All Things Foodie

Yum! Recipe below: 1/2 cup coconut flour 1 cup coconut milk 4 eggs 1 tsp baking soda 1/2 tsp salt 2 tsp vanilla cinnamon to taste coconut oil for cooking First - make sure all your ingredients are room temperature.  I don't know why all the recipe sites do not tell you this but any recipe mix like this must be at room temp - the eggs, coconut milk and the flour (i keep mine in the fridge) all must be room temp or the batter will just be too thick.  I learned that lesson trying to make cream puffs and wondering why sometimes my paleo pancakes would work and sometimes not.  So.  That said... I basically just put all the ingredients in the bowl and mix them with a fork until the ingredients are blended.  You should be able to easily pour the mix into the pan.  I use coconut oil in the pan to fry the pancakes.  Let them cook on the first side so that you see some holes in them and then flip them. If you must have your sugar - then at least use pure maple syrup please :

Friday, December 7, 2012 - a holiday shop and stroll night in downtown Wallingford, CT eventually brought us into Knuckleheads Restaurant for some pub fare.  After partaking of several holiday type foods offered by some local stores for the stroll crowd, I decided to cast my Paleo intentions aside and have a sandwich. First, since this was a planned activity night for the downtown shops to bring folks into their stores and/or eating establishments it was a very busy night.  This was hubby's first time at Knuckleheads and he was dying to try it.  The restaurant was full and the line at the back was about eight people long when we got in.  We didn't have to wait too long to be seated.   Since I decided to go totally non Paleo tonight, and there is no Chardonnay on the menu, I had the Guinness to start.  As for the meals, I think the pictures tell more than any words can. The corned beef sandwich was the perfect size for me and I enjoyed every bite.  After the sandwich I

Kale, not your average every day breakfast that's for sure! I recently ran across a TED talk from Dr. Terry Wahls that's been on the internet for a while. In the talk she tells about how she has recovered from secondary progressive Multiple Sclerosis and recovered.  Her research into the disease led her to discover how important a Paleolithic diet is to human health. Visit the link here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjgBLwH3Wc . Watching the video made me realize that I still wasn't getting enough vegetables in my daily diet. Dr. Wahl's diet consisted of three plates covered with vegetables a day, three cups of sulfur rich vegetables, three cups of bright color, grass fed meat, organ meat and seaweed.  She says that kale has the most nutrition per calorie of any plant as it's full of vitamins B, A C and K along with minerals.   We might think we are eating enough vegetables to get by, but once you write it down and pay attention you may realize you co

Headed to the Mohegan Sun Casino in CT last week for a mini get away.  We originally thought we would get some steak but at the last minute decided to quell a continuing craving I've had for Mexican food.  SolToro Tequila Grill fit the bill.  We sat in the bar area so we could people watch while eating.  We ended up more interested in devouring the food than anything else. Since this was our first visit, our friendly and knowledgeable waiter Chris gave us an overview of the menu and told us about the table side guacamole since I was definitely going to order that.   First off, I had the SolToro signature margarita, very fresh and tasty, to go with the freshly made guacamole.  We watched as the woman deftly separated and scooped out the beautiful ripe avocado flesh into a bowl, mashed it up and added a garlic, onion, lime, chili, lime and cilantro to make one of the best guac's I've ever eaten.  Chris had asked us if we wanted an order for two or four and although we cho

On a recent trip to Chicago, IL I wanted to see how I would fare with dining out while maintaining a Paleo diet as much as possible.  I decided to provide a mini review of a few places that we ate at to show the Paleo choices and challenges that we encountered in hopes of helping others to make it easier to find Paleo friendly food as well. Day 1:  Hartford to Chicago The trip started off at Bradley International Airport in Hartford, CT.  Ah, my first meal challenge on the road.  As with most airports I've been in, there is the usual line up of fast food joints and then the possibility of getting a salad either to go or dine in a restaurant.  The thought flitted across my mind t just say the heck with it and just eat what I wanted for the next few days since we were on vacation.  Like vacation gives me a Paleo free pass or something.... Instead, I managed to actually order something that was as close to Paleo as I could.  At the Black Bear Restaurant  I chose the Wedge Salad.  

312 Chicago Italian Restaurant in Chicago, IL.  It's an italian restaurant in downtown Chicago that I found when searching for a Paleo meal to enjoy while on vacation.  Normally you would not think of an Italian restaurant as a go to choice for a Paleo meal but this one seemed to fit.  I read that it had organic foods, and gluten free items on the menu.  With our love of Italian food and the fact that it had a few items that might fit for both of us we gave it a try. Here are a few of the items we enjoyed:  First, the appetizer.  My husband loves octopus and usually gets some kind of ceviche or seafood mix for an appetizer so this one worked well.  Grilled Octopus with shrimp and assorted vegetables.  He loved it.  So that was his paleo non dairy choice.  Next, my appetizer was one of my favorites and if it's on the menu I usually get it.  Here's the beef carpaccio.  Nice chilled slices of rare beef with some capers, arugula and thin slices of fresh mushrooms top

Bread baking and cooking and eating many gluten foods are deeply steeped in cultures and rituals of family, food, memories, and love.   I grew up waking up to the smell of freshly baked bread every Sunday morning when I stayed over at my Grandmother Bentley's house.  On Saturday night after she got out of work from the night shift at the convalescent home she worked at, she would start the bread dough.  By early morning after it had risen all night long there would be bowls of yeasty smelling bread dough ready to knead by hand and put into the bread loaf pans.  The smell  wafting out of the oven  of those freshly baked loaves of bread and the ensuing taste of warm buttered bread slices is one of my favorite foodie memories.   Alas, my Grandmother's bread may have been the devil at the root of her diseases.    Both of my Grandmother's hands and fingers were horribly disfigured from arthritis. She  and other family members led me to believe it was caused from

Avocado Paleo Deviled Eggs 8 hard boiled eggs (cut in half) 1 ripened avocado 4 Tbsp  Kosciusko ®  mustard (made by Plochman's) 1/4 tsp garlic powder salt and pepper to taste 1 tsp dried parsley Remove the cooked yolks and mix together with the mustard, avocado, salt and pepper, and garlic powder.  Mix preferably in a mini food processor for a smooth consistency.  Spoon mix into the egg halves and top with a pinch of dried parsley or other dried spices you might like.  Enjoy! These are a great grab and go Paleo breakfast. Note:  The  Kosciusko ®  mustard ingredients are distilled white vinegar, mustard seed, water, salt and spices.

It's an official Day 30 of the Whole30 for me because I started on January 3.  As I was making my delicious asparagus frittata for breakfast this morning and thinking over the last 30 days and how I felt in comparison to Jan. 3, a couple more aha's popped in my mind. I have to say that besides feeling incredibly bloated and unhappy about my weight for the last few months I didn't have any physical issues like pains in my knees, hips, joints, etc.  No skin problems, except that extra layer that gravity has decided to pull over my upper eye lid so I can be sure to look like I have crossed over the half century mark.  And I get headaches very rarely and when I do I freak out because I'm just not used to it.  I was never overly tired and seem to be on a pretty even keel with energy for the most part.  Most of that is because I get at least 9 hours of sleep a day and I had been doing about a 75/25 lo-carb diet for the last four years.  It was only in the last few months t

Ten Things I’ve learned from doing the Whole 30 Experiment: 1.               I can drink coffee without cream.   Really.   2.               I had no problem whatsoever giving up the cheese.   It is actually possible to eat an omelet without cheese.   Who knew? 3.               I now know what the cafeteria at work uses to coat the grill with – soy spray from a can.   It kept me away from having my daily egg white with cheese omelet. 4.               I also learned that the butter the grill cook uses is clarified.   Yay!   I had a few squirts of that on some tasteless looking broccoli one day.   Saved me from getting whiney over what was for sure to be a yucky lunch day. 5.               I can make it through the week without wine. 6.               Strangely enough I didn’t have any sugar cravings until around day 11 which came disguised as a craving for Friday night wine.   Crafty sly sugar brain… 7.               I finally realized just how much money I was spending a month

OH My.  Only ten days to go.  Day 20.  Time is starting to go by faster now.  The first week crawled by.  Now the days are starting to blur together.  Missed our Saturday shopping trip because of the snow storm in CT.   I was so focused on making the Paleo coconut crepes that I forgot about meals for the rest of the day.  After spending a few hours out in the freezing cold taking photographs of snow crystals I was really hungry and did not have anything for a quick bite.  Instead I munched on one tiny piece of pineapple leftover from breakfast, guzzled some water, threw some chicken legs into the oven and went back out in the cold to continue photographing.  Hunger pangs go away pretty quickly when you fill up on water and you are busy with a project :-) An early dinner consisted of the baked chicken legs and then I made a turkey shepard's pie.   Will post pics and recipe on that later.  That was one of the tastiest meals I've had so far.   Today, back to the "cow store&

Woo Hoo!  It's Saturday. Thank you GOD!  A friend was going to have a cooking class for a few friends and make ham and asparagus crepes, normal style.  I was going to attend and try to make the same Paleo style.  Alas - her event had to be cancelled so it gave me a change to try it at home.  Hubby got the benefit of this delicious feast and helped in the process. Paleo Style Crepes: Mix together all the following ingredients: 3 Tablespoons Organic Coconut Flour (I used Bob's Red Mill) 2 eggs (cage free if you can get them) 3 Tablespoons Organic Coconut milk (in a can) full fat - without any sugar 2-1/2 Tablespoons water pinch of salt Use an 8" crepe pan.  I used a teflon coated one which helped the crepe to just slide off.  If anyone knows where to find a non-teflon crepe pan please let me know... I'd like to get away from teflon if possible. Heat the pan.  Add some coconut oil.  Add 1/3 of the batter or just enough to be able to sprea

Still hanging in there on Day 17.   Getting into the routine of buying, preparing, and generally keeping a steady food stock in my kitchen.  My next step is finding a local farm for my supply of grass fed beef.  I did find the list of the farms on this wonderful Eat Wild website .  Now it's just a matter of going to get the beef!   Or chicken or pork.  I am so happy to find out that I can go to a local farm for some great, grain free, sustainable food sources.  We won't have time to get to any this weekend but hoping for a food run by the end of the month. Only had one temptation day in work so far.  We had a Department social with lots of "rewarding" sweet food.  I really would have loved to have tried the butterscotch/chocolate chip brownies because they smelled so good but it wasn't that hard to leave them alone.  My observation that day was that here I was on my "plan" and avoiding the sweets and it was somewhat of a challenge to me yet no one else

Yeah - this is a good celebrating paleo night.  Just because it's the weekend, Gridiron Greats Magazine is on its way to our subscribers, we have not eaten out since December 31, and lobster was on sale at our favorite grocery store.  All good good good! Meal of the day:  Lobster.  Lots of it.  We cooked it ourselves on the grill outdoors in about 30 degrees F weather no less.  Since we have a flat top cook top we thought the big pan would be boil the water faster and fit the two lobsters if we cooked them on the side of the grill outside.  Still had to cook one at a time.  They were pretty big lobsters.  So happy we had some awesome Ghee to go with the lobster.  So for once, hubby got to actually have some buttery taste with his lobster.  He cannot eat dairy at all so me going Whole 30 and dropping the dairy just got us on the same page.  I discovered Ghee, and now he gets to have that taste he liked without the dairy.  The added fun part is that when I take the top off the Gh

Another lovely Paleo day here in Connecticut on the Whole 30 plan.  I haven't noticed any real difference in my sleeping patterns yet.  I guess I expected that I'd be sleeping soundly ALL through the night and would wake up feeling refreshed and ready to just jump out of bed with all the energy I have stored up from eating such a marvelous diet.  Alas, that is not the case.  The only thing that has improved is that my husband commented that my snoring is not as bad as it usually is so I guess that's an improvement although not as outstanding as I expected.  I also suppose that once I get into a regular work out or exercise routine that will help too. Here's the food primer for today.  I decided to listen to my body and my body said it wanted fruit.  I haven't been eating very much fruit for some time so it was time to try something different for a change (I usually have eggs and something).  So for a real treat since I made it to DAY 8 I had blueberries and raspbe

I'm a day late posting for day 7 but wanted to get it in anyway. Yayyy I made it through another day 100% no cheating no tastes of anything off the plan. For those of you who happened to stumble across this post, the Whole 30 is a 30 day challenge to eat healthy and to put it simply, eating the Paleo way with a diet oflean meats, fish, fruits and vegetables. See their site for more info and my post from day 1. Ifelt much better on Monday than i did on Sunday. I Took a vigorous walk and felt off kilter after that. Could have been a blood sugar drop. Don't know but i felt great Monday. Morning of day 8 Just had a nice egg white omelet with natural cooked sliced turkey breast and spinach and finally got to use my ghee. Wow. I love the smell of that ghee warming up in the pan. Eye round roast has been started in the crockpot for dinner and i expect that to be a tasty event. A couple of friends are stopping over for a short visit so that will be my first situation

Day 6.   Wonderful Sunday morning.  Church in the morning at 8AM.  What did I forget about?  The bread for communion!  First time ever that I took the rice cake and the water instead of bread and grape juice.  I know there are those who would say it's only a little piece of bread... but for this plan even one piece is not what I wanted to eat.  Thankfully there are options.  I could have made my way through the grocery store the other day just tasting all those little pieces of food samples but I didn't.  You see how this way of life eating and such is about much more than just the food.  It's about choices, and willpower, and motivation, and much much more.  It's about making food at home instead of running to a restaurant.  It's about exercising and starting to feel better.  Although I have to say, that my husband and I went for a walk this afternoon and it was a very hilly walk.  Not the best way to start out because it wiped me out instead of making me feel ener

Day 5 of my dramatic lifestyle change...  Today started out well with a nice egg omelet with fresh spinach and tomatoes and a slice of deli chicken.  The deli chicken was gluten free, no antibiotics, yada yada.  Let's just say it fit the list and didn't list any strange ingredients nor did it have any sugar in it.   I started a crock-pot of what was going to be a meat chili but turned into steak soup.  I chopped up four grass fed eye round steaks, quickly browned them and threw them in the pot.  Then I added a cut up yellow pepper, some minced shallots and garlic, and then some beef broth.  I didn't have any tomato sauce that worked for me but then I realized that tomato paste is only that - tomatoes.  Unless there is some other reason why that is not a good thing, then this is what I'll be using as a tomato base for anything that needs it.  No sodium, no sugar, no citric acid.  Works for me. I went grocery shopping and stocked up on  some things.  Got a lot of

Day 4.   And it's a Friday too.  No problem getting through the day.  Had leftover pork and cauliflower from the other night for breakfast.  Then leftover turkey muffins with brussel sprouts for lunch.  Lots of water throughout the day helped as well.   Tonight's dinner:  julienned zuchinni, nuked for a couple of minutes and added chopped fresh garlic and some olive oil.  Not sure about the olive oil thing.  I haven't used it a lot on these meals, just a sprinkling here and there. I had heard a cooking tip where you sprinkle the olive oil on the food after cooking it, not while cooking it as it will turn the flavor so I've been following that rule for some time.  The meat was baked chicken breast with herbs.  Simple meal but yummy.    This experiment has more benefits than getting healthier.  It's been five days since hubby and I have gone out to eat either breakfast, lunch or dinner.  That's a record in itself!  The money we will be saving from this experiment