had cantaloupe and blueberries with lime juice and it was pretty good too. The lime juice really has an affinity for the blueberries, I think. I picked up something called "blossom water" at the store today that smells like flowers - I think it might be good on fruit salad too. Maybe rose water would also work! Hmmm...

That's it for tonight. Happy eating!

Greens Series - Day 1 - Relaxed Kale Salad

Welcome to my first blog series! This week I am going to focus on greens. Greens are one of the most nutritious things you can eat, packed with vitamins and minerals and even protein and fiber. Everyone knows they should probably eat more of them, but it's hard when you only know one or two ways to prepare them. That is where this series comes in. Each day this week I'm going to prepare a different recipe for various green leafy things, exploring many different varieties as well as cooking techniques.

First up we have an unusual raw kale preparation. It's called "Relaxed" Kale Salad because the action of massaging the kale with a little salt and extra virgin olive oil wilts down the tough raw kale leaves significantly and makes them tender enough to eat without cooking. The original recipe can be found here: http://freshtopia.net/vlog/?p=97 There is a video about the salad at the link that is pretty cute. I usually use regular green curly kale in this, but I also like using red curly kale, which gives it a nice color. I've never tried using lacinato (dino) kale for this, so if you give that a try let me know how it works out!


Relaxed Kale Salad

ingredients:
salad:
1 bunch of kale
1-1/2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
1/4 tsp sea salt
1 tart crisp apple, such as gala or fuji
1/4 cup roughly chopped walnuts

dressing:
2 T balsamic vinegar
2 T extra virgin olive oil
1/2 T (1-1/2 tsp) raw honey
1/2 T (1-1/2 tsp) brown or Dijon mustard

Remove the stems from the kale and give it a rough chop. Put the kale in a large mixing bowl and drizzle with the olive oil and salt. Massage the kale with your hands for 5-7 minutes until it wilts down significantly and becomes tender.

I started with a bowl of kale that looked like this:


And after massaging I ended up with this:


Roughly chop the apple and walnuts and add to the greens. Whisk all the dressing ingredients together and pour over the salad. Toss to distribute. You can eat it right away, but it will also keep in the fridge for at least a day or two. The kale is more than sturdy enough to hold the dressing for that long and the flavor can even improve with time. The only thing to watch out for if you want to hold it in the fridge is that the some of the apples can become a little mealy.



I've enjoyed this salad immensely ever since I started making it two years ago. I hope you'll give it a try!

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Posts in the Greens Series:
Relaxed Kale Salad
Spinach Pesto
Baby Bok Choy with Ginger
Broiled Kale
Southern Style Collards

Avocado Pudding

I'll admit "avocado pudding" sounds pretty weird, but bear with me. It turns out when you puree avocado in the food processor, you wind up with a mild, smooth, creamy base that is just the texture of pudding. Adding some other flavors to the party turns it from the beginnings of guacamole into an amazingly decadent pudding. Since avocados FINALLY went on sale at my Whole Foods, I was quite excited to buy some and make this recipe again! It's great as a snack, as dessert, or even as breakfast.

Here is how we start:


1 really ripe avocado (too ripe is better than not quite ripe enough)
1 ripe banana
3 T toasted carob powder*
1/2-1 tsp raw honey, optional (not pictured)

Cut the avocado in half and scoop the halves into the food processor. Peel the banana, cut it into large chunks, and add it to the food processor too. Add the carob powder on top.



Looks appetizing huh? Anyway, process the ingredients until they start to break down and get smooth. Taste and adjust sweetness with the raw honey. Process again until the pudding is completely smooth and creamy and then scrape into a bowl.



The pudding is done! Stick a spoon in it and go to town. You can also keep it in the fridge for a few days, but it's a good idea to put a piece of plastic wrap down touching the surface so that it doesn't get a skin (just like "real" pudding). I usually get two servings out of one batch.

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*Note about carob: Carob is often marketed as a chocolate substitute, which I think does carob a pretty big disservice. As a chocolate substitute, frankly, it sucks. As a food in its own right though, I think carob has a delicious toasty flavor. I you don't like carob or if you would rather have a chocolate pudding, just replace the carob powder with cocoa powder and up the honey to 1 Tablespoon (carob is naturally sweet whereas cocoa powder isn't, so the cocoa powder needs a boost).

Primal Peach Patties

I was cruising around yesterday trying to find more paleo blogs when I came upon Son of Grok. I can't believe I had never seen it before! Anyway, this recipe for Primal Peach Patties caught my eye so I decided to make them today.



Man are they good! The recipe says it makes 10 patties, but I got 13. Only 12 would fit on my baking sheet though, so I just ate the last one uncooked and it was absolutely delicious. I did add a smidge of salt to mine because I'm a salt junky.

I'm hoping to pack some of these for my husband to eat for breakfast. They seem like they would make a very nice dessert as well.

Celery-Apple Slaw

This is a really nice simple side dish that goes well with any grilled meat.

All quantities are to taste:
celery, cut into matchsticks
apple, cut into matchsticks
parsley, minced
lemon juice
extra virgin olive oil
sea salt

Just toss everything together. This is also great if you add in some thinly sliced fennel bulb and then use minced fennel fronds instead of parsley.

German-ish Dinner?

Tonight we had bratwurst, braised broccoli rabe, and fried apples. I fried the apples in butter, which isn't really paleo, but you can do the same thing with coconut oil or lard or something and it would turn out equally yummy. :)


Sausages cooking. I simmered them in 1/4 inch of water for about 15 min, then drained the pan and let them get a little brown.


Apples frying. Just apples and butter, nothin' else.


Broccoli rabe before and after wilting down. I minced a shallot and sauteed it in olive oil until it just barely started to turn brown, then added a bunch of broccoli rabe, about 1/2 cup chicken stock, a pinch of salt, and a pinch of red pepper flakes. Covered it and let it simmer for 20 min or so.


Dinner is served! I actually only ate one of the sausages. We had some mustard with it too.

Paleo Fruit Crumble

serves 3-4

ingredients:
fruit of your choice (I used one can of apricots canned in juice and about 1/2 cup frozen raspberries)
1/2 tsp arrowroot powder, optional
1/4 cup prunes or dates
1/2 cup almond flour
1 cup walnuts or pecans
1/2 tsp cinnamon
stevia to taste

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Place your fruit of choice in an oven safe dish of the appropriate size and sprinkle with the arrowroot powder (this will make the filling more syrupy/cohesive, but is optional).

Puree the prunes or date in a food processor along with the almond flour. Add the whole nuts and cinnamon and pulse briefly to combine. Taste and adjust sweetness with stevia. The mixture should hold together when you squeeze it, but be crumbly if you rub it between your fingers; if it's too dry add a little splash of juice, if it's too wet add some more nuts.

Press the nut mixture down firmly over the fruit. Place in the oven and bake for 30 min. Let cool for 15 minutes before eating.

This refrigerates well for at least one day and is excellent reheated for breakfast.



Recipe was modified from: http://forum.lowcarber.org/showpost.php?p=7315732&postcount=97