Paleo Spaghetti Squash simple pasta

I have been wanting to try this for a long time. Recently, many friends have been telling me to give it a go, that I would really like it. I'll admit, I'm still not a huge fan of the texture since I'm a big perfect pasta texture person, but this was really delicious all the same.

Ingredients:
2 spaghetti squash, cut into halves with seeds scooped out
2 T olive oil, 1 T butter from grass-fed cows
4 cloves garlic
salt and pepper and crushed red pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake the squash cut side down (after the seeds have been removed) for 30 minutes. While that is baking, saute the rest of the ingredients. Once baked, use a fork to scrap out the "pasta" and scoop into the sauce. Serve with salad and steak and enjoy!

Paleo Almond Dog Bites

My guilty pleasure was always a good corn dog. Since finding out I have Celiac back in 2010, I haven't had one of those delicious ultra-processed babies. I made these out of Almond and Coconut flour for the Super Bowl, and was very impressed!

Recipe adapted from: http://glutenfreefix.com/corn-dog-bites/3126/

Ingredients:
1/4 cup melted butter
3 eggs
2 T honey
1/4 cup almond flour
2 T coconut flour
1/4 t baking soda
1/4 t salt
4 hot dogs cut into fourths
mini muffin pan

Preheat oven to 325. Mix the butter, eggs and honey. Add in and mix the flours, baking soda, and salt. Mix well, then pour into the mini muffin pan, filling each tin half-way. Press in hot dog pieces. Bake for about 15 minutes. Perfect!

Paleo French Onion Soup

You really love someone when you make them French Onion soup. Slicing a bunch of onions can really bring a big man... or in my case a tough girl... to tears. Anyway, the hubbs requested this and it turned out pretty good!

Ingredients:
1 T olive oil
4 onions, sliced
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 T arrowroot starch
1/4 water
2 shredded carrots
2 cups chicken stock
2 cups beef stock
pepper to taste
1 bay leaf
1/4 tsp sage

In a crockpot (if your insert is removable for frying) or in a large skillet, sauté the onions, garlic, and oil until onions get soft. Sprinkle the starch and stir for about 1 minute. Add water to deglaze the pan (this is really good if you use a gluten free beer or wine instead). Add the rest of the ingredients, bring to a boil, then put the pot back into the crockpot and cook on low for a couple of hours until you are ready to eat.

Paleo Poppers

You know those delicious grilled Jalapeños stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon? Well these are incredibly similar, only I used avocado instead of cream cheese and broiled them since it's freezing outside. Be careful when you handle them, because I apparently picked up the world's hottest jalapenos and my hands were pretty numb for a couple days... ouch!

Ingredients:
8 Jalapenos, halved and seeded
8 slices of bacon, cut in halves
2 avocados, meat scraped out

Stuff each jalapeno with avocado and wrap with a half of a slice of bacon. Place the stuffed peppers into a 8x13 casserole dish or directly onto the grill. If using the oven, bake at 400 for 10 minutes then broil on high for about 5 minutes or until bacon is crispy. Serve and enjoy!

Vegan Tomato and Kale Soup

On an incredibly cold day, tomato soup is just perfect. I'm not a fan of tomato soup with chunks of veggies normally, but this was delicious.

Ingredients:
28 oz. can of fire-roasted tomatoes
3 cups vegetable broth
1 bunch of kale, chopped
1 1/4 cups rice, cooked (you could also use quinoa)
1 cup frozen pea + sliced carrot blend, organic
2 bay leaves (remove before serving)
1 heaping tbsp chili powder
pepper/salt to taste 
1 tsp garlic powder 

pinch cayenne pepper

Blend tomatoes in a processor until smooth, then pour into a large pot. Add vegetable broth and cook on medium-high until boiling. Add spices, bay leaves, and peas and carrots until vegetables are cooked through. Add rice and kale and serve!

Miso like you've never had it!

I love good miso soup. This soup was fantastic! I've seriously never had miso that tasted this good, and it was my first attempt at home-made miso. There's a little twist, since my mother-in-law made it this way once and I just love it. I didn't have tofu, so I didn't add it, but it would be a great addition to make this more of a meal!

Ingredients:
4 cups water
2 T sweet white miso paste (I find this in the refrigerated section at the local health food store)
1 T vegetable bouillon
1 jalapeño, sliced
handful chopped cilantro

Bring the water to a boil, add the miso paste and bouillon. Stir until dissolved, then add jalapeno and cilantro. Now go try it and love it!

Chipotle Quinoa

I have honestly never liked chipotle. I love every pepper in the world it seems, with this exception. I found this recipe as well in the the Food Matters Cookbook and decided to give it a try. I was blown away, both by the great flavor of the dish and the heat of the chipotle... a great thing! If you don't like spice, don't add any of the adobo sauce and just use one pepper.

Ingredients:

3 T olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 T minced garlic
2 canned chipotle chiles, minced with some sauce
1 tsp dried oregano
3/4 cup quinoa
salt and black pepper
1 cup cooked or canned black beans, drained
1/2 cup corn
1 1/2 cups vegetable stock
lime wedges

Heat oil in large skillet over medium heat. Add onion and garlic, and cook until onion is clear. Add peppers and adobo, and oregano. Turn heat up to medium-high, add quinoa, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and stir frequently for a few minutes. Add beans, corn, stock and boil. Stir, reduce heat to low and cover, and cook for 15 minutes. Serve with lime wedges.

Ma-Po Tofu without the fluff!

When I lived in China, I was always all over Ma-Po Tofu. It's normally stir-fried with pork, but I'm obviously cooking without pork these days. I modified this recipe from an incredible cookbook I picked up a while back, called The Food Matters Cookbook. It's got all kinds of great plant-based recipes, with meat included as well, just not the star of the dishes. This dish surprised both my husband and I in that it was so good! He's a meat-lover by all standards, and thoroughly enjoyed this. I swear, it was danged-delicious!

Ingredients:
1 T olive oil
3 cloves minced garlic
1 T minced ginger
1/2 tsp chile flakes, to taste
1/2 cup chopped scallions
2 cups chopped tomatoes
1/2 cup vegetable stock
14 oz firm tofu, cut into cubes
2 T soy sauce
salt
black pepper
1 drizzle sesame oil

Heat oil in large skillet. Add garlic, ginger and chile flakes until they sizzle. Add scallions, tomatoes, and stock. Cook for a couple of minutes until fragrant, then add tofu. Stir occasionally until heated through. Stir in soy sauce, salt, black pepper, and sesame oil. Serve over rice and enjoy!

Roasting Seaweed

I've posted a while back about how great of a snack seaweed is. I love it with a bit of rice. In some households, kids eat chicken fingers all day. Well in mine growing up, my brother and I were all over seaweed and rice. I guess we both still are! You can buy little packets of it in the store, but it's incredibly expensive, especially when it takes all of 5 minutes to do in your own kitchen and it tastes so much more fresh.

This is all you need:
A package of seaweed... as much of it as you like.
A brush for food
sea salt
sesame oil
large pan... my mom just used her stove top

Lay out each piece of seaweed, paint on thin coat of sesame oil, then sprinkle with the amount of salt to your preference. I love salt so I throw it on very generously. You may want to hold back and just sprinkle a very light amount. With the pan heated on high, use your fingers or a tong to lay a piece of seaweed in there for about 3 seconds (until it starts to crinkle a little) then flip for a couple of seconds and continue until all seaweed is done. You can chop it into fourths, which is what I prefer since I like a mouth full of seaweed, or into sixths which is what is normal. Serve it alone or with a teaspoon of rice per piece of seaweed for a light lunch or snack.

angeled eggs over tuna

I did a recipe overhaul on my usual deviled egg recipe, and these were delicious! This version is packed with even more protein, since I threw in a can of tuna. I also removed the vegannaise so these are now Paleo.

Ingredients:
12 eggs, boiled
1 can tuna
2 T spicy mustard
2 T horseradish
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
black pepper
salt
red pepper
2 T olive oil
1 diced jalapeno

Cut the eggs in half and spoon out the yolks into a large bowl. Mix all of the rest of the ingredients in with the yolks until well blended. Spoon the mixture into the egg whites, which should be overflowing with goodness once you are finished. Enjoy your healthy, delicious, perfect snack!

fit for a wedding; italian wedding soup

Belly up for veggies! Let me just tell you what freaks me out the most about food: the length of time it lasts in a can/bottle/jar. For example, I cringe when I watch those Progresso or Campbell's soup commercials. How do they make the meat in those cans last that long without going bad? How is that still edible? And people eat this junk because it's fast food? Barf.

Soup is one of the fastest things in the world to make. Well actually, any healthy meal can be super fast. And by healthy, I am excluding all the "organic" or "healthy" canned or frozen meals with all of those nasty chemicals that make the food last longer. Seriously gross stuff. Mallory and I made this soup in a pinch with no recipe.

This brings me to another issue... just because you do not have a recipe or have never made anything before does not mean you don't know how to make it! Simply throw some stuff in a pot until it tastes good. It really is that simple. It's called learning how to cook. Besides, cookbooks did not exist when many of the delicious staples were first created. They were passed down by word of mouth or by watching and doing.... which in turn changed all the recipes by a little bit each time they were recreated. So who cares if your recipe doesn't match Mario Batali's or your great-grandmother's?

Ingredients:
2 cups chicken broth
2 cups beef broth
2 cups water
1 cup carrots
2 cups spinach
dash of parsley, black pepper, salt, and crushed red pepper

Throw it all into a pot and allow it to boil, then decrease the heat a little and allow it to cook until meatballs  are done.

Meatballs:
1 lb ground beef
1 T minced garlic
1 diced yellow onion
1 tsp honey
1 T red pepper
1 egg
1/2 cup almond meal
1/2 cup chopped celery

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix all of the meatball ingredients together. Form them into balls, sizing them to whatever you prefer. Place them all on a slotted pan atop a baking pan and bake for 35 minutes. Remove from the oven and toss into the soup and serve!

Ernie's sausage balls!

It's gameday! There was a little joke made last year when Ernie made his sausage balls and Alabama lost to South Carolina.... but I'll save you all the laughs :) Anyway, Patti and Ernie came to visit last weekend and I made a healthier version of his lucky sausage balls. Although they were super delicious, Carolina lost. But hey, they were yummy!

Ingredients:

2 16 oz packages sausage (All natural, no msg or any additives)

4 cups sharp cheddar cheese, shredded

1/2 cup finely chopped onion

1/2 cup finely chopped celery

2 tsp black pepper

2 tsp minced garlic

1 T crushed red pepper

1.5 cups almond meal

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 375 F. Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl; stir well. Form into 1inch balls. Place on ungreased slotted baking sheet, atop a baking pan; bake 18-20 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven; cool 5 minutes before removing from pan. Serve with cocktail forks or toothpicks.

paleo poppyseed vinaigrette

My all time favorite salad dressing is poppyseed dressing. I order it any time I get a salad at a restaurant, since chances are, its made of oil and sugar, sans any gluten problems. My cousin Mike is the owner/chef at Kelley's Courtyard Cafe, and no one makes poppyseed dressing better. There's probably no chance he'll give up the recipe, so I decided to venture out on my own and make a Paleo version. The dressing I ended up with was a total success. It's delicious, nutritious, and very similar to the flavor Mike will someday bottle up like Paul Newman did after his glory days :)

Ingredients:
1 cup olive oil
1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
juice squeezed from 1 orange
1/3 cup honey
1 T mustard
3 T poppyseeds
dash of salt and pepper

Whisk it all together then store in the refrigerator after serving.

paleo fried "rice"

I am so excited about this. I'm Asian, and I love rice. Rice has always been my food-love. It's always been there... I'm slightly kidding. In all sincerity though, I have probably had it with almost every one of my meals since I was able to eat solid food as a kid. Bread has never been a big deal to me, nor has any other grain. But rice. Dear goodness, rice. Anyway, I ran across an awesome blog that instructs you how to make cauliflower taste like rice and how to incorporate it into your everyday rice dishes. Saved!

Find it here: http://feastingonfitness.blogspot.com/2009/10/cauliflower-rice.html

I decided to incorporate it into my mom's famous fried rice. The other day I was sad that my cousin ate all of my fried rice, but now I'm better seeing as I can make my own healthy version :)

Ingredients:
1 head of cauliflower
1 T olive oil
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 small yellow onion, diced
1 cup mushrooms, diced
3 T liquid aminos
1 T sesame oil
1 T black pepper
1 tsp ground red pepper
3 eggs, scrambled
3 slices bacon, chopped

Cut up florets of the cauliflower then blend in food processor or blender by small amounts, into rice-like texture. Set aside. Heat a large skillet to medium heat, add olive oil, red bell pepper, onion, mushrooms, and cauliflower. Cook for 2 minutes, then add the liquid aminos, sesame oil, black pepper, and ground red pepper. Saute for 2 more minutes, then add the eggs and bacon. Stir everything together and let cook until the cauliflower has a rice-like consistency.

spicy wings over paleo, just in time for football!

Everyone should know by now what a wing fanatic I am. Wings are my go-to meal... even for a romantic dinner with Jake the day before he leaves for deployment. True story. I'm not sure why people think they are so bad for you. I especially like when someone tells me how unhealthy chicken wings are, as they grab a bowl of ice cream and a diet soda. Yep. Anyway, there is something about the way the meat cooks with the skin (fat) and the bone that makes it so sweet and juicy. I love my wings marinated and grilled, but we don't have a grill here at the beach house. I am about a few meals away from breaking down and buying the portable grill Jake and I have been wanting for a while now. Until then, baking and broiling will work. These wings were so absolutely delicious, I just can not describe how amazed I was at the full flavor. I didn't even use any vinegar/sugar/chemical-laden sauces. SOOO YUM!

Ingredients:
1 package wings, wing tips removed
1 T sesame oil
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp grapeseed oil (or olive oil)
3 T liquid aminos
1 T honey
1 T apple cider vinegar
1 T crushed red pepper
1 jalapeno, chopped
5 cloves of garlic
2 T cayenne pepper

Blend everything (but the wings) together in either a blender or processor, until everything is pureed and combined. Throw everything in a ziploc bag or a tupperware container with the wings. Allow to marinate overnight, and shake it all up when you get the chance. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place the wings side by side on a slitted pan over a baking pan after greasing the slitted pan. Bake for 50 minutes, turning the wings over halfway through. Turn on the broiler at the end, then broil the wings 5 minutes per side to get it crispy. Or if you have a grill, just throw them all on a grill for about 30 minutes, flipping halfway through.

Warning: these wings are extremely deceptive when it comes to heat. They burned my mouth and I am a spice fanatic. I would only use 1/2 of the jalapeno and 1/2 of the cayenne as well as 1/2 the vinegar if you can not tolerate spice very well.

baked sweet potato aka my favorite Paleo snack!

I have been snacking on weird food since I was a baby. I believe my first snack other than my mother's milk was dried squid... basically squid jerky. Yeah, that's how hardcore beast I am. Now I can't even think about eating squid without gagging because of squid overload. Next I guess I moved onto yummy sweet potatoes, which are much more the "norm" I'd say. Sweet potatoes are yummy and it doesn't get any easier. Well, you could always reach for a bag of chips. Oooooh your chips are "whole grain"... well then, aren't you the healthiest person in the world. Not. Go several days without grain and see how different your body feels. You'll be amazed. But I digress. I just wanted to share how easy it is to snack on something other than junk.

Ingredients:
sweet potato

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Poke many holes into the sweet potato then wrap it in foil, shiny side in. Bake for 30-45 minutes, or until soft. Yummy!

paleo eggplant dip

I know, I know. This stuff looks gross. My dad even said it looks like cat food. I'm not going to lie, it certainly does. However, this is so delicious, and PERFECT for football season in place of all those corn chips, pita breads, and cheese dips. I got the original version of this recipe from my friend Jen, and it was delicious! To fit it into my Paleo challenge, I substituted the beans for eggplant and added a tiny bit of extra ingredients. After one bite, my dad won't stop eating it... and he's a pretty tough food critic, unlike the oh-so-forgiving Jake I'm used to cooking for. So try it out!

Ingredients:
4 garlic cloves, peeled
4 T fresh lemon juice
2 heaping T sesame tahine
2 tsp ground cumin
pinch salt
1 medium eggplant, cut into large chunks
2 jalapeno peppers, chopped
pinch crushed red pepper
pinch ground red pepper
1 T grapeseed oil (or olive oil...)
sliced veggies of choice for dipping

It's as easy as this. Throw everything into a blender then serve. Yeah that's right, what more can you ask?

apple {pie} brie

Once upon a time, there was a wonderful restaurant downtown Norfolk called the Winehouse. This was 3 years ago to be exact, when Jake and I had first started dating. He doesn't know this, but this was actually my first real date at a nice restaurant, with a bottle of wine... you know, all the trimmings. We ordered the baked brie as an appetizer. The brie was baked in puffed pastry and folded in with cherries, apples, and sweet wine. It was absolutely amazing. My parents had a block of brie they wanted eaten, as well as some apples... and you know I will make sure something gets eaten! Food can not be wasted! So this is what I came up with, and is much lighter than if it had been baked inside of buttered bread.

Ingredients:
1 block of brie, rinds cut off
1 medium green apple, sliced
1 T butter, melted
1 T cinnamon
1 T honey

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Cut the brie in half, and set the top half aside. In a small bowl, mix the butter, cinnamon, and honey together and set aside. Place half of the apple slices on top of the brie. Sprinkle half of the cinnamon butter mixture atop the apples. Place the top half of the brie on top of the apples. Repeat with the remaining apple slices and cinnamon butter mixture. Bake on an oven-safe surface for 15 minutes or until cheese bubbles. I suggest adding chopped walnuts and cranberries to the sliced apples before baking if you happen to have them in your kitchen! Serve with GF crackers.

seaweed soup

Call me crazy, but one of the only things I crave other than ice cream and chicken wings is seaweed soup. I love this stuff. I'll even go so far as to call it the food the kings of the sea might pray to have for dinner. It's so healthy and much more simple than it sounds. You can find the seaweed at any asian food store, or maybe even a health food store. Koreans actually use this as a detox food, which completely makes sense, seeing as this is all seaweed. I dare you to try it..... you'll love it. Serve it with rice or quinoa or something of that nature, or just have it as soup!

Ingredients:
2 lbs chuck roast
8 cloves garlic, minced or chopped
approx. 1 lb dried seaweed strands
1 T GF soy sauce
pinch of salt
1 T sesame oil
serve with black pepper

Make beef broth the night before by cooking the chuck roast in water in a crock pot overnight. The next day, pull meat out of the broth and set aside. Place the soup into the refrigerator for the rest of the day until fat rises to the surface, and remove it with a spoon with holes in it.
Soak the dried seaweed in a bowl of water for about 2 or 3 hours. Once seaweed is soft, squeeze all excess water from it then cut it with scissors or a knife into smaller pieces. In a big saucepan, saute the sesame oil and garlic, then add the seaweed and saute for about 3 minutes. Add the soy sauce, then add the beef broth. Pull the beef apart with your fingers or cut it with a knife then add it to the broth. Simmer this mixture for about 3 minutes then it is ready to eat. Add more salt and pepper to taste.

tomato tomato...guacamole edamole!

Jake LOVES avocados like he loves shrimp, and that is a lot. He asked me the other day to make him some guacamole as his parting gift. So the loving wife I am, went off to the store to get some avocados, but they were $1.79 for a single avocado! Yeah, I love my husband, but I'm not a dumb shopper. I wasn't about to pay 12 bucks for the avocados to make guac. Instead, I experimented with the edamame I already had in the freezer, which you can get for a $1.50 per bag in your freezer section. Oh yeah, here's to experimenting! Great success! I used the same basic recipe my sister-in-law Christy uses to make her avocado dip, because it's the best version of guac I've ever had. Yay for family that cooks!

Ingredients:
1 lb. cooked edamame, drained
1 T water
1 T white wine vinegar
1/2 lemon, sqeezed
2 T green onion, chopped
4 cloves minced garlic
1 diced tomato
1 1/2 T olive oil
pinch of salt
pinch of crushed red pepper
1 jalapeno, chopped
handful of chopped cilantro

Puree the edamame in a food processor or blender with 1 T water. It doesn't have to be smooth, there can be chunks. Stir together all wet ingredients, then add with the edamame in a medium bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir. I served these with carrots and celery, but you can use corn chips or whatever you prefer. You can also eat this leftover as a protein-packed snack between meals for the next few days!