Good Monday to ya! That's what my Mom says when she does her weekly Monday phone call. Well, actually, it's been a little patchy lately with summer being upon us, and schedules being off, but still, none the less, good Monday to ya! :) I have a fantastic, simple, and versatile recipe for today! And it's loaded with veggies, good fats, & some chicken! What more could you want to recover from a summer weekend! Whomp whomp... :) Chicken & Veggie Salad Ingredients: For the dressing:
For the Salad:
Method:
So simple, right? I told you so! I will sometimes just eat this beast of a salad as my dinner! Other times I'll divide it into 2, or 3 or 4 and use it to top a leafy salad for a few days. The choice is up to you! You could also make it to bring to a summer pot-luck! I always appreciate seeing a healthy option at a get-together! Well, I hope this inspires you to make yourself a happy, healthy salad this week! Why I describe it as happy is slightly mysterious, but I love salad, and it makes me happy to prepare it, and devour it, so, it's happy to me! Hope you had a great Monday; I had a lazy (x 10!) day-I did workout in the afternoon, but the rest of the day, well, I never got out of my p.j's except for that workout, so let that be your guide to my inspired day! :)
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Did you know there was such a thing as National Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Day?!?! Well, there is, and it's today! Who knew?! Well, truth be told, I don't really like pie that much. I also don't liked baked fruit....but, did you know rhubarb is a veggie? Whacko. Also, did you know rhubarb has laxative properties? So, basically I'm going to talk to you about a pie that is made with vegetables and can make you poop. I know, you can hardly wait! :) Hahaha...oh my goodness, what's up with me today? Seriously though...ok, not too seriously because it is still me after all, we have a jumbo patch of rhubarb that grows in one of our fields, and I've never, in the 4+ years I've lived in this house, used it for anything! I have occasionally pulled a stalk out to eat raw (it's crazy sour, but if you peel the 'skin' back, it's only moderately sour, and somehow refreshing!), but that was all it ever did. Until I heard there was a National Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Day! If there was ever a time to decide to walk the 40 ft out my back door and pick some fresh rhubarb for something, it was for today! This paleo, bare bottom pie is really very simple to make, and it's 'bare bottom' because I didn't think a paleo crust could stand up to the juiciness of the fruit (...um, and veg), so I just made it a top! I could have also just crumbled it on top, but it isn't national Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble Day now is it? Paleo Strawberry Rhubarb Bare Bottom Pie Ingredients For the filling
For the crust
Method:
I've actually never seen rhubarb at the grocery store or even a farmers market...I suppose it must be somewhere though! If anyone lives close to me, feel free to come and collect some of mine for free! So, on this National Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Day, I bid you farewell! :)
Do you have any rhubarb stories to tell? Any yummy or different ways to prepare it? Do share! I found this recipe on Pinterest from The Pinning Mama...well, actually, I found the picture, and never even looked at how to make it! It was honestly so strait forward from their lovely photos that I never bothered to look at the recipe until today, when I wanted to be sure to pass the credit onto who deserves it! So, my method and ingredients vary slightly from the original, but the results are still divine. If you're a strict paleo eater and don't consume any dairy, I would wrap a piece of tin foil over the top of this to bake, then uncover for the last 5-10 minutes to give the peppers a chance to brown up a little. Chicken Fajita Bake Ingredients
Method:
This recipe can easily be doubled, and is so simple to make. My kids, who can sometimes be fussy about when meals change ("this is very different from a taco!" my 6 year old announced) all enjoyed this. Hazaa! So, I've made it a bunch of times since then. I've used jalapeño peppers when I had them, diced a tomato onto it when I only had one pepper, more cheese, less cheese, etc. etc. Basically, this recipe is simple, easy to sub ingredients in and out, and also makes great leftovers. I once turned the leftovers into soup! Now that was deee-lish! :) Well, tonight we have a paid preview for The Drowsy Chaperone, then opening night is Thursday! Yikerdoodles! If you live in the area, come to see it! It's funny, full of big song and dance numbers, and it is a Canadian show to boot (that can sometimes mean it might be terrible, but this gem went to Broadway and won a bunch of Tony awards!).
I've got no witty closing remarks....so, goodbye for now! :) I thought today was Monday..... Turns out its Tuesday and I'm loosing touch with reality! :) Adam was working all weekend, then yesterday (which was Monday, incidentally) we just got things done around the ol' homestead. So, anywho, today I bring to you a simple recipe for a paleo tortilla. We do a "Taco Tuesday" night every few weeks here, and I am always happy to just pile all my taco toppings onto a mountain of salad. We were low on the leafy stuff though one day, and I thought it might be nice to have an alternative to my usual taco salad and actually have a vessel to carry my taco goodness in. I started searching the web for some good recipes, and they all had either cauliflower which I didn't feel like cooking, mashing and draining, or coconut milk, which I was out of, or one million eggs to make up for the crazy amount of coconut flour used (coconut flour is very absorbent!). Simple is my main objective in the majority of my recipes, so I just thought, "well, these will only be for me (we had regular, gluten free taco shells for the rest of the family), so I don't need to make a million of them, I'll just aim for 2-3!". And I set off on the task! The result was a simple, 3 ingredient tortilla that was bendy, but strong, and was totally satisfying! Paleo Tortilla Ingredients:
Method:
That's it! I've made these a few times for a few different purposes. Once I added cinnamon to the batter, then once they were cooked I spread some almond butter in one of them, and rolled it around a banana! It was a great snack!
I've also added cayenne pepper to the batter, then I wrapped up diced leftover chicken, avocado, tomato, & onion. Yum! So, these are a blank canvas, really! Use them as you please! Have a great Tuesday! We've got a lot of ground beef....seriously, too much ground beef! we ordered food last year (in April) from a food company, and you "shop" and pick what you want, and then they deliver it in one fell-swoop! We had to emergency buy another deep freezer to accommodate the volume of meat that showed up at our house! The sales man (although super nice) had clearly not estimated properly when he told us the deep freeze we already had would be sufficient for all the meat we had coming. Anywho.....all that to say we still (over a year later!) have about 30-lbs of ground beef left! And that's with us eating at least 1-lb of it every week! Needless to say, coming up with ground beef recipes that are different and worth eating was getting difficult! Then Caleb (who loves cheeseburgers!) mentioned something about this beloved food, but we had no gluten free hamburger buns, so I told him I wasn't going to make burgers. Then it hit me! I have the beef, eggs, bacon, pickles and onions I would normally add to a cheeseburger-I didn't see why making it into one huge casserole wouldn't work! Well, unless, of course, the kids wouldn't eat it because it looked like garbage....so, I included the best part of a burger-the cheese! If you're strict paleo, omit the cheese, and this is still a fantastic recipe! If you eat primal (and can tolerate cheese)-then get your cheese on! Eww, that sounded way more gross than it was meant to....... The casserole is gluten free, full of bacon cheeseburger flavours, and the leftovers are the best! My husband loves it packed in his lunch. Thumbs up! Bacon Cheeseburger Casserole Ingredients:
Method:
My kids honest to goodness love this casserole! They think I'm brilliant for making such a fantastic mess of a cheeseburger!
Every part of it is so bacon cheeseburgery and delicious! I had wanted to add tomato too, but decided against it as I didn't want this to turn out too wet, so I added slices of it on top before I ate mine. The next time we had it I put it right on top of my salad, added tomato, avocado, and hot banana pepper rings and ate it with the salad (I like lettuce on my burgers, so I figured it would be ok)! It was really good, two thumbs up! Well folks, I'm signing off! I've got to get baking my usual Friday night rehearsal treats, and I want to get out and clean one of my gardens that I've been neglecting! I hope everyone has a grand weekend (it's Victoria Day weekend {the early Queen's birthday celebration| here in Canada!), and I also hope that you come back here soon to see what else I've got cooked up! :) xo Black-Flies!!!!! They've arrived!!! That's all I have to say about that for now. Ok, I will add that 2 black flies already flew into my eyes today. Not my fav. Crock-Pot!!! I just wanted to do sound so crazy again. I think most people feel like a crock-pot is a winter, comfort food type of thing. Falseroo. I find I use it as much, if not more often, in the 3 other seasons because there is more to do out of the house! Well, even in the house, the spring comes, and you suddenly have the urge to organize your closet....which leads to organizing your room, which leads to building a new bed! I didn't build a new bed, but that sequence of events did happen to me a few years ago. We were sleeping on a hand-me-down bed from 1963. No joke. And I was sick of it and in my cleaning/organizing frenzy I started thinking, "I can build us a new bed!". I was going to too, but, long story short, I didn't. Wait? What was I talking about....? Geepers, crock-pots. So, days like the one I blabbed on about there leave you suddenly standing in the kitchen at 4:45 going, ".....oh yeah....dinner?". In that moment I usually make some eggs and cuts up some veggies and call it a meal, but I prefer to feel a little more amazing (and humble...) by having gotten a tonne of work done around the house AND having an awesome meal ready for the fam. The End. Crock-Pot Balsamic Chicken Ingredients:
Method: If you are prepping this meal the night before you need it, all the power to ya! :) You don't have to, but I'm just throwing that option out there!
If you're getting this ready the morning of the day you plan to eat it, do this:
*You can also cook it on high for 3-4 hours if the meat is thawed, or 5-6 if it's frozen. Cooking chicken low and slow is the best however. Just a wee crock-pot tip The balsamic vinegar really breaks down the meat leaving it tender and yummy, but it also lends a tang to compliment the sweet honey.
I've added other spices too, like paprika (a favourite of mine), cayenne pepper, I've even swapped out the basil for rosemary, which was great. So, what are your plans for this week? I think you should plan to make this :) Just sayin'. Alrighty, have a great Monday! Way back in the day....as in, June of last year, I posted a non-paleo cinnamon sugar cookie (the snickerdoodle), and had been hankering for a paleo version. I love cinnamon in general (in my coffee, with honey when I'm feeling a cold coming on, on fruit, just to name a few ways I love it), but having it on a cookie seems to make the cookie more....healthy? Haha, what a fool I am. I could sprinkle cinnamon onto a huge bowl of ice cream and it would not redeem the ice-cream at all as a food worth eating! Anyway, FYI, there are two main types of cinnamon, Ceylon (the kind we generally use here in Canada), and Cassia-which happens to be the name of my husbands sister (who passed away). My daughter's name, Keziah, is the Hebrew for Cassia, or cinnamon. So, I love cinnamon for a lot of reasons! :) Cinnamon is a serious super food though, for realz. This site, Cooking Detective, has a super thorough article called 29 Surprising Health Benefits of Cinnamon that is well worth the read! A quick Google search though will show you that cinnamon has a ba-zillion health benefits. So, if I'm going to eat a cookie anyway, adding cinnamon is a good way to amp up the quality of the treat. : ) Anywho, I started thinking about paleo snickerdoodles again though because of wanting to make some paleo & egg free cookies for a fellow The Drowsy Chaperone cast member for a rehearsal treat. So, make these, enjoy them, share them, hoard them, whatever! Paleo Cinnamon Sugar Cookies (aka-snickerdoodles) Makes about 14 cookies using a small (1 Tbsp) scoop Ingredients:
To roll the cookies in:
* You can also just roll them in cinnamon and skip the sugar Method:
The rest, they say, is history. I'm not sure why I said that...? It's a fantastically rainy day here in the fine town of Tweed, it's crazy windy too! When I went to do the chores this morning the horses were running around like whackos because of how howl-y the wind was, and the chickens looked hilariously pathetic all wet from the rain. Anyway, have a great day wherever you are, whatever the weather! I love fish....when it's battered and fried! I know, I know, that totally ruins how gosh-darned healthy fish it, but I can't help it! We do eat fish occasionally in a healthy way, and we used to a lot more when Caleb was younger (he's 10 now!), but over the years we'd stopped eating it on a regular basis. Anywho, a while ago we went to a lovely restaurant in Belleville, "The Boathouse", and I ordered fish and chips (yummy!), anyway, the girls tasted it, and talked about it for days! Seriously! "Mom, remember that fish you had that you let me taste? That was really good, you should make it sometime" was the gist of what I heard. I was happy to oblige since I do love it so much...but I wanted it to be a paleo version so that gluten-free Caleb could eat it, and also so that it wouldn't have to be for a treat day. And that's that. Through serfing the web for different ideas/recipes, and experimenting, this perfect batter was born, and it made a seriously tasty fish. Paleo Fish Sticks Ingredients:
Method:
These fish sticks turn out soooo good! I even like them the next day cold.
Anywho, really, it would have been appropriate to post this fish recipe last Friday, a day in which a lot of people eat fish as a "fast" (from warm blooded meat), and to mark Good Friday, the day observed as the death of Jesus. Last Friday we were in Brantford having a fish fry (a wonderful tradition that involves a big ol' deep fryer out on my sisters' front porch). We batter and fry fish, chicken, mushrooms, pickle spears, and this year we also battered and fried Oreo cookies, Reese Peanut Butter Cups, Mars, and Snickers. Oh, and fresh cut potatoes got a fry up too. Sound like a huuuuuge tummy ache? It was. It was a glorious tummy ache! :) So, I'm signing off! I've got rehearsal (again.....) tonight, then am looking forward to a weekend with Adam home from work and whatever random last-minute plans he comes up with! This is a marital issue I am overcoming! I like to stay home, visit no-one, plan nothing. Adam loves to socialize and do things. So, on his days off I am mentally prepared for a, "Hey! Let's go to..." scenario. On the days he works I get to have my own time, quiet time, plan nothing time. :) Anyway, that was just a random annotation about my life! Have a great weekend! Truffles are one of the easiest things to make, for realz. A 'regular' truffle consists (basically) of cream, chopped/shaved chocolate, and vanilla extract. This paleo version is just as simple, but I opted out of cream and used coconut oil instead. I have also made truffles with coconut cream (from this site), and they were good, but I wanted to make some on a different occasion and had no coconut milk. So, I just threw some things together and made these....which, after I had made, photographed and eaten them...it came to me...I've made these before, sort of...in October 2013 I wrote a "healthy chocolate treats" post and the chocolate I made then was the same. I tried to re-invent the wheel, and came out at the other end with, have you guest? A wheel. I'm loosing my edge here people, this is serious. Sheesh. Anyway, these are tasty, easy, and apparently my "go to" for a chocolate fix....whether or not I even realize it..... Paleo Dark Chocolate Truffles Ingredients:
Method:
So easy, right? They are a real treat! I have always had a serious sweet tooth, but I have especially always loved chocolate, and so I like to have little chocolate treats available that are a healthier than the sugar and hydrogenated oil filled store bought versions. You can buy some good store bought versions, but the prices are usually whacko! I have more time than I do money, so I'll stick to making my own. Anyway, I didn't plan on posting this today, but here I am, doing it anyway. I'm a rebel without a cause!!! Ok, I'm not, I just want to share a chocolate treat because, well, why the heck not? :) Have a great Tuesday! In January I shared a Dutch macaroon that was simple, light, airy, and tasty. I went ahead and paleo-fied it into this version for a valentines day treat! It's still simple to make, but if you're not paleo, look over here for the regular recipe, but instead of just scooping the cookies onto a baking sheet, pipe them out into hearts like these cookies! Paleo Heart Macaroons Ingredients:
Method:
So, the recipe itself is pretty darned simple, then you just do the tiniest bit of extra work and, voila! Valentine ready! :)
I'm not a big valentine hype kind of person. Ya know, demanding dinner out, a bouquet of flowers, a box of chocolates, etc. Although, I love a box of chocolates anytime, so I would always gladly accept one of those! I do like to try to make valentines day fun for my kids though, so I make things into hearts to thrill their little hearts. :) Along with these I also dyed some Rice Krispie treats pink, and spread into a large cookie sheet and then cut out into heart shapes. They loved those. Adam and I ate out for lunch today, which is my kind of valentine date. The kids were in school so we didn't need to hire a sitter, it was 2 in the afternoon so the restaurant wasn't busy, and neither of us had breakfast or lunch, and so our late-afternoon "lunch" was filling and took care of our tummies for dinner! All three meals made up in one! Score! I just said score about a meal.... Now I'm running out the door to a rehearsal! I didn't post all week for some reason....I lost track of the week in a serious way!!! Oh well, can't fix it now! I hope everyone has a great weekend, whatever you do, however you valentine! xo |
Hi, I'm Amy-Lyn! I am the lady behind this here blog! I live in the sticks with my animals, my super handsome husband, and my
3 amazing kids! Here you'll find things from recipes (gluten-free, paleo, and strait up junk food!), DIY ideas, thoughts on raising a son with autism, and whatever else pops into my brain! : ) Read more about me by clicking here! Want to Stay Connected?
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