The Paleo Mama

Homegrown and Handmade

paleo

Albino Broccoli Soup

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We love albino broccoli in this house! There are so many things you can do with it! Broccoli’s little brother, cauliflower, is by far the most versatile vegetable that you can have in your house! You can make pizza crust, rice, mashed “potatoes” and so much more! Tonight I made my soup!

This is by far MY FAVORITE soup ever! I love this soup with meatballs. Tonight I am trying these Merguez meatballs from The Clothes Make the Girl, author of the amazing Well Fed cookbook. I usually make them with Arabic meatballs, which is a little different than the Merguez Meatballs.

I promise, the cauliflower tastes amazing in this recipe! It’s even more delicious if you use your own homemade bone stock! You can read my recipe for making stock here!

Albino Broccoli Soup

2 heads of cauliflower or 3 frozen bags, broken in florets

3 medium onions, diced

5 cloves of garlic

1/4 cup butter or Grassfed Organic Ghee 7.8 Oz

3 cups of stock (I prefer my homemade chicken stock, but you can use beef stock too)

2 teaspoons of salt

1/4 teaspoon of pepper

Directions:

Steam or boil cauliflower until tender. Drain and set aside.

Saute the onions and garlic in a pot over medium heat until tender.

Add cauliflower and stock to the pot. Mash with a potato masher or use a stick blender to puree the mixture to a consistency you prefer. I like mine a little chunky. If you don’t have a stick blender then you should use a blender to puree it.

Add salt and pepper. Taste and adjust seasonings.

If primal, serve with a dollop of sour cream!

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.

Zucchini Brownies

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A friend of mine recommended me to try these Zucchini Brownies. I thought, “Hmm, that sounds weird, but I do love zucchini.” Then I looked at the recipe and was shocked to see that there is no flour! What the heck??? However there is 1 cup of dark chocolate, so I was IN! It was one of those nights where I was craving something, but I didn’t know what, so I made several things to try to satiate my odd craving.

In walks Zucchini Brownies…craving satisfied.

Here’s the recipe; this is from Fast Paleo’s website.

Ingredients

 

To see the instructions on how to make this recipe, click here!

This recipe is gold! We loved it. It’s pretty rich, so it’s a great treat and it’s loaded with protein too. Next time I won’t use 1/3 cup honey because the chocolate chips and peanut butter sweeten it pretty well. This is definitely a keeper! My 3 year old asked for seconds and I didn’t have to say no to her because they are so healthy!

Asian Lettuce Wraps with Coconut Cauli-Rice

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One thing I love doing is trying different cultural foods. Last night we had Albondigas Soup, which was outstanding…it was so delicious that I was literally licking my bowl. I didn’t take a picture of it, however, I am still going to share the recipe with you in my next post.

This post is about my lettuce wraps which were just as delicious. My husband took a bite and gave me the best look ever. It was the look of, “I’m so glad I married a woman who knows how to cook!”.  I wasn’t always so savvy in the kitchen. It took a few years to learn the ropes. Now I’m to a point where I will try to cook anything. Nothing looks too hard, well, there is Julia Child’s Beef Bourguignon which I still am scared to try. Needless to say, she is a legend so we’ll leave it at that!

Ok, this recipe was sent to me from GNOWFGLINS ecourse that I took at www.gnowfglins.com so I can’t take credit for it! I did have to “Paleo-fy” it just a tiny bit, but it’s amazing and so yummy. It’s easy, but takes about 15 minutes of prepping the veggies.

Asian Lettuce Wraps with Coconut Cauli-Rice

Asian Lettuce Wraps

1/4 cup coconut aminos (this is the Paleo approved version of soy sauce)

2 TB fermented fish sauce

2TB lime juice

1TB apple cider vinegar

1 TB raw honey (optional: leave out if Whole30 or 21DSD)

1 egg

2 TB coconut oil

1 medium onion, diced small

1lb ground chicken

2 TB grated fresh ginger

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 cup packed grated carrot (2-3 carrots, depending on size)

1 large red bell pepper, cut in small sticks

1/4 small head green cabbage

1 head butter lettuce, leaves separated

sea salt and pepper to taste

Serves 4

Whisk together the first 6 ingredients in a bowl, and set aside. Melt coconut oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onions and saute for a few minutes till they are soft. Add ground chicken, break it up, and cook it till it’s no longer pink. Stir in the garlic, ginger, and carrots, and cook for 3-5 minutes till the carrots are soft. Add in cabbage and red bell pepper, and stir-fry until slightly soft but still crisp, 3-5 minutes. Pour in the sauce mixture and toss the meat and vegetables to coat. Reduce heat to low and simmer for another few minutes. Taste. Add salt and pepper if necessary (taste it first because it will be a little salty already from the fish sauce). Fill the lettuce leaves with the meat mixture and top with coconut cauli-rice (recipe follows).

Coconut Cauli-Rice

1 head of Cauliflower

1/4-1/2 cup of full fat coconut milk

2-4 TB coconut oil

salt and pepper

3 TB lime juice

Take the cauliflower and cut it up into smaller pieces. Throw half at a time into a food processor and pulse it until it starts to look like the size of rice. Throw it in a bowl and processed the rest of the cauliflower. My processor only fits about half a cabbage at a time. Melt coconut oil in a large skillet. Pour in the cauliflower rice and saute’ it for about 5 minutes till it becomes soft. Pour in the coconut milk. Saute’ for another 5 minutes. Take off heat, add lime juice, salt and pepper.

If you make these wraps you HAVE to serve pineapple on the side. The flavors just go together so well! Hope you like it! Enjoy!

25 lbs down and some before and after!

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I thought it was time to write about how I am actually feeling and doing on Paleo. It has been nearly 6 months since I started my own personal Paleo journey. It’s been 3 months since my whole family has been eating Paleo. Since I started in October, I have lost a total of 25 lbs!!! My husband has lost 31 lbs since he started January 1st and has lowered his cholesterol enough to come off his statin drugs! I have noticed huge behavior changes in my 3-year-old daughter since we took gluten, sugar, and dairy out of her diet. And my 8 month old son, who weighed in at 20lbs a month ago, is thriving, happy, content and such a joy to be around. He eats everything I give him. His recent favorites are Paleo chicken nuggets, roasted asparagus, and grilled squash.

So I’m going to show my current before and after pictures. Seeing these are motivation in itself to keep going!

BEFORE
AFTER

I tell people all the time that I feel amazing. I really do. There is no other way to describe how I feel with our new lifestyle. I have so much energy throughout the day…much needed energy since I’m chasing around a highly energetic 3-year-old and an 8 month old army crawler! My mind feels clearer. I haven’t had a headache since I started Paleo. This is now such a part of our life that I NEVER want to go back to what we were before. It’s become second nature and easy.

Do I cheat? Hmm, I like to call it indulging and, yes, I do indulge once a week on one meal. This week I had chips, dip, and Mojitos with my girlfriends and it was GREAT! Last week I had wings and pizza.

Do I let my kids cheat? I am not going to be able to watch every, single thing my kids put in their mouth. I’m also not going to be so strict that I don’t let them indulge in something that they love. Geez, I do! So, yes, I let my daughter eat gluten snacks at her preschool. I let her Papa give her ice cream every day that we were home a few weeks ago. I let my son have those organic puffs when I see them on sale. Life is too short to not have a little bit of indulgences in our life when it comes to food. You have to be able to find that balance to where you can indulge and be done with it. It took a few months for me to be able to do that without being tempted for more or without my body telling me I need more.

Do I workout? If you mean “going to the gym working out”, then no. I just love to be home with my kids. Our mornings are so great together and Frankie is in such a routine with his morning nap that I just don’t even want to mess that up. However, I am on my feet ALL day. So, I wouldn’t say that I don’t exercise, I just don’t do strenuous exercise. And I’m ok with that. Obviously my body is ok with that because I’m losing weight. I cannot devote the time to do any kind of crazy workout schedule, that’s why I could never do a diet that requires me to. Another reason why I love Paleo. It works with your body like nature intended.

What the heck do I eat if I can’t have gluten, diary, or sugar? LOTS!!! I have so many different types of new foods these last few months that I have never tried! I used to just make side salads to go with dinners before we were eating Paleo, but now I am making so many different types of vegetable dishes! We’ve had things like: coconut-almond green beans, roasted Brussel sprouts, kale chips, marinated and roasted beets, creamy cucumbers, mashed cauliflower, cauliflower rice, spaghetti squash, squash fries, sweet potato chips, roasted turnips, parsnip fries, leeks, fennel salads, Jicama home fries, and SO MUCH MORE! Does that sound restrictive to you? Eating Paleo has opened up my eyes to so many new kinds of foods. Once you get out of the “American” way of thinking that every meal needs bread, or that sweets can’t taste good without sugar, you can really start to see that there is so much more to food than starch and sugar. Eating Paleo has also liberated me. I have gone through times where I was obsessed about the number of calories I ate, or the amount of fat something had in it. I now know that fat-free means LOADED with sugar…and that fat is not bad for us. I have lost 25lbs eating fat. I eat lots of fat. I cook with coconut oil liberally. I eat avocados. I don’t feel guilty for reaching for a 3rd or 4th piece of bacon. I even sometimes don’t trim the fat on our steak off. Fat is good. Our brains are mostly fat. Our bodies need fat.

Do I spend more money on food every week? If you are comparing our weekly budget to what I spent when I was crazy couponing a few years ago, then yes. I spend much more. If you compare our budget to what I spent when we were eating real, unprocessed (but not completely Paleo) foods, then no. I spend the same. Thankfully, I do not have to be really strict with our budget. We are extremely frugal in many areas of our life. We buy everything used. We sell things we don’t use. I also try to live very naturally, so I make a lot of our cleaning and daily hygiene products from scratch. If we spend more than $100 one week, I don’t freak out. I spent $150 this week, which is on the higher end of what I spend weekly, however, we needed things like toilet paper, a few cleaning products, and paper towels (which we mostly use for the animals and our new, litter-training kitty is burning through them). I haven’t been able to convince my husband to give up toilet paper yet!

Do I eat all organic? Nope. In fact, I would venture to say that I eat mostly “un”organic. I do get organic vegetables IF they are on sale. We do eat grass-fed beef because we bought a whole cow and split it with a few families keeping 1/4th of the cow for ourselves. This costs us $4.50lb and will last us all year. I sometimes find pastured chickens on sale at a nearby grocery store and I snag a few. Thankfully, we don’t have to worry about dairy anymore. I buy the So Delicious or Silk brand of coconut milk for my daughter to drink a few times during the day and for us also to use in our smoothies. I transitioned my daughter from raw cow milk to coconut milk when we went Paleo. Our eggs come from a local farmer (the same one we get our grass-fed beef from) that has free-range chickens and costs $2.50 dozen. We go through about 10 dozen eggs a month.

How do I feed my working husband? I boil eggs every week for him to grab. I have fruit always handy and ready to grab on the way out the door. I make a larger dinner and he takes the leftovers to work for lunch. I make hash, egg cupcakes, meat and spinach muffins for quick breakfasts on the go.

How do I have time to cook 3 meals a day and spend time with my kids? We eat easy breakfasts together. I grab our griddle throw things on it for breakfasts like eggs, bacon, sausage, or ham lunch meat. If we don’t have a griddle breakfast, then I usually make a smoothie for everyone. Even my 8 month old enjoys these. I always have frozen bananas or strawberries on hand and I just make a simple smoothie. I sometimes sneak in coconut oil, flax-seed, or raw egg yolks for added nutrition.

What do we drink? That’s easy…LOTS of water and an occasional milk. Me and my husband take a Fiberblend every night and we use apple juice for that (only because we CANNOT take it without juice…it’s really disgusting, like dirt). Our 3-year-old loves her coconut milk and I give her that about twice a day.

What do we snack on? Honestly, we don’t snack anymore. Our 3-year-old does, but me and my husband find that our protein and veggie packed meals really keep us full for a long time. For my 3-year-old I keep beef jerky, nuts, fruit leather, and fresh fruit on hand for when she is hungry. Her preschool teacher had a little meeting with me last week and told me that she has never seen a 3-year-old eat so much and so many kinds of healthy foods. She agreed that kids will eat what you give them, especially if you start them off right when they are young, like we did with Arianna. If interested, you can see some great kid lunch ideas on my Pinterest page: https://pinterest.com/jackieritz/arianna-s-lunches/ .

So there…there’s a look inside some of our Paleo life. I hope it helps you, encourages you, and motivates you to make some changes in your life, or to continue on the path you are on!