Sugar detox Macaroons

This is best treat ever…Seriously…I think I could eat all batch by myself…So good it is….And I am on Sugar detox day 14. I won’t lie that it’s easy, because it’s not…

Now the recipe:

• 2 egg whites
• 1 green apple, peeled and shredded
• 1 cup coconut flakes (unsweetened)
• 3/4 cup shredded coconut (unsweetened)
• 1/4 tsp salt

1) Mix egg whites with salt. Add in coconuts and apple and stir in well. Place in fridge for 30mins. to soften coconut.

2) Using a small scoop (i.e. melon baller, cookie dough scoop, or small ice cream scoop), fill with batter, pack very firmly and release bites onto parchment paper lined baking sheet

3) Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes, then broil for 2 minutes if you want them more golden.

Morning Glory muffins (Paleo)

Paleo Morning Glory Muffins

I was willing to bake something and Keven pointed out today that our apples are going bad, so I decided to seize the moment and do something with apples. Of course, I have my favourite apple fritters muffins recipe that I love and could eat all the time, but also wanted to try sometihing new.

I went to check on PaleoOMG website to see if there are some ideas that I could use. I took her Morning Glory Nut free muffin recipe, twisted a lot and got my own version of Paleo Morning Glory Muffins. They came out very nice, feel a lot sunflower taste and misses a bit sweetness, so if you have sweet tooth, I would advice to put at least 3 TBSP of honey, but if you are trying to limit sugar then keep initial 1 TBSP.

Here comes the glorious recipe for 12 muffins:

Ingredients

• 2 apples, peeled and cored, grated
• 1 large or 2 medium carrots, peeled ir grated
• ½ cup almond butter
• 1 cup sunflower seeds
• 3 eggs, whisked
• ½ cup Walnut Oil or Coconut Oil(melted)
  
• ¼ cup dried apricots or any toher dried fruits of your choice
• ¼ cup pecans, roughly chopped
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 1 tbsp Chocolate chips (Enjoy life) -optional
• 1 tablespoon raw honey
• ¼ teaspoon baking soda
• pinch of salt

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
2. Toast sunflower seeds over medium heat with 1TBSP fat. I used regular olive oil, but you can go with coconut oil. Make sure that you don’t burn seeds, so keep mixing very frequently.
3. Grate apples and carrot to a bowl and add  almond butter.
4. Then add your roasted sunflower seeds to the food processor and puree until you get a flour/meal.
5. Then add your sunflower seeds flour, eggs, walnut oil, honey, apricots, chocolate chips, pecans, cinnamon, salt, and baking soda. Mix well.
6. Pour your batter into muffins tins. I lined my muffins tin with silicone muffin liners but paper would do just fine.
7. Bake for 25-30 minutes until cooked through.
8. Let cool slightly, but but best to eat them warm. ENJOY!

Related articles

• Paleo Apple Fritter cupcakes (followmyself.wordpress.com)
• Paleo Banana Muffins (cavemanmodernwoman.wordpress.com)
• Ginger Muffins (ontotheplate.wordpress.com)
• Paleo Breakfast Muffins: The Autumn/Winter Edition (cakesandshakes.wordpress.com)
• Saturday Morning: Banana Nut Muffins (paleovoyage.wordpress.com)
• Paleo Is As Paleo Does (queensweat.com)
• Raw Apple Muffins! (klling.wordpress.com)

What I learned this weekend…

ufff….I had such a bad experience…..I got alcohol poisoned and all day yesterday was spend sleeping, waking up, going to bathroom to puke, then go back to sleep again…

I had no idea that it would be that bad, seems like I start having alcohol tolerance zero. So, there was a birthday party fot my friend from french class and they are really not good cooks and decided to make pizza with some bought dough, so I offered to help them and to make proper dough. Anyways, thought it would be nice to teach others what I know, especially as I don’t eat pizza’s anymore, not regular ones…..Maybe I would have tried this one, but the sauce that they used was full of “red list” ingredients, so I just decided to skip. Anyways, those who tasted, said that pizza was good 🙂 And Keven decided that he wants to have something nice to drink, so we came to agreement to buy some rum and make Pina Coladas, which were actually very nice:

• Captain Morgan Spiced Rum
• Pinapple juice
• Coconut milk
• Ice cubes

So, the recipe seems pretty much paleo, I just should not have drunk wine before and maybe maybe all would have turned out nice….But it did not….That was worst day of my life….Last time I felt so bad was after my hen party, but then I ate whatever and mixed all alcohol possible….and Friday…no shitty food, wine and Pina Colada…except I ate some apple crumble as birthday cake, just because it had much more apples than crumbles and decided to take a chance as I almost never, literally, never cheat, because I don’t feel like and I don’t need. The only times when I allow myself to cheat is when something is homemade and I feel that it might be tasty and I want to try it and pay courtesy to the person that made food, which happens maybe once in 3 months. Anyhow…..at 20h I started feeling a bit better, drank some hot water with honey, then ate some apple sauce, decided to make myself chicken soup that would soothen my upset stomach:

• 2 chicken drumstick (or whatever chicken you have)
• 2 carrots, cubed
• 2 celery sticks, chopped
• 1 onion, diced
• some persil (dried or fresh)
• salt and pepper to taste

Put all ingredients in pot with cold water, make it boil and simmer for ~1hour or until meat falls easily from the bones. Remove meat from bones, cut into small peaces and return to pot with vegetables. Check for salt and pepper to season and that’s it. Very simple and delicious. I would have wanted to make something more spicy, the one with roasted garlic, but decided that maybe not this time….

Soup and applesauce worked their magic and finally I could relax and not think about running to bathroom to hug toilet bowl. I think I slept in total from friday night till now like 24 hours. Today I am feeling better, though still a bit shaky, decided to go for a walk as obviously there will be no training for me today…Lesson learned: training, healthy living and alcohol does not go together…

But this poster helps to think positive and go through and experiences:

Paleo Apple Fritter cupcakes

Of course I was baking again…..How else it could be? And….as always…or at least almost always I get inspiration from PaleoOMG website 🙂

So…she was making doughnuts. I decided to make cupcakes….I increased a bit the amount of apples for topping, but everything else is pretty much the same and you can find original recipe here.

RECIPE:

Ingredients

For the donut

• 1/3 cup pecan meal
• ½ cup applesauce
• 4 dried medjool dates, pitted or 10-12 regular dates
• ⅓ cup Coconut Oil, melted
• 3 tablespoons Coconut Flour
• 4 eggs
• 2 tablespoons raw honey
• 1 heaping tablespoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• pinch of salt

For the topping

• 5 apples, cored and diced (I used honey crisp)
• 2 tablespoons Coconut Oil, melted
• 3 tablespoons almond butter
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 2 tablespoons coconut milk
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
• pinch of salt
• 3-4 tablespoons coconut sugar

 

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.
2. Let’s get your toppings started early. Place a tablespoon or so of coconut oil in a large skillet over medium heat.
3. Add your diced apples to the pan, mix around, then cover to help soften your apples.
4. While your apples are cooking, make your dough for cupcakes.
5.  Add your pecan meal, dates, honey, applesauce and coconut oil to food processor and puree.
6. Then add your eggs and vanilla extract, and puree.
7. Lastly add your coconut flour, baking soda and powder, cinnamon, and salt and puree until all incorporated.
8. Grease your donut pan and pour in your donut mixture half way up (to keep room for your topping on top).
9. Now finish off your toppings. To your apples that have been sauteeing up, add your coconut milk, almond butter, maple syrup, cinnamon, vanilla extract, and a bit of salt. Mix well.
10. When your toppings are well combined, pour 1-2 tablespoons of your mixture onto each cupcakes, sprinkling each with a bit of coconut sugar.
11. Place in oven for 30-35 minutes until cooked through.
12. This made 12-15 cupcakes.

 

Paleo Chocolate Zucchini bread

It has been a long time since I posted a recipe and it does not mean that I don’t cook 🙂 I do cook every day, as this is what we have to do being in pale wagon if we want to survive, but I haven’t been doing something new or exciting. However, I saw a recipe on http://paleomg.com and of course I wanted to try it, just because I always like any desserts that I make from this website. I tweaked it a bit and I think next time I will not squeeze zucchini to make sure that moisture stays in. The cake was good, but a bit too dry for my taste. Sorry for the quality of the picture (taken with iPod)

• 3  zucchini (peeled and shredded)
• 2 eggs, whisked
• 3/4 cup almond butter
• 1/3 cup honey
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder (this gives really strong chocolate taste, so you can minimize for more subtle taste)
• 2 tablespoons coconut flour
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• pinch of salt

Shred zucchini, squeeze a bit of water and mix in a bowl with all the rest ingredients. Be careful adding coconut flour because it is very liquid absorbent to make sure that your dough is not too dry. Grease you bread loaf with coconut oil and bake 375F for 25-35mins. It took me 29mins to have toothpick come out dry. Enjoy!

Paleo crunch bars

So, I wanted to order some stuff from Steve’s Paleo, but the shipping is super expensive, so I decided to make a research on all mighty google.com and find a recipe to make it myself. Anyways, I am so used to make everything myself that I kind of lost hope and interest to buy. Well, I try to ind something, but there is always some ingredients that I don’t like or if it’s all clean, then it is super expensive and it is much cheaper to make it myself.

I took a recipe from here and I basically repost the recipe:
Ingredients

1/2 cup Raw Pumpkin Seeds
1/2 cup Pecans ( I used 1/4 cup of Pecan meal, because I had it and found it much cheaper to buy pecan meal than actual pecans. Anyways, I usually use them for baking and have to make into meal, so saving expenses and extra work)
1/2 cup Shredded (raw, unsweetened) Coconut
3/4 cup Almond Meal
1/2 cup Raw Sunflower Seeds
1 tsp Cinnamon
1 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract
1/4 cup Coconut Oil (plus a little to grease the pan)
1/4 cup Honey
2 tbsp of 100% Cacao

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Grind the pumpkin seeds, pecans, and coconut in a food processor until it’s a coarse flour.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the pumpkin/pecan/coconut flour with the almond meal and sunflower seeds. Use your hand. This is also when you add the cinnamon.
Add in the vanilla and the coconut oil stir with a spatula until the mix is evenly coated.
Add the honey and fold the mixture together until it is consistent throughout.
Grease your baking pan. I actually used two bread pans and divided mixture in half. I first pan I put and pressed so that it would be all equal the original mixture, then to the rest I added cacao and put that into second pan. I wanted to try two variations and did not want to cook twice 🙂 Both came out good. If you make just one variation, use square pan, for the convenience. Bake for about 15-20 minutes. Keep an eye on it though. Once it is golden brown and the aroma fills your kitchen, it’s ready. Remove it from the oven and use the spatula to cut it into 20 bars. Let it cool though before you take them out of the pan.

My delivery arrived

Today I got the huge box 🙂

It is my almond and coconut four delivery. I decided to buy a lot, to have for a long time, especially having in mind that Christmas are not that far away actually. I mean, they will come and I don’t want to worry about what I am gonna do 🙂

I also ordered some stuff to try out, especially regarding my protein intake (the protein powder is so not for me and makes me feel bad and gain weight) and I am kind of bored with eggs and fish, so decided to try out some other stuff. So, I got spirulina powder and hemp protein powder and hemp seeds. I also ordered  maca powder and  chia seeds for all the goodies that they have inside 😉

Pork Tenderloin with apple stuffing and Pecash Butter sauce

Since going pale, I am cooking meat much more often than before and before I wasn’t doing that much with it. Like, for instance, I have never done anything with pork tenderloin, I did not even know how to butterfly it. I had some idea in my head, but I still checked on internet to make sure. So, changing way of eating makes me learn new things and I am really happy about that. So, there was a week of pork ribs, now came time to have some pork tenderloin (my menu of the week depends on what I can find at reasonable price or sales that would be organic and humane raised 🙂 )

The hardest part in this recipe was actually not the tenderloin but the sauce which includes making pecash butter. I do not have kitchen food processor, just blender so it took me a while and some modifications were required to be made to get the right consistence.

Pecash Butter

• 2/3 cup pecan halves
• 1 cup raw cashews
• 1/4 cup coconut oil (if you are stuck with blender as I am)

Basically, the recipe was calling for cups of nuts, but I did not have that much, so I simply chose to keep the proportions in minds, that goes 2:3 and thats it.  If you do have a food processor, then place nuts into its bowl and let it run for 8-10mins. until creamy and smooth texture. If you do not have, then its more work. I had to scape sides of my blender quite often and after around 10mins, I decided that it is going not exactly as I would like it to be, so I decided to simplify work by adding coconut oil to get the moisture out of the nuts and finally get this creamy and smooth texture. It work really feel and in couple minutes I had my beautiful pecash butter which is really tasty as well (Glad that I am over the phase of nut butters, so it will stay in fridge for much longer and I won’t have to make new butter soon 🙂 )

Pork Tenderloin with Apple Filling

• 2 lb pork tenderloin
• 2 apples (peeled, cored and cut into chunks)
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1tbsp honey
• 1 tsp lemon zest
• 1/2 cup pecash butter
• 2 garlic cloves (minced)
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 pinch salt
• 1/2 cup hot water

Preheat the oven to 350F. Butterfly the tenderloin lengthwise to have a uniform peace. Place apples, cinnamon, lemon zest, honey into food processor or blender and process until smooth but still chunky texture. Pour apple mixture onto flattened tenderloin and spread evenly. Roll up the pork and place into baking dish. Bake for 45-60mins (~25mins. per pound of pork). Remove from pan and let rest for 10 mins.

Mix pecash butter, crushed garlic, salt and pepper in bowl. Slowly add water to get desired consistence, something like thick soup. Serve Pork tenderloin with 1/2 sauce on top and rest on the side.

I took this recipe from Paleo Comfort Foods book and it was really nice. However, I was doubtful when I was making it that there is no seasoning on the top of the roll and just apples inside, so I was a bit worried that the taste might be quite bland. Actually it would have been, but that is where the almighty sauce comes in. It really makes all the difference, so if you plan to make this recipe, do not omit sauce. You can use any other combination of nuts, but sauce is a must, because it brings richness of taste.

Trout with pecan crust

Yesterday I made trout with pecan crust that was super delicious. Literally, best trout dish that I have eaten so far (though I haven’t eaten that much 🙂 ). I love pecans and especially when they are a bit toasted. The recipe is really not complicated and I made it for 2, so I needed the following:

• 2 trout fillet
• 1/4 cup almond flour +salt&pepper to season them
•  1 beaten egg white
• 1/2 cup of chopped lightly roasted pecans
• 1/2 tbsp of ghee

for sauce:

• 1/2 tbsp ghee
• 1/8 cup lemon juice
• 1/4 cup wine (recipe called for white, but I used red one and it was still really good)
• 1/8 cup drained capers
• 1 tbsp parsley

Prepare in separate plated almond flour, beaten egg white and roasted pecans. Place trout fillet flesh down first into almond flour, then egg white and lastly into roasted pecans. Press firmly to make sure that pecans stick to the trout. Heat ghee over medium heat and put trout flesh down first, fry for about 5mins.( the aroma will be amazing), then carefully flip it and roast for other 4-5mins. Take trout out of the pan, add rest of ghee, lemon juice, wine, capers and parsley. make sure you scrap the rests of trout and heat the sauce. Pour over the trout. Enjoy. Yummi!

Related articles

• Sauteed Trout with Pecans – Join me on the patio for dinner! (pastaprincessandmore.wordpress.com)
• Healthy Candied Pecans Recipe- Snack Time! (familyfocusblog.com)
• Pecan Crusted Baked Fish (notecook.com)

Biking and climbing + ribs, rubs and dips

It has been quite a few days since my last blog entry and I have been willing to write something for almost every day, but at the same time I did not feel like writing on my iPod 🙂 June started and I decided not to get a bus pass but use my bike instead. Saturday I bought a used bike (did not see point of getting new one, because we don’t know how long we gonna stay here blah blah). It goes so much faster with my new bike and even those horrifying hills don’t seem that horrifying anymore and quite manageable. I have been increasing my arrival time to my work place every day. Tuesday I made it in 60mins, Wednesday – 55mins. Thursday – 54mins. I am proud of myself to go each time faster and faster, means my legs are getting stronger. And I also reached fastest time to go down the hill: 52.5km/h 🙂 I also have been very good girls and already went to climb 3 times this week. It is so much more easy to go to climbing gym when I am on the bike, rather than bus, because I don’t have to get out of the bus, walk to the gym, walk back to the bus, take bus, walk home….It takes loads of time…With bike I arrive faster than with bus, plus I can leave work half an hour earlier than before, because I don’t depend on bus schedule, so it is very simple to take a little turn on the way home for the climbing gym. They also made new routes and some are really interesting and powerful. For the first two times I was climbing routes that are more of my level and does not require too much concentration and effort, because I was forgetting to take tape for my fingers, and my tendon is still not o.k. As much as I know it might take even a year for tendon to heal, so I don’t have any other choice as wait patently and climb using support. Yesterday I decided to climb routes that are higher than my level, because I want to improve and I was switching between overhanging climbing (powerful movements) and crimps (endurance and finger strength). That was super nice session that I really enjoyed. On Wednesday, when I did not go to climb, I made a little workout for the abs from Skimble app, called Ab-Bootcamp. Today was my rest day as I have Crossfit tomorrow, first time after a week break (seems like ages ago 🙂 ).

Obviously, I had to make something sweet and nice today, so I chose to make the chocolate cake that was actually my first paleo dessert which I made for my birthday 🙂 It is still cooling down and waiting its turn to be tasted. It is super delicious, just takes time to deal with those dates 🙂

This week I discovered ribs. Last time I ate ribs back in Lithuania and when I saw humane raised ribs for fair price in the shop I decided to take a chance and to make something out of it. It is absolutely delicious. Keven now is just dreaming about ribs 🙂 So, today I made a load of rub from “Paleo Comfort Foods” that probably will be enough for a year. The rub consist of:

• thyme
• four peppercorn blend
• grilled sweet pepper
• hickory salt
• sea salt
• black and white pepper
• onion powder
• ground cumin
• chilli powder
• turmeric
• garlic powder
• sweet paprika
• rosemary
• mustard powder
• cayenne powder

Uff…It was easier to make than to write it down 🙂 But now I will have rub for all the rest of the year. In the original recipe there was no grilled sweet pepper and no hickory salt, but I found these smokey ingredients in some other recipe, tried it out and fall in love. I was checking many recipes to find how to make the ribs in the oven (most of them offer you to use grill, which I don’t have), so after checking probably 10 websites or more (all of them required roasting ribs in the oven for at least 3 hours), I came up with this preparation of Pork Back Ribs in the Oven:

Remove filmy membrane of the back of the ribs. Spread the dry rub all over. Leave it to marinate in refrigerator, covered with plastic film or aluminum foil for at least 2-3 hour or best overnight. Cut the ribs into 3-4 rib chunks. Preheat the oven to 450F. Heat 1-2 tbsp of olive oil in the pan on high and both sides until nicely browned. It’s quite fast process, but it will give that amazing crunchiness afterwards. Place ribs on roasting pan and put in the oven for 50-60mins, turning over half time. This is much faster than having them in the oven for a longer period on smaller heat and I found it very nicely cooked and crispy.

It is also nice to have sweet potato chips along with ribs and some nice dip. I was using roasted red pepper dip from paleOMG and I loved it. Definitely recommend to try it out. It goes also really well with roasted cauliflower and broccoli. The other dip that I also used with ribs was Tahini dip ( good with veggies and fish as well) which is super easy to make:

• 1/3 cup tahini
• 1/3 cup lemon juice
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/3 cup water (start by adding less to check for the desired thickness)
• 1 garlic clove (crushed)
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1/4 tsp cumin (optional)
• 1/8 tsp hot sauce (optional)

I like hot sauces, so I do add hot sauce and as cumin is one of my favourite spices, I never forget this one 🙂

For my lunch when I am working, I am still stuck with Tuna salad (tuna, celery, apple, chive, spinach or kale, sometimes avocado, some nuts (pecan is super nice) and the dressing), because I just can’t get over it. It is easy to make and I just love the taste of it and sauce is really good with anything actually and I use it sometimes with other salads as well:

• 1-2 tbsp of home made mayo
• 1 tsp of mustard (I use old-fashioned)
• 1 tsp of apple sider vinegar
• salt and pepper to taste

So much from my food and exercise world this week 🙂 I hope you will try out some recipes and enjoy them as much as I do.