Paleolithe

Primal Creamy Spicy Cauliflower Cheddar Soup

Julie — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 00:21:05 +0000

My favorite comfort food in the world before starting my primal/paleo lifestyle was mac n’ cheese (n’ ranch beans n’ tuna n’ hotsauce – can you tell I’m in college?). This soup beats my mac n’ cheese cravings to the ground, and it takes only slightly more work to make than Easy Mac!

The other day, Jonathan and I were walking around Costco looking for cheese – they have the CHEAPEST huge blocks of fancy cheese! – and he stumbled upon pure spice-o-phile gold. Like a child at Christmas with eyes all aglow, he victoriously presented a ridiculously massive block of ghost pepper cheddar cheese to me. I wavered a bit as to whether or not we should buy it, mainly because although I love spicy foods, habanero is about as hot as I can handle before my ears turn red, and the ghost pepper is literally the hottest pepper in the world (according to Guinness Book of World Records). After some negotiating, he won, and as he put the cheese of doom into the cart I started to wonder what on Earth I could cook with weapons-grade dairy. Well, I present to you my soup!

When it comes to dairy, I highly recommend anything Kerrygold. Their cheese and butter is unbelievable. Unfortunately, their products aren’t cheap, but if you are fortunate enough to have a Costco membership, they sell enormous blocks of Kerrygold Cheddar and Dubliner and tubs of their butter for very cheap!

Note: As I’m sure you’ve noticed from the title, this soup contains dairy and thus is not in line with “paleo” diet, but rather the “primal” diet.

Steelhead Trout Lemon Artichoke Pesto Burgers

Julie — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 15:38:25 +0000

Tonight I wanted fish and Jonathan wanted burgers – so fish burgers it was! We grabbed some lemon artichoke pesto sauce we bought at Costco (OMG it is UNBELIEVABLE), threw it into a food processor with some steelhead trout (it was cheaper than salmon, so we grabbed it) and fried it up. They were super yummy and took next to no time to make! I guess I cheated since I didn’t make the pesto myself – feel free to make your own pesto or buy a different kind. Or really, you can add whatever you like to the fish – dijon mustard and capers; hot sauce and a little almond flour; onions and garlic – anything goes!

We served this with a side of our favorite what do we do with left over spinach, sausage, and leeks dish. We simply switched out the bacon for left over Italian sausage.

Primal Pizza with Cheesy Cauliflower Crust

Julie — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:12:06 +0000

We’ve been craving pizza for weeks and decided to give it a go. We found some interesting primal/paleo pizza recipes around the internet, and decided to give it a go combining the best of what we found. This recipe uses cauliflower as the main ingredient in the crust and tasted so close to regular pizza, we were thrilled! Put whatever toppings you like on it – we used sausage, mushrooms and onion.

Paleofied Polish-Style Pork Cutlets (Kotlety Schabowe)

Julie — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:10:05 +0000

My family is from Kielce, Poland (I’m first generation American), and I grew up eating my grandmother’s amazing cooking from the homeland. I didn’t always appreciate the food when she was cooking it (awww man, cabbage rolls again?), but now that I’m older and don’t have her calling me when dinner is ready, I miss our simple Polish meals tremendously. This recipe is a paleofied version of my grandmother’s ‘kotlety schabowe’ (pork cutlets), where I replaced the flour with almond meal. I made them with Jonathan the other day and we were instantly in love. He had them for the first time and declared them his new favorite pork, and it was a delightful trip down memory lane for me. I hope you love them as much as we did!

Typically these are served with potatoes, but feel free to use whatever sides you want. Homemade oven roasted sweet potato fries would go really well with these.

Greektalian Pesto Lamb Stuffed Portabella Mushrooms

Julie — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 01:19:01 +0000

It was a “throw stuff together and see what happens” type of day in the kitchen and these delicious Mediterranean fusion bellas came out! I’ll be honesty, I’m estimating the quantities of things from memory for this recipe, so feel free to tweak the amounts as you see fit. This came out so well, our non-paleo friend who was staying with us said it’s one of the best meals he’s had!

Semi-Italian Pesto Spaghetti (Squash)

Julie — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 15:41:16 +0000

Fast, easy (that’s almost all my recipes… I’m a simple cook!) and a yummy vegetable alternative to pasta, pesto spaghetti squash makes for a great Italian-esque side! We recently had this along side our primal eggplant parmesan for a complete primal and not-intentionally vegetarian Italian dinner!

Primal Eggplant Parmesan

Julie — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 18:19:50 +0000

One of my all time favorite cuisines is Italian – I love garlic, tomatoes, olive oil, and basil! Although most of the recipes call for bread, bread crumbs, or some kind of pasta, there are ways of getting around that to have a more primal/paleo friendly Italian dinner. Here I used almond flour instead of bread crumbs to make the delicious breading on my Eggplant Parmesan. This dish goes really well with pesto spaghetti squash (recipe coming soon) for a complete primal Italian meal!

If you’re avoiding dairy, skip the cheese in the recipe.

Painful Intolerance Self-Discovery

Julie — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 04:46:22 +0000

My dearest readers and paleo/primal fellows,

I have discovered some very sad news recently. I have read quite a bit about people embarking on the Whole30 challenge as a way of revamping their diets and of possibly discovering food intolerances that they didn’t know they had. Well, I took a more painful route to finding out my food intolerances.

I have had the unlucky misfortune of suffering TWO bouts of food poisoning within the same week (once last Monday and again this past Sunday). After the literally gut-wrenching episodes of wallowing in pain and taking Imodium to stop myself from going the route of many an Oregon Trail player and dying of dysentery (or rather the main symptom, in my case), I decided to celebrate the end of my first non-fetal-position day with a glorious assortment of cheeses. Jonathan and I are more primal with regards to dairy, but it seems that my days of feasting on milk-derived goodness may be at an end.

You see, I quickly discovered that I am lactose intolerant.

My celebration almost immediately turned to lamentation when my intestines turned into balloon animals, filling with noxious fumes rivaled in odor only by the sulfuric vents of hell and twisting around each other in an attempt to escape my lower abdomen. I was not pleased. I was baffled at first, given my usual nonchalant consumption of cheese, but it seems that lactose intolerance can be caused by a stomach bug (or age, but I think it was the bug).

CURSES! Not only is cheese equivalent to ambrosia of the gods to my palate, but Jonathan and I have recently purchased an assortment of 13 different fancy cheeses to nibble on in place of dessert. This is pretty much how I feel.

I suppose this is a good thing – it will allow me to more fully embrace the paleo lifestyle. The transition will not be pretty, and I may or may not do the horribly unpaleo thing of taking a Lactaid pill here and there. I will try however, my dear readers, for the sake of my bowels and for you.

~Julie

Shredded Brussels Sprouts with Creamy Goat Cheese

Julie — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 20:42:21 +0000

Like many people, I am a little scared of brussels sprouts. The one time I tried them as a kid, I was immediately revolted by a taste that could only be described as “fart” and I vowed never to put those weird mini-cabbage things in my mouth again. Well, I’m a little older now and have decided to be brave and give them another chance. This recipe is very similar to the Sautéed Baby Spinach & Leak with Bacon recipe, but with shredded brussel sprouts and no spinach. I served this as a side dish with baked gingery-garlic salmon (recipe coming soon!) and Sunset Roots.

VIDEO – Dr. Doug McGuff – “Medical Proof for the Caveman Diet”

Julie — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 04:29:48 +0000

I came across this video the other day and I absolutely loved it. Dr. McGuff does an excellent job talking about biochemistry and metabolism in fairly easy to understand terms, and he lays down strong arguments for infrequent, high intensity workouts for optimal fitness. I am personally still researching and trying to learn all I can about how our metabolism works, and I will definitely be working on a post about it in the near future! In the mean time, enjoy Dr. McGuff’s video!

From Body by Science

Doug McGuff, MD became interested in exercise at the age of 15 when he first read Arthur Jones’ Nautilus Training Bulletin No. 2. His interest in exercise and biology led him into a career in medicine. In 1989, he graduated from the University of Texas Medical School at San Antonio and went on to train in Emergency Medicine at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences at Little Rock where he served as Chief Resident. From there, Dr. McGuff served as Faculty in the Wright State University Emergency Medicine Residency and was a staff Emergency Physician at Wright-Patterson AFB Hospital.