Sweet Golden Beets

Delicious and nutritious!  I thought I'd try something new with these beautiful golden beets today.  I cooked them in coconut oil, which added some sweetness and then drizzled them with a little bit of pure maple syrup.  So good!

Ingredients:
Three golden beets
Sea Salt
Maple Syrup
Coconut Oil

Directions:
Heat a spoonful of coconut oil in a skillet over medium low heat
Peel beets and cut into thin slices
Cook in the oil until slightly browned
Sprinkle with sea salt and drizzle with maple syrup

Vegan Strawberry Chia Pudding

This is a delicious pudding, which I love to have for breakfast.  It is so simple to make.  You can adjust your sweeteners as you wish, but you don't need to add too much because the strawberries are already sweet.  In fact, you don't need to add any sweeteners at all, I just have such a sweet tooth!  You can also add a 1/2 or whole ripe banana to this, which eliminates the need for any other sweeteners, too.  Remember to use organic strawberries to avoid a lot of pesticides.  Using frozen strawberries assures you will have the perfect consistency without having to refrigerate, so you can enjoy eating it right away!  Enjoy!

Ingredients:
1 cup plain almond milk
3/16 cup (1/8 + 1/16 cup)  chia seeds
8 small frozen organic strawberries (adjust amounts if you have large strawberries)
2 medjool dates
1 tsp coconut sugar

Directions:
Place all ingredients in a high speed blender and blend until smooth.

Almond Flour Popcorn Shrimp

Today I found a great way to get my son to eat super-healthful coconut oil!  This fried shrimp recipe is absolutely delicious!  It does not taste coconutty, but rather quite sweet.  He loved it and filled up on protein, while getting the benefits of coconut oil.  I hope you and your kids will enjoy as well!

Ingredients:

• small shrimp
• 1 egg
• almond flour
• sea salt
• coconut oil

Directions:

• Warm a skillet on medium heat with enough coconut oil to coat the entire bottom with a layer a few centimeters thick.
• Scramble the egg in a bowl.
• Place about a cup of almond flour into another bowl with some sea salt added.  You can add more flour to the bowl if you need it depending upon how much shrimp you are making.
• After peeling, deveining and rinsing shrimp, dip them into the bowl of egg and then into the bowl of almond flour.  Coat with almond flour.
• Place shrimp in a single layer into the skillet.
• Cook until bottom side is browned and then flip over and cook on the other side.

Dairy Free Creamy Strawberry Popsicle

These turned out so amazing!  And it only needs 4 ingredients!  You can vary the sweetness and amount that you make.  I made three popsicles out of the following:

7 frozen organic strawberries
1 very ripe organic banana
1/2 can organic coconut milk
2 organic medjool dates

Place all into a high speed blender and blend until smooth.  Then pour into popsicle molds.  These taste like creamy strawberry popsicles!  YUM!

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!