The Paleo Mama

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Paleo Education

My Top 10 Paleo Necessities

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When I first started eating Paleo, I spent A TON of money! Let’s face it, it costs a bit of pocket change to get a Paleo pantry stocked…especially when you are not used to cooking whole, unprocessed foods. In walks Amazon.com…my lifesaver and money saver.

If you haven’t started shopping on Amazon, then you need to. They have some ridiculous deals and shipping is always so fast. When we started Paleo, we signed up for Amazon Prime, which is an annual fee of $79. Wait, wait, don’t get scared away. This includes free 2-day shipping for the WHOLE year, accessibility to Prime Instant Videos which has lots of TV shows and movies to choose from, and the Kindle Lending Library with thousands of books to choose from!

They also have Amazon Mom which gives you 20% off diapers and wipes and, also, 2-day shipping on Prime items. Amazon Mom also has a free trial you can do to test out the waters and see how you like it. You don’t have to be a mom to do it either!

Amazon Student is another great deal! You get a free 6-month Prime trial if you have a valid student email address.

All this to say, I love Amazon! And if you are eating Paleo, some of the items that you find you might need, are so expensive in the grocery store. You can find them on Amazon for a fraction of the cost. Here are some of my favorites…

1) Coconut Oil

You will use coconut oil a lot! Coconut oil replaces all other vegetable oils you may have used before going Paleo. Coconut oil can cook at a higher temperature than any other oil, so it’s a good choice to have! The benefits of coconut oil are mainly from the nutrient value of medium chain fatty acids (MCFAs). The best comparison in nature as to the percentage of MCFAs being consumed in a diet is human breast milk!

2) Coconut Chips

These are delicious! You can snack on them raw, throw them in baked, Paleo goods or make caramelized coconut chips!

Recipes I love: Caramelized Coconut Chips, Paleo Breakfast Cookies, and Morning Glory Muffins

3) Coconut Milk

It’s really, REALLY hard to find coconut milk that doesn’t have any added ingredients, however Natural Value coconut milk only has water and coconut! It’s a great deal off Amazon because in the stores it’s nearly $4 a can! On Amazon you can get 12 cans for $30!

Recipes I love: Ground Beef Stroganoff, Pumpkin Pie in a Cup, and Whipped Coconut Cream

4) Olive Oil

Zoe olive oil is my absolute favorite olive oil. The taste and flavor of it is amazing. It’s great to have both coconut and olive oil on hand in a Paleo kitchen. Coconut oil withstands hotter temperatures better than olive oil, but olive oil is great for marinades, homemade mayonnaise, and salad dressings.

Recipes I love: Homemade Mayo and Marinated Balsamic Chicken

5) Sweetleaf Liquid Stevia

Stevia saved my life when I was giving up the flavored creamers to put in my coffee. My favorite kind is the English Toffee from Sweetleaf. Stevia comes from a plant and is 100% natural. Beware: lots of the store-bought stevia brands are not 100% stevia. Sweetleaf and Kal are reputable brands that are 100% stevia.

6) Almond Butter

Peanut Butter is a no-no if going Paleo because, guess what, peanuts are a legume, not a nut! Crazy, eh? I was surprised too. We really like Barney Butter Smooth Almond Butter , however it does have some evaporated cane juice in it. If you are looking for something with JUST almonds then Maranatha Natural Almond Butter is awesome…just a little on the expensive side.

Recipes I love: The Easiest Bread Ever, Zucchini Brownies, and Paleo Breakfast Cookies

7) Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips

We love these chocolate chips by Enjoy Life. They are the only ones I have found that are gluten, dairy, nut, and SOY free! They are so good and we use them in lots of recipes. The kids love them too and I feel good about letting them snack on them. They are around $3.50 each on Amazon which is an AWESOME deal. In the stores they are around $6 each…yikes!

Recipes I love: Chocolate Chip Cookies, Chunky Monkey Muffins, and Zucchini Brownies

8) Coconut Sugar

Coconut sugar is a great substitution for regular sugar, and even, brown sugar. It comes from coconut tree sap and is one of the lowest glycemic index sweeteners on the market. I have made caramelized onions using coconut sugar and they come out delish!

Recipes I love: 2-Minute Paleo Mug Brownie, Caramelized Onions, and Whipped Coconut Cream

9) Fruit Leather

If you follow my Pinterest page, I post pictures of my daughter’s lunches to help give my followers some ideas for sending whole, unprocessed lunches. You might see fruit leather mentioned in there from time-to-time. They are so good and are 100% fruit. I get these for super cheap off Amazon and my kids, even I, love them! They love it when I cookie-cut them into cute little shapes and hearts.

10) Almond Flour

Almond flour is my favorite alternative to white flour. I LOVE it! You can do so much with it and it Honeyville’s Blanched Almond Flour is very light and fluffy.

blanchedalmondflour_1

These are 10 staples in our house. A lot of the items have a “subscribe & save” option on Amazon, which makes the cost come down even more.

And once you gather all your kitchen pantry essentials, here is a list of my favorite Paleo cookbooks to get you on your way:

1)Well Fed: Paleo Recipes for People Who Love to Eat

2)Make it Paleo: Over 200 Grain Free Recipes For Any Occasion

3) Paleo Comfort Foods: Homestyle Cooking for a Gluten-Free Kitchen

 

Paleo Kids: What to feed them?

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My new friend over at Living Crunchy invited me to write a guest blog post on how to feed real, clean food to kids. Today, I’m going to share with you the post that I wrote and I hope it can help you on your Paleo journey as a family!

As a mother of two Paleo kids  I understand this very common question. Kids love junk. They love candy. They love bread. They love anything that isn’t “healthy”…right?

If I was to tell you (and I’m not bragging here, I just am proving that feeding kids Paleo is possible) that my kids love veggies, boiled eggs, slices of avocado, bone stock, olives, and every kind of meat; would you believe me? They can down a steak faster than a grown-up, and nothing quenches their thirst like water. They don’t even know what cereal is. They thrive on what I eat, and that is meat, eggs, veggies, nuts, fruits, and healthy oils.

Yes, it can be done. When I hear mothers say that they can’t get their kids to eat anything but mac n’ cheese, hot dogs, chips, crackers and cereal, I wanna ask them, “Are they the ones doing the grocery shopping?” Seriously, who is buying it? If you don’t buy it, it won’t be there to tempt them, but mostly, tempt yourself to throw something easy at them that you KNOW that they will eat and won’t fight about.

Here are two ways to start the process of eating healthier:

1) ease into it. Slowly eliminate the junk foods in your house and start by buying healthy alternatives. Let your kids finish the cereal, let your husband finish his stash of chips, but don’t buy anymore. Or…

2) you go cold turkey. This is how I did it. I bagged up all my junk food, grains, cans of soup and fruits, and I donated them. My personality is all-or-nothing. So this just worked for me. I don’t overwhelmed easily some could handle this more intense transition. Some people, can’t do it this way. For example, the working mom may find it really difficult to make so many changes all at once.

Either way, you are making healthier choices for your family. I had to stop looking at food as a means to an end (hungry—> so satiate that hunger) and look at it as a way to heal my body, grow my children’s bodies, and energize my life.

My kids never get a separate dinner. If we are having bone broth soup, so are they. If we are having grilled veggies and grilled chicken legs, so are they. And let me tell you how adorable it is to see a baby tear apart a chicken leg with his little mouth!   Once you break YOUR bad habit of feeding them the easy food, you will see that raising Paleo kids is just as easy as raising non-Paleo kids.

I’ve had many Paleo mothers ask me what to send in their school lunch. For me, packing my daughters lunch for preschool has really made me tap into my creative side. I bought a Planetbox lunchbox, which is a bento-style stainless steel box, to help me be diverse and make the whole “lunch dilemma” more of a fun thing that me and Arianna do together in the mornings.

I try to make her lunches creative, colorful and tasty. She eats some dairy, like cottage cheese and Greek yogurt on occasion because she loves it. I try to always include something in her lunchbox that she loves. This keeps her happy and looking forward to seeing what I included. She loves roll-ups, which is simply deli-meat rolled up.

Sometimes I cut the roll-up in 5 sections and neatly place them in her box. Some other protein-rich foods I put in her box are, boiled eggs, slices of avocado (drenched in lemon juice), beef jerky, pistachios, shredded chicken, and leftover steak. Then I try to add one or two veggie items. This is usually sliced cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, or carrot sticks.

Now, if you have a toddler, then you know that they love to dip. So, I include a little container of almond butter or olive oil/balsamic vinegar that she can dip her veggies in. I always try to add a healthy fat. Sometimes this is the olive oil/vinegar dip but other times it is olives, nuts or avocado. Then I give her a fruit. It’s whatever I have on hand. I throw other things in that she loves like fruit leather, dark chocolate for a treat, Nut Thins, or a Lara Bar. And that’s it! It takes me about 5 minutes to make her lunch in the morning.

I started a group on Pinterest called, “Arianna’s Lunches“. When I remember, I upload a picture of her lunch I made for that day.

The greatest lesson I have learned as a mother is that there are three things that we cannot FORCE upon our children: input (food), output (toilet), and sleep. In trying to “break” our kids and get them to conform to our will, we end up hurting the relationship even more. However, what we can do is give them options. Kids love to feel like they are in control too.

They are, indeed, little humans and have the same strong will that we have. Limit your food options to healthy choices and let them choose. Let them feel like they are choosing for themselves. Let them feel like they are in control of their own bodies. That’s the goal, right? To raise healthy children that will one day grow up and make healthy choices for themselves.

Great recipes from The Paleo Mama:

Fruit Gummy Snacks

Paleo Mac n’ Cheese

Baked Avocado-Coco Fries

 

Paleo Portion Sizes

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Grassfed burger, coleslaw, and mashed cauliflower!

This can be the most confusing part about eating Paleo. Take a look at modern diets; they all revolve around counting calories, points, macros, checking to see if you are in Ketosis, and tracking every single thing you put in your mouth.

The first thing I realized when I started eating Paleo was that is was so liberating! There’s no counting involved, no tracking calories, and no strict meal plan. You eat what you want, within the realms of approved foods, and you eat it whenever you want. For starters, this can actually be confusing.

Melissa Hartwig, author of the amazing new book, It Starts With Food, and founder of the Whole30 program, has a VERY good section on portion sizes that I will reference for this. Generally, you should eat 3 meals a day. This works well from a hormonal and social perceptive, as well it gives your body a good 4-5 hour break between meals allowing glucagon time to do its job and mobilize energy. It also keeps leptin levels normalized.

You build your plate around your protein source, whatever that may be for that meal (meat, seafood, or eggs). Protein is essential at every meal to help stabilize blood levels and to keep you from overeating at your other meals. Protein satiates! Your portion size of protein should be “palm-size”. So, look at the palm of your hand and use that as a guide. The thickest part of your protein source should be the same size as the palm of your hand. For deli meat, stack them to be approximately the thickness of your palm. You should eat 1-2 palm size servings at each meal. Go by your size and activity level. If your small eat one palm. If your big or very active, then eat two.

For WHOLE eggs, a good meal-size portion is the number of eggs you can hold in one hand. This is usually between 3-5 eggs. And you are eating the WHOLE egg. Throw out all that garbage you have heard about not eating the egg yolk. That is half the protein! There is no way you are going to get enough protein if you are just eating egg whites.

Fill the rest of your plate with vegetables. Yea, that’s it. I like to include at least two vegetables with each meal for diversity and I have a huge cupboard of spices to add to them. Some vegetables are nutrient-dense and some are carbohydrate-dense. Vegetables like butternut squash, pumpkin, sweet potato, beets, acorn squash, and parsnips are carbohydrate-dense…which isn’t a bad thing! Just eat them appropriately to your body. If you are active, then you need to make sure you are eating some of these to support your activity.

Next is fruit. Hartwigg goes onto add that we should start with eating one to two servings of fruit a day. And a serving size is the size of your fist. You can eat fruit with your meals or after your meals. My family enjoys fruit as a dessert. I usually whip up some coconut milk to make a dipping cream for our fruit.

Lastly, the portion size of healthy fats is critical to each meal. You can eat one or more fat sources per meal. If you are coming from a traditional diet, then “healthy fats” is an oxymoron. I assure you though, fats are crucial to your body. Here is a short list of healthy fats that Hartwigg gives in her book:

All oils: (olive oil, coconut oil, etc.) one to two thumb-size portions (this is about a TB or two)

All butters: (coconut butter, nut butter,  clarified butter, and ghee) one to two thumb-size portions

Olives: one to two open (heaping) handfuls

Coconut (meat/flakes): one to two (heaping) handfuls

Nuts and seeds: up to one closed handful

Avocado: half to one avocado

Coconut Milk: between 1/4 – 1/2 of a (14 oz.) can

If your little, not that active, and need to lose weight, then Hartwigg suggest to choose a fat from the lower end of the specified quantities (It Starts With Food, pages 188-195)

I hope this answers some questions you may have and I hope it also liberates you the way it did me. You should feel satiated after you eat. It should carry you 4-5 hours till the next meal. Eating a portion of protein, vegetables, fruit, and healthy oils at each meal (3x a day) ensures that you are getting the proper nutrition that your body needs.