Cinnamon Roasted Pecans and Almonds!!!

We all want to know how to snack!!  I get this question all the time.  If you aren't asking it right now, you will in 3 months.  This is a snack you are going to want to make all the time!

Ingredients: preheat oven 350 degrees
5 handfulls (small mixing bowl full) of mixed pecans and walnuts
About 1 tsp. cinnamon
About 1 Tbs. maple syrup

I'm drooling over this while i'm typing!  Get a mixing bowl and mix your ingredients until everything is evenly covered.  On a baking sheet w/ parchment paper (it's like wax paper but you can put it in the oven) spread it around and put in the oven for 10-12 minutes.

Wait until it cools and you have a really awesome snack!

Dried Fruit

It's time to get a dehydrator or dig it out of your garage and dust it off.  Dry fruit from the store is gross. Dry fruit made from home is THE BEST SNACK EVER.  I have mangos, pears, bananas, and cranberries (flop)!  All the sudden the banana chips were gone! In Shaun's belly! They dried for two days and they were gone in seconds! Well. bananas are so cheap,  I just made more.

Just Chicken

Ingredients: warm the George Forman or go out and buy one
7 strips of chicken
1 sweet potato
1 bowl of broccoli
1/2 or so butternut squash
some olive oil
1 garlic clove minced (I hope by this point you always have one in your fridge)
sprinkle of Thyme
sprinkle of Sage
sprinkle of pepper

I got home at 9pm thinking, "I don't want to make a big meal, so I'll just have chicken." It's usually just that, but I really enjoyed my homemade chicken seasoning.

First, heat a pan on medium for the chicken, then start on cutting the Sweet Potato. 1/2 sweet potato per person is a good amount.  So cut it up into little fry pieces.  Make sure you oil them up with olive oil.  Put them in the George Forman, turn them once or twice, and YUMMI!  It should take around 10-15 minutes for them to cook.

When the pan gets warm, add about 1tsp olive oil - or just dribble around the pan.  Add minced garlic to the oil, stir for a second.  Add the chicken to the pan.  I sprinkled the Thyme, Sage, and pepper only on 1 side on purpose. They will cook rather quickly, about 3 minutes per side. I usually just watch the chicken cook through until it's only half rare, then I flip.

While the chicken is cooking put 1Tbs. water in your broccoli bowl and cover with saran wrap or put it in a steam bag or steam it on the stove top if you have the pans.  I added some leftover brussel sprouts to the broccoli.  Put it in the microwave for 2-3 minutes for a medium bowl. If you make a lot for the family, it'll be longer.

You can put butternut squash in a bowl with some water and cover for . . . lets say 6 minutes? Just make sure you can easily poke a fork into it like a soggy potato.  Shaun and I traded cooking places and he did a wonderful job finishing the 3rd veggie side!  He had both the broccoli and the squash in the microwave for 10 minutes (I already had the broccoli in for 2 before trading).  The squash was uncovered but drenched in water.  It turned out super moist when i drained it, and it was super Tasty!

Roasted Baby Squash and Carrots

You are going to need energy on paleo. How do we get it?  "So we should eat a lot of carbs, right? Uh, no. As you will see we are better served if we can encourage most of the body to run on fat and just provide enough carbohydrate to meet the needs of these truely glucose-dependent tissues.  By reducing the body's total need for carbohydrate, we actually protect ourselves from Blood Sugar Crashes."  Excerpt from Robb Wolf's The Paleo Solution.  Buy it and read it.

Ingredients: preheat oven to broil. Serves 2 or maybe even 1 if you're hungry
The Paleo Diet Cookbook

1Tbs extra virgin olive oil
1 garlic clove minced
1/2 zucchini cut 1/4 inch
baby carrots (handful sliced in half long ways. Some I cut in 4s long ways)
sprinkle dill across - aprox. 1/2 tsp. (recipe called for fresh, I used dry)
sprinkle thyme - 1/2 tsp.

preheat oven to broil. In a baking dish add the oil and garlic (I used a baking sheet with foil on it).  Add the veggies and mix in the herbs. I used my hands to toss.  Broil for 10 minutes.  (just in case you didn't know, broil is only using the top burner in the oven, and it gets pretty hot.  Sometimes you'll broil bread and butter so the top is crispy and the bottom is soft. dont eat bread.)  keep it in for 10 minutes. stir. and keep them in for another minute or so.

Bison Stuffed Bell Peppers

Ingredients: Serves 4. preheat oven 350.
The Paleo Diet Cookbook

4 Bell Peppers (make sure when you buy them that they can stand on their own)
1 Tbs. olive oil
1lb bison
1 egg
1scallion diced
garlic powder to taste (I used 2 small, fresh cloves)
cayenne pepper to taste (I used 1/4 tsp.)

Preheat oven. cut the tops off the peppers and remove seeds.  Rub the outer surface with oil. Instead of measuring, i just poured about 1tsp in my hand and rubbed. Get a baking dish, add some olive oil to the bottom of it, put the peppers in the dish and set aside.

In a bowl combine ground bison and egg. You can use your hands but I just used a spoon.  Add the Diced scallions, pepper, and garlic.  Keep mixing till it's all even looking.  Stuff your peppers (great for kids to do!)

 You might have already realized this before stuffing the pepper, but your baking dish is going to be slippery when you put the pepers in.  It was quite a challenge to get my peppers to stand on end when full, so I had to put two small shot glasses to help hold them up.  This is what took me the longest to accomplish!  So now you have your baking dish, peppers bison spout up, and now cover ( I covered with foil).   Bake for 1 hour. let sit for 5 minutes.

OK. 1/4 tsp. of cayenne pepper was perfect. 2 tiny cloves of garlic or 1 big clove was perfect!  How can you add an ingredient to taste when the product is RAW? gross.  I'm glad my guesses worked out.  But before I get ahead of myself, I did do a couple things wrong. I'm all cavewoman, so I wanted more meat in my pepper!  I stuffed 1/2 pound in 1 pepper and 1/2 pound in another pepper (I didn't stuff 4 peppers like the recipe said).  The bison was very rare and more like luke warm. Which is ok for some people.  But we put ours back in the micrwave to a more medium cook.  I think if I would have put 1/4 pound in a pepper, it would have been fine. Oh, and when it's all done and you put it on your plate, juice might go everywhere.

Pumpkin Nut Muffins

Ingredients: preheat oven 400 degrees, makes 12 muffins
1/2 C. coconut flour
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 C. pureed pumpkin
6 Eggs, beaten
4 Tbs. coconut oil OR gently melted unsalted butter
1/3 C. pure maple syrup or honey (Grade B or less)
1 tsp. real Vanilla extract
some pecans
12 aluminum muffin liners

Holy Cow! Where was this recipe when I had my last 45 day, no cheating, paleo challenge!? Now that I'm preparing for a lifetime of paleo, I'm extremely excited that I have The Primal Blueprint Cookbook to give me amazingly healthy, delicious recipes like this. GO TRY IT RIGHT NOW.  If you don't have coconut flour, go buy it, and you can also make a pancake recipe that I'll post soon.

Grease a muffin pan very well, or you can prevent the mess by getting aluminum muffin liners. 1st, combine all the dry ingredients in one bowl #1; blend, stir well, and set aside.  Get bowl #2 and add the pumpkin puree. One by one add the eggs and mix well.  Add the oil/butter, maple syrup, and vanilla extract.  Mix well. Add the dry ingredients from bowl #1 and whisk until you don't see any lumps. You can add chopped nuts if you want. I added mine on top.  Use a spoon to fill in muffin pan or liners 3/4 full.  They will rise a little bit.  Bake 18-20 minutes.  I kept mine inside for 20 minutes.  You can get a toothpick to poke through the muffin; if it comes out "clean" then they are ready to come out.  I prefer the muffins warm, but they are yummi warm or room temp.  The muffins stuck to the liners just a little bit. It wasn't big problem, though.

BREAKFAST TACOS!

I got the idea from an enchilada recipe from The Primal Blueprint Cookbook. No more flour tortilla! Say YES to egg tortilla taco!!!


Ingredients: serves 2 people
1/2 sausage package
1 diced tomato
1/4 diced onion
1 avocado
lemon juice
salt
garlic (1 small clove fresh or 1 tsp. or so of powder)
5-6 eggs

Heat a pan on medium (to save time, heat two pans - 1 for your sausage and 1 for your eggs). Side Note: I always have the oven on Warm with plates so when i'm finished something, I plop it in the oven until everyone's ready to eat.

Put your sausage in pan 1. I would personally add sausage to both pans to grease both of them up then consolidate them- or you can just use olive oil for your eggs. While those are cooking, dice the tomatoes and onion. continue to stir the sausage, cut your ripe avocado in half, dig out the green and smash it up. I always add a little salt, garlic, and lemon juice to taste - and don't really use measurements.

Whisk your eggs in a bowl.

In a well greased pan 2 (or same pan 1 - you can put your sausage in a bowl and put in the oven to keep warm), pour a little bit of the egg in the pan. It was easier to flip the egg if I kept it small and thin, like a small flour tortilla. You gotta flip it fast and good or it can rip or flip on itself where it'll stick together. Cook for about 45seconds or a minute on each side. When I was done with 1, I put it in the oven to keep warm.

Eat these like a taco or with a fork. It just depends on how dirty you want to get ;)