Cinnamon Espresso Steak with Caramelized Onions and Spinach

Disclaimer, the following story involves bugs:

I know everyone likes a story so I will tell one. It's almost as bad as the fish story. I've been debating telling it but what the heck! So, I have been super busy lately and sometimes I rely a little heavily on nuts for survival. I had a container of hazelnuts in my pantry so I grabbed them and off to work I went. Throughout the morning I would take a handful of nuts and eat them. I made it to work and had the container sitting on my desk while I was eating them. I just so happened to look down and saw a little bug crawling on my desk. I am not terribly squeamish when it comes to bugs so I just squished it and went on with my business... Do you see where this is going yet? I nonchalantely went in for another handful and saw a bug crawling on the rim of the container... My stomach drops as I look in... There are little bugs swarming all over the hazelnuts! OMG!!! Then I had to convince myself not to get sick. Now I have to question if bugs are Paleo... Should I consider that extra protein? Not that I will ever knowingly eat them.

If I didn't gross everyone out I have a delicious recipe for you!

This isn't so much a recipe as it is just the way I like to eat my steak. I've been asking around to see if there was a "right way" to cook a steak because until the past couple years I didn't eat red meat. Most people said they always grill theirs but that isn't exactly feasible for me since I live in an apartment... on the top floor... and a George Foreman just doesn't have the same effect to me. That and I don't own one...

I know this sounds weird but I would rather eat this than a dessert, and that says something because I'm a sweetaholic.

Sorry for the awful picture. Maybe one day I will graduate from taking them with the camera on my phone.

Ingredients:

• 1 sirloin steak, as small or large as you want
• pinch of cinnamon
• pinch of instant espresso
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1/2 sweet onion, sliced into rings
• large handful of baby spinach
• coconut oil for cooking

Directions:

1. Heat about a tablespoon of oil a medium skillet over medium high heat until melted. Cook onions in the oil until they are translucent and getting brown on the edges. Throw the spinach in with the onions and cook until just wilted. Set aside.
2. Honestly, I don't measure out the spices, I just sprinkle a little of each on top of the steak separately. So do that :)
3. Melt some more oil in the same skillet and cook the steak over medium high heat 2-3 minutes per side until it reaches your desired doneness. I like mine medium rare!
4. Plate the steak and top with the caramalized onions and spinach.
5. Devour!!!

The Hulk Buster Smoothie

I feel like I've been away forever! Please don't hate me! The Fitness Ninja is recovering from ACL surgery so I've been filling in at the gym morning and evening on top of my day job. No complaints here though because I love what I do! Although it doesn't leave much time for creating new recipes.

Update on my quest to gain weight: I lost a few pounds last month because I wasn't able to take in enough calories with my busy schedule but recently added in a ton of starches into my diet in hopes of getting my weight up. I've been given until the end of this month to gain 15 lbs or else I will be caned... I'm up to 160 and need to be at 175. Please pray for me!!

So... this is the holiday season and that means lots of yummy foods that aren't exactly diet friendly. These foods often leave me feeling very bloated and swollen and sluggish. In light of that, I have the perfect smoothie that helps get rid of the extra water retention that comes with eating less than optimal food. Now I'm not condoning eating all those holiday foods, but lets be realistic, we are all human. So if you do splurge and feel a little crappy, drink this green smoothie and you will feel loads better!

Ingredients:

• 2 cups ice
• 3-4 handfuls of baby spinach
• 3 stalks celery
• 1 cucumber
• 1 granny smith apple, quartered
• 1 inch fresh ginger, peeled
• 1 tablespoon MCT oil (olive oil or melted coconut oil would also work)
• 1/4 - 1/2 cup water (as needed to help blend)

Directions:

1. Wash and roughly chop the your and veggies.
2. Place everything into your blender or food processor and blend on high until smooth. I used a Vitamix so it took about 45 seconds and was very smooth. If you don't have a high powered blender it may take a little longer.
3. This makes approximately 2 servings so if you are not going to use it all place the remainder in a glass container in the refrigerator. Drink it within 24 hours.

Thanksgiving Recipe Round-up

I was going to try to come up with a few original recipes for Thanksgiving this year but alas, life has gotten in the way. Sometimes I wish there were just a few more hours each day to get everything done!!

So what I have done is visited a few of my favorite sites and compiled a feast of options that made my mouth water just by looking at the pictures! I'm sure they taste awesome as well or else they wouldn't be my favorite sites :) This is a tiny list compared to what is out there but I'm confident these will be great additions.


First, I'm going to start out with the turkey, what is Turkey Day without the turkey? This looks absolutely amazing! Just a few simple ingredients and the main dish is complete!

Roasted Rosemary Turkey by The Food Lovers Primal Palate




Next up will the cranberry sauce. I grew up eating the stuff from the can and thought it was the best thing in the world! I didn't want anything to do with the real thing. Looking back on it, I don't even know what I was really eating, was it really even cranberries? I have actually made this recipe and I have to say, wow, it's awesome!!

Tart Cranberry Sauce by The Food Lovers Primal Palate




 

Of course I'm going to include the one recipe I actually did convert! My poor picture looks so sad compared to these professional pics... But the taste is what matters!!

Sweet Potato Souffle

Honestly I have never tried this stuffing before but just by reading the ingredients, it looks and sounds amazing! Anything I have ever made from PaleOMG is delicious so I have perfect faith this will be as well!

Thanksgiving Stuffing by PaleOMG





I always thought I would miss buttery mashed potatoes and I never liked cauliflower but honestly, I can barely tell the difference between the two. I actually crave mashed cauliflower now. Here is a great recipe for it!

Mashed Cauliflower by The Clothes Make the Girl






Mmmm gravy! Nuff said :) Plus is can go on the turkey, stuffing, and mashed cauliflower!!

East Paleo Herb Gravy by Nom Nom Paleo






Brussels sprouts, in my opinion, are an acquired taste. A taste that I am still acquiring actually. They have to be cooked a certain way in order to enjoy them. This is my go to recipe and I think it would be an awesome addition to any holiday table.

Balsamic Onions and Roasted Brussels Sprouts by The Food Lovers Primal Palate






Pumpkin pie is usually the staple dessert, right? Well I'm going to do you one better.... Pumpkin Cheesecake!!! I've personally made this. I made it for Thanksgiving last year and it was a huge hit! Even my family members that aren't Paleo loved it!

Pumpkin Cheesecake by Wellness Mama

Sweet Potato Souffle

First off, I want to apologize for the hiatus. I have been super slammed lately and being creative was put on a back burner. I basically only cooked to stay alive and it was the same old thing over and over because... well that's easy!

I don't want anyone to think I forgot about them so I thought of my favorite Thanksgiving side dish. The best part is testing it out and eating it before Thanksgiving!! Another awesome thing is that since I'm still trying to gain weight, it doesn't matter that this is normally what you would consider a huge treat :)

So, what is a Thanksgiving feast without sweet potato souffle? A crappy one in my opinion. This is the best part, aside from the pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce. I could make my meal off of that! My suggestion is to not do that though.

This souffle is so sweet and delicious. I personally prefer mine with the crust of candied pecans on top. I know some people put marshmallows on theirs but to me that's just wrong! Luckily for me, this is one of the easiest recipes to "paleofy" because you just have to exchange a few ingredients.

Ingredients

Souffle:

• 4 cups cubed sweet potatoes
• 1/2 cup palm sugar (found at Whole Foods)
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons Ghee (Whole Foods)
• 1/2 cup coconut cream (Trader Joe's canned or any cream from full fat coconut milk)
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Topping:

• 3/4 cup palm sugar
• 4 heaping tablespoons coconut flour (Whole Foods)
• 4 tablespoons Ghee
• 1 cup chopped pecans

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
2. Peel and cube your sweet potatoes and place in a steamer basket over boiling water and cook until tender, 15-20 minutes. Transfer to a large bowl and mash them up! 
3. Then add in the palm sugar, eggs, salt, ghee, coconut cream and vanilla extract. Mix them all together until smooth. Transfer to a 9x13 inch baking dish rubbed with oil. 
4. To make the topping, mix together the palm sugar and coconut flour. Cut in the butter until the mixture is slightly coarse but almost pasty. Stir in the chopped pecans. Sprinkle the topping over the sweet potato mixture as best you can, it's a little sticky.
5. Bake in the preheated oven 30 minutes, or until the topping is lightly brown and it smells like Thanksgiving throughout your house!

I adapted this recipe from http://allrecipes.com/recipe/yummy-sweet-potato-casserole/

Spiced Bacon

Ahhh November.... The weather is starting to cool off, there are so many holidays coming up, my birthday is this month, what isn't to like?!

A while back I decided to do the Whole30 program, which was awesome by the way... everyone should do it. So that meant bacon was off my list of items I was allowed to have, I didn't realize bacon had sugar in it until then. After ending my Whole30 I just didn't have a taste for bacon, I know I know, that's ridiculous, but true.

Something I love about being in the Paleo community is we don't just limit bacon to breakfast. It's in EVERYTHING! I tried it in muffins once, it was ok but I didn't get it crispy enough. That might be my next mission.... Or maybe I need to get started on Thanksgiving foods!

This isn't so much a recipe but an idea of how to make bacon even better! What?! Is that possible?! It is in my opinion! I like my bacon with a little kick to it. I honestly have no idea why I started doing this but I'm glad I did because it makes the bacon even more delicious!

Ingredients:

• Bacon (as much or little as you want)
• Cinnamon
• Cayenne Pepper

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and lay your slices of bacon flat making sure they aren't overlapping each other.
3. Sprinkle the cinnamon and cayenne pepper over the bacon. How much depends on your own taste. Remember cayenne pepper is spicy.
4. Place the baking sheet in the oven and bake until crispy, about 30 minutes.
5. When you remove it from the oven, transfer the bacon to a paper lined plate to cool off a little.

Trying to gain weight with Paleo

For someone that is overweight it seems like one of the hardest things in the world to lose that weight. The words diet and exercise are dirty words. You want me to do WHAT?!  Does that sound about right? It is mentally and physically challenging to get out of your comfort zone to make the changes you want to make. One of the ways I kept my motivation up while trying to lose weight was looking at fitness models online and in magazines. That isn't exactly what would work for everyone but it helped me. It was the only thing keeping me from shoving chocolate down my throat at some points! I would look at the picture of a girl with a six pack and rockin' arms and say to myself, "this Reece's cup is not going to help me look like that." So I didn't eat it. For me it was that simple and that difficult.

Eventually I reached my goal weight and size and I stayed there for almost a year before the desire to set another goal set it. I wanted it to be something that if I reached it, it would be a huge victory. Something that would be mentally and physically challenging and push me to my limits. I decided that I wanted to enter a figure competition!

When I started this I weighed in at 135 wearing a size 0  and I am 5'9" tall.

I have a LOT of work to do!

I was going to have to gain a significant amount of muscle weight. I'm tall and lean so that was possibly going to work against me. Every models body that I love is short with stalky muscles. There is no way I can obtain that exact look physically. So I found a few pictures of taller models to aspire to.

I gained quite a bit of weight right off the start by increasing my calorie and carb intake. I was seeing a huge difference in the size of my muscles, especially in my shoulders and back. I was working out only 3 days a week with heavy weight and super sets. Little to no cardio other than what I was getting from my workout.

As many of you know, I'm pretty strict paleo. I would say I'm 98/2 when it comes to strictness. My cheats are very few and far between. I just feel yucky afterwards so what's the point?

With this being said, gaining weight while eating clean is F*ING HARD! My body is basically refusing to gain. I keep losing!!! I was told to eat more... MORE?! I started eating more and I've finally stayed at the same weight for a week now, that's something... I thought losing weight was hard!

I got smart and started logging the food I was consuming and realized that I wasn't eating enough protein. You need protein to recover, duh! Now I'm drinking a protein shake with my meals. I don't tolerate dairy so I'm drinking beef protein called Carnivor. I have the cherry vanilla flavor and it is disgusting! The chocolate it better.

So, one upside to trying to gain weight is I get to eat all the time, I can eat basically anything I want within reason, I need to keep my ratios right at least. Lots of fruit and sweet potatoes!! Yummm!

I heard that adding a half teaspoon of baking powder to the water helps them peel easier, or is it baking soda? Is that true? Maybe I'll try it this weekend when I have a little time, just in case it takes forever. I hate when you peel the shell and the white comes off with it, very disappointing!

I hope this explains why my recipes have been less geared toward weight loss and a little more indulgent. I need the calories! There will come a day when my recipes are very simple and geared strictly toward fat loss. Meat and veggies!

Oh!! Good news!! Today is day 3 of restricting myself to one cup of coffee a day. Last night was a success!!! I actually slept really well and woke up feeling like I slept after only 6 hours. Of course the rest of the day I will be a zombie but yay, I slept!! Since I only get one cup, I make it especially delicious. I put a tablespoon of full fat coconut milk, a splash of vanilla extract, and stevia in it, give it a stir, and it tastes better than a Dunkin Donuts latte!

Right now I weight about 158 lbs and still fitting into my same clothes. I'll keep everyone updated on my progress :)

Cinnamon Raisin Biscuits

I was sitting down drinking a cup coffee a couple days go when it dawned on me; I should I should make my sweet potato biscuits into cinnamon raisin biscuits! (I wish I had this kind of epiphany every time I drank coffee, that would be many many times a day!!!)

You know those little cinnamon raisin biscuits from Hardee's that are so delicious and make your pants feel immediately tighter after eating them? I knew them very well in my previous life :-/ Well that's what they remind me of!

I decided not to use sweet potatoes for this, I don't know why really, I just did. I have a jar of applesauce in my refrigerator that was begging to be used, so I obliged. They are moist and delicious and if I didn't have the most self control of any person I know I would have eaten the whole batch!!

On a different note, I have decided to limit my coffee intake to one cup (or large mug) a day. Getting to sleep at night has been a problem lately so I'm going to try this out. Plus, it seems like everyone's doing it. Now my only problem is staying awake all day! For those that know me, I know you are in shock! The pumpkin spice tea from Trader Joe's has been my best friend! That is what I was enjoying while devouring these :D

Ingredients:

For the biscuits:

• 3 eggs
• 4 tablespoons coconut flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 1.5 teaspoons cinnamon
• 4 tablespoons sugar substitute ( I used Stevia in the Raw, it needs to be a cup for cup kind)
• 3 tablespoons unsweetened applesauce (I like the kind from Trader Joe's)
• 1 tablespoon palm shortening (If you haven't gotten this yet, you should! You can also use butter)
• 4 tablespoons raisins

For the glaze:

• 4 tablespoons Stevia in the Raw
• 1/2 teaspoon arrowroot powder
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 tablespoon coconut milk

Directions:

For the biscuits:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Whisk the eggs together in a medium mixing bowl.
3. Add the coconut flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and Stevia and continue whisking until a dough  forms.
4. Then add the applesauce and continue mixing until well incorporated. 
5. Cut the palm shortening in, mix thoroughly, then stir the raisins in.
6. Scoop spoonfuls of the dough onto the baking sheet making 9 biscuit shapes.
7. Put in the oven and bake for 12-15 minutes until golden brown.

For the glaze:

1. Place all ingredients in a bowl and stir until smooth.
2. When the biscuits are done and cooled a little, drizzle on each biscuit and serve!!!