Paleo Blueberry Bites

This is a recipe that actually has the hubby thinking that going Paleo may be ok for him.

These were actually very easy to make. I found the recipe on Julia's Paleo Pantry through Pinterest and made it, holding my breath when the hubby tried it. He actually likes these a lot, so I make them and try to keep some around for a quick snack, or when I want something bread/muffin like.

I also want to give props to Julia's Paleo Pantry for helping me figure out what was wrong with my coconut flour recipes with them turning out so dense. It turns out that coconut flour keeps sucking up liquids, so if you want a thinner batter, you add oil and eggs, not more water and coconut milk.

Ingredients:

3 eggs
3 tablespoons melted coconut oil
3 tablespoons honey
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup sifted coconut flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup blueberries - Julia's website used frozen blueberries. I used fresh blueberries in the mix, and they were fantastic. If you get frozen blueberries from the store, make sure that they don't have any added sugar in them.

Directions:

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the eggs, honey, oil, salt and vanilla.

Sift the coconut flour and the baking powder into the whisked egg mixture and stir well, until no lumps are left. 

Pour in the blueberries, and mix carefully, taking care not to crush the blueberries and not to turn your whole mixture blue. Mix just enough for them to be evenly distributed throughout the mixture. 

Julia's recipe says to spoon teaspoonfuls of the mixture into greased mini muffin tins. I chose to use my silicone baking cups on a baking sheet.

Pre-Baking

Bake at 350F for 15 minutes. If you see they are cooking too quickly, reduce the heat to 325F and bake for 20 minutes, until lightly golden. Allow the clusters to cool in the tin, and remove carefully once cool. This helps them to not fall apart.

Post-Baking

You can see where they have gotten a little golden brown. I have made subsequent batches and baked them a little longer so they are more golden brown. Yes, I know that one is missing. There was a Hubby-Mouse that snuck one before I could snap the done picture.

Paleo Canning - Chicken Prep

This weekend I came up with my Paleo menu for the week and went shopping with the hubby for a few  essential items (ok, a shopping basket full of essential items).  While we were out I picked up two whole chickens and brought them home. I wanted to make some homemade shredded chicken and with the price of canned chicken, I thought I would try making some myself.

I started by washing the chickens and putting them in my large canning pot. I wanted the chicken to have some flavor, so I quartered two onions and put those in the pot and then filled the water up over the chicken. I finished the seasoning with some garlic powder and poultry seasoning. Then I heated the water and boiled the chicken for about 2 hours. In the end, two beautiful little chickens, about 5.5 lbs each.

Once the chicken is cooled, then you can go ahead and pick the bones clean. I have experience cleaning poultry because I would help my Grandmother clean the turkey after thanksgiving dinner. If you don't have experience, that's ok. You will be able to feel the difference between the meat and the fat. Get rid of as much of the fat as you can, and then you will end up with something like this:

I got one large bowl of chicken from each bird. I mix light and dark meat because I like both, and for Paleo cooking, you don't need to be afraid of the fat. Once I had the birds cleaned, I chopped up the chicken and divided it. Each bird ended up giving me about 5 cups of chopped chicken. I decided to divide this into four equal parts and then put it in bags to freeze. If you are the kind of person who only likes white meat, you can do this with chicken breast, but it may be a little pricey.

I said that this post was about canning, and it is. I was looking and looking at the broth in the pot after I pulled the chicken out and decided that it couldn't go to waste, so I canned it.

 

I followed the same steps that I used to can my soup in an earlier blog post, Paleo Canning - Gazinta Soup.

From two chickens, and a little time, I ended up with 16 pints of Chicken broth that I can keep in my pantry, and 8 bags of shredded chicken that I froze. When I was at the store, I saw that a can of chicken broth costs $1.25 to $1.50 and a can of chicken in water is about $2.25 to purchase ready made (that is for a 10 oz can which has 2 ounces of water in it). This means that I spent $14 and some time to get almost $40 worth of food, and I know that what I made doesn't have any added sodium, and is much healthier.

I could have taken the chicken that I froze and canned it in the broth that I just made, and both would have been shelf stable. I may do that at some point, but I like to freeze things that I will use within 2 months time, and can things that will take me longer to use.

It is getting late for tonight, but I do want to let you know that I have some new recipes coming this week including Apple/Banana Breakfast Souffle and Blueberry Bites. The recipes sound delicious so I hope to be posting them soon.

Paleo Canning - Gazinta Soup

I got a text from my hubby before I got out of work yesterday that said he was making Paleo Friendly soup for dinner. I thought, that is great, now I don't have to cook. When I got home, I found this vat o'soup sitting on the stove. It was good, but even after packing lunches, there was just too much to eat before it would be bad. So I decided to pull a trick out of my hat and get the pressure canner out and can some soup.

Even before I decided to change my lifestyle to Paleo, I loved to can food. I like the idea that I can control what is in what you are eating and that there is nothing added that shouldn't be in there (in the past few years, I have tried to eliminate things like preservatives from my diet).

If you have never canned before, it is easiest to start out with jams and jellies to get the hang of it. It has been at least 5 years since I have bought a jar of jam, and the stuff you get in the store is loaded with preservatives and tastes awful compared to what you can make yourself. After jam and jelly, I moved on to apple and cranberry sauce canning. If you don't want to eat the jam and jelly because they contain lots of white refined sugar, that is understandable, but your non-paleo friends and family will love it as gifts. I actually have people fight over the last jars of my applesauce (which is what I would consider paleo because it is apples, water and a little bit of spices). Canning high-acidic food (fruit/jam/jelly/tomatoes) is very easy because you use a hot water bath to preserve the food.

To can low-acidic foods (meats and vegetables) you need to get the jars hotter than boiling water, and you have to use steam in a pressure cooker. Once you get the hang of canning, it is very easy to do. I like it because you can have shelf-stable food in your pantry for when you have a hunger attack and no time to make dinner (or at your desk when there the weather is bad and you don't want to go out).

If you want to know more about canning, get the book above (it is my canning bible) and then also visit the Ball Canning Website. I would say that the recipes are not necessarily paleo, but the book definitely goes over some cooking basics like making beef and chicken stock that you can use in other recipes or preserve for later use.

These are some of the tools you need for canning:

In  the back I have a pan with hot water and the jar lids (I call them flats). The flats need to be in hot water, but not boiling water. The hot water activates the rubber around the flats so you get a good seal on the jar. You can only use the flats once, so I usually write the contents of the jar on them with a sharpie once the jars have cooled.

23 quart pressure cooker/canner (left) and vat of paleo soup (right)

Tools, from the top: lid rings (in the container), long spoon, long ladle, jar lifter, magnet stick, jar funnel, and tongs (I use the tongs if there is an awkward position with the jars that need adjusting, and I used the tongs to get the flats out of the pan before I had the magnet stick).

When you preserve food, you need hot jars, hot food and hot water in the bottom of the pressure canner while you load it. This helps the food resist bacteria and prevents weakening and cracking of your jars from a temperature change. Take your funnel, and fill your jar. Leave room at the top of the jar for head space. The canning book will tell you how much head space that you need. Similar soup in the book required 1" head space. If you do not leave enough head space, your jars can break during processing.

Once the soup is in the jar, wipe the rim (mouth) with a wet washcloth to remove any food.

 Once you have wiped the rim of the jar, then you can pick up a flat with the magnet stick.

 Place the lid on the jar, centering it with your fingers, and then screw the band down tight.

 

Then you load your jars into the pressure canner. The canner I have will hold 8 pint (16 oz.) jars with seven around the outside, and the last one in the middle.

Once you get everything loaded and everything is secure, it is time to start canning. For similar soups, the ball canning book said to process at 10 lbs of pressure for at least 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Ok, so what am I going to do for the almost 2 hours it takes the canner to get to pressure and then let it process? Think, think, think... I know! lets get pale-organized!

I cleaned out my pantry, and I have about 1/4 of the food left that was in it (I'm just beginning this paleo lifestyle and have lots of reminders of my old lifestyle). I also found a couple of items that I could re-purpose. My old flour canister became a great storage container for my measuring cups and spoons that I use when I'm baking, and the size is perfect for me to put a jar of coconut oil in to run hot water over it and melt it. Old cereal containers became storage for the collection of paleo 'flour' that I'm gathering.

Now back to our regularly scheduled program.

Once your soup has processed, and the canner has de-pressurized, you need to take the jars out and set them on a towel. You need the towel for two reasons: 1) it protects your counter from being burned, 2) if your counter is cold, and you set a hot jar on it, you could crack the jar and lose all of the work you just did.

When the jars are cooling, you can sometimes hear a metal 'ping' sound. This is a good sound, it means that you have a seal and as the contents of your jar contract, they are pulling the lid down to seal.

There is one more thing to note about pressure canning. Pressure canning cooks the food while it is being processed. You could throw a batch of soup together get it to boiling and can it and it will cook the rest of the way while it is being processed (this is why commercially canned soups have mushy contents). If I am cooking soup to eat and preserve, I will leave the veggies firm in the soup that I take out for dinner that night so my soup is not mushy later.

So you may be wondering why I called this post Gazinta Soup.

In my family, we like soup and we like to make it, lots of it. Which is why my husband had the largest pot in the house full of soup, and said that he learned it from me. Gazinta means... what is in the fridge/cupbord/freezer 'goes-in-to' the soup. You can have beef, turkey, chicken, or beef-tomato gazinta soup. This is a soup where I don't follow a set recipe, and I have never made it the same twice.

These are the ingredients for the soup I just canned.

Ground Beef
Kale
Carrots
Celery
Onion
Stewed Tomatoes
Tomato Sauce
Green Beans (not technically paleo, but the hubby was trying)
Broccoli
Garlic
Beef Broth (we had some in the cupbord from our pre-paleo lifestyle that he wanted to use but you could just as easily use some that you made)
Salt and Pepper to taste.

When making soup (or crockpot) recipes with ground beef, you need to brown the beef first. If you don't it will get all mushy and weird.

Brown the ground beef, start adding liquids, and then add your vegetables. I know he used about 2 lbs of ground beef but that is about all I know. He likes to chop and chop and fill the biggest pot in our house with soup ingredients. If you are planning on just eating the soup, boil/simmer until the hardest vegetable can easily be speared by a fork (in this case the carrots). If you want to preserve the soup, I would leave the veggies a little firmer so they won't be mushy later.

As fruit comes in season, hopefully I will be able to come up with more paleo-friendly fruits to can naturally (not drowning in sugary syrup).

Recipe #3 - Paleo Pancakes & Waffles

Paleo Pancakes. It sounds like an oxmoron, but I actually found a really good recipe on Nom Nom Paleo (my new favorite paleo cooking website) and decided to try it.

Nom Nom Paleo - Cinnamon and Coconut Pancakes

I found the batter to be a little thick and I added 1/8 c. of water.

I cooked them, and of course, I burned the first batch. This is not a paleo thing, this is a Wendy thing, I always burn the first batch. I'm much better with making waffles.

This started me thinking (I can already hear my husband's voice in my mind saying 'oh crap'). You typically just add oil to pancake batter to make regular waffles. So I plugged in the waffle iron and started mixing.

This is the recipe as I made it.

Banana, Coconut and Cinnamon Waffles

Wet Ingredients
1/2 banana, mashed (I did this in the bowl with a fork)
3 tbsp. coconut milk
2 large eggs
1/2 tsp. apple cider vinegar
1/2 tsp. real vanilla
1/8 c. water
2 tbsp. olive oil (or other paleo oil, I used what I had on hand)

Dry Ingredients
1 1/2 tbsp. Bob's Red Mill Organic Coconut Flour
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 Pinch of salt

For Cooking on the Waffle Iron
Cooking Spray (I found coconut oil cooking spray at the store)
or if you don't want to use cooking spray, you can grease the waffle iron with olive oil, or ghee or whatever oil you prefer.

This gave me almost three 4-inch square waffles.

Mix your wet and dry ingredients in separate bowls while you wait for the waffle iron to heat up. Once the waffle iron is hot, then mix the wet and dry ingredients together, use cooking spray on the waffle iron and then pour the batter in. Traditionally I would use regular cooking spray on the waffle iron, but since that kind of oil is not paleo, I did find coconut oil cooking spray to use at the grocery store.

Mix wet and dry ingredients separately.

Pour the batter in the waffle iron and cook. Waffles are done when the steam stops coming out of the sides of the waffle iron.

If you look at the back splash in front of the cord you can kind of see the steam coming out of the waffle maker.

I found that when the waffles were done, they were not crisp, but they did hold their shape.

I ate 2 of the waffles with some of my Almond Butter that I made in a previous post and they tasted very good.

I fed a non-burned pancake to my non-paleo (yet supportive) husband who said 'banana pancake, that's good.' Since we have a winner with him, I have decided to post the recipe up for those who want to follow it. Happy Cooking!

Recipe #2 - Nut (Almond & Cashew) Butter

I ended up trying the Coconut Flax bread recipe again yesterday and adding more liquid. The result was a significantly more edible bread. I will probably wait a bit to post the recipe because I'm still going to work with it a bit.

In the meantime I decided that instead of putting regular butter on the bread (instead of Country Crock) I should probably make some different nut butter to use as a spread. I found a recipe online, and it was so easy, I was sure that I could not screw this up...

The first thing that you need are unsalted, roasted nuts. I was able to easily find raw, unsalted nuts, so I had to roast them myself. The nuts I chose were almonds and cashews.

Raw Almonds

Raw Cashews

To roast the nuts, preheat your oven to 375F and bake for 4 minutes, give a little stir and bake for 4 more minutes. Be careful not to let the nuts burn. The roasting time can vary depending on the moisture that was already in the nuts, so keep that in mind, and keep an eye on your nuts.

Roasted Almonds

Roasted Cashews

The next step is to let the nuts cool. I found that leaving them on the baking sheet on the kitchen table under the ceiling fan worked well to get them cooled quickly.

Once your nuts have cooled, the online recipe I found said to process them in your food processor, and add a little oil as necessary to get a creamy texture for the butter.

Either the internet lied, or I have a crap food processor. I kept grinding the roasted nuts, but all I got was nut powder. I ended up adding olive oil to the very granulated nut powder so that it would start to form the butter.

Cashew Butter

The cashew butter turned out better than the almond butter, but both have a very grainy texture. There is one redeeming quality though, the flavor is excellent. I have both in jars in my fridge waiting to be spread on something, probably the paleo pancakes that I'm going to try to make tomorrow.

Overall I would call this a 55% success. The thing it let me know is that I definitely need a good blender to make some of these paleo recipes, and I can't think of a better one then the Blendtec. I want that for my Christmas Present.

Of course if I do get the Blendtec, then I will have to make sure that my husband doesn't do something like this:

This is how the cashew butter turned out.

Recipe #1 - Paleo Bread (Coconut Flour and Flax)

My first attempt at Paleo cooking is to make some bread. I searched the internet for a bread recipe and quickly found that most of the recipes contained almond flour. Since the hubby has a 'sensitivity' to tree nuts, I looked for an alternative to almond flour, and found a recipe that used coconut flour and flax instead.

The reviews for the recipe were all very positive.

I think that I did something wrong.

The only thing I did differently is using flax meal instead of 'flax seeds, ground'. The recipe said that the 'batter will be thick" and that you should 'pour' the batter into the loaf pan. I found that the batter being thick was an understatement as the dough landed with a solid THUNK into the pan.

I patted the 'batter' out as best as I could, although it was thicker than any peanut butter cookie dough that I have ever seen.

I baked the bread, and the result was a dense loaf that looked just like what I had put into the oven, only dry.

I was going to wait until tomorrow to try the bread, but my husband encouraged me to try a slice, so I decided what the heck I should probably taste it.

One of the premises of Paleo cooking is that you don't use processed foods or dairy. If you had to put a spread on the bread, it could be some cashew butter, or at the very least real butter. What did my husband get out of the fridge? Country Crock... Since he was so excited to try this paleo bread, I let him take the first bite (sans any spread). He chewed and chewed and chewed, then he made some sound that indicated to me that his mouth was very dry, so he washed his paleo bread down with some Diet Coke and then put the country crock on the rest of his piece and choked it down. He is so supportive.

I took a bite sans spread with much the same result as my husband had, although I had the foresight to get a very tall glass of water to wash it down with. Then I put the country crock on my bread and choked it down.

Once my husband was able to speak again, he asked me if this was a recipe for lembas bread and if one bite of this could sustain a man for a week. I gave him a dirty look. Did I mention that I have a very supportive husband?

Then I cut a slice and broke it into 3 and gave a piece to each of our three dogs. They scarfed it down and they had tails wagging for more. I guess that this recipe is slightly moister than a dog biscuit. My first paleo bread is now in the fridge and will be used as dog treats and I will keep searching for a new recipe.

The Beginning...

I'm going to lay this out right now...

- I love carbohydrates.

- I love Starbucks (I have a Starbucks budget).

- I love chocolate, candy and cake.

- I love comfort foods.

- I eat when I'm stressed.

Now that those important things have been said, I am going to try to switch to a 'Paleo' Lifestyle.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the Paleo phenomenon going on the premise of the diet is fairly simple. You can eat meat, poultry, fish, fresh fruits and vegetables, some tree nuts and healthy fats. You should avoid dairy, grains (corn is considered a grain), legumes (all forms of beans and peanuts), starchy foods (white potatoes) and alcohol. Basically if a cave man could chuck a spear at it or find it growing as they traveled, you can eat it.

So with what I said above about being a carbohydrate lover and all that you may be asking "why is she going to make the switch?"

The answer is simple. I'm tired of feeling like crap all of the time. I should add to this that I have been experimenting with my diet over the past 6 months. Sometimes I take out carbohydrates and sometimes I eat more fresh fruits and vegetables. Sometimes I cut out processed foods, and other times I mow down on the unhealthiest stuff I can find. For instance ramen noodles, they are basically no better for your body than eating cardboard with sodium and a little beef or chicken flavor, and I absolutely love them. If I want to stop feeling like crap, I have to make a change. I have found that I feel the best when I have a diet with low processed foods, and high in foods that are close to their natural state. Paleo may not be perfect for me, but I'm going to give it a try.