It’s been a few weeks since my last post, and although I was on a short hiatus from publishing any of the experiments going on in my kitchen, fear not. Plenty of experiments were had. Unfortunately I wasn’t happy with the results of several strange things I tried, and I’m going to have to continue to tweak them before I set them loose on you all. Such is the life of someone relatively new to paleo and paleo cooking, though. I’ve decided to share a quick recap of a couple of ideas I tried, and maybe someone out there might have a better idea of what to do to help me improve one of them. And of course there was one success, which I included here, so I was happy to have at least one to share.
The one ingredient that really stumped me this week was aloe. I found these huge aloe leaves on sale at the store and bought one, brought it home, and attempted to make a juice with it. I will give you the recipe but I highly recommend you DO NOT make it yourself unless you want to try to figure out how to make it better. I juiced 2 granny smith apples and 7 carrots and then blended that juice with the gel from the inside of the aloe leaf, 1/3 cup of maple syrup and 1 cup of coconut milk. When that didn’t taste good I heated it up on the stove, thinking maybe the heat would tone down the bitterness of the aloe gel. This did not help, and tasted much like a warm, sweetened milky shot of wheatgrass juice. Not good. In shot form, wheatgrass juice is tolerable, and once in a while you might even find me at Smoothie King or Jamba Juice buying one. But the concoction I made would not have made for anything more tolerable than a sip, and I was so embittered (pun INTENDED!) by the taste that I was too frustrated to like it even if it were mildly palatable. I bottled it and put it in my fridge but every time I went to drink it I was so disappointed by the first taste that I never managed to actually drink any of it, and I eventually just gave up and threw it away. So I am still on the lookout for a recipe of some kind to do with aloe. Juice was the most prevalent finding on a Google search, but has anyone else found a good use for it? I’d love to find a way to incorporate aloe into my diet.
I also tried to make green bread for St. Patrick’s Day this week. Many of the paleo bloggers published recipes for green foods, including cookies (Against All Grain) and waffles (the Paleo Parents) using sunbutter, which has a natural reaction with baking soda to produce a green color. I tried to make my own recipe with a green result, but it did not turn out green, and didn’t taste very good to boot. So once again I decided against sharing that disaster with you all.
Finally this weekend arrived and I had to get back to my usual meal preparation for the upcoming week, so I made a paleo alternative to spaghetti that actually turned out pretty good. You can probably use any variety of meats for the sauce, but I have been eating a lot of beef lately so I decided to make my meat sauce with bacon and chicken. Try it this way or replace the bacon and chicken with ground beef, ground pork, lamb, meatballs, whatever! I’m sure it will all taste good. Here was my design for Sunday afternoon Paleo Spaghetti.
Sunday Afternoon Paleo Spaghetti
Ingredients:
6-8 strips of nitrite-free bacon (depending on the thickness – I use thick-cut so I only needed 6)
3 chicken breasts, finely diced
1 spaghetti squash
1 red pepper, diced
½ yellow onion, diced
2 TBSP tomato paste
1 18-oz. jar of diced tomatoes
¼ cup full-fat canned coconut milk
2 cups of fresh spinach
2 TBSP of coconut oil
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp sea salt
1 TBSP oregano
1 TBSP sweet basil
Parsley to garnish
Directions:
- Cut the spaghetti squash in half lengthwise, scoop out and discard the seeds inside and rub with coconut oil. Place facedown on a baking tray lined with wax paper, pour ½ cup of water into the tray and bake at 400 degrees for 1 hour. Prepare the “pasta” sauce while the squash is cooking. When the squash is done, remove it immediately and flip the halves over to cool before scraping out the stringy “noodles” with a fork.
- While the squash is baking, cut up (I find kitchen shears to work better for this than a knife) the bacon into diced pieces and fry in a skillet until nearly crispy.
- Add the chicken and continue to cook, covered, until chicken is nearly cooked through.
- Remove the lid and add the pepper and onion. Cook until they are tender
- Add the tomato paste, tomatoes and coconut milk and bring to a simmer. Cook on simmer for 10 minutes
- Add seasonings. I also added a few pinches of cayenne pepper, or you can also use red pepper for a little spiciness.
- Add spinach. It will cook quickly, so do this at the end. Stir it in until it wilts and then turn off the heat.
- After forking out some of the squash into a bowl, spoon the sauce over the top and garnish with a little parsley.
This recipe made about 5-6 servings, which I boxed up and plan to eat throughout the week. It also freezes well so if I don’t feel like eating it all this week I can save one or two for meals some other time.
I will continue experimenting and hopefully some of you will approach me with some good ideas for what to do with aloe, once I muster up the courage to buy it again. Until then, be well and be paleo!