Fuel : Thanksgiving Stuffing

I loved Nom Nom Paleo when i discovered it - devoured post after post.  In the end, while i learned a lot, i also got a bad case of jealousy.  I live up close to Santa's workshop, in a city of 100 000 and there are not the restaurants like those she mentions, and going to the Crossfit olympics would be a HUGE financial undertaking for a family of ten :)...

Still, love it.  and it's a treat to look at.  And i do try recipes when i have the ingredients and equipment.  (and i'm drooling over the meat slicer...)

But this Thanksgiving, we had a big potluck with our church family on Saturday night, and on Sunday planned to make a turkey for just our crew.  We got the turkey in the oven before church, and then Coach wanted to pick up some diet pop on the way home.  He said something about stuffing, too bad it wasn't paleo, and it rang a bell for me.  A friend who is eating the GAPS diet had mentioned that she and her daughter made a stuffing that was mostly celery and onions.

But when i mentioned that, he shook his head.  That's not a stuffing...  He trudged into the supermarket, while i waited in the car.  I did a quick search on my iphone for "paleo stuffing" and THIS is what i got!  I sent him the ingredients using the Buy Me a Pie app, and when we got home, he got buy making me stuffing.  Since i guess that's how we roll...

Juli, at paleomg.com has come up with something that is stuffing, that hits all the right notes, but at the same time is even more delicious than stuffing, and is completely paleo!

What a decadent pleasure!

Check out her delicious recipe:
http://paleomg.com/paleo-thanksgiving-stuffing/

This recipe made enough for a family of ten, with a very big and strong man having at least three separate meals worth between 3 p.m. dinner and 11 p.m bedtime.  With about a cup leftover for me to mix a little in with my eggs in the morning, and Coach to finish up all the rest :).  I love that a single woman makes her recipes big enough for my family!

And from Canada, happy Thanksgiving!

Fuel : Lunchtime salad

Coach T says that if i'm still hungry, it's because i need more fat in my diet.

I love chicken skin and bacon as much as the next guy, but I've got eight children and there just plain isn't enough skin to go around :)...

Other great ways to increase your fat intake is: olive oil dressings, butter slathered on roasted meat, nuts (salted or not) and nut butters, coconut oil.

But one of my favourite fat sources is avocado.  It's full of minerals, has a delicious, smooth taste, can be added to eggs, sandwiches or salads, and fills you up!

Plus, I find that as mom i can either feed me or feed the troops, and eight little mouths certainly outvote my paleo tummy...  So i end up making carby foods for their breakfast, and grabbing quick whatever i can find to fill my tummy as they get going.  This morning (and lunch) it was a peach and some leftover ham!

This salad is super easy to make with leftover salad, taco fixings, or to just make up for a one person salad bowl.  A plain oil and vinegar dressing is great, but add in some mashed avocado, and a little dab of dijon mustard, and it's a whole 'nother world.

One more delicious trick is grinding up sesame seeds into a paste in the blender, and using the pea sized chunks as "croutons"...

Fast and easy!

Fuel : Burrito-ful salad

I don't have a picture for this one, but you can check out Mucho Burrito's website for an idea of where i'm going with this.

Scroll down to the salad bowl.

Now, imagine no bowl!

This is something we had this week, and then we made our own :)

Coach T did a wonderful pork roast, and then shredded it in the crockpot.    With greek dressing, tomatoes, cucumbers, and lettuce,  and tzatziki on the side (should have added feta cheese, too!), it makes a hugely satisfying, very paleo feast!

AND the children love the kind of meals where they get to choose what ingredients they eat and in what proportion.

I noticed three plates where everything was carefully sectioned off :)

Fuel : Proteiny, savoury eggs in a muffin tin!

Like most things in life, the inevitable craving for carbs can fixed with the judicious application of bacon!

Coach T loves these little "muffins", which are super easy to bake and are super tasty!

We tweaked this recipe from allrecipes.com, so it's always a little different...

Bacon and Eggs in a Muffin Tin

Preheat oven to 350.
Bake bacon on a cookie sheet (this reduces the mess!) till well done but not completely crispy. 

But a little knuckle of butter inside each muffin cup.
Curl a bacon slice around the inside of the muffin cup, and break some up to make a "bottom", too.

Sprinkle a little cheddar in each muffin cup, then break an egg into each one.  Top with jalapeno bits and a little more cheddar, and any leftover bacon crumbs.

(Coach T likes to switch up what cheeses he uses, or add in onion instead of jalapeno, or red peppers, too)

Bake in preheated oven for ten to fifteen minutes.

Delicious!!!  I have frozen these so he can grab them for a quick breakfast (when he isn't doing the intermittent fasting, which i guess will be another post one of these days...) :)  But in general, they go way too quick to save.

Fuel : Simple, Clean Suppers

I feel a little guilty blogging about meals i didn't make (except for the chicken!).  Coach T loves cooking and is a lot less utilitarian than I am.  Still, he makes meat, a veggie, and that is it.  No breads on the side, no carbs, but still... tasty!

One simple thing we do with a lot of our veggies is roasting a la Jamie Oliver.  (Click the link for the recipe!) In one of his shows, he had a huge pan of cut up veggies and poured on a "big glug" of olive oil, tossed it all up with his hands, shook generous coarse salt and pepper on it, and threw it in the roaster with his meat.  It looked beautiful, and when we tried it out, it *tasted* wonderful, too!

So, we tend to roast veggies a lot.  Some, like the sweet potatos in the top photo surprise us with how delicious they are later on, cold.  We left the skins on, and they were delicious cold as boats in our bedtime snack.

The pork ( top photo) is just marinated and cooked in a chimichurri sauce, and the chicken (second photo) was "fancy" - Coach T asked me to mix seasoning salt with butter and lift the skin all over the chicken and stuff in the seasoned butter.  Usually i just use a lot of seasoning salt and make sure to baste but the added butter did make the meat extra tasty!  They end up tasting just like the rotisserie chickens you buy at the supermarket!

The tomato and mozzarella salad is his summer favourite, and I love it too!

Here is the recipe:

Coach T's Summer Tomato and Mozzarella Salad

6-8 ripe tomatoes, cut into 1" cubes
2-3 cups mozzarella, cut into 1" cubes
2 tsp basil
1/2 c. olive oil
1/2 c. balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper to taste


optional add ins: pine nuts, and feta :)

Fuel : The Church Potluck

Writing about food for a family who is trying to eat paleo could get pretty repetitive if we never ate anyplace but our own house.  Today i thought i'd share about eating paleo at potlucks...

First of all - yay for my church!  I love the church we are at so much!  Great people, great preaching, singing, community - a potluck every month, and birthdays to sing for every week...  And big boys like this who try to make my baby smile (and succeed!  That's where being the oldest of a very big family comes in handy, i think!)

The problem with potlucks is that you don't have so much control over what is there, so first off, you need to make sure that your contribution is paleo.  I think that's actually kind of hard, bcz most moms of many have a few potluck recipes that are their go tos - things that are tried and true crowd pleasers.  And then paleo seems kind of pricey compared to that, and also, kind of... boring.

For our church potlucks, we have to bring a main dish, a side dish, and a salad.  So today we brought a ham (no sugary glaze), a bag of buns (for everyone else!  And our carb hungry sons...), and a romaine, blueberry and feta salad with greek dressing - it's my favourite this summer :)

And when i moved through the line, i saw so many delicious things that i could eat!  Actually, i cheated a bit, because i had corn, which is a grain, but apart from that i scored all kinds of delicious things.

The salad and ham i brought, another salad with pecans, wild greens, and a balsamic vinegar dressing, chicken with a cheese topping, brazilian lime chicken thighs (yummy!), raw carrots, and goat cheese rolled in cinnamon (what a tasty idea! Usually cinnamon is found in sweet things, but it really worked just rolled on its own around the goat cheese.  (We do eat dairy with our paleo - i know not all paleo eaters do, but we've found it a quick source of protein and yummy, too...)

And for dessert, watermelon!

Once you steel yourself to avoid the big bread basket and pasta dishes, no  matter how tempting, the church potluck can be a fun place for some paleo variety!  

I know i'm going to make that goat cheese log again here at home :)

Fuel : Affordable Fuel for a Big Family

I've talked to a few other moms (of bigger families) who've been to the blog and wonder how it works, feeding everyone paleo.

First of all, we don't.  We figure we'll go bit by bit, and i'm still baking (!) for the little ones.  (it helps if you think of it as making kid chow :) - not meant for adult consumption)

So, the children still eat homemade whole grain (and sometimes white!) bread, biscuits, potatoes, corn...  But gradually we are converting our pantry and buying habits to include them.  It helps that paleo seems to be "all the good bits" anyway...

Except to our one extreme carboholic child :)

Anyway, one thing that's made a difference in our food budget was an offer from friends.  We don't hunt (yet) but friends are outfitters, and had a moose where the hunter didn't want all the meat.  So she called me out to her place, i brought the children, and we cut that moose up :)

Haven and the incomparable Mrs. Davis

It was seriously a lot of fun, for all the children - where else do you get to see a giant carcass suspended from a hook in the roof, or get to chop up huge sides of meat, or grind your own burger meat, and then wrap and stamp it?

Now, many months later, we are still eating that moose!  And tonight we had probably the best steak we've had in many months...

Costco has great prices and great quality, and we're able to buy sizes commensurate with our family, but a little wild meat thrown in there gives variety, and  is just as delicious as store bought!  Try it!

Fuel : Snack time

If you've tried to  lose weight before, the idea of a bedtime snack may not seem like a good idea.  But if you've been in the Zone, you'll know where we're coming from.  Three meals, two snacks, all balanced carbs/protein/good fat.

This is what Coach T made me for my bedtime snack.  Mmmm....

Being paleo doesn't mean following all the Zone rules, but we do find they mesh pretty well, and following the Zone may be better if you are the type of person who likes to count calories, or measure portions, or who is apt to cheat :)  just a tiny little bit!

Right now, we're loosely following Zone/Paleo/ketogenic diet rules - low carbs (and good carbs over refined, no white sugar/flour), adequate protein, and high(er) fat.  It's so delicious!  And, i lost another pound this week :)....

Fuel : Paleo Pizza

I smelled dinner cooking and it smelled like.... Pizza Hut!

What on earth?  So delicious... so forbidden...

But when T called us upstairs to eat, there was something decidedly unpizzalike on the table.

The bacon definitely made up for the lack of crust - it was crunchy, and salty and delicious.  The chicken was seasoned using a bottled cilantro/lime marinade (we also love Tyler Florence's Ultimate chimichurri sauce if you prefer making from scratch).

And over all, melted cheese.  Everyone ate it and loved it :)

Coach T's Paleo Pizza

Cut up ten chicken breasts into bite sized pieces.  Throw them into a casserole dish (9X13 pyrex baking dish, ungreased).  Slather them in chimichurri sauce, or italian salad dressing, or whatever marinade you like.

Bake until almost cooked through.  Cut up half a pack of bacon.  Shake over top the chicken.  Cook again till bacon is crispy.  Drain liquid.  Cover in shredded feta and grated cheddar.  Bake until cheese is bubbly and golden.

Even the littles ones loved it!

Tonight's workout:

3 rounds of this:

1 minute rowing machine

1 minute kettlebell swings (i used the 8k baby one)

1 minute jumping pullups (like a chinup, only you jump up and lower yourself slowly - killer)

1 minute shoulder press thrusters (i used 8 k dumbbells)

1 minute squats

1 minute rest

And i should confess (do i have to?) that although breakfast and dinner were both paleo, the middle of the day was a total write off - six of seven littles were sick, and so was i, so we voted to do school on Friday instead and take Monday off. Very sweet. I don't feel much better, but we'll have to get the show on the road tomorrow - i don't think i can handle that much nothing :)...

Anyway, no cookies tomorrow! I'm turning a blind eye to my 3 yo sneaking into the kitchen as i write - i know it means one less butterscotch almond cookie to tempt me...

T downloaded the Robb Wolf podcast for me to listen to, and has an abstract (?!) of the book "Good Calories, Bad Calories" - less about a specific diet, more of studies on nutrition. We'll try to keep to this for now. Sometimes it's just too hard for me :) But i want it to work! Tomorrow's a new day...