Paleo...Sandwich?

I am at a loss of what to call this one. You tell me the name and I'll change the title... Sound like a good deal?

This past weekend was ah-maaazzzz-ing! I got to go to San Angelo, Tx to visit my husband at Goodfellow AFB!!!! I haven't seen him since mid August and let me tell you, it was such a perfect weekend! It felt good to just be "us" again. We didn't do anything special, we just had a normal weekend together. We even hung out in the grocery store! HA! But, for those of you that know us, that's what we do and I couldn't dream of being anything else but "us." To Grady- I love you so much, thank you for being an amazing husband and being in the military. I never thought I would be a "military wife," but I love every bit of it! Everyone at home absolutely cannot wait for you to get your butt back here for Christmas!!!

I got home late Monday night and really didn't feel like going to the store, so I made another "kitchen sink" type of meal. Those can either be really awesome, or a major major fail. Lucky for you guys, this one ended up being really awesome!

Paleo....Sandwich? (<---- again, please help me rename this!)

Ingredients:
1lb ground meat (I had ground beef)
1 tomato
1 small can of tomato sauce (no sugar or salt added)
Lg. Handful of Spinach Leaves
2 Garlic Cloves (yes, April, FRESH garlic...aren't you proud?!)
2 eggs
1 Tbsp Coconut Flour
1/2 avocado

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375F
2. Put meat and tomato sauce into mixing bowl
3. Chop up your spinach and mince that garlic... do a little dance while you're at it, then add to the ground beef
4. Mix above thoroughly, then add in 1 egg and your tbsp of Coconut Flour. These two will act as binding ingredients
5. Place mixture into meatloaf pan and bake in oven for roughly 40 min or until meat is cooked through. (Meatloaf should be between 160-165F when done)
6. Take meatloaf out of oven, let cool a bit and slice into desired sizes
7. Slice tomato and place two tomato slices (not stacked) onto plate. 
8. Add a meatloaf slice on top of the tomatoes
9. Place some spinach leaves on top of the meatloaf slice (optional, the picture doesn't have the extra spinach on it...oops!)
10. Fry your 2nd egg! I like mine to be a little runny still, but this part is up to you... Once your egg is done, place it on top of the spinach leaves
11. Last but not least, add your avocado and there you have it! Paleo Sandwich!

Thanksgiving In a Bowl

Can we talk about Doug Martin? Yeah. 52 points in fantasy football, are you kidding me?!?! My best friend, April and I are playing each other in our fantasy league, and I just lost to her due to Martin. Oh well. That was an awesome game....teach me how to Dougie!

Are you ready for some Thanksgiving recipes?! I sure am... I love holidays, not only for the time spent with friends and family, but for all the delicious food. The only bad thing is, is that the holidays can bring some absolutely amazing food that is oh so bad for you. Like I said in a previous post, let yourself indulge, but just know that you can make better choices. Life's all about that right? Make the best choices for yourself that you can at the time. So, in hopes of helping you do just that this holiday season, I will be posting some yummy (some paleo, some not) recipes starting with....

Thanksgiving In a Bowl

(this is one is paleo!)

Ingredients:

• 1.5lbs Pork Sausage
• 1 Head of Cauliflower
• 2 Granny Smith Apples
• 1 Yellow Onion
• 7-8 Stalks of Celery
• 1/2 C Raisins
• 1 tsp Cinnamon
• 1 tsp Allspice
• S&P to taste

Directions:

1. Dice your Onion, Apples and Celery
2. Add your Sausage and above mixture to a pan with olive oil over medium-high heat
3. Let simmer until no pink shows in the meat.
4. While mix is simmering, chop cauliflower and make cauliflower rice. (Put the shredder attachment onto your food processor and simply "shred" or "rice" your cauliflower. Or you could just youtube how to do this!)
5. Once meat mixture is almost done, add raisins and spices. Cook for about 3-4 more minutes, then drain all excess liquid out of the mixture
6. Add your cauliflower rice to the pan to heat it up a bit and slowly mix in the meat mixture.
7. Serve with a bit of parsley on top and VOILA!

Paleo Granola

The last 4-5 months, one of my Bro-n-Law's, Matt, has been living with us and it's been awesome! He's moving to Seattle tomorrow morning and I am so sad to see him (and Jasper) go, but I know he's really going to enjoy it there! That also means another vacation will be in the works! WooHoo! So Matt, I hope you have enjoyed your time with us as much as we have and know that you are welcome back anytime! Drive safe, have fun and we'll see you soon! We love you! (p.s.-Boz is going to miss his cousin Jasper so much!)

In efforts to lighten the mood a bit, how was your Halloween? Mine was full of relaxing in front of the TV, handing out candy to Trick or Treaters and getting a "Boorito" from Chipotle (and eating candy too, but we won't talk about that!). Negative point of the night- a group of middle school aged kids where one was dressed as a drug dealer... SERIOUSLY?! #1- I hope this child's parent realized that's what they were telling people they are dressed as and screams their head off, #2 - no candy for you!, #3- SERIOUSLY?! Highlight of the night- the cutest little princess came up to my door, as she was getting candy, I noticed that she came on a 4-wheeler... her dad said she got really tired of all the walking (she was only about 4), so he took her home and took her back out on his 4-wheeler so she could still enjoy the night. High five to that dad!!!

Now that the candy festivities are over, let's get back to eating healthy!

Paleo Granola

Ingredients:

1/2 C Cashews
1/2 C Almonds
1/2 C Sunflower Kernels
1/2 C Pepitas
1/2 C Raisins
1/4 C Dark Chocolate Chips (optional)
1/4 C Pumpkin Puree
1/4 C Walnut Oil
2 tsp of instant coffee (optional, but really yummy!)
Dash of Salt or any seasoning you want (cinnamon would be good, or pumpkin pie spice)

Directions: 

1. Preheat oven to 325F
2. Mix all ingrendients into bowl. Make sure that all "dry ingredients" get covered by the pumpkin and walnut oil!
3. Evenly spread mixture out on parchment-paper lined pan
4. Bake for 45-50min. (bake a few minutes longer if you want it really crunchy)
5. Set on cooling rack and cool completely!!! This is where it really "crunches" up!

*Walmart has bags in their produce section for about $2.50 each of the Sunflower Kernels and Pepitas! Those bags will last me around 7-8 batches of this, yay for being cost effective!
** When picking out your nuts (haha), make sure that they are plain. Meaning no salt, not roasted in any oils, etc...