Arrowroot Powder Pizza Crust Recipe

Most people who are paleo will tell you that at some point or another, they just really miss pizza. We’re no exception to this rule. Finding a good paleo pizza recipe, however, can be tough. It’s a lot of trial and error, and sadly, some not so good dinners along the way. Well, I happened upon this recipe from Paleo Spirit. I don’t have, and have never actually used Tapioca Starch, so I substitited arrowroot powder, since I’ve heard that they can be substituted for one another. I also always add some italian seasoning (oregano, basil, thyme, and a little rosemary) to my pizza crusts. I add the dried herbs on top of whatever liquid the recipe calls for. This refreshes the herbs so to speak and makes them a bit more flavorful. Here is a picture  of the cooked crust.

I then topped it with some home made pizza sauce, cheese (we eat dairy) and some pepperoni. It turned out to be really tasty.

Kitchen Skills, Like a Boss

I am a housewife and a stay at home mother. I took a home economics class in middle school, and that is the extend of my “culinary training.” Thanks to YouTube, though, I have been able to pick up some kitchen skills along the way that have proven to be quite valuable. Today, I wanted to share some of those with you. Please note, none of these videos are mine. They are all linked to where I found them on the internet….

How To Chop an Onion

How To Peel Garlic in Less Than 10 Seconds

How to Cut a Mango

How to Cut Tomatoes

How to Hard Boil Eggs- I add a tiny bit of baking soda to the water, to make it easier to peel….

How To Slice a Pepper

How To Cut a Pineapple

How to Make an Omlette

Do you have any others that you’ve picked up along the way that you’d like to share??? Let me know in the comments section.

Spreading the word….

My husband is an wonderful advocate for Paleo. He loves telling people about how we eat, how it’s affected us, and how delicious it is. A lot of times, though, when he gets to the part about what we don’t eat, people’s eyes start to gloss over. Other times, people immediate start to question the entire thing. “If you don’t eat all of those things, what exactly do you eat??? Do you just eat twigs and berries and branches all the time??” I, on the other hand, am not so vocal in my approach. Maybe it’s a bit sneaky on my part, but I let the food speak for itself.

The other day, for example, my husband offered for us to cook dinner for his family. He wanted me to make buffalo chicken nuggets, (I’ll post a recipe for these bad boys as soon as I get around to measuring the ingredients) with dill dip. Now, in my husband’s family, cooking is not a task to be taken lightly. These people CAN COOK. I have never, never eaten something at any of their gatherings that wasn’t amazing. I, on the other hand, could burn water when we first got married. So, this task was a bit intimidating, to say the least. Not to mention, I was making something Paleo (although very much a cheat food in my book) for people who seem to be completely uninterested in Paleo.

Challenge Accepted.

When I was finished cooking, I could sense some reluctance from everyone to try the chicken. I think that when you tell people what paleo is, they expect the food to be gross. My husband, however, got everyone to try some, and they all liked it. Most of them came back for more. (WIN!!) What is an even bigger victory to me, however, was the conversation that I had with his sister when she tried some later that evening. She asked if the chicken was breaded, and I explained what I had used to make it. She then asked if we were gluten free, so I started to explain Paleo to her. She was genuinely interested, so I pulled out my Paleo cookbooks for her to take a peek at.  She found a lot of recipes that she wanted to try, and was asking me questions about where to buy certain ingredients, and whatnot. I’m not sure if she will actually give it a shot or not, but the fact that we were able to have a discussion about it, is a win for me.

I certainly don’t expect everyone to convert to Paleo, but it works for us, and any time that people are open and receptive to that  is pretty awesome.

Confessions

While we are back in New England, we are still very much in a transitional state. We are living with family at the moment, which means that we don’t have our own kitchen.  With that said, comes my confession….we have been eating like garbage. There has been more coffee than water. More fast food than real food, and far more processed junk. If I wasn’t committed to Paleo before this lapse, I would be now. I feel terrible. I am in pain from my bladder condition every single day. I am not sleeping well, but I am exhausted all of the time. This is clearly my body telling me that something needs to change. Before we went Paleo, I didn’t know that I could feel better. I didn’t know that I could ease my symptoms and enjoy life more, but now I do. The proof is there, right in front of me, and it’s time to get back on track…

Oven Baked Eggs

I read somewhere that you can bake eggs in the oven, and since I’m useless in the morning, I thought that this might be a good idea. I could bake some eggs, and have them ready for easy breakfasts. With that said, I thought I’d give it a try. I put a little bit of bacon grease in the bottom of each spot, and I cracked one egg into each section of this mini loaf pan I have. (I’m not sure if it’s really called a mini loaf pan. It’s more like a muffin pan, but the spaces are square). Then I popped it into the oven for about 20 minutes. The eggs were pretty good that day, but when I reheated them on subsequent days, they were pretty rubbery. I will say, though, that when topped with a sausage patty and a slice of cheese, it was a decent breakfast.  My husband didn’t seem to mind them (or maybe he did but was trying to be supportive), but I don’t think I’ll make them this way again.

Do any of you folks have any easy breakfast ideas??

Banana Bread Coffee Cake

I’m not a morning person at all. I’m that person who can barely function enough to set the coffee maker without injury in the morning, so I do it the night before, so that all I have to do in the morning is stumble into the kitchen and push one button. (I could program the darn thing to eliminate that step, but there are too many steps involved in that for my brain to process…..) When you add in a baby that needs to be changed and fed, dogs that need to be fed and let outside, easy is the name of the game for me. Generally, I will hard-boil a bunch of eggs for the week, bake some bacon in the oven, and breakfast will be eggs, bacon, a piece of fruit if we have any, and coffee. The problem, however, is that I don’t really enjoy hard boiled eggs. I get sick of eggs in general, after awhile. Eggs were, in fact, the only food that I could not have during my entire pregnancy. It didn’t matter how I made them, they just didn’t work for me. With that said, I’m always in search of something that I can make ahead of time that I can just grab and eat in the morning. So, when this recipe for Banana Bread Coffee Cake from Taylor Made it Paleo came across my news feed, I thought I’d give it a whirl.

The result was good. Different, of course than what you come to expect from Coffee Cake, since there’s not a crapload of brown sugar crumbled all over the top, but my husband and I enjoyed it. It was easy for me to grab a piece to eat, with my coffee in the mornings. Although, I wasn’t sure how to store it, so I just stored it on the counter. I do think that next time, it should be stored in the fridge, since it got kind of funky pretty quickly. 😉