Adventures in Nutty Granola

A few weeks ago, M and I went up to Southern Vermont for Family Work Day for the Jenckes Foundation. Family Work Day is filled with trail work aka lopping, chainsawing, hacking and stacking. We spent most of the day removing fallen trees from the ski trails in the form of chucking 60lb logs into the woods.

We started the morning at M2's house with a delicious granola breakfast care of my Mama. I broke my "no grains" rule to indulge in some coconutty, oaty granola from Healthy Living, an amazing health food store up in Northern VT. Mostly, I broke my rule so that I could have some of my mom's homemade fruit compote, which is soon to be replicated, but the granola was phenomenal.

Since tasting the forbidden granola, I've wanted to try and make my own. I found a guide on Girl Gone Primal and modified it a bit to make my own, nutty granola.

Nutty Granola

Ingredients:
Almonds
Cashews
Walnuts
Unsweetened shredded coconut
3 Tbs maple syrup
5 egg whites

I put all of the nuts into a bowl to soak for a few hours.

Chester was curious. I'm not sure of my exact nut measurements: I used an entire bag of raw almonds from Trader Joe's, half a bag of raw cashews and 1/2 cup walnuts.(This recipe can be modified for any amount of nuts: you just have to change the number of egg whites and maple syrup.)

I soaked the nuts for about three hours-- until they had soaked up almost all of the water in the bowl and looked nice and soft.

I ground the nuts cup by cup in the food processor,

and whisked the maple syrup and egg whites in a separate bowl.

I combined the nut and egg white mixtures, making sure that all of the nuts were covered in egg.

After lining a baking sheet with parchment paper, I spread out a 1/2 inch layer of the mixture. I baked the nutola for about 10 minutes at 350, stirred (or flipped) and then continued to bake for another 10 minutes.

I completed this flipping/stirring step a few more times before the nuts were browned and toasted looking.

Once the nuts were done baking, I added the coconut flakes.

I attempted to shake the nuts and coconut together in a plastic bag. However, we are cheap, so our plastic bags are ghetto and don't seal very well (and I'm a gross kid), so there was a granola explosion.

I managed to salvage most of the goods and we ate them with almond milk, blueberries and some demon peanut butter for our Sunday Breakfeast. Needless to say, I'm all nutted out-- I can't even think about nut butter without longing for some cold, crisp vegetables. The granola is great though, and I'm going to attempt to make some fruit compote in the next week or so-- it needs some fruit to lighten it up-- all of those nuts just go straight to my chins!

Sometimes I Get Jealous...

I love eating the way that I eat. I love eating the foods that I eat. Eating this way has helped me gain energy, changed my body composition and allowed me to comfortably stop counting calories and worrying all the time about gaining weight.

How do I eat, you ask? Well, I try very hard to follow a Primal way of eating. I'm not strictly Paleo, but I do avoid grains, legumes and dairy* whenever possible. I use unsweetened almond milk in my coffee and I enjoy the occasional spoonful of peanut butter. I will eat special goodies made with wheat flour at family get-togethers, but for the most part I bake with almond meal and sweeten said baked goods with honey or maple syrup. No oats, spelt, amaranth, sorghum, barley, buckwheat or kasha for me.

That being said, sometimes I get a bit jealous when I go through my daily food blog rounds. Carrots 'N' Cake, KERF, Oh She Glows and The Edible Perspective (to name a few) are always creating amazing looking oatmeal or pancake breakfasts. Oatmeal and pancakes with nut butters, chia seeds and berries and coconut! Drool-worthy overnight oats. When I look that the pictures of these concoctions, I sometimes feel like I'm missing out. I want to put all of those delicious toppings on top of something, but I choose not to eat grains. Thus, a grainy base is out.

Last weekend, I gave in to my jealousy and created an almond meal pancake monster, which I topped with blueberries, almond butter and maple syrup. Totally hit the spot!

Monster Almond Meal Pancake

Ingredients:

1/4 cup almond meal
1 egg
1 tsp cinnamon
1Tbsp chia seeds
~2Tbsp shredded coconut
blueberries

I fried this puppy in coconut oil over medium heat until cooked through and browned on each side. Once finished cooking, I topped it with maple syrup, almond butter and additional blueberries.

This was going to be a single serving sized pancake, but it turned out to be gloriously dense and pretty gigantic, so M and I split it. It was everything I'd hoped it would be and more.

The primal way of eating works incredibly well for me. Not only do I feel and look healthier, I've also made huge gains in my workouts since switching away from the standard American diet. Eating this way, on top of my exercise routine, has given me the fitness results that I've always wanted...and I'm still improving everyday. A lot of that has to do with the way that I work out, but, they say, your body composition is 20% exercise and 80% diet.

I rarely crave grains, legumes or dairy and I don't really miss them either. Peanut butter is an exception: I do crave PB every now and then, but because my diet is pretty clean otherwise, I allow myself to give in to this craving (within reason). I eat so many vegetables and such a wide variety of vegetables that I never really want breads or baked goods.

* Okay, so lately I've been less than stellar with the avoiding of cheese. I really don't drink cow's milk, eat yogurt or consume any non-cheese dairy products. I try really hard to avoid cheese...but sometimes it sneaks into whatever I'm eating...mostly because other people put it there to sabotage me. Cheese is delicious, and I'm pretty sure it has addictive properties. I try to avoid it...really, I do.

Buffalo 'n Beets

One of my favorite "in moderation" foods is buffalo chicken. M makes a pretty meal grilled buffalo wing--which I adore--but my heart lies with the greasy fried goodness of buffalo chicken tenders. Every now and then I will convince M to add them on to our take-out order (I pretty much try every time we order Italian takeout, but M has this Jedi mind trick to get me to not want them anymore) and I bask in the bready, fried, blue-cheesy glory that are buffalo tenders.

In an effort to healthfully satisfy my buffalo craving, I decided to make baked buffalo chicken tenders:

Gluten-Free Baked Buffalo Chicken Tenders
(sheesh...what a name!)

Ingredients:

• Chicken tenderloins (or a chicken breast sliced into tenders)
• Almond meal (I used the Trader Joe's variety)
• Franks Red Hot
• 1 Tbsp unsalted butter
  

• Blue cheese dressing for dipping

I started by rolling each tender in almond flour (frowny face unintended)

After spraying both sides of each tender with olive oil, I placed them on a baking sheet. Then I placed them in the oven at 450 for 10 minutes on each side. It was about 90 degrees in Boston last night, and about 120 degrees in our kitchen...

In the meantime, I poured some of our gigantic container of Frank's Red Hot into a frying pan along with about 1Tbsp of butter over medium heat

When the tenders were finished baking, I coated each of them with the buffalo sauce

Voila: Gluten-Free Baked Buffalo Chicken Tenders

To go with our chickens, I decided to make a beet salad using beets I picked up at the Copley Farmer's Market.

I cut off the beet greens to save for another day

Then washed and wrapped each beet in aluminum foil and placed in the oven at 450 for about 30 minutes.

While the beets were roasting, I put together a salad of mixed greens, goat cheese, walnuts and blueberries

Once the beets were done, I rinsed them in cold water. The skin comes off easily in cold water after roasting--all you have to do is gently rub the beets.

Voila: Beet Salad

I was so excited that the beets worked out! They were a great way to spice up a salad that we make fairly often. Plus, beets are in season in Massachusetts right now! We needed a nice, cold salad to offset the spicy hotness of the buffalo tenders: it was, in my opinion, the perfect summer salad.

An Extravagant Brunch

Last Saturday, I decided to make a delicious brunch. I was inspired by yet another gifty from IIN, gluten-free, wheat-free, sugar-free, dairy-free blueberry maple muffin mix from Purely Elizabeth.


All I needed to add was maple syrup (I used 1/2 of the recommended amount), olive oil, blueberries and vanilla. Easy-peasy. I stuck some blackberries in with the blueberries to make them a little more exotic and I thought about using coconut oil instead of olive oil, but I really wanted the brunch to be niiiiice, so I followed the recipe...

I popped the mini muffins into my ancient oven. (You can't really tell from this picture, but there are no numbers on the burner dials...they have two settings: inferno and gas leak).

The mini muffins came out perfectly!

Some glamour shots:

To round out our brunch, I made some scrambled eggs (two eggs, two whites each), and bacon, because, as we know, no brunch is complete without bacon! I also sliced up a peach I had lying around.

It was a protein packed, blueberry muffin-y brunch! The muffins were great: they had a very unique taste-- maybe it was the chia seeds and millet flour. I used to be some sort of muffin freak (I would eat a dunkin' donuts reduced fat blueberry muffin every morning before work in the olden days), and I really liked these! I'm not sure if I would buy the mix myself, but I definitely plan on using it as a model for my own healthy blueberry muffins.

Monsterberry

Yesterday, I ate the largest strawberry known to mankind.


Yes, my hands are on the small side, but this berry was seriously gigantic! Did you know that conventional fruits (of which this is one) are usually larger and less tasty than their organic counterparts?

Conventional strawberries are also a member of the"Dirty Dozen": the 12 fruits with the highest pesticide residue (59 detected in a 2009 survey according to The Daily Green). Strawberries, along with peaches, apples, blueberries and nectarines are among the most contaminated fruits on the market. If you have a choice, buy their organic counterparts.

Also, see The Daily Green for a list of "Clean 15: Foods You Don't Have to Buy Organic"

Update: FitSugar just posted this cute little pocket guide to the "Dirty Dozen"