Paleo Bites

You've probably seen a theme here as of late...my little mason jar beauty's.  this has been the easiest way for us to have on the go lunches.  But that's not all I've been up to;  I recently tried my hand at paleo baking.  One of my new goals is to make a recipe weekly/semi regularly found on Pinterest and see if its all as easy and amazing as it seams.

Sesame Chicken Salad

Grilled Chicken 

Carrot shreds

Diced cucumber 

Lettuce 

Orange 

I used trader joes sesame dressing, not paleo, contains soy.  You can't win them all.  Maybe when I have a little more time I can figure out a paleofied version.

Grill Baby Grill

Our grill has saved us this summer.  It's been way to hot to heat up the kitchen with cooking.

I found these amazing pre seasoned ribs at Costco for $18!  They lasted us about 3 days.

And pre grilling your chicken really saves time on packing lunches.  Nothing like a nice char.

Grapes of Wrath

Look what Hubby found in our back yard!  We didn't see them until he started hacking away at the over grown weeds. He came in the house so excited to share.  The vine is actually growing up and around one of our trees, which is in danger of being choked.  Hubby's decided to build a arbor to lead the grapes to, really hoping nothing dies in the process!

Berry Breakfast Bars

Recipe found at here

My bars did not come out quite as cakey as the pictures lead me to believe, but there may be 2 reasons why.

1. I substituted apple sauce for mashed banana.

2. The site did mention that coconut flour could be tricky with absorption. 

Don't get me wrong, the bars were good. Just not to die for.  It was a good try though.  I think I will give it another go but this time with dark chocolate. Mmmmmm. 

Here's something new, well new to me.  I saw a add for E Meals on another paleo blog.  They have all kinds of amazing weekly meal plans that will fit anyone's life style/diet.  There was even a deal on groupon, I got a whole year for under $30.  I haven't made anything yet but I have about 3 weeks of menus to pull from so far.

My other great find was Paleo food delivery.  There just aren't enough hours in the day, especially when you work 13 of them.  I was getting desperate, to the point of asking a friend to cook for me.  I figured it was worth a google search, if I needed help others must too.   Here are the top sites I found in the So Cal area.

1. Hunt Gather Food

2. Brian's Bowls 

3. Paleo On The Go

4. The Paleo Box

5. Loss Arts 

6. Body Food Kitchen

The bottom two have great options but were way out of our price range.

We tried Brian's bowls first and they are good but they only offer 3 bowls a week, so if your not big on repeats you may have to supplement, but if your just looking for a back up supply of food in a pinch they are great.

We got our order from Hunt Gather this week, so far so good.  When we calculated everything out from groceries, fast food and eating out we found we spent just as much if not more than we would for the convince of this program.  The food tastes great, it's totally portable, fresh and healthy.

Paleo on the go is next on our list to try.  

The Paleo box is based out of Florida and is not yet shipping out of state, but they have crazy cool snacks and bread!  I'm on the notify list for when they ship.

Mason Jar - Greek Salad

We had company this weekend so I didn't get to dabble in a new recipe.  Greek salad is one of my favs for the summer, it's light and filling.

I chose the wide mouth Kerr jars from Target over the Ball jars because they are more uniform in size and if you decided to eat straight from the jar you wouldn't get dressing hands!

You can also see in my pic that there are two salads layered differently.  

Ingredients:

Kalmata Olives and Juice

Thin sliced red onion

Diced cucumber

Feta cheese

Chicken

Romaine lettuce

Greek Feta Dressing from Trader Joes OR Newmans Greek

There's no set amount for each ingredient, layer to taste.  I will say though that the onions can get a little strong.

Left Salad

Hubby doesn't like olives of any kind.  He also works from home so I left his dressing out so he could choose how much or little to use.

Right Salad

For me, the more Greek the better!  I chopped up 6 olives, a little onion, 1.5 tbsp olive juice and 2 tbsp feta dressing for the bottom of my jar.  Followed by chicken, feta, cucumber and lettuce. 

What I'm trying to say here is do what works for your family.  There's no wrong way here. 

Mason Jar - Dijon & Fig Glaze Salad

My latest fascination is mason jars. They are charming, country, space efficient and eco friendly. As you saw in my last post I've gone pin crazy on smoothie recipes and salads. I spent my Sunday testing new smoothie recipes and making mason jar salads.

I've also been looking into the differences between paleo and primal eating.  I am a lover of cheese, primal allows dairy.  I really shouldn't be doing dairy because of my auto immune deficiencies but as I'm dipping my toes back into the paleo pool I'm not going to cut it just yet, starting back with cutting grain and processed sugars.  You'll see some cheese etc in my recipes so change to fit your needs.

Dijon Fig Pear Champagne Glaze Salad

This glaze recipe was originally found on Trader Joes website.  I never cook a whole chicken because its just the 2 of us plus I prefer boneless skinless breasts, so I modified this slightly to fit my taste/need.  Usually I marinate and grill my chicken but in this case I'm using the glaze as my salad dressing.  Hubby kindly pre grilled a bunch of chicken for me so I could chop and go.

4 tbsp champagne pear Gorgonzola dressing

1 tbsp Dijon mustard

1 tbsp fig butter

Stir in a dish and microwave for 30 seconds to meld all the flavors. 

If your grilling chicken go ahead and start marinating, leave a little on the side for dipping.  If your making your salad wait for it to cool before placing in the jar.

I'm no expert here but I was told its all in how you layer your jars.  You want dressing on the bottom (be careful not to splash up on the sides) followed by meat and/or items that can marinate in dressing without falling apart, then comes your hearty veggies like cucumber, bell pepper, mushroom etc. and finally leafy greens

In my salad I chose glaze, chicken, cherries, candied walnuts, cucumber and romaine.

What do you like in your salads?

Smooth E Operator

I know its been few and far between that I've been able to post anything.  The short story of it all is that we're short staffed at my work and I've been working 13 hour days (that's right people, I'm gone from 5am to 7pm)  The sad side effect is that I've been eating out for all my meals because I leave so early and come home so late I'm to exhausted to prepare anything.....and now I've gained back all the weight I'd lost plus some more.  BOO.

Upside, Hubby bought me a Ipad so in my down time at work I've been on Pinterest, pin pin pining away paleo recipes.  By some miracle I had 6 days off in a row and decided to actually try some of these recipes and really try to get back on track with paleo eating.

These are my trusty tools:  IPAD and Blender.  I also picked up this snazzy mortar and pestle at Costco, a few of these recipes called for ground flax seed.  I also heard that ground chia seed helps thicken smoothies and is amazing in Omega 3.

This did take quite a while to cut up all the fruit and read each recipe so I don't have pictures of them all.  Instead I'm posting the pretty pictures from the blogs they came from, followed by my modified recipe, when you click on the picture it will link you to the original recipe.

Why modified you ask?  I'm allergic to banana (the base of most smoothies), I had to use the fruit on hand and some had to be paleo-fied.

Strawberry Sunbutter & Spinach

http://www.coffeeandquinoa.com/2013/03/strawberry-spinach-sunbutter-smoothie/

• 2 cups frozen strawberries
• 2 large handful spinach leaves
• 3 Tbsp sunbutter
• 1cup unsweetened almond milk
• 1.5 Tbsp maple syrup
• 1Tbsp ground flax seed
• 2 tsp apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon

I doubled the original recipe and it filled 2 mason jars perfectly.   This smoothie is pretty delicious, especially if your a peanut butter lover like my hubby is.  Sun butter is the perfect sub, Trader Joe's has a pretty yummy jar for under $5.

Mango Orange

http://oursavorylife.com/a-super-hydrating-paleo-smoothie-recipe/

1 cup frozen mango's

1 orange, peeled

2 apricots

1 cup almond milk

1/2 cup 100% pure coconut milk

Chia Seed and Ground Flax optional

Bright citrus flavor, the apricot didn't blend down to well though.  If you don't like chunky smoothies I would leave it out.

Pina Colada

http://www.vegalicious.org/2011/02/04/pina-colada-smoothie/

• 2 cups pineapple (I used frozen from Trader Joe's)
• 1 cup mango
• 1 can coconut milk
• 1 cup pineapple juice
• Chia Seed and Ground Flax optional

This was my favorite, the only down side was it was a little to acidic drinking it all at once, but that could just be me. I still have one more jar of this so I'm going to definitely try again.

At this point I was feeling pretty confident in my smoothie making ability's and decided to wing it.  I had purchased some pre cooked beets at Costco, super healthy....super disgusting.  Picture me, dumping 3 juicy beets in the blender, dancing in the kitchen singing "turn the beet around, blah blah blah, the passion".  It didn't matter how much fruit I put in the blender it was not going to cover that taste.  I even dumped half out and tried to salvage it.  No Bueno.

So we scrapped that batch and moved on.

Very Berrylicious

http://www.thegraciouspantry.com/clean-eating-super-berry-smoothie/

1 cup blueberries

1 cup strawberries

1 cup blackberries

2 big hand fulls of spinach

1 tablespoon chia seeds (I added ground flax too)

1 cup unsweetened almond milk 

Another fav of the Hubby's, he loves anything berry and definitely better than beets!

Here are my little beauties in the freezer, each batch filled 2 jars. My mom bought me blue ball jars at Target.  I also bought larger jars to make salads in more on that to come and more smoothie recipes too.  I found some with avocado base, that should be interesting.

Paleo at Sprouts

One of my favorite things about the Foodee blog is that you can save recipes you like and it will make a grocery list for you.  I picked 11 meals that I wanted to try along with some basic needs I've read about like Coconut Oil, Aminos and Milk.

After searching for the local Whole Foods store I found the closest one to me was about 40 mins away.  No Bueno.  Then I remembered there was a Sprouts on my way home from work.

I'd only gone to Sprouts once before, honestly its pretty daunting walking in.  Its not set up like a typical grocery store and I spent 2 hours there!  Slowly strolling up each aisle hunting down my items and reading labels.  You would not believe how many things they sneak sugar and soy into.  It took me a long time to figure out which was the "right" kind of almond and coconut milk to drink.  Still have to do a little research on brands.
Here are some photos of my "Haul"
Coconut Oil, Milk, Aminos and Water.  Chicken Stock. Almond Milk.  Stewed Tomatos.  Apple Sause (not shown) and Apple Cider Vinegar.  I'm going to try my hand at making my own Mayo!

Spaghetti Squash, Strawberries, Cauliflower, Onion, Shallot, Cranberry, Flaxseed, Almond Meal

and that funny thing on the right is a Jicama.  Apparently you can treat it like a potato.

Green Stuff: Basil, Mint, Cucumber, Celery, Kale, Chard, Scallions

I felt very silly standing infront of the greens totally stumped at what I was actually looking at, found a very nice man who told me which was chard and kale.  He even brought me a Ad and coupons.

Googled how to prepare chard to learn how to cut the beast apart. 

There was SO much prep work for veggies. 

Hubby made some perfect steaks for dinner.

Last but not least I tried a recipe I saw on facebook for a green drink. 

(Using their pix, my shaker cup was not as pretty)