500 fan giveaway - Paderno Spiralizer

Source: Amazon.com

Win a Paderno Spiralizer Tool!

The Paleo Network has reached 500 fans on Facebook! Thank you all for liking my page and following some of my cooking adventures. I do realize things have been a bit quiet lately, but they will pick up significantly starting in August. I have a series that will be starting the first week of August called "The ABCs of Paleo." It will involve a new recipe every week for 26 weeks (for each letter of the alphabet). I will be highlighting a different ingredient (or dish if the letter is extremely difficult) each week that starts with that letter of the alphabet and ask for you all to play along with me and create recipes using the same "special" ingredient each week. For example, "A" could be apple, avocado, asparagus, artichoke, etc. Each week will be a new letter to come up with new dishes. 

Onto the giveaway... 

I debated between a few different items and ended up deciding on the spiralizer. I just started using mine a few weeks ago and have had so much fun with it! I've made "zoodles" (zucchini noodles), yellow squash noodles and spiralized some sweet potatoes. It comes with three different blades (small, medium and straight blade for ribbons). It's a fabulous tool that I use regularly and want to share the opportunity with one of you to win your very own. 

How do you win? 

1. Mandatory: Sign up for my blog via email by typing your email address in the box on the upper right-hand side of the blog page. 

2. Mandatory: Like my Facebook page. 

3. Extra: Post a comment stating what you'll make first if you win the spiralizer. 

4. Extra: Follow me on Twitter. 

5. Extra: Tweet this giveaway.

Be sure to enter through the Rafflecopter app below. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Notes:

• Once the winner has been notified, you will have 48 hours to respond. If no response received within 48 hours, a new winner will be selected. 
• This is not a sponsored giveaway, I am personally paying for this item.
• Giveaway is open to US residents only, 18 years of age and older. Sorry non-US fans! I'll do my best to snag some giveaways for you in the future. 

Best of luck!

Paleo Basil Cashew Pesto Coated Spaghetti Squash with Chicken and Zucchini

When I posted a picture of this dish (on both The Paleo Network's and my own personal Facebook page), I didn't anticipate the response that I received. A number of people took interest in this dish - both Paleo and non-Paleo eaters alike. I knew I needed to get this recipe written before I forgot any of the details.

I separated the ingredients and directions into different sections based on the parts of the dish: Spaghetti Squash, Pesto, Chicken, Zucchini and putting it all together. It may sound like a lot of steps, but some of it can be done in advance or things can be done concurrently. For example, I roasted and prepared my spaghetti squash a couple days prior and had the squash strands in a large Ziploc bag in the refrigerator. I could have prepared the pesto in advance and had that in a Tupperware, which would definitely make for a quick and easy weeknight dinner. It truly is a simple meal packed with so much flavor. It's so good, I ate some of the leftovers for breakfast! I made this with chicken, but as I was eating it, I thought how delicious shrimp would be. If you don't have cashews on hand for the pesto, you could probably use pine nuts or macadamia nuts. 

I'll be adding this to my regular rotation. Grains and dairy were not missed in this meal. Everything seemed to work together so well. The pesto turned into a decadent sauce when tossed with the spaghetti squash. 

Basil-Cashew Pesto Spaghetti Squash with Zucchini and Chicken

Serves: 5-6

Ingredients:

• 1 large spaghetti squash or 2 small, roasted and pulled into strands

Pesto:

• 1 cup of packed basil leaves
• ¾ cup raw cashews
• ¼ cup nutritional yeast
• 2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
• Juice from one lemon
• 1 t. pink sea salt
• ½ - ¾ cup extra-virgin olive oil, depending on your preferred consistency

Chicken and Zucchini:

• 3 – 4 T. Fat of choice
• 1 ¼ - 1 ½ pounds chicken tenders, breast or thighs, cut into bite-sized pieces
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 medium zucchini, diced
• Sea salt and freshly-ground pepper, to taste

 

Directions:

To roast your spaghetti squash (can be done in advance):

1. Pre-heat oven to 375°F.
   
2. Cut in half length-wise.
3. Place cut-side down in a large baking dish with about an inch of water (I typically use two baking dishes if I am roasting two squashes).
4. Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until the shell is soft to the touch.
5. Flip the squash over (flesh side up) and allow them to cool until you can handle them.
6. Using a fork, pull out all the flesh into strands. If using immediately, just put into a large bowl and set aside. If saving for later use, put into a large Ziploc bag and store in the refrigerator.

 

To make the pesto:

1. Place all ingredients except olive oil into your food processor.
2. Process for about 30 seconds, or until everything is chopped and well-incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the food processor bowl.
3. With processor running, slowly drizzle in the olive oil until you’ve reached your desired consistency.

To cook the chicken and zucchini:

1. Heat 2 T. fat of choice in a large skillet or frying pan over medium to medium-high heat.
2. Add chicken in a single layer and let it cook for 8-10 minutes on one side to allow it to get golden brown and crispy.
3. Season with sea salt and pepper.
4. Flip, add minced garlic and cook 3-5 more minutes, or until chicken is no longer pink.
5. Remove from pan and reserve for later.
6. Add remaining fat of choice to same pan. Toss the zucchini in the fat and allow to sauté for 5-7 minutes, stirring occasionally. Season with sea salt and pepper, to taste.

Putting it all together:

1. If you roasted your spaghetti squash in advance (and it’s cold/cool), then heat spaghetti squash in a large skillet/pot/frying pan over medium to medium-high heat, tossing occasionally. If your spaghetti squash is still warm, just add your warm skillet/frying pan in which you cooked the chicken and zucchini.
2. Add pesto, a few spoonfuls at a time, tossing/stirring and adding more until the spaghetti squash is coated to your liking. You may have some pesto leftover (it tastes great on eggs!).
3. Add the chicken and zucchini to the skillet and mix it all together. Add a little more pesto at this point, if you’d like. Toss to coat the chicken and zucchini with the pesto.
4. Serve and enjoy!

Please share this recipe with your friends and family and on Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter. I appreciate your help in helping build The Paleo Network. 

Paleo Mushroom, Onion & Spinach Frittata (with optional sweet potatoes)

I'm a big fan of breakfast foods. Yesterday afternoon, my husband and I stopped by Whole Foods to buy a few things for dinner. While shopping browsing, he suggested we get some fancy sausage for Sunday breakfast. That prompted us to buy bacon. Then my brain thought frittata, so I grabbed some veggies for that. One thing led to another and we walked out of there with quite the haul.

As soon as I awoke, I got started on breakfast. It was a pretty easy dish to put together though.

Paleo Spinach, Onion and Mushroom Frittata

Serves: 4

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

• 2-3 T. fat of choice
• ½ onion, diced (I used yellow)
• 8 oz. sliced baby bella mushrooms (could use button/white mushrooms)
• 3 large handfuls of baby spinach
• 1 cup of roasted sweet potatoes, diced (optional)
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 8 eggs, whisked
• Sea salt and pepper, to taste

Directions:

1. Preheat broiler to high.
2. Heat fat in a cast iron skillet (or other oven-safe pan) over medium to medium-high heat.
3. Add onions and sauté for 3-5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
4. Stir in mushrooms and allow to cook down for 5-7 minutes, stirring every minute or so.
5. Season with sea salt and pepper, to taste.
6. Toss in the spinach until it is wilted.
7. Add sweet potatoes, if using. I happened to have some leftover from a previous meal.  
8. Add garlic and stir to distribute. Spread the veggies out evenly in the skillet.
9. Pour the whisked eggs evenly over the veggies and let the frittata cook for about 7 minutes, or until bottom is set. Push away the edges a couple times and tilt the pan so the uncooked egg will cook properly.
10. Put frittata (in pan) on the middle rack of the oven. The broiler will cook the top of the egg. Broil for approximately 5-7 minutes or until the top is slightly browned.
11. Remove from oven and cut into 4 pieces. Remember, the pan is extremely hot, so use your oven mitts!  
12. Serve with sausage, bacon and fruit. 

Blueberry-maple sausage and applewood-smoked bacon from Whole Foods

This is a great basic recipe for a frittata. You could easily swap out some of the veggies for other veggies. I considered buying asparagus instead of the spinach. You could also add a little meat directly to the frittata.

Hope you enjoy this dish as much as we did! I will definitely be making more frittatas in the future. It was so easy to make and different from the usual omelette or fried eggs. 

Question of the day: What meats and/or veggies would you put into your ideal frittata? I would love a sausage, mushroom and onion frittata drizzled with pizza sauce. Pizza frittata! That may be next on the docket.

Please like and share this recipe with your friends and family. Feel free to use the Pin It button located below this post. If you don't see the Pin It button, please click on the title of this blog post and that will pull up the individual post. You should then see the Pin It button at the bottom of the post. If you like this dish, please comment so others will know. Thank you! 

Paleo Strawberry Ice Cream

The temperatures are on the rise. Summer is on Spring's heels. What's more delicious on a warm summer afternoon than homemade ice cream? My strawberry ice cream is Paleo and only involves four ingredients. As long as your ice cream maker bowl/base has already been in the freezer, you'll have delicious ice cream within 30 minutes. I store my ice cream maker bowl in the freezer all the time when I'm not using it. That way I can make ice cream at any time when the mood strikes. If you don't have an ice cream maker yet, I highly recommend the Cuisinart ICE-21. Easy to use. Reasonably-priced. Fast.

Paleo Strawberry Ice Cream

Serves: 8

Ingredients:

• 2 cans full-fat coconut milk
• 1 ½ pounds fresh strawberries, tops cut off
• ¼ - ½ cup raw, local honey
• 1 t. vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Add all ingredients to a blender (I used my Vitamix). Blend until pureed.
2. Turn on ice cream maker per the manufacturer’s instructions.
3. Pour ice cream mixture into your ice cream maker. (You may have a little extra – I just pour it into a mason jar and store it in the fridge. You can always drink it as strawberry milk).
4. Let mixture churn in the ice cream maker for about 20 minutes (depends upon your ice cream maker's instructions).
5. Scoop out into an airtight container.
6. You can either serve it immediately as soft-serve or store it in the freezer for a couple hours so it’ll be more of a hard ice cream consistency. Either way, you’re in for a real treat! 

                          Beginning                                                       End Result

I am looking forward to trying out new flavors over the summer. Cookie dough, perhaps? Maple pecan. Almond butter/chocolate ribbon vanilla ice cream. Mango. Blackberry.

Question of the day: What is your favorite kind of ice cream? As a child, I loved Oreo Cookie Blizzards or Breezes from DQ or Bonnie Doon's Cookie Dough Ice Cream (made in northern Indiana where I grew up). I still have a fondness for cookie dough ice cream. I also love chocolate ice cream.

Zucchini Noodles with Chicken, Bacon and "Bread" Crumbs

Bacon + "Bread" crumbs + Chicken + Zucchini + Olive Oil + Garlic = a flavorful and easy dish that will hopefully satisfy your pasta cravings. Zucchini is a low-carb, Paleo substitute for pasta. If you have a vegetable spiralizer, you could use it to make the zucchini noodles. I hadn't purchased mine yet, so I used my food processor when I last made this recipe.

This dish was inspired by a basic pasta dish consisting of spaghetti or fettuccine, olive oil, garlic and parmesan cheese. I have added some additional dimensions with the chicken and bacon, but it still has that delicate flavor. You could easily omit the chicken or use a different protein. Salmon would taste amazing as well. You could also omit the bacon, if you so choose.

Zucchini Noodles with Chicken, Bacon and “Bread” Crumbs

Serves: 4-5

Ingredients:

• 7 medium zucchini, shredded (I used my food processor shredder attachment, so they were a little bit shorter than “noodles”)
• 2 T. + ¼ cup Coconut oil, divided
• 1 ¼ pounds of chicken tenders or breast, diced or 3 cups shredded rotisserie chicken
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• Bragg’s Sea Kelp Delight Seasoning, to taste (or another 
• Crushed Red Pepper Flakes, to taste
• Sea salt and Fresh-ground Pepper, to taste
• ½ cup almond flour
• Olive oil, to drizzle at the end
• 8 slices of bacon, crumbled

Directions:

1. The first step is to prepare the zucchini noodles. Put them into a strainer (over a bowl or in the sink) and toss them with a little bit of salt. The salt will speed up the sweating process to rid the excess moisture. Let set for 20-30 minutes.
2. After the sweating time, squeeze them in a kitchen towel (or with paper towels).
3. While the zucchini is sweating, melt 2 T. coconut oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken in a single layer. Allow to cook for a few minutes before stirring it around. Continue cooking until no longer pink, about 7-8 minutes. If you are using shredded rotisserie chicken, then you'll just need to heat it up for a couple minutes in the skillet. 
4. Stir in the garlic and seasonings.
5. Add the zucchini noodles to the skillet and toss around.
6. While the zucchini noodles are warming up, melt the remaining ¼ cup coconut oil in a medium frying pan over medium heat. Add the almond flour and season with sea salt and pepper. Stir constantly for 2-3 minutes to allow the almond flour mixture to “toast.” If it's too thin, just add a little more almond flour. 
7. Plate the zucchini-chicken mixture, drizzle with olive oil and top with approximately 2 slices of crumbled bacon and a couple tablespoons of the “bread” crumbs.
8. Dig in! 

Paleo Lasagna Soup

A while back, I ran across a recipe for lasagna soup over on Epicurean Vegan. Vegan does not always make for the best Paleo dishes, but it can be a great starting point. Her recipe used fake sausage, a bouillon cube and glutenous lasagna noodles. I wasn't about to ingest that combination of ingredients. Some of the swaps were easy. Italian sausage and ground turkey as the meat, homemade chicken broth instead of water and bouillon to make a richer soup and Cappello's grain-free lasagna instead of the glutenous pasta. I also found myself improvising as I was actually making the soup. I was completely out of oregano! What does a girl do when she runs out of oregano without having to drive two miles to the nearest grocery store since the onions were already sauteing on the stove? Yes, I could have asked one of my neighbors. They did come to the rescue when I ran out of chili powder the last time I made my chili recipe. Instead, it dawned on me that I had plenty of Italian seasoning in the cupboard. I Googled the main ingredients in Italian seasoning and it sounded like a perfect flavor for the soup. 

Paleo Lasagna Soup

Adapted from Epicurean Vegan

Serves: 8

Prep time: 5 minutes   Cook time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

• 1 T. coconut oil
• 1 onion, diced
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 12 oz. bulk Italian Sausage (I used Mulay’s Sweet Italian Sausage by removing the casings)
• ½ pound ground turkey
• 1 T. Italian seasoning
• 1/8 – ¼ t. Red Pepper Flakes (depending on how much heat you prefer)
• 2 – 14 oz. cans diced fire-roasted tomatoes
• 1 cup spaghetti sauce
• 6 cups chicken broth, preferably homemade
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 package of Cappello’s lasagna noodles, torn into bite-sized pieces
• Sea salt and freshly-ground pepper, to taste

Directions:

1. Melt coconut oil in a soup pot over medium-high heat.
2. Add onions and garlic, stirring occasionally, for 5-7 minutes.
3. Add Italian sausage and ground turkey and break up with a wooden spoon, stirring to incorporate with the onions and garlic. Cook, stirring occasionally, about 6-8 minutes or until no longer pink.
4. Season with Italian seasoning, red pepper flakes, sea salt and pepper.
5. Add diced tomatoes, spaghetti sauce, chicken broth and bay leaves. Stir until combined.
6. Bring soup to a boil, lower the heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 10-15 minutes so the flavors can meld.
7. Add the lasagna noodles right at the end, stirring so they don't clump together. Cook for only 30-45 seconds. Remove from heat immediately.
8. Serve alongside Paleo garlic knots and a side salad or sauteed vegetables for a delicious meal. 

Note: Cappello's Pasta can be purchased at many Colorado stores (check out their website for a complete listing). Unfortunately, if you live outside of Colorado, it's only available through their website. I would highly recommend asking your local health food store or market to carry their pastas. 

Hope you enjoy! Now that I've tested out the lasagna noodles, I will definitely be trying them in a true lasagna dish. I'm not sure which type of lasagna yet. I also may try making cashew ricotta cheese, or maybe even Vegan cheddar cheese for crumbling on top or in between layers. 

Paleo Naked Chicken Fajitas + guacamole

I love chicken fajitas. My mom started making fajitas for our family when I was an early teen. She served them in flour tortillas with sharp cheddar cheese. Definitely not Paleo. The fajita filling itself is Paleo. You really can't get much more Paleo than meat, veggies and spices. Add in some healthy fats in the form of guacamole and you're set. My mom shared the recipe she used, which she actually found in a magazine at a doctor's office nearly two decades ago. I've changed the recipe a bit, so I consider this more of my own at this point. I also put together my own guacamole to top the fajitas. It's super simple and only takes three ingredients (plus sea salt and pepper).

Paleo Naked Chicken Fajitas

Serves: 4-5

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup olive oil
• Juice of 2 limes
• 1 ½ t. Sea Kelp Delight Seasoning
• 1 ½ t. dried oregano
• 1 ½ t. cumin
• 1 t. garlic powder
• ½ t. chili powder
• ½ t. paprika
• 2 jalapeños, minced and divided
• 1 ¼ to 1 ½ pounds chicken, cut into bite-sized pieces
• 2 T. coconut oil
• 3 bell peppers (I used green, yellow and orange), sliced
• 2 onions, sliced

Guacamole:

• 3 avocados
• 2 Roma tomatoes, diced
• Juice of 1 lime
• Sea salt and freshly-ground pepper to taste

Garnish:

• Crushed plantain chips (I buy them from the bulk bin at Sprouts, but you could also purchase Inka Chips)

Directions:

1. Make your marinade first, so the chicken can soak up all the delicious flavors while preparing the rest of the dish. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the olive oil, lime juice, spices and 2/3 of the jalapeños.
2. Add the chicken to the marinade and stir with a spatula to coat every piece evenly. Set aside.
3. Melt the coconut oil in a large cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat.
4. Once the pan is hot, add the sliced onions, bell peppers and remaining jalapeños. Toss to coat with the coconut oil. Sauté, stirring occasionally, for 8-10 minutes. You still want the veggies to be slightly crisp.
5. While your veggies are cooking, prepare the guacamole in a medium-sized mixing bowl.
6. Mash the avocado with a fork or masher. Add the remaining ingredients and mix well. Taste for seasonings and adjust as needed.
7. When the veggies are done, pour them out into a bowl and tent with foil to keep warm.
8. Add the chicken and the marinade to the skillet. Allow chicken to cook on the first side before stirring/flipping. Continue cooking the chicken until no longer pink, around 4-5 minutes per side.
9. Add the veggies back to the pan, tossing everything together so the veggies get coated in the spices from the marinade.
10. Serve with a large spoonful of guacamole and top with a handful of crushed plantain chips. 

I will be adding this dish into our regular rotation of meals. It's such a simple, but flavorful dish. It's definitely not very photogenic, but tastes amazing.

Question: Do you have any recipes that were passed down to you from your parents that you've made your own?