The Paleo Princess

Before you stop and remind me that cream or any dairy products, for that matter, are not paleo, take a look at the list of ingredients. No dairy. If you make the soup, you will see that the soup strangely feels like there had to be some sort of cream in it.  Whatever it is, it’s tasty and perfect for a cool night at home.

Here’s what you need:

Beef Broth (best from scratch like in the link)

2-3 pounds of organic chicken (I like drumsticks and chicken legs)

5 stalks of celery

4 carrots

1 yellow onion

Here’s how: 

1. Chop the onions and celery into thin slices. Shred the carrots or use the vegetable peeler to make ribbons.

2. Place the onions, celery and carrots in the broth and let it simmer for 10 minutes or so.

3. Add the chicken to the broth. Make sure there is enough broth to cover the chicken and veggies. Bring it to a boil and then drop the heat down low to a simmer.  If you are using a slow cooker, there is no need to let the veggies simmer. Go ahead and put the chicken in there and let it go for at least an hour before you eat.

4. Let the soup simmer for about 45 minutes to an hour. If you are going to be around the kitchen, definitely let it go longer.

And that’s it. An easy peasy chicken soup-y.

*sorry…No photos!  The soup disappeared as I was tasting it.

For the last few months, I’ve been buying raw knuckle bones for my dog. I have been doing this primarily because I have heard that it keeps the dogs occupied.  An occupied dog is a quiet dog, usually.  As much as I love spending time with my pooch, we need to have some separate quiet time once in awhile.  If you peek into my freezer, you will see a bag full of beef bones (mostly knuckle) ready to be chewed up by my Joules.
This past weekend, while cruising the internetz, I came across a couple of blog entries regarding beef bones. (here and here) Inspired by all the facts about bones, I set out to make my own beef broth.  Conveniently, I had all the ingredients I needed to get started: a full supply of beef bones and water! Remy and Mark both say to include apple cider vinegar but I went without and it still worked out. I bet if I add the vinegar next time, it will be out of this world.  This time it was just awesome. The cider, I read, helps to extract the minerals without changing the flavor.

Here’s what you need:

2-3 big beef bones (knuckle, femur)

water to cover the bones

Here’s how: 

1. Heat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.  Place bones in the oven for about 50 minutes.

2. Place bones in pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer for a few hours. Beef bones can actually go for a couple days to get the full flavor and goods out of them.  I ended up simmering for 4 hours and then turning the stove back on whenever I was fiddling around in the kitchen. This happened for about 2 days.  My dog may have had a couple bowlfuls too…

When you decide you are done, pull out the bones and enjoy!

This was simple and I cannot wait to share what I did with the broth!

Bones...not just for dogs.

okok. I couldn’t wait. I made a creamy chicken soup. To be written later…

This week, The Paleo Princess celebrated its first birthday!  Since the Italian style sauce I posted last July, I have had a great year of sharing my Paleo cooking with you all.  I have truly enjoyed posting photos and recipes for you to try out, and I appreciate all the feedback whether it is here on the site or on the Facebook page.  I hope you will continue cooking with The Paleo Princess in the next year and beyond!

As we are celebrating a birthday, what better way to celebrate than by making cupcakes?! I am pleased to share with you a recent favorite: Coconut Cupcakes from Elana at Elana’s Pantry.  I have already made them a few times. Because I tend to decrease the amount of agave by half and skip the frosting (it’s got heavy cream in it), I treat them more as a muffin at my house.  I served them at brunch yesterday and they proved to be a popular item! I am sure that you will like them very much.  Remember—just like other Paleo treats, just because the ingredients are Paleo friendly, does not mean that you should eat as many as you can stuff into your mouth. (I know I know…sometimes, it’s hard.)

Without further, ado, here is the recipe (replicated from Elana’s Pantry).

Here’s what you need:

3 eggs

1/2 cup coconut oil

1/2 cup agave nectar

1/2 cup coconut flour

1/2 teaspoon celtic sea salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut

Here’s how: 

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. In a small bowl, blend eggs, coconut oil and agave netar.

3. Once combined well, mix in the salt, baking soda, shredded coconut and coconut flour.

4. Allow batter to sit so that it may thicken a little bit.

5. Either line a cupcake tin with baking cups or use coconut oil to grease up the cupcake spaces.

6. Spoon 1/4 cup batter into each cupcake opening.

7. Bake for 20-25 minutes.

8. Allow cupcakes to cool before serving.

Enjoy these! Until next time…

Back in April, I wrote an entry about how to still buy good quality meats and vegetables without making a huge dent in your bank account.  In that entry, I listed growing your own garden as one of the options for being an economical Paleo eater.

Chard-fest 2011!

As a great supporter of sustainable agriculture, both personally and academically, I decided to try out some of the things I have learned on my own.  Through various farm visits and my class I took last semester, I have learned so much about how to avoid chemical usage by interplanting, planting things that attract beneficial insects and rotating crops.  In my plot in the school garden, which I share with two other students, I have been growing Kale, Chard, Beets and Tomatoes.  As you can see in my photo to the right, we have been pretty successful!  In my backyard (which I am oh-so-lucky to have as a grad student!), I also have a couple garden plots that I have been working on. My special somebody built me a couple of beautiful raised beds and so I have planted a variety of seeds and diligently water and weed every couple of days.

A peek at one of the plots!

I’m very excited! Back in Switzerland, we had a vegetable garden which was sort of productive, but to be honest, we didn’t have a clue as to what we were doing. We thought we did, though… This time around, it is definitely still a learning process but I think that I have a better grasp on what I am doing.  Stay tuned to see how things pan out!

For those of you wanting to plant your own gardens, I have put together this little booklet. The booklet explains a little bit of what it means to have an organic garden and how to go about planting your it.  It provides three steps on the why’s and how’s of an organic garden.

Download a PDF of the booklet here: “Beginner’s Guide to Organic Gardening”

Have you ever bought something without fully thinking about how to use it or why you would need such a thing? Yes, I have bought knitting needles and yarn with no knowledge of how to knit.  I have known somebody who bought a guitar with no guitar playing experience or know-how.

What does this have to do with cooking, you might ask. A couple weeks ago, I was at the grocery store and did my usual browsing and wandering around the grocery store in search of inspiration for my next meals.  I ended up at the meat counter and spotted a beautiful piece of bone-in Pork Loin [roast] sitting behind the glass.  The price was just right and I could not take my eyes off of it.  Without even thinking about how or when I would cook it, I heard myself asking for the three pound hunk of meat.  Upon returning to my kitchen, the fact that I had no idea what to do with the pork before dawned on me.  But like the knitting kit, I figured it out.  Fortunately, I did a lot better figuring out the pork than the knitting.  And now I would like to share my beer-y delicious Pork Loin Roast with you all.

note: This is a dutch-oven recipe.

Here’s what you need:

1 three-pound pork loin roast

1 yellow onion

6-7 carrots

12 oz dark beer

2 bay leaves

2 tablespoons salt

1.5 tablespoons pepper

2 tablespoons butter or olive oil

Here’s how:  

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. Cut the onion in half and then slice the onion into very thin slices.  Also, while you’ve got the cutting board out, cut the peel and cut the carrots into 1/2-inch slices. If you prefer your carrots to be a little more chunky, go ahead and cut them that way. It does not matter too much how the vegetables get cut.

3. Combine the salt and pepper and then rub all over the pork.

4. Place your dutch oven on the stovetop and heat up to medium-high.  Once hot, place butter or oil in pot and wait a minute. Place the seasoned pork in order to sear on all sides.  This will probably take about a minute on each side.  Once seared on all sides, remove from pot and place on a plate.

5. Add the onions to the pot. Stir the onions around until they are softened.  You may need some additional grease at this point.  After onions are softened, add the carrots until they have softened a teeny bit.

6. Add the beer. Let it come to a boil for a few seconds before placing the pork and the bay leaves in there.  Put the lid on and into the oven it goes!

7. Wait for about 1.5 hours before pulling it out.  If you used a bigger chunk of meat, it will need to go a little longer. If you’re paranoid like me, you might be tempted to open it up and slice into it to see if it’s done. Try to resist the urge! I know it’s not easy…

When you take it out of the oven, be sure to let it rest for about 10-15 minutes.  This resting period will keep the yummy juices from spilling out when you cut into it and will hopefully make you feel a little less uneasy about your meat being done as the meat will continue to cook slowly during this resting period.

Serve with a heaping spoonful of carrots and onions on top.  The soup is also quite tasty as well.

Bon appetit, mes amis! I hope you enjoy this one.

We all scream for coconut milk ICE CREAM!

I’m so excited to share this recipe with you! A few months ago, my wonderful boyfriend bought us an ice cream maker so that he could make me my own dairy-free ice cream. He experimented a little bit and came up with the following recipe.  It’s been such a joy to be able to eat something with ice cream-like consistency without the side-effects that dairy can oftentimes bring me.  So, it is with deepest pride and greatest pleasure that I welcome you tonight. I invite you to relax, let me pull up a chair as the dining room proudly presents–your coconut milk ice cream!

A little note before you get started: We use a 2 QT Ice Cream Maker. If you are using anything smaller, you will need to divide the recipe ingredients in half. This ice cream maker is just big enough at 2 QTs.

Here’s what you need:

2 cans of coconut milk (13.5 fl oz each; I like the organic Whole Foods brand but others might work well too as long as it’s FULL FAT. “Light” will not work!)

6 eggs (5 if you use Jumbo eggs)

5-6 tablespoons of honey (preferably Raw) OR 4- 5 tablespoons of agave nectar

1 tablespoon of vanilla extract

+ anything you’d like to add-in: roasted almond slices and dark chocolate chunks are my favorite!

Here’s how:

1. Make sure your ice cream maker “tub” (I don’t know the technical word for it) is nice and frozen. With the way my freezer works, I have to turn the freezer on it’s highest setting and keep the tub in there for a couple of hours, at least.

2. Set up a double-boiler system.

3. Combine all ingredients minus eggs and add-ins inside of the inner bowl.  You can use a whisk here.  Once the water starts boiling like crazy, bring it down to a simmer so you don’t have water splashing up into your precious ice cream mixture.

4. Mix eggs. I recommend using an electric hand-mixer for this so that the eggs get mixed up really well.

5. After the coconut milk mixture is combined well and the coconut milk chunks are gone, you can add in the eggs.  Before you dump the eggs into the coconut milk, take a 1/2 cup or so and put it INTO the eggs. Stir around. Now you can dump all the eggs into the coconut milk.

6. Slowly stir for about 10 minutes. Sing some songs, draw pictures with your whisk…whatever you need to do to make those 10 minutes go by.

7. Place mixture in the fridge until cool.  This can take up to 2-3 hours, maybe more.

8. Once the mixture has cooled, it’s time for some ice-cream making! Refer to the instructions of your respective ice cream makers for this part as each one is different. You can add the add-ins when the ice cream mixture starts to resemble soft-serve ice-cream. Let the mixture stir a little bit longer before turning the machine off. Pour the mixture into a storage container of your choice and put it away in the freezer…and that’s your coconut milk ice cream!

YAY! Hope you like it.

Hi friends– In the last post, I talked a bit about ways to get good animal protein, fruits and vegetables without breaking the bank.  I also promised you all a recipe for a pot roast using beef chuck roast.  I’ve been using a dutch oven instead of a slow cooker so my instructions will be for that.

Here’s what you need:

2-3 pound beef chuck roast  (you can go bigger/heavier…I cook for two now so I stick to smaller ones)

7 medium carrots

3 stalks of celery

1 big yellow onion

3 cloves of garlic

1 can of stewed tomatoes

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons salt and pepper (mixed together)

*feel free to add carrots and celery as you’d like

1 tablespoon mustard (for the sauce. I like Sierra Nevada Spicy Brown)

hot sauce (I like this kind: Pepper Plant California Style Pepper Sauce)

honey

Here’s how:

1. First, prep the vegetables.  Once all the vegetables are ready, the rest of the cooking will go pretty quickly.  Peel and cut up the carrots into 1/2 -inch pieces.  Wash and cut up the celery in a similar way.  Cut up the onion into 1-inch chunks.  Lastly, peel and coarsely cut up the garlic.  Maybe even open up the can of tomatoes so it’s ready to go.

2. Sprinkle and rub in the salt and pepper mixture onto the meat.

3. Preheat the oven at 325 degrees Fahrenheit.  Heat up the pot at medium-high heat.  Once heated, sear the beef on all sides.  All you need to do is make sure that each side of the beef gets browned–this will take maybe 1-2 minutes each side.  Once browned, remove the meat and add the onions and garlic.  Wait until the onions soften a little bit before adding the rest of the vegetables.  Let it get to a boil and then put the meat back into the pot.

4. Turn the stove off and put the pot (with the lid on!) into the oven.  Let it cook for about an hour. Turn the temperature down to 250 degrees Fahrenheit and continue to cook for another 45 minutes.  If you like to be super careful, the meat is ready when the internal temperature reads 160 degrees.  If you go without a thermometer, the meat will be nice and tender when it’s done.

5. Sauce: Scoop 1.5 cups of the vegetables out of the pot and into a food processor.  Puree.  Add a tablespoon of mustard to start with.  If you like a little spicy bite, add a teaspoon of hot sauce and maybe some honey.  Taste it and then add more hot sauce, mustard or honey if you’d like.  We all have different tastes so I encourage you to play with the sauce a little bit.  When you think it’s to your liking, slice up the meat, add the sauce and bon appetit!

You will probably be left with a broth in your pot.  After I’ve eaten the meat and most of the vegetables, I like to heat up the broth and just drink it up as a soup!

When it comes to paleo eating, there are a few reactions I hear often. The most common, though, regards cost.  ”Isn’t it expensive?” “Paleo sounds awesome but I think it just might be too pricey.”

Indeed, buying meat, albeit quality meat can add a little bit of heft to your grocery bill.  Fact: Organic chicken and grass-fed beef cost more than pasta and white bread.  Fact: Organically grown fruit and vegetables cost more than non-organic and canned vegetables.  Don’t worry, my Caveman/woman friends, for there are ways to eat well without shelling out the big bucks.

Here are a few tips on how to tackle the cost:

1) Be on the lookout for sales.  Even places like Whole Foods have sales on various cuts of meat as well as their fruits and vegetables.  A few weeks ago, I saw a sale on pork chops.  Another time there was a sale on grass-fed ground beef.  It’s possible, if you’re vigilant enough, to spot these price cuts.  Sure, you might not necessarily be able to be as picky about which meats you get from week to week but your bank account will thank you.

2) Farmer’s Market.  The farmer’s market is a great way to buy fresh produce at a price that is lower than most supermarkets.  Going to the farmer’s market is something I look forward to each week. In Monterey, the farmer’s market is held every Tuesday from around 4-7 pm.  Other than lower prices, it’s nice to have that interpersonal communication with the people who grew the food you are about to eat.

3)Grow your own. A little vegetable patch in your backyard might not necessarily save you tons, but by growing some things that tend to be marked up in stores, you can save a little bit. Maybe grow your own herbs like rosemary, basil and cilantro or your own organic strawberries (more on why you should eat organic strawberries another time) and blueberries.  I’m currently working on a “how to grow your own garden” instructional pamphlet and will post it on the site when it is finished.

4) Look for cheaper cuts of meat.  This kind of goes with #1 but I thought I should make it separate.  When you’re at the butcher or the grocery store, look for cuts of meat that tend to be the cheapest.  Chicken, for example, is a good source of animal protein and is not as pricey as some beef cuts.  Trader Joe’s has some good chicken at some good prices.  Beef chuck roast and pork shoulder are also cuts of meat that tend to be cheaper.  Not every meal has to be a nicely grilled New York steak (although it sure would be nice!).  Also, eggs are a great source of protein.

5) Join a CSA.  CSA stands for “Community supported agriculture”.  Basically, with a CSA, you pay a certain amount of money either per week or for a season/subscription and each week you receive a box or bag of fresh produce from that farm.  Not all CSAs will save you cash but definitely check out the ones close to you to see if there might be some price differential.

I hope this is helpful and leaves you a little relieved of the “how can I afford the meat” panic.  I’ve been there. I know that “eating paleo makes me feel healthy and I want to continue but my bank account says otherwise” feeling.  It’s totally do-able! Check out my next post. I will share a recipe for a beef pot roast with you! A chuck roast, as mentioned earlier, is one the cheaper cuts of beef and I will show you that you can get tasty dishes out of cheap cuts of meat.

Aloooooha! That’s exactly what I was saying to myself yesterday. We had some great sunshine-y weather here in Monterey.  I finally got to wear my shorts and sandals without getting cold.  What a treat! While the warm weather only lasted a couple of days, it was a welcome break from the cooler weather.  The warm day combined with the long hours of daylight felt like the perfect summer day–a good opportunity for some Jimmy Buffett and Don Ho music playing.

Back in October, I posted a recipe for a Butternut Squash Soup using roasted apples, onions and butternut squash.  While that was tasty, I think that this one is much better.  It’s easier and faster to cook up, and I think it makes for a smoother texture.  Try it out and see what you think.  I really like the combination of carrots, squash and onion with a touch of cumin and curry.

My classmates picking their own carrots during a field-trip to Jacob's Farm in Santa Cruz

Here’s what you need:

5 medium-sized carrots

1 butternut squash

1 large yellow onion

3 3/4 cups chicken broth

1/2 teaspoon curry powder

1/4 teaspoon cumin

a sprinkling of cardamon

salt

pepper

(optional) 1 tablespoon coconut milk per serving of soup

Freshly picked carrots

1. Peel the carrots and chop into 1/2-inch slices.  I said five carrots but if you feel like going a little less or more, go for it.

2. Peel and cut the onion into 1-inch chunks.

3. Cut off the rind of the butternut squash and chop the “meat” into chunks.  It doesn’t matter too much how big or small you get them because they are going to get blended later.

4. Heat a pot over medium-high heat.  Once heated, add a tiny bit of oil (grapeseed or olive).  Wait a minute and add the onions.  Cook the onions for about two minutes or until softened .  Add the carrots and squash.

5. Next, add the chicken broth until all the vegetables are barely covered.  You don’t need to add so much that the vegetables are submerged because you’ll end up with a super liquidy soup.  You might need to add more than the amount I wrote down or you might need to go less. Watch while you do it and add the chicken broth accordingly.  Add your spices.  I added about 7 turns of the pepper grinder and a couple pinches of salt in addition to the other spices.  Just add the bare minimum for now since you won’t get a good idea for the taste until it’s all blended together.

6. Bring to a boil and then simmer. Put the lid on it and let it simmer for about 20 minutes or until the carrots are soft.  You should only need to check on the carrots because they take longer to soften than the squash.  Be sure you stir things around once in a while.

7. Once the carrots are soft, it is time to blend it all up! You can either use a food processor, blender or a hand-blender. I personally like the hand-blender because I do not have a dishwasher so it is the easiest to clean.  You pick what you are most comfortable using.  Blend the soup until all chunks are gone.  At this point, you can taste the soup and see what needs to be added. You might find that you don’t need to add anything, in which case you are ready to eat!

8. When you serve it up, add a spoonful of coconut milk to your bowl if you’d like.  I found that the spices and the coconut milk complement each other well.  This part is totally optional.

Pair the soup with some tasty meat and some greens and you’ll have yourself a complete meal with your proteins, carbs and fats.  Happy eating

See you soon——–