Carrot Cake Breakfast Treat

My new favorite breakfast item is in the form of a delicious Oh She Glows Carrot Cake Scuffin. Of course, I doctored the recipe to make it paleo friendly, and the results were, I dare say, amazing.

Paleo Carrot Cake Scuffins

Ingredients:

1 cup almond flour
1/2 tsp baking power
1/4 tsp sea salt
1.5 tsp pumpkin pie spice

2 tbsp coconut oil

1/4 cup pure maple syrup

1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 egg

1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut

1.5 cups shredded or grated carrots

• 1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup chopped walnuts

I combined the dry ingredients and then neglected to follow the rest of Angela's well laid out instructions...mostly because I was being a little bit lazy. Everything turned out okay in the end.

I shredded the carrots,

and combined everything in one bowl. The original recipe called for 1/2 cup oats, but I replaced these with shredded coconut to give the scuffins a less soupy consistency. I also reduced the maple syrup from 1/2 cup to 1/4 cup for less sweetness.

I scooped six scuffins on to parchment paper.



I topped them with shredded coconut and baked at 350 for about 25 minutes.

mmMMMmmm...carrots.

We prepared a Saturday morning breakfeast:

Scuffins, scrambled eggs and tiny plums with neon insides


We ate outside in the sun.

Chester wanted some. He didn't get any.

Homemade Beef Jerky

Sunday was jerky day at my house. We ventured through the rain to Whole Foods to pick up some beautiful meat to jerkify.

After staring at the red meat section for a good five minutes, we decided to go with this guy:

Methinks he's a sirloin?

M got to work slicing. We sliced most against the grain, but some pieces with the grain to see how they would differ in texture.

While M sliced, I collected the strips in a bowl and covered them with our Ginger Teriyaki marinade.

This was a super, fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants test run, so we decided to go with the prepared marinade. Next time, I plan on whipping something up myself!

One of the less gross meat pictures I took...that reddish stuff is marinade...not extra blood.

We laid the strips out on the dehydrator and let it do it's thing.

We left the jerky for about 4 hours on 160 degrees, and by then it was time to go to bed...so we turned down the heat to 130 and left them dehydrating over night.

The end result was some delicious jerky, of which I do not have pictures. I'm planning on having a Lil'Nic taste test this evening, and I will report back asap.

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!