I've always loved to bake and eat sweets. In college, I was the one that would bake a cake for each of my friends birthdays. Since going gluten-free, baking isn't the same. Experimenting with flours is frustrating, expensive and most of the time inedible in the end. Add in eating Paleo and it's even more limiting. I have found though that Paleo baking does have some benefits, one of which is the more limited options of flours. When I've been following other peoples recipes, it's much simpler when they only select from tapioca, coconut, almond, arrowroot, or potato flours.
Now that I've been cooking and baking Paleo for the best part of the last 2 years, I know what I prefer when it comes to baked goods. Today was the first day that I really thought, I can make my own Paleo baking recipe and I did! My main goal was actually removing sugar from muffins. Following my last Whole30 a few months ago, I'm having very bad reactions to sugar. I've found it's best to avoid it completely but muffins have just sounded so good! My solution was to use date paste as a replacement for sugar in muffins. First up, making the date paste!
How to Make Date Paste
Yield: about 1.5 cups
2 cups dates, pitted
water
1. In a large measuring cup, measure out dates. Cover in warm or hot water. Let soak for 1 hour to soften.
2. Strain dates but keep the date water.
3. Add dates to a food processor or blender. Start blending them on medium or medium-high power.
4. Slowly drizzle in about a teaspoon at a time the reserved date water. This will help get a creamier consistency.
5. Let blend until you have a smooth medium density paste. I opted for a bit thinner consistency and then found it did thicken in the fridge a bit.
6. Store in the fridge in a sealed container for up to 3 months.
With the date paste in hand, I decided that Paleo Banana Muffins were my best recipe to start with. I know from past baking that I prefer a muffin with a coconut and tapioca flour blend rather than almond flour. Keep in mind that coconut flour can NOT be substituted in this recipe.
Date Sweetened Paleo Banana Muffins
Yields: 30 mini muffins or 12 regular muffins
5 TBLS butter, melted
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 ripe bananas
1/4 cup date paste
1/2 cup coconut flour
1/2 cup tapioca flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1. Preheat the oven to 350'.
2. In a large microwave safe bowl, melt the butter.
3. To the melted butter add the eggs, bananas, vanilla and date paste.
4. With a fork, mash the bananas and stir to combine. Make sure to break up any large chunks of bananas otherwise they will cook unevenly.
5. Add in the remaining ingredients. Stir until well combined.
6. Spoon about 3/4 way full into greased muffin pan, silicone muffin holders, or papered muffin tray. For mini muffins bake for 13-15 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean. For regular muffins 22-25 minutes.
7. Remove immediately from pan to ensure cooking stops. Place on wire rack to cool. Muffins can be frozen for eaten later too!
We are banana eaters in my house. I usually buy between 8-10 pounds of bananas a week yet we always seem to be out of them. This last week I'm not sure what happened but we have a lot of leftover bananas. The only problem is, I won't touch them if they have spots. So it's time to figure out ways to utilize all these ripe bananas!
One great way is to dehydrate them to eat for snacks or use in my Homemade Larabars. Dehydrating usually takes about 3 hours to dehydrate 10-12 bananas. Another thing you can do is peel, chunk, and freeze the bananas for smoothies or banana ice cream. One trick we've learned is that they need to be flash frozen otherwise they all stick together.
Flash Freezing Fruit
1. Line a large baking sheet with tin foil.
2. Cut the fruit down to the desired size, if necessary. I chunk my strawberries, bananas, pineapple, and mango but leave my blackberries, raspberries, and marionberries whole.
3. Place the baking sheet in your freezer. If you have a check or upright freezer, use this for about 1 hour. If you only have your fridge-freezer it takes closer to 4-5 hours to get a solid freeze.
4. Remove the baking sheet from the freezer and immediately slide all the fruit off into freezer Ziploc bags and put back in the freezer. All your hard work will go to waste if you let the fruit defrost at all.
The easiest and most satisfying way to use up spotty bananas is to make pancakes! I've tried many different banana pancake recipes and finally figured out the easiest and yummiest one.
Easy Paleo Banana Pancakes
Serves: 3, 12-15 4" size pancakes
2 ripe bananas
4 eggs
4 TBLS coconut flour
2 TBLS coconut oil, divided
1. In a blender combine all ingredients. Whirl up until combines and smooth, about 1 minute.
2. Heat a non-stick skillet or grill pan over medium heat with 1 tablespoon of coconut oil.
3. Four the batter into the skillet to make 4 inch size pancakes.
4. Wait for the edges to cook completely and the pancake to look firm before flipping, about 3 minutes.
5. Flip and cook for an additional 1 minute.
6. Serve immediately.
These are great topped with fresh fruit, some seared banana bits, warm syrup or however else you prefer your pancakes!
Curry is one of my favorite dishes since it can be done in so many different flavors but always has the perfect combination of spices. When I was pregnant with my son, curry was what I had to eat. I remember dragging my husband to the Thai restaurant down the street to sit outside in 90' weather and eat a piping hot bowl of massaman curry. Since discovering Thai food 10 years ago, we've eaten it a lot. It's one of the few cuisines that seems to be mostly gluten free so I've been able to try all sorts of dishes. I always come back to the curry though.
Since my love for Thai curry can also get a bit expensive, I've started making it myself at home. Now I know there are many different ways to make curry and as a Thai cooking novice, I go for the simple one. I purchase curry paste in tubs at the Asian store, store it in my fridge, and just combine it with coconut milk. What's great is that you can purchase all different flavors such as red, yellow, massaman, panang, or green. I've only purchased the Mae Ploy brand since that's what is available to me. My husband prefers panang so we usually make our curry from that, red or massaman.
Curried Zucchini Noodles with Sausage
Serves: 3
2 medium zucchini, spiralized (I use the Paderno Spiral Vegetable Slicer
)
1/2 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
1/2 orange bell pepper, thinly sliced
1/2 onion, thinly sliced
2 TBLS curry paste
1 can (or 2 cups) full-fat coconut milk
1/2 lb ground italian sausage
2 TBLS coconut oil
1. Heat wok over medium heat. Add coconut oil and italian sausage. Cook sausage stirring continually until cooked through. Remove from wok.
2. Add in curry paste. Using a spatula stir the paste until it starts to bubble slightly. Add in the coconut milk.
3. Reduce the curry paste and coconut milk for 5 minutes until the sauce thickens and reduces by 1/3. Make sure to stir or it will burn on the inside of the wok.
4. Once the sauce is reduced, add in the bell peppers and onions. Cook for 3-5 minutes, so they are cooked but still have a crunch. Add back in the sausage.
5. Add the zucchini noodles and toss to coat. Turn off the heat and do not cook the noodles.
6. Serve immediately.
Note: If you cook the noodles in the sauce you loose the crunchy consistency. The sauce alone will cook them a bit but the dish is not nearly as good with cooked noodles.
Freezer meals can be the most convenient dinner meals but are daunting to make. Last October when we did our first Whole30, I decided to make some freezer meals. It was my first time trying it out and I was about as inefficient as possible. This time around I thought the steps through much more and was able to make 10 meals in 3 hours. If you can have uninterrupted time, this could be done in 2 hours.
My first step was to come up with the recipes to cook. I knew I wanted to do a mixture of different meats and use what we already had frozen so I ended up with 2 chicken recipes, 2 beef recipes, and 1 pork. I decided this time around it would be easier to just make 2 of each meal, so 5 recipes x2. Here's what I decided on. All meals are gluten free, paleo, and Whole30 compliant.
Paleo Minestrone Soup
Brazilian Curry Chicken
Enchilada Chicken Stew
Squeaky Clean Boeuf Bourgignon
Thai Curry with Beef (I used panang curry instead)
I then made a spreadsheet with the ingredients that I would need. I left off spices since I had all of those already. I ended up with a master shopping list that I then doubled.
When I went to the store I spent $33 which included some produce for the week too. All the meat I already had in my freezer.
Here's my process:
- Write the recipe name, date, and additional instructions on your large freezer Ziplocs before you start in sharpie. Make sure this includes cook time!
- Line up your Ziploc bags on the counter propped open with the duplicates together.
- Have all the printed recipes next to you on the counter.
- Start with veggies so your bags have weight to them and stay open. Chop, slice, dice or cut according to one recipe. Make sure to cross of whatever you've just done from the recipe. This may not seem necessary at the beginning but later on you won't remember where your at.
- Next add in spices. If you add a bit extra that's okay. I find that some of the spices often stick to the bags when your emptying them out.
- Now is liquids. At this point you need to use your discretion on if the liquids will fit or not. It's okay to just write "Add 1 can of diced tomatoes and 1 can chicken broth" to the front of the bag. Just make sure the can's to add are items you stock on hand all the time so you'll have it when you need it.
- Add frozen meat or seared meat, according to the recipe.
- Remove as much air as possible and seal Ziplocs. Place in freezer for another day!
- Clean-up! I don't clean-up as I go since that just adds more time. I've found that when I did clean-up as I went, I put away items I ended up needing for another recipes. I do toss dirty dishes in the sink but that's about it.
Tips:
- Grocery shop the day before otherwise it's very overwhelming. Most items don't need to be refrigerated so just leave it all on the counter.
- Do like items together. Peel all your carrots, turnips, etc at the same time.
- Use a food processor or blender to "dice" your onions to save time. Make sure to read each recipe though to see if you need to slice or chunk them instead.
- Most of these recipes don't require the meat to be pre-cooked so if it's already frozen, you don't need to do anything else to it. To make sure I don't forget it, I place my sealed frozen meat inside my large ziplocs with the other ingredients.
- When you put it in the freezer, laying them flat on their side takes the least space but make sure it will fit in your slow cooker that way.
I survived the Whole30 except for the fact that I stopped on day 28. My biggest hurdle was eating out either at restaurants or other peoples houses. It's very apparent to me that unless someone else eats Paleo, they don't understand what foods I can eat. I only made it to day 28 because it was my sisters birthday dinner at my parents house. I was told I could eat everything. The ribs were coated in BBQ sauce which contained sugar, there were potato chips, the twice baked potatoes contained cream, and the dessert was creme brûlée. There was a fruit salad which was great but as hard as I wanted to, everything wasn't Whole30 compliant. I did choose not to add extra BBQ sauce but in the end, did that really make much of a difference?
So day 1 post Whole30, I was craving sugar. I think knowing that I can know have it makes it even more tempting. I decided a batch of Peanut Butter Cookies was the way to go. After 1 cookie, I felt like crap. The good thing is that I didn't eat another cookie and can now see how the sugar effects me so quickly.
This week when sitting down and planning my menu, I didn't even realize all but one of my meals was Whole30 compliant again. For the most part, our dinner meals do meet the Whole30 guidelines with the occasional added sweetener. I really wanted Butternut Squash Risotto this week, so we are having it! I did find that I have the ingredients for these meals without going to the store which will help clean out my fridge, pantry and freezer and save me money. I do still need to go to the store for bananas and milk for baby boy but otherwise it should be a low cost week.
Menu Planning
Week of 2/2/15-2/9/15
Monday: Baked Trout Saratoga with Carrot & Parsnip Puree
Tuesday: Leftovers, Hubby is gone
Wednesday: Paleo Shepard's Pie from Quick & Easy Paleo Comfort Foods: 100+ Delicious Gluten-Free Recipes
Thursday: Braised Beef, Artichokes, & Peas from Mediterranean Paleo Cooking: Over 150 Fresh Coastal Recipes for a Relaxed, Gluten-Free Lifestyle
Friday: Chorizo Meatloaf with mashed sweet potatoes
Saturday: Butternut Squash Risotto (made without the cheese)
Sunday: Crockpot French Onion Soup from The Paleo Kitchen: Finding Primal Joy in Modern Cooking
Lunch can be one of the most challenging meals of the day. I find that it's the meal I often forget to plan so it's left up to chance most the time. Leftovers are the easiest lunch solution. The problem arrises when my husband takes them all or they just don't sound good for lunch. My go to lately is a protein filled salad. I will make different versions of chicken salads or egg salads a couple times a week that usually last 2 days. This helps give a variety and use up extra veggies we have around. Another good option is to make a soup that can be eaten or frozen for later. Our freezer in the garage has pre-portioned soup in freezer containers that can easily be reheated.
I've recently discovered dill and how wonderful this fresh herb tastes. I've been adding it to everything, including my eggs. When I went to make my egg salad the other day the dill was a perfect companion to it for an extra mustard taste. Fresh dill lasts in the fridge for several weeks if it has a paper towel wrapped around it.
Dill Egg Salad over Tomatoes
Serves: 2
1 tomato, sliced in 1/2 inch slices
4 eggs, hard-boiled and diced (I used my egg dicer)
1/2 cup cooked ham, diced
2 TBLS mayo (I made an avocado based mayo which was in the fridge)
1-2 tsp yellow deli mustard
1 tsp white vinegar
1 1/5 TBLS fresh dill, chopped
1/2 tsp celery salt
salt & pepper, to taste
1. Slice the tomato and arrange on a plate.
2. Mix all ingredients together. If they don't bind well enough, add a bit more mayo.
3. Put the mixture on top of the tomatoes and top with some more dill and black pepper.
This will last in the fridge for one day. After that it gets too watery and looses the flavors.
