Paleo Primavera

My name for this dish is probably a misnomer. It is not spring, nor is the sauce a traditionally light or cream primavera sauce. Regardless, the focus of this dish is the multitude of textures and flavors that the vegetables provide. Call it whatever you want. I’ll call it delicious.

Sauce: (this sauce is very vegetably! Use less if you don’t like that, or if you have picky eaters)
About half a stalk of celery, diced
4 mushrooms, sliced
About a cup of carrot “chips” (carrots cut to look like coins)
1 small to medium onion, diced
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
About 1 cup of diced tomatoes (packaged or fresh)
About 2 cups of tomato sauce
4 Tbsp tomato paste
About 1/4 lb ground beef (or other meat of choice)
Seasonings to taste: Italian seasonings, pepper, ground onion, ground garlic, sea salt
Fat of choice (optional depending on fat content of your meat)

If using an additional cooking fat (you have a super lean meat), heat your fat in a large pan or pot. Add prepped vegetables.

Sauté. Add meat. If you were not using an extra cooking fat, cook meat with vegetables all at once.

Season liberally. Add diced tomatoes and proceed to add the tomato sauce and tomato paste.

Mix well and season as you go on.

Allow sauce to simmer while you move on.

Zucchini pasta:
2 large zucchini
A julienne peeler

Take your peeler to your zucchini. Very simple. If you don’t have a julienne peeler, just use your vegetable peeler. The noodles will look more like elegant little ribbons than spaghetti.

Optional step: heat up zucchini in pan with a little fat. I prefer my zucchini raw, now. It has a more al dente texture.

Wrap it up:
Pour your simmering sauce over your zucchini noodles!

Enjoy!

Paleo Frittata Pancake??

So, let me catch you guys up. On August 4th I competed in my very first Crossfit competition. I decided to do the California Affilliate League Comp because they had a scaled division. It was soooooo much fun. The WODs were:

4 Rounds:
5 Cleans (65#)
10 Hand Release Push Ups
20 Double Unders

10 Min AMRAP:
20 One-Arm Kettlebell snatches (18#)
10 Burpees

And the floater WOD:
55# Overhead Carry. Max distance in 5 minutes.
Every 50m, perform 5 Overhead Squats.

Overall, I placed 5th out of the scaled female competitors at CF Temecula South. The other members from RC Crossfit who competed did really well, too. I’m sure that having a ginormous, cheering group of other RCCFers didn’t hurt either.

And after:

Ok, so that’s that. Onto the recipe. I’m sure that by now you guys know I am OBSESSED with frittatas. They’re so easy, portable, and you don’t need to reheat them when you eat them for lunch the next day.

Today’s recipe is a cross between a “potato” pancake and a frittata. Hope you enjoy!

1 small yam, grated with cheese grater
1/2 large bell pepper, finely diced
1/2 Anaheim child, finely diced
6 eggs
Splash of coconut milk
Seasonings to taste: chile powder, pepper, paprika, sea salt
Coconut oil or butter

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Prep veggies.

Add eggs, coconut milk, and seasonings. Mix together.

In a large oven-safe pan, heat your fat. When your fat is hot, add your mixture. Keep your mixture on the stove until the edges start to bubble. Remove from stove and place in preheated oven. Bake for 10 minutes or until center sets.

Remove from oven. Allow to cool. Slice and serve, or slice and put away for the rest of the week.

Enjoy!!

Minty Mexican Beef

I love the flavor combination of mint and beef. I don’t know what it is about these two ingredients, or what it is that they bring to each others’ flavor profiles, but I love, love, love.

Today’s recipe is a nice base that you can do a lot with. You can put it over salad, put it in lettuce wraps, or serve it on the side of some veggies or cauliflower rice. It’s simple and versatile. Enjoy!

Minty Mexican Beef
One bell pepper, diced
One Anaheim chile, diced
Half a large onion, or one small onion, diced
Two cloves of garlic, minced
Handful of mint leaves, roughly chopped
About 10 oz ground beef
Juice from lime
Seasonings to taste: sea salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, paprika, chile powder, menudo mix
Fat of choice (optional depending on the fat content of your meat)

Heat a sauté pan with your fat of choice. Add all veggies, excluding the mint.

Sauté to soften veggies. Add beef.

Break the meat down. Add seasonings. When it’s almost cooked, add mint and lime juice.

Stir. Allow meat to cook thoroughly.

I served mine over lettuce with diced tomatoes, guacamole, and a few olives.

Enjoy! Dinner’s done!

Banana Crepes

Hi All!

These past couple of weeks have flown by. I’m still researching pretty regularly at the Huntington Library, but I’ve moved away from salads and towards fajitas. You’d be surprised how well they transport.

I have also been busy with making practice cakes (not paleo) for my niece’s upcoming birthday! She wants a hippo party, and my initial attempt at creating a cake in the shape of a hippo didn’t go quite as well as I had hoped. Regardless, I think the decorations are coming along.

Lastly, before I give you my banana crepe recipe, I will be competing in my very first CF competition this Saturday! I am doing a scaled division, but I’m kind of excited, so wish me luck.

Here’s a recipe for banana crepes. The first few I made forced me to lose a couple brave crepe souls, but I was able to get the last three to work! Good luck. Be patient.

Banana Crepes
Crepes:
4 eggs
1 cup + 2 Tbsp of Coconut Milk
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
3 Tbsp coconut flour
Fat of choice

Filling:
3-5 bananas, sliced (I used three, but if you don’t mess up in your crepes like I did, you may need more bananas to make up your filling)
2 Tbsp vanilla extract
1 Tbsp ground cinnamon
1 Tbsp honey or agave nectar (optional)
About 1/4 c coconut milk (optional)
Fat of choice

In a mixing bowl, combine all of the crepe batter ingredients except for the fat of choice. It should create a thin batter.

In a sauté pan, heat your fat of choice. Once your pan is sufficiently hot, use either a ladle or a measuring cup to spoon the mixture into your hot pan.

You just want a thin layer of batter, so ladle it on thinly, or even swirl your pan a bit.

While you may get away with not flipping these, I had to. The batter wasn’t as thin as a non-paleo crepe. Here was the source of my frustration.

First attempt

2nd attempt

3rd attempt. No photo of batter, but we finally have crepe success!!

And it wasn’t just a fluke, either.

Continue with your batter until it’s gone.

Set finished crepes aside.

Onto the filling.

Using another sauté pan, heat your fat of choice.

Add bananas and the other filling ingredients except coconut milk.

Heat through and add filling to crepes.

Optional step: add coconut milk to any remnants in your filling pan. Heat through (add more cinnamon or sweetener if you’d like) then drizzle over your filled crepe.

Good luck!!

Italian Casserole

So, I know it has been a while, and I’m I sorry! I say this all the time when my schedule is hectic, but I’ve been living off of paleo “fast food” the past few weeks–salads and frittatas. If anyone tells you that eating paleo on the go is too hard, they’re neglecting to experiment with these two dishes. They’re versatile (frittata and salad combinations are seriously limitless!), easy to pack, and can be eaten cold.

Anyway, enough with my rant, here’s an Italian casserole, almost a lasagna, for you to try!

Italian Casserole
1 eggplant, peeled and sliced vertically
1 zucchini, peeled (you can leave the skin on if you want) and sliced vertically
1 bunch of spinach leaves
1 bunch of basil leaves
1 bell pepper, diced
1-2 packages of mushrooms, sliced
Meat sauce (recipe here) (I made mine in the slow cooker in advance)
Extras: olive oil, Italian seasoning, pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Prep your eggplant and zucchini. Dry roast them in the oven for about 5-10 minutes, then flip over. Brush with a little olive oil if you want. Remove from oven when dried out, then set oven to 350 degrees F.

Prep your other veggies.

In a casserole dish, place a layer of meat sauce (I should have used a larger dish!)

Begin to layer your roasted eggplant.

Once your eggplant is layered, add more veggies.

Add a layer of meat sauce.

Add a layer of zucchini.

Then finish it off with another layer of meat sauce.

Place dish in oven for 20-30 minutes to cook vegetables.

The finished product is a little liquidy (and not too pretty), but you can drain that out. There are a lot if big flavors in this yummy dish.

Paleo Banana Muffins

Sorry I haven’t posed lately! I’ve been eating a lot of salad.

Danny’s leaving on another trip for work, and, like always, wanted something homemade to snack on. He asked for banana bread and I decided to make a paleo variety, too.

Hope you like them!

Paleo Banana Muffins (makes 16 muffins or one average size loaf)
Wet ingredients
5 eggs
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
1/2 can coconut milk (14 oz can, so about 7 oz)
1/2 cup coconut oil or softened, unsalted butter
2 nasty bananas, smashed
1/4-3/4 cup honey or agave nectar

Dry ingredients
1/2 cup almond meal
1/2 cup coconut flour
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Prep your muffin tin or loaf pan.

Combine dry ingredients in a small mixing bowl.

Mix together. Set aside.

In a larger bowl, combine your wet ingredients (photo taken before adding bananas and fat).

Using a whisk or handheld mixer, integrate your wet ingredients.

Add dry ingredients to wet.

Combine.

Spoon mixture into prepared loaf pan or muffin tins.

Bake. I didn’t check the time, sorry! Check at about 15 minutes.

Yam, Spinach, Arugula, and Sausage Frittata

Sorry for the delay in posting! I’ve been really busy with my research this past week.

Today’s recipe happened after yesterday’s workout. It was a good workout, I was hungry, needed to shower, get presentable, and head to LA before my self-imposed 11am deadline. Having less than an hour to go, I decided a quick oven-prepared frittata would allow me to multitask.

If I assembled the frittata and put it in the oven, by the time I got showered and ready, I figured it would be cooked. My major dilemma was that I wanted yams, but didn’t have the time to cook them like I normally do. I figured if I peeled them into super thin slices, they would cook in the oven.

And what do you know? I was right. So cheers to multitasking and this frittata easily makes three servings that you can pack in advance.

(Warning: I do not encourage leaving your oven operating unattended in all circumstances. Be cognizant of your surroundings, particularly little children…)

Yam, Spinach, Arugula, and Sausage Frittata

1/2 yam, peeled (after peeling the skin off, just continue to take the vegetable peeler to the yam)
About 1 cup- a cup and a half of mixed spinach and arugula
1 large sausage, cut or diced (I would recommend a slightly sweet sausage like a chicken and apple or a slightly spicy sausage)
6 eggs, beaten
Seasonings to taste: pepper, cumin, chile powder, paprika, granulated onion and garlic
Fat of choice

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

Prep your yam.

Grease an oven-safe pan and place your slices of yam in a thin layer in the pan and up the sides just a little.

Add your seasonings to taste (Can you tell I love spicy yams??). Then add your layer of spinach and arugula.

Add sausage.

Pour your beaten eggs over the mixture.

I had a little leftover yam, so I added it on top (not pictured).

Place in preheated oven. Take a shower. Or just wait. Your choice. It’ll be between 20-30 minutes for your frittata to be cooked (when the center is no longer runny).

Remove for oven, slice, serve, or portion into three meals. I love frittatas for that very reason!!

Have a great weekend, and thanks for your patience!!