Bacon wrapped shrimp and scallops

I visited my fabulous in-laws recently down in Florida and was treated to a lovely dinner at Marlin Darlin in Largo. The most amazing thing on the menu was having a pretty decent set of options for making a paleo or primal meal that my son and I could eat. The drinks were delicious and the bacon wrapped shrimp was wonderful. Their version was served with a round of jasmine rice and parmesan cheese and a sauce that had gluten in it. Obviously, I skipped the sauce but I did try the cheese and rice...once in awhile you have to cheat a little to get the full food experience at a restaurant. 

My version uses a vegetable mix to replace the rice and keeps the flavor in season. I used Argentinian shrimp and local North Carolina scallops with plain jane bacon. This took about 25 minutes from start to finish which is doable on a regular night of the week. I will certainly be making this one again soon. It was a big hit with both my husband and my son...as evident by his hand reaching for more.

Ingredients:

• For two people: 12-24 shrimp and a few scallops (optional)
• 1/2 red bell pepper
• 1/2 yellow bell pepper
• 1/4 red onion
• 8-10 pieces of bacon
• 1/2 bundle asparagus
• 1 yellow squash
• 1 tbl minced garlic
• salt, pepper
• 1 tsp ginger powder or some grated ginger

Prep:

Heat your oven to 450F and get a skillet to medium heat. Cut the bacon into thirds. Take one of the strips and chop into bite sized pieces and place in the skillet. This piece will be cooked down to provide the grease for the veggies. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and wrap the peeled and deveined shrimp with the 1/3 bacon pieces. Place these on a greased aluminum foil covered pan. Meanwhile, cut the veggies up into small pieces. I did the onion first, then the bell peppers since they take the longest to cook down. Cut the asparagus into 1/4 pieces. The squash was easy do into rounds then quarter from there.

Cook:

In the skillet cook the onion and pepper for 3 minutes, until the onion is translucent. Once that is complete, place the shrimp into the oven at 450 for 8-10 minutes. Back in the skillet, add the asparagus, garlic, salt, pepper, ginger and squash. Cook down until the squash is soft enough to eat. This takes about as long as the shrimp takes, 8 minutes. 

Serve: Serve warm and immediately, no one likes to have to microwave their seafood. I put a little parmesan cheese on my husbands to try it out but he said he didn't need it. That lets me know it was good :)

Summer squash gratin

I absolutely love summer squash. Thankfully I haven't tired of it yet since when squash is ready on the vine, it is ready in abundance. I headed to the local farmer's market this last week and they offered a few varieties of squash that I did not grow this year so I loaded my bag up with one of everything and made this recipe up. It is nice and flexible since it can incorporate all the in season produce you have available. 

Ingredients:

• 1 Yellow Squash
• 1 zucchini
• 2 tbl garlic, chopped or minced
• 1 eggplant
• 1 onion, red or sweet white
• 1 bell pepper of your favorite color
• 1 sweet potato or regular white potato
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 tsp thyme
• salt and pepper

Prep:

Some people love gadgets. While I used to be one of them, a few mandolin digit slicing accidents cured me. Thanks to my amazing paleo powers I regrew the tip of my finger in 1.5 weeks. No kidding. Since then I use a knife for slicing. It is safer for everyone. Slice the veg thinly but not paper thin. I recommend cutting the sweet potato a little thinner since it takes the longest to soften. Once you have a pile, randomly layer them in a casserole dish. Sprinkle the herbs and garlic over the top. Drizzle the olive oil.

Cook:

450F for 45 minutes uncovered. Cover and cook another 10 until all is soft. If you like having a little extra cheesy delight on your dish to make it a bit Italian, sprinkle parmesan cheese over top and bake an additional 10 minutes. I also love this with a bit of crumbled goat cheese. 

Paleo baby diet

Our son is picky. He simply refuses to eat any gluten, legumes, corn, soy, processed food or sugar. So, we make him other things. All kidding aside, our diet is filled with wonderful foods that any child can eat (as long as they are allergy free, of course). I have a lot of people look at me like I must be starving because we don't eat processed foods or like I restrict everything and must have a very sad diet. I wanted to share a few of the daily things we eat. 

Breakfasts:

Every morning we eat eggs. Been doing this for 8 months now. Nope, not tired of them yet! Why eggs? Why not..they are the best thing you can feed yourself and your child. Eggs are filled with lutein and zeaxanthin which help your eyes from macular degeneration, cataracts and other problems. They are amazing for your brain as well. The choline in eggs is huge for baby brain development. While I was pregnant I took a choline supplement after reading articles about how rats on a choline supplemented diet showed dramatic processing, storage and retrieval improvements over the non-supplemented rats. This was a lifetime improvement based of the diet of the mother. That is worth eating a few eggs.  Check out these studies on how it is not made in human body but is a newly discovered essential nutrient. Essential nutrient study, a study on how eating choline while pregnant lowers an infant's risk of stress related illness and finally a study on why bacon and eggs are good for you. 

Lunch: 

Alton is pretty easy going about lunch. We sometimes puree a bit of food just for ease of feeding or traveling but he is pretty much all solids and has been since 9 months old. He eats what I eat, minus salad. I made a bbq salad for lunch and he had the chopped steak, onions, tomato, carrots and bbq sauce. The sauce was a farmer's market blend made with no corn syrup or corn vinegar and used apple cider vinegar instead. Just the way we like it :)

Supper:

Just like lunch, Alton hangs with his folks and eats at the big kids table. This makes like sooo much easier. Who wants to be a short order cook? Here Alton is eating one of my delicious soft tacos made with almond flour. We have cooked onions, peppers, tequila marinated flank steak, avocado and lettuce inside. He was in heaven. Thank goodness he is an adventurous eater. I truly to blame the processed food industry on all of the picky eaters out there. When food is engineered to be the best flavor you can scientifically create and is designed to trick your palate into craving more, who would want silly old nature? It is understandable why kids chose crackers and chips over apples and peaches. Besides, peaches require effort and our whole society has trained us to think that requiring effort is a bad thing. 

Snacks: Alton is really limited by the traditional kid's diet of what he can snack on. Thankfully we don't feed him the traditional kid diet! He has a love affair with raisins that is precious. He squirrels them away in his cheeks like he is saving them for winter. He will eat handfuls of raisins, chopped dates, chopped figs, fruit, etc all day long. 

As far as fruit goes, hand him an apple and watch him work! He loves grabbing apples and just helping himself to a disaster. He does the same for ripe peaches as well. Now that we know that the skin bothers him, we peel it and problem solved. I like to core the apples, slice into layers and eat it with almond butter. For my own apples, I throw in a layer of Justin's chocolate hazelnut butter. 

Apricot and almond stuffed pork chops

A few years back I was fortunate enough to visit New Zealand and I reveled in their simple, straightforward food. Even before I had heard of things like Paleo, Primal or low carb, I could see that the simple clean way that the locals were eating was clearly beneficial to their health. While traveling I always drink the local brews. I fell in love with Speights beer and popped into one of their restaurants for a bite to eat. The dishes were very hearty, not too heavy and worth of praise while remaining simple. I grabbed a copy of their cookbook and made that my souvenir. The best part is the photography in between each of the recipes. Beautiful! One of the recipes called for a apricot stuffed chicken with goat cheese. I had been making it that way for quite a while until our diet shifted and now I have a whole new approach. Equally delicious, equally simple to create. 

Ingredients:

• Pork chops
• Dried apricots
• Slivered almonds
• Salt and Pepper
• Cooking oil
• 1/4 cup chicken stock
• 1/2 tbl Red wine vinegar

Prep:

Heat a skillet to a medium-high heat and heat the oil. Take the pork chops and slice a pocket into the sides. Be cautious not to go all the way through. Take the apricots and slivered almonds and layer them neatly inside the pork pocket. Salt and pepper the outside. I used to use toothpicks to hold this closed but if you are gentle on the stove, you won't need them.

Cook:

Place the stuffed chops in the pan and don't move them for 2-3 minutes. This ensures the get a nice caramelized outside. Flip them over once you see that the raw pink has gone mostly white to the slit. Repeat on the other side. I often place a lid on the pan once they are flipped to create a little steam to finish off the middle and add extra juices for a sauce. Once the are complete, gently remove the chops and set aside. Pour the chicken stock and vinegar in the pan. Stir constantly while this reduces down. You may need to crank the heat up but be watchful that it does not burn.

Once the sauce is reduced, pour over your creation and enjoy. I served mine with a layered veggie bake. This one had potatoes, green bell pepper, zucchini, squash, garlic and sweet onion layered with thyme, olive oil and cracked pepper. 450F for 45 minutes.  

Give me a break

I realize that all parents have rough days. They all have rough nights. I feel like every single night is a rough night for us. As we approach the 1st birthday of our little (big) guy, I don't really feel like celebrating. Am I being a bad mom if I feel like the 1st birthday celebration should really be Hooray! We didn't kill you yet! or I can't believe I made it through a year of screaming and getting kicked in the face!

Our typical week has its normal highs and lows with baby behavior. For the most part our son is a very kind, funny, adorable bouncing baby boy. The frustrating part is that he is CONSTANTLY sick to one degree or another. We try ridiculously hard to make sure that he has none of the offending foods but the American diet is so filled with problem areas for us that anything is a potential disaster. When people go on a diet they have the option of cheating once in awhile. They get to build in cheat days here and there to indulge in whatever suits their palate. With our diet, the "cheat" foods are things like a touch of Justin's Chocolate Hazelnut butter or a scoop of Haagen Dazs Vanilla Bean ice cream. That is it. Out of everything in the whole wide world, that is literally all we have found. Our son reacts to both dairy and chocolate so  both of those have to be miniscule amounts. His labs came back saying that he has a seriously low lactose tolerance. On top of that, he reacts to sugar wildly so sweets are kept to a minimum. I thought chocolate was safe but he kept reacting to it like it was gluten. Turns out that all the things that I kept saying to our doctor were making a reaction in our son were on a list of known gluten cross-reactive foods. We have a request from one of our doctors to get that lab done so we can see how reactive he is to the list. I know without a test that he is hypersensitive to them all. The lab is Array 4, fyi. We are basically beyond the Paleo/Primal diet and into the GAPS diet.

So where does that leave my diet? Well, here is the list of foods we cannot eat. I don't have this list made up based off of a Paleo or Primal diet, this is the known foods that seriously bother our son.

Gluten, Cow's milk, Soy, Soy derivatives, the entire legume family, Corn, Corn derivatives to include iodized salt, Chocolate, Potatoes, Sorghum, Rice, Coffee, Yeast, Amaranth, Quinoa, Millet, and Oats. Additionally, waxed fruit and vegetable skins, strawberries, blueberries and other small seeded fruits give him terrible reflux. They are all out directly but I can eat them without him reacting.

That pretty much sums up every single thing you can eat. If you actually find something that has not been made with any of those ingredients, the salt will probably remove that last touch of hope. Iodized salt contains corn which irritates our son's skin terribly and will make his skin boil. Fun, right? Not so much. That is why Mom is in a round the clock state of misery. I eat something or he eats something- he gets the itchies-he can't sleep- he wants to be held and nursed until the itchies go away. This lasts for HOURS. To add another layer of medical mystery to the batch, our son has a neurological tick every time he gets a bad food in his diet. What this means, we have no idea. His brain in constantly amazing us with what he can do at such a rapid rate but he follows the autistic diet so closely that it is often a little scary. Would he be having neurological problems if we just let him eat whatever? With all the research into leaky gut and leaky brain, I wouldn't doubt that something terrible could happen if we just fed him the SAD for a change.

Something has to give. So what then? Do we stop nursing? Well, that sounds all nice but what is he going to eat? I can give him some solids but he won't have a full diet because he is missing so much. There are no multivitamins that he can take, no formulas or supplements. 100% of his diet must be perfect. Additionally, he has no intention of weaning. I am pretty sure he would nurse forever if given the choice. The other problem with weaning is that I would then be making 2 sets of food and having to control our environment. As is, the entire house if free of all offending foods so we don't have an accident. Once we start introducing foods that he can't have, the risk of an accident goes up. Besides, am I going to sit in front of a child and eat foods that he can't touch for his whole life? That is a real jacked up move. Hey kid, you eat that bowl of specialty food while I eat these potato chips. 

Last night Alton sprang from bed at 12:30 and declared that he was now capable of running like a toddler at 11 1/2 months old. Impressed with his advanced skills, we smiled then tried to get him to calm back down and get to sleep. Sadly, he had the itchies. That mixed with the newly found pediatric runner's high made for a baby that did not go to sleep until 3am. My dear husband asked me What did you eat? which was the last thing I wanted to be asked. I am pretty sure I fantasized about laying the hurt down about then. This is a question that he asks me pretty frequently that in no way is meant to be a negative thing. It just makes me livid. My reaction to it was to become quite irate. It is not like I am trying to make our kid constantly sick. My throat hurt thanks to a wicked flu bug and I couldn't take cough medicine because they all had bad ingredients. I ate a small amount of ice cream to cool the burn in my throat. This was enough to make someone itchy and wired from the sugar. Hooray. So what is left for me? Nothing...nada...zip...zilch. I can't even get drunk because the alcohol is not exactly ideal for him. Besides, I would be getting drunk daily. I think they have a term for that....oh yeah, alcoholic. (Actually, I couldn't be classified as an alcoholic, I wouldn't have time for meetings)

So the question is what do we do? I suppose the answer is to keep calm and carry on. If one more person tells me to pray, to let go and let God, that this is just a phase, that God must think I am amazing because he gave me quite a challenge, that .....blah blah blah....I suppose my only solution is to thank the makers of anti-itch and reflux medication and lace up my sneakers for a run. Boy, have I been running a lot lately.