Confessions

For months and months I have been gabbing about how I need to "get back on the wagon" and "I can't believe I have gained so much weight this year". So this weekend I said to myself "Alright Cora, it is super bowl weekend, enjoy the food (and thank goodness I did because the game left something to be desired!), and Monday morning finally get back on that wagon. I had a plan, though this is nothing new, I always have a plan! I just lack follow through when if comes to controlling myself around food. 

I LOVE to eat. I love the taste, the smells, the social enjoyment of eating and the emotional escape that cramming a cookie into my face seems to allow. The truth is, I have major issues with food. The only time in my life I have ever felt a true sense of control around food was when I was completely and honestly following the Paleo Diet guidelines. I also had more energy, slept better, felt less aches and pains and almost no random "I need chocolate NOW!" cravings. So....what happened?

My inner demons took over. I gave in to the feeling of being left out. I hated everyone constantly asking me "Is that paleo?", or "Should you be eating that?" or "Why not just have a little? It can't hurt anything." The truth is, it did hurt. As soon as I started to cheat the urgent cravings, the emotional defeat and the sense of failure took over and BAM! I gained all the weight I had lost back, and the entire list of other physical and emotion complaints that lead me to paleo in the first place came back. Shoot. It stinks. I hate it. 

So, back to the plan! I had a plan. I was going to wake up this morning and eat a wonderful healthy breakfast and hit the ground running. While I would like to say I did just that, I didn't. I had a hard, rushed morning getting my kids out the door to school, which is always a draining task in this house. I had a toddler who felt the need to embrace his terrible twos just a little more than usual, and instead of a big healthy breakfast I grabbed a large glass of coke and three left over cookies. I think I ate some goldfish crackers with my kid too. 

Well, there you have it. Proof positive that I have absolutely lost motivation and control. So I took a hot shower, brushed my teeth, drank a large glass of water and gave myself a little pep talk. It's time to take control over my own life again. And I need to do it in a sustainable, family friendly way. So yes, I am going to eliminate sugars. Sugar clearly makes me crazy. And I am going to embrace the Paleo lifestyle again, but with a few adjustments to fit our family. I'll discuss those changes another time. But for now, my cranky two year old and I are going to the grocery store to buy a few wonderful vegetables so I can start a big wonderful pot of delicious healthy soup. 

Step one: Refill my fridge with easy, delicious food options! Today's project, lots of yummy soup that can be reheated in 2 minutes time all week long!

What's my recipe? I don't have one! Clean, and chop every veggie that looks fresh and wonderful and throw it in the crock pot with some homemade broth. Season with wonderful herbs and let the crock pot do work it's magic. 

It is simple, but that is where I am starting. Join me on this journey! I will conquer my food demons one small step at a time. 

Friday Family Fun Night- Shapes and Colors

Happy Friday everyone! I am so sorry that I made you wait an entire week for Friday Family Fun night. I decided that it makes more sense to post each Friday's activities a week later so that the "Friday" post, actually gets posted on Friday.

So, LAST Friday, we created our evening around Shapes and Colors. My preschooler has been working on all the various shapes and colors in school. Honestly, she has had them down for a while, but it is fun to reinforce what she is working on at school in a fun way at home. So this dinner is probably the most colorful meal I have ever placed in front of my family. But first, our activities. 

I am sure you all have wonderful books to read about shapes and colors to your children. We read a few of our favorites. "Mouse Paint" by Ellen Walsh and "Pete the Cat" by Eric Litwin. I prepared for our art time by cutting out shapes of different sizes and colors out of construction paper. I decided we would make a snowy scene mural together. That in mind I cut many sizes of circles in white, triangles in orange and green, black rectangles, red octagons etc. Then we got out the large roll of painters paper that we love so much, glue, scissors, crayons and water color paints and went crazy creating our family snowman style. Or as we named it "SnowBerts!"

YES! I did the art project with my kids! It is FAMILY fun night! I really enjoy spending time being creative with my children. Plus, I got to really take advantage of the teaching opportunity as we took all the shapes I had cut out and turned them into a picture. 

And now, our beautiful dinner! 

Pan Baked Chicken with Fresh Strawberry-Mango Salsa, Sweet Potato Flowers, Pineapple and Banana Circles, Broccoli, and Blueberries. So many colors, and so delicious!

"Strawberry-Mango Salsa"

2 cups Fresh Strawberries Chopped

1/3 of a Fresh Mango Chopped 

1 Jalapeno chopped very fine (seeds removed)

Fresh Cilantro finely snipped 

Juice from 1/2 of a Lime

Prepare ingredients as listed above. Stir together. Yes, it is that easy! And this was incredibly tasty served on top of our cooked boneless skinless chicken breasts. 

"Sweet Potato Flowers"

Thinly slice sweet potatoes into rings that look like chips and place in a bowl. Toss with1-2 teaspoons of olive oil and sprinkle with a touch of cinnamon. Spread chips in a single layer on cookie sheets and place in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes on each side. Remove when Sweet Potatoes are soft. While cooling, cut chips with a small cookie cutter to make fun shapes. Simple and tasty.

Now the really fun part is presentation. The picture below is of the exact same food presented without the rainbow effect. It is still pretty... but didn't excite my children as much as the rainbow presentation in the picture above.  

Ultimately the point is to have fun while eating foods that strengthen the body! Enjoy this meal as a family! 

                                                   Have a WONDERFUL weekend!! 

Taco Stuffed Mushroom Caps

Happy Tuesday!

Yesterday I was feeling like getting creative in the kitchen. So, I made up a new recipe that seriously scores 5 stars at our house! Taco Stuffed Mushroom Caps.

"Taco Stuffed Mushroom Caps"

1 Pound Ground Sirloin
15-20 fresh mushrooms, washed and stems removed
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 1/2 tsp chili powder

1 Handful of Black Olives (Sorry, this is not a precise, count every olive type of recipe!) 

2 Tbsp Guacamole 

fresh cilantro
Fresh salsa

So, first you are going to brown 1 pound of fresh ground sirloin. Season the sirloin with cumin, cayenne pepper, chili powder, and an onion if you must. My measurements above for the spices are to our taste, but taco meat can be more mild or have more kick depending on your tastes so experiment with what you like.

COOK ONCE EAT TWICE TIP- It does NOT take an entire pound of taco meat to stuff mushroom caps! So after I browned and seasoned the meat I put half of it in a container in my refrigerator to reappear in a new form today at lunch!

Next, I mixed the remaining half of the taco meat with about 2 tablespoons of guacamole* and a handful of chopped black olives. Once mixed together, spoon mixture into mushroom caps. Place mushroom caps in a glass baking dish and bake at 350 degrees for 12-15 minutes. Remove from oven, sprinkle with your favorite organic salsa and some fresh cilantro. I ate these up as lunch yesterday, and then my husband gobbled up the rest of them when he got home from work. They were very good! These would also make a fun dish to serve at a party!

*Guacamole is made from avocados, tomato, onion, cilantro, salt and garlic. It is easy to make. I will post my recipe another time. (If you rather buy guacamole, that is fine. Always watch your ingredients to be sure that everything is fresh and meets your own diet standards. If it has ingredients you can't pronounce or don't recognize, it probably isn't good for you! 

Cook Once, Eat Twice! Sweet Potato Pancakes

My amazing mother has always been trying to get me to plan ahead when it comes to our weekly menu. She says I should cook once and eat twice, and by doing so save a whole bunch of prep time in the kitchen. So this week, I am going to explore this idea, starting with this morning's breakfast! I had some left over Whipped Sweet Potatoes that we served as a side the other night. I have been itching for a new breakfast option so I decided to get creative this morning. If you missed the post about with the recipe for Whipped Sweet Potatoes here it is:  

"Whipped Sweet Potatoes"

3 Large Sweet Potatoes (Peeled and cubed)
1/4 Cup Coconut Cream
1 Tbsp Ghee
1 Tbsp Cinnamon
1/2 Tbsp Nutmeg
1 tsp Vanilla
2 Tbsp Pure Organic Honey
Salt to taste

Place peeled and cubed sweet potatoes in a large pot and bring to boil. Cook covered until potatoes are fork tender, about 20 minutes. Drain water. Mix remaining ingredients together with the sweet potatoes and mash until they reach desired consistency. 

This morning all I had to do was grab the container of left over potatoes and stir in one beaten egg. From there I heated a pan on medium heat and melted about a tablespoon of Ghee (purified butter). Then I scooped pancake sized scoops of the mixture into the pan. Cook on first side until pancake browns around the edges and center starts to look more solid. Flip and cook on the other side. Meanwhile, I sliced a few strawberries to serve with my pancakes. Total this breakfast took me about 15 minutes and I REALLY enjoyed it!

"Sweet Potato Pancakes"

2 Cups Left over "Whipped Sweet Potatoes" 
1 Egg, beaten
1-2 Tablespoon(s) Ghee

Serve with fresh fruit and a sprinkle of coconut flakes! Mom was totally right on this one. Making a little extra whipped sweet potatoes with dinner required no extra effort and then  made breakfast this morning extremely simple. I hope you enjoy it! 

Are you sure there is nothing to eat?

So it has been one of those weeks where the budget is tight and I have been trying to use every last scrap of food I can find to avoid going to the store before pay day, plus is has been really cold out so I haven't wanted to leave the house! Please tell me I am not the only person who does this? Anyhow, we had a few somewhat creative meals this week as a result.

Tonight, I literally took the remaining contents of my refrigerator and said, "What can I do with this?" Often, this approach results in some form of soup or stew, which is the magic way of using that one remaining zucchini or half a green pepper. I love making soup! Today however, I wasn't in the mood for my traditional veggie soup and I was missing some of my favorite ingredients. So, I got creative and worked with what I had which was:

1 Parsnip
1/2 bag of Baby Carrots
2 cloves of Garlic
2 Zucchini
5 Strips of Bacon

Huh. Doesn't look like dinner does it? Enter my awesome pantry! From my pantry I added:

2 Cans of Diced Tomatoes
1 Can of full fat Coconut Milk
1 Can Chicken Broth (I used only 1 Cup)
1 Tsp of Salt
1 Tsp Dried Basil

In a soup pot, add sliced parsnip, zucchini, carrots, cans of tomatoes (do not drain, add the juice as well), 2 cloves minced garlic, salt, basil and 1 cup of chicken broth. Bring pot to boil and allow veggies to get soft. At the same time cook bacon, cool and crumble. When veggies are tender, put mixture in a food processor and whirl. Put mixture back into the soup pot on simmer and add 1 can of full fat coconut milk to mixture. Stir in bacon bits or sprinkle on top. This ended up tasting like a creamy tomato and basil soup... but with many other awesome vegetables AND BACON, hiding within it. I was especially excited because my oldest daughter LOVED this soup and she swears that she HATES zucchini. The vegetable ninja strikes again!

In other news, we had a snow day this week. It was a perfect snow day. Lots of packing snow, perfect for building snow men and forts, but warm enough outside that we could enjoy playing.

 






Happy Friday Family Fun Day! Tonight our theme is shapes and colors! Will post details on Monday. Have a wonderful weekend!

Finger Food Feast

Happy Monday to you!

Last night we strayed from the usually big Sunday dinner. There have been MANY recipes I have wanted to try and just never seem to get around to trying them. So last night, I finally gave them a go! First I must give credit where credit is due. Everyone should own "Everyday Paleo, Family Cookbook" by Sarah Fragoso. This is an outstanding cookbook and packed full of great ideas and information. The recipes posted today are adapted from this cookbook. I say "adapted from" because I never can seem to leave a recipe alone. I will list what is in the cookbook, and then tell you what I did as well.

Tuna Stuffed Eggs

6 hard-boiled eggs
2 Tbsp Mayonaise
1 Green Onion (I leave this out due to my distaste for onion)
2 teaspoons lemon juice
2 teaspoons Dijon or yellow mustard
Sea Salt and black pepper to taste
1 6 oz can tuna, drained

Peel hard boiled eggs and slice in half lengthwise, scooping out the yoke. Mix egg yokes with other ingredients, stirring in the Tuna last. Spoon the yoke mixture back into the hallowed out egg. We added  2 tablespoons of Dill Pickle Relish to this as well as a sprinkle of paprika.

This recipe got a great review from my family. I now plan to sneak these into after school snacks and even lunch boxes. I think that the weekend is a great time to try new recipes. Sending my kids off to school with something brand new in their lunches makes me nervous. What if they don't like it? I hate the thought of my child, or any child for that matter, hungry. So I try out recipes on the weekend when we are not rushed. Then if we have a failed attempt, there is time to try something else, and I know not to send it to school.

We also had this fresh tray of veggies with a wonderful dip!

Credit goes to my adorable husband for arranging these veggies to look so pretty! What a big helper he can be. :-)

What is the dip you ask??? Would you believe me if I told you that I got my kids to eat vegetables dipped in vegetables?! Seriously, I felt like a nutrition ninja! This wonderful dip, also from Sarah Fragoso's "Everyday Paleo Family Cookbook". Soon there will be an entire section on this blog featuring the many wonders of Cauliflower.

Cauliflower Hummus

4 cups steamed cauliflower
2 tablespoons almond butter
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1-2 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon paprika
Pinch cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon sea salt

Steam cauliflower until fork tender. Drain and cool. Once cauliflower is cool place in a food processor along with remaining ingredients and process until completely smooth.

We enjoyed this recipe, though as always have thought of variations to try in the future. We like a little more kick, so we thought of perhaps adding some roasted red peppers and a touch more cumin. The fun part about cooking is that there are so many possibilities!

Space- The Final FUNtier!

Welcome to Friday Family Fun Night! The Space Edition!

We spent the afternoon watching "Wall-E" and making our very own alien hats!

It is amazing the amount of fun you can have with construction paper, pipe cleaners, markers and glue. In our house, a good stash of emergency art supplies is a must! 

The highlight of our outer space dinner was this very fun "Solar System Salad". We use large naval oranges sliced in circles to make the Sun, slices of Star Fruit for stars, and made melon balls as the moons and planets (we used a small watermelon so they would look like Mars!) My children thought that this was possibly the coolest thing I have ever placed in front of them and it was so simple. This was also the first time they have had Star Fruit. They LOVED it, and why not, it is delicious and looks like stars!

The remainder of our dinner requires a little more imagination to grasp the vision. We served delicious slow roasted pork tenderloin on a bed of whipped sweet potatoes with a baked apple on top. This was supposed to be a flying saucer. Can you see it? The potatoes are supposed to be the steam or smoke coming out of the bottom of the saucer. Anyway, my kids went for it. They love these dinners an get really into the theme and making the food fun. So naturally, we had to cut up the pork and the apples for the kids. My four year old then said "Mom! My space ship crashed into the mud and broke!!" OK, that vision worked. I love my kids. We also served this dinner with a side of delicious green beans. We had an idea to make them into aliens, but everyone just wanted to eat, so for the night we just called them "Alien Tentacles".

Recipes:

Pork Tenderloin (This is not really a recipe... but it is what I did!)

Dust with Sea Salt, Black Pepper and Thyme. Place in a glass casserole dish and bake at 350 Degrees for 2 hours. This for so tender and juicy. We loved it!


"Whipped Sweet Potatoes"

3 Large Sweet Potatoes (Peeled and cubed)
1/4 Cup Coconut Cream
1 Tbsp Ghee
1 Tbsp Cinnamon
1/2 Tbsp Nutmeg
1 tsp Vanilla
2 Tbsp Pure Organic Honey
Salt to taste

Place peeled and cubed sweet potatoes in a large pot and bring to boil. Cook covered until potatoes are fork tender, about 20 minutes. Drain water. Mix remaining ingredients together with the sweet potatoes and mash until they reach desired consistency. These were sweet and delicious... but not the same as those Thanksgiving Dinner Sweet Potatoes all covered in marshmallows. Sweet potatoes are an incredible super food so I have been searching for a way to get my children to enjoy them. This recipe did the trick... or maybe it was that I presented it as part of a space ship, either way, I will take it!

"Baked Apple"

Cut apples in half and removed the core (I actually used my melon baller to remove the core which worked wonderfully). I drizzled just a touch or honey in each apple slice, placed them in a glass baking dish and baked for about 30 minutes at 350 Degrees or until the apple was soft, but not gooey.

There you have it. We wrapped up the evening with a couple episodes of the original Star Trek series, with a clean up break in between episodes. We must start each day with a clean kitchen or it seems as though no one gets to eat!

"Live Long and Prosper!" -Mr. Spock