What the heck do you eat for breakfast?

Breakfast was the hardest meal for me when I started eating Paleo. As I mentioned in my very first post, I've had a bagel with peanut butter (or sometimes cream cheese) every morning of my entire life. Occasionally I'd branch out and have toast.

My new workday routine breakfast consists of 2 eggs (fried or scrambled in coconut oil), and a bowl of "cereal" (I think I got the idea from coach Jen). And some fish oil. If you need more vegetables in your life (who doesn't?), I've also started having a handful of spinach which I saute for a minute after the eggs are done. Sometimes I have salsa with scrambled eggs, and sometimes I add paprika or ground pepper. This whole routine takes no longer to prepare than my old breakfast, and I pack my lunch while my eggs are frying.

Pardon the cat.

On the weekend, I often make paleo pancakes or waffles. Both of these (receipes posted below) are big hits with non-paleo folk as well. I think the pancakes are better than the "regular kind" because I don't feel like I have to douse them in butter and syrup to enjoy them. The waffles are surprisingly spongey and every bit as delicious as the non-paleo kind. Bonus: they've got protein powder and 3 eggs apiece so they have 5 blocks of potein and will actually keep you full until lunch!

Paleo Protein Waffles

From "Giving Up Grains". This makes 2 waffles. I made the whole batch, ate 3/4 of one waffle, and heated up the rest in the toaster oven to supplement my breakfast for the rest of the week!

Ingredients
1/4 cup coconut flour
2 scoops of vanilla protein powder
6 eggs
2 tbs honey
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbs natural organic apple sauce (do not leave this out or they will be very dry!)
4 tbs ghee, melted (I use coconut oil)

Heat up your waffle iron. If you don't have one, it's totally worth buying! Whisk everything together. I melted the coconut oil first, but make sure you wait for it to cool because the first time I did not and it started to cook my eggs when I poured it in! The batter is a bit lumpy and strange in consistency, but I promise this does not affect deliciousness. My iron has an automatic shut off when it's done, but it's about 5 minutes. As topping I heat up some frozen berries in a saucepan with a bit of honey.


Paleo "Cereal"

You can put all sorts of things in this but here's a list of what I often add.

A spoonfull of berries, frozen (and then thawed) in the winter, fresh in the summer
Sliced banana
1/2 scoop of protein powder
A handful of coconut (toasted in the toaster oven!)
Walnuts (also toasted)
chia seeds
flax seeds

Then I mix the whole thing up with either almond milk (unsweetened!) or coconut milk beverage. Both are much cheaper at costco than at any grocery store I've seen.


Paleo Pancakes

I'm not sure where I found this recipe originally, perhaps Mark's Daily Apple blog.

Ingredients (per person)
1 ripe (or frozen) banana
BIG scoop of almond butter
1 egg
Cinnamon to taste
(you can add almond flour to thicken the batter, and I've also added a bit of protein powder).

Thaw the banana, if it's frozen, and smash it up. Whisk everything together. Fry in ghee or coconut oil. I find they take much longer than ordinary pancakes, so don't put them on too high or the outside will burn before the inside is cooked enough. Serve with berries (or syrup, if you like that sort of thing), and some blueberry breakfast sausage (way better than they sound) from Beach Road Meats on Locke St.


Egg Muffins

If you need something quick for hurried mornings, I sometimes make up some egg muffins ahead of time on the weekend. There are a million versions on the interweb (like here), but in short, you wisk up your eggs, add whatever you want in terms of finely chopped veggies (peppers, onions, spinach, etc) and meat (precooked: ham, sausage, etc), and bake in muffin tins on about 350 for 20-30 minutes. They tend to deflate a little like a souffle, but they're tasty (think mini quiche!) and can be kept in the freezer, then heated up in the toaster oven or microwave once you get to work!

Banana Macaroon Pie

I've hated bananas for as long as I can remember. The texture really grosses me out (and also Mom says I had some sort of banana related incident as a child). But since bananas are a very convenient snack (they come in their own container!), and work so well in smoothies, I decided to give them another try. As I'm finding with many things that I've previously resisted due to unpleasant texture (like broccoli...it's fuzzy...) if you disguise it at first, you can make it edible (often with bacon), and eventually you even get used to it. Recently, I've embraced the banana, and it has become a part of my new favourite dessert:

Banana Sundae(ish)

Sliced banana (1/2 to 1 whole, hunger dependent), drizzled with almond butter and a bit of honey, and sprinkled with cocoa nibs.

The day after inventing this banana camouflage (and just one week into the 10 week paleo challenge), I was confronted with an invitation to a birthday dinner involving double chocolate cake. Keeping in mind my "plan to not cheat" motto I decided to make my own dessert to bring along. My manfriend suggested I make something to share, and proposed that I make my banana sundae into a pie to "make it look less healthy so that other people will try it". Google found me this recipe, which I modified (ditched the strawberries and replaced the crust with something chocolatey) to create the masterpiece below.

Banana Macaroon Pie

Crust
3/4 cup blanched almond flour
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut, toasted
1/4 cup cocoa
1/4 cup coconut oil, melted over low heat
1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Filling
2 ripe bananas

1 tbsp lemon juice

½ tsp vanilla extract

3 eggs, beaten

2/3 c. coconut milk
honey and cocoa nibs for the top


The crust is modified from Elana's Gluten-free Almond Flour cookbook. Her crusts are all variations on a theme. I adjusted her coconut pie crust to make it chocolatey, although I think I would put a bit more coconut/almond flour and a bit less cocoa next time.
1. Combine dry ingredients in one bowl, whisk the wet in another bowl, and stir the wet into the dry.
2. Press into a 9 1/2" pie pan.
3.(?) I then baked it at 350 for 10 minutes (without the filling), but realized afterward that this was probably unnecessary; Alana's crust recipe was for a pie with chilled filling (and thus needed separate baking), and the original banana pie recipe did not pre-bake the crust. Thus, the top edges were a little crispy, so I'll try without pre-baking next time (there's nothing in it that really needs baking anyway).

4. Mix bananas, lemon juice, and vanilla extract either in a food processor or by hand (you’ll need to mash the bananas first if you mix by hand). Then gently mix in coconut milk and eggs.
3. Pour banana filling into pie crust.
4. Bake at 180 C for 35 minutes, or until set in center. Let pie cool.
5. Drizzle honey and sprinkle cocoa nibs on top (or stick with the strawberries and blueberries suggested in the original recipe).

Note: other people actually ate it, and took a second slice for later!

Kentucky Fried Haddock

Today something awesome happened. I accidentally discovered the secret recipe for KFC's chicken batter (ish).

This is awesome because once every year or so I crave that flavour so badly that I forget how horrid the meal makes me feel, and I stop at KFC. And then I feel horrid, and spend another year gagging at the thought of repeating the process.

But no more, friends! The most excellent discovery began when I found this recipe last week when I was having a childhood craving for Shake 'n Bake. I successfully shaked and baked my porkchop, although I didn't have the fancy "Nature's Seasons" spice, and the salt and pepper alone wasn't quite enough. Also, just to note, I did not grid my own almond flour, I went to the bulk store and bought a bag that someone else had already ground for me. I'm really not quite there yet...

Today, I decided to try the recipe again, this time "breading" (really, it's "almonding") my haddock. And when I tasted it, I could have sworn I was eating KFC....except with fish instead of chicken, obviously. But I expect it would work just as well on chicken or pork. Seriously, if you, like me, suffer from occasional inappropriate KFC cravings, you have to try this. Look, I was so excited I took a picture of my partially devoured meal.

...I really need a better camera, other paleo recipe blogs have much more professional looking visual aids.

Anyway, I ate it with my Lemon Cranberry Cabbage Salad (also pictured) that is my go-to paleo potluck dish, and which is in my side dish rotation along with "Salad Without the Lettuce" (or: a Big Bowl of Veggies).

Kentucky Fried insert meat (Paleo KFC)

Ingredients
Almond flour
1 whisked egg
Sea salt and pepper (I think I used 6-8 cranks of the grinder each)
A pinch of cumin
several shakes of chili powder
Haddock, or any sort of meat (I think)

(sorry about the imprecise measurements, I just sort of guess how much will taste good...)

1. Mix up the flour, salt/pepper, cumin, and chili powder in a soup bowl type dish that your meat can fit in.
2. Whisk the egg in a similar dish.
3. Dip your meat in the egg to coat on both sides, and then coat in the batter mixture.
4. Pan fry in some olive oil. I cooked the haddock (both sides) until it fell apart when I tried to flip it.

Sometimes, you just need a piece of toast

When I started crossfit I didn't jump on the paleo bandwagon straight away. I started gradually reducing my wheat consumption in lunches and dinners, but I was still very much addicted to my morning bagel with peanut butter. I had been eating either toast or a bagel for breakfast every day of my life, it was hard to imagine anything different.

Last Christmas I did something drastic and decided to only have a bagel every other day. Breakfast has always seemed to me like the hardest meal to change; it's much easier to get moving in the morning if you just carry on with your regular routine on autopilot, so it takes some directed effort and perhaps planning to do something different.

Anyway, in order to give up morning toast EVERY DAY for the current 10 week paleo challenge I'm attempting now, I decided it was time to find an alternative. I tried making this bread first, because it was the only paleo bread recipe I could find that actually looked fluffy. Most of them look more like banana bread in density, which just won't do for toast. It one didn't work for me, in short. It didn't rise at all and so was hardly wide enough to spread nut butter on.

My next attempt was much more successful. The recipe is from Elana's Pantry, which has a slew of gluten free goodies that appear to be mostly paleo friendly. I didn't have the tiny pan she recommended (I got mine from Fortinos), so my slices are more the shape of malba toast. Mine also has brown flecks because Fortinos has only flax meal instead of golden flax meal.

I love this bread. It's light and fluffly like proper bread, and even tastes like it's buttered already! It's good with nut butter, or all by itself. It also doesn't take very long to make at all. I mixed the ingredients while my spaghetti squash was roasting, and baked it while I ate the spaghetti squash (with ground beef, simmered for a while in diced tomato with garlic, salt and pepper, tamari, and lots of paprika and chili powder...delicious!). I have also successfully eaten this bread toasted with an egg, tomato, and bacon, and it did not fall apart, although it's a bit incorrectly shaped...unless you have a rectangular egg pan...

EDIT: It looks much better with golden flax meal, as prescribed, and I think it tastes even better too.

Paleo Bread
Ingredients
1 ½ cups blanched almond flour
2 tablespoons coconut flour
¼ cup golden flaxseed meal
¼ teaspoon celtic sea salt
1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
5 eggs
¼ cup coconut oil
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

1. Place almond flour, coconut flour, flax, salt and baking soda in a food processor (or a bowl)
2. Pulse ingredients together (or stir with a fork)
3. Pulse in eggs, oil, honey and vinegar
4. Pour batter into a greased 7.5" x 3.5" Magic Line Loaf Pan
5. Bake at 350° for 30 minutes
6. Cool and serve