Bacon and Egg Cups

I saw this picture somewhere on Pinterest a while back and decided to give it a try for Easter Breakfast. The result was very tasty, pretty and extremely easy to make!

Bacon and Egg Cups
1 slice of bacon and 1 egg for each cup you wish to make
Regular Sized Muffin Tin
Optional Extras (chives, cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, herbs, etc.)

Cut each strip of bacon in half and form an X in the bottom of your muffin tin. Crack an egg into the cup on top of the bacon X. You can add other flavors here as well such as chives, cheese (if you eat dairy), sun-dried tomatoes or herbs. Bake at 350 degrees for about 35 minutes or until the eggs are cooked to your desired doneness and bacon is crispy on the top. Give it a try and let me know what flavor combinations you create!

Baseball, Tree Forts, Spring Flowers and Easter Hats

Photos from the past week or so.

 The Boy in the Tree Fort we made from downed branches.

 Everyone should wear a big floppy hat on Easter.

Chocolate Bunnies!

Happy Boy after his first baseball game.

Eat Like a Dinosaur - Chicken Nugget Review

I've been spending a lot of time with Eat Like a Dinosaur: Recipe and Guidebook for Gluten-free Kids (ELaD) by the Paleo Parents lately. It's filled with kid-friendly paleo/primal recipes that are easy to make. The Boy is notoriously picky and sometimes won't eat any of the food he helps me to make. I think seeing the ingredients sometimes specifically makes him not want to try the food...but we give it a try anyway. He and The Girl have both been very interested in ELaD and have spent some time themselves thumbing through the book dog-earing the pages that have food they'd like to try. That in and of itself has made this one of my favorite cookbooks right off the bat.

ELaD is a treasure trove of meat dishes, side dishes, dips, snacks and treats that are filled with healthy ingredients. Yesterday The Boy and I decided to make their chicken nugget recipe. I thawed and cut up the chicken while he mixed up the "breading". He then coated the chicken and I put it on the cookie sheet. He had a great time getting messy!

The chicken turned out crunchy on the outside and moist on the inside, just as a chicken nugget should be. But unlike the store-bought chicken nuggets, these contained ingredients that we could actually pronounce! And when you bit into a nugget it was really chicken rather than some strangly textured homogenious chicken-like substance. These are chicken nuggest that I'd be happy for my kids to eat every day!

Our Easter Eggs

Our hens are starting to lay eggs again! Yay! It feels like forever since we had eggs in the fridge, but soon enough we'll be almost drowning in them. We have a few hens that are starting to lay their first tiny eggs and a few hens that are fairly old (in hen years) and are laying duck-sized eggs. We also have hens that lay brown eggs, white eggs and green-blue colored eggs. So our egg baskets look like Easter baskets all year! I did save a dozen white eggs this year that we may color, but with the variety of colored eggs we have naturally there's really no need to dye any.

Paleo/Primal Chocolate Pancakes

I woke up this morning planning to make chocolate muffins for breakfast, but changed my mind on the way down the stairs. I decided to make Chocolate pancakes instead. Everyone in my house loves pancakes, whereas muffins are hit or miss. So I went with the consistent winner and cooked up a batch of chocolate pancakes. I used my usual Coconut flour pancake recipe but made a couple of minor changes to pack them full of chocolatey goodness. I think the added cocoa powder gave them a richer flavor that didn't really need syrup (but I added some anyway :) ). I still like the regular recipe, but this chocolate one will give me a second option if the morning calls for just a little more chocolate. :)

Chocolate Coconut Flour Pancakes
4 Eggs
1 14oz can coconut milk
2 t cinnamon
3 T unsweetened cocoa powder
1 t baking soda
1 t salt
1 T vanilla
2 ripe banana
1/2 C Coconut flour
Combine all ingredients in a blender starting from the top of the list down, mixing until well blended. Add water by the Tablespoon if needed to blend completely. Heat a griddle to 300F. Pour batter from blender onto griddle forming 4 inch pancakes (pancakes much bigger than that will be hard to flip). Add any mix-ins such as shredded coconut, dark chocolate chips, chopped nuts at this time. Once bubbles form in the batter then break and the edges look dry, flip pancakes. Serve warm with pure maple syrup and fruit or the toppings of your choice!



Clean plate!

And another clean plate!

Everyday Cookie

I just received my copy of Eat Like a Dinosaur: Recipe & Guidebook for Gluten-free Kids (ELaD) by the Paleo Parents. It is a wonderful treasure trove of kid friendly Paleo recipes that I intend to fully review very soon. But this afternoon I was instructed by the boy to make some chocolate chip cookies while he was at baseball practice. While I have several good paleo chocolate chip cookie recipes and the ones in Eat Like a Dinosaur also look very promising I was inspired by the "Anytime Cookie" recipe in the book. The idea of an Anytime cookie, which is a cookie that contains only healthy food that is good to eat anytime, is an awesome idea. I've gone in that same direction before when making muffins for the kids that were packed full of veggies, fruits and nuts. If I can make a "Treat" that the kids love to eat, but contains protein, vitamins and such without added sugar, then I wouldn't mind if they had a couple for breakfast, or had one in their school lunch bag or had one for an after school snack.

The ELaD Anytime Cookie recipe looked good, but I was running low on Almond flour and had some carrots that were begging to be put into a cookie. So I went in another direction. The result is a cakey cookie that is moist and sweet without added sugar; all sweetness comes from fruit and chocolate chips. The Boy loved them as did the girl...and the Hubby; so I imagine I'll be making these Everyday Cookies a lot...although hopefully not Everyday.



Everyday Cookie
4 Carrots
1 ripe banana
5-6 prunes
1/2 C almond butter
1/2 C walnuts
2 Eggs
2 t cinnamon
1 t salt
1 t baking soda
1 T Vanilla
1/2 C coconut flour
1/2 C dark chocolate chips

In a food processor, puree carrots, banana, prunes, and walnuts. Add all other ingredients except chocolate chips and process until well incorporated. Mix chips in by hand then drop dough by large spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet with a silpat or parchment paper lining. Bake for 15 minutes at 350 degrees. Cool completely before handling. Makes about 2 dozen.

Olives are Awesome!

I discovered something this morning, that I have been missing all of my Paleo lifetime...maybe my whole lifetime! For breakfast, I made my usual three fried eggs with baby kale sautéed in coconut oil, then looked over at the bottle of olives we purchased at Costco yesterday. Hmmm, would olives taste good with eggs and greens? I wasn't sure. But I'm pretty culinarily adventurous; so I thought I'd give it a try. Oh my! It was exactly the thing breakfast has been missing all along! The salty/sour of the olives fit with the fattiness of the eggs and the sautéed kale perfectly! This will become my go-to breakfast from here on out! Give it a try.