grain free Archives - Page 13 of 16

Roasted Jerk Chicken with Carrots and Potatoes

December 4, 2014 By Becky 6 Comments

This paleo roasted jerk chicken with carrots and potatoes is just the thing to warm you up on a winter evening.

As winter settles in, I’m trying to remain focused on the few cold-weather activities I actually enjoy– namely, roasting things, making hot drinks, and baking cookies. (Don’t even try to get me excited about skiing, snowboarding, or sledding. I’ll just meet up with you in the lodge for some hot chocolate when you’re done freezing your nose and toes on the frigid slopes.)

There is one other winter activity I enjoy, though, and that is going on Caribbean vacations. I don’t have the money for a trip anywhere warm this year, but Ben and I had an amazing time in Jamaica year before last. Today we relived some of those good times by eating this paleo roasted jerk chicken with carrots and potatoes. It’s no trip to the islands, but it does taste really good.

Ginger Thyme Tea

November 30, 2014 By Becky 15 Comments

This caffeine-free ginger thyme tea is easy to make at home
and perfect for when you’re feeling under the weather.

I woke up Thanksgiving morning with the beginnings of a cold. Black Friday was even worse, with the irrepressible urge to nap setting in a mere three hours after I woke up. Yesterday, after getting over ten hours of sleep the night before, I spent the hours between six and eight pm dozing off on the couch with a purring cat on my stomach and a scarf wrapped around my head. I’ve gone through two pocket packs of tissues and finally had to cave and buy a full-size box.

Since I know a lot of people get sick around the holidays, I thought I’d share my favorite homemade remedy: a simple ginger thyme tea.

Grain-free Cranberry Orange Bread

November 21, 2014 By Becky 10 Comments

My family doesn’t have a well-defined set of Thanksgiving traditions. Growing up with divorced parents, I often divided my time between two Thanksgiving dinners, having the main meal at one house and dessert at another. Things always felt briefly desolate as I was shuttled between the two under the cover of early nightfall, but a slice of pie (or three) put an end to that pretty fast. And I wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on spending time with either of my families.

My mom and I usually had dinner at a friends’ house, and didn’t have to do much of the cooking. (I don’t think either of us has ever roasted a whole turkey, unless she did a bunch of turkey-roasting before I was born and neglected to tell me about it.)

Paleo Pumpkin Pancakes

November 17, 2014 By Becky 15 Comments

I’m a little late to the pumpkin party this year. I bought a couple of cartons of pumpkin puree over a month ago because I knew the pumpkin cravings would eventually hit, but wasn’t sure when.

I made it through all of October and the first half of November without making a batch of my paleo pumpkin spice ice cream, a pumpkin and pecorino soufflé, or a pumpkin caramel cheesecake pie. I didn’t just not make any of those things–I didn’t even want them. It was like I was over pumpkin.

Almond Butter Thumbprints with Salted Caramel

October 27, 2014 By Becky 44 Comments

My mom, my boyfriend, and I are really grateful to Karen of Karen’s Kitchen Stories for introducing us to these amazing cookies. I know it’s a bit hard to believe because this was a pretty big batch, but we ate them all between the three of us. I was not interested in sharing with anyone else because they were too good.

Even though they’re paleo cookies made with almond butter, they taste very similar to traditional peanut butter cookies, and the crumbly, buttery cookie and creamy salted caramel are an unbeatable team.

Maple Apple Spice Cake

October 20, 2014 By Becky 16 Comments

My boyfriend doesn’t like things made with apples, pumpkin, or squash, so fall is kind of a hard time for us. I’m all like, “It’s time to apple-pumpkin-squashify all the things!” and he’s all like, “Oh, it looks like there’s some bread over there for toast.” Literally, he had toast for lunch the other day. I could not even get him to try a bite of this butternut squash soup with fried garlic and chili oil.

I’ve been a paleo food blogger for long enough that I feel like a little bit of a failure when my boyfriend has toast for lunch.

Things are going a little bit better on the apple front, though, because Ben really liked this cake. Unless you’re the one to stir the grated apple into the batter, which would be a pretty major tipoff, you probably won’t know that there’s any apple in it. It does help make the batter extra moist, though, kind of like the zucchini in zucchini bread, and also adds a little more sweetness.

Butternut Squash Soup with Fried Garlic and Chili Oil

October 14, 2014 By Becky 14 Comments

A little over a week ago, my laptop gave me the prohibitory sign when I tried to turn it on. Now that’s all it will do–show a gray screen with a circle with a slash through it, and one of those little timers that never stops turning.

I’m in the process of mourning the photos I lost and trying to scrape together money to buy a new computer. Luckily, my school lent me a laptop to use in the interim–a giant, clunky monster of a PC, but so much better than nothing. I’ve been comforting myself with this soup.

Pear Galettes with Pistachio Frangipane

September 29, 2014 By Becky 10 Comments

“Can I have this?” Ben points to the last slice of galette, sitting alone on the cutting board.

“NO!” I scream in my mind.

Sensing my hesitation, and because he’s a nice boyfriend, Ben asks, “Do you want some of it?”

Um, yes.

“How much?”

All of it. “Half of it.”

Ben smiles and cuts the slice in two, leaving me what amounts to one eighth of a galette, then devours his share. And he doesn’t even like pears! That’s how I know these galettes are good stuff.

Balsamic Chicken with Mushrooms

September 22, 2014 By Becky 28 Comments

I love to read. It’s actually somewhat of a problem.

Whenever I read fiction or a memoir, one of two things happens. I either put the book down because I can’t get into it, or I’m so into it that I can’t think about anything else, and end up reading the whole thing within a day or two. The latter happens much more frequently than the former, and everything else I’m supposed to be doing falls by the wayside. I fall into reading rabbit holes so easily that I usually don’t allow myself to read anything other than my school textbooks during the semester itself. (Of course, I’m very interested in speech and language pathology, but books with titles like Understanding Voice Problems and Preclinical Speech Science never really end up being page-turners. Instead of keeping me up all night like a suspenseful novel, they’re uniquely capable of sending me into a sudden nap if I read them anytime after the sun sets.)

Nutella Coffee Cake + Paleo Nutella

September 2, 2014 By Becky 2 Comments

I’m sharing a recipe for nutella coffee cake with homemade paleo nutella over on the Healthy Aperture blog this week!

I had to turn in the post a while ago, so it’s been over a month since I actually ate the cake, and now I REALLY want some. I can barely focus enough to write this little blurb because I am desperate to get up, go to the kitchen, and make it again. The sweet, vanilla-scented cake has huge swirls of dark, rich nutella, and the combination is totally addictive.

Here are five reasons you should be making nutella coffee cake right now:

Balsamic Steak with Fig & Arugula Salad

August 27, 2014 By Becky Leave a Comment

Do you think beautiful food tastes better? I do.

Of course, every once in a while you come across a beautiful dish, take your first bite, and feel disappointed because it doesn’t taste nearly as good as it looks. In my experience, though, that doesn’t happen much.

More often, a food’s level of beauty and deliciousness are relatively close together, with the gorgeousness boosting the deliciousness up a notch or two (or perhaps vice versa, but I don’t really find that a food looks prettier once I’ve tried it and know that it’s tasty…we eat with our eyes first, after all). The food looks good, so it tastes even better. I think that’s how it goes with me and figs. Yes, they’re yummy, but most of all, their colors are just so pretty. When I take a bite of fig while looking at the freshly-sliced figs that are still on my plate, the beauty of those figs makes the one in my mouth taste even better.

Galician Greens

August 11, 2014 By Becky 7 Comments

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

My mom is from Texas, and I lived there for four years, so I am a bit of a Southern girl at heart. I like fried okra, really hot weather, and smiling at people I don’t know (not as much of a thing here in Boston, unfortunately).

As a true Texan, my mom gets really excited about greens, but I was never able to share in her excitement until now. When I was a kid she often worked to recreate the greens my grandmother used to make, which started with salt pork and reportedly ended up as a fabulous and memorable side dish. I never had the chance to try my grandmother’s greens, so I can’t really say how my mom’s versions compared, but as a child I felt exasperation and dread whenever my mother picked up those gargantuan leaves at the store. I just didn’t like collard greens.