SQUEE! It’s finally time for us to share our upcoming book, Real Life Paleo! Real Life Paleo is in the final editing stages and it’s time to share sneak peeks! Our 3rd book combines the knowledge that we’ve learned from being leaders in this movement for over 4 years with the practical lifestyle tips we use to make it work in our family of 3 young boys. Real Life Paleo is all about nourishing the people in your life with nutrient-dense foods that are made into quick, simple, easy, delicious meals.
Real Life Paleo includes our incredibly popular 3-Phased Approach to transition to the Paleo lifestyle, which is simplified into 3 simple steps: SWAP, REMOVE and HEAL. No need to be confused about where to start. Don’t get overwhelmed with all the complicated intricacies about the lifestyle. Real Life Paleo breaks it down into easy to execute stages to help everyone succeed at their own pace! With tear-out guides, shopping lists, and all kinds of tools you’ll be set to get on the wagon and stay on!
And the key to sustained success will be enjoying delicious food. So, let’s talk about what the book’s 175 recipes! Real Life Paleo has:
- 80/20 ratio of super healthy recipes to paleo-friendly treats
- 79 recipes made under 30 minutes or less
- 69 recipes made with 5 ingredients or less
- 81 recipes made with only 1 pot
- 27 holiday recipes
- visual indexes to all the above to easily find what you’re looking for
- allergen index, including 114 egg-free, 108 nut-free, and 143 nightshade-free recipes
- meal ideas for each phase and every meal, showing you how to put a whole meal on your table (not just recipes)
- how-to sections on paleo staples like making your own spice rubs, vegetable rices, noodles & mashes, and nut butters and milks
Seriously.
We’ve made this book for everyone to succeed. We’ve made bread with cauliflower. We’ve added nutrient-dense healing paleo super foods (like egg yolks, seafood, broth, beef and even sneaky organ meats) into over 50 of the recipes! If you cook from Real Life Paleo you’ll have a micro-nutrient dense diet that is scientifically proven to reduce inflammation, support weight loss and help you gain health. We cannot wait to share it with you all!
So, how about a sneak peek into the making of Real Life Paleo?
As you may have noticed, the cover took quite a significant turn over time! It was never our intention for the previous cover to be the permanent one, but we knew it would be extremely difficult to execute our ultimate vision, which was a full table shot of typical dinner for everyday people (hence REAL LIFE).
Problem is, getting in the full space needed for an entire book cover and not just a meal was more than we anticipated. And even the foods we thought would be on the cover, aren’t. The above shot is one of MANY we took on the final cover shoot day. Originally we thought yuca fries and kale chips were a good idea. Alas, they weren’t very appetizing… so we switched to the foods on the cover we now love with sweet potato chips and broccoli along side the chicken fingers, butternut bisque & bacon soup, and (fruit sweetened) chocolate chip cookies.
Only with the help of the entire DC Metro area paleo food bloggers were we able to get that cover shot! Thanks to Brent and Heather from Virginia is for Hunter Gatherers, Russ and Janey from The Domestic Man, Sam from Paleo Sitter and Aimee for sticking it out all day to work towards this shot. Yes, ALL DAY. Matt ended up cooking several versions of the same meal to keep it looking fresh as we made 1/4″ adjustments and got the shot perfectly clear.
If you think the team got into some crazy positions for the cover, you’re right. Although, it wasn’t new for our friend and photographer, Aimee, who spent much of her Sundays hovering in odd positions trying to get overhead shots. Without the really expensive equipment for a fancy armed tripod and blue tooth to remote photos to a laptop that most overhead photographers use, Aimee did an incredible job getting stunning shots for Real Life Paleo consistent with the aesthetic I was hoping for. A family-friendly appeal with food for everyone of all ages.
This Chicken Fingers, Honey Mustard, Ants on a Log, and Coconut Milk shot are part of our kid-friendly section.
Aimee escalated the Apple Cinnamon Crumb Cake recipe from our blog to new heights for Real Life Paleo.
Sometimes though, the food just speaks for itself and you end up with every shot from every simple angle just looking stunning. Such is the cake with our Chocolate Berry Cake, perfect for birthdays. Our team member Sam actually made it for her own birthday this year after loving it the day we made and photographed it.
See, Aimee’s giving the cake two thumbs up. She was excited she didn’t need to try to disguise anything in the photos!
I love how all the photos of our family for the book are just our hands because we were always in our jammies!
The thing about photographing a cookbook with a professional photographer and not just with yourself is that it means respecting their time and shooting about a dozen recipes in one day. In our case, that was every Sunday for several months. So during the week recipes were developed, on Saturday food was prepped, and on Sunday the food was shot.
Almost every Sunday our kitchen table was filled with food after it would come off the photography table. The family and team members would swarm around the table, looking at “the list” for the day, snacking on leftovers from the photo shoots, and helping Matt chop veggies.
What foods do you see that you recognize, and what foods do you see that you’d like us to share the recipes for? Over the next couple of months, leading up to the November 4th release of Real Life Paleo we’ll be sharing several recipes from the book with you. We hope you’ll love them and the book as much as we do!
If you can’t wait, simply send us your pre-order confirmation and we’ll forward you an exclusive recipe for our Breakfast Burritos! Also, pre-ordering through Amazon guarantees you the lowest price AND you won’t have to pay until it ships! I happen to think this book will make EXCELLENT holiday gifts, so order a bunch now to keep the cost down!
If you still want more info on the book, read our original post here. But in the meantime, get excited because our plan is to share the Cranberry Clemintine (no bake) Coconut Bars in September!
Get excited, we’ll share this no-bake recipe from Real Life Paleo soon!
