Breakfast

Paleo Bread

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paleo bread

I made this paleo bread for stuffing this year, but it can easily be toast for breakfast. This was my first time working with arrowroot powder and I was pleasantly surprised. Normally, I just use almond flour, but it can make baked goods pretty dense. The arrowroot flour is extremely light and powdery, like cornstarch, and it often used as a replacement for cornstarch in recipes. I suggest adding an extra egg or bit of liquid when working with arrowroot flour so it’s not too dry.

I hope you all are as excited for this recipe as I am. I can think of a lot of ways that this can be incorporated into other recipes. Mmmm … I have missed garlic bread, I am after all, half Italian. Plus, this would be awesome with some homemade liver pâté.

Paleo Bread
 
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Serves: 4-6
Ingredients
  • 4 eggs
  • 2 tbsp honey
  • 2 tbsp of coconut oil
  • ½ tsp of sea salt
  • 1½ cups of almond flour
  • 1½ cups of arrowroot flour
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
Instructions
  1. Preheat over to 350 degrees.
  2. Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl. Whisk together to get rid of clumps.
  3. Combine wet ingredients in a separate bowl, and whisk.
  4. Slowly add wet ingredients to dry, and blend with a hand mixer.
  5. Line a loaf pan with parchment paper. Then pour in batter.
  6. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

Condiments

Lemon Dijon Dressing

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lemon-djion-dressing

This lemon dijon dressing is paleo and vegan friendly. Instead of vinegar, I used a half a cup of fresh lemon juice and for the oil, I went with extra virgin olive oil. I made this because I really wanted a salad dressing that tastes amazing with turkey leftovers. Since I used to love turkey wraps with djion mustard, I thought it would be fun to make a salad version of that. Hopefully, I’ll have that recipe posted on the blog soon.

Making this salad dressing was crazy easy. Even the fresh lemon juice took only five lemons, so it wasn’t nearly as time consuming as I expected. This dressing recipe is a bit tart, but if you want it sweeter just increase the amount of honey in this recipe. I wanted to keep the sugar content down, so I only added in 2 tbsp of creamy wildflower honey (my all time favorite honey flavor). I also wanted to give a nod to honey mustard, by using honey instead of another natural sweetener. I also used Amy’s Naturals Organic Dijon Mustard. The only ingredients in this mustard are white vinegar, water, mustard seed, sea salt, and clove. Everything except the sea salt and clove is organic. We make homemade mayo pretty often, so it’s doubly good to have this on hand.

Lemon Dijon Dressing
 
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Serves: 2-4
Ingredients
  • ½ cup of fresh lemon juice (about 5 lemons)
  • 1 cup of extra virgin olive oil
  • ½ tsp of sea salt
  • 2 tbsp of dijon mustard
  • 2 tbsp of honey
Instructions
  1. Squeeze fresh lemons for lemon juice
  2. Whisk lemon juice with olive oil, sea salt, dijon mustard, and honey.
  3. Serve over salad.

Soups

Turkey Bone Broth

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turkey-bone-broth

Turkey bone broth is great for your health any time of the year, but it’s especially awesome over Thanksgiving. You can make it ahead of time to add to your favorite holiday recipes, instead of chicken stock, or you could use leftover turkey bones from Thanksgiving.

Making bone broth in the slow cooker is ridiculously easy. I threw in the bones and some skin. Added a carrot, a chopped piece of a leek (any onion will work), and parsley. We recently cleaned out our fridge and don’t have a ton of food in the house. I normally add a carrot, half a yellow onion, and a celery stick to flavor my broth. Then I fill the slow cooker with water almost to the top. Honestly, there are tons vegetables you can use to flavor your broth, but you really want the turkey flavor to shine through. The longer you cook the broth, the more this will happen. I set mine on low for 20 hours, since that’s the max on my slow cooker. But I often leave it on for over 24 hours. If the flavor gets too strong, I dilute it with some water and now I have even more delicious bone broth.

If you’re vegan and looking for a delicious Italian inspired broth to add to your recipes. Check out my Italian Carrot and Cabbage Soup. I was really happy with how much flavor I was able to get with this vegan broth. Even my husband who loves my bone broths, liked the flavor of this broth, and we’re both kind of snobby about our soups. It is my favorite thing to cook from scratch.

Turkey Bone Broth
 
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Ingredients
  • 1 chopped piece of leek
  • 1 turkey leg
  • 1 handful of parsley
  • 1 tbsp of apple cider vinegar
  • 1 carrot
  • 20 cups of water (or until slow cooker is almost full)
  • 1 tsp sea salt
  • (optional) season with fresh ground black pepper
Instructions
  1. Bake Turkey leg on 350 degrees for 2 hours. Then remove and shred meat and set it aside.
  2. Add leftover turkey bones and skin, to slow cooker with leek, carrot, parsley, apple cider vinegar, and sea salt.
  3. Let it cook on low to 20-24 hours.
  4. Then strain broth, and salt as needed.
  5. (optional) Add fresh ground black pepper and serve as a hot beverage.

Desserts

Rustic Apple Tart

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rustic apple tart

This rustic apple tart was definitely a labor of love. This was my first time using the tart pan, and it was a bit of struggle to get the tart out. Luckily, with my husband’s help and a lot of patience we were able to manage. So you might want to get an extra set of hands in the kitchen for this recipe. Arranging the apple slices was a bit tricky as well. The closer to the center, the more difficult it became. The thinner the apple slices, the easier it is to arrange them, so take your time. If it’s not perfect don’t stress, just call it “rustic” like I did. It’s not a bad thing if it looks a bit homemade. You don’t want your guests to think you bought it!

I sprinkled it with a little bit of cinnamon instead of powdered sugar. We are trying to be healthy here! The crust is a paleo pie crust made with almond flour, coconut oil, and an egg. Honestly, I prefer a savory crust when the filing is sweet. I kept the amount of natural sweeteners I used in this recipe low as well. Only one tablespoon of honey is used in the filing, and I brushed a little bit of maple syrup over the apples before I put them in the oven.

Rustic Apple Tart
 
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Serves: 1 apple tart
Ingredients
  • 2 cups of almond flour
  • 2 tbsp of coconut oil
  • ¼ tsp of sea salt
  • 1 egg
  • 4 fuji apples
  • 1 tbsp of honey (optional)
  • ¼ cup of maple syrup
  • ½ tsp of cinnamon
  • ¼ cup of water
Instructions
  1. Peel and chop two fuji apples. Add apples to saucepan with water and boil until soft, about 30 minutes.
  2. Then transfer to food processor and puree to get a small batch of applesauce. Add honey if apples aren't sweet enough.
  3. Use the food processor again to make tart crust. Combine almond flour, coconut oil, egg, and sea salt until it forms dough.
  4. Then roll dough out between two pieces of plastic wrap. Otherwise the dough will stick to your roller since we use almond flour instead of regular flour.
  5. Transfer rolled out dough to pie tart. I wet my fingers with water, since there is oil in the dough, to shift dough around until tart mold is completely filled.
  6. Spread homemade apple sauce on bottom of tart.
  7. Then, peel remaining apples and arrange apple slices in an overlapping circle until you reach the center. The thinner the apple slices the easier it is.
  8. Brush maple syrup over apple slices and bake at 450 for fahrenheit for ten minutes.
  9. Then turn down the temperature to 350 for twenty minutes.
  10. Let apple tart cool before removing from tart mold.
  11. Use a sifter to garnish apple tart with cinnamon.
Nutrition Information
Serving size: 4-6

Health & Wellness

Vital Farms Eggspands to SoCal

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pastured-eggs

My husband and I go through eggs quickly in our kitchen. We love to snack on hard boiled eggs, have breakfast for dinner, and make paleo baked goods – which require a lot of eggs. Whenever we run out of farmer’s market eggs, or are unable to get to the farmer’s market, we go to Wholefoods for Vital Farm Eggs. The first time we went to Whole Foods for eggs (instead of the farmer’s market) I must have stared at the different eggs, reading labels for fifteen minutes. Luckily, a helpful customer recommended these to us. She mentioned how much she loved the eggs, put two dozen in her cart, and said the yolks were orange. (Which means more nutrition!) Not only that but they are organic, pastured, and non-gmo. I’ve even eaten them raw in homemade coconut oil mayonnaise. These can be pretty pricey, which is why Vital Farms is introducing their Alfresco Eggs brand to over 200 Ralphs and over 60 Vons stores in the Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego areas. The reason these eggs are more affordable is due to cheaper feed. They are still pastured on pesticide and herbicide free land, but  are given conventional feed instead of organic. Check out this link for a coupon. It went live yesterday and will be up for two weeks.

The Vital Farms expansion comes on the eve of the implementation of California Proposition 2, the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act. This Act goes into effect January 1, 2015 and will only increases the cage size for confined birds raised in California. Vital Farms works with multi-generational family farms across the United States, including several in Southern California that operate with a well-defined set of organic agriculture practices that includes the humane treatment of farm animals as a central tenet. Their eggs are the first pasture-raised eggs to earn the 3rd party Certified Humane® label, which means each hen has access to at least 108 square feet of pasture on which to roam and forage. For the most commonly purchased egg, free range, by comparison, hens only get about 2 square feet per bird, and limited outdoor access.

The pastures at Vital farms contain no pesticides, herbicides or other chemicals and are rotated frequently to ensure fresh nutrition for the hens, which also gives the land time to rest and recover naturally. These efforts are reflected in the company’s three pillars: humane treatment of farm animals, superior taste, and exceptional nutrition. In comparison to a conventional egg, pasture-raised eggs contain two thirds more Vitamin A, three times more Vitamin E and seven times more beta carotene. They are also naturally high in Omegs-3s.

Disclaimer: I’m not being compensated to promote this product. This is an unbiased review.

Soups

Italian Cabbage and Carrot Soup

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Italian Cabbage and Carrot Soup

This soup was inspired by a cabbage soup my Mom used to make whenever she went back on weight watchers. Even though it’s diet friendly, it’s really delicious. My husband who loves his meat dinners really liked this vegan soup. It’s flavored with fresh parsley and ground thyme. The grocery store was out of fresh thyme, so I used ground, which surprisingly, turned out great. I added a ton of carrots, because I love them in soups, plus they are a really cheap and filling ingredient.

Although this soup is vegan, for leftovers, I made a paleo version with baked parsley, garlic, and thyme meatballs. Normally, I make my meatballs with rosemary and garlic, check out the recipe here. But these were surprisingly good, and I definitely plan on making them for the blog in the near future.

Italian Cabbage and Carrot Soup
 
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Ingredients
  • ¾ head of napa cabbage (I prefer the leafier ends)
  • 10 chopped carrots
  • 1 tsp of ground thyme
  • 1 stalk of celery
  • ½ chopped white onion
  • 2 tbsp of tomato paste
  • 2 fresh bay leaves
  • 1 tomato halved
  • ½ cup of chopped parsley
  • water (enough to cover vegetables)
Instructions
  1. Chop cabbage, carrots, parsley, and onions and add to dutch oven.
  2. Then add in one whole celery stalk, bay leaves, and one tomato halved.
  3. Add in tomato paste and spices.
  4. Then cover vegetables with water, put on lid and let simmer for a few hours.
  5. When ready to serve, remove halved tomatoes, celery stalk, and bay leaves. These are to flavor the broth.
Nutrition Information
Serving size: 4-6

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