As you can imagine, after months of eating the same recipes over and over while writing Eat Like a Dinosaur until they were just right, we’re a little sick of our own food. Not to mention, we’ve wanted to try foods we had seen posted around the internets but hadn’t had time to try over the past few months. So, Matt took the week off of thinking up new stuff and we tried out the following recipes.89YNF59FEV
The first was Elana’s Paleo Bread. We saw this recipe when it first was posted and really wanted to try it for french toast. We were hoping that Elana’s recipe would be firm enough to stand up to the job and of course it did. Elana never disappoints! Even though we had a wider loaf pan than recommended, our loaf of bread came out perfectly. No sticking to the pan, no burns, just a wonderful texture and flavor had me use my “bread slicer” – I had almost forgotten how to use it!
We used our recipe for french toast, but since we didn’t have any blueberries for that sauce we came up with a strawberry jam sauce (see bottom of post for recipe) that is DEE-lightful to go with it. The sauce really captures the flavor of ripe strawberry jam better than I imagined it would. Every single boy in the house licked his brunch plate clean from this awesome dish. And the loaf of bread made plenty of slices for the boys to make sandwiches the next day too, what a treat!
We also tried The Mango Duck’s Chile Verde Chili. You might see this recipe and think it’s not “family friendly” but our family disappeared this right quick – there were, sadly, no leftovers. We served it for dinner with Matt’s mother, used a dollop of coconut cream (just the top from canned coconut milk) on top and everyone ate bowls of it after swirling the cream in. It’s an awesome blend of sweet and spicy with bacon and jalapenos. It was not too spicy for the boys and the pork was so tender and delicious we couldn’t get enough. Love her, check out The Mango Duck!
We all really enjoyed Paleo Comfort Foods’ Sweet Potato Casserole from their book, Paleo Comfort Foods. The boys picked this out from the book themselves and Finn essentially made the whole thing himself, with a little assistance with knives and boiling water, of course. We intended to post a video of this, but unfortunately we couldn’t reasonably fit the whole half hour into a YouTube video.
This is definitely the way I want to make my sweet potatoes from now on. The boys were attracted to the pecans on top and they really make the dish special. We had plenty of lunch leftovers that the boys had for lunch for several days in a row!
I’ve been wanting to try a BUNCH of NomNomPaleo‘s foods for the entire summer. We tried her Carrot and Parsnip Puree and are planning quite a few additional recipes, including our long fantasized Super Porktastic Bacon-Topped Spinach and Mushroom Meatloaf.
It just doesn’t seem fair that their family have such adorable boys, two successful and ridiculously nice parents, and are amazingly fit & strong. Then, on top of it all, they’re amazingly talented in graphic design, photography and recipes. If they start a cult or pyramid scheme, I’m in – I love these guys and want to keep drinking their kool-aid.
I found Dash of East’s Pumpkin Butter while salivating on foodgawker. I knew immediately upon seeing it that I had to make it for our Sunday brunch. I regularly cook on Sunday mornings and it’s (sadly) Matt’s only guaranteed meal off of work for the entire week. We’ve got a bunch of pumpkin from our trip to the farm which we roasted with Elana’s technique. This recipe was SO easy to make and the boys LOVED it. We simply substituted palm sugar for the brown sugar in the recipe, but you could use this easy recipe from GlutenFreeEasily which uses honey if you wanted. It was perfect on pancakes; you could also put it on Elana’s Paleo Bread, pumpkin bread, Spunky’s bagels, or simply as a fruit dip. So exciting fall is here!
Um, and then we made these little ditties from Elana’s Cupcake Book for the boys’ cousin’s 5th birthday. These Sunken Chocolate Souffle Cupcakes were insane. All of the birthday party guests (not remotely Paleo) happily ate these gooey ice cream cups. And, well, yea. They were GOOD.
Not to mention all the fantastic food we tested for our Make It Paleo review!
If you want to try the one recipe we did make this week, here’s Strawberry Jam Sauce, our surprisingly awesome accidental invention for the week.
Ingredients
2 C frozen strawberries (chopped or whole)
2 Tbsp coconut oil
1/2 C maple syrup
1 tsp arrowroot powder
Instructions
- Over medium high heat add maple syrup to sauce pan and bring to a soft boil
- Once bubbling, reduce to medium heat and add coconut oil and frozen strawberries
- ♥ Cook strawberries, oil and syrup together over medium heat, letting little hands whisk occasionally (this will help break-up the strawberries into small pieces), until sauce thickens slightly and strawberries soften – about 10-15 minutes, depending on strawberry size
- ♥ Once sauce is thickened and strawberries softened, whisk in arrowroot powder until fully incorporate
- ♥ Simmer over low heat for 5 to 10 minutes, until the fluid evaporates and your sauce becomes a rich and wonderful goo!
Serve warm as a sauce or store in an air-tight container and refrigerate for up to a week or two. Spread cold over Elana’s bread as a jam or do what we did – serve warm over french toast for a luscious sauce!
Enjoy doing the steps marked with a heart symbol (♥) with a tiny handed sous chef!
