More swine, yams & almonds.

Welp, this has been neglected for some time now…. Nothing new here aside from a new snack/meal still containing my favorite ingredients; almonds, sweet potatoes, blueberries. In January, Bre and I had our unofficial "foodie tour" in Chicago over 3 days. The best place we went to was definitely The Purple Pig. They offered mediterranean cuisine in almost a tapas style with no coursing. My favorite was the pork-fried almonds….. We liked them so much we went back there the next day to have them. When we got home, I was still craving them so I made them myself. They make an awesome beer snack, but throw in a few extra little things and some starch and you have an awesome meal to devour.

I used:

a handful of raw almonds
1/2 cup blueberries
5 garlic gloves
4 rosemary springs
1  sweet potato
4 strips of bacon
bacon fat
A little S & P


1. Cook your bacon, set it aside.
2. Keep the fat in the pan and add the almonds, cooking sautéing them for about ten minutes, ass your rosemary, garlic, and blueberries and continue for another five minutes.
3. While you're doing this, dice up a sweet potato and cook in a pan. (Use bacon fat)
4. Combine all and enjoy, I drizzled some aged balsamic and it was the perfect touch. Enjoy

Scavenging.

Well payday is two days away which means I am yet again scavenging together the food I have left to feed myself. I didn't think eating sweet potatoes stuffed with bacon and blueberries would ever be something I'd eat, but I suppose it's better than Ramen noodles from 2009 that are still in the pantry....

Simple here:

5 strips of bacon (Discretionary to your love of bacon)
1/2 cup of blueberries
2 baby yams
1 egg

Preheat the oven at 400 degrees

Cut the sweet potatoes in half lengthwise, keeping the skins on and placing the cut part face down on a cookie sheet. Keep those suckers in there for about a half hour (or until the potatoes are cooked through).

About halfway through, I began cooking the bacon. Towards the end, I tossed the blueberries in the pan with the the bacon and let it finish cooking thoroughly.

Take the sweet potatoes out to cool for five minutes or so.

Next, drain the bacon fat out of the pan and put your bacon and berries in a bowl with one whisked egg and stir. (I added some pepper for some extra flavor, again DIY)

Now, take a spoon and core out most of the potato and set aside, or do what I did and shovel that in as an appetizer as you go.

Add your bacon n berry egg mixture to the inside of the potatoes and cook again at 400 degrees for another ten minutes.

I suppose the salty bacon mixing with the sweet blueberries makes this dish good. You can probably do a berry medley with whatever meats you prefer.

Chow down.

Chicken Fajita Lettuce Wraps

These chicken fajitas were awesome. Lots of flavor with few ingredients.

There wasn't an exact recipe that we followed for this dish, but below is what we ended up using..

Ingredients: 

-2 chicken breasts (Bare chicken has no antibiotics or hormones added)

-1 organic red pepper

-1 organic green pepper

-1/2 a very small onion 

-3 garlic cloves 

-S & P

-Cajun spice seasoning to taste

First,  cut the chicken into thin strips and set aside in a bowl. Then, I chopped the onions and garlic, and cut the peppers into strips and added to the bowl with the chicken. Add the seasonings, mix together, and let sit to marinade for about 15 minutes or so.

When this was just about finished, I added some coconut oil to a large pan, then sautéed everything.

We ended up making these into lettuce wraps, but making this into a salad would be good too! If you are not grain free, you could also make this in to a healthy whole grain wrap as well.  

Graknowla

Granola has a great reputation, and with there being so many different options out there on the shelves, we figured it couldn't be too difficult to make it on our own. Nomnomnom, we were right. This recipe is a quick and easy recipe that can be saved and enjoyed later for us on-the-go crazies. This is a fun one because it is extremely "tweak able" for your liking. Unfortunately, you won't find any chocolate chips, peanut butter, or fruit in the granola I've been making, however you could surely just add that to the recipe. I used almonds, walnuts, macadamia, and hazelnuts in mine.

Have on hand:
8x8 baking dish
Large mixing bowl
Parchment paper

1/3 cup honey (raw is best)
1/2 cup chopped macadamia nuts
1/2 cup chopped hazelnuts
1 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
1/2 cup chopped raw almonds
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tbsp unsalted organic butter
1/3-1 cup of dried fruit
(A guideline to use is to have a total of 3 cups total of whichever nuts or seeds you desire)


Preheat the oven 300 degrees

Combine all the nuts, coconut, and cinnamon in a large mixing bowl

On the stove top, melt the butter and honey together until it starts to bubble.

Pour this into the nut mixture and stir well.

Next, line your 8x8 dish with parchment paper and pour in granola mixture

Take a second piece of parchment paper to pack the dish tightly.

Keep that sucker in the oven for 30-35 minutes

Let cool in the fridge for about a half hour or so, then enjoy.

I have found that they stay composed as bars if you keep the pan covered in the fridge. If you are eating  the granola as cereal, you can crumble the bars into milk. Enjoy.

Grain free, dairy free pancakes

These pancakes are awesome. I feel bad admitting that because we've have a family recipe passed down for many decades, but no one would guess they are grain-free and dairy-free.

There are many different options for grain free pancakes, many include bananas or coconut flour, but these mainly use almond flour and flax seed meal. The recipe we found and liked the best Came from http://www.paleoeffect.com/recipes/paleo-

pancakes-paleo-effect/

They substitute maple syrup for sugar, and also, add cinnamon to the batter. This makes a perfect cinnamonny, not too sweet flavor.

The flax seed also adds fiber to the meal as well!

We followed the recipe exactly, but made our own blackberry emulsion for the topping. It's very easy too make. Pick your favorite berries and add them to a food processor, or you can even mash them. We found that with the berry topping, no syrup was needed at all. This cuts back on your sugar intake,

All the ingredients are fairly easy to find. The almond flour, flax seed meal, and arrow root powder can be found at any grocery store with natural aisles. 

Everyone should try these just once, you will never go back to normal (hopefully not from a box) pancakes. 

Chicken Fillet with Avocado-Zucchini Pasta

Pretty easy meal today. 

1 chicken fillet (Bare is a great, no hormones, no by-products, no antibiotics, and humane source)

1 bell pepper

1 zucchini

1 avocado

1 garlic clove

Juice from 1/2 a lemon

A few baby spinach leaves

Arugula

Salt & Pepper (+ any other desired seasonings)

Coconut Oil

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

First, I used a julienne peeler on one whole zucchini (you can use yellow squash as well) put it in a colander to let the water drain from it while I made the avocado sauce.

For the sauce, I used my magic bullet to blend the avocado with some fresh baby spinach leaves, one garlic clove, dash of onion powder and black pepper. (You may need to add some EVOO to thin the sauce out)

Next, I tossed the zucchini "noodles" in EVOO with a bit of salt and pepper on medium heat in a pan for about five minutes. I mixed in the avocado sauce and let that sit while I cooked the chicken.

The chicken filet was cooked in coconut oil and some salt and pepper - nothing crazy. I put it on top of arugula just for the extra zest.

I put the zucchini pasta in a raw bell pepper (I prefer the raw taste rather than cooked, plus you aren't cooking off any micronutrients eating your veggies raw)

Wah-la. 

Those sweet potatoes though...

Sweet potato. Oh how I've had a huge misconception of what you tasted like up until recently. I was introduced to sweet potatoes in dumpling form, loaded with butter and brown sugar and HATED them. Then, I tried them loaded with butter and bourbon in mashed form.... even worse. Finally, I had just a plain old yam with some S&P. They're almost addicting now for me. I can't wait for the fall when they're in season for the midwest. They are so good just cooked off by themselves, awesome low-glycemic carb, loaded with vitamin A, good amount of B6. Pretty impressive for being so ugly on the outside. Anyhow, I decided to make a hash out of them for breakfast, and it turned out extremely well. All I did was thinly slice the amount of sweet potato that looked close to filling for me, tossed it in coconut oil in a skillet,  added some bacon, garlic and onion powder, fresh cracked pepper, and topped it with an egg, turmeric, and avocado. This kept me satisfied for a good portion of the day. Well done baby yams, well done.