Simply Norma

Looking out the window, small snowflakes fall to the ground and join the thousand others that have attached themselves to the cold sidewalk. We should have a good 5-8 inches before the day is over.

The air is crisp — the sky white. Beauty at its best.

And here to make matters even better is the perfect soup. Really. I wouldn’t lie to you. This soup is much better than the squash soup I’ve made in the past and it’s vegan, paleo and gluten free. Yes! The sweet potatoes give it a wonderfully sweet taste. No added sugar. You just have to try it.

You will need just a few ingredients.

And it’s so easy to put this soup together. One of the “hardest” parts is slicing and chopping the leeks.

These will be put in a large pot (make sure you read all the directions below as I’m giving you a very shorthand account of the steps you’ll be taking – just the major ones).

The second hardest part? Peeling your sweet potatoes and cutting or chopping them into small bite sized pieces.

Then you’ll be adding the sweet potatoes to the pot along with a few other things …

Oh, this leafy vegetable (called watercress) was something I had never tried before. Don’t be afraid of it though if you’ve never tried it. Although it tastes bitter when eaten by itself (of course I had to try it), it blends beautifully with the sweet potatoes and has no bitter taste at all when cooked. (Some people describe the taste of watercress as being peppery and tangy but I didn’t get that flavor.)

Look at this beautiful soup that’s coming along so well …

Okay so — you’re going to try it, right? I strongly encourage you to try it. This soup is chock full of vitamins. Go on — search it out and see for yourself. Check out the nutrition in the sweet potatoes and the watercress. Can something this healthy be so good?  Yes!

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 Tablespoon Olive Oil
• 3  large Leeks, white & palest green parts only, chopped and rinsed well
• 3 large Sweet Potatoes, peeled and diced (original recipe calls for 4 but mine were pretty big so I used 3)
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 Vegetable Bouillon Cubes
• 1  cup packed Watercress leaves, chopped loosely
• 1 to 1 1/2 cups Light Coconut Milk
• Salt and freshly ground Pepper to taste
• 1/4  cup chopped fresh parsley

Directions

1. Heat the olive oil in a large soup pot.
2. Add the leeks and saute over medium heat, covered, until they begin to turn golden. Stir occasionally.
3. Add the sweet potatoes, bay leaf, bouillon cubes and enough water to cover everything.
4. Bring the soup to a gentle simmer, covered, until the sweet potatoes are tender, about 20 minutes. (Prick a fork through a few of the potatoes to make sure they are tender.)
5. Mash some of the potatoes against the side of the pot with a fork then stir those pieces back into the soup to thicken it.
6. Add the watercress leaves and coconut milk then simmer over very low heat for 10 minutes longer.
7. Season with salt and pepper.
8. Remove the pot from the heat and set aside, covered, for an hour or two before serving.  (You can also make this soup the day before as it tastes even better the more it is allowed to blend together. Make sure you refrigerate it.)
9. Add the parsley right before serving and heat the soup through one more time.

I adapted the original recipe by using coconut milk instead of rice milk as it makes it more paleo friendly. Thanks to Kahakai Kitchen for this recipe.

I served this with a side salad and paleo muffins.

If you like sweet potatoes, you will definitely enjoy this soup.

These paleo Chipotle Meatballs were absolutely scrumptious.  I did change the recipe a tad so they wouldn’t be too spicy for me. The recipe makes a LOT of meatballs — well, for two of us it was a lot.  We ate the leftovers for breakfast and lunch — yum!

There are two sets of ingredients that you’ll need to get started …

This is the first time I’ve purchased clarified butter (also known as Ghee). It comes in a bottle and doesn’t have to be refrigerated.  Interesting, no?

The original recipe uses dried chipotles peppers but it says that we can also use canned chipotle peppers — I chose the canned. This is what they look like — make sure you remove the seeds.

Oh — here’s what the clarified butter looks like … smushed butter (laughing).

Prep your ingredients so you can have them ready as needed. Make sure you read through all of the instructions first — I know, I know, it’s a simple instruction but when I’m in a hurry I think I can wing it as I go along and sometimes it just doesn’t work.

This is what your meatballs will look like before you fry them. You can make them smaller so they will be bite-sized if you wish.

I used two skillets to fry the meatballs because I wanted them to be almost cooked at the same time.

Next you’ll be putting the meatballs in a large pot with the sauce and cooking them through.

Are you ready to try this delicious recipe? Don’t be afraid to make the whole batch — really and seriously, these are good. Just make sure you adjust the spices to your taste.

Ingredients (for the meatballs)

• 1 large onion, peeled and diced (reserve half of the cooked onion for the sauce)
• 2 pounds ground beef (I used 2.13 — that’s just the way the measurement came out)
• 2 canned chipotle peppers (seeds removed)
• 2 tablespoon chopped cilantro
• 2 large garlic cloves, diced
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin powder
• 1 teaspoon paprika
•  3  tablespoon virgin olive oil
• 1 1/2 teaspoon sea or kosher salt
• 2 tablespoons clarified butter (ghee)

Ingredients (for the sauce)

• 1/2 of the onion mentioned above
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 2 canned chipotle peppers, seeds out
• 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin powder
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 1/2 cups diced canned tomatoes
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. In a large skillet, saute the onion in 2 tablespoons clarified butter until it’s clear.
2. You’ll be using half of the onion in the meatball mix and reserving the rest for the sauce in a side bowl.
3. While the onion is cooking, pre-chop all the other ingredients for the meatballs.
4. Slice the chipotle peppers in half, remove the seeds then chop the peppers finely.
5. Combine the beef with half of the cooked onion, garlic, chilies, paprika, cumin, coriander, salt and 1 tablespoon olive oil.
6. Use your hands to knead and combine all of the ingredients then make small balls from the meat mixture.
7. Set the meatballs aside until you’re ready to cook them.
8. Preheat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large skillet (or two) until its hot. If you use 2 skillets, make sure you add olive oil to each one (I showed 2 tablespoons because I used 2 skillets).
9. Add the meatballs and cook on medium high heat for 3 minutes on each side or until well browned. You will not be cooking them all the way through at this point.
10. Add the sauce ingredients to a large pot along with the rest of the cooked onion (but not the tomato puree yet).
11. Stir the sauce to blend everything well, then add the diced tomatoes and stir completely.
12. Add the meatballs to the sauce and cook uncovered for 8-10 minutes stirring frequently as you want the meatballs to cook all the way through.
13. Once the meatballs are cooked through, taste the sauce to make sure you don’t need to adjust anything, i.e. more salt, cumin, etc.

And — that’s it!  This recipe really is worth trying.  You can make the meatballs without the chipotle peppers but they really do give it a nice little burst of flavor.  Want them spicier? Just add more chipotle peppers. And then … enjoy!

I served the meatballs on a bed of pumpkin ginger noodles with a side salad.

This recipe was adapted just a tad from Finger Lickin’ Chipotle Meatballs.

Here’s an improvised recipe — the original one had the lamb chops cooking on the stovetop.  That didn’t work too well for me as the house got very smokey and in our house the alarms are quite sensitive.

In the long run, I did my husbands lamb chops on the stovetop and I plopped mine in the oven until they were cooked the way I like them — no pink at all in the middle. Any hint of redness makes me gag. But my husband likes his meat medium rare sometimes. Ugh.

Anyway — here are the ingredients I used for the marinade.

And it will turn out looking like this …

And you’ll be marinading the lamb chops for a couple hours or you could just brush them on the lamb chops right before cooking if you forget to marinade.

Ingredients

• 5-8 lamb loin chops (I used small ones)
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 Tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped
• 1/2 Tbsp dried thyme
• 1 Tbsp red wine vinegar
  2 Tbsp olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Marinade the lamb chops in a mixture of garlic, rosemary, thyme, red wine vinegar, and olive oil for 1-2 hours. I put them in the refrigerator for this.
2. When ready, remove the chops from the refrigerator and allow them to sit until they are at room temperature – approximately 30 minutes.
3. Heat a cast iron skillet to medium heat and place the lamb in the skillet.
4. Cook the lamb chops for 4-5 minutes in the skillet then flip them over and cook them an additional 3-4 minutes.
5. Remove the lamb chops from the skillet and allow them to rest for about 5 minutes.

And that  is how you get medium rare lamb chops.  I didn’t realize they wouldn’t be cooked all the way so I gave my husband his portion and then I did the follow:

Baking Lamb Chops

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F convection (or regular bake).  Add the lamb to a baking dish and bake for approximately 20 more minutes.
2. Check for doneness with a meat thermometer which should read 170 degrees.

Keep in mind that the lamb was in the skillet first so it was partially cooked through which is why it doesn’t need to be in the oven longer. I just followed the additional step because I can’t eat meat that’s not well done.

And — after all this, my picture didn’t come out so great.

But the lamb sure did! That was quick thinking on my part, no?  Aww, shucks, I knew you’d think so. (laughing)

Here are the two recipes that I combined to get MY baked lamb chops.

Marinated Herb Lamb Chops

Herb Roasted Lamb Chops

These will be the second paleo brownie recipe that I have tasted. The first ones were made by my son awhile back when we first started eating paleo.

These brownies were not bad but could have been a tad better. My husband and I had different opinions of what more was needed though. I thought they were a bit dry but my husband thought they weren’t sweet enough. Interesting how two people eating the same food can critique it differently, no?

I had some problems with the original recipe as you’ll soon see. The ingredients were pretty simple though.

And once everything is put together, this is what the mixture will look like.

The original recipe calls for a 9×13 baking dish.  Uh, no. There is no way this batter will spread out into a 9×13 baking dish.  See?

I used an 8×8 baking dish and it worked quite well.

And the final product came out looking pretty good.

Alright so — I’m going to change the recipe just a tad to make it sweeter and to (hopefully) give it more moistness.  Let me know what you think. (Keep in mind I haven’t tried the variation yet as we’re still eating this first batch.)

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup coconut flour
• 1/4 cup almonds, ground
• 1/3 cup cocoa powder, unsweetened
• 5 large eggs (instead of 4), at room temperature
• 1/2 cup raw honey (instead of 1/3)
• 1/3 cup apple sauce, unsweetened
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup coconut oil

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350° degrees Fahrenheit.
2. In a medium sized bowl, combine the coconut flour and unsweetened cocoa powder then sift 2 times to lighten the mixture.
3. Add the almonds to the flour/powder mixture.
4. In another medium sized bowl, whisk the eggs then add the raw honey, apple sauce, vanilla extract and coconut oil.
5. Make a hole at the center of the dry ingredients and whisk in the liquid mixture until well blended.
6. Spray a non-stick baking spray in an 8×8 baking dish.
7. Put the batter into the baking dish and place it in the oven.
8. Bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Set aside to cool then enjoy!

Note: In my convection oven, it took 25 minutes to bake but I tested it at the 20 minute mark. Convention ovens tend to cook things quicker.

Ahh … goodness!

This recipe was taken from Paleo Brownies Coco Nutty Recipes and they have more recipes there for you to try. Check them out!

If you like vegetables, this Orange Vegetable Gratin might be a recipe you’ll embrace.

With squash, sweet potatoes and carrots as the base, you can’t go wrong with using this as a side dish. The ingredients are pretty straightforward although I’ve made a few changes on the amounts and have paleo-ized the recipe by using almond flour instead of bread crumbs.

After preparing your ingredients, they’ll be put in a casserole dish for baking.

Add the a tad of grated fresh aged parmesan cheese, almond flour, salt and pepper …

Then bake.  Ready to try it?

Ingredients

• 1 acorn squash, seeded, peeled and cut into cubes
• 1 large sweet potato, peeled and cut into cubes
• 2 carrots, peeled and cut in half lengthwise, then into chunks
• 1 shallot, thinly sliced
• 3 Tablespoons Kerrygold butter
• 1/4 cup almond flour
• 1/2 cup grated aged parmesan cheese (if you’re not a strict paleo dieter)
• Salt & pepper (to your taste)

Directions

1. Heat the butter in a large skillet. I had to use two skillets for this step as the recipe says to keep them in a single layer.
2. Saute the vegetables for about 15 minutes until they start to brown and are just tender.
3. Preheat oven to 375.
4. Transfer all the vegetables to a baking dish.
5. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, almond flour and 1/2 the cheese but do not stir as you want this to sit on top and get crunchy.
6. At about 20 minutes, remove the casserole from the oven, stir the ingredients and bake for approximately 20 minutes.
7. You want to remove the casserole when everything looks golden and the vegetables are soft. Pricking a fork through one of the larger vegetable pieces and having it be soft is the best way to know if its cooked.
8. Sprinkle with the remaining cheese and serve.

That’s pretty much it. I used a whole acorn squash and reduced the sweet potatoes from two to one.

The results?

I served this with baked chicken and fresh sliced pineapple.

Enjoy!