Raw, Vegan Caramel Vanilla Pudding/Sauce

Wow, this is absolutely fantastic!  I had the urge for some vanilla pudding, so I made this!  I was pleased to discover that it has a wonderful caramel flavor, too!  It's so easy to make:

Ingredients:
1 cup raw cashews
1/2 cup coconut sugar
1 Tblspn vanilla extract
1 Tblspn melted coconut oil
2 medjool dates
1 cup water (or more if you want more of a caramel sauce consistency)

Directions:
Place all ingredients in a high speed blender.  Set to high speed and blend until smooth.  I used the "soups, syrups, fondue" setting on my Blentec and it was perfect.
You can add a little more water if it isn't blending well.

I liked the flavor of this pudding better right out of the blender when it was warm.  But, you could make it cold in the fridge and eat it that way, too.  This would taste incredible poured over any kind of vanilla ice cream!  You could even use it as a frosting.  Enjoy!!

Grain Free Zucchini Bread Muffins

I think that these are the most delicious grain free baked treats I have ever made or eaten!!  The recipe is not something that I created, but rather borrowed and then modified from the amazing Danielle Walker of www.againstallgrain.com  I just bought her cookbook a few weeks ago and have been making all kinds of delicious recipes!  These just take the cake, along with her grain free sandwich bread made from cashew butter.  YUM!!  So, here is her recipe, which she so graciously shares on her brilliant blog:  Against All Grain Almond Flour Zucchini Bread

I only made a few tweaks to suit our dietary needs.  If you follow her recipe, it is SCD legal,  but we do not use honey, so I used coconut sugar.  I also can't have too much fruit, so I left out the banana that her recipe calls for.  I also peeled the zucchini so the green color in the muffins wouldn't dissuade my son from trying them.  So, here is my version, and I'm sticking to it for us because I love them and my son actually and finally ate zucchini!  I hope you enjoy them as much as we did!

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup blanched almond flour
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg (I added a smidge more than this)
3 eggs
1/2 - 3/4 cup coconut sugar (I added 1/2 and then poured some more in)
2 peeled, shredded zucchini

Instructions:
1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2.  Put paper muffin cups, preferably bleach free, in a muffin pan.
3.  Combine spices, salt, almond flour, and baking soda in a small bowl.
4.  Peel and then shred the zucchini in a food processor.  Use a paper towel to soak up some of the water from the zucchini.  Don't go crazy with this because you want some of the moisture in there.
5.  Mix eggs and coconut sugar with a stand mixer.  Once frothy, add the zucchini and beat for a few seconds until combined.
6.  Add dry ingredients from bowl while mixer is on, and mix until blended.
7.  Spoon the batter into muffin cups.
8.  Bake for 25 - 30 mins until middle comes clean when toothpick or fork is inserted into the middle.

Paleo Family Dinner - Grain Free

Just take a look at this gorgeous dinner that my mother-in-law and I prepared for our family during her visit last weekend!  High quality proteins, organic greens and veggies, and pure green smoothies and juices!  I felt so good serving this to my family!  She generously bought me this new cookbook while she was here and I have already been making creations from it like crazy!  I love it.  The food is pure and whole, the recipes are simple and they are adaptable to whatever your diet may be.

The dinner we made were the sliders (grass-fed beef) from the cookbook.  Instead of bread for the buns, we used grilled portabella mushrooms with lettuce wrapped around the outside.  I had never tasted portabellas with bison (my body doesn't do as well with beef as it does with bison) before and it was amazing, I have to say.  We grilled some peppers and onions to add to the burgers, also.  Everyone enjoyed a salad, plus a green smoothie (which is how my son always enjoys his salads!), and I had my green veggie juice.  

I so appreciate my mother-in-laws unconditional love and support of my attempts to feed my family the most health-promoting foods that I can.  She even trusted me and used coconut oil for the cooking!

Paleo Frittata - Grain and Dairy Free

Yum!  This was so delicious and so simple to make!  I got the recipe from my new cookbook, Paleo Comfort Foods by Julie and Charles Mayfield.  It is amazing when you just put some simple whole foods together and they form such delicious harmony!  The all organic ingredients in this dish were: 

ground organic turkey, onion, broccoli florets, spinach, eggs (pastured), zucchini, sea salt, black pepper, basil and a little bit of coconut oil for sauteing.  That is it!  And it was great and nicely filling.  

Paleo recipes leave out cheese and milk, which is great for me because I do not do well with dairy.  I highly recommend this delicious and versatile cookbook!

Grain Free Cupcakes/Muffins

I cannot decide what to call these delicious treats!  They are sweet, so they are like cupcakes, but they aren't so sweet that you can't also call them muffins.  With the simple icing I made they are even sweeter.  And truly because they are packed with protein (almonds and eggs) they are more like muffins.  In any case, my mother-in-law deemed them "the best she's ever eaten," so I thought that made them worthy to share here!

I have also recently decided that if I am going to use sweeteners in foods, there had better be some nutritional value within them.  This is mainly why I have moved away from using agave nectar.  In this recipe, I used my absolute favorite - coconut sugar - both within and for the icing.  I also used a little bit of organic blackstrap molasses to coat the cacao nibs, since molasses is a source of minerals including calcium, iron, potassium and magnesium.

These are a variation of almond flour vanilla cupcakes that I have made from recipes I have found on blogs like Elana's Pantry and some paleo blogs.  I just thought they needed some unique originality!  

So, here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

3 organic pastured eggs

1/4 cup of coconut oil melted - unrefined

1 tbsp vanilla extract

2 1/2 cups blanched almond flour

little dash of sea salt

1/2 cup coconut sugar

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp cinnamon

cacao nibs

organic blackstrap molasses

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

Mix the dry ingredients together - except for the cacao nibs

Mix the wet ingredients together except for the molasses

Choose how much nibs you want to add, place them into a bowl and coat with some molasses.  Set aside.

Mix the dry ingredients into the wet and stir until lumps are gone.

Add the sweetened cacao nibs and mix in

Place into paper-lined muffin tins

Bake in the oven 20 mins or until golden brown on top

While muffins are baking, take some more coconut sugar, about 1/4 cup and place into a small pan on the stove.  Add some water, about 1/2 cup or a little more and heat over medium heat.  Stir with a spatula to reduce the water down until you have a syrupy mixture that you can spread onto the muffins. It will be a bit sticky, but so yummy and so good.  Coat the tops of the muffins while they are still warm and you are finished.  

As with any recipe you can tweak the sweeteners to your liking.  I found that they weren't sweet enough for my taste until I added the icing and then they instantly became delicious!  But, you could always use stevia or no icing at all if you don't love sweet flavors, and then they would be more like muffins after all.  

I used cacao nibs instead of chocolate chips again for the nutritional value and to avoid added refined sweeteners and other ingredients.  Cacao nibs are pure forms of chocolate providing all of those great antioxidants.

Enjoy!

Green Smoothie Popsicles

These are awesome!!!  It is so hot during the summer and I don't want to give my son anything sugary or even more juice for a popsicle since he already drinks a green juice or smoothie everyday.  So, I froze his regular smoothie and he loved it!!!

Ingredients I used (all organic):
Spinach
Banana
Apple juice
Frozen mango
Little bit of orange juice

You only need enough liquid for it to blend smoothly. This mix of fruits is also good without the apple juice.  Just add some water instead.

Really, you can use whatever fruits you want. You cannot taste the spinach with the fruits!  I may sneak a little wheatgrass powder in next time, too.

Directions:
Blend all together until smooth

Pour into popsicle holders and freeze

If you have some favorite mixes of ingredients, please share in the comments.  I have already heard someone mention pineapple, peach and spinach - YUM!

Healthy Strawberry Milk

This is not the strawberry milk I grew up drinking!  This is actually made from real milk and strawberries!  My son absolutely loves this and it is so simple to make.

My son also loves drinking any kinds of smoothies with a straw.  Using plastic straws was really bothering me because of the waste and the chemicals in the plastics.  But, then I found a glass straw (pictured) at our local health food store!  My son says that it tastes better, too.

Ingredients:
About 1 cup of any kind of milk.  We used goat milk here.  This is also amazing with almond milk.
1 ripe banana
5 or 6 frozen strawberries

Directions:
Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth!