Glimpses of Life – Page 38

Salmon Cakes with Sweet Potato Fries

I decided to try a couple of new paleo recipes. They are both simple to make but tasted great!

The first one was for Salmon CakesÂ with Garlic Aioli. I was surprised at how true to the recipe the salmon cakes turned out. Moist yet dense.

Ingredients for Salmon Cakes (Patties) – (Coconut Oil not shown)

Ingredients for Salmon Cakes (2 of 2) — Ingredients for Garlic Aioli

Here they are right before I baked them in the oven.

And the Garlic Aioli I served with them had a more fluid texture than I anticipated but tasted great also. Thanks Emeril!

So — here is the salmon recipe so you can try it for yourself.

Ingredients

1 large sweet potato, cooked then peeled and mashed
â…” cup almond meal
â…“ cup packed finely chopped parsley
2 Tablespoons finely chopped onion
1 Tablespoon fresh squeezed lemon juice
Â½ to 1 Tablespoon hot sauce (I used only 1/2 tablespoon and it turned out fine)
Â½ Tablespoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon cumin
1Â¼ teaspoon paprika
Â½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 large eggs (at room temperature)
2 14.75-ounce cans Wild Alaskan Pink Salmon (remove skin and bones)
2 Tablespoons coconut oil

Directions

Wash the sweet potato and use a fork to poke holes in it.
Bake the sweet potato in the oven at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for approximately 30-45 minutes. A fork should pierce through easily when done.
After removing the potato from the oven, let it sit for 15 minutes or so to cool then mash it.
Add the almond meal, chopped parsley, onion, lemon juice, hot sauce, salt, cumin, paprika, black pepper and eggs to the mashed potato.
Open the cans of salmon and slowly turn the can upside down and dump the salmon in your hand. With the other hand, halve the salmon and remove the bones from the inside. At this point, you should remove any skin that’s on the outside also.
Add the salmon to the other ingredients and mix thoroughly.
Using a 1/3 measuring cup, scoop out evenly sized salmon cakes until you have approximately 12 patties.
Chill the mixture in the refrigerator for a minimum of 30 minutes.
Heat a large frying pan over medium high heat. When it’s hot, add 1 tablespoon coconut oil for every six patties. Let the oil completely melt until the pan is very hot then slowly add the patties and cook for 4 minutes on each side.

This was truly a great recipe! I made 6 and froze 4 patties. My patties were a little larger as once I had them in the frying pan, I flattened them out. Very very good.

I served these with Sweet Potato Fries. Another simple but goodly recipe.

Special thanks to EverydayMaven for these delicious salmons!

Cave Man Cookies

On occasion, the need to have a “snack” rears its head in our household.

There are many things we can snack on while on a paleo diet. This time though, our choice was a Cave Man Cookie.

These cookies can’t be readily found. I was able to find them at a health food store called Tailor Made Nutrition in Woodbury, Minnesota.

This package has six cookies and each one is individually wrapped so they stay “fresh” even when you open the bag.

They DO NOT taste anything like a “regular” cookie as they use honey instead of cane sugar. They are about the size of a Chips Ahoy Chocolate Chip Cookie. The texture is soft and kind’ve gooey but not in a bad way. I really like them.

One cookie fit in the palm of my hand.

The first time I tasted them I thought they were a little bland. But, by the second batch (yes, I went back for more) I had already grown accustomed to them and like them quite well.

Alas! They are a bit pricey — $4.29 for 6 cookies. I guess that’s not too bad considering you can get a cookie at Starbucks for $2.50 or so and, although it’s bigger, it’s not as healthy.

So — perhaps a once or twice a week treat is enough, eh?

[amazon_link id=”B002R38ZQO” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ] Original Caveman Cookies [/amazon_link]

Cinnamon Fruit Salad

This is a really easy Cinnamon Fruit Salad with a hint of coconut. Very good to have as a snack, side or “just because” you feel like it.

Ingredients

1Â medium navel orange
1Â kiwi, peeled, sliced and quartered
1Â medium ripe banana, sliced
1Â medium apple, sliced
6Â seedless grapes, halved
2Â tablespoon sunflower kernels
1/4Â cup coconut milk
1/8Â teaspoon ground cinnamon

Directions

In a large bowl, combine fruit and sunflower kernels.
In a small bowlÂ combine coconut milk and cinnamon then mix well.
Pour over fruit and toss toÂ coat.
Serve immediately. This yields approximately 8 servings.

See how easy that was?

Now, I have a confession to make. I didn’t grow up in the kitchen whipping up food from whatever was in the pantry. As a matter of fact, when I was a single mother I would make baby cereal for me and my son for dinner. I just didn’t have the “cooking” instinct in me. Later in life, I developed a desire for cooking but with mostly tried and true recipes like this one.

But, having said that, I follow most recipes right to the letter. So … wanna have a nice laugh today? Here goes. What do you see in the picture below?

Are you laughing yet? The recipe called for 6, count them, six green grapes halved. So, that’s what I sliced. After I did this, I laughed out loud and just about rolled over on the floor. I became a rebel and doubled the green grapes to twelve! Â (I have to be careful what I write because I’m sitting at a coffee shop right now laughing out loud and people might think I’m nuts.)

The only reason that I can think of to stick with the quantities in this recipe is because of the coconut milk. Add too much fruit and you won’t have a good coconut-cinnamon taste.

So — let’s all be rebels in the kitchen. I don’t know why I reverted back to my “really old” days of making sure I stick by the recipe, especially with a recipe like this one which has lots of room for flexibility.

Oh — it was good! I loved it — my non-coconut-loving husband thought it was just okay. I served it on the side with Orange Chicken as my entree.

Orange Chicken with Cinnamon Fruit Salad

Paleo Orange Chicken

Wow! This Orange Chicken recipe that I made is wonderful and will be on my “must have again” list. Served with a Cinnamon Fruit Salad, it fit the bill to satisfy an empty stomach. I imagine that one could make these vegetarian by usingÂ FriChik by Worthington (although I haven’t made them that way yet).

I did have a “learning” moment while going through it so I’ll share that with you later in this post. So — here goes!

And of course, the orange juice (without pulp)

Ingredients

1Â lb. chicken breast cut into bite size pieces
2Â eggs
1Â cup almond flour
Olive or coconut oil (I used olive)

For Orange Sauce

1/2Â cup freshly pressed orange juice
The zest of 1 orange
2Â tbsp. tapioca starch
1Â tbsp. coconut oil
2Â cloves garlic, minced
2Â tsp. fresh ginger, minced
1/8 tsp. crushed red peppers (more if you want it spicy)
1Â tbsp. fish sauce
1Â tsp. white wine vinegar
1Â tbsp. honey
2Â green onions, thinly sliced

Directions

In a small bowl, mix the orange juice with the tapioca starch and whisk until the starch is all dissolved. Set this aside.
To prepare the sauce, preheat 1 tbsp. coconut oil in a skillet over medium heat, add the garlic, ginger, crushed red peppers, and half of the orange zest. Cook until golden, about 1 minute.
Once the oil and spices are golden, add the fish sauce, the white wine vinegar, honey and cook about 10 seconds.
Add the orange juice/starch mixture to the skillet and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Note: Be careful not to keep it on the burner too long or you’ll get a really thick consistency which is what you don’t want.
Reduce the heat and simmer for a minute or two. Remove the mixture from the heat, but leave it in the skillet.
Break the two eggs into a bowl and whisk them together.
Dunk each piece of chicken in the raw eggs and coat them with the almond flour.
Pour olive oil (or coconut depending on your preference) into a big skillet until itâ€™s about 1/2 an inch deep. Heat it to at least 365 F.
Add the pieces of chicken to the oil and cook until golden on each side, about 5 minutes.
Transfer the cooked chicken pieces to a paper towel for a few minutes then transfer them to a serving dish.
Once the chicken is fried, place the skillet containing the sauce back on medium heat and warm it up. When itâ€™s warm, pour it over the chicken pieces and mix to get them nicely coated with the sauce.
Garnish with the remaining orange zest and the sliced green onions.

This was really delicious. As I mentioned in direction #4, I did have a problem with the sauce but it was easily corrected thanks to the advice from my friend Kathy.

Here are a few pictures for your perusal …

So — this is what happens if you cook the orange sauce too long … quite “gummy.”

I added a little bit of orange juice at a time to make the consistency pourable but still “thick.” Like this …

Here’s my “workstation.” I had it to the right of the stovetop so I could “dunk” the chicken in the egg and flour and straight into the hot oil. Those eggs should be whisked!

The frying went well. I “eyeballed” when the chicken was done by how crispy it looked. See the ones I turned already in the picture? They were nice and browned and ready for turning.

And of course, the finished product. Â Oh, did I already say how delicious they were?

Yum! Very thankful to Paleo Diet Lifestyle for this recipe.

[amazon_link id=”B000BF3AJ2″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ][/amazon_link]

Paleo Apple Cinnamon Breakfast Cake

This paleo Apple Cinnamon Breakfast cake was pretty good for a paleo cake (normally they don’t have much taste — perhaps that’s a cook problem?).

Because the recipe calls for 9 eggs (yes, you read that right), we refrigerated it after we ate some. The next day for breakfast, it still tasted good.

Because my husband doesn’t like coconut flour too much, he was not overly fond of this cake — so, personal preference on whether one will like it or not (of course, that’s how it is with all recipes, eh?)

It was quite simple to make.

SauteÂ the apples, water, vanilla and cinnamon in a skillet until the apples are the consistency of apple pie filling â€“ approximately 10 minutes. Once the apples are finished cooking, add 2 tablespoons of coconut oil or butter to the mixture and stir until the oil or butter is melted. Allow the apple mixture to cool for a few minutes before adding it to the egg mixture.

This is what it will look like …

Next, you’ll be combiningÂ the eggs, coconut milk, coconut flour, Â½ tsp cinnamon, maple syrup, baking soda and salt until its well whisked up.

After combining the apple mixture with the egg mixture, pour everything into a greased 8×8 glass pan. Here’s what it looks like unbaked.

And, the finished product will look like this …

The apples rose to the top of the cake but in reading the reviews for this recipe, this is normal.

Okay then. Ready to bake? Here’s the recipe …

Ingredients

4 cups diced apple (cored and peeled)
Â½ cup water
1 Tablespoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 TablespoonsÂ butter
9 free range eggs
2 â€“ 3Â Tablespoons pure raw honey
3 Tablespoons coconut milk (if paleo) or milk of choice
1 Â½ Tablespoon organic coconut flour (no substitutions per the original recipe as it will not work correctly)
1/2 tsp additional cinnamon
heaping Â¼ tsp baking soda
pinch of salt

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit.
In a skillet, saute the apples, water, vanilla and cinnamon until the apples are the consistency of apple pie filling â€“ approximately 10 minutes.
Add 2 tablespoons of butter to the mixture and stir until the butter is melted.
Allow the apple mixture to cool for a few minutes before adding it to the egg mixture.
In a bowl, whisk the eggs, coconut milk, coconut flour, Â½ tsp cinnamon, maple syrup, baking soda and salt until its well combined.
Combine the egg and apple mixture then pour it into an olive oil or butter greased 8Ã—8 pan. Bake for 50 minutes or until the top is nice and golden and the middle is cooked through.

Even though this recipe has almost 1.5 tablespoons of cinnamon, it wouldn’t hurt to add more — if you’re a cinnamon lover like I am.

Enjoy!

Salmon with Strawberry Balsamic Glaze

This Salmon with Strawberry Balsamic Glaze was delicious. I loved the sweetness in the glaze that melded with the tenderness of the salmon. We used honey instead of agave syrup and it turned out just fine.

Served with a paleoÂ Roasted Carrot & Blood Orange Salad with an arugula base (replace the brown sugar with honey), it made for the perfect meal.

I enjoy trying different marinades/glazes and salads with salmon. For awhile, we were having salmon once a week and for some reason I started to get tired of it. I wanted a different kind of fish. But the feeling soon wore off as salmon is one of my favorite meals.

A Minnesota Blue Jay

The first time I saw this beautiful blue jay, he/she took my breath away.

There are two of them, male & female, who appear to live in one of the trees in our front yard. Occasionally, they come to the back deck and eat the seeds that fall from the bird feeder that we have out. They are a tad too large to eat from the feeder itself.

Did ya know … male and female blue jays are very hard to tell apart unless they are “handled” and a “breeding” patch is found under the female.

Interesting …

Baked Mustard Lime Chicken

I’m still catching up with some of the reviews on some paleo recipes that my son cooked for us while he was here.

This Baked Mustard Lime Chicken was very limey. The recipe calls for 1/2 cup of fresh lime juice. I would halve that amount so that it won’t make me pucker — unless, that is, you happen to really really like lime. I couldn’t get past the lime flavor in this recipe.

Looks pretty juicy, doesn’t it?

My son served this with steamed broccoli which accompanied it very well. I dipped my broccoli in the chicken sauce and it tasted okay that way.

I will be trying this recipe again but, again, with less lime juice.

Any lime lovers out there?

Garlic Mustard Plant

A couple or so weeks ago I spotted a really pretty plant in my backyard, side yard and basically all around the yard (1/2 acre)– here and there and in large clusters. Hmmm … if I didn’t know any better, this has to be a weed, I said to myself.

So, I set out to pull this weed. The task was quite overwhelming. The plant pulls out quite easily, especially in the wet Minnesota weather that we’ve been having, but there is so much it.

My husband thought I should let this pretty plant grow wild but my gut told me differently. Â One evening, while we were watching the evening news, a segment on an invasive noxious weed was being talked about. And guess what it was? Yup. The plant I had been pulling up that was all pretty looking was an invasive plant called the garlic mustard plant.

I’ve learned so much about this plant in the past three weeks but I was glad that I learned it early on.

Last year I had pulled some of these plants out on the west side of the house but they were the stalks and not yet mature. Surprisingly, most of those plants didn’t return so I must have caught them right on time — before they dropped their seeds which is quite important.

The plant is considered biennial. It comes up as a really pretty rosette (circles of leaves all the same height) and they have about 3-8 rounded kidney-shaped leaves. The plants can stay green all winter.

Once the plant “grows up” (matures) in the second year, it becomes stalk-like and produces a pretty cluster of white flowers — each with four petals. Shortly after this, seed pods form and they look like tiny green beans. These pods hold dozens of seeds that fall to the ground and, you guessed it, make many more plants, uh, weeds.

These seeds can be spread throughout the property by a person or animal walking through and transporting it on their shoes or paws.

Some seeds have been known to remain dormant from 5 to 10 years. Can anyone say ugh?

This is what my property looked like when I started the weed pulling …

Here’s another area of the same plant, uh, weed.

Fortunately for me, all the plants I pulled up did not have any pods yet. I must’ve pulled 15 large trash bags of weeds.

One mistake I made was pulling the weeds and laying them on the ground so I could gather them later since it started to rain. Unfortunately, the plant — really, should I call it a plant? — can continue growing while lying on the ground and seeds can fall to the ground while it lies there.

Since we use well water on our property, I’ve chosen not to use Roundup, a weed killer, that will knock it out quickly (although you have to make sure you spray all the leaves). The weed killer that must be used needs to have 2% glyphosate in it in order to be effective. If one is going to use a weed killer, they should do a spot application in early spring or late fall when the native plants are dormant (so you don’t kill everything else also).

Oh — a friend suggested I try spraying the plant with vinegar instead of with Roundup. Has anyone ever tried that?

It is very important to remove this weed because they produce a chemical that has been shown to inhibit the growth of other native plants.

It is possible to halt the infestation of the garlic mustard plant if it’s pulled out by the roots before the seeds set. Monitoring the area after you pull the plants out for additional weeds is very important as it could take several years to completely wipe it out.

Also, adding native plants to the area can help to crowd it out if you don’t have a large infestation but you still need to pull ANY garlic mustard plants that pop up or they will take over.

Recently I walked our property and found more immature stalks growing along with the first year plants. I will be using roundup on the first year plants since they are few and far between (so far) and won’t take too long to spray.

Unfortunately, next year I’ll have my work cut out for me again because the two neighbors uphill have large infestations that are heading my way.

Two other important things to remember:

1) Â The plant is not supposed to be composted although when I checked with my garbage disposal company they told me to put it in the garbage or in the yard waste container. Do you suppose they don’t realize the problem? It is possible for the seeds to live through the composting process.

2) The plant is edible, or so I hear. No, I haven’t eaten it and I would strongly recommend that anyone check this out thoroughly before they put this plant in their mouth.

Here are a few other articles you might want to read regarding this plant:

If you have had any success in removing this plant from your property and there is anything you wish to add, I encourage you to comment.

[amazon_link id=”B0008309SW” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ] Roundup 5100720 Weed and Grass Killer Super Concentrate Bottle, 35.2-Ounce [/amazon_link]

Apple Cinnamon Bread

I made this Apple Cinnamon Paleo Bread that my son had given me his recipe for. It turned out okay but not great. It’s worth my giving it another try though as it’s paleo and I like both apple and cinnamon.

I served it with a Cabbage Soup and that turned out delicious. Not everything can be perfect, eh?

Ingredients

2 ripe bananas
1/2 cup apple sauce
4 eggs
1/2 cup almond butter
4 tbsp coconut oil, melted
2 apples, peeled, cored, and shredded
1/2 cup coconut flour
1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla
pinch of sea salt

Ingredients

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit.
Combine the bananas, apple sauce, eggs, nut butter and oil in a mixer and mix well on medium speed until its fully incorporated. (Start slow then increase the speed.)
Once all of your ingredients are blended together, add the coconut flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, vanilla and sea salt then mix well.
Grease a 9Ã—5 glass loaf pan with olive oil spray or butter. (I used a dark pan and that may be why I had a problem — see below.)
Pour the batter into the pan and spread it evenly.
Place the pan in the preheated oven and bake for 55-60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
Remove from the oven and flip your bread out onto a cooling rack after it cools.
Slice and serve.

I allowed the bread to cool for about 10-15 minutes before trying to remove it and this is what happened …

Ugh! Oh well, live and learn. I probably should have used (besides the glass pan) more olive oil spray on the bottom.

It was a pretty simple recipe to follow. I liked the breadÂ but my husband did not. He’s not a big fan of coconut though and that probably made a difference.