Paleo Pot Roast and Turnips

I've added two new love affairs to my cooking arsenal: Turnips and Pot Roast. Oh...my...goodness gracious. I had to stay up until 11:30pm or so last night to give the Pot Roast a full six hours in my slow cooker but it was well worth it. The smell that filled my apartment was as if that wispy hand from the old looney tunes cartoons was calling out to me. It smelled so divine I couldn't help but snack on everything in front of me. It was making me so hungry and I almost forgot to take any pictures. On top of all that, it was easy...and cheap! I spent under $15 for two whole delicious meals including 3/4lb of meat (each meal), carrots, gravy (er..water that turned into gravy, kinda), sweet potatoes, and turnips mashed with grass fed butter. I vote yes.


Paleo Pot Roast
Ingredients:
-Meat (As much as you want really. I used a 1 and 1/2 pound London Broil. I imagine pork shoulder/chuck roast would have worked just as well.)
-6 medium/large carrots
-1 onion
-3 cloves of garlic
-1 cup of beef/chicken stock (or water); I just used water because I didn't have any stock.
-Salt/pepper/spices of choice 

Everything chopped and ready-to-go.

Instructions:
1. Pour the water/stock into your slow cooker.
2. Turn it on low for 6-8 hours (you could turn it on after everything is in, up to you).
3. Peel and cut the carrots in half.
4. Chop up the onion and garlic. I kept everything in decent sized chunks. Not too big, not too small. Optionally you can saute the garlic and onions in a tbsp or two of your favorite cooking fat before adding them to the pot. 
5. Season your meat on both sides (liberally).
6. Put the meat in the slow cooker with the carrots on the sides and the onions/garlic on top.

Everything in the slow cooker.

7. Wait and try not to eat your entire kitchen while its cooking (I almost failed at the "don't eat your entire kitchen" part).

The end result; Half-eaten. It was so good I almost forgot to take a picture.

Turnips w/ Sweet Potatoes and Grass Fed Butter (Mashed)
Ingredients:
-3 or so turnips
-1 sweet potato
-Grass fed butter

Instructions:
1. Bring some salted water to a boil.
2. Chop up the turnips and the sweet potato.

Chopping everything up.

3. Toss everything into the pot and let it cook for 30-40 minutes. The sweet potatoes were done significantly faster than the turnip. Next time I think I'll cook 'em separately. This time I just fished out the sweet potato chunks and set them aside in my mashing bowl.
4. Mash everything up with some salt, pepper, and grass fed butter. Note: The turnips didn't mash all that well for me. I probably didn't boil them long enough (I was hungry, it was late, so I let 'em cook about 25-30 minutes. Also, my chunks might have been too big. You cook, you learn.)
5. Enjoy!


Until next episode,
The Simple Paleo Cook

Granola and Hard Boiled Eggs

I made my first summer star squash.

This thing is a summer star squash. I had *no clue* what it was when I bought it at the Woodinville Farmers Market.

Sliced it and steamed it. Delish!

Here's how I made mine (adapted from several recipes found easily online). I noticed that various recipes called for various cook-times at different temperatures. The key point seemed to be, "Don't burn it". I ended up more or less following the recipe from PaleOMG because it had a shorter cook time at a higher temperature, it was late, and I was tired. I modified a few things.

Granola

Ingredients:

-1 cup raw unsalted almonds

-1/2 cup raw pumpkin seeds

-1/4 cup shelled hemp seeds

-1/2 cup pecans

-1/4 cup raw walnuts

-1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut

-1/2 cup coconut oil

-1 cup raisins

-1 tbsp cinnamon

-Dash of nutmeg

-1 tsp salt

-1/2 cup creamed natural honey

-1/2 cup maple syrup

Granola ingredients.

Instructions:

1. Chop the almonds, seeds, and pecans to your desired consistency. I used my food processor and pulsed each item a couple times.

2. Add all the chopped nuts/seeds to the shredded coconut in a large bowl.

3. Mix in the honey, maple syrup, cinnamon, salt, and coconut oil. Everything except the raisins.

4. Spread the mix out evenly on a parchment lined cookie sheet and bake at 300 degrees for 25 minutes taking it out of the oven and stirring it every 7-10 minutes or so.

This part smelled amazing!

5. Remove from the oven, add the raisins, and let it cool.

The end result. Ready for some hiking =).

I put it in the fridge to cool and it turned out wonderful. Maybe next time I would use less sugary things (like maple syrup and honey). Nonetheless this was delicious (a special treat indeed).

Hard Boiled Eggs

This is barley a recipe. It was super easy and really seems like a useful egg prep. to get under my belt.

1. Take some older eggs (7-10 days old or so).

2. Cover them with 1 inch of cold water in a pot.

Yep. Eggs. Not very exciting but delicious.

3. Bring them to a boil.

4. Take off the heat and cover the pot. Let is sit for about 7-15 minutes depending on the size of the eggs. I let mine sit for 10.

5. Take those egg-ies out and put them in an ice bath. Once cooled (and the cooking has been stopped); Put 'em in the fridge.

As always thanks for reading! Please comment with any comments/questions/suggestions... I want to hear from you!

-The Simple Paleo Cook, aka Perry ;)

Bacon (Oven Baked)

Bacon is awesome. The smell of it will make me rise from the heaviest of sleep-induced-comas. Steve over at Nerd Fitness has put together a wonderful Bacon resource (here). Some of the highlights cover how to find the best bacon; In a nut-shell, stay away from the heavily processed stuff, definitely don't go for the "healthier" turkey bacon (it's really not bacon at all and has tons of added stuff you don't want). Basically just go for something, "unprocessed, with just a few ingredients. Think "pork, water, salt, brown sugar” and not much else". If you really want to get advanced, cure your own bacon. One of these days I'll do that. For now, I'm happy buying the best bacon I can find and cooking it in my oven. Let's get down to it.

1. I bought a couple cookie racks to do lay over a tin-foil lined baking pan. I use lots of tin-foil to catch all that yummy bacon grease.

Ready to receive the bacon =).

2. Layer as much bacon as you can fit. It will shrink a little bit.

Bacon!

3. Put your bacon in an unheated oven. Set the temperature to 400 degrees and set a timer for about 20 minutes. Watch your bacon so it doesn't burn.

Bacon! And tongs. Tongs help for this.

3. Remove the bacon and put it on a paper towel lined plate to cool a little bit. Don't forget to save that delicious bacon fat in a jar. I keep mine in the fridge and use it every now and then to spice up various things. Like frying veggies in bacon fat for example. Not all the time of course; But it sure is yummy.

Save the fat! Don't pour it down the drain...it does....wonders on plumbing systems.

4. Bacon!

5. Bacon!

6. Bacon!

Have some bacon, eggs, and pineapple. It always makes me feel like I'm in Hawaii!

Thanks for reading! If you have any comments/questions/suggestions; I want to hear from you!

breathe deep seek bacon,

The Simple Paleo Cook

Paleo Applesauce

I had a busy morning cooking up some bacon, paleo homemade applesauce, and figuring out what to do with that summer star squash I got at the farmers market. I try to get at least one thing a week that I have *absolutely no idea* how to cook/prepare. That way I'm always learning! I'll post later tonight on Bacon and the Summer Star Squash. For now I wanted to get this applesauce post out there!

Paleo Applesauce
I found this recipe on PaleoCupboard.com (link here). I modified it just a tiny bit by adding some nutmeg alongside the cinnamon. Paleo applesauce is dangerously good. I originally made it to go in the paleo chocolate and rainier cherry muffins (link here). Without further ado, let's get into it!

Ingredients:
-4 to 8 Organic Apples (I like to keep the peels on. Your choice).

A variety of organic apples.

-2 Tablespoons (which is 6 Tea-spoons) Natural (Raw) Honey
-3/4 Cup Water
-Cinnamon
-Nutmeg

Tools:
-Large Pot
-Spoon or other stirring device
-Smashing device
-Apple slicer (so helpful I can't even begin to tell you...one of my favorite kitchen gadgets for under $5)

Why I love my apple slicer. Makes eating anything round with a core that much easier!

-Sharp knife

Instructions:
1. Prepare your cooking area. For me this meant braking out ol' faithful (my wooden cutting board), getting a knife out, and taking the apples and honey out of the fridge.

Anna's Natural Creamed Honey, ol' faithful, and seven organic apples of various varieties.

2. Chop the apples into little pieces and add the honey, cinnamon, nutmeg, and water to the pot.

Chopped apples w/ honey and 3/4-cup water.

3. Put the pot on the stove and bring the water to a boil. I check to see if the water is boiling by making a little hole with my stirring device (parting the sea of apples). Stir often.

Everything together on the stove-top.

Parting the sea of apples to check if it's boiling yet.

4. Once it starts boiling/bubbling (it doesn't have to be a rolling boil or anything), reduce the heat and cover the pot. Cook for 20 minutes or so stirring occasionally. 

Cookin' up those apples.

5. After 20 minutes or so, remove the pot from the heat and mash up the apples to your desired consistency. Transfer them into another container and put the whole lot of goodness in the fridge to cool.

Mash 'em. Mash 'em good.

The end result! I can't wait to go home and try some...End work! End!

As always, thank you for reading! I appreciate your time =). If you have any questions/comments/suggestions please let me know! 

Until the next post fellow Paleo adventurer,

The Simple Paleo Cook

Banana Bread Coffee Cake (w/ and w/o Chocolate) Gluten Free and Paleo

Oh...my...banana bread coffee cake. This recipe is *dangerously* good. I made 5 loaves, 1 full-sized and 4-mini. One of the mini-loafs....might have disappeared. I'm (cough) not sure what happened to it.

That's not my hand...I swear ;). Remember that post about not being perfect? Oops. I ate an entire mini-loaf.

Some inspiration...let's jump to the end result pictures!

Hmmm...that one mini loaf seems to be missing half =). The big one has no chocolate, three of the little ones have gluten free chocolate chunks. One plain.

In the pan.

A quick flip trick and out of the pan to cool =).

I found this specific recipe on PaleOMG; Another one of Juli's amazing posts. Juli has been kind enough to allow me to re-post the ingredients of her recipes, but she has asked that I omit the instructions so you give her blog some traffic as well. Don't worry, I'll still put up lots of pics and my extra comments. You can find the full recipe here. Juli didn't use any chocolate, and neither did I in the big loaf. I experimented with adding chocolate in the smaller loafs and it worked wonderfully in my humble opinion. In the smaller pan I did reduce the cook-time a little bit. The fork test was applied ;).

Without further ado (and before I try to eat any more of this) let's go on this delicious baking journey together. This is my second time baking. Ever. I'm proud of myself =). Here it goes!

What you'll need (Ingredients)

-3 brown bananas, mashed

-¼ cup maple syrup

-1 teaspoon vanilla extract

-3 eggs

-½ cup almond butter (or other nut/seed butter)

-¼ cup coconut flour

-½ teaspoon baking soda

-½ teaspoon baking powder

-1 teaspoon cinnamon

-pinch of salt

For the toppings

-4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) grass fed butter, at room temperature (or coconut oil)

-2 tablespoons coconut sugar

-2 tablespoons almond flour

-1 teaspoon cinnamon

-¼ cup pecans, crushed

All of the ingredients. I used all of my ghee making two batches of this goodness. In the small jar on the left is the coconut flour, the jar to the right of that has almond flour.

It begins. Round one. I didn't have any brown bananas so I just used some organic very-yellow ones.

Mmm...yep: Maple Syrup! I could probably just have stopped here and ate this bowl. That wouldn't be healthy...but I'm sure it would have been a sugar-overload of deliciousness.

Note: First time mixing. I used a fork (why, I'm not sure). Wait until round two for improved technique.

Forking around with the dry ingredients ;).

Round one into the pan.

Round one toppings. Basically butter and sugar. No wonder it tastes so darn good.

Toppings....on top ;).

Go go round two!

Mmm...eggs.

Oil up those mini-pans like it's a hot day at the beach.

Improved strategy! That's documented learning for ya. Go-go gadget whisk!

Round two had chocolate (and a reduced cook time).

And the end result! Again =).

Wow...these are amazing. I think I found my go-to special treat recipe. Now to give it all away (with the exception of two of those mini-loafs. They're staying with me! One is already gone...tomorrow I'll try to only eat half of the other. Then I can enjoy this treat for three days. The rest I will bestow upon my co-workers and possibly my yoga studio (Bala Yoga - Love them!).

As always...I want to hear from you! Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Lay 'em on me!

Yours truly,

The Simple Paleo Cook

Ground beef, sweet potatoes, and butternut squash!

Sweet Potatoes
I love them; Your average large sweet potato (according to nutritiondata) has 692% of your daily value of vitamin A, 59% of your DV of vitamin C, 7% DV iron, 7% DV calcium, 4g of protien, no fat, and all of the for a whopping...wait for it...162 calories. These things rock! And they're super easy to prepare in a variety of different ways. This time I cooked 'em in the oven. Let's get down to it.

What you'll need:
-Some sweet potatoes/yams (as it turns out, in most United States grocery stores, yams are actually sweet potatoes as well)
-Tin foil
-(Optional) Olive oil
-(Optional) Bakeware/Cookie Rack/Something to put them on/in in the oven

Instructions:
1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
2. Wash your sweet potatoes, cut out any little bad spots, and then dry them.
3. (Optional) Oil 'em up with a little bit of olive oil.
4. Put them in the preheated 400 degree oven for 45 minutes -1 hour and 30 minutes. Cooking time varies depending on size but they're fairly forgiving so don't worry about it too much. You can test if they're done by trying to stick a fork in them; It should go in and come out easily.

Two sweet potatoes ready for some olive oil love ;).

That's it! Enjoy your delicious, nutritious, sweet potatoes!

Grass Fed Ground Beef
When you're making ground beef you have so many options, lots of variables and things to play with (if you want to); You could also go the simple route and just cook plain grass fed ground beef. I'm sure it would be just as delicious.

I decided to add some spices, cook up that walla walla sweet onion just sitting lonely in my fridge alongside some garlic in some ghee, and add a couple roma tomatoes to the mix as well.

What you'll need:
-2 roma tomatoes
-1 sweet onion
-3 cloves of garlic
-Ghee (grass fed, clarified butter)
-Grass fed ground beef (I used 2lbs)
-Spices (I used oregano, basil, thyme, salt, and pepper)

Instructions:
1. Prepare all your ingredients first. Cut up the onion into little bits, mince the garlic, cut up the tomatoes, and prepare your spices in a little bowl.

Onion + Cutting board = Getting started (exhausted but now getting excited about food!)

Little onion chopping trick: Cut the onion into a little grid without cutting all the way down, then turn it on its side and it's almost completely chopped for you!

Two roma tomatoes, just in-case you didn't know what these things looked like ;).

Three cloves of garlic, ready to be minced. That paper looking skin comes right off; Just chop off both ends first.

Everything ready-to-go.

2. Put some ghee or a cooking fat of choice into your skillet and cook up the onions/garlic for 10-20 minutes on medium heat.

Stir them constantly. Burned onion/garlic = bad.

3. Set the onions and garlic aside for now. Start cooking your beef. Once it's almost cooked all the way add the onions/garlic/spices/tomatoes to the mix. I was cooking up two pounds of beef so I did it in two batches. An overfilled skillet is no fun.

Almost there; Add the extras =).

The onion/garlic bowl on the side.

Victory! At this point it was 11 something and I had forgotten to add any other veggies to my meal. Solution: Grab a handful of Kale and forgive yourself. You just spent time preparing delicious food to take care of and nourish your body! Smile =)...and eat!

Sleep. I slept well. I had to wake up early the next morning (today) for a 6:15 yoga class. Yoga in the morning is more than rejuvenating for me; It sets me up for a beautiful day in my body and my mind. Without going *too* hippie on you, it basically allows for accepting yourself, right now, just as you are. Smile again =). Aaaannnd.....leftovers!

Mmm...mash of sweet potato, some frozen brussel sprouts, and frozen french-style green beans. The frozen stuff isn't ideal but it sure is easy!

Breakfast. It doesn't look like much but it did the trick and tasted divine!

Butternut Squash (in a slow cooker/crock pot)

Butternut Squash is another one of my absolute favorites. It's warm and inviting, filling, cool looking, and really easy to prepare with several different methods. Today I decided to go with the slow cooker method so I could have some freshly cooked butternut squash with dinner. According to Whole Foods, butternut squash is, "one of the richest sources of plant based anti-inflammatory nutrients such as omega 3s and beta-carotene". Score =).

What you'll need:
-A butternut squash that fits in your slow cooker/crock pot.
-Tin foil

Instructions:
1. Push a knife into several spots in the squash so it doesn't explode on you. I've yet to have to clean it off the ceiling and would imagine that's an experience best avoided ;). I poked 5 or so holes in mine.

Poke some holes. Exploding squash might look nifty, but is probably no bueno.

2. Wrap it in tin foil and put in in your slow cooker on low for six hours or high for 4 hours. Give or take. I always prefer to cook things on low.

Six hours on low.

I can't wait to eat you! This thing barley fit. I got lucky =).

3. When it is done, carefully remove the tin foil (it will be very hot). Cut it in half the long way (from top to bottom). You'll have to scoop out the seeds in the middle but they should come out super easily because it's already cooked. I like to add some cinnamon and some ghee to mine afterwards.

Carefully remove the squash from the slow cooker. I like to use tongs.

Ol' faithful, my wooden cutting board w/ a freshly cooked squash ready to be prepared.

Cut it in half and save the top; There is delicious squash in there!

I seasoned one half with cinnamon. The other half went (covered) into the fridge.

Getting some dinner going to go w/ the squash. Yay for cast iron! Pictured is ground beef from earlier, baby carrots, broccoli, baby kale, and a dash of olive oil.

Dinner is served.

4. Enjoy!

Lunch

Another quick meal. I wanted to focus on this blog post and my upcoming trip to Whole Foods to get ingredients for some Banana Coffee Cake (post coming later tonight on that!). I just warmed up some ground beef in my skillet, steamed some frozen butternut squash, frozen green beans, frozen brussel sprouts, and a side of organic strawberries. 

Note: Frozen butternut squash can't even come close to the squash I'm cooking up right now in my slow cooker, but it's super easy to pop in a steamer. I like having a good frozen stash of veggies/fruits just-in-case lazyness sets in a little bit. Forgive yourself. I forgive myself =).

Quick lunch of grass fed ground beef cooked w/ onions, garlic, tomatoes, and spices alongside some veggies and fruit. Water.

Perry, The Simple Paleo Cook