Refreshing “Un-salad Salad” Lunches for Hot Weather - A Guest Post for The Balanced Platter

I was delighted to write a guest post for The Balanced Platter that was published this week!

My topic was lunch salads that can be packed ahead of time without wilting by lunchtime. The secret is choosing heartier vegetable bases.

The below is a sneak peak, but click on over to The Balanced Platter to read the full post for mix and match options that add up to 9 different pack-ahead "un-salad" combinations!

Estimating Needed Freezer Space, and Buying A Whole (Smallish) Grassfed Cow, In Pictures

It's COW DAY!

Today our family picked up its first whole grassfed cow. Before, we had bought half grassfed cows from a couple of different local farmers. We knew that we were in for a lot more beef than we had ever bought, so we added another chest freezer to our family's setup in the garage.

Before our family made the move toward increasingly depending on local bulk purchases of meat, I was always at a loss for knowing how much beef would be involved, how much freezer space we'd need to have,  and whether we could handle the commitment. I used to be rather annoyed when I could never seem to get a straight answer from people who had bought bulk in the past...but now I know why! There are so many factors, it is hard to pin the experience down.

Example: How many pounds of meat can I expect in my grassfed beef purchase?

Answer:

2011 (Half cow, Farmer A): 198 lb. dry hanging weight

2012 (Half cow, Farmer B): 498 lb. dry hanging weight

2013 (Whole cow, Farmer B): 660 lb. dry hanging weight

Do you see what happened there? The cow sizes varied not only between Farmers A and B, but also between how much beef we committed to buy from Farmer B. Farmer B was straightforward about the fact that his smallest cows at slaughter go to his whole cow purchasers, to avoid the whole cow families having the sticker shock of buying, say, one of his 1000 lb. dry hanging weight cows. (Even at an inexpensive price of $3/lb. that comes to $3,000! ...whereas by comparison the smaller-side cow he designated for our whole cow purchase - at 660 lb - came to $1980, kill fee and butchering fee included in that number.)

What I can visually quantify for curious would-be local beef buyers, though, is how much space is required for certain amounts of meat. For example, we own an older Hyundai Santa Fe. 660 lb. of frozen beef took up the entire back. You can see two large knee-high Sterilite containers (blue and grey) containing just a small amount of the beef.

In other words our emptied trunk is capable of transporting a small whole grassfed cow (660 lb. shown here), or half a very large grassfed cow (498 lb. in the past)...that's with the back seats still installed.

I can also give visuals on the rough proportion of cuts we got from our 660 lb. this time around. It is worth noting that my husband specifically requested that the butcher cut our beef to maximize grill-ability. (We do lurv ourselves some grilling in this family!) That means that cuts that might have been roasts (like chuck roasts) were instead cut as chuck steaks and cube steaks.

I used smaller Sterilite containers to divvy up some of the meats on our driveway. This way my girls could take 1 lb. packs of frozen ground beef from the designated "ground beef bin" to their daddy standing by the freezer in the garage...while I sorted the cuts.

 Below you'll see the cuts in a shallow (6" deep, roughly 2' by 3') Sterilite container. This is to give you an informal idea of the quantity of cuts that comes from a 660 lb. purchase. These are rough estimates only...even after taking the shots of the cuts I'd discover an extra of the same cut here or there somewhere else, so there is an estimation margin of error.

These are shown in a large knee-high depth Sterilite container.

This one's an exception...the T-Bones shown were in
a smaller Sterilite container that would hold a couple of shoeboxes side by side.

One last photo. This shows how much freezer space we required for 660 lb. You'll notice that we got A WHOLE LOT of ground beef in the deal. Our top freezer on our refrigerator is completely full of ground beef. Our chest freezer also had some ground beef in it, along with other cuts.

This is where I can give the good "rule of thumb" estimation I always give friends who are curious about freezer space requirements for bulk purchases.

• One refrigerator freezer can store roughly 100 lb. of meat...if it's "neatly contained" (like the blocks of ground beef shown here). More irregularly-shaped cuts may mean less storage efficiency.
• One modest waist-high chest freezer (as shown here) can hold roughly 200 lb. of meat.
• One modest double-wide chest freezer (as shown here) can hold roughly 400 lb. of meat.

That adds up to 700 lb. capacity, but since we had a few items (like leftover bones from our last bulk purchase) still in the freezers, that largely fits with the notion of 660 lb. of meat.

The best way to determine, then, if you have enough freezer space, is to ask your farmer before committing to a quarter, half, or whole cow is whether he/she might be able to predict the final dry hanging weight of your committed purchase. Then, eyeball your existing freezer space and use the rules of thumb above to see if you're in the ballpark.

In our case, we knew we'd need more freezer space, and we managed to pay $125 for the used double chest freezer shown on the right through a Craigslist connection. It was a very worthwhile addition to the garage setup!

Are you planning any bulk beef or other bulk meat purchases from your local farmers this spring? Have you figured out your freezer space needs for the purchase?

EDIT TO ADD: Jan of Jan's Sushi Bar posted this link in the comments on how much "eating meat" one can expect from beef purchases. I think it is another great measuring stick for assessing your potential purchases. THANKS, Jan!

~

Update: GAPS, Unorthodox Tweaks, and New Theories on Salicylate Sensitivity

My 3 year old daughter had a good month. OK, a really good month. The thing about having a special needs kid, is that needed core resources can often be inaccessible due to insurance, geography, or other heartbreaking complications. Or, the pendulum can find itself on the other end of the spectrum, where everybody is selling something to help, and the bewildered parent tries to figure out what is or isn't covered by insurance, and what offerings seem most promising.

In our house we have parades for celebration-worthy poops.
(Via Flickr Creative Commons.)

In the second case, it's not uncommon for a kid to make developmental or other leaps, and the parents find themselves not able to precisely determine the causes for success...because this isn't a double blind single variable/control random trial with lab rats; this is your one and only precious child, for whom you will spare little effort or expense in the hopes of progress. That is, you can have several contributing factors at once, and it can be hard to pin successes on any one factor.

In our case, we have connected in recent months with a board certified pediatrician who is known in our area for specializing with special needs kids and gut health. There are many things she is trying with our daughter, including some targeted supplementation after an initial lab determining nutrient status. Most notably, though, she characterized the GAPS diet as a, "good starting point". She noted that my daughter's ongoing issues with soft, mushy poop signaled that yeast could still be a problem, and asked us to cut way back on fruit. Although fruit is GAPS-legal, I think it is easy to overdo, at least in our case, because it is so portable and fast. Our daughter was eating 3 or 4 pieces in a day at the time. The doctor also recommended introducing a small handful of ancient gluten free grains, to see how they were tolerated.

GRAINS?! The part of me that was so committed and knowledgeable about how GAPS is supposed to proceed was fairly panicky at the thought. GAPS is supposed to heal the gut, and then much longer down the road, include nongluten grains once the gut was stabilized.

But, I had been feeling desperate to try something different. Mushy poop is not exactly an asset for a kid you'd hope to daytime potty train before her preschool potty training deadline arrives this fall. We started to follow the doctor's prescribed guidelines. While quinoa did not seem to settle so well, buckwheat seemed to agree with her very well, so she was getting very small servings of it as a carb source. Occasionally small amounts of rice (known by many in the paleo community as a safe starch) also came into play.

And guess what? She did not regress.

In fact, for about three glorious weeks, my 3 year old made some wonderful progress. It is, of course, possible for a parent to be biased or overly subjective when evaluating behavioral changes as correlated to diet changes. But, do you know what is not so subjective? Suddenly solid, normal-looking poop. Also: Sleeping all the way through the night like a rock star. Also: Her speech therapists, occupational therapist, AND her preschool teachers gave us extra-encouraging reports.

So, not only was our daughter's behavior and concentration improving, but her previously mushy, foul-smelling poop suddenly resolved into Bristol Stool Scale 4 poops. This is what many in the special needs community would call a "holy grail poop" - it is a pretty universal sign that digestively, something has resolved or is resolving in the right direction.

So, I got cocky. I thought, "This is great, we have figured things out, we are helping her!"

And suddenly, like that, 3 weeks of awesomeness went to (har har) crap. Awful poops, increasingly disrupted sleep, lack of concentration, and ultra-lethargic, distracted behavior.

I was beside myself. I was beside myself trying to figure out what the heck happened. What had changed? Then I realized: I had been doing a 21 Day Sugar Detox through March, and about a week before Easter it ended. Suddenly, I was back to making stuff that I hadn't made for about three weeks - treat-y things involving coconut flour, almond flour, honey, etc. We also had some meals involving marinara (= tomatoes), and I had bought some frozen diced pineapple and mango - all three of which I had not bought or cooked in that three weeks.

The common denominator among these foods seems to be salicylates - and these inadvertently reintroduced foods happen to be moderately to very high in them. Sarah Ballantyne of The Paleo Mom wrote a post on salicylate sensitivity a while back. The possibility of salicylate sensitivity had also been brought up by our certified nutritional therapy practitioner.

Many who work in the field of special needs kids' gut health know that there is not always a simple answer, and that often sensitivities and allergies must be determined slowly, sometimes taking months or years to suss out. Frequently, as seems to be happening for us, major issues like gluten and dairy will be identified, only for smaller, lesser-known factors including (but not limited to) salicylates, phenols, amines, food dyes, artificial colors, and artificial flavors to be determined as fellow culprits. More complicated still, they are often naturally occuring chemical components of otherwise healthy, harmless foods that most folks can eat with impunity, so the lesser-known factors are rarely obvious unless strict dietary elimination trials are performed.

In our case, while nothing is yet 100% certain, there was certainly a dramatic enough correlation to merit serious consideration of dietary salicylates as a real problem for our daughter - because when I stopped feeding her honey, almonds, coconut, tomatoes, pineapple, and other higher salicylate foods in favor of lower-salicylate alternatives, her poop went from ultra messy and gross back to celebration-worthy, her sleep improved, and she began talking up a storm again, using sentences with even 9 or 10 words, and increasingly discussing her surroundings.

For me, continuously tweaking her diet has become much less about following a protocol's rules (whether GAPS, paleo, etc.) than turning it into a real n=1. For example, buckwheat may not be optimally nutritious in terms of its nutrient content, but as a carefully considered carb source for my daughter it beats many fruits and other high-salicylate foods because it does not draw her into messy-poo-Crazytown. In the meantime, though, several solid GAPS principles remain in place: such as probiotics, live fermented foods, and bone broth!

I have a feeling this is just one example of many tinkering exercises we will be doing with her diet in the years to come, but until then, I celebrate that we can possibly slide one more giant piece of the puzzle into place.



~
Have you broken rank with a protocol or dietary recommendation in a bid to better personalize dietary needs?

The Smallest Reasons To Persevere Are The Biggest (To Me)

Often, I wonder if it is worthwhile trying so hard as a family on the diet end of things. My investigation into how food impacts biochemistry/hormones originated about three years ago because of my family's and my own lifelong struggle with weight. Yet, striving to focus our diet on nourishing foods proves daily to be a countercultural notion.

Still, a couple of years the road, my husband and I realized that keeping my youngest's diet as cleaned up as possible was central to supporting her therapies and speech acquisition. However, these days I try to give my oldest some leeway sometimes so that she can learn about making her own choices. It is really hard to manage the dynamics of two separate levels of clean-eating between two sisters! I still run into snafus and learn lessons on how to do it better every day.

My husband took my oldest daughter to a popular and semi-legendary burger joint for a daddy-daughter date last night with my blessing - it is a rare occasion indeed at our house, probably once a year or less. When they came back and my oldest daughter was out of earshot, my husband told me that I'd be proud of her: she had eaten a bite of her burger, then removed the bun and started munching on the beef, cheese, bacon, sauteed mushrooms and onions, and said, "I just like the meat and cheese and veggies, I don't like the bun so much."

Via Flickr Creative Commons,
Gifford Photographic Collection.

I nearly fell out of my seat. It was so heartening to hear that on some level, her brain was running software that led her to the most nourishing part of the burger in front of her. I don't get to appreciate moments like these every day - there are certainly times even very recently that I've watched her dive gleefully into a sugary treat without a moment's reflection - but I am glad that she is independently displaying application of what we try to do with food at home.

There was another moment today that took me completely by surprise. The same daughter squealed to me today on the playground, "Look, Mommy, I went across the monkey bars all by myself!"

I caught my breath. Really?!

For some, the notion of a 6 year old swinging across monkey bars by herself is nothing remarkable at all: it's a kid being a kid.

But for me, it was deeply, personally encouraging. I have very clear memories of being 9 years old, watching other fourth graders whip back and forth across the monkey bars on the school playground. I tried a few times, but ultimately returned home dejected, feeling like I was less than because I was physically incapable of keeping up with the other kids on the monkey bars. By then, I was simply too heavy and not strong enough.

On Monday, my 6 year old starts a once weekly 9 week course of CrossFit Kids. It isn't the hardcore weight-bearing exercises that the CrossFitting adults do - it's looking to be more structured like an exceptionally fun phys ed class, with bear crawls and the like. I hope fervently that her budding healthy eating inclinations and her enthusiasm for the monkey bars are boosted further by an encouraging, friendly environment celebrating functional fitness!


~
Have you celebrated any small victories in your household with healthy eating and fitness this week?

Paleo Grocery Finds - What I Buy, Where: WalMart

If there's one thing that I learned long term from my years as a dedicated couponer, it is the mental exercise of skimming my grocers' shelves for price points on my regular paleo staples, and new-to-me paleo-friendly items. Even in few grocery store aisles that I shop every week, I find my eyes spontaneously flicking across each shelf, line by line, searching for novel information to plug into my brain's "product/price point" database.

Our WalMart has an
ever-improving gluten-free
section. Not necessarily
paleo, and I don't use it all the
time, but it's nice to have
there for certain occasions.

I recently realized how useful it might be to put my price points information out there - I have often been grateful to find out about paleo-friendly products at various stores from fellow real food enthusiasts, so perhaps my grocery lists will give those reading ideas about new things to look for as they're doing their grocery shopping errands. As you'll see, there are a lot of "in house" and conventional items that we buy right alongside more premium organic staples. Of course, most WalMarts with grocery sections and Super WalMarts carry a vast and varying selection of produce, eggs, meats, and fish, so your trip to WalMart may not necessarily look like ours below. But, hopefully, there will be an item or two we buy regularly that you haven't thought to check out at your own WalMart...and odds are that when you do find it, it will be very price competitive!

Prices subject to fluctuation seasonally and regionally; once you hear of something I've found, double check your own locations' stock and prices. I've put a bold  GF for "gluten free" where the product in question has been specifically marked as "gluten free".








My WalMart is not so good with its coconut milk selection. It used to carry Golden Star, which is just coconut milk and water, and comes in a green can. It wasn't always in stock, so I always grabbed a bunch when it was there. Even after I'd politely talked to a couple of managers about keeping it in stock more regularly, I mourned deeply when they instead stopped carrying it and replaced it with Imperial Dragon, whose ingredient list includes a couple of preservatives. Coconut milk is consumed so regularly at our house, including by my 3 year old daughter who has gut health issues, so finding a short ingredient list is very important to us. Now when I am in a pinch at WalMart I'll pick up Thai Kitchen's coconut milk, which still has guar gum in it, but if I plan ahead I can keep stocked with a BPA-free no-additive coconut milk via Amazon.com.

Imperial Dragon:
This is a coconut milk I avoid;
look at the ingredient list!

Goya: Another coconut milk to avoid

because of added preservative.

My Typical WalMart Shopping List

Label for WalMart's
in-house organic milk.
ALLERGY WARNING:
CONTAINS MILK.
No, really!?

Besides bulk meat purchases from local farmers, WalMart and Wegmans roughly tie for getting my most grocery dollars month in, month out. Here are the things I regularly buy for our family at WalMart.

• Organic Eggs: $4.18/doz.
• Silk Unsweetened Almond Milk: $3.18/half gal. GF
  (I like this brand because it does not have carrageenan)
• Organic Stonyfield whole milk (in-house): $3.58/half gal
  
• 1 lb. Earthbound Farm Organic Baby Carrots: $1.94/ea. (We usually buy several pounds each visit! They go in almost every lunch we pack.)
• Mariani honey bars: ~$4.99/5 pack - these are nuts, dried fruit, and honey  GF

  

  Mariani's Honey Bars. I find these by the produce section.
  I love their simple ingredient lists of nuts, fruits, and honey.
  My 6 year old daughter loves that they look like granola bars.

• Pistachios, 32 oz.: $10.99

  

  VERY nice prices
  on Thai Kitchen's
  red curry paste and
  green curry paste.

• Fischer nuts - walnuts, pecans, etc. Allergen info says processed in a plant with tree nuts but says nothing about wheat. Prices vary across sizes.
• Bananas: $0.47/lb.
• Blood oranges, around 8 in a 3 lb. bag: $3.88
• 6 ct. Marketplace single serve guacamole (WalMart's in-house version of Wholly Guacamole): ~$3.88 GF
  (These are also a lunchbox staple of ours! I sometimes stick a short straw in an opened one for my 3 year old to build her oral motor muscle tone as she sucks it up like a milkshake.)
• Wyman's frozen wild blueberries (these are teeny berries and thus great for baking): ~$0.20/oz, depending on the size bought.
• Mezzetta Pitted Greek Kalamata Olives, 9.5 oz.: $4.72/ea. GF
• Thai Kitchen Red Curry Paste and Green Curry Paste: $2.30/jar GF
  (This is at least a dollar cheaper than almost anywhere else!)
• Pace Salsas: ~$2.50/jar  GF
• Local raw honey: $8.99/35 oz. jar
• Hormel Natural preservative-free ham, turkey, and salamis: ~$2.50/pack  GF



Love me some olives!





• Zico 1 L coconut water: $4.48 GF
  
  
  

  

  WalMart has fair prices on coconut water. Zico is my favorite
  brand available at our WalMart as far as taste goes.

What paleo-friendly finds have you scouted out at WalMart?

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This post contains an Amazon.com affiliate link. Shopping Amazon through this link results in a tiny percentage of the purchase price being given to Primal Kitchen, at no added cost to you, so thank you for supporting Primal Kitchen!

Sixty Second Frosting - A Paleo-ish Dairy Free, Grain Free, Gluten Free, Egg Free, Nut Free, Refined Sugar Free Option

My daughter's birthday party was this weekend. I created this frosting for her gluten free egg free dairy free nut free cupcakes - it is so simple, I couldn't believe how easy it was! You won't believe how easy it is, either. This recipe makes a buttercream-y fruit-flavored frosting that isn't shockingly, cloyingly sweet, but instead gently sweet.

I baked these cupcakes in unbleached parchment liners, and then transfered them to colorful liners after they had cooled.

Sixty Second Frosting

Makes enough to frost 3 dozen standard size cupcakes

Ingredients
One 10 oz. jar of St. Dalfour jam, flavor of choice (I used raspberry)
    -> You can substitute 10 oz. of any no-refined-sugar-added jam
1.5 cups of Spectrum organic palm shortening
1 tablespoon of vanilla extract, preferably one without corn syrup as an ingredient
1/4 tsp. ground sea salt

Directions
Combine all ingredients in a large bowl, and whip at high speed until very smooth (about 30 seconds at the highest speed if use my stand mixer).

If desired, use a cake-decorating tip to pipe the frosting out onto the cupcakes.

For special touches, add fresh fruit, colorful cupcake wrappers, or other cupcake toppers.

***

Just for kicks, let's compare ingredients. Frosting from a can, a "rich and creamy white" flavor, from a popular national brand:

Sugar, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and Cottonseed Oil, High Maltose Corn Syrup, Water, Corn Starch, Salt, Distilled Monoglycerides, Polysorbate 60, Color Added, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Natural and Artificial Flavor, Citric Acid, Freshness Preserved by Potassium Sorbate. Also may contain milk ingredients. 

But hey, look, it's gluten free!

Here is the ingredient list for the above sixty-second frosting:

Red raspberries, concentrated grape juice, fruit pectin, organic expeller pressed palm oil, organic vanilla extract, ground sea salt.

I by no means classify frosting of any sort - paleo-fied or not - as a health food, or a weight loss food. But, birthdays are meant to be celebrated, so when you are celebrating one and baking your loved one some cupcakes or a cake, isn't it nice to know that you can make a frosting using 6 ingredients that you can recognize - in less than 60 seconds?


What do you like to do to decorate your cupcakes for birthday celebrations?



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This post contains Amazon affiliate links. Shopping Amazon through Primal Kitchen affiliate links supports Primal Kitchen at no additional cost to you, so thank you!!

Star Fruit Magic Wands

This is a fun little project I dreamed up for my daughter's upcoming 6th birthday party. It is fast, pretty, and best of all, kids love the magic wand effect. What can I say? Kids love edible things that look like non-edible things.

Here's the scoop.

Star Fruit Magic Wands

Makes 6-8 magic wands

Ingredients

2 large star fruits

Tools

6-8 6" bamboo skewers, ideally the kind with one pointy end and one blunt end

Directions

Wash the star fruits, then slice into 3/4" thick slices. (You will have a couple of end pieces that don't work as well...so snack away on those!)

Insert the pointy end of the skewer into the bottom part of the star on the star fruit slice, about 1" deep.

Serve immediately, or for a colder popsicle-style treat, let the star fruit magic wands chill in the freezer for 20 minutes.

For a serving suggestion, consider a stout vase or two filled with glass pebbles or marbles, to hold the wands in place so that the magic wand star design really stands out!

~

What simple kids' birthday party ideas have you been trying out lately?

Dairy Free Paleo Cream Cheese, and Raspberry Cheesecake Truffles

Ever since we figured out that my youngest daughter had dramatic behavioral and developmental improvement when we cut dairy out of our diet, she has been dairy-free. Since I'm still in the home stretch of nursing her - now usually just a couple of times a day - I too have kept myself dairy free, since many problematic food proteins are able to pass through mothers' breastmilk. I've valued the experience for the fact that it has forced me to become much more inventive - and to have a solid understanding of how the dairy-free alternatives I craft taste for my youngest daughter.

Some things were easier to give up than others. I have not missed milk much. But pastured butter and ghee? Ohhhh, how I miss those. Another thing I've greatly missed is the class of ultra-rich full fat cultured cheeses, like mascarpone and cream cheese. Luckily, I recently came up with a cream cheese substitute that is based entirely in whole foods. I am proud to share that basic dairy-free cream cheese recipe - and to show you one example of how it can be adapted and applied in the creation of a decadent dessert!

Here is the basic cream cheese recipe. When the basic recipe is made as shown below, it will not be sweet - it will be fairly thick, and have the very tangy creamyness associated with plain full fat cream cheese.

Basic Dairy-Free Cream Cheese
Makes roughly 1 cup

Ingredients:
2/3 cup raw organic cashew butter
1/3 cup organic palm shortening
2 tsp. raw organic apple cider vinegar (this is available at most grocery stores now for around $3.50/bottle)
1/2 tsp. fresh lemon juice
1/4 tsp. ground sea salt

Combine all ingredients at room temperature using a mixer, stand mixer, or powerful blender. The longer you whip, the smoother your mix will be. If desired, add in the vinegar and lemon juice to the mix slowly, tasting as you go, to customize your desired level of tanginess.

*****

Now, let's kick it up a notch in a easy-to-come-together special dessert: Raspberry Cheesecake Truffles. These puppies are so rich and deliciously satisfying, most folks enjoying them as a post-meal dessert will probably be content to savor one truffle in all its glory. I love the Cadbury-egg-style-surprise factor of biting into these and hitting a gorgeous, juicy raspberry!



Dairy-Free Raspberry Cheesecake Truffles
Makes 8 Truffles

Ingredients

• 1 batch "Basic Dairy-Free Cream Cheese", as shown above
• 1/3 c. maple syrup (this can be adjusted to taste/sweetness preference, or omitted altogether)
• 1/2 tbsp. vanilla extract

• 8 fresh raspberries

• 8-10 oz. chocolate of choice, for melting (I've used Enjoy Life allergen-friendly chips and Scharffen Berger 99%...see alternative sugar-free chocolate options below).

Tools

• 1 silicone cake-pop-style pan - I used the Wilton Round Brownie Pop silicone mold. I recommend a silicone molding option, because after your truffles have set it will be much easier to gently "pop" them out of their molds.

Directions
Melt 4 oz. of the chocolate, either using a double boiler or warming in the microwave for 2 minutes at half power. When the chocolate is melted, stir it with a clean, dry spoon until it's entirely smooth. Using a standard table spoon, spoon a couple of spoonfuls of the melted chocolate into each of the cavities of the silicone mold you've chosen to use. Use the back of the same spoon to push the melted chocolate up the walls of the cavities, so that the melted chocolate comes all the way along the sides to the top of each cavity in the mold. Wait 5 minutes, then repeat the process, so that the remaining still-melted chocolate at the bottom is pushed along and clings to the hardened chocolate on the walls of the cavities.

Add maple syrup and vanilla to the cream cheese batch and whip the cream cheese mix until smooth. The consistency will be like barely-warmed butter. Spoon 1/2 teaspoon of the cream cheese mix into the bottom of the silicone mold's chocolate-coated cavities. Press 1 fresh raspberry into the center of the cream cheese cheese mix in each cavity, then top each raspberry with another 1/2 teaspoon of the cream cheese mix. Put the silicone mold in the freezer for at least half an hour - the surface of the cream cheese mix must become very cold and firm up just a bit before adding the last bit of melted chocolate on top.

Once the cream cheese is sufficiently cold and firm, melt the remainder of the chocolate. Remove the silicone mold from the freezer, and spoon the melted chocolate onto the top of the cream cheese mix in each cavity until the chocolate covers the cream cheese entirely and is the melted chocolate is level with the top of the cavity.

Place silicone mold in the fridge until chocolate sets fully. Very gently, peel back the silicone as you ease each truffle out of its cavity. Serve within 24 hours of creation - so the raspberries are at their juicy best!

*****

Truffle Adaptations and Other Suggestions

• Try other fresh berries (strawberries, blueberries, etc.) or small pieces of fresh fruit in place of the raspberry.
• If you like, you can make these with unsweetened dark chocolate, or stevia-sweetened dark chocolate, and the truffles will then be entirely free of refined sugars. In our house, I used both Scharffen Berger's unsweetened 99% (I buy mine at Wegmans) and Enjoy Life allergen-friendly chocolate chips with great success.
• If you or your loved ones are nut-free, you could easily substitute unsweetened organic sunflower seed butter for the cashew butter above when making your batch of "cream cheese" for the truffles. You will not get the same cream-cheese flavor effect, but instead of cheesecake bites, you'll end up with what I'd call sunbutter-and-raspberry-jam truffles. Yum!
• If you want sweetness in your cream cheese mix without adding the carbs from maple syrup, you could add just a few drops of organic stevia extract instead.
• As shown in the top photo, you can skip the chocolate aspect of the dessert entirely, in favor of spooning the sweetened vanilla-added cream cheese mix over fresh berries in a pretty bowl. This makes a simpler, faster, colorfully fresh option for a company dessert!

What dairy-free alternatives have you been enjoying lately?


~

This post contains Amazon affiliate links. Shopping Amazon through Primal Kitchen affiliate links supports Primal Kitchen at no additional cost to you, so thank you!!

On The Folly and Heartache of Perfectionism

There's a lot of hullabaloo on the paleosphere right now about an eyebrow-raising study, in which the lead content of bone broth made from organic chickens was found to be roughly 10 times more concentrated than in the tap water used to make the same broth - and the researchers say that this because bones are where lead is sequestered in the body. Of course, since our family eats a lot of soups made from homemade broth, you can imagine my panicky gut (no pun intended) reaction to this revelation. However, I am trying to not. freak. out. First of all, I know next to nothing about a) the source journal in which this study was published, and b) about lead concentration levels and their associated dangers. Secondly (and I thank God for this), there are so many brilliant minds heading up the real food community - many of whom are MDs and PhDs, so I am looking forward to reading their blogs' soon-to-be posted analyses of the study's data. That's not to say that I should not research and come to conclusions of my own, but so often I appreciate some dots being connected for me due to my lack of professional or educational expertise.

Still, my heart was heavy yesterday afternoon as I tried to soak up yet another situation where I thought I was doing well by my daughters, but ended up with at best a murky conclusion. After all, hang around the interwebs long enough, and you'll find that there's a conviction rendered against just about anything you can put in your mouth...spend any time searching specifically for dietary interventions for neurological disorders (as with my daughter's sensory processing and speech delay issues), and you're down an even deeper rabbit hole of often conflicting nutritional advice.

So, what am I now to do? I think, mostly, to remember Teddy Roosevelt's advice:

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."

That is the most that I can do as a mother. Ya know better, ya do better. So for the next week or so, I will suspend bone broth from our diets until further conclusions can be reached. In the meantime, I rely heavily on grace to sustain us where my well-intentioned dietary decisions have failed or may fail in the future.

There may not be a perfect dietary plan to support my daughter and her quirks; we may be tinkering with what helps her or hinders her for years to come. But, I'd like to think that despite the trial and error, in the aggregate, over time, we are averaging an uphill climb.

By this, I mean to say that even though there may be hiccups over food sourcing, contamination (besides this current lead/broth imbroglio, as with arsenic in rice, chicken, and apple juice), trying to make decisions over what is worth buying organic and what is not...on average, our choices have improved. I may not witness this week to week or even month to month, but I can testify to that improvement when looking over years.

You'll recall from a previous post of mine that I was once an extreme couponer. Here is one example of one of my coupon runs...I think this one cost me somewhere around $25. This run happened somewhere around 2008, if memory serves me rightly.

I was laughing to myself today as I pulled into our driveway after a trip to Wegmans. I thought to myself how fun it would be to recreate a grocery run lineup on our front porch...4 years (give or take) later!

Boy, I wish I could say this run had cost me $25...ha!

Side note: Having practiced extreme couponing, I did not walk away from it having learned nothing. Am I still using my savings strategies? You bet. At Wegmans today, I put most of our dollars to the "highest value added" items that we eat: organic meats and vegetables. (We also like to save by purchasing naturally raised meats from local farmers in bulk, but we are between bulk orders right now.) Apples and pears, coconut milk, and jarred pasta sauces rounded out the run. I picked up that butterflied organic leg of lamb because it was marked half off, and my organic chicken drumsticks were selected because they were the cheapest in cost per pound of organic chicken meat, as compared to breasts, wings, and whole chickens. I bought organic grassfed beef chuck roasts and ground beef, similarly, because those are cheapest per pound.

It does not take a rocket scientist to conclude - especially when comparing the two pictures above - that the ongoing habit of improving thousands of tiny little decisions over the course of days, weeks, months, adds up to a very different health trajectory in the long run. I may not ever know precisely the optimal foods to feed my family, but I certainly know that the bottom photo comes a whole lot closer to that elusive ideal than does the my grocery run from the top photo. (I do find it very funny that the only commonality between the two pictures is bacon.)

So take it to heart: Even if you have arrived at the point of delving deeper into your choices, and you are starting to feel confused, know that a handful of big decisions (avoiding sugar, for one) will have the greatest impact for your family. Yes, there are plenty of more minor decisions that remain for my family to research and tinker, but, instead of feeling the immense pressure of perfectionism, I try to rest in God's grace to keep us humming along, and thank Him for the progress that we've been able to make thus far.

Do you have a before/after grocery picture that you like to use as a reminder of how far you have come?

Edit to add: Chris Kresser published his first take on bone broth / lead here. It is a worthwhile read, and I definitely recommend following Kresser's site and other major players' sites in the next week or so to see what other information comes to light.

~

DIY BBQ-Flavor Kale Chips - Gluten Free, Grain Free, Dairy Free, Paleo, Primal

True confessions time: I have been having a really hard time with this nutrition challenge. You'd think a challenge vet like myself would not have difficulties with a challenge - I've done 3 on my own and this challenge makes the 5th with my Crossfit box. And it is true - the more challenges I've done, the better I've gotten with economies of scale, sourcing my food, planning ahead, and honing the recipes that really work for me and my family.

For me, this time the difficulty is boiling down to a) motivation - it is so hard to keep it going when I am not able to work out the same way that I did in past challenges (due to rehabbing an injury), and b) boredom/monotony, because I haven't been proactive about mixing it up with different foods, instead falling back frequently on my usual stand-by recipes. Also, during this challenge I am trying something new and combining the J.J. Virgin recommendations with the paleo challenge portion, so I am not eating eggs, which has proven far more difficult than I'd have guessed - eggs are my breakfast go-to, after all!

The monotony thing has really gotten to me, because even a good 12 days into the challenge, I am finding myself drawn to taste-bud-hijacking junk foods (sweet and salty both) and prepaleo comfort foods. I have managed to not slip up, but these cravings tell me that I need to get some new challenge-legal snacks in my life!

Speaking of challenge-legal snacks, I'm already thinking ahead to a classic comfort food occasion: the Super Bowl. I don't even care about football, but boy, do I love football-watching food. We are hosting some friends, and I'm planning ahead this year to have challenge-friendly fare at the ready: Some slow-cooked shredded carnitas in a crock-pot, maybe some hot wings (if it's not too cold for grilling), veggies and guacamole, Clementines, and so on. Perhaps I will also make kale chips! After all, nothing says, game food like something crispy and savory.

Today, I tried out my first go at kale chips - I've had them store-bought before from the company Brad's, which does a marvelous job - but I was hoping to get similar results at home for a fraction of the price. The cashew butter combined with the apple cider vinegar and seasonings lends a rich umami "cheesy" flavor, to these, as well. This is what resulted, and my daughters and I enjoyed the chips so much that I couldn't resist sharing!

Barbecue Flavor Kale Chips
Makes about 2 cups of chips

Ingredients

• Bunch of fresh kale, about the size of two fists, with stems removed and chopped into roughly chip-sized pieces
• 2 tablespoons cashew butter (can sub nut butter of choice, or tahini, or sunbutter - though I don't recommend the final toasting at 450 with these due to oxidation concerns)
• 1 tablespoon bacon fat
• 1 tablespoon oil of choice (I used macadamia oil, which has a higher smoke point)
• 2 tsp. apple cider vinegar (raw organic apple cider vinegar is usually cheapest found in stores, around $3/bottle)
• 4 drops organic stevia extract (optional, adds to the BBQ flavor, could also sub honey or maple syrup depending on your goals)
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 2 tsp. onion powder
• 2 tsp. paprika
• 4 drops fish sauce (optional; I used Red Boat, which is free of junk - made of just anchovies and salt)
• Sea salt to taste (I used 30 cranks from my sea salt grinder)

Directions

After washing the kale pieces, use a paper towel to get as much moisture as possible off of the kale. Put the kale pieces in a gallon-sized Ziploc bag.

In a blender or mini food processor, blend the remaining ingredients until smooth. Mixture will be thick unless bacon fat was already warm/liquid.

Spoon the blended seasoning mix into the Ziploc bag with the kale pieces. Close the bag and "massage" it for a couple of minutes to get the seasoning mix into as many crannies of the kale as possible. The mix will warm just a bit from the massage action and probably become a little less thick, so this will help your task.

Spread the kale chips in a cake pan or cookie sheet, and bake at 350 for 30 minutes, gently stirring the chips around the pan every 10 minutes or so. The kale will get a little limp before it starts to dry and crisp up during this process. Finish the chips with 1 minute of the broiler set on 425 just crisp the chips just a little more. Enjoy hot, fresh, and crispy, straight out of the oven!

This post contains Amazon affiliate links. Shopping Amazon through Primal Kitchen affiliate links supports Primal Kitchen at no additional cost to you, so thank you!!

On Reward Alternatives to Food

I sat this morning amid a cluster of people on the floor, as we listened intently to our fearless leader - the Crossfit box's nutrition coach. She was giving an overview of the upcoming challenge; paleo nutrition options, and Zone nutrition options. Much of it I had heard before, but this time I really tuned in to something that she emphasized.

"Find other rewards for yourself besides food..."

Oh, how familiar I am with this need! She had willfully acknowledged the common battle that many face, of using food as an emotional salve. There is just something about the end of the day that beckons for a treat to take the edge off - a minicelebration for making it through another gauntlet. A glass of wine, some chocolate, some toasted nuts (or how about all three!).

While processing her encouragement on that topic, I vowed to draw up a list of non-food rewards that I'm going to look to during this challenge. Here are mine:

Sometimes mini mental escapes are
the best form of nonfood reward.
Via Flickr Creative Commons/The Smithsonian.

1. Mobility sessions. Rewarding? Maybe not immediately. But, I always come away from 10 minutes with my roller feeling much better and a little more supple all around. Even better, our challenge awards bonus points for mobility work. For small sessions at home I'll be looking for pointers from MobilityWOD.com.
    
2. Words with Friends. Any time the urge for junk food strikes, I know I can depend on the 5-10 games of Words with Friends that I have going on at any given moment. Sometimes taking a few turns is all I need to be distracted from that craving.
    
3. Planned TV time. Hear me out on this - I'm not talking mindless TV consumption. I mean deliberately seeking a TV show or movie to watch as a reward. Being a Star Trek and sci-fi junkie, I luckily have quite the vast selection of favorites. I will still be honoring my earlier bedtimes though, per challenge sleep recommendations!
    
4. Hot salt baths. There is nothing quite so relaxing for me as a long soak in the tub. I will add in some Epsom salts for enhanced relaxation and mobility, thanks to the magnesium!
    
5. Magnesium oil. Magnesium oil does an even better job of getting magnesium to muscles when applied by rubbing on the skin. I plan on using some every day, if I can manage it.
     
6. Hot yoga. Another mobility-enhancer, I see the reward of exercise in the optimized hormones, the delicious muscle exhaustion, and the boosted mood for the rest of my day. Though I won't be attempting a return to Crossfit WODs for a few weeks yet, I embrace whatever workout reward I can derive through hot yoga!
    
7. New reads. I'm going to find some good reading material in the next week or so. I especially like biographies. Does anybody have some to recommend?
    
8. Home DIY pedicures. A hot foot soak in Epsom salt water, followed by some Piggy Paint. Amazing what prettier toes can do for one's mood!
    
9. Scent therapy. Lighting a scented candle, or putting on some of my favorite junk-free fragrance - Lavanila's Vanilla Grapefruit - are often enough to brighten my mood. I love the portability of the Lavanila, too, for mood boosts on the run!
    
10. Earlier bedtimes. Yup, instead of seeing earlier bedtimes as a drag, I'm going to embrace them as a reward in and of themselves! So when the nighttime itch to snack strikes, if nothing else on my reward list sounds good, it's off to bed with me.
    
    Maybe, though, I'll squeeze in a play or two of Words with Friends before I go to sleep.

What are your favorite non-food rewards that make you sigh contentedly at the end of the day?

~


This post contains Amazon affiliate links. Shopping Amazon through Primal Kitchen affiliate links supports Primal Kitchen at no additional cost to you (i.e. the item's price does not go up for you), so thank you!!

Paleo DIY Challenge-Friendly Cobb Salad

Ah, the flurry of whole30s, sugar detoxes, and other noble nutrition challenges has taken hold of the Twittersphere. Every other tweet seems to be folks ready to cast aside their dalliance with sugar and other less savory characters in favor of the basics, fuel-wise: meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruit, nuts, and natural fats.

When embarking on such challenges, I've come to appreciate the value of having ingredients ready to go at a moment's notice. This is why the paleo-fied version of a Cobb salad makes a great fast meal: everything can be chopped and ready to add way ahead of time. The DIY aspect also makes salad assembly company-friendly.

Also get yo'self some romaine.

This is what we made today when we had my inlaws
for company. I like my Cobb salads to be as colorful
as possible, so I go for as many contrasting hues
as I can manage. Red peppers, orange carrots,
yellow egg yolks - delicious!

Our ingredients included:

• Cubed cold chicken
• Bacon, cooked crispy
• Fresh sliced red pepper
• Fresh shredded carrot
• Some hot-and-sweet seasoned/baked pecans and almonds
  (These pictured I made at home...you can make your own seasoned nuts low carb and challenge-friendly by coating them in the barest splash of hot sauce and macadamia oil before toasting in the oven, 425F for 20 minutes, stirring throughout.)
• Hard boiled eggs
  (We kept them in their shells until chosen for a salad so they'd go right back in the fridge if we didn't use them all.)
• A batch of my homemade ranch

Part of the appeal when serving to company is presentation, and nothing presents more beautifully than simple, fresh ingredients. 

 

 

What salads are you throwing together in a bid to clean up your diet in the new year?

~

New Year's T-Shirt Giveaway Winner

Thanks to Random.org I was able to pick a number to determine the winner of my T-shirt giveaway - number 4!

That means that commenter #4, Nancy West Johnson, has won herself a free Primal Kitchen t-shirt. Hooray! Nancy, please contact me at primalkitchen at gma¡l dot com and we can work out getting your shirt sent your way.

Thanks to everyone for participating, and I hope that you have a happy 2013!

~

The Year Ahead {2013 Dawns} - a Primal Kitchen Giveaway

Now a couple of days on the other side of Christmas, we've cleaned up a lot of wrapping paper and packaging, and I'm finally getting a handle on planning to use some of the neat gifts I've been given.

My parents gave me some credit at my local yoga studio, for which I am extremely grateful. They also gave me a gift card with the stated purpose of finding some yoga clothing. My hope is to find some good on-sale fitness wear that I can use for both yoga and Crossfit - and since I've dropped a lot of weight, I now can really use that gift card to find more tops and bottoms in smaller sizes that fit. Though a year of Crossfit certainly made me stronger and generally fitter, yoga exposed a lot of my weaknesses, like flexibility and balance. I look forward to seeing what a couple of more months of yoga will bring to the table fitness-wise.

My in-laws really surprised me, with a smoker! (It was this year's Christmas gift and next year's birthday gift rolled into one.) Wow, it is cool! There are so many possibilities, but I am really excited about being able to buy pork in bulk locally and being able to smoke my own ham and bacon. How great to select the ingredients for our family's ham and bacon, so that my littlest can also enjoy it, too! And, admittedly, I cannot wait to smoke some roasts and baby back ribs in this bad boy. So, there are a lot of fun experiments and projects wrapped up in that present as well.

Wow, I wonder if this
model was hired because
of her resemblance to
Michelle Dockery...?

Fitness fun and kitchen fun. What can I say? Those made for a great Christmas, in my book.

Now, I want to throw a little more holiday cheer back out into the world to say "thanks" to all of my readers and commenters for a great 2012:

I'm giving away a Primal Kitchen classic lunchbox/kettlebell design T-shirt in the size/age/gender of the winner's choice! Yes, that means the winner can pick size of kids', women's, or men's tee!

Look for this, in the right hand column of Primal Kitchen,
and click "Join this site" to join!

If you are a follower via Google Friend Connect and you make a comment in this post with your favorite part about visiting Primal Kitchen, you are officially entered to win. I will use random.org to generate a random number to chose the winning comment. I will also verify that your comment belongs to somebody in the "Google Friend Connect" list, so be sure that you also join there if you haven't already so that you aren't disqualified! To follow Primal Kitchen via Google Friend Connect, please go to the right hand column of the Primal Kitchen web home page and click the blue "Join this site" button!

So, three easy things: Join this site via Google Friend Connect (if you haven't already), make a comment (one per person, honor system!), and include in your comment your favorite part about visiting this site. Entries must be made before 11:59 p.m. on December 31, 2012. The winner will be announced on New Year's Day (January 1, 2013).

Winner must claim prize within 48 hours of award being announced, otherwise winner forfeits prize and a new winner will be selected.

~

This post contains an Amazon affiliate link. Shopping Amazon through Primal Kitchen affiliate links supports Primal Kitchen at no additional cost to you (i.e. the item's price does not go up for you), so thank you!!