Cauliflower Crust Pizza (Mac)

I came across a link to what looks like a great low carb pizza crust.  We will be giving this a try on Saturday night!  This also looks quite yummy.  The cheese doesn't live up to paleolithic standards, I know, but occasionally we will eat full fat (organic when possible) cheese on something like this or like my version of KFC's Double Down which I made for a Friday dinner a few weeks ago (pictured above).

On a side note, I ordered up some casings to try my hand at making pepperoni.  Pepperoni is a fantastic snack, but I'd like to be in charge of my own ingredients and food safety.  I am looking forward to making a batch :-)  I also purchased a decent meat slicer to allow me to make larger quantities of jerky with a reasonable amount of prep time.  My current favorite recipe is simply some hickory smoke flavor and black pepper.

We are planning to go to a BBQ hosted by Linda at Trail's End on May 22 where I hope to pick up some roasts for sausage and pepperoni making as well as some steak to tide us over until our cow is ready in August.  I am also a little closer to finding some locally raised chicken for meat.  I cringe every time I buy factory made, Lilydale garbage.  It is difficult to find a location that is close and can provide me with two chickens a week as all of the places I have found so far are a 2-3 hour drive away.  I am also on the search for some local lamb - love me some lamb!

Paleo What? (Mac)

The basic premise behind paleolithic nutrition is modeling food choices based on what humans would have eaten pre-agriculture i.e. hunting and gathering.  For the vast majority of human evolution we ate meat (insects, too), fruits, and vegetables.  There are loads of books and interpretations of paleolithic principals out there for you to research so I am not going to give an exact breakdown here.  Some proponents advocate higher fat than others, some more protein, etc but for the most part they all stick to the common theme of meat, fruits, and veggies - no breads, no grains, no cereals, no starchy vegetables, no processed food products and no dairy (depending on who's book you are reading).

I tend to eat a lot of meat and the fat that goes along with it as well as veggies.  I eat fruit a few times a week and it is mostly berries, the odd small apple, and banana pancakes on Saturday mornings.  I am 36 and woke up this morning laying in bed with a blood pressure of 97/52 and a pulse of 49 and my usual mid day average BP is somewhere around 105/60 - dispelling the notion that eating a lot of meat and fat will give you high blood pressure.  My meals are pretty straight forward, quick to make, and are nutritious and tasty. For example let's take last night's dinner - ground bison stuffed peppers with curried cauliflower rice.

I simply took some ground bison and tossed it in a skillet with some chopped leek, garlic, and coconut oil and fried it all up.  I then cut some peppers in half, added the meat mix, and threw some diced tomatoes on top.  Popped the plates in the oven at 250 for 45 minutes and they were done.

For the cauliflower rice, I started about fifteen minutes before the peppers were done by chopping up the cauliflower into manageable pieces and then using a "Slap Chop" like device proceeded to chop the cauliflower to the consistency of rice (a food processor could also do the job).  After I had the cauliflower cut up I added some curry powder and cayenne pepper and tossed in in the dry skillet (after I cleaned it) and toasted it all up a bit.

By the time the cauliflower rice was ready the peppers were done and it was time to eat.  Yummy!  I forgot to take a photo of the finished dish before we ate, but you get the idea :-)

Saturday Morning Breakfast (Jody)

Blueberry Paleo pancakes with sausage made from grass feed cow.

Paleo pancakes-- one banana per person served, one egg per person served), and a scoop of home made walnut butter (well any nut butter) and a tbsp of cinnamon.  You can adjust amounts to suit after you have tried this once or twice.  Generally for four of us it is three bananas (keeping the carbs down) and four or five eggs.

Directions: Put bananas in a bowl and mash with a fork (or potato masher), then add cinnamon, eggs and nut butter.  Lightly mix with fork-- then take the mixture and put it in the blender until smooth. Pour desired sized pancakes into a pan on medium heat and cover.  Check after a minute or so and when the top is no longer liquidy just flip them over for another minute or so. Heads up: they do not have the fluff of a pancake made with a grain flour.

Sausage --Heads up: cooking in the the oven takes a long time--too long for us. I say fry them. Our oil of choice is coconut oil (we do not have nut allergies); it has a high smoke rate since it is so saturated and is great to cook with.

We like to add organic blue berries to our pancakes-- our kids still have a little 100% pure Canadian maple syrup.

What Did You Have For Dinner? (Mac)

I mentioned yesterday that we were going to have roasted duck and mixed veggies for dinner so I thought I'd share some photos and what I did to make it.  Quite easy, actually.  I simply put the duck in a large roasting pan, added what ever veggies tickled my fancy, in this case it was yellow peppers, mushrooms, asparagus, leek, carrots, and celery.  I was going to add some red beets, but ran out of room as you can see in this photo taken just before popping the bird in the oven at 350 for 2-1/2 hours.  I also rubbed some coconut oil on the duck, added a bit of garlic with some random spices on top and added some home made red wine.  The whole affair took about 15 minutes of preparation.

Once the 2-1/2 hours were up I took the lid off and broiled the duck for about five minutes to make the skin a little crispier.  Despite what the "experts" say about the horrors of fat we ate the skin and didn't feel the slightest bit guilty - fat is not the enemy it has been made out to be.  Anyway, this is how I generally cook whole chickens as well...super simple, super fast, and very tasty.  I am boiling the carcass as we speak to make ground turkey (I ground myself) and vegetable soup to freeze for quick lunches.