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. 

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.

Meatball Soup

It's been a while since I've posted and this little ditty is past due.  I started this one way back in March but didnt want to over load on recipes. 

Let me preface that I've never made a meatball.  Truthfully I hardly ever eat them, unless they come in the form of my mom's albondigas (mexican meatball soup).  So this was a huge step for me to make and eat meatballs.

First off I found this recipe for "italian wedding soup" on theFoodee.com (you have to click on the picture to get to the blog it originated from)  I got all my ingredients between Sprouts and Trader Joes.

• Ground beef pork (1 pound)
• Basil, dried (1 teaspoon)
• Onion powder (1/2 teaspoon)
• Garlic powder (1/2 teaspoon)
• Carrots (2)
• Celery
• Onion
• Garlic (1 clove)
• Chicken broth (6 cups)
• Tomato sauce
• Cauliflower (1 cup)
• Frozen chopped spinach (2 cups)

This Mirepoix mix from Trader Joes was a great little time saver for my soup base.  In the pot it went with garlic, spinach, chicken broth and tomato sauce.

My first soup faux pas was that I grabbed my ground pork instead of ground beef out of the freezer.  Oops.

This recipe also called for "ricing" cauliflower.  Let me just tell you, with out a food processor this makes a huge mess.  So I opted out of that and went for almond meal in lieu of bread crumbs and a good old fashion egg to combine my herbs and meat with.

Under cooking pork really freaks me out, so I made sure they were nice and brown before plopping them into the broth.

With garlic salt and ground pepper to taste, I was pleasently surprised with my paleo creation.  Next time I think I'll through in some stewed tomatos.

Enjoy!

Getting Knitty with it...

Na na na na na nana (in my best Will Smith voice)

I started a knitting club and this is why I was rushing to pull my house in some kind of decent order.

Saturday night had some of my girls over , my homies, BFF's, comadres, sisters, friends...to get their yarn on.  Everyone got a cute little owl bag to carry their projects, we came out with 6 new knitters and 2 new crocheters.  We had a ton of fun, wine and laughter.

The only down side for me is that I went WAY off the paleo wagon.  So far off that I stayed off all Sunday and Monday, bearly seeing the wagon wheels fade into the sunset haha.  I made enchiladas and beans, there was a abundance of appetizers and dessert!  Shamefully I put away the remaining pieces of tira misu last night.  I was hungry! So now we've rolled around to Tuesday and I'm having all these cravings for things I know I shouldnt be having.  Hubby will be leaving super early tomorrow for Arizona through Friday.  I gotta take those days to reset and get back on track.  Next Friday I'm hosting book club!  So now starts the search for some Paleo friendly munchies. 

Sweet Potato Hash

Things have been mainly quiet on the home front...just plugging away an bags and boxes.  I'm pretty happy to share that I got all my purses put up on a shelf and all the boxes in the kitchen and den cease to exist.  We've also made major headway in the curtain department.  Maybe next week I'll have some after photos for everyone. 

Paleo is also going well.  My hours have just been slipping away between work, food prep and house stuff so I haven't had time for the o' bloggeroo but I have been keeping a photo log in my phone.

Hubby made some amazing sweet potato hash, super simple and super yummy.  I'm not sure where he came up with this little ditty but we've made it a couple times so I pretty much have it memorized.

You start out by chopping half a red onion, one apple, one orange and shredding about 2 cups of sweet potato.  My poor little grater is now stained and strained!  I highly suggest getting a food processer with a grater if your looking for paleo friendly tools.  I'll be getting one next month.

Secondly heat your non stick skillet with coconut oil and saute the onion and apple till translucent.

Then add in your sweet potato and oranges.  I squeezed my oranges just a little to get some of the juice going in the pan.  You'll continue to stir and saute till the hash cooks down.  Then finish it off with a Tbsp of honey and a tsp of garlic salt.

We had this as a side to Spicy mustard pork and to steak, I'm sure it would also be great for breakfast.

Enjoy!

Fresh Start

Happy Monday!

The move is officially over.  Most of the boxes are un packed. I'm mostly over being sick and feeling the full effects of being robbed an hour of sleep (thanks day light savings)

I've been tip toeing around the topic of Paleo eating, reading the Paleo diet book and blog after blog of information. 

These are my favs so far:
Whole9
The Foodee Project
Chowstalker
PaleOMG
Paleo Plan
Meanest Momma

Whole9 writers have a book called It Starts with Food.  Several sites recommend it so I looked it up on amazon and BAM bought it for my iphone Kindle app.  You know how they show you other's purchased xx also?  The cookbook Well Fed popped up, also good reviews, so I purchased that too.  I never thought I'd read a cook book cover to cover, but the style of writing was so real and invigorating it made me want to start right away and that's what I did.

The author talks about doing a weekly cook up, where you prepare everything you would need for the week so all your meals take less than 20 mins to make.  I really didnt have a meal plan for the entire week so I just prepared for Monday. 

Whats for Breakfast:  Egg scramble with shrimp, bell pepper and onion.  Topped with Avocado.  Grapes for a snack.

Whats for Lunch: Seared Mahi and Dill, Green Beans, Cherry Tomatos.  Blueberries and Almonds for snack.

Later on tonight we'll have Steak and Asperagus for dinner.  Although I havent finished reading all my books I know this is what I want to do.  I cant believe that no one told me about this sooner.  For the next month I'm going to follow the Whole30 plan.  30 days of strictly paleo eating.  What some of you dont know is that I also suffer from Fibromyalgia and Psoriasis, both auto immune disorders.  I'm hoping by eating clean foods that I'll be able to reverse my health to something close to normal.

30 is the new 20

I know I've been dormant for a while.  Mainly nothing momentous to share and partly still resonating on the load of information from my last post, but here's a little fun from last week.

These ladies are the core of my youth.  My childhood bestie's and my sister.  These day's its FAR and between that we actually can all be together in the same room, but last Thursday some things shifted in the right place and we were able to have a nice girls night out.  (I say far in a quite literal term, as we are scattered between San Clemente and Los Angeles)

I had bought some concert tickets as an anniversary gift for another friend.  We were supposed to go on a double date, but that quickly fell apart when Hubby had to go back east for work and the other couple couldn't make it because of a non-bottle-taking-baby situation.  So I found myself with 3 open tickets and couldn't think of 3 people I'd rather take then these.  I felt very "sex in the city" getting the girls together.  Ironically in our 18 year friendship we've NEVER gone to a concert.

We started out the night at a swanky West Hollywood restaurant called the Fig & Olive.  One of the girls had a coworker who's husband just happened to be working and was able to get us a table.

It was a interesting set up, kind of like a patio but inside.  We sat in wicker chairs that pulled up to a coffee table and all ordered an assortment of crostini's and a salad. 

We have this a inside joke where you have a "moment" with your first bite of something new. Something you know is going to be good but surprises you on just how good and its "food-gasmic". Each bite was divine, I didn't want this evening of good food and friends to end.  But at the same time I kept glancing at the clock thinking we have somewhere to be.

And that's when the waitress comes up and asks if we just have 10 more minutes to spare because the manager would like us to have a desert.  How could we turn that down?  Behold the "moment" giving chocolate lava cake with the surprise citrus semifreddo.

I considered taking an after shot but we basically licked the plate clean if that gives you any indication on how good it was.

We left the restaurant saying why don't we do this more often?  We should do this once a month!  Would that realistically happen, probably not because lets face it LIFE happens but it's nice to hope. 

It was only a 5 minute drive to the concert venue so I really had nothing to worry about we got there in plenty of time.  The concert was Tristan Prettyman (mentioned in this post)

This would be my third time seeing her in concert and she just keeps getting better.

Fun Fact: the first time I saw her 6 years ago was with one of my besties and now we were seeing her again together.

I thought I was pee in your pants excited before... I think I literally turned into a 15 year old girl when Joshua Radin came out to do a song with her.

All the music was beautiful, emotional and raw; a genuinely Great concert.  I'm super happy I got to share it with my sister.  Although theres only 3 years between us, we've had a gap in our social scene the past oh I don't know 8 years lol.  Now that she's a married lady and almost 30, I see that gap is closing.  I would have NEVER thought we'd go to a country bar together, let alone try line dancing. 

The evening was full of reminiscing, remember whens and where did the time go?  And then there was the interesting conversation of age, discussing how 30 isnt so scary afterall  (we range from 29-31)  At what point are you a adult?  In my mind I'm still 23! Although some days my body feels 63. When I look at my peers some with children some without and we're just "the girls".   My sister made an interesting point, "our 30's are to redo the 20's but BETTER."  We're more mature, have more money and can appreciate things differently than 10 years ago.   Funny and true.  I bet we'll be having the same conversation in 10 more years.

Confetti Spaghetti

I know I haven't been keeping up with tips so I thought it would be nice to share a recipe.  I made this last night for dinner. 

1. Choose any pasta of your liking and boil.  (here I used Trader Joe's Garlic Basil Linguine)

2. Grate 1 1/2- 2 cups each of carrots and zucchini.  Saute in a pan with salt, lemon pepper seasoning and 1 fresh lemon.  Start with half the lemon and add juice to taste.

3. Add confetti veggie mix to pasta with olive oil drizzle.  May need more salt and lemon pepper to taste.

I serve my pasta with baked Lemon Pepper Chicken and chopped zucchini.  Would also be great with shrimp.

Enjoy!

B is for Book Club and Babies

So there's no weigh in up date this week.  I was unable to make my meeting because I had a work meeting run late.  I'm sure this is a blessing as I DOVE off the wagon last weekend and I'm sure I gained.  I just got a little free pass till next week to make it up.   Instead I'll be sharing about book club.

I read the book "the Lost wife" based in Prague during WW2.  This is my favorite excerpt from the book with out spoiling the story.  It has special meaning to me from my own experiences, things in my past that I'm not willing or ready to blog about.

When I got to the host home it quickly became apparent that we would do more stuffing of faces than talking about the book!  There was an amazing spread of desserts and wine along with gourmet grilled cheese and soups.  What could possibly make grilled cheese gourmet you might ask?  I'll tell you. It starts with raisin nut bread lathered in butter stuffed with brie, prosciutto, apple, fig spread and arugula.  Take that Ham and Cheese!  There was also the option of brie and chocolate; and Yes, it was delicious.  I tried to be good, honest I did.  I started with half a sandwich and salad. It was just TO good.  So I had another quarter of the sandwich.  I did however avoid the desert table because I'm pretty sure I already ate my weight in points.

I had really been wanting to join this book club for a while, but the entrance challange was a spelling bee.  Don't get me wrong, I can spell with the best of them.  I "words with friends" and "scrabble".  But to do it in front of people, NO thanks.  For some reason I was able to attend with out having to face the challenge so I gladly jumped on board.  I figured I'd know a couple people based on the evite list.  These are people I havent seen in 10 plus years.  At first I felt kind of "high school reunion" about it, but then was pleasantly surprised to see I'm not the only one a little more round in the face.  Then the next wave of realization hit.

Babies. Babies everywhere. There were 3 gooey tots to drool over.  Like this little guy, Wyatt.

There were 12 women there including myself, I started counting and realized that there were only 3 other people there with out children. 1/4 of attendees.  I wondered how they were feeling, do they not have kids by choice?  Or are they in a similar boat as me?  I'm guessing probably 50/50.

This is Sawyer, the little bean I'm making the book for you saw in my last post.  He helped keep me distracted from over thinking and over eating lol.  For some reason the reverse lens on my iphone started taking grainy pictures??

I won a game, answering the most correct questions about the book, and got this cute book tote....and in the end I signed up to have the next book club at my house in March.  The book I've chosen is one of my old fav's The Glass Lake by Mauve Binchey.

Hobbies and Jalepano's

I don't have anything super wonderful to report, but I feel like writing so it's time for show and tell.

Since its been cold and raining, the general feeling is to be inside nice and cozy.  So here are a few of my current projects. 

I started a mini book that I had intended to give as a baby shower gift.  That didn't happen and now the baby's heading into 4 months lol.  But I had all the stuff and so I decided to go ahead and finish it, the up side is I can now add pictures instead of giving it to my friend blank!

Next on my list of cozy projects is knitting.  One day while walking through Michael's I noticed this scrumptious sample of yarn, Loops & Threads Bunny Tail (pom pom).  I had to have it.  It looked really hard to work with, so I did my research and found some patterns to use.  Last November one of my besties and fellow knitter came over and we watched multiple you tube videos to figure out how to cast on these little monsters.   Once we got it down the rest was easy peasy.  The trick is you knit one stitch between the balls. The funny story about this blanket is that it called for 70 stitches.  I decided I wanted it a little bigger so I cast on 80 stitches.  Then I had my sister look at it and she said might as well make it a even hundred.  Well NOW the blanket is about 6 feet in length.  What started to be a lap blanket will now be a couch blanket for me and my hunny.   Since I usually scrap during the summer (and we've had a unseasonably warm winter) this project got pushed in the closet and was recently resurrected.  I'll be sure to post a picture when its done.  At the rate I'm knitting should be some time in January.

Last but not least I joined a book club.  This past month I read "The Lost Wife".  It was REALLY good so much I wish I had more book to read.  Tonight is the first meeting I'll be attending and the dinner theme is Gourmet Grilled Cheese, Soups and Champagne.   I'm in trouble lol.  I made jalapeno poppers pictured below.  Not too bad, I used the reduced fat crescent roll dough and re cut the sheet into 32 squares.  With a tsp of cream cheese and some chopped jale's, they come out to 1 point each.   I also made some with mini chocolate chips and brown sugar, also 1 point each.

Down side, I had a off site meeting for work today and they provided lunch.  The lunch in itself wasn't bad, 7 pts.  But I was STARVING and ended up eating the 12 point cookie that came in the lunch box.  I'm contemplating taking my own dinner to book club tonight so I don't totally botch this week.  We'll see what the scale says on Monday!