Honey basil pork meatballs

This recipe made my day. Not only did it turn out amazing the first time, it was super quick, easy and so tasty. My son loved it so much he ate two servings. My husband devoured his and I barely managed to sneak a few away into a leftover tray for lunch. I am pretty sure that this dinner for 4 really should translate to dinner for 2 plus amazing snacks all day. One of the things I really enjoyed about this dish was getting to use the basil that I have growing in my front garden. I typically plant 8-10 basil plants each spring because I love making pesto. Other than pesto, pasta sauce, and caprese salad, I don't have a ton of other basil recipes. This will be on the list from now on. 

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. ground pork
• handful of fresh basil leaves. I used 6
• 2 tbl minced garlic or about 4 cloves, minced
• 3 onion tops (scallions)
• 1 tbl fish sauce
• 1 tsp Chili powder
• 1 tsp Paprika
• 1 1/2 tbl honey
• 2 tbl Sesame oil for the pan

Greens portion:

• Bunch of kale, stem removed, leaves washed and chopped
• 1/4 onion, chopped
• 1/4 cup of stock or water (whatever you have on hand)

In a bowl combine the minced garlic, spices, honey, fish sauce, greens and pork. Smash together with your bare hands while pretending you are the Swedish Chef. Bork Bork Bork! Meanwhile, you sesame oil should be heating in a pan over medium heat. You want it hot enough to cook the meat but not too hot as to burn it. That will leave a crispy outside and raw inside. 

Once you made little meatballs, place them gently in the hot oil and be sure to leave some space around each one. Turn as they brown. This whole process takes about 10 minutes to complete. Remove the meatballs and let cool on a piece of paper towel so the oil drains away.

Place the chopped onion and kale in the pan of oil. Stir around to get nice and sesame oiled. Add the 1/4 cup of liquid so it creates a steam. Place the lid on the pan and step away for a minute. Once the greens have cooked down to your liking, serve up and enjoy! 

My son really loved this. He had his regular bowl of slop for dinner then ate a bowl of this while smiling. He got really excited when I served him another meat ball. Paleo baby!!!!!!

Leek potato soup

So, in the Paleo community some people don't eat potatoes. Sorry folks, I do. The paleo community eats a lot of things that aren't the most amazing/good for you/best possible foods for my brood and that I won't feed my child so let's call this even.

Besides, mustard has been taken from my available list of foods because the vinegar used to make it is almost always corn derived...that really sucks for me since my kid is one of the Celiac people with a corn sensitivity. 

Most paleo people don't hyper focus on labels since for the most part all the ingredients seem okay. I recently bought a package of breakfast sausage from my new favorite farmer. We had a long discussion about animal care and feeding, slaughtering and food preparation. He and his lovely wife assured me that no corn products were in any of their foods. I bought the most amazing brats and bacon ever along with the sausage. (The bacon is nitrate free and seasoned with celery and cherry juice which makes the best flavor with less saltiness.)  Thanks to my mother's keen eye, I avoided a disaster when she noticed dextrose on the label. Most paleo people wouldn't care about that but dextrose to me means corn poison. So, she had a lovely breakfast sausage and I made bacon. mmmmm bacon. Interested in the zillion ways corn is hiding in your food? Check out this list. 

This is the little (big) man who is such the awesome eater.

Now to the soup. Really tasty soup. If it weren't for the bacon, it would be vegan. But I reserve the right to add bacon to anything I can. I have lost all the baby weight without really trying and have to keep my body going for my little man so I eat as much bacon as I can shove in my face. Life is too short to be deprived. While you can use ghee as a butter substitute for this recipe, I kept it simple and used bacon grease. Additionally, some people use dairy but since I don't, I used coconut milk for this flavor. So rich and delicious. Serves 6. If you like roasted garlic, roast the garlic while you are making the soup so you can have it ready by the time you reach the final steps. 

Ingredients: 

Rinse the dirt out.

• 4-5 Leeks with the green parts chopped off and the rest rinsed well
• 4-5 small potatoes
• 1 tbl white pepper
• 4 pieces of bacon
• salt
• 4 cloves of roasted garlic or minced garlic
• optional- scallions
• can of coconut milk
• Box of chicken or veggie stock

Put a large pot on medium heat and sizzle up your bacon until crispy. Take the bacon out and leave the grease in. Set the bacon to the side and try not to eat it all like I do. 

Cut into little coins and keep the bottoms to plant.

Literally plant the bottoms and enjoy new, free leeks! 

Cut up your leeks. Chop off the bottom 1" of the leek, save for later. Take the leafy tops off as well. Discard those. With the remaining section, chop into 1/2" sections. 

Rinse well and push apart into rings so they cook quicker.

Peel and chop the potatoes and set aside. Put the rinsed leeks into the bacon grease and cook down for 5 minutes. Add a dash of sea salt to help sweat the leeks. Once they are nice and cooked down, add the potato and broth. Add the roasted garlic or fresh garlic and white pepper. Bring to a hard boil. Boil for 5 minutes then turn down the heat, set the lid on and cook on low for 25 minutes. Check and cook for up to 15 minutes more, as needed to attain tater softness. 

Once cooked, blend with an immersion blender or your blender of choice. 

Add the can of coconut milk and continue to mix. Pour into a bowl and add the crumbled bacon and scallions. Enjoy!

Avocado tuna endive lunch boats

Lunch can be a bit of an issue if you are on the go. My best friend really wants to switch to a more primal lifestyle but she is constantly on the go. It is difficult for her to make a full meal in the short lunch break that she gets. I started thinking about what kind of meals she could make and this was one of my ideas. I also love mixing veggies in my diet that are not on my regular shopping list. A little variety goes a long way. So in addition to the normal restrictions of a paleo diet, I have to be exceptionally careful about ingredients. Since my son can detect dextrose in breakfast sausage that is then filtered through me (breastmilk), I have no room for error. I love tuna sandwiches but I can't use mayonnaise because it usually has the soybean oils or other contaminant. Additionally, mustards have vinegars which are often corn based which is a huge problem for my son. I decided to skip the mustard/mayo blend and come up with something new. It turns out that I made something that is even better than the original and much easier to create- Avocado tuna!

Ingredients: 

• 1/2 an avocado, very ripe
• 1 can of soy free tuna
• 2-4 cherry tomatoes
•  1 tsp onion powder
• black pepper
• 1 belgian endive

Cook:

Mash the avocado with a fork and add in the spices and chopped up tomato. Mix in the tuna and place in the leafs from the Belgian endives. They have a lovely crisp bite to them which is so much better than mouths full of nasty bread. 

Side dish: I used leftover brussel sprout/butternut squash scramble on the side. This dish is super easy and reheats very well.

Ingredients:

1 handful of Brussel Sprouts

1/2 butternut squash, cubed

1 handful mushrooms, sliced

black pepper

bacon grease

Cut the ends from the sprouts and quarter lengthwise. Sautée in the bacon grease. In the meantime  take the squash and steam in the microwave for a few minutes until soft. Add into the pan with the other sprouts and add the mushrooms. If you love garlic, a little garlic goes great in this dish well. Sautée until the mushrooms and sprouts are soft enough to eat. Enjoy.

As a bonus, I put my dish on the counter and it fell off just right. The shattering sound was quite a surprise, especially since I have Pyrex dishes which are very hard to break. I have used this same set of dishes for 6 years and they have no chips or cracks. Pyrex is awesome for a reason. I must have dropped it juuussssst right. I kind of feel like I deserve an award. 

Baked avocado eggs

Trying to come up with new breakfast ideas has been a little difficult. I can't do grains so most of my traditional go-to foods are off the list. I also have a little one to feed so I need to make food for either the two of us, or something that I can make while I feed him. That means fix it and forget it food. For that kind of recipe, I present the baked avocado egg. 

Serves 2. 

Ingredients:

1 ripe avocado

2 eggs

Pepper

1 piece of bacon

Cumin

Cut the avocado in half lengthwise. Preheat oven to 425F. Remove the pit and scrape out enough of the avocado so that you can fit a cracked egg inside. I mashed the rest up and made a bit of guacamole and some baby food. I sprinkled a bit of cumin inside to add a little pep. Crack the egg into the avocado cups. I placed the cups in little baking dishes so that they would not fall over. Cut the bacon into bite sized pieces and sprinkle on top of the two. Pop into the oven for 14 minutes. I found that anything over 15 makes it too hard boiled. Under 12 is too runny. 13-14 is jusssst right. I served mine with left over meat stuffing. 

Alton approved!