Paleo Pancakes

This is gonna be a short little post for the night!

There are limited things to eat for breakfast when you are eating gluten-free and dairy-free. As much as I love bacon and eggs, it gets a little boring after almost 30 days. I love pancakes and have tried a few GF/DF recipes, and this is my favorite one that we have found and tried so far.

This recipe is from The Southern Eclectic. It's a much slower cooking process than "normal" pancakes, and it has an obviously different texture. But they are SO delicious! We melted chocolate then added it to the batter because I was having a craving (as we women do every now and then haha).

You can eat these with bananas, strawberries, blueberries, maple syrup, or whatever fresh fruit or nuts you would like!

Totally satisfies those carb cravings you can get every now and then on this diet. :)

Chorizo Stuffed Poblano Peppers

This is the last dinner I posted on Facebook, and the one I got the most requests for a recipe!

I was looking through my cookbooks, and came across a recipe for Chorizo Stuffed Baby Bell Peppers. It was an appetizer, and since I wanted to make them for dinner I doubled the recipe and used full-sized peppers. It was delicious! (This was from my cookbook "Make it Paleo").

A week later I wanted to make it again. This time I decided I wanted it to be a little spicier, so I bought poblano peppers instead. So here is MY recipe I adapted from the Make it Paleo recipe. I made some minor changes, and added a side sauce to cool off some of the heat in the pepper.

Chorizo Stuffed Poblano Peppers with a Mango Avocado Puree

For the Peppers:

4 large poblano peppers

1 beef chorizo

1 pork chorizo (I got both pre-made chorizo sausages at Fresh&Easy. They have AMAZING fresh and organic food there. Especially meats. But, that's another blog...)

1/2 white or yellow onion, chopped (I used yellow, it's a milder onion)

3 garlic cloves, finely mined

1 roma tomato, chopped

1/4 cup black olives, sliced.

1/3 cup cilantro, chopped.

juice of 1 lime

olive oil

salt/pepper to taste

Set oven to 350 degrees. In a large pan, sauté garlic and onions in a little bit of olive oil (less than a tablespoon) until lightly golden brown. Set aside. 

In a large bowl, mix tomatoes, black olives, cilantro, lime juice, and the now cooked garlic and onions. 

Slice peppers lengthwise on one side to make an opening. Remove the stem and the seeds from the inside. 

Back to the stove: remove chorizo from casings and simmer in pan for about 5-8 min, or until 75% cooked. (You don't want to cook it all the way, because it will continue to cook in the oven.) 

Drain the excess oil out of the pan and then mix the chorizo with the vegetable mixture. Once it it fully combined, stuff the mixture into the peppers.

Place the peppers in an oven safe pan or dish (not covered) and bake for about 30-35 min. This totally depends on your oven by the way. If you have an Easy Bake Oven like me (I will post pictures soon), You're looking at 35-40 minutes. The main thing you want is for the top to be crispy and the peppers to be soft and charred.

Mango and Avocado Puree:

2 ripe avocados, pitted and sliced

1 mango, pitted and sliced

juice of 1 lemon

1 tsp chili powder

scant 1/4 cup sliced jalapeno (more if you want it spicier!)

2 Tbl olive oil

salt/pepper to taste

In a food processor (If you do not have one, a blender will work just fine. But I strongly suggest you invest in a food processor if you are dedicated to cooking) combine avocado, mango, and olive oil until well combined. Add the remaining ingredients and process until you get a smooth consistency. Add salt, pepper, more jalapeno, whatever you'd like to get the desired spiciness. (Maybe some hot sauce if you want to kick it up some more?)

I made this sauce specifically to balance out the spice in the pepper/chorizo, so I made my sauce fairly mild. I do LOVE spicy food, but you don't want to scorch your taste buds in one meal. Balance, my friends is the key to a meal! :P

Serve this with a light side salad, or just by itself! 

Mmm Mmm Mmm!!!

First Post! WOO!

Hello friends!

So this is my first blog post. I'm gonna start it off nice and simple-like and just tell all of you why I'm making this awesome bloggy-bloggerson.

I like to cook and make yummy food, and I've been posting pictures of all my yummy food on the book of face, and people have been asking me what my recipes are and such... so yeah! (now I'm using run-on sentences!)

So about 25 days ago, my lovely boyfriend, Colin, and I decided we were not going to eat like fatties anymore and change our way of eating. I heard about this amazing thing called The Paleo Diet (a.k.a. The Caveman Diet, Primal Diet, etc) through one of my customers at work. She said one of her friends tried it, loved it, lost weight, and is now a much happier person! I thought to myself, "Huh... it would be nice to not feel like I would like to die, throw up, or kill innocent people after I eat...maybe I should try this out." ::rubs chin in deep thought::

"What is The Paleo Diet?" you may be asking yourself, or your computer screen in an attempt to talk to me. Well there is this cool thing called the Internet and it will tell you everything you need! But if you don't want to search the interwebs right now, I'll give you brief insight to this lifestyle change! (Yes, I'm calling it "lifestyle" and not "diet" because the word "diet" makes me a sad panda.)

The Paleo Diet is pretty much eating how human beings are supposed to eat. Things that can be hunted or gathered, not man-made, cultivated, or not real food (i.e. spam, cheese wiz, tofu). Mainly you eat meat (beef, pork, chicken, fish), vegetables, fruits and nuts. You may NOT eat things like corn, potatoes, any dairy product (except eggs, cause you can find those under chickens butts and can steal them and eat them), grains, legumes, and most importantly anything processed. So if you are reading a food label, and one of the ingredients goes something like "monounsaturated xahfntlsjsand i-cannot-pronouce-you" then I would stay away from it.

For the best information on how to eat Paleo, I would go to one of these websites:
The Paleo Diet
Mark's Daily Apple
Nom Nom Paleo (My FAVORITE food blog. She is pretty awesome.)


Like I said earlier, Colin and I started this new way of eating 25 days ago. Since then we have both lost weight (he has lost 11lbs and I have lost 9lbs), have had less stomach problems, and find that we are actually enjoying the food we are eating! Who would have thought that I would have preferred a bowl of fruit over a big ol' plate of nachos?! Not this girl! I've even thought about eating non-Paleo foods, and got over it in a matter of seconds. Sorry, Taco Bell, this lady is not giving into your 99 cent burritos anymore!

To end this first post, I'm going to say that I am not here to "convert" anybody, or force you into my way of living. That's just rude. I'm simply appealing to the people who are interested in my new lifestyle and want some of my recipes. On that note, some of the recipes are mine that I made up myself (I'm pretty awesome, I know. Yay Culinary School!) and some are from other websites/books that I have found. I'll be sure to specify where I got my recipes so if you do decide to make this delicious AND nutritious food, you will have the means to.

Ok thanks. :)