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!

Paleo cookies!

I am seriously feeling way too deprived. And grumpy. The grumpy i think comes from ketosis, since it is abated if i eat a lot of fruit/veggies - but it seems like i'm always on the verge - but the deprivation... not much i can do about that. On the paleo way of eating, my "treats" have been fruits (which i am allowed to eat as much as i want now, as opposed to the Zone's miserly doling out) - and nuts (which i don't eat too many of since they are expensive :)...)

But today after running some errands, i had a brain wave. I had been oh so deeply desiring a coffee crisp chocolate bar with 70% cocoa chocolate - and been a good girl and even said no to my uxorious husband's offer of lunch at McDonald's...

I went to my recipe book cupboard and pulled out Serene Allison's cookbook, Rejuvenate Your Life, and double checked the ingredients for her "chocolate". It's a raw foods cookbook, and for awhile i was making a lot of things out of it - super healthy, really yummy - but a little time consuming, especially before we moved here where there is pretty much no moisture in the air and the dehydrator works like a dream (as opposed to several days to dry out flatbread in our last place)...

Anyway, not only was that recipe pretty kosher, but i decided to make halvah balls. Now i have, in the freezer of my fridge, delectable little balls of deliciousness that don't break the rules and that will give a little variety.

Here are the recipes i used:

Serene Allison's Chocolate

2 cups raw almonds, ground into almond butter in my vitamix
1/2 c. tahini
1/3 c. cocoa (i put a little less than she originally called for, which was 1/2 c.)
pinch sea salt
1/2 c. raw honey (again, i put a little less as i didn't have much and wanted some for halvah, too)

I mixed it all by hand in a bowl with a silicon spatula, oiled my hands with a little olive oil, and rolled them into balls, and put the plate into the freezer for an hour or so. Then i picked them off the plate and put them in a ziplock bag in the freezer, ready to eat...

Serene Allison's Heavenly Halvah

I ground 4 c. raw hulled sesame seeds (i bought a big bag of these through our natural foods coop and this is mostly what i use it for!) - i really made homemade tahini, since i ground them up into a paste
added in a little olive oil
a little raw honey

Mixed well together in a plastic bowl with a silicon spatula. Then, as it was really too soft, i chilled it in the fridge for awhile before i oiled my hands and rolled them into balls, put them on a plate in the freezer, till i can put them in their own ziplock bag. These are delicious little nougat-y balls, full of energy, and not too sweet (i didn't have a LOT of honey, and i prefer a little less over a little too much)

I asked T about the paleo acceptance of cocoa, since it is a bean, but he assured me that a lot of paleo people use cocoa, for whatever reason - if i knew why it's excepted from the beans restriction, i'd feel a little less like a cheater, but for now, these are a nice paleo alternative to the things i'd rather be eating (like fried cheese with mayonnaise and a side of fries... LOL!)