Sweet Clementine Duck

Roasting a whole duck can be a bit of a scary process but why? It is just another type of bird.

450F for 1 hour with a tin foil top. Breast side down. Then flip the bird, make slashes in the flesh and flip over. 350 for 1 hour without a hat. 

Sweet Fried Plantains

Plantains are another food that I grew up seeing in the store but never eating. I have an appreciation for them now and am trying to make more than just desserts with them. They are the perfect blend of banana and sweet potato. Strange combo, I know. 

This is really a simple dish that is also a little naughty. Paleo diets don't eat sugar and some don't do honey either. I feel fine about honey and limit my sugar to the occasional grain free baked good. Since it is in such a small part of my diet, little splurges like this leave me with no guilt. This recipe is super quick to whip up and tastes great. 

Ingredients:

• 1-2 plantains (2 people per plantain)
• 2 tbl sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp powdered ginger
• coconut oil to fry
• Honey for the top

Directions:

Slice the plantain into long sections. I like to make diagonal cuts but you could do length wise sections. Roll these into a mixture of the dry ingredients while the oil melts and gets to a medium heat. You don't want it too high or you will scorch the sugar. Once hot, place a plantain in the oil and let it cook for about a minute on one side then flip. If it is nice and golden without going black, the heat is right and throw the rest in. I cook about 1 minute per side. Take from the heat and drizzle a little honey on top. Enjoy. 

The ups and downs of raising a paleo child

For every benefit to raising a child with a healthy diet, there are drawbacks. 

Benefits

Lifetime health

no vitamins necessary

adventerous eaters

they will grab a mango off the shelf and not know what to do with M&Ms

Challenges

Pacification is much harder

The "I want thats"

Food sharing

Accidental glutening

New Blog Name

I have been thinking about what to call my blog for awhile now and I came up with a new name. Primal Child Eats. I had originally loved the idea of calling my blog The Tasty Life but it was taken by someone. I added NC to the end but realized that I won't always live in North Carolina. I am more Primal than Paleo and believe in the primal way of life so I wanted something to reflect that. My child is the reason for all of my culinary experimentation and our new, wonderful way of life so I wanted to honor him in the title. My primal child surely does eat well and so do we thanks to him.

Enjoy your primal eats.

Slow Cooker Lamb Shanks

Lamb shanks, if you are not familiar with them, are the most tender, fall off the bone, cuts of meat you can imagine. Lamb goes particularly well with rosemary so I made a very simple dish that is a fix it and forget it masterpiece. I was literally poolside while this was cooking. I came home to a delightful meal that looked as if I had been working for hours. In its most basic form, this recipe can be quite successful with just garlic, rosemary and onion. I added a few more flavors to make a full meal out of one plate. 

Ingredients:

• 2-4 Lamb shanks
• 4-6 carrots
• 1 onion, cut into wedges
• 1 tbl garlic, minced
• 2 twigs rosemary 
• 1/2 cup red wine
• salt and pepper
• 5-10 small tomatoes quartered or 2 large tomatoes chopped

Recipe:

Cut the onion into 8ths like an orange. Place in the bottom of the pot. Wash and peel the outside of the carrots and place with the onions. Quarter the tomatoes and drop in with the rosemary, garlic and wine. Add the lamb shanks to the top and season with salt and pepper. 
Cover and cook on low for 7-9 hours. I put mine in at 8:30 AM and served it around 6pm. 

I served the shanks up with garlic smashed potatoes. Potatoes aren't Paleo but I don't care. I love potatoes and don't react to them like some people do. Perhaps it is my Indian genes. Perhaps my Irish. Either way, I love all nightshades. 

 

Playing by the tobacco while our food was cooking away.

Gluten Free Peach Blueberry Cobbler

Making peach ice cream.

North Carolina grows peaches. Lots of peaches. I always figured Georgia had the peach thing covered but North Carolina really takes the cake in my opinion. As a kid I used to hate peaches. Truth be told, I hated a lot of foods that I love now. Most of those foods I have only come to appreciate in the last year thanks to my new lifestyle. A funny thing happens when you get rid of processed foods. Once your sugars normalize you realize how sweet natural foods can be. You find that salt is not really necessary and that a little black peppercorn ground on a steak can be the most perfect seasoning ever. I hated onions, peppers, squishy fruit like peaches and plums. I hated "gritty" fruit like pears and just about anything that wasn't orange macaroni and cheese. My dad used to joke that I would serve mac n cheese at my wedding. I tried as a joke to include it but they didn't offer it on the venue's menu. Thank goodness.  

Roadside peach stand. 

This spring with our new dietary restrictions in place my husband and I made a sort of unofficial challenge to only shop at the farmer's markets. That challenge has changed our lives. I have a greater appreciation for each piece of produce now. I can taste the region as the seasons have changed and I now know that eating squash more than once a month won't kill me. In fact, it has become another challenge to add variety to my repertoire of recipes. 

Tree ripened Sandhills peaches are something to relish while the sun is beating down. The sweet juicy peaches that grow here are massive. Growing up I swore I hatted peaches for two reasons. 

1. I wasn't familiar with how to eat them and didn't know much about them.

2. Peaches in a can was pretty much it. If you grew up under the California sun that made every tinned fruit a gooey warm mess, you would hate peaches too. 

27 minutes in 94F heat. Add 4 minutes to help a hurt racer.
 This was our 2nd 5k race.

I, like most people, assumed that peaches were a Georgia thing. Turns out that they are 3rd on the list of peach producing states. NC, even with its over 100 cultivars, is not in the top three. California and South Carolina taking the lead. 

To celebrate peach season (June-August) we ran the 3rd annual Peachy Feet 5K and listened to bluegrass at the Peach Festival. Gotta love small towns. Enough of that. Let's eat!

Peach Blueberry Cobbler 

Insides: 

• 4-5 Fresh peaches
• 1/2 -3/4 cup of fresh blueberries or thawed from frozen
• Optional 1/3 cup sugar to coat the fruit. I don't like to use much sugar so I omit this typically. 

The cobbler part:

• 1 cup almond flour
• pinch sea salt
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves (optional)
• 1/4 cup melted coconut oil
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Peel the peaches with a peeler or by cutting an X in the bottom and boiling them for 30 seconds then plunging them in an ice bath. After the bath the peels should come off smoothly. Slice and discard the pit. Slice the slices into smaller pieces. Mix with the blueberries and sugar and place in the bottom of a 9x9 pan.

In a bowl mix the dry ingredients then add the oil and extract. This should form a loose crumble. Apply over the top of the peaches and place in the oven for 20 minutes at 350F. 

Enjoy. 

Clove and honey bbq ribs

BBQ season has always been a bit daunting since I always had my dad around to make the food and never learned how to do it myself. This summer my husband and I set out to master our grilling techniques. We have also been experimenting with new cuts of meat since switching from the grocery store to the farmer's markets. As of right now we are down to 1 grocery store trip a month for things that aren't local. Baking supplies simply don't come in season in our local market. When they do, we will be totally big box store free. These ribs were from Riley's Ranch in North Carolina. They raise heritage Large Black hogs, Tamworth hogs and heritage chickens. As a nice bonus, the owners are two of the sweetest people you could meet. 

This recipe is a bit sweet, slightly tangy and adaptable. It also works great with a bit of orange juice or peach juice mixed in. We served our ribs up with a side of skewered veggies. 

Ingredients: 

• 2 tbl coconut oil or other high heat oil
• 1/2 onion or a small onion, chopped small
• 1 cup honey
• 1 cup of Dijon mustard
• 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
• pinch salt, ground pepper
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves (more if you really like cloves)

Directions: In a saucepan  heat the oil and cook down the onions until translucent. In a bowl add the vinegar, honey and mustard and mix. Season with the cloves, salt, pepper and cooked onions. Pour into a sauce pan and bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes while stirring. Take off the heat and split into two batches. One will be for placing on the raw meat, the other for dipping later. 

Heat your grill for indirect heat. Salt and pepper the rack of ribs and place on the vented grill for 35-40 minutes. Brush the sauce on at this point. Before that it will just stick to the grill and make a mess instead of clinging to the meat. After 10 minutes, flip and sauce the other side. Cook another 10 minutes. Total cook time is about 1 hour.

Remove from heat, cut up and enjoy. We made ours with the grilled peaches since we were already working with the indirect heat and cloves. Our son devoured 3 ribs all by himself. Not bad for a 12 month old. I didn't worry about the honey because it was cooked and no longer ran the risk of botulism. 

Baby eating ribs-is there anything cuter? 

Lemon blueberry bars

Real baked goods are wonderfully light, fluffy and don't last long in my house. My husband spent years perfecting his recipe for sourdough bread and had it perfect right before we went gluten free. Oh well, time to move on to perfecting grain free baked goods. A new challenge awaits. I am in love with this recipe. I made a few batches before I got it just right. It does have a small amount of sugar in it so it doesn't qualify for the paleo/primal seal of approval. I don't care. It is awesome. I am not "Paleo Perfect" and I eat so well that I don't minds having a bit of sugar now and then. Que the cheesy music "Pour some sugar on me in the name of love" Okay, maybe not that song. I am all out of $1s anyway. 

As I baked this set of bars I was listening to The People's Pharmacy on NPR. There was a story of a mother whose child had been diagnosed with arthritis at 3 years old. They tried the medications but were seeing the negative reactions and no real benefit. They decided to go another route and removed gluten, dairy and nightshades from their diet. They went on a 6 week leaky gut cleanse.  Leaky gut gets a bad wrap but the word intestinal permeability goes a lot further with the medical folks. Additionally, they added a few supplements that are anti-inflammatory. By 6 weeks later, the child was healed. Stories like this give me hope. The mother was not an "alternative medicine" practitioner. She was a New York Times journalist. As we work to heal our son's leaky gut, stories like this give me great hope. Someday in the future our son will have all the holes plugged in his gut. I do not believe his pain will last forever but I do know that he will be gluten free for life. Considering the rates of Celiac and non-celiac gluten sensitivity in our families added with the down-right nastiness of gluten, we are gluten free for life. Dr. Leslie Mendoza Temple added her thoughts about going beyond the basic gluten, soy, corn and dairy free diet and adding positive supplements to expedite the healing. 

With the elimination diet we are very happy with our results in that we have not gotten worse. I still feel like we should be getting better though. After listening to the episode, I am considering adding a few supplements. The doctor suggested a fish oil, l-glutamine, deglycyrrhizinated black licorice, aloe vera juice and adding a probiotic. I am not sure how many of these we will do but I will post our results here. 

Now for the recipe-

This makes 9 bars that are pretty good sized. I like it just fine without the sugary glaze but it is up to you how sweet you want to go. A note to people who strictly avoid corn: there can be cornstarch in powdered sugar. Be wary and look at every package. Sometimes you have to shop around to find one without. Also, the arrowroot starch/powder is what gives this recipe volume. You can skip it but the bars are flat and a little more dense. If you buy arrowroot powder in the fancy grocery store spice section it is about $6 a jar and doesn't go very far. I bought a large bag of it from Bob's Red Mill for about $8 and it will last me a long time. It is worth the purchase.  

 Ingredients: 

• 1/2 cup coconut flour
• 1/4 cup fine ground blanched almond flour
• 1/3 cup arrowroot starch
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 tsp sea salt
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cup coconut milk- I used the light variety but regular is great
• 1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• zest of two lemons
• juice of 1 of the lemons, 2 if you really like lemon bars
• 1/2 cup blueberries. 

In one large bowl add all of the dry ingredients. Mix together. In a second bowl mix all the wet together. Whisk the wet into the dry. Add the blueberries last and fold them in so they do not become macerated messes. This keeps the berries from having their color run through your mix. I like to put a few extra on the bottom of the pan so there is a nice visual layer. 

Pour into a 9x9 greased pan. Pop into the oven for 30 minutes. It should brown a bit but not too much. I use a convection oven so you might need to test them at 30 then add a few more minutes depending on your exact oven output. 

Glaze: 

• 1 cup powdered sugar (or regular sugar blended for 3-5 minutes in a sharp blender)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1 tbl water

Mix all together in a bowl. It should be runny but not watery. It will set up a little. I suggest you let the bars cool completely before applying or it will just run off. 

I actually really enjoy these without the sugar topping. I think it is sweet enough as is. 

350F for 30 minutes

Chorizo stuffed round zucchini

Our Saturday Farmer's Market has a chorizo that is killer. It is the perfect blend of spices that leaves the meat hot without burning you up. It is savory without lacking the punch. Absolute perfection. I swear by Hilltop Angus Farms products. Grassfed beef is best cooked at lower cooking temperatures and that works nicely with the squash I love to pair with it. A few weeks ago I found these adorable round zucchini squash at the market and knew I needed to find something to stuff in them. Since we are working on making a repertoire of kid appealing foods lately, I made a cute stuffed round zucchini that I am pretty sure would make a kid at least take a few bites. 

Ingredients: Serves 4

• 4 round zucchini or 4 long, fat zucchini
• 1/4 cup onion
• 1/2 lb ground chorizo meat
• 1 extra zucchini for cooking

Recipe:

If using round zucchini, slice the top off about 1/4" down. I used an apple corer to pull out the middle of the zucchini. Set the squash aside. Salt and pepper the cavity. Place in a 350F oven for 15 minutes. If using the long squash, slice out a channel.

In a pan take the meat and begin to cook down on a medium-low heat. Once the meat is mostly done, add the chopped guts of the zucchini, the 1/4 cup of chopped onion and extra squash. Cook until the meat is done.

At this point the oven part should be complete. Remove from oven, place on your serving plate and stuff with the goods. I love to make it overflow so it looks all fancy. Happy eating.

Exploring cheese

I gave up dairy for our son immediately after he started reacting strangely at 2 months old. Not knowing that his diet would soon require many more restrictions, I mourned the loss of my bowl of cereal and spent weeks trying to adjust to the thought of rice milk on cereal. Looking back now, I have to laugh a little. I rarely miss cereal. Since switching to a primal diet and lifestyle, I eat better than ever. When I did finally start to reintroduce dairy to my diet, it was a gastrointestinal hiccup. My system lost its ability to break down the lactose and it let me know of its displeasure. A little at a time, I reintroduced goat cheese and now I am back up and functioning properly. Thank goodness. Our son's dietary restrictions are a minefield of potential slip-ups. We are limited very strictly by his food intolerances as a subcategory of Celiac and Leaky Gut. He is gluten intolerant but also is severely intolerant to soy, legumes, grains, corn, potato, millet, chocolate and coffee. Also on this list is cow's milk. We thought he had Milk/Soy Protein Intolerance but we aren't sure anymore. It is still possible but there are no real answers when there isn't a clear test available. Here is what we know. If we have cow's milk products he has a violent reaction. It is a nasty stool, bad breath, reflux, screaming and red gluten-rash reaction. That also includes failed attempts at kefir and lactose free products. He had a upper and lower GI scope a few months back and the doctor said that he had such a low ability to digest lactose that he was amazed that he could digest breast milk. The doctor obviously doesn't realize that most cultures are lactose intolerant yet digest breast milk. 

My husband and I are both part Native American so we assume that the lactose intolerance can also be partly genetic. What isn't explained is why he can digest non-cow's milk products. My husband's family has a lot of lactose intolerant people and since my sweetie loves his cheese and milk, he swears by drinking a glass of milk a day to maintain his lactose tolerance. I used to think this was nuts. I thought he was deluding himself into thinking it worked that way. Turns out he was right. Mea culpa. 

This was crumbly, sharp and slightly gooey. It was awesome.
Not the best cheese description but you know what I mean. It was tasty.

Want to learn more? Check out this Science Daily report about how you can gain a lactose tolerance by drinking a small glass of milk a day. The human body is a wonderful thing. It will really adjust to whatever you throw at it. Working with the insight of this study and our desire to introduce our son to so many wonderful foods before he hits the age of refusing everything, we have ventured into the realm of the sheep and goat cheeses. 

I am curious if our son has MSPI or if the dairy intolerance is part of his Celiac. If anyone has any insight, I would love to hear it. I found a list of gluten cross-reactive foods that lists American cheese and cow's milk as a cross-reactive food. A year ago I would have not believed that. We found that our son has a gluten reaction to the aforementioned list of foods and they are all on the list. Curious- Check out Cyrex Labs Array 4 test.  The bad breath is usually the tip off. It tells us that something is going on in his GI tract that is not making him happy. The rash also gives it away. 

This was light, subtle and rich. Almost like a young romano.

Now for the fun part. Testing limits. Our son is not a guinea pig but we do have to know what our limits are so we can feed him and lead a relatively normal life. He will be sheltered from the majority of food things that most people eat but I don't consider most people's diets food. So, that kind of makes me not feel so bad. Our local farmer's markets are filled with great vendors and a few goat people. I love goat cheese. Wrap it in chicken breast or crumble it over a veggie bake and I am in heaven. We are lucky enough to have a great shop downtown that sells artisanal cheeses and other foods. 

This week we are sampling a goat cheese and a sheep's milk cheese.  The good news is that he has yet to have a physical reaction to the small amounts tasted. That is wonderful news. There may be hope for him after all. 

Local goat cheese: Garlic herb from Paradox Farms in NC

We are planning to attack the dairy problem on two fronts. 

1-Gain a lactose tolerance so he has more flexibility in his diet and can potentially enjoy ice cream at some point in his life. 

2-Develop his palate so he experiences new flavors, textures, smells and kinds of food with fearless embrace. 

First attempts have been successful. We began with the goat cheese from Paradox Farms and he didn't seem to mind a little crumble here or there on his veggies. He wasn't too keen on simply eating the cheese though. Same reaction with the Humbolt Fog. When it came to the Spanish sheep cheese, he made a little smile. That is what it is all about. We will work on giving him little bits of that at his snack time for a few weeks and continue adding in new flavors and varieties. Sometimes I feel like a culinary mad scientist with my test subject. I love having people to cook for and getting to see his face when he tries a food that he didn't even know existed is great. That is why we call it the tasty life.

In my searches for information about lactose and MSPI I found these helpful links. 

Dairy Facts

Things I never would have thought of before having to read ingredients lists- Dairy or non-ndairy? 

Dairy guides to all the types of dairy, lactose percentages and forms. Whey, casein etc. 

Goûter AKA afternoon snack

Prosciutto e melone

In simple terms, the goûter is the French word for afternoon snack. In reality, the word implies so much more. There is a whole French series of unwritten and written social rules that go with French eating that Americans simply do not understand. Our food cultures couldn't be more estranged. I have been really trying to find a good way to make my son's tummy happy, feed him well and make sure I don't become a slave to the snack food industry and sugar cycle. The goûter has been our perfect solution. 

Tuscan melons have a wonderful sweet
flesh and thin rind. Perfect for snacking.

I mentioned that we have been trying to get out of the vicious snacking cycle for a while and needed a game plan to accomplish it successfully. Not only was baby snacking all the time but so was Momma. That only leads to bad things. I reevaluated our food and did a lot of reading to find what looked like the best option for us. Our first stop on the road to the goûter was looking up children's recipes. I was saddened to find that the majority of kid's recipes are for mac 'n cheese, breaded chicken strips, cookies,  cakes and other generally not ideal foods. I knew there had to be a better way. If you keep feeding kids the same crud, at what point do you expect them to develop a varied flavor palate? To embrace those fruits and vegetables you know they need? Are we supposed to hide food in sauces, under ketchup, inside pastas and fake Oreo cookies forever? That is not the way I want my child raised. Why would anybody train their child to be skeptical of food because they know that there are hidden veggies in it? That is just silly. 

How about raising kids who like veggies? 

Crazy, I know.

The reading I have been doing started with the book Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting. The book was filled with great inspiration and a nice primer into the differences between our parenting styles. While I am more of an AP (Attachment Parenting) kind of person, I can see really valid reasons for almost all of their practices. My husband and I in the pre-baby wisdom decided on what to follow and not to follow from her book. After our son arrived, we had to tweak a few of those things. Generally, we have been very happy with the advice taken from Mrs. Druckerman. 

He is so darn cute. I know I am biased but come on...who wouldn't love that face?

After Bebe, I found my way to French Kids Eat Everything.  From that book, we have completely turned around our eating habits and are raising a food adventurer. The goûter is the French answer to the snacking dilemma that most Americans fail to see as a problem. I mentioned previously that I hate seeing kids with snack food everywhere while they throw sucker-induced tantrums at 9am. YOUR TODDLER DOES NOT NEED SUCKERS. Period. There was a time when people used to have sweets on special occasion. We would savour it. The Queen of England had chocolate brought to her and savored it because it was such a rare and precious commodity. Vanilla was an exotic flavor and considered simply the best. Now we eat ice cream regularly, "treat" our kids daily and generally use our pie holes as dumpsters for every vile lab created concoction with sprinkles on top and then wonder why our kids have never-before-seen rates of cancers, obesity and attention problems. 

The French system is breakfast, lunch, goûter, supper. Admittedly  the supper is much later than most parents are okay with. Americans like to have our kids in bed by the time that most French people are serving up their aperitif. In my family it is much easier to have a 4pm snack that leaves a happy belly than to try to make my son wait until my husband is home and supper is ready. When I tried that I had a screamy baby pulling at my apron strings and a husband who arrived home to a frazzled wife about an inch away from duct taping the child. Peace is restored with the 4pm goûter. 

What to serve? I try to make a well rounded day based off of our primal diet. I would say that we are paleo but since we have been trialing sheep and goat cheese, I think that moves us into the primal category. For breakfast we eat eggs. Every day we eat eggs. I still have yet to tire of them. That is usually served with a little bit of chicken sausage or leftover veggies and a slice of bacon. Lunch is typically a vegetable saute of some sort. It really depends of what the market has in season. We have stopped going to the grocery store for everything except the occasional baking good and coconut milk. It is liberating. 
Since we have had loads of meat and veg until snack time, we typically do a piece of fruit. 

Today we ate one of my all time favorite snacks: prosciutto e melone. The slightly salty prosciutto wrapped around the sumptuous, juicy melon makes a heavenly snack. I could describe it further but I fear it would be X-rated. It always takes me back to sitting in a trattoria in Bassano del Grappa in Northern Italy. The key to making this treat is finding a good melon. I happen to find a vendor at the market that was growing Tuscan melons. They have a thin skin and rich golden color. The flavor is deeper and sweet. If there are none around, just use a very ripe cantaloupe.  Wrap the prosciutto around the melon and devour. You can cut it into pieces and add torn strips of the prosciutto if you like as well. My son really enjoyed his goûter today. That gave me plenty of time to make supper in peace. Happy bellies make happy babies. 

Powder is a Khao Manee mix. Part alley cat, part Thai royalty.
The "Diamond Eye" cats are rare and beautiful.  They are
extremely smart and affectionate.  He is sure he is a toddler too.
You never know what you will find at your local animal shelter. 

Even our kitty was all smiles today. I think he was just trying to get some of the prosciutto. 

Spicy grilled eggplant

I am new to eggplant. It always weirded me out. I love the way it looks but something about the leather-like texture on the skin made me fear the unknown. It also tends to go from ripe to creepy-mushy seemingly overnight so each time I mustered up the courage to buy one I failed to cook it before it had to be set free. Not any more. I have looked the eggplant in the eye and found a friend. The sad part is that I lived in Italy for a few years and my amazing landlord and his wife grew everything. They had such a bountiful garden and would constantly give me produce from it. At the time I still hated onions, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers and just about everything that didn't come from a box. I shed a tear thinking of what I missed out on then. 

This recipe was simple and delicious and had a nice kick to it. I am thinking that it may lead me to making a recipe for eggplant lasagna. 

Ingredients:

• 1 eggplant
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp red pepper flakes
• 3 tbl olive oil-1 for brushing on the grill
• 1 tsp garlic, minced or chopped

Prep:

Heat your grill and slice the eggplant into 1/4" thick slices. Salt them lightly and set them in a colander for 20 minutes to sweat. Once done, pat dry. 

Directions:

Brush a little of the olive oil on each slice and crack fresh black pepper on them. Place on the grill over medium heat for 3-5 minutes per side. This should not be hot enough to burn them. Once grilled, arrange on a tray and mix the sauce.

For the sauce, mix the olive oil, minced garlic and pepper flakes together. Brush over the grilled eggplant. 

How easy was that?