Paleo Chocolate Pudding and Fudge Babies

Bringing recipes over from Northwest Cavegirls. Cavegirl Stephanie here:

Chocolate: This day is meant for chocolate. Two lovely ladies, Katie and Elana, saved my bacon today. We needed chocolate for dinner and we needed healthy chocolate and for us today that meant no dairy, no grain, minimal sugar. If you haven't had the time to put together Angie's chocolate covered cherries, maybe you'll have time for one of these.

Enter Elana's dairy free chocolate pudding:

This is an incredibly easy dessert to whip up. I used a can of full fat coconut milk, coconut oil, chocolate chunks from Whole Foods, and a bit of agave. Click on through to see her recipe. Elana uses xylitol in hers. I didn't have any. I only used a tablespoon of agave, since I tasted the mix and it seemed nearly sweet enough for me. PLUS, since I was serving it with another choco-hit, I didn't think we needed it overly sweet.

Next up, Fudge Babies from Chocolate Covered Katie:
From the set of ingredients, you can see that it doesn't take much to make these little darlings. Walnuts, dates, vanilla, cocoa, and a tad of salt. I chose smoked sea salt, but I can't say that it was enough to give it much of a smoked flavor like I'd hoped for.

I used a cup of walnuts, 1.25 cups of dates, a splash of vanilla, a twist of salt and 5 tablespoons of cocoa. Whirl the mixture in your cuisinart or equally powerful device, then roll into little balls. These babies taste like ULTRA MOIST BROWNIES. I'm in love. I love how Katie titles the page that her recipe is on: "Make. These. Now." I second that. These are amazing little fruit sweetened bites of ambrosia that need to show up on Valentine's Day, Christmas, PMS Day, whatever day you need a BLAST of chocolate delight.

We are going to be a happy family come dessert time tonight!

Edit: WARNING... make a double batch of fudge babies if you expect to have any for your family and friends. They are the most tasty little brownie-like bites I've come across in a long time!

Garlic Ginger Chicken with Sesame Baby Bok Choi

Bringing over Northwest Cavegirl recipes. Cavegirl Stephanie here:

I'd forgotten about this chicken dish, until last night. A friend gave me this recipe about 10 years ago. We've loved it many times, but then as usual, I forget things and they fall away. Well, last night I was in a pinch to get a quick healthy meal for hubby and me. I thawed chicken breasts and then looked in the fridge, saw the bok choy, remembered this dish and VOILA! We had a meal plan! My friend said that this was a staple of her Korean grandmother's, and that she also used it several times every week. I can't believe it's been so long. I'll be making this a lot, until I forget about it when something new and shiny comes along.

Garlic/Ginger Chicken

2 chicken breast cut into small bite sized pieces
tablespoon of minced garlic
tablespoon of grated ginger
tablespoon of chili garlic sauce (looks like that picture to the right)
tablespoon of coconut oil

Place chicken pieces in a container for marinating. Add garlic, ginger, and chili garlic sauce. Coat chicken. Marinate for 4 hours or so. When ready to cook, heat oil, add chicken and marinade to pan and stir fry chicken. You just want the chicken done, not OVERDONE, so watch for the pink to disappear and just a little browning happening. Season with salt if needed.

Sesame Baby Bok Choy

1 teaspoon of olive or coconut oil
several baby bok choy, halved length-wise
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
sea salt

Heat olive or coconut oil in pan on high heat. Add bok choy and quickly stir fry, maybe 1-3 min. Looking for the stage where the greens just start to wilt and the thicker sections are browned a bit. Remove from heat and drizzle with sesame oil and season with sea salt.

If you don't have time to marinate the poultry, no worries, just toss it all in the pan and stir fry it. It's still very delicious!

Mango Chicken Salad

Bringing recipes from Northwest Cavegirls. Cavegirl Kate here...

What makes this salad is the mango salsa!

Serves 3

Ingredients:

• 1 mango, peeled, pitted and cubed
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
• 4 green onions, thinly slices (spring onions)
• 1 medium red pepper, seeded and chopped
• 1/2 cucumber, peeled and chopped
• 3 tbsp. of fresh lime juice
• 1 tsp. minced fresh garlic
• 1 tsp. dried oregano
• 1 tsp. ground cumin
• Dash of chili powder
• 1 Romaine Lettuce
• 2 x Chicken breasts

Directions:

1. Mix all the ingredients except the lettuce in a bowl.
2. Let stand for at least 15 mins. Serve on top of the lettuce.
3. Grill chicken breasts, slice and add to the salad.

Note: The vegetable mixture without the mango can be made in advance and refrigerated. Add the mango and a dash of lime juice before serving

Hey Presto!

If you are anything like me, you might need a little lesson on how best to cut and peel your mango. I admit I did and found this very handy youtube video to guide me.

Bon Appéti

Roasted Broccoli and Onions

Bringing over Northwest Cavegirl recipes. Cavegirl Kate here...

You will need...

• LOTS of broccoli florets
• Red onions
• A pack of your favorite bacon
• Herbs and seasoning of your choice
• Olive oil

This dish began as a side created for St. Patrick's Day and originally began as oven roasted broccoli with onions. Have you ever thought of roasting broccoli before? Well we hadn't…I know strange as we roast all our other veggies normally and then generally steam the broccoli.

So prepare your broccoli and peel and cut your onions into chunky chunks. Lay all of them on a baking tray and sprinkle generously with your chosen seasoning. We used Trader Joe's 21 Seasoning Salute which is my favorite mixed herbs and spices mix right now. The glug a generous amout of olive oil onto the tray over your broccoli and onions. Roast on a hight heat (450*) for 15 mins until the broccoli and onions are tender.

THEN...

Because we had a ton of leftovers we decided to create dish number 2… Broccoli and Bacon. We cut up 5/6 or more rashers of our favorite bacon, that being Trader Joe's Apple Smoked right now :) Fry up the bacon pieces until cooked a little crispy. Drain off the the majority of the bacon fat and then add the broccoli to the pan, shallow frying it in a little of the bacon fat then add the bacon back to the pan and heat through.

OMGosh this dish, be it lunch, brunch or a side to accompany meat is delicious. We are HUGE fans of broccoli in our house SO with the added plus of bacon, which makes everything better right?!…  it HAS to be a recipe for SUCCESS!

Paleo Coconut Flour Biscuits

Bringing over Northwest Cavegirl recipes. Cavegirl Stephanie here:

For the most part, I don't miss bread. Every once in a while, though, I miss a biscuit in the morning. I get a little tired of eggs and want something different. Wellness Mama had the answer for me. I made up a batch of her coconut flour biscuits when I was craving a biscuit and I was WOWED.

I like them plain, or with a little herb mixed in, or with a tablespoon of bacon drippings mixed in... mmmm mmm. Kate's post on the Chicken Sliders got me thinking about sausage breakfast sandwiches. I use those almond buns sometimes, too, but prefer these coconut ones for the breakfast purpose. My gang likes both of them, but not as well as bread yet. I'm workin' on it!

For the record, my sandwich has some paleo herb mayo on it. The sausage is Beeler's spicy sausage, the one that comes in a chub.

Give this a try, I think it will perk up a dull morning!

Butternut Squash Lasagna

Bringing over recipes from Northwest Cavegirls. This one is from Cavegirl Kate.

We are big fans of lasagna in this house and with the big Aiken house divide I needed to come up with a paleo version for the caveman hubby and his cave girls when I make my youngest occasional cave kids their favorite dish of mine, beef lasagna.

So...

I found inspiration from Health-Bent.com in using butternut squash instead of pasta sheets. I created a very yummy meat-tastic tomato sauce and crumbled some sweet potato and beet chips on the top to add a little crunch to the finished dish.

Here's what's in it...

Ingredients:

• 1lb (ish) of ground buffalo/bison
• 1 onion chopped small
• 2 Casual Gourmet Chicken Sausages with Roasted Red Pepper and Spinach (from Costco)
• 4 rashers of bacon chopped
• 1 jar of pasta sauce ( my favorite is Lucini Rustic Tomato and Basil)
• ½ a carton of chopped tomatoes
• 1 Tbsp. minced garlic
• Splash of Worcestershire Sauce
• A few fresh basil leaves
• Splash of red wine
• Shake of pepper
• 1 small jar of roasted red peppers
• 1 small/med. butternut squash
• Handful of crumbled veggie chips (optional)
• sprinkle of dried mixed herbs
• sprinkle of dried sage

And the way I made it...

Directions:

• Chop onion and fry with garlic, mixed herbs, bacon and sausage until the bacon is cooked and the onion is sautéed.
• Add the ground buffalo meat and cook.
• Drain any excess fat
• Add the roasted red peppers and stir in
• Add your preferred pasta sauce, diced tomatoes, splash of wine and Worcestershire Sauce
• Prepare the butternut squash and slice into even planks/sheets
• Layer your lasagna with the first layer being the sauce and ending in a sauce layer too. Be careful not to overlap the sheets.
• Top with a generous sprinkle of crumbled veggie chips
• Bake in the oven for 45 mins on 375 *F. Beets chips blacken when baked.
• Serve and enjoy!

 

I served my lasagna with steamed broccoli and Paleo Herb Buns