Almond Flour Paleo Bread #1

The hubster has been craving carbs like crazy lately. (Poor hubby!) And since he's sick of coconut bread, I told him we should try making bread with almond flour. At least it'll give a different flavor. And so I found this Health Extremist Almond Flour Paleo Bread Recipe to try. This recipe still used some coconut flour as well so I figured it'd be a nice transition into almond flour just in case it's very different from coconut flour. Not to mention, the bread on the website actually looked like soft delicious bread! Just to test it out, I made a half batch.

Here's what you need: 1/4 Cup Coconut Flour, 1 Cup + 2 Tablespoons Almond Meal/Flour, 1/4 Cup Ground Chia Seeds, 3 Eggs, 1/8 Teaspoon Sea Salt, 2 Tablespoons Coconut Oil, 1 Tablespoon Apple Cider Vinegar, and 1/4 Teaspoon Baking Soda

In a bowl, mix the coconut flour, almond flour/meal, chia seeds, sea salt and baking soda.

In another bowl, mix the eggs, coconut oil and apple cider vinegar.

Then, pour the dry mixture into the wet mixture and stir until everything is incorporated.

I placed the mixture into a loaf pan and patted it down with a fork (a bit too much as it turned out...) It was baked in a preheated oven of 350°F for 30-40 minutes (since it was a half batch).

It came out like this. The texture was kind of grainy and the flavor was bit bland in my opinion. It was also rather dry and dense (possibly from overpatting it?) instead of soft and chewy. Next time, I will add a lot more butter/coconut oil (maybe 1/4 cup) and possibly some water so it won't be too dry or grainy. Heh, lucky it's not for meeeeeeeeeeee. ;o) 

Update 8/27/13 - Finally got a picture of the bread sliced, toasted and buttered. Sorry, it's a bit blurry!

Kimchi Omelette

So, one day the hubster comes home with an awesome idea. Kimchi Omelette! If you think about it, all the flavors seem like it would complement each other deliciously. It's only a bit sad that le hubster has no patience to measure out everything and so everything was eyeballed.

First, we chopped up some kimchi and lettuce.

Then we scrambled 4 eggs.

Then we cooked up some bacon.

And as the bacon cooked, we added the kimchi and lettuce to the scrambled eggs.

Once le bacon was crispy, we dropped in the egg mixture. (No oil was needed because of the bacon grease.) Sprinkle desired amount of salt.

Once the ends were getting really cooked...

Le hubster turned on the broiler and tried his best to cook the inside part of the omelette.

(You can see the broiler at work here.)

Everything is now pretty much cooked.

And voilà, le kimchi omelette is born. It was super deeeeeelicious! I was actually jealous of this keto friendly meal. om nom nom nom nom

Peach Jam Toasts & Tomatoes

For breakfast, I toasted two sourdough bread, then slathered on lots of homemade peach jam from the Portingas with a couple of homegrown roma tomatoes from the Shis. Everything was very simple and quite delicious. The peach jam really tasted like those yummy goodness from a can and the tomatoes was very tomato-y!

Cheese n Tomato Toasts

I am 100% over food poisoning. Hooray! For that, I made fancy toasts today. Toasted up a couple of slices of sourdough bread. Slathered Laughing Cow's Creamy Swiss Cheese (did not see that it was a light version. lucky for me, it still tasted yumsters!). Sliced up a fresh homegrown roma tomato from the Shis. Sprinkled with crushed sea salt and black pepper. Served with a side of green grapes. It was amazingly delicious in my tum-tum! Definitely, a fav!

Turkey Fried Rice

Soooooooooooooo, I made turkey fried rice bc we had left over ground turkey sitting in the fridge. Now, normally, I'd just throw things together without measuring or a recipe, however, just once, I thought I'd try out a recipe Turkey Fried Rice and see how it turns out.

In place of peas and snow peas, I used fresh homegrown green beans we received from the Portingas. They are gorgeous, aren't they??? I used 1.5 cups of these fresh green beans and boiled them in water for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, I cooked up 1lb ground turkey with 1tsp Penzeys' Pork Chop seasoning, which included garlic and ginger. Then, I cooked half a white onion (in place of the scallions) until it was nicely browned.

1 cup sliced carrots and 1.5 cups boiled green beans

Then back into the pan for the ground turkey, onion, green beans, carrots and rice. I actually used less rice than was called for bc I don't like an excessive amount of rice in my fried rice. Once everything was mixed together, I added the 2 tbs hoison sauce and 2 tbs rice wine (no rice vinegar in this house).

At the end, I decided to add eggs bc for us, fried rice ain't fried rice without scrambled eggs. In fact, that's the best part!!!! So, being lazy, I just pushed everything aside and scrambled up three eggs in the space shown. heh.

And voila, turkey fried rice. It's not my fav but it was good enough. I still think the best fried rice is made with spam, eggs, peas n onions.

Simple Beer Stew

For our next stew, we wanted to try to make it with beer instead of wine and see if it'll still end up deliciously scrumptious as our other stews made with red wine. Here's what we used:

Beef neckbones

1 onion, chopped

6oz tomato paste (in a can)

11 tsp beef bouillon

4 cans of beer

5 cups water

3 bay leaves

We used about 1-1/2 lbs beef neckbones for this stew.

Seared them on all sides, though you may want to season them as ours came out a little bland though it was fall-off-the-bones tender.

Did the whole onion thing again as the previous oxtail stew, but with a splash of beer instead of wine.

Both the seared meats and onion and tomato paste went into the slow cooker to which we added four cans of PBR (minus the splash in the previous step), the water, beef bouillon and bay leaves. Cook on high for 4 hours, then refrigerate.

A day later with the fat removed and soup reheated all day:

Served with a poached egg and broccoli for a complete heart healthy dinner.

One for papa bear, mama bear and moi... 

Actually, the biggest one was for pops, the middle one for moi and the littlest one for the hubster. (He had other meaty side dishes)

Oxtail Stew

For oxtail stew, you definitely need beef oxtails (shown above). This one is just over 2 lbs.

They were seared on all sides before being placed in the slow cooker.

Then we browned 1 1/2 medium sized white onions.

While the onions browned, we added 8 cups of water, 10 beef bouillon cubes (tsps), 2 cups of cheapo red wine and 3 bay leaves into the slow cooker.

Once the onions were browned, we added 6 oz tomato paste and a splash of red wine

Once the onions were caramelized, we added it to the slow cooker as well.

We cooked it for about four hours on high and then let it cool. Then placed it in the fridge to cool it down and let the fat harden to scoop out the next day.

Then we cooked it on low all day and when we were ready to serve, we also added hot pot meat and about 4 oz halved cherry tomatoes! 

Super yumsters oxtail stew! :D

Green Beans with Bacon, Tomato, and Parmesan Cheese

The hubster found this recipe a long time ago, back in Aug 13, 2012 to be specific, and emailed it to me. I've had it earmarked since then, but I guess we never bought green beans until recently. And even when I did buy the green beans, it still took me another week or so to actually cook this dish... Well, here it is:

before cheese

with grated Parm cheese

The actual recipe can be found here: Michiana Eats since we just eyeballed the amount of ingredients used... It still came out delicious! (Also, we subbed minced shallot with minced onion and subbed the butter with bacon fat) Om nom nom.

Now I want to make a casserole version and mix in LOTs of grated Parmesan cheese. So delicious!