A Little Solace on the March to the Grave: Paleo Bread

In between discussing cannibalism, why we can't marry each other, and our inevitable mortality with my almost 3 year old, I made this loaf. Here's the recipe:

Paleo Bread

• 2 cups soaked and dehydrated almonds
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/8 cup flax seeds
• 1/8 cup sesame seeds plus additional to top, optional
• 2 tbsp coconut flour
• 1/4 cup cashew and coconut oil blend (homemade)
• 1 tbsp Apple Cider Vinegar
• 4 eggs

1) Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. In food processor type thing, blend the almonds until they are almost a flour. This part is annoying and takes a lot of work. Sorry. You could buy almond meal/flour, but I can't handle eating it in great quantities, so soaking and dehydrating the almonds beforehand make this bread easier on my belly.

2) Add the baking soda, salt, flax seeds, sesame seeds and coconut flour and mix.

3) Add the remaining ingredients and mix until it turns into a dough. A wet dough. 

4) Grease a small loaf pan (I used pastured butter) and pour batter into pan. Put in the oven. Bake for 30-40 minutes. It should puff up a lot and brown. 

About the cashew/coconut oil blend: I made my own cashew butter but it doesn't get smooth unless I add oil. I am not sure about the proportions, but I'd guess it's about 75% cashew. 

Grain-free Mac 'n' Cheese

This is a sort of complicated one-skillet leftover-utilizing meal, in that you need to make the cauliflower and/or cabbage before. If you plan ahead and have cauliflower and cabbage for dinner the night before, and you just don't eat all of it in one sitting, then it's a brilliant use of leftovers. Sometimes you remember and sometimes you don't. Don't beat yourself up. 

It starts with an onion. 

Okay no it starts with cooking a head of cauliflower in a pot with some water until it's cooked, and roasting some cabbage in the oven at 400 degrees F with some olive oil and paprika and ground caraway and salt and pepper. Roast the cauliflower until it's browned. And eat some of both with a steak or something. But don't eat all of it, Miss Piggy! Then put the leftovers in the fridge and go to sleep and have sweet dreams about being Hillary Clinton's wingman. 

Sleep well? Great! You're still going to have to wait because this would be a strange breakfast, but what do I know? When I lived in Japan my home stay mother made me hot-dog pizzas for breakfast while the rest of the family had miso soup and leftovers. 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Remove four hippy local pastured eggs and some hippy local heavy whipping cream from your fridge, about a cup of cream, maybe more. Crack eggs and pour cream in the same bowl. Add paprika and caraway and salt and pepper. Whisk it. Into shape. Then add a cup of grated parmesan cheese and a smidge of other cheeses you might have around the house because your Mother-in-Law was visiting and cheese is delicious. I used a bit of Swiss Emmentaler. I didn't grate it, I cut it up kind of small though. Waste not want not.  

Now, the onion. Cut up one large onion and cook it with some fat (I used olive oil) in your big cast iron skillet until it's translucent-plus. Then add two cups of sliced brown mushrooms, paprika, caraway, salt and pepper to taste. I don't know how much. A sprinkling. Use your common sense. Cook this until the mushrooms are nice and soft and cooked. Remove to a plate.

Vegetarian? Skip this part. Cut up some Canadian bacon (do I need to tell you to get the best kind of pig-life bacon you can buy? I don't, you know better), and sautee it in the skillet until browned a bit. You could also use regular bacon but I didn't and I think it would be a different kind of thing but that's cool. Dude, you could use tofu, just keep it away from my face okay? (Said the former vegan.)

Add the mushroom-onion mix back.

Chop up the cold cauliflower and cabbage. Make it small. Add to skillet. Stir.

Turn off the heat. Pour the egg cream cheese mix on top of the other stuff and smoosh it all down. Put in the oven until it puffs up and is not jiggly. Eat all of it. It's really good cold too if you can control yourself. This amount served the three of us pretty well with a big green salad on the side. 

Listen, you could definitely add more cheese to this. I'm not going to stop you. 

Pizza! With Cheese!

I don't know, man, sometimes I just want to eat a pizza, or as was the case last week, I am invited to a pizza party and need to rustle up something. This pizza was a little bit complicated. I mean it's not so tough that you need to block out a week to prepare, but there are steps. Also, this pizza is a veritable cheese bomb. There's cheese in the crust, there's cheese on top, there's all the cheese you have to eat while you're grating the cheese. So if you're not eating dairy, move on, cover your eyes, and pray for us.


The first step is ricing the cauliflower. I used a whole small head of cauliflower. Look, it was a week ago and I don't remember exactly how much. Put the florets in a blender or processor or use a knife (poor you) and make that cauliflower really small. Like smaller than rice grains actually, if you can remember what those look like.

We don't have a microwave because we're hippy conspiracy theorists, but if you did you could nuke the cauliflower rice. I used a pot and a lid on the stove, over medium heat, and I added a smidge of water. Cook until the cauliflower starts to soften and weep. And this part is weird but next wrap up the hot cauliflower in a towel or cheese cloth and twist and squeeze (careful baby it's hot) until its pretty dry and looks like dough. Crumbly dough.

Put this into a bowl with 3 eggs and a cup of grated mozzarella. (Try to use the good dry stuff, not the suspended in brine stuff for this part, we want the crust to be dry.) then add a bit of oregano, maybe a tablespoon? And some salt? A pinch? Just some general Italian style seasonings. And mix it up with a spoon. Oh lord you can add so much to this.

Crap did I tell you to preheat your oven? 350F please. Go back in time and do that first.

Spread out some parchment paper on a baking sheet. Form some pizza crusts. Do not use your hands or try to spin it up in the air--that would be messy. I recommend making many smaller pizzas, since this doesn't have that much structural integrity. And bake until they start to brown a bit. And look firm. No, you don't need to look sternly at the pizza, I mean make sure to eggyness should look cooked is all.

Now I made my own pizza sauce by using a can of tomato paste and some Italian spices and garlic powder and water and heat. You can do that or just buy some. But I think you should still heat it up.

If I need to tell you how to top a pizza I'm so sorry about your life. I hope it gets better. I used sauce, two or three types of cheese, Coppa salami, green bell peppers, and mushrooms sautéed with garlic and olive oil. Then I baked it again until it was hot and bubbly and brown. Then, agonizingly, we biked it over to the party in Chris's cargo bike. So it was a bit cold when we ate it but it was still delicious and all the vegans at the party loved it.

Zoodles and Sausage Sauce

First of all, you need to know how to make Zoodles, or zucchini noodles, whether you are going to be Paleo or not. Because Zoodles are a thing of beauty, and they are easy. Well, okay, they are a little bit annoying to make, and you need a special tool. You need a julienne peeler. And you need to accept that you will have little zucchini strings around your kitchen for days. And maybe some blood. But trust me, it's worth it.So wash your zucchini and remove the stickers.

Then peel them with the julienne peeler into a colander. Peel until you see the seeds, then stop. Yes, it feels wasteful.

Now, use some sea salt, maybe two teaspoons--I never measure--and mix it up in the noodles. Just coat them so that all the noodles have a bit of salt. Not a ton. And wait. Put a bowl under the colander to catch the water that'll drain off the noodles. Wait at least 20 minutes, up to an hour; the longer you wait the firmer the noodles will be.

Now I'm not a scientist, and I'm lazy, so sometimes I squeeze the noodles to remove excess water, and sometimes I don't. But I know that you MUST RINSE the noodles unless you like salt noodles. Trust me. Salt noodles will ruin your day and you'll be up all night drinking water and peeing.

As for the sauce, brown some sausage and bacon in a big pot, then remove the meat but leave the grease. Then add one chopped onion and some julienned carrots until the onions are starting to brown. Add spices like oregano. Then add chopped garlic and stir for a minute. Add a bit of wine and tomato paste. Then add the strained tomatoes. Put the meat back in, and some chopped spinach. Cook on medium for a while. The longer the better. Serve over zoodles. Boom. Dinner.

Frozen Chocolate Banana Nut Balls

It's getting hot in here, so let's make some nut balls! I am getting so hot, I'm going to make some nut balls.
I made a version of these when Cary and Meri came over for dinner, but this recipe is more elegant, smoother, less sweet. You can always add some honey or maple syrup to these. Taste as you go, that's what I do.
Frozen Chocolate Banana Nut Balls

• 1 cup sprouted and dehydrated almonds and cashews
• 1/4 plus 1/8 cup raw cacao powder
• 1 cup shredded coconut
• 1/4 cup coconut oil
• 2 tap vanilla extract
• 1 banana

So what I did was put the nuts and coconut in my ninja blender with the cacao powder and blended for a while until it was pretty smooth. Then I added the coconut oil and vanilla and blended again until it was almost the texture of nut butter. Then I added the banana and blended until that was, well, blended. Taste for sweetness. You might want to add some honey if you want a sweet treat.
Then I lined a plate with parchment paper and scooped out balls using my mini ice cream slash cookie scooper. Make them not too big is my advice, since they really take a while to eat. Then I popped that plate into the freezer until they were good and frozen. Then I ate a bunch. Yum!

Kale is such a hipster

My daughter is floating in a tepid bubble bath asking me to be the "Angry Queen" right now so that she can be Snow White, and then she wants to know if I'm going to kill her. And if I say "no I'm not going to kill you" she gets upset, so I end up saying "I'm gonna kill you Snow White!" Over and over until she leaves me alone.

Anyway, kale. It's probably good to eat it and it shouldn't be too hard to cook it in an appetizing way. I'm going to tell you my old stand-by. It involves butter. Or olive oil or whatever fat you're into.

Take your kale and rinse it. It might be sandy and dirty so rinse it. Then stack the leaves up and slice it thinly perpendicularly to the center stem. Compost the bottoms. Then slice perpendicular to the first cuts so that the kale pieces are smallish. Then rinse the small itty bitty parts but don't dry them off.

In a large pot put two tablespoons of fat and the dripping wet kale pieces. Turn the heat to low and cover. In a few minutes stir the kale so the stuff on top gets to the bottom, you know like how people stir things up. Put the cover back on. Stir occasionally until the kale is wilted and about half as voluminous. Then turn off the heat and either serve right away, or, if you're like me and like your vegetables overcooked, cover and let steam in the remaining heat until whatever else you're having is cooked. Season with salt and pepper and maybe some more butter, why not?

Look, there is so much more you can do with kale, or even with this recipe, like you could sauté some garlic in the oil for a bit before you add the kale. Or red pepper flakes. The thing is, it's not hard and you can do it. Yes, sometimes I burn the kale because I'm in a hurry and try to cook it faster, but it's not like this takes a lot of time. The washing and cutting is the hardest part but it goes much faster with a glass of organic hippy no detectable sulfites wine. You deserve that wine, look at how healthy your dinner is! You're cooking KALE.

Banana Pancakes

I wake up hungry. I seem to be the only one in my house to do so. Breakfast is important to me. So important that I often pre-breakfast if we are going out for brunch. I have issues, blood sugar issues. Other issues too but we can get to those later.

This is my recipe for Banana Pancakes. They are easy, adaptable, malleable, and don't really taste like bananas. This serves one person. Also they are more like crepes in texture but Banana Crepes sounds snobby.

Blend the following until smooth:

1 banana
3 eggs
1 splash vanilla extract (optional)
1 tsp cinnamon
1-2 tbsp cashew or other nut butter (optional)

Pour onto a greased up hot skillet on medium heat and wait until bubbles appear and the edges look dry then flip and cook for another 30 seconds. Serve hot or save for later and eat cold.

Great with bacon or spread with nut butter or yogurt or fruit or you get the idea.

Sometimes I substitute cooked sweet potato for all or part of the banana. Sometimes I throw in a handful of almonds to add some texture. Sometimes I make the pancakes small and sometimes I make them big. Don't worry about it too much.