Almond flour, flax meal pancakes

This morning Christopher and Zoe wanted pancakes. My first thought was 'Damn. He knows I can't eat pancakes!' The flour shoots my blood sugar through the roof, the calories are totally empty and they put you in a food coma within an hour. So, I decided to make them the regular ones and make me some protein laden, low carb, grain free beauties. Cooking with almond flour is actually very easy when it comes to baked goods, you just sub out flour equally and off you go.
For this recipe I used:

• 1/3 cup almond flour
• 1/4 cup golden flax meal
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup of milk (to make these paleo or for dairy intolerance use coconut milk, almond milk, ect)
• a dash of baking powder
• a few drops of vanilla stevia

Mix it all together in bowl and heat your pan. I make them a little larger than silver dollar pancakes. To this batch I added fresh blueberries and banana slices:

And then drizzled raw, local honey on them:

These are great! Very filling. I got about 7 good size pancakes out of it, but what is really great is what I didn't get. High blood sugar, low nutritional value and an epic crash an hour later.
This is really a breakfast you can feel good about! Go make them, you'll love them, your kids will love them, it'll be a big 'ol love fest! Just don't forget the bacon!!!

Good for you chocolate meringue cookies!

After being tortured by Jillian michaels for the last few days and eating dang near close to perfect, I started craving chocolate. Chocolate preferably in the form of cake or cookies. Determined not to give in, I started thinking of an alternative. I thought of meringues, those yummy, crispy airy delicacies. It's just egg whites, right? And a teeny bit of sugar. I figured I could add chocolate and call it a day. I did a quick google search and quickly discovered that there are thousands of recipes out there for meringues! I couldn't believe all of the variations! I just wanted chocolate, so I went with this one and modified it pretty heavily. I followed the baking instructions in the recipe, so these aren't true meringues, not crispy and airy, but more dense and chewy, but plus side, they only take about 12 minutes to bake versus 2-3 hours.
Here's the recipe:

• 3 eggs at room temperature. (if you're anything like me, you hate seeing the words room temperature because it requires advance preparation, so just put the eggs in a bowl of hot tap water for a few minutes. Voila. Room Temperature!)
• Preheat the oven to 350
• Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and spray with PAM
• 1/2 cup of organic coconut sugar
• 2 TBL cocoa powder
• 3TBL organic cocoa nibs
• 2 oz dark chocolate chopped finely
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp cream of tartar or a teeny splash of white vinegar 

Start by separating the eggs. I find the easiest way to do this is to crack it in my hand over a bowl and let the white slip through my fingers. Just slips right through and the yolk NEVER breaks. I also recommend organic, free range eggs! They're just better for you!

using a glass or metal bowl, whip the whites until peaks start to form. Slowly add the coconut sugar, tablespoon by tablespoon:

                                 
Continue to beat the egg whites and sugar until you have stiff peaks. I never really got them too stiff. Not sure why, but does it matter really?? When you are satisfied with the volume of the eggwhites, stir in the cocoa powder and cocoa nibs:

                                     
I guess the cocoa nibs are optional, but man, they add in such a depth of deep, chocolaty flavor. So delicious. You can get them at Whole Foods or Trader Joes.

Your mixture will look something like this:

                            

 

Get a spoon and drop them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and sprayed with PAM:

The recipe I followed said there were 40 cookies here. But I only got 24. She did say to use a TEASPOON though. Seriously??? Who wants a cookie the size of a teaspoon?? So I revolted and used a normal spoon instead! Baked them in a 350 degree oven for 12 minutes and took them out and transferred them to a wire rack to cool. I took this picture an hour later:

 

Seriously good, folks! And really perfect to satisfy a sweet tooth. Best of all, they are low carb, grain free, gluten free, refined sugar free. I did the nutritional values for you because I know some of you require proof.

Per cookie:

• Calories: 31
• Carbs: 2
• Fat: 2
• Protein: 1

Whatcha waiting for?? Delicious! and basically guilt free, so, you're welcome.

Spaghetti Bolognese, kind of...

As a non insulin taking diabetic, pasta is one of those things I have a love/hate relationship with. As someone who tries to eat mostly primal/Paleo, pasta is almost like a cuss word. I manage the cravings well for the most part, but every now and then...every now and then...I break down and eat pasta. My blood sugar rockets through the roof and I feel awful. Swearing I won't eat it again, but knowing I will. Oh the life of the wishfully pious.
The times I am a Paleo rock star, I eat meat sauce with zucchini pasta. Yes, zucchini pasta. It tastes just like real pasta, said nobody ever, but it does the trick and I always feel quite smug when I make the good choice to have it instead of the wheat kind!

It's super easy. Grab a zucchini, and using a veggie peeler, peel that bad boy until you get down to the seeds. It'll look something like this:

I drizzle a little olive oil, add some garlic, sea salt and cracked pepper.

 

Top it with your meat sauce and a teeny tiny bit of Parmesan and you're ready to twirl!

Because really, isn't the twirling half the fun of pasta???

Homemade coconut butter

I have heard of coconut butter for awhile now, but never really understood what is was. To me, it sounded like a new body cream by Philosophy or Origins. I hopped on the coconut oil craze early on, but admittedly, I'm a bit late to the coconut butter party. I had been meaning to try it, and stumbled across a jar at Whole Foods. For $12. For 8oz! What?? I didn't want to try it $12 worth, so I moved on.
But then one day I was at church with my sister, and by church I mean TJMaxx, when I had an encounter on the food aisle. You know that aisle, where overpriced gourmet foods and davinci syrups go to die. It was there. An 8 oz jar of chocolate coconut butter. For $7.99. Why not, I said to no one in particular. It took me a few months to even open it, but when I did, hallelujah! It was amazing. Smooth, coconutty, chocolaty. It was Delish. And as I do with most things, I googled how to make it And quickly thought "wow. Those people selling this stuff at whole foods are making a fortune off of their profit margin!" Because the ingredient list is short and NOT expensive. All you need is a bag of plain, shredded coconut. NOT the kind you buy at the grocery store that is loaded with sugar, just plain, unsweetened, desiccated coconut.



I had that in my pantry. So I whipped out my Vitamix, dumped the coconut in and turned it on. I used the plunger to push it into the blades and after about 2 minutes it went from coconut to liquid coconut. I kept blending for another 3 minutes. It was smooth, but a bit grainy. Another google search took me to Nam Nam Paleo, and she used a tablespoon of coconut oil in addition, so I tried that and voila, it smoothed it right out. I added some vanilla bean paste, vanilla stevia and cinnamon to it and am now waiting for it to go from liquid to butter. I eat it straight from the spoon when I'm hungry and need something to tide me over. But if you can't handle having something so delicious open and freely available, it could be wise to have a loved one hide it from you. Seriously. Don't say I didn't warn you.

The Great Butter Debacle of 2011

I was in London this week when I received word from a friend that I had better buy butter while there because Norway was out.
Come again?
Yes, Norway, the COUNTRY is out of butter. How this happens, I am a bit unsure, but the dairy industry has been quick to blame the low-carb dieters and lower than average production levels.
Well, I did buy butter in London and brought it home to Norway, but really, the whole out of butter thing bothered me. I won't say it's a conspiracy set in motion by the margarine lobby, but I'll be damned if I'm going to eat that nasty butter LIKE spread. The sign at the grocery store on the bare butter shelves says there will be no butter until at least the 1st week of 2012, so clearly I needed to take action. So, why not make my own? Moving out to the country has given me a crafty streak, so I decided to tackle it with the help of my 2.5 year old. We googled 'How to make butter' and got about 5000 hits, so don't worry, there are plenty of methods. Basically, if you are going to make butter, you need heavy whipping cream. That's it.
So, we got out the stand mixer and our cream and measured out 2 cups:


Then poured it into the bowl of the mixer and using the whisk attachment, let whip:
Every once in awhile, have a peek in and look:
It will whip up beautifully into fluffy whipcream in a couple of minutes:
Your kitchen helper may want to lick the spatula:

Keep whipping and whipping and suddenly it will totally separate and look disgusting, like yellow blobs floating in water! Guess what, you have curds and whey:

Pour it into a strainer and the buttermilk will drain out leaving the butter behind:
Then use your hands to ball it up and squeeze out the excess buttermilk and put it back in the mixer and see if you can beat out any more water. Drain it one more time and form it into a ball and then it's time for an ice bath. Apparantly, if you bathe it, it will make it last longer. So I bathed it in freezing cold water:


and then once the water ran clear, took it out, patted it dry and formed it into a ball. I then kneaded sea salt into it:
And voila, I made BUTTER!! It is delicious:
No worries here about any dang butter shortage! Try it! It's so easy!

Homemade almond milk

On our most recent trip back to America, I was surprised to see the presence of Almond milk in the grocery stores in the dairy section right next to cow's milk. When I last lived in the states in 2003, you had to go to the health food store to get it. I was also impressed at how cheap almond milk is! I spent the 5 weeks we were there drinking almond milk whenever possible. It's lower in carbs than regular milk, same amount of fat, HALF the calories, cholesterol free, loaded in antioxidants, has nearly as much calcium and an impressive array of vitamins. Really, what's not to love? Well, the price of it in Norway, that's what's not to love. Coming back to Norway, I went in search of almond milk. We have soy, rice and oat milks readily available in normal grocery stores here, but no almond milk. I finally found some at the health food store, but it was a tiny box and it was about $10!! Crazy.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. How hard can making homemade almond milk be?? Not hard at all is the answer! I can get raw almonds in bulk for about $11 a KILO here (that's about 2.2 pounds) and I only need a cup to make about a liter of milk, so it's a significant savings over the health food store almond milk. I tend to make small batches, as it only lasts about 5 days in the fridge and I really only use it in my smoothies, so I don't need a whole lot.

Start by soaking a cup or two of almonds in water over night. They will nearly double in size after the soaking:

Drain them and rinse them and put them in your blender or food processor and cover them with 4 or 5 cups of cold water:
Process them on high until the mixture is white and frothy:
Next, strain the mixture into a container. You can use a fine mesh sieve, but I use a bag specially made for nut milks:
That's it! How simple is that? Put it in an airtight container and use it how you would milk! It's delicious, and more importantly, it's so good for you! Now go make some almond milk:

Green beans roasted with garlic and basil in coconut oil

The days are getting longer and warmer and it's that time of year where we are starting to get a lot more fresh produce. Yesterday at one of my neighborhood fruit and vegetable markets there were some green beans I just couldn't pass up, and when Christopher lit the grill tonight, I decided to roast them over the hot coals!
I prepped the beans by tossing them in coconut oil, 2 cloves of fresh garlic, a handful of fresh chopped basil and a pinch of crushed red pepper:
Next, I put them in my roasting basket and put them on the grill:
There was a lot of smoke when coconut oil met hot coals, but the smell was delicious. I just stirred them every 30 seconds or so, and because the coals were so hot, the beans were done in about 4 minutes. The finished result was delicious:
A great way to get one of your 5 servings of fruit and veggies!

Homemade almond/cashew butter

I'll admit it, I'm a almond butter girl on a peanut butter budget, so when I read something about making my own nut butters at home, I did a backflip in my head. I can get raw nuts here in Oslo fairly inexpensively, whereas a tiny jar of almond butter sets me back about $8. If it's possible to make my own for half the price, it's a no-brainer for me. A quick Google search confirmed that I was not the first person to have this idea, so who better to let guide me than a gal called Heather with a blog called 'Heather Eats Almond Butter'? So, if you're tired of paying too much money for nut butters that are older than 10 minutes, look no further. You're going to need whatever nuts you want to use. I used cashews and almonds. I didn't measure, just used enough to cover a baking sheet:

I popped them into the over to roast them. Roasting brings out a really lovely flavor and depth to the nuts, and the aforementioned Heather said the roasted nuts tend to butter up quicker than the raw. I almost burned them, so remember to keep an eye on them:
Put your roasted nuts into your food processor:
Put the lid on and turn the processor on high. You'll get alot of noise and a nut powder first, but keep the machine going, turning it off every now and then to scrape down the sides. Depending on your food processor, this can take anywhere from 9-12 minutes.



Soon you will be rewarded with a gorgeous creamy nut butter:
The sky is the limit as for flavors. You can keep it plain, as alone it has such a glorious depth to it, or you can add maple, chocolate, cinnamon or whatever!

The nutritional benefits of fresh nut butters are too numerous to list here, but this is one thing that is a staple for me in a paleo/primal way of eating. It's also low on the glycemic index, so my blood glucose never spikes when I eat it.

What are you waiting for?? Go and make some homemade almond/cashew butter!