Blog
Gingerbread Men
Mr. Swiss Paleo’s favorite cookie is the good old Gingerbread Man. These were the only Christmas cookies that I made this year and they disappeared in the blink of an eye. Poor Santa didn’t get any. They turned out crispy and chewy at the same time and the gingerbread flavor was just right.
Gingerbread Men
Ingredients
- 2 1/4 cups almond flour
- 3 Tablespoons arrowroot powder
- 1/2 cup coconut crystal sugar
- 1 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 2 teaspoons powdered ginger
- 1 Tablespoon cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 egg
- 1 Tablespoon vanilla
- 1 1/2 Tablespoon blackstrap molasses
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 325 F (165 C).
- Mix all of the dry ingredients together in a mixing bowl.
- Mix in the wet ingredients (egg, vanilla and molasses).
- Knead into a dough ball with your hands.
- Place the dough ball between 2 sheets of parchment paper and roll out to 1/4" thickness with a rolling pin.
- Remove the top layer of parchment and use a cookie cutter to make your shapes.
- Place cookies on a parchment lined baking sheet and bake for 12 minutes.
Celery Root Hash with Fresh Vegetable Compote
I was too lazy to go to the effort of trying to make celery root rösti (that recipe shows the celery root pictures and the peeling and grating process pictures), so I just sort of made loose hash out of my celery root by grating it and cooking it on a tray in the oven. I topped it with a vegetable/prosciutto medley that was super easy and really delicious. My husband and daughter topped the whole thing off with fried eggs.
Celery root is totally delicious and it’s really nothing at all like celery. It has a slightly sweet taste and it’s very versatile. You can roast it or mash it like any other root vegetable. It’s actually much less starchy than most other roots and tubers for anybody out there who is trying to watch their carb intake.
Breakfast!
Ingredients
- 1 large celery root
- 2 Tablespoons coconut oil
- Handful of cherry tomatoes (I used about 8), cut in half
- 1 bell pepper (I used a yellow one), cut into strips
- 1 onion, diced
- 1 zucchini, diced
- 4 slices prosciutto, chopped (could use bacon instead)
- Optional, fried eggs for the top
- Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Use a sharp knife to cut the ugly end off of the celery root and then use a vegetable peeler to peel the outer skin off.
- Grate the celery root with your food processor or a box grater and toss the grated root with 1 Tablespoon of coconut oil.
- Spread out on a baking tray, sprinkle with salt and pepper and bake at 200 C (400 F) for 30 minutes, stir around about half way through. It is done when it get a little brown and slightly crispy on the edges.
- While your celery is baking, heat the remaining 1 Tablespoon of coconut oil in a large pan.
- Add in the onions and cook until translucent over medium heat.
- Next add in the bell pepper and cook for a few more minutes.
- Now add in the zucchini and prosciutto.
- Continue to slowly cook, stirring often for another 10-15 minutes until it gets really caramelized and soft.
- Finally add in the halved cherry tomatoes and continue to cook until they soften and cook through but still hold their form.
- Pile your cooked celery root hash onto your plate and spoon the vegetable mix over the top to serve. You could top the whole thing off with a fried egg 🙂
Baked Cod with Olive Tapenade and Tomatoes
My husband is not a big fan of white fish, but I love it. Sometimes I eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner when he’s out of town on business just so I can get my fill of it. Most of the time I just pan fry it and squeeze a little lemon on it. My friend, Julie, is an amazing cook and she suggested I try it with some olive tapenade smeared on it. I didn’t get an exact recipe from her (meaning her dish is probably way better than mine), but this is how I did it. I added a little extra nutrition punch by sprinkling hemp seeds over the top. You can read all about hemp seeds here.
Ingredients
- Cod (or any white fish you like), 1-2 pieces per person
- About 1 teaspoon olive tapenade per piece of fish
- 1 tomato, sliced
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 1/2 teaspoon thyme
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Olive oil for drizzling
- 1 teaspoon hemp seeds (optional)
- 1 teaspoon hemp seeds
Instructions
- Pat the fish pieces with a paper towel and then lightly salt and pepper.
- Place in an oven proof dish (I used a pie pan), and spread the olive tapenade over the top of each piece. I spread a pretty thin layer over mine, but you could put it on as thick as you like.
- Divide the minced garlic between the pieces and sprinkle it over the tapenade layer.
- Lay slices of tomato over the pieces of fish.
- Sprinkle with the dried thyme.
- Drizzle with olive oil and then sprinkle with hemp seeds (optional)
- Place in a pre-heated 200 C (400 F) oven and bake for 15 minutes.
Hemp Seeds
So, what comes to mind when you hear about hemp? Probably hippies, marijuana, dreadlocks and vegans. Am I right?
Well, hemp is a nutritional powerhouse and you don’t have to be a hippie to enjoy it. I recently received a free sample of hulled hemp seeds from Hemp Seed Oil EU, which is the European distributor for Hemp Oil Canada Inc (the largest hemp product producer).
Hemp Seeds
I had already researched hemp in the past, and have previously bought hemp powder just to play around with it since I am always looking at different replacements for grain flours. I use the hemp powder regularly when I make smoothies to add a little protein. I was excited to try out another form of hemp and see what I could do with it.
This is what I learned about the benefits of hemp seed during my reasearch:
* Contins all 20 amino acids, including the 9 essential amino acids (EAAs) our bodies cannot produce.
* Contains a high protein percentage of the simple proteins that strengthen immunity and fend off toxins.
* Nature’s highest botanical source of essential fatty acid, with more essential fatty acid than flax or any other nut or seed oil.
* A perfect 3:1 ratio of Omega-6 Linoleic Acid and Omega-3 Linolenic Acid – for cardiovascular health and general strengthening of the immune system.
* A superior vegetarian source of protein considered easily digestible.
* A rich source of phytonutrients, the disease-protective element of plants with benefits protecting your immunity, bloodstream, tissues, cells, skin, organs and mitochondria.
* The richest known source of polyunsaturated essential fatty acids.
Great. But what does it taste like and what do you do with it?
I think the little hulled hemp seeds taste a lot like raw sunflower seeds. Nutty and fresh. You could sprinkle them over or add them to just about anything, savory or sweet. I will definitely add them in the next time I make Paleo Granola or Paleo Chocolate Chunk Lara Bars. Here’s a look at what I made this week with the hemp seeds I received:
Paleo Dark Chocolate Autumn Bark
Cranberries, Nuts and Seeds Oh My!
Baked Cod with Olive Tapenade, Tomato and Hemp Seeds
But what you REALLY want to know is if you use it in brownies will they be “magical” like pot brownies? See? I can read your mind 😉 I think you should totally add these to brownies, but they won’t make you see unicorns. Hemp and marijuana both come from the species Cannabis sativa, but, just like Canis lupus has subspecies that range from wolves to poodles, Cannabis sativa includes a large assortment of plants with different characteristics.
Paleo Roasted Pumpkin Soup with Fried Sage
Fresh sage from my garden
I have two sage plants that are producing huge amounts of sage. I love sage and have been using it a lot lately in all sorts of things. I absolutely love fried sage as a garnish to make dishes extra special, and truth be told, I have been known to eat a handful of fried sage as a little snack while I’m cooking.
I picked up this beautiful pumpkin from Jucker Farm recently figuring I would just make chunks of roast pumpkin with herbs. It’s a staple recipe around our house when squash season arrives.
Fresh from the farm
My plans changed with the arrival of some really dreary and rainy weather which had me wanting a comforting bowl of soup (or a very large glass of wine to drown my sorrows). I’ve made pumpkin soup loads of times, but I’ve never added fried sage to it before. I never usually measure anything and probably make it slightly different each time, but this time around I made an effort to write down what I did as I went along so that I could share it with you all.
Ready to roast
**A few notes on additions and substitutions. I used butter as my oil, but you could use ghee, coconut oil or any other oil you prefer. I used a pumpkin variety that is widely available here in Switzerland called an Oranger Knirps (I’m not 100% sure, but I think it might be very similar to kabocha squash). It’s bumpy and looks a bit different than the kind of pumpkin you carve for Halloween. It has a texture very similar to butternut squash (which you could easily use instead of pumpkin). I have no idea how well canned pumpkin would work because I’ve never tried it. I imagine the texture and taste might be different.
Soup is served
.
Ingredients
- Pumpkin. My pumpkin weighed 2 lbs 4oz (1020 grams) after it was seeded and roasted.
- 3 Tablespoons butter, divided
- 1 onion, diced
- 2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed with a garlic press
- 2 Tablespoons fresh chopped sage (about 16 leaves) and few more whole leaves for garnish if you like
- 4-5 cups chicken stock or bone broth (I used homemade)
- 4 slices bacon, cooked and grumbled
- Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 400F/200C.
- Cut your pumpkin in half and remove the seeds. I cut it again into quarters after removing the seeds but you could also leave it in 2 halves. Rub the pumpkin with oil all over (on the skin and cut sides). I used bacon grease for this because I had just cooked some bacon. Lay your pumpkin on a baking tray cut side down and roast in the oven for 30 minutes. Remove it and cool when done. This step can be done several hours or a day ahead. Once it's cool, remove the skin and roughly dice and the pumpkin flesh and set aside.
- Heat 2 Tablespoons of butter in a large soup pot.
- Add the onions and garlic and cook over medium heat for 15 minutes until soft and fragrant.
- Add in the diced roast pumpkin and stir.
- Now add in 4 cups of broth and stir. Reserve an extra cup of broth (or water) to add later if you feel your soup is too thick. Each pumpkin has a slightly different water content and your broth amount may be different than mine.
- Simmer for about 30 minutes (or longer if you like) covered and stirring occasionally.
- While your soup is simmering, heat the remaining Tablespoon of butter in a small pan and fry up the chopped fresh sage. It's done when it gets a bit crispy and starts to brown just a little.
- Just before adding the sage to the soup, blend the soup to your desired consistency with an immersion (stick) blender or a blender that can handle hot liquids. I left mine with a few little chunks because I like it that way.
- After blending the soup, stir in the fried sage.
- Add in the additional broth or some water if your soup is too thick.
- Salt and pepper to taste. I really didn't need to add salt because my broth was quite flavorful.
- Garnish with additional whole leaves of fried sage, crumbled bacon, toasted nuts (pine nuts, hazelnuts or pumpkin seeds), a dollop of cream or a spoon of pesto.
Double the Beef Paleo Chili
This is actually fairly similar to my old chili recipe, but I tweaked it as I went along and used different spices. This new version turned out great, so I thought I’d share it as well.
I cooked this in a crock pot (slow cooker), but it could easily be done in a pot on your stove top. Don’t forget to add toppings to your chili because that’s where all the fun is! You could add avocado, chopped red onions or spring onions, hot chili peppers, cheese or sour cream if you do dairy or cilantro and a squeeze of lime.
Paleo Double the Beef Chili
Ingredients
- 1 red bell pepper, diced
- 1 yellow bell pepper, diced
- 1 onion, diced
- 2 Tablespoons chili powder
- 2 Tablespoon garlic powder
- 2 teaspoons oregano
- 2 teaspoons cocoa powder
- 1.5 teaspoons ground cumin
- 1.5 teaspoons salt
- 500 grams ground beef (about a pound)
- 500 grams stew beef chunks (about a pound)
- 1 can chopped tomatoes (240 grams or 8oz)
- 2 Tablespoons tomato paste
- 2 cups (about 500ml) bone broth or water
Instructions
- Throw the diced bell peppers and onions into the slow cooker.
- Add in all of the spices and liquids.
- Brown the ground beef and the stew meat and add that in as well. The hamburger will be mostly done and the stew meat will just be browned on the outside, but not cooked through.
- Stir everything together.
- I cooked this for 3 hours in my slow cooker, but you could cook it longer. The longer you cook it, the more tender the stew meat will get.
Paleo Stuffed Eggplant
I love eggplant and probably my favorite way to make it is my recipe for Amazing Eggplant because it is so quick and easy. This recipe is also easy (and equally delicious), but it requires a bit more time since there are other vegetables to chop and dice.
Eggplants ready for the oven
Chopped and diced ingredients for the filling
Sometimes I’m in the mood to spend the time and sometimes not. This is a really versatile recipe and you can use whatever vegetables you like in the meat mixture. I used what I had on hand and this is what I came up with.
Filling ingredients ready to be mixed together
The eggplant “guts” scraped from the skins and added to the veggies
The empty shells ready to be stuffed
I had quite a bit of the stuffing mixture left after filling my eggplant skins and I WAS planning on using it the next morning in a frittata. Mr. Swiss Paleo, however, had other plans and ate it up as “dessert”.
Hot out of the oven
Add a little bit of grated Parmesan if you do dairy
Ingredients
- 2 eggplants
- 2 carrots (120 grams/4 oz), diced
- 1 red bell pepper (135 grams/5 oz), diced
- Button mushrooms 50 grams/5 ounces, chopped
- 1 tomato (120 grams/4 oz), diced
- 1 onion (120 grams/4 oz), diced
- 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped or pressed with garlic press
- 2 Tablespoons fresh basil
- Pine nuts 15 grams/half an ounce
- 300 grams/10 oz ground beef (raw weight)
- 1 Tablespoon oil of choice, plus more for brushing the eggplant. I used coconut oil
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon pepper
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 400 F (200 C).
- Slice your eggplants in half lengthwise and brush all over with oil. Place cut side down on a baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes.
- While the eggplant is baking, heat your 1 Tablespoon of oil in a large pan and add the onion and cook until translucent over medium to medium/high heat.
- Then add in the garlic and carrots and cook for a minute or two. Then add the red pepper and cook for a few minutes.
- Now add the mushrooms and cook for a minute before adding the tomato. Continue to cook for a few minutes to let the flavors combine and until the vegetables soften.
- Remove to a bowl and stir in the fresh chopped basil and set aside.
- At this point, your eggplants are probably done and you can remove them from the oven to cool a bit while you start on the ground beef.
- Now put the ground beef into the same pan that you used for the vegetables and brown. Add the salt, pepper and dried oregano to it at the end of browning it.
- Add the cooked ground beef to the cooked vegetables and scoop the flesh out of the eggplants and add that in as well. Stir everything up and mix well.
- Spoon the mixture into the scooped out eggplant skins and sprinkle with pine nuts.
- Return to the oven for 5-10 minutes on broil to brown the pine nuts.
- If you tolerate dairy, you could grate some fresh Parmesan over the top after removing from the oven.
Notes
You will have left over stuffing that can be used the next day in an omelette or frittata. I think that would be tasty but I'll never know because Mr. Swiss Paleo ate the extra stuffing 🙂
A Paleo Pot Luck Meet Up
I went to my first ever Meet Up event the other day. It’s definitely out of my comfort zone to get together with people I don’t know, but it’s usually outside your comfort zone where personal growth and good things happen.
I’ve written about friendship and how important it is in a guest post for Paleo Parents (read it here, awesome recipe included), so it was time for me to walk the walk if I’m going to talk the talk. Making new friends isn’t always easy in a foreign country, so you have to grab every opportunity that comes along to meet new people.
Mingling and making new friends
I also worry a little about going to events where people will know that I’m a paleo blogger. I’ve seen some pretty horrible comments floating around out there in the paleo community towards bloggers that people feel don’t live up to some ideal standard— “You aren’t a bikini model, are you sure you eat paleo and can be trusted as a reliable blogger??” I’m always afraid people will expect me to be somehow better than what I am in reality and that they’ll be disappointed when they meet the real me. Does that make sense? Ha! That’s usually why I drag my husband along to these sorts of things. I may not look exactly like a paleo poster child, but he sure does 🙂 And yes, it irritates the heck out me that I eat just like he does and will never, ever have abs like that 😉
My Paleo Poster Boy
Really cute Paleo babies
So, the meet up was a great success and I met some really, really nice people. And some incredibly cute paleo babies! We pretty much covered lots of different age groups. Chris and I (old, with a grown daughter), young families with babies, a family with 3 school age children and a young single guy from Poland (single ladies—he was adorable, nice and intelligent—you should have been there!).
Tasty Food to Share
It was interesting to hear what brought people from all different backgrounds to the same paleo point in their lives. It was great that we also found lots of other things to talk about besides food. I used to feel a real need to talk about my paleo experience and “talk food” all the time when I was first starting on this journey many years ago. Now though, it’s just how I eat and live and I really don’t think about it or talk about it all that much. Except with my friend Julie…we always talk about food 🙂 !
We had some delicious food to go along with our easy flowing conversations. There was a lovely quiche that everybody thought was yummy, a delicious and fresh cucumber/bell pepper sort of salad, veggies and guacamole, I brought this salad and some Autumn Bark, there were some muffins that I somehow didn’t get around to trying and there was a delicious lemony cakey thing made with plantains. We all brought our own choice of meat for the grill. There was wine provided by our gracious hosts, but we were all so busy talking that we never even actually got around to opening it. I only had my phone camera and was too busy talking to get many photos. Yeah, I’m not so good at this blogging thing…
New Friend 🙂
So, My People, the moral of my long story is: Take a risk. Find (and take) opportunities to meet new people or join new groups. You might just meet some fabulous people, learn something new or have a lot of fun. You’ll never know unless you get out there and do it. If you are in the Zürich area, I hope I’ll get the chance to meet you at a future pot luck gathering 😉
Special thanks to Melissa and Stan for organizing the Meet Up 🙂
Dark Chocolate Autumn Bark
This has so many different things in it that I wasn’t sure what to call it :-), but since it’s Autumn and it has nuts and seeds and cranberries in it (those are Autumn kind of foods, right?), that’s what I called it. It was really easy to make and it even looked a little fancypants when it was finished.
Autumn Bark
I recieved some organic hemp seeds from the European distributor for Hemp Oil Canada and was looking for ways to use them and this bark is just one of the recipes I decided to try the hemp seeds in. You can read my post about hemp seeds here.
Hemp Seeds
I try to only make treats like this when I have people over, have a friend to give it to or if I’m going to a pot luck event. Sometimes I even take stuff to the gym, but then I feel kinda bad because people there are usually trying to get in shape and escape from treats. These went to a Zürich Area Pot Luck Meet Up (although Mr. Swiss Paleo and I did sample them a bit before I could get rid of them 😉 ). Have you ever been to a Paleo meet up with random strangers? You can read about my experience here.
Toasted seeds and nuts
This recipe (if you can even call it that) is totally adaptable and you can mix in whatever your heart desires.
Fancypants Drizzle
Cranberries, Nuts and Seeds Oh My!
Ingredients
- 250 grams dark chocolate plus a little extra for drizzling (I used 85%)
- 4 Tablespoons pumpkin seeds
- 4 Tablespoons chopped or slivered almonds
- 1/4 cup dried cranberries
- 1 Tablespoon Hemp Seeds
- 1 Tablespoon finely chopped pistachio nuts
- Sea salt (to sprinkle over the top)
Instructions
- Toss the pumpkin seeds and almonds into a dry pan and brown over medium high heat for about a minute (or until the almonds turn golden and the pumkin seeds start making little popping sounds). Remove to a bowl and set aside.
- In the same hot pan, brown the hemp seeds for about 45 seconds to a minute. Remove to a small bowl and set aside.
- Break the chocolate into pieces and melt on the stovetop or microwave. I did this on the stovetop. Use low heat and stir while it's melting.
- Now dump the pumkin seeds, almonds and dried cranberries into the pan with the melted chocolate.
- Pour the chocolate mixture out onto a parchment (baking paper) lined baking tray and spread it around into a rectangle shape with a spoon (about 1/8 inch thick).
- Sprinkle the hemp seeds, pitachio nuts and sea salt over the top.
- Put the tray in the fridge to set the chocolate for 30 minutes to an hour.
- Now you can get fancypants and drizzle a bit more melted chocolate over the top if you like and then return to the fridge for the drizzle to set.
- Break the bark or cut with a knife into pieces (big or small, up to you).
- Store in the fridge.
Pumpkin Pie Spiced Sweet Potato Butter
On a recent trip home from studying at University in the States, my daughter brought us a jar of Braswell’s Sweet Potato Butter. It was delicious, and I think the jar lasted about 2 days. We spread it on some grain free crackers and we ate it by the spoonful right from the jar.
I decided it couldn’t be all that hard to make my own and so I did. It turned out perfectly and tasted like pumpkin pie filling. I felt better about eating this stuff right from the jar than I do about nutbutters.
So what does one do with sweet potato butter? Well, eat it by the spoonful like I do, or you could: spread it on any kind of paleo baked good (crackers, pancakes, muffins, bread), use it as a dip for apple or pear slices, add it to smoothies, mix it in with kefir or yogurt, add it to paleo granola with a splash of almond milk or use it as a filling for crepes. You could also try putting it in tart shells and making mini pies. Now there’s an idea I might have to try 🙂
Pumpkin Pie Spiced Sweet Potato Butter
I wasn’t even going to post this recipe, but after taking a jar to the gym and having several people request the recipe, I figured I might as well share it with the rest of you 🙂
Ingredients
- 650 grams of sweet potato (that's how much my 2 sweet potatoes weighed together), adjust the spices up or down if you have a little more sweet potato or a little less
- 3/4 cup organic apple juice
- 2-3 Tablespoons honey, depending on how sweet you like it
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon ginger
- 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
- Pinch of ground cloves
- Pinch of salt
Instructions
- Peel the sweet potatoes and cut them into even chunks or slices.
- I used a crock pot (slow cooker) and just threw everything in togoether and cooked it for 3 hours. You could easily do this on the stovetop in a pot and it would be done when the potatoes got soft and squishy enough to mash.
- Remove everything to a food processor and whiz until it's nice and smooth. A blender might work, but I haven't tried it.
- This made 2 medium sized jars for me. It lasted a week in the fridge (by the end of a week I had eaten it all 🙂 ), but it would probably last a little longer.
Featured On
Follow Us!
