Category Archives: Recipes

Primalgirl Cooks: Paleo Pasta Part Two

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PastaAustin and Houston were amazing, thanks for asking! Okay, you didn’t ask, you’re waiting for the pasta recipe. Sorry to those of you on the East Coast, I promised you dinner for Monday night. I forgot about the time difference and the ass-pain of airport security. To those on the West Coast, you’re welcome. O_o

Here goes. Hopefully you made your sweet potato, yam or plantain flour. If you didn’t, you can experiment with other flours such as rice, quinoa, sorghum, finely milled almond flour, or other gluten-free flours that you’ve found don’t give you gastric distress. The basic recipe is as follows:

Paleo Pasta

Ingredients

  • 140 grams sweet potato flour or a combination of flours.
    (Please see note below if using almond flour.)
  • 60 grams tapioca starch
  • 2 egg yolks
  • 4 whole eggs
  • 1 tsp salt

Note: If you want to use almond flour, I suggest making the following changes with regards to flour, unless you want to add xantham gum and/or guar gum to help the pasta hold together. All the other ingredients (eggs and salt) remain the same. Almond flour is not starchy at all and doesn’t absorb the liquid from the eggs very well. This causes a couple different problems. First off, if you simply follow the regular recipe and just substitute some almond flour, your dough will be wet and sticky. If you don’t use finely milled almond flour, or you use too much, your dough will have chunks in it and it will break apart if you try to roll it out too thin.

Option 1
Option 2
• 120 grams starchy flour
• 40 grams almond flour
• Extra tapioca or arrowroot powder for rolling out the dough
• 100 grams starchy flour
• 40 grams almond flour
• 80 grams tapioca starch
• Extra tapioca or arrowroot powder for rolling out the dough

Directions

Get your water boiling. I like to add salt and olive oil to the water, but I’m not sure it’s terribly necessary.

If you have a stand mixer, add all the dry ingredients to the bowl and blend to combine. If you’re using a regular mixing bowl, whisk or use a fork instead. (For the following steps, imagine your hands are the stand mixer’s paddle and just follow along. Go wash your hands first, though.)

Make a well in the center of the flour and dump the eggs in. Blend with the stand mixer or use a fork until it’s mostly combined. (You can finish it off when you knead it.)

Turn the dough out onto a clean, flat working surface, lightly dusted with tapioca, arrowroot or other flour if your dough is a little sticky. Knead it by hand until it’s smooth. If it feels a little dry, you can add a teaspoon of olive oil. It’s it’s too wet, add a sprinkle of whatever flour you want until it’s perfect. Your dough should feel silky and smooth and should not be sticky.

I like to wrap the dough in plastic wrap to keep it from drying out. You won’t be able to roll it all out at once and it will dry out and crack if you just leave it sitting on the counter.

Either use a rolling pin and roll out about 1/4 of the dough as thinly as you can, or put small chunks of it through your pasta roller until it’s the desired thickness. Because this has eggs in it, it puffs up a bit when you cook it. If you don’t get it pretty thin, you’re going to have very thick pasta. It will take longer to cook and you may not be happy with the result.

Cut the pasta to your desired shape, using a pastry wheel, an attachment on your pasta roller or a plain old knife. If you’re making spaghetti or other long noodles, it helps to use a pasta drying rack to keep them from sticking together. However, when I started out, I simply used a cookie sheet and separated layers of pasta with wax paper. I DO love my pasta rack, though. It’s way faster and easier. Once you’ve got them hanging up, or lying flat but separated, it’s okay if they start to dry out.


To cook the pasta, put it in boiling water and cook for about 3 minutes. Ravioli will take a little longer, approximately 6 minutes. Once it has started to float towards the surface, take a piece out and taste it. Act quickly — pasta like this can quickly turn from perfect to mush if you’re not careful. Once it’s done, drain and serve with your favorite sauce.

I’ll be posting pictures of my ravioli on Facebook and Twitter tomorrow, once I get my husband up out of bed and he finds the camera for me. I’ll also try to post a recipe for my pumpkin sage cream sauce soon for those of you that are nightshade free.

Enjoy! I hope this works as well for your family as it has for mine. I’d love to hear about your experiences, the different flours you used and what you thought of the recipe in the comments.

Primalgirl Cooks: Paleo Pasta Part One

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For those of you that caught my tweet the other day, you’ll know that I have come up with a Paleo pasta recipe.

That’s right: PASTA. I’m not talking zucchini noodles, spaghetti squash or those disgusting  zero-carb shirataki noodles that smell like fish. I’m talking real, honest-to-goodness pasta that you can turn into lasagna, spaghetti, fettuccine, ravioli or whatever the hell you want.

It’s grain-free, gluten-free, guar and xantham gum free and 100% Paleo. It does take a bit of work though, but trust me when I say it’s worth it.

This whole adventure started when George Bryant over at www.civilizedcavemancooking.com posted a recipe for beef bacon ravioli. I’ve been missing Italian food something fierce lately so I eagerly clicked on the link. To my dismay, I discovered that George hadn’t made the pasta himself, but had gotten it from Capello’s Gluten Free Products and that it was $55.00 for 4 12-oz packages. Not only can I not afford $55 for pasta that will make approximately 2-3 meals (my kids eat A LOT), but the ingredient list left a little to be desired: almond flour, cage-free eggs, tapioca flour, potato starch, xantham gum, sea salt. My children and I can’t eat potato.

I spent the next two weeks coming up with what I think is the perfect Paleo pasta recipe and although it takes a lot of time and preparation, it does NOT cost $55.00. It’s not low in carbs, but it doesn’t have any gut irritating substances in it. Treat it like a moderation food on the Primal diet: you don’t want to start eating it every day but there’s no reason you can’t have it once a week.

I’m about to leave for Texas for a weekend of Primal Transformation Seminars, but before I go, I wanted to leave you guys with the recipe for the flour that you’ll need for the pasta. That gives you all weekend to play around and make the flour, and when I get back on Monday, I’ll be posting the full recipe so that you can Paleo Pasta for dinner Monday night.

You’ll also want a couple other things while you’re at it.

Pasta Making Accessories:

  1. a heavy rolling pin or a pasta roller. (I personally opted for the pasta roller after spending hours trying to roll the pasta out thin enough. It’s practically the same price as the rolling pin, after all and sooo much freakin’ faster.)
  2. a pastry wheel or a pizza cutter.
  3. a kitchen scale. I don’t use cups or teaspoons; that way you can substitute whatever flour you want and the recipe will still work.

sweet potatoesAlright: the flour. I have used a ton of different starchy vegetables to make flours and they’ve all worked out great for pasta. So far, I’ve tried jewel yams, Asian/Oriental yams, plantains, purple sweet potatoes and golden sweet potatoes. Taste-wise, I like the jewel yams the best (plus the pasta was bright orange!) but for looks, the Oriental yam won hands down. The flour ends up being white, hence the pasta is a creamy color and looks more like the “real” stuff. The kids loved the purple sweet potato spaghetti — the pasta was purple — but I personally felt like I was eating play dough. Plantain flour works amazingly well, but it has a pretty earthy taste to it and may not be to everyone’s liking. I’m planning on experimenting with taro root, winter squash and pretty much every starchy thing I can get my hands on when I get back. If anyone has already tried these, please let us know in the comments!

Instructions:

  1. Peel your starchy vegetable of choice.
  2. Slice very thinly with a mandolin slicer or carefully with a knife.
  3. Dehydrate until vegetable is completely dried out. (Try snapping a piece in half, if it’s dried all the way through then it’s done. This step doesn’t take as long as you’d think. Mine was done in less than 2 hours. I also tried this in the oven. Set the oven as low as it will go (170 degrees or less) and occasionally crack the door open to let the moisture escape. Keep an eye on the slices and remove when dried. Using an oven for this is more of an art than a science but it can be done.)
  4. Put the dried vegetable into the dry container of a Vitamix, or a good blender. Blend until the vegetable is a smooth flour.
  5. Use and store as you would any other flour. I keep mine in sealed mason jars.

That is it — that is all. A very simple way to make Paleo flour from your favorite starchy vegetables. You’ll need approximately 140 grams of flour (I like to use a couple different kinds — 70 grams or so of each) for the pasta recipe, so make sure you have enough. Whatever you have left over, you can turn into pancakes for Sunday morning breakfast. :) You’ll also need tapioca flour/starch and finely milled almond flour (if you want — almond is optional) in addition to the flour you’ve made so pick them up this weekend if you don’t already have them!

For those of you in the Austin and Houston areas, I hope to see you at the Primal Transformation Seminars this weekend. Otherwise, I’ll be chatting with you Monday when I return.

Oh — you’ll need one final thing: a nice bottle of red wine.

Saving Money Living a Primal Lifestyle

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savemoney_growOne of the complaints I hear most from people thinking about adopting a Primal or Paleo lifestyle is that it’s too expensive. Meat costs money. Coconut flour is expensive and hard to find. Organic fruits and vegetables cost more than their conventional counterparts. How do you make this type of lifestyle work on a restricted budget?

I believe that if anyone can answer this question, I can. We are a single income family with two kids. Technically, we’re below the poverty line, since my husband is enlisted in the Air Force. However, we own our own 4000 sq ft home and have two beautiful (working) cars in the driveway. I have enough handbags and shoes to wear different ones every day for six months and we eat grass fed beef, pastured eggs, organic produce, coconut oil, pastured butter and bacon on a daily basis. I shop at Whole Foods, Trader Joes and Sprouts. We have savings accounts with money in them and while the balance on our credit card is a little higher than I’d like it to be, we don’t have any debt that isn’t manageable.

How am I making it work? It seems like an impossible task, doesn’t it? I’ll tell you my secret: I’m damn good with money. And I don’t waste anything.

I received a request for a guest post from someone who wanted to share some money saving tips with you for a Paleo lifestyle (which I’ve included below) but I thought it would be fair if I shared my tips with you as well, as they’re completely different.

Saving-Money1. I’m realistic. Although I know the benefits of grass fed pastured meat, it’s not always available to me at a price I can afford. When my local grocery store has a “buy one get TWO free” special on meat, I buy it and put it in our deep freezer. I buy my pastured (grass fed) meat in bulk from a local farmer, and also store it in the freezer. I figure that if we eat grass fed meat some of the time and regular meat some of the time, we’re not going to up and die. Having a selection of both in the freezer means that I can rotate the good stuff with the regular stuff and still feel good about what we’re eating.

2. I get all my fat for free from my local farmer, in exchange for writing reviews on how awesome their farm and products are. (You can check out their website here, shameless promotion, cough, cough.) I get A LOT of it at one time. I render the fat down myself, strain it and put it in mason jars, which I store in the freezer. I use this fat for everything from cooking to homemade sausages to hand lotion in a pinch. You’d be amazed how many people are willing to give the fat away for free, as no one else seems to want it. (And you’d be amazed at how well it moisturizes, although it’s a bit smelly lol.)

3. I save my bacon fat. I just leave it in the pan, even overnight. It doesn’t spoil. It’s just there, deliciously waiting for me to fry my eggs in it the next morning. Organic, pastured eggs, which I’ve gotten from my farmer for about the same price as the crap conventional ones in the grocery store. If this grosses you out, think back to how your Grandma used to cook. She had a can next to the stove for her drippings and fat, didn’t she? It never went in the fridge. My dad’s family used to use these drippings to spread on bread when butter was scarce. I am too lazy to wash my cast iron pan every day, so I don’t bother with the can.

4. Any produce that has a thick skin that we’re not going to eat, I don’t bother buying organic. This includes bananas, avocados, oranges and sweet potatoes. (We don’t eat the peels of anything anymore, by the way, but that is another post for another day.)

save_money5. I make everything myself from whole real ingredients. We don’t buy any packaged food, except for the occasional package of gluten-free rice pasta and gluten-free tamari. I make chicken broth and even make my own coconut and almond milk. Why in the hell would I pay $2.99 for a can of coconut milk that has stabilizers, artificial vitamins and preservatives in it, when I can make the same amount of coconut milk for about 35 cents? It tastes better, it’s organic, I use filtered water and I know exactly what’s in it: coconut and water. It’s not rocket science. Neither is making your own coconut butter. If you buy a jar, it’ll set you back 10 bucks. Making it yourself costs…about $2. I make my own beef jerky, because I just can’t find any gluten-free, preservative-free jerky in the store that isn’t $45. I also make my own mayonnaise. It takes less than 1 minute, thanks to an awesome tip from Orleatha Smith, which we will be sharing with you via video sometime in the next month. I can use that mayonnaise for salad dressings and sauces and I even use it to cook with (it’s just oil, vinegar and eggs after all — if your recipe calls for those ingredients, why not use mayonnaise?) It’s amazing how expensive packaged food is. Don’t pay for flashy packaging and marketing campaigns. Stop spending money to have someone else (a machine, let’s face it) make your food for you. Take back your power and save yourself some cash.

6. I don’t waste anything. When I only have a little bit of mayonnaise left in the jar, instead of washing it out I add a bit of vinegar to it and voila! Instant salad dressing. I squeeze out every. last. bit. of toothpaste from the tube before I toss it. I add water to the dish soap bottle to get the remnants out. You know those neat soap dispensers that give you foam? The ones that are ridiculously expensive? Did you know that the first ingredient in that soap is water? I buy the original bottle so I can have the aerator-thingy and when the soap is gone, I refill it with about 5 cents worth of dish soap and fill the rest up with water. I learned these tips from my mom, who really needed to stretch the budget. She learned them from her mom. We’re so wasteful as a society it makes me sick sometimes. We only need to put our garbage cans out about once a month, while our neighbor’s cans are overflowing each and every week.

7. We don’t eat out. A meal for a family of four at McDonald’s costs over $20. For $20, I can make a meal that includes things like bacon wrapped scallops, grass fed steak, organic vegetables AND fruit. We mostly drink water. I don’t spend money on juice or soda or milk or coconut water or whatever you trendy kids are drinking these days. I make my coffee myself, with pastured cream, and take it in a reusable to-go cup. I refuse to spend $5 on a cup of coffee.

8. We do things that are free. Guess how much it costs to go hiking in the mountains? Or camping? Or to the park? When they grow up, our children won’t remember the ridiculously expensive vacations we went on, or the expensive flashy toys we bought them. They will remember the time they spent with us, not the money we spent on them.

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I have more tips, but I’ll save them for another day. In the meantime, Zara Blake, a financial blogger from the UK has some money-saving tips for you:

fruit picBuy from a farmer’s market: Buy fruits and vegetables from the farmer’s market where you will get them for cheap.  Visit the market at closing time when you will get the items for a cheaper price.

Dressings and salads: Make your own dressings and salads at home. Don’t spend $15 to have someone else make it for you.

Buy local foods: Always go for locally grown and seasonal foods. Exotic ones are more expensive and your body is not built to digest them regularly.

meatBulk meat: Buy a whole lamb or goat with a friend. Try meat-shares for larger animals. It will come already cut up and packaged so you can store it in the freezer. Try to buy grass-fed meats rather than the grain fed ones.

Plenty of eggs: These are the best source of protein after meat and are also pretty cheap. Include plenty of eggs in your diet.

Sales: Watch out for clearance sales in different grocery and online stores. Grab them while you can and stock up.

Do some gardening: Grow all the vegetables you need and save money. Use your kitchen waste as manure and practice rain-water harvesting. If you are running tight on living space, try roof-top gardens or potted plants.

Soups: If you find your veggies becoming dry, prepare soup with them. Using homemade bone broth is a great addition to this.

Fishing: Go fishing on weekends and catch as many fish you can. Clean and fillet them and store them in the freezer.

Nuts: Buy nuts in bulk quantities as they are cheaper than prepackaged nuts in small bags. Package them yourself and store them in the freezer.

Home-food: Eat at home and don’t eat out at restaurants too much.

No wastage: When you buy meat, don’t waste what can be eaten. If you dislike a certain part, learn to cook it in a new way. Don’t buy unnecessary prepackaged items as it will make your grocery bill go up very fast.

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These money saving tips were contributed by Zara Blake, a financial blogger from UK. She has written many articles on health, nutrition and finance. Catch her on Twitter: @financeport

Primalgirl Reads: Eat This, Not That and Rich Food, Poor Food

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eat-this-not-that-bookOne of the things that upsets me the most whenever I’m in a book store is the prominent position of stupid books like Eat This, Not That by David Zinczenko and Matt Goulding. I flipped through it to see what the authors had to say and went through all five stages of grief within a one-minute period:

1. Denial: No. Noooooo. No way are you telling me that I should choose Breyer’s ice cream over Haagen-Daas. Why the hell would I want a lower fat content, added stabilizers and unpronounceable chemicals?! And you’re telling me the reason that the Dairy Queen Banana Split is healthier is because it has a freakin’ banana in it?! What about the high fructose corn syrup poured all over the top?! I can’t believe that people would fall for this!!

2. Anger: O.M.F.G. This book is going to perpetuate the obesity epidemic in this country and isn’t going to help ANYONE. It just validates people’s shitty choices and makes them feel good about ordering a chicken burger with fries and a diet soda instead of the hamburger with fries and regular soda. W.T.F.

3. Bargaining: Maybe if I put sticky notes on the front of every one of these books in every store I see them in, someone will notice. Maybe if I stand in front of the display for hours, I can talk anyone who is interested in the book out of buying it and steer them towards a copy of The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf. Maybe if I complain to the store staff, they’ll do something. Maybe if I go on a hunger strike and alert the local media, someone will pay attention.

4. Depression: Why am I bothering. This country is going to kill itself. Why should it make any difference to me if some housewife gives her kids diabetes, they’re not going to listen to me anyway. Let them all die miserable deaths after living miserable, short lives.

5. Acceptance: At least the 20 bucks they’re spending on this book will be 20 fewer dollars they spend on fast food. At least they will be making marginally better food choices. At least people are starting to actually pay attention to what they put in their mouths. At least they’ll have a fuel source when the zombie apocalypse finally happens and they need something to burn.

Suffice it to say, I do not endorse Eat This, Not That. I think it is a sensational piece of garbage that uses faulty 1980s science (think: low fat is good!) and perpetuates reliance on the industrial food complex. I think if the authors of Eat This, Not That teamed up with the “nutritionists” (ha!) on The Biggest Loser, it would be freakin’ hilarious and a fantastic advertising opportunity for Nestlé.

Enter Jayson and Mira Calton, Stage Left:

RichFoodPoorFoodI was thrilled to receive my advanced copy of Rich Food, Poor Food: The Ultimate Grocery Purchasing System (GPS) by Jayson and Mira Calton a couple weeks ago. I think this book may be the answer to a looming problem we all have: when faced with a store full of choices, an industry intent on tricking us into choosing quantity over quality and we want real food, what the hell do we eat?

Apparently Jayson and Mira had similar reactions to Eat This, Not That as me. This is a beautifully put-together, wonderfully written book for people who want to eat real food and who are looking for the best options on the market when they do turn to pre-made stuff. It’s Paleo-friendly and wheat-free.

Honestly, I wasn’t expecting to learn anything but as I flipped through the pages, I found tons of information that I hadn’t been aware of. Did you know that you can ferment brown rice and beans to reduce the phytic acid content by up to 96%?! I didn’t, but Mira and Jayson did. Not only do they tell you about it, they actually give you the recipe so that you can do it yourself. It was nice to see that I had instinctively been making some of the best choices I could on my own, and not so nice to find out I had been duped in a couple of instances.

This book is empowering. With it, you can head to the grocery store knowing what products are okay to eat and which ones contain dangerous chemicals and additives. You will also have healthy alternatives that you can make yourself. The Caltons refer to specific brand names that you are likely to see in stores and tell you exactly why some are “rich” and some are “poor.” The book is divided up into Aisles (instead of Chapters) just like a grocery store and it covers most things that you would be likely to eat. After brand names are covered, there are featured recipes so that you can make things yourself and tons of information so that you can always make the right choice when you’re at the store.

In Rich Food, Poor Food Jayson and Mira also uncover industry secrets and tricks that are cleverly designed to fool us into thinking a product is healthy. They give us the skinny on dairy, meat, fish, produce, condiments, grains, baking ingredients, beverages and snacks, as well as the tools to know whether the product is right for us or not — no matter what the label says.

Rich Food, Poor Food doesn’t cover everything; it is designed to teach you how to quickly identify a “rich food” from a “poor food” on your own. This is exactly what most of us need: the power and knowledge to make our own decisions, instead of trainers and meal-plans that don’t actually teach us anything and ultimately end up making us slaves to them for all eternity.

That being said, I couldn’t think of any foods that I would actually eat that this book didn’t cover in some way. Rich Food, Poor Food is perfect for someone like me. I make most things myself — like mayonnaise, sausages and broth — but sometimes I’m too busy or tired to make everything. That’s when I’ll pick up my copy of Rich Food, Poor Food and head to the store.

Rich Food, Poor Food is the indispensible follow-up to Jayson and Mira’s 2012 bestseller Naked Calories. You can find coupons for discounts on “rich foods,” cool products such as grocery bags (with the GPS basics printed on them!) and tons more information by signing up for the Rich Foods Center on Mira and Jayson’s website at www.caltonnutrition.com. The center launches February 26, 2013!

Homemade Coconut Milk, Coconut Cream and Coconut Butter

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Coconut is amazing. You can turn it into flour, milk, oil or butter. You can drink the water. You can simply eat the coconut. You can buy it shredded or in cans. Most of us don’t think about how simple it is to make things ourselves and so we pay $14 for a jar of coconut butter or $2.50 for a can of coconut milk and resign ourselves to shelling out for it because it’s awesome.

My kids have to take milk to school to fulfill some bullshit calcium requirement and since they’re dairy free, we’ve been sending them off with coconut milk. I’ve tried watering down canned coconut milk but it tastes…canned. I had started buying coconut milk “drink” in tetra paks, but at $2 each, it was getting expensive. Plus, one look at the “vitamins” on the side revealed that all the additives were artificial – even in the Trader Joe’s brand. I read a post on The Primal Parent about the damage that those artificial vitamins can do and how to make your own almond milk (which I did, and it was amazing but I can’t send the kids off to school with any type of nut product). So, I set off to make my own coconut milk. I simply used shredded coconut instead of nuts and used the same procedure.

The result was the silkiest, smoothest most delicous coconut milk I’ve ever had. It was fragrant. With a flavor I’d never tasted before. It tasted…fresh. The first batch I made separated in the fridge and had to be brought to room temperature and re-blended in order to drink it so I set about tweaking it. The fat congealed in one big lump and floated to the top. Frequent attempts to shake it back into submission only resulted in the lump getting bigger, much like dairy butter. (In case you’re curious, the fat that separated was pure coconut cream — or more correctly, coconut butter, but we tend to think of coconut butter as something else — I’ll get to that later. We’ll just call it cream for simplicity’s sake.) It was richer and smoother than the coconut cream you buy in the store and didn’t taste like it had come from China, which is how the stuff I’ve found tends to taste. It was solid like a block of butter is when you first remove it from the fridge, but when it warmed up it had the consistency of whipping cream.

Coconut butter is like peanut butter — the flesh of the nut with the absolute shit blended out of it. It’s not technically “butter” any more than almond butter is butter, but it is beyond amazing. It’s also very expensive. Artisana sells a 16-oz jar of Coconut Butter for almost 14 bucks. Sure, it’s raw. And organic. So is the stuff you can make at home. I estimate you can make a 16-oz jar of the stuff yourself for less than three dollars, depending on how much you got your coconut for. I bought a jar before I started experimenting so that I would know what it tasted like. It tasted like an orgasm feels. There is no other way to describe it.

So how do you make these things yourself? Well, here are the recipes.

Coconut Butter

You’re going to feel like a dimwit when I tell you how easy this one is, but don’t. Please. We’ve become programmed to think that only the all-powerful food industry holds the secret to foods like mayonnaise, peanut butter and pickles, but they are incredibly easy — and way cheaper — to make at home.

Things You’ll Need:

  • Blender (a high powered blender like a Vitamix work the best but any old blender will do.)
  • Shredded Coconut (I use Bob’s Red Mill Fine Macaroon Unsweetened Coconut. You can use any brand you want, but make sure it is finely shredded and unsweetened.)

1. Put the shredded coconut in the blender and put on the lid. You’ll want to use at least a couple cups of coconut since it reduces and you’ll definitely want more than a tablespoon of finished product.

2. Turn on the blender and gradually turn it up to high.

With a Vitamix, you’ll have finished coconut butter in about 3 minutes. With a regular blender, it might take as long as 15-20 minutes, but it will eventually turn into butter. Turn off the blender and scrap down the sides if you need to once the butter starts to form. Blend to desired consistency (just taste it to figure out how smooth you want it).

That. Is. It.

Note: Don’t add any type of sweetener to your coconut butter. I know it looks like icing, but it isn’t. I tried to make “icing” by adding some agave nectar and strangely enough, it dried the coconut butter out. No amount of re-blending gave it back the wonderful consistency it had before I added the agave. It should be fine if you’re using the coconut butter in a recipe that also calls for sweetener.

Coconut Milk and Cream

You can use this exact same recipe to make cashew milk, almond milk or any-type-of-nut milk, including a wonderful blend of all your favorites. Just make sure you drain and rinse the nuts and use fresh water in your recipe. With coconut milk, you use the same water that you soak the coconut in. This is the only difference.

Things You’ll Need:

  • Shredded Coconut
  • Blender
  • Filtered Water
  • Tea towel (I use Flour Sack Towels. Love, love, love them.)
  • Clean glass bottle
  • Funnel if your bottle has a narrow mouth
  • Guar Gum (if you want the cream to stay emulsified in the coconut milk)
  • Sugar/Honey (optional)
  • Vanilla (optional)

You’ll have to experiment with coconut to water ratios to get the consistency that you like but here are some basics that I like:

  • Coconut milk to drink: 1 cup coconut, 4 cups water
  • Coconut milk to cook with: 2 cups coconut, 4 cups water

1. Soak coconut in filtered water for several hours or overnight. I just do this step right in my blender. Less mess, fewer dishes. Work smarter, not harder. Flip the switch a couple times during the day to mix it all up, if you feel the need.

2. When you’re ready, turn the blender on high for 2-3 minutes in a Vitamix, a little longer (say 5 minutes) in a regular blender.

3. Set up your glass bottle, funnel and tea towel. 4. Strain the coconut milk by pouring it slowly into the funnel and squeezing the excess liquid into the bottle. You can discard the leftover pulp or use it for recipes. (It’s rather tasteless at this point) Repeat until all the milk is strained.

5. When you’ve finished straining your coconut milk, you have several options. If you want it unflavored and unsweetened, or you want coconut cream you can go ahead and drink it now or put it in the fridge. Otherwise, you’re going to need to return it to the blender. This is what I do.

6. I add 1 tsp of vanilla, 1 tablespoon of regular sugar and 1/4 tsp of guar gum while the blender is on. That way the guar gum doesn’t clump. I usually mix the guar gum with the sugar and add them together. It seems to work quite well.

7. When the coconut milk is flavored/sweetened to your taste, pour it back into your glass bottle.

A note on using Guar Gum: The following pictures are of freshly made coconut milk using guar gum. Notice the separation on the left. Even though you’ve used guar gum, the coconut milk will separate several times. Just give it a little shake to remix it. The guar gum keeps the fat from clumping when you refrigerate it and will eventually keep it emulsified once the temperature has dropped. If you don’t use any, you will end up with a clump of coconut cream that will not mix back into the milk unless you bring it to room temperature and reblend it. Using Xanthan Gum makes a product thicker and is not what you want in this case, unless you want to thicken the coconut milk up. I caution against this, though. If you want thicker coconut milk, use more coconut and less water. Xanthan gum gives your finished milk a slimy feel, especially if you use too much. Be careful with the amount of Guar Gum, too. The same thing can happen. A scant 1/4 tsp in 4 cups of water is enough.

8. Your fresh coconut milk will keep in the fridge for 3-4 days. You can also freeze it, but be prepared for some separation when it thaws.

Let me know how it turns out for you! Try making some other nut milks. My favorite is cashew milk. Just make sure you soak the nuts for about 12 hours and dump the water out and rinse before beginning. Nuts contain phytic acid and other anti-nutrients you don’t necessarily want to drink.

Save yourself some time:

Once you’ve made your nut butter, leave some in the blender and add water. Blend for a minute or so and then strain. Instant nut milk! Plus you’ve used up the last bits in the blender and made cleanup easier.

Vitamin D, CBS and Pickle Mayonnaise

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Vitamin D and Sleep

Dr. Seth Roberts (a PhD and biohacker who presented at AHS last year) has been blogging about my Vitamin D and sleep connection for several months now and has been trying it out for himself. Seth has been trying to improve his sleep for years and definitely thinks I’m on to something. You can read about his experiments here. He’s currently writing a publication on the subject, which I can’t wait to read. He’s also been referring to the topic during some of his talks. I know some of you have tried and have had success with changing the timing of your supplementation – we believe it’s more important than previously thought and can impact the outcome.

Paleo on CBS

Paleo’s been on the news again! Dr. Kim Mulvihill at CBS San Francisco recently came to PaleoFX and interviewed some of us. There’s tons of great information, including an interview with CJ Hunt about his new movie, In Search of The Perfect Human Diet. (Spoiler alert: it turns out the perfect human diet is Paleo.) Check out the videos on CBS, or click below. I just happen to be in this one. ;)

Aired May 14, 2012: New Documentary Highlights Health Benefits of Paleo Diet
Aired May 15, 2012: Going Paleo Means Cutting Out Common Items from Diet
Aired May 16, 2012: Plenty of Options When Cooking For Caveman Diet
Aired May 17, 2012: Can the Paleo Diet Extend Your Life?
Aired May 18, 2012: Olympic Athlete Credits Paleo Diet for Healing
Aired May 21, 2012: Plastic Surgeon Prescribes Paleo Diet Instead of Liposuction

Pickle Mayonnaise

I recently went on a road trip to New Mexico to visit a friend who I haven’t seen in years. I have so much in common with this woman that we never run out of things to talk about and do together but thanks to the military we’ve been thousands of miles away from each other since 2006. Staying with her and her family really brought a point home for me – we are not meant to live alone with our immediate families, isolated in our perfect boxes. We’re supposed to have extended family and friends around us most of the time. For support with our children. For help with the cooking and cleaning. To socialize with. We shared so many ideas and tips over a one week period that I have come home with tons of new things to try, many of which I’ve already started doing. We even stumbled upon an amazing mayonnaise recipe that I’m going to share with you. If it hadn’t been for Rhonda, I never would have thought about trying this.
As a lot of you know, making your own mayonnaise is disgustingly easy. I say disgusting because it takes about 30 seconds and tastes better than anything you’ll EVER get in a store. It’s a lot cheaper too. Just like salad dressing and marinades, it uses oil and acid – the difference is, there’s a raw egg thrown in. But just like salad dressings and marinades, you can mix up the type of oil and acid you use to invent amazing new flavors.
Rhonda had recently made a batch of pickles but had forgotten to add water to some of the batch (a crucial step if you actually want to be able to eat the things without your face turning inside out). I was making mayonnaise for our trip back home and needed vinegar. She suggested using the vinegar from one of her jars of dill pickles that hadn’t been diluted so I tried it. OMFG. It was possibly the best mayonnaise I’ve ever had. It tasted like summer – for me, that’s potato salad and barbecues. Since the mayo already had a pickle flavor, we didn’t need to add pickles to our tuna or egg salad on the road which made on-the-go preparations really easy. I added a little extra salt to the batch as well so I didn’t need to deal with adding salt, either.
We came up with the idea to make the vinegar to use for future batches, which is what I’m going to do later this afternoon. All you need to do is find a pickle recipe you like, make it — but don’t add the water or the cucumbers — and pour it into a mason jar. You don’t even need to go through the canning process because vinegar won’t spoil. You could add any number of herbs to it, depending on the flavor you want. I’m going to get some fresh tarragon and try that. Having flavored vinegar will save me having to add herbs to my mayonnaise later on and gives a depth of flavor that herbs thrown in at the last minute just don’t have.

Here’s the recipe. Substitute different oils and acids for different tastes.

Basic Mayonnaise Recipe

1 egg
1 cup oil (I use extra light tasting olive oil or avocado oil)
1 1/2 tbsp acid [vinegar or citrus juice] (3/4 tbsp apple cider vinegar + 3/4 tbsp lemon juice is lovely)
1/2 tsp dried ground mustard
1/2 tsp Real Salt or sea salt (more or less to taste, but 1/2 tsp is what I like)
Optional: fresh garlic, pepper, whatever herbs you want.

Put everything into a mason jar and use a stick blender to combine. You’ll have lovely, thick mayonnaise in about 30 seconds. If you’re using a food processor, add the oil in a steady stream. If you want to make a creamy salad dressing, just add some milk to thin it out, or even some more lemon or lime juice. Using balsamic vinegar as your base in this case works nicely. It all depends on what you want to do with the finished mayonnaise. If you’re making potato salad, I really suggest making and using pickle vinegar. (Don’t use pickle juice from a store bought jar, it has been diluted and your mayo will be runny.)

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I’m still writing my book and I’m really excited about how it’s turning out. As for a guestimate of when I’ll be finished — well, with toddlers, road trips, military PCS’s and life all competing for my time and attention, it could be a while but I’m optimistic I’ll get it done by the end of this year. :)

Primalgirl Cooks: Paleo Holiday Brussel Sprouts

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Paleo Holiday Brussel Sprouts

Let me start by saying, I don’t think there is anyone on this planet who hated brussel sprouts more than I did. I have tried them at various times throughout my life, prepared by different people and never had one I liked. Until I added bacon to them.

I don’t know what made me experiment with brussel sprouts, perhaps it was one last ditch effort to enjoy a vegetable that my whole family loves and insists on having at every holiday. I came up with the perfect recipe for the holidays – the combination of the cranberries, bacon and walnuts is truly epic and compliments (while masking) the taste of the sprouts. Adding the balsamic vinegar reduction was the coup de grâce, though, it completely changes the entire flavor. This recipe can be a main dish in itself or makes the perfect accompaniment to any dinner.

If it’s any testament as to how freakin’ delicious this is, I would willingly eat this a couple times a week. The leftovers are even better the next day, reheat beautifully and make a great lunch. This can be made up in advance and gently reheated in the microwave or oven. The measurements are subjective; if you love walnuts, add more. If you hate cranberries, use raisins or leave them out. You really can’t mess this up. Using 1 lb of bacon and 2 lbs of sprouts will yield about 10-12 side dish servings or 4-6 main dish servings.

Ingredients:

  • 2 lbs brussel sprouts, washed, trimmed and quartered
  • Bacon (I use an entire pound. The ‘ends and pieces’ nitrate-free bacon from Trader Joe’s is awesome for this. Use less if you want, but at least 5-6 slices.)
  • 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
  • 1/2 cup chicken broth, bone broth or stock
  • 1/4-1/2 cup walnuts
  • 1/4-1/2 cup organic dried cranberries
  • Salt, to taste. (Warning: add this LAST — after the bacon — or you’ll regret it!)

Directions:

  1. Wash, trim the ends and quarter the brussel sprouts. Set aside.
  2. In a large frying pan, cook the bacon until the fat releases. I like to chop it up before I cook it, but you can always crumble it afterwards. Remove from pan and drain on paper towels. Leave the bacon fat in the pan. Use it ALL, trust me.

  3. Balsamic Vinegar Reduction

    In a small saucepan, reduce the balsamic vinegar over low to medium heat. You’ll need to whisk it so it doesn’t burn. You’ll know when it’s done, it will become thick and syrupy, like in the picture. Remove from heat and whisk in the chicken broth to deglaze the saucepan. Set aside.

  4. Saute the brussel sprouts in the bacon fat for a few minutes (I do this for 2-4 minutes). Make sure they’re all coated with it’s saturated goodness.
  5. Add the vinegar reduction and broth to the sprouts and mix it all up. Cook over low to medium heat until the sprouts are done the way you like them, approximately 5-10 minutes. You can cover the pan to speed up the cooking time, but I like to let the broth evaporate off. Don’t worry if there’s some liquid left, the cranberries will soak it up. Add more chicken broth if the pan dries out.
  6. When the sprouts are cooked, add the walnuts, cranberries and bacon back in and stir. Cook for a minute to heat through. Taste and add a pinch of salt if you want. You should find that any liquid left in the pan gets all soaked up. Serve and enjoy!

The bane of children everywhere turns delicious when bacon is added.

The Evolution of Coffee: Bacon Maple Lattes

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I first heard about Bacon Maple Lattes on Anthony Bourdain’s travel show No Reservations. It was a show on San Francisco, where I am lucky enough to live. Apparently, the Pirate Cat Radio Station (now called Mutiny Radio due to legal issues) in the Mission District has been serving them for decades and they were so good Anthony Bourdain had to tell the world about it.

Bacon? In coffee? Sign me the hell up. Bacon is one of my staple foods, being Paleo and all, and so is coffee. I figured the combination of the two would be heavenly.

The only problem for me was the “maple” bit. At the time I was still having dairy in coffee, so the “latte” part didn’t faze me. Now I’m dairy free so having a latte is out of the question. The amount of sugar in maple syrup is insane, but I decided to have a treat – after all, it’s (fairly) natural; if primitive man came across maple syrup, you bet your ass he’d eat it.

So off to Mutiny Radio we went. The Bacon Maple Latte was as good as I expected. It was coffee! It tasted like bacon! It even had real bacon bits sprinkled on top. It was way too sweet for me, but the maple went so well with the rest of the flavors I didn’tcomplain. (Imagine a pancake breakfast, with bacon, everything drowning in maple syrup and coffee on the side – it’s like they bottled that. Without the nasty gluten.)

The price, however, wasn’t awesome. $5 a cup. Not cheap. However, Mutiny Radio is a small, pirate radio station operating on donations, volunteers and proceeds from their coffee. We were happy to help.

Now normally, I wouldn’t give away the secrets of a small, struggling business but I know that 99% of you don’t have access to Mutiny Radio, and you’re practically salivating at the thought of bacon coffee. Also, we Paleo people hold ourselves to a higher standard when it comes to nutrition, so anything corporate America makes, we can make better. Also, Mutiny adds cream to their bacon maple lattes. I wanted a dairy-free version. So, first of all, I encourage you to make a donation to the radio station by joining their collective. Then, go buy some nitrate-free, free-range bacon. If you’re up for the maple syrup, get the best quality stuff you can afford. You could also experiment with high-quality maple flavor instead if the sugar content is a big deal for you. Or leave it out altogether, maple isn’t for everyone. If you’re lucky enough to have an espresso machine, this is going to work best for a latte (or Americano if you don’t have dairy). Otherwise, brew really strong coffee.

The Evolution of Coffee
Mating of Coffee and Bacon Produces Delicious Progeny 

1. Cook up the bacon. Save the fat – this is the part you really need. Make sure you cook the bacon slowly, so all the fat cooks out, then strain the drippings through cheesecloth or a very small strainer so that it is clear. You can store this fat in a covered container in the fridge. You can cook with it or use it for your coffee, just keep in mind that it doesn’t keep forever. You’re going to want to use it in a timely fashion. (Sometimes I don’t bother to strain the fat, I find it gives it a stronger bacon flavor which I like.)

2. Brew your espresso or coffee.

3. Add anywhere from one to two heaping tablespoons of bacon fat to your blender, depending on your tastes. (Mutiny Radio uses about a teaspoon.) Add your maple syrup, honey, stevia or sugar or no sweetener at all, depending on how you like it. Pour in your coffee and blend well (keep in mind that the coffee will “expand” so leave about the same amount of space in your cup as you would for cream). You’ll notice the bacon fat emulsifies and make the coffee look like it has cream in it.

4. If you want to (and you want to, believe me), sprinkle some crumbled bacon on top and serve.

Believe it or not, that’s it. The novel part of the drink is…bacon fat. Not bacon essence, bacon flavoring or bacon #40, just plain ol’ bacon fat.

If you happen to be in the Mission District of San Francisco, I suggest stopping by Mutiny Radio for a Bacon Maple Latte, otherwise, you can make your own at home. It’s incredibly filling and is usually all I have for breakfast.

You can also try your coffee with unsalted Kerrygold butter and coconut oil. This is called Bulletproof Coffee and it was invented by Dave Asprey. He has the recipe here but I like to experiment with the amounts of fat I put in to find the exact flavor and richness that I like best. You don’t have to follow the recipe exactly. Leaving out the butter and simply just using coconut oil is also amazing. I originally thought the milky color of the finished result was from the butter, but it’s not. It’s from any fat you decide to use.

Another addition is cocao or cocao butter. Artisana and Love Bean both make amazing raw chocolate coconut butters that you can dump in the blender, along with some additional coconut oil, to make a delicious, frothy, dairy-free mocha.

Experiment! Make it your own and enjoy. It’s a fantastic way to get more fat into your day.

Bacon is Rad.
Gluten is Bad.
That is all.

Enhanced Water You’ll Want to Drink

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I’ve been seeing all kinds of crazy crap on the market lately. Water full of vitamins, flavors, calcium, electrolytes, herbs, and weight-loss ingredients. There’s even a fortified water for dogs (FortiFido) and one enhanced with “positive thoughts” to “raise consciousness in humanity” (Aquamantra). I can’t make this shit up.

Apparently people don’t want to drink regular water anymore. I, myself, have no problems with it, but sometimes like to “spice it up” a little and make my sports drink. I’m not going to let the industry “enhance” it for me, though; their track record isn’t great at keeping toxic chemicals and sugar out of my food. I’m certainly not going to let them mess up the one calorie-free thing I consume.

It only takes one slice of strawberry and cucumber to make this water delicious, but sometimes I like to add more for stronger flavor.

My husband and I were in a Thai restaurant a couple of years ago and the water we were drinking was the most delicious, refreshing water we’d ever had. We had no idea why, until the waitress came over to refill our glasses. In the pitcher was a slice of strawberry and a slice of cucumber. She told us that they add the strawberry and cucumber (one slice of each is enough for an entire pitcher of water) and refrigerate it for a few hours. It has the most beautiful flavor and is ultra-refreshing on a hot day. Trust me, try this one. You will not regret it. No sugar, no chemicals, no calories, completely Primal and FREE. Best of all, you’re not buying into the plastic bottle industry for $2 a drink. I bet even Fido would drink it.

Tip: You can reuse the strawberry and cucumber slices a couple of times. You’ll know when you need to put fresh ones in; they’ll lose their color and the flavor won’t be as strong. Enjoy!

Make Your Own Beef Jerky

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Primal/Paleo snacks can be hard to find when you’re on the go. Often I’ll be surrounded by bastardized versions of tasty Primal treats – hormone-laden beef sticks loaded with MSG, sugar and nitrates for instance – and will choose to not eat rather than subject my body to the chemicals found in the non-recyclable packaging. Even at Trader Joe’s, my favoritest grocery store in the world, the beef jerky is loaded with sugar. Part of being Primal is planning ahead and making your own food. So, I tried my hand at beef jerky.

It was surprisingly easy. The results were amazing. It was hands down, the best beef jerky my husband and I have ever had. Since I started with a grassfed cut of beef, I knew the quality was top notch. There were no chemicals, hormones or excitotoxins and absolutely no sugar. A truly Primal/Paleo snack I could eat with abandon – and eat it we did. The best advice I can give you is to make LOTS. It goes fast.

The first time I made it, I started with a 2.78 lb piece of flat iron steak. You can use pretty much any cut of meat you want, but make sure it isn’t too fatty. The fat in the meat is what makes it spoil faster and you need to remove it. Starting with a leaner cut makes things easier on you. You can “blot” the jerky throughout the drying process with a paper towel to remove the excess fat that drips out. I got exactly 1 lb of beef jerky from the almost 3 lb piece I started with, so there is quite a bit of water in there. That’s why I say make lots. Next time I attempt this, I will use at least 6 pounds of beef to make it worth my while. This explains why commercial beef jerky is so expensive – but not why they use so many damned chemicals.

The second time I made jerky, I used a crossrib roast I didn’t know what else to do with. I had looked up ways to cook it online and pretty much found out that the slow cooker was the only way to make this cut of meat tender enough to eat. I realllllly didn’t feel like yet another slow cooked roast, so I said screw it, I’ll make it into jerky and see how it turns out. The meat had a lot more fat on it, so it took more work to cut it all off. But the meat itself didn’t have a lot of marbling – so it turns out it was a great cut of meat to use. I didn’t even have to blot it during the drying process. I was worried about it being too tough to eat – but nope, surprisingly it was more tender than any other time I’ve made it.

I got a $40 dehydrator on Amazon, and it dries the jerky beautifully. I’ve never tried to use an oven to dry meat, apparently even the lowest temperature will still “cook” the meat a little, and that isn’t what you want. If you’re serious about being Paleo/Primal and you like jerky, spend the $40 and get a dehydrator. Let me tell you, dried kiwi’s (with the skin still on for the extra fiber and vitamin C) are like sweet-tart potato chips. Dried apples are amazing on a hike. The skin gets all crispy and even the core is delicious (I just sliced the apple using a mandolin and removed the nothing but the stem and the seeds. If you do it from the top, you get a beautiful star pattern in the middle of the apple. Art AND food. But I digress.) Having your own dehydrator is worth it, IMHO.

I also have a vacuum sealer, which I use to seal up 2 oz bags of jerky (or whatever I’ve dried) to help it keep longer. Then, I keep those bags in the fridge. To be honest, we’ve never had jerky last more than two weeks in the house – we keep eating it all – so I don’t know how long it would actually last before going bad. Vacuum sealing, however, would make it last much longer – exposure to air is what makes the fat go rancid, which is what makes the meat spoil. Cut off the air and you don’t have to worry about that.

There are plenty of fantastic recipes for the marinades on the Internet – the website I use is www.beefjerkyrecipes.com. They’ve got everything on there – even recipes for rabbit jerky. My favorite one is a recipe called Island Cowboy Beef Jerky. You can use wheat-free tamari instead of the soy sauce if you want, skip the Worcestershire (although I do admit I like the taste of it and do use it, since there’s only 2 tablespoons per batch) and mix up the ingredients to suit your own tastes and dietary restrictions. All the directions you need and more information and tips can be found right on their website.

Making my own beef jerky was so amazingly simple that I can’t believe more people don’t do it themselves. The fact that I didn’t have to use any preservatives, chemicals or sugar just gave me more ammo against the prepackaged food industry.