Paleo Recipe - Chicken with Spicy Thai Almond Butter Dipping Sauce

In case you haven't noticed, I use a lot of heat in my recipes.  If you are a "spice weanie" feel free to reduce the quantity of peppers.  I brought this dish to a potluck I went to last night and it was all eaten so that was a good sign.  I really liked this dish but I must admit I prefer peanut sauce over almond butter sauce.

Chicken with Spicy Thai Almond Butter Dipping Sauce:

Grilled Chicken:

4 Chicken breasts sliced about 1/2 inch thick against the grain
Juice from 3 limes
Juice from 1 orange
1 jalapeno minced (remove seeds if you want a less spicy version)
1 T grated ginger
2 T chopped cilantro
3 cloves minced garlic
1 T red pepper flakes (omit if you don't like spicy food)
1/4 cup olive oil
Pinch of salt

Mix all ingredients together and marinate chicken about 1 hour, stirring thoroughly once. 

Grill on medium high heat for a couple of minutes on each side.

Thai Almond Butter Dipping Sauce:

1/2 cup almond butter
1/8 cup coconut milk
1 tsp fresh grated ginger
1 clove minced garlic
Juice from one orange
Juice from one lime
2 tsp tamari sauce
1 tsp cider vinegar
1 tsp red pepper flakes

Mix all ingredients together.  It is best to make this dipping sauce a day ahead so all the flavors meld together.

Cheers!

Paleo Recipe - Easy Crockpot Rosemary & Garlic Chicken Stew

I threw this together in a pot on Valentine's Day and had a big bowl of it yesterday for lunch.  It is very flavorful and the chicken was so moist it almost melted in my mouth!

Easy Crockpot Rosemary & Garlic Chicken Stew:

1 whole free range chicken (my preference is free range)
1 sweet potato diced
3 organic carrots diced
2 stalks celery chopped
1 large onion chopped
1 medium eggplant diced
1 can diced tomatoes
20 cloves of garlic whole cloves peeled
3 whole sprigs of rosemary
Salt
Pepper

Rinse chicken and take out any parts such as neck, gizzards.  Rub with salt and pepper.  Stuff 10 cloves plus whole rosemary sprigs inside cavity.  Place 1/2 of first 3 ingredients plus 5 cloves of garlic into crock pot.  Place chicken breast side up into crockpot.  Cover with the other half of first 3 ingredients plus 5 cloves of garlic.

Turn crockpot on low heat and cover, cooking for 3 hours.  Add tomatoes and eggplant and cook for another 2-3 hours.  Chicken is done when leg bones wiggles very easily and chicken is falling off the bone.  Once igredients are cool, take chicken out of the pot and remove all meat from bones.  The meat is VERY easy to remove and practically falls off the bone.  Make sure you remove all bones from stew.  Add chicken meat back into veggies, stir and serve!  Delicioso!

Tantalizing Temptations

Today is the end of my first week of the 30 Day Challenge!!  My only cheat was a bit of raw honey in the chocolate orange custard I made for Valentine's dinner last night.  Truly.  Amazing.  And I am not just talking about the dessert!  It is amazing that I haven't had any wine, sugar, brown rice, black beans, quinoa and the likes since that is what I have been subsisting on for the past 10 years!  Patting myself on the back.

Today was one of the most challenging days.  I got together with 7 girlfriends for a potluck to talk about a wine fest weekend we have coming up (yes, this will be a full on cheat weekend).  There was a lot of great food, everyone brought wine and even chocolate brownies.  Skip the brownies?  Sure, no problem.  Skip the wine?  Oh hell, I wanted that wine so bad I could nearly taste it!  I must have will power of steel to have resisted that wine!

At the end of week one on the full challenge but actually on day 15 eating this way, I am down 9 lbs.  N I N E lbs!!  Wow!  I realize that my body was initially in shock and a lot of this is water weight but I will take it!

I made a great crock pot recipe that I will post tomorrow.

Valentine's Paleo Dessert - Chocolate Orange Custard

I went without wine, my vise, for Valentine's dinner but I wanted to come up with a tasty dessert.  This contains raw honey, which I don't think is recommended for the first 30 days and then only occasionally but since I didn't drink wine or champagne, I wanted a small treat for Valentine's day.  I was quite pleased with the results of this however, next time I will sprinkle the top with unsweetened grated coconut before I put it in the oven.

Paleo Recipe - Chocolate Orange Custard:

4 Eggs
3/4 can of coconut milk
1/3 cup coco powder
2 T raw honey
1 T hot water
1/2 cup fresh squeezed orange juice, reduced by half over medium heat and cooled
1 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp cinnamon
Orange zest for garnish and added flavor

Place large casserole dish with 1/2 inch of water in oven and heat oven to 325.  Wisk eggs and then wisk in coconut milk, vanilla and cooled orange juice (if it is hot it will cook the eggs prematurely).   Put coco powder and cinnamon in a small cup and add hot water, stirring to make a chocolate sauce.  Add honey to chocolate mix.  Add chocolate sauce to egg mixture.  Wisk until everything is mixed in.  Pour into 4 dessert ramekins (in photo) and place ramekins carefully into casserole dish in oven.  Cook for 28-35 minutes until top has puffed up and feels firm when tapped.  Grate orange zest over custard and serve while still warm.

I have been keeping up my walking routine.  Today I walked 7668 steps, according to my pedometer.  That equates to almost 4 miles.

Paleo Valentine's Dinner - Easy Orange Garlic Scallops

My biggest challenge tonight was not opening up a good bottle of wine to go with the delicious dinner I made.  I am a wino and I would have sold my sister for a chance to open up one of the bottles I have stored away but I resisted temptation knowing that the reward of better health and a new wardrobe are in my not too distant future.

If there is one thing I do well it is cooking.  My boyfriend tells me we don't need to eat out because I can cook better than any restaurant in town.  I think it is just an excuse for him not to take me out to dinner!  I need to start burning food. ;-)  Tonight I made seared scallops in an orange garlic sauce served over a bed of wilted spinach with sauteed red cabbage and steamed asparagus in lemon sprinkled with finely chopped almonds.  This is a very easy recipe with just a few ingredients.  I hope you enjoy it!

Paleo Recipe - Orange Garlic Scallops:

1 lb large sea scallops
2/3 cup juice squeezed from fresh oranges
Juice from 1/2 of a lemon
2 tsp minced garlic
2 T coconut oil
Salt & Pepper to taste

Put orange juice in small pan and reduce by 1/2 over medium heat.  Pat scallops dry and sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper on both sides.  Heat coconut oil on medium high and when oil is hot, place scallops in pan.  Cook for 1 1/2 minutes on each side or until golden brown.  Remove scallops from pan, turn down heat to medium and deglaze* the pan with the reduced orange juice and juice from the 1/2 lemon.  Stir in the garlic.  Place scallops back into pan and toss with sauce, then cook for 1 more minute.

Serve over a bed of spinach and pour remainder of sauce over scallops.

Deglaze - Adding the cold liquid to the browned bits left in the pan from the scallops, salt and pepper create a wonderful sauce!

Ahhh, You Cursed Brat! Look What You've Done! I'm Melting, Melting...

I am not melting but it seems my FAT is!  Truly, I feel like the wicked witch of the west but in such a good way!  And the cursed brat is my best girlfriend from high school, Christine, who pointed me in the direction of Paleo and has been such an incredible icon of support, love and encouragement for so many years.

Today I am 14 days into eating the Paleo way but this is only the 6th day of my 30 day challenge.  Several people on the Robb Wolf Forum recommend throwing the scale away or at least hiding it during this challenge.  Why the heck would I do that if I continue to see such positive results?!  If my weight loss stalls, I vow to put the scale away until March 8th, the end of my 30 Day Challenge.

As of today I have lost 9.5 lbs!!  And this calculated from the lowest I have weighed in 3 months!  Not only that, but I tried on a few pairs of jeans yesterday that I haven't been able to wear for well over a year.  Yes, I did appear to have squashed myself into a sausage casing but I can at least get them on and even zip and button them!  If  I continue on this path I will even be able to wear these jeans in public in another few weeks!

The only "cheating" I have done since I began this challenge was two nights when I had to take some cough medicine, which contains sugar, otherwise I was at risk of coughing up my lungs.  I eat when I am hungry and have figured out the things I need to have in the frig and cupboard for those "if I don't get food into my belly NOW I will eat my own shoe leather" moments.  Here are a few things I have tried to keep on hand to snack on between meals:

Avocados
Raw almonds
Cashews
Almond Butter
Fresh coconut (it is a work out just extracting the meat but worth the effort!)
Grilled Chicken
Canned tuna

These are my go to foods.

I am feeling great!!  And lookin' better, if I do say so myself!  My face is less puffy and I seem to have less of a spare tire around my waist. 

I had been fairly sedentary over the past year.  Depressed and unmotivated due to the impending death of my mom who was withering away from cancer at the young age of 69, I could barely drag myself out of bed or off the couch.  I would cry for hours but pull myself together before my boyfriend got home from work so he would not know that I was falling apart at the seams.  I put up a strong front with my friends but inside I felt like my heart was being wrenched out of my chest.  This didn't lead to the most healthy lifestyle.  Having bone surgery on my foot didn't help matters as I couldn't even walk further than 1/2 a mile without excruciating pain until the last couple of months.

I ordered a pedometer on Amazon and received it on the morning of my official 30 Day Challenge.  My goal when I started the challenge was to walk at least 5 miles a week for my first month.  The average person walks 2000 steps in a mile.  Here is my daily step count since the start of my challenge:

Day 1 - 4375
Day 2 - 7613
Day 3 - 5029
Day 4 - 6939
Day 5 - 6390

This is a total of 25,941, which equals almost 13 miles and I still have 2 days to go!  Oh yeah!!!

Paleo Recipe - Spicy Chipotle Chicken Sausage Frittata

I feel like an eating machine and I am becoming a bit obsessed with coming up with Paleo friendly recipes!  This morning I made a frittata and I must throw modesty aside and say it was truly the best frittata I have ever had!  Here are the ingredients and also a photo:

8 farm fresh free range eggs
6 crimini mushrooms sliced
1 small onion diced
15 organic grape tomatoes cut in quarters lengthwise
1 jalapeno diced
1 cup kale (from my garden) chopped
2 Trader Joe's chicken apple sausages chopped ( I like the sweetness of the apple with the spicy chipotle but you may use other sausage if you prefer)
1 chipotle pepper chopped
2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp oregano
fresh ground pepper and a pinch of salt.

Heat oven to 375.  Wisk eggs and set aside.  Saute onions and jalapeno pepper for 3-5 minutes.  Add all other ingredients and saute another 2-3 minutes.  Pour eggs over ingredients in pan.  Bake for 8-12 minutes until egg is set.  Slice into wedges.  I served this with 1/2 an avocado and my homemade salsa verde.  Salud!