If you had the chance to make it out to the Primal/Paleo Potluck at Thomas Snow’s place the other night you were in for a real treat! Or rather, a real variety of delectable primal/paleo treats! The dishes everyone brought were really quite impressive. Hopefully everyone took home some major inspirations for their paleo arsenals. While all the dishes left me wanting more there were a couple that stood out and blew me away. John’s rosemary and almond flour crackers were amazing. Eugene’s butter chicken (on top of Christina’s cauliflower rice) knocked my palate to another world. And Meredith’s chocolate brownies made my eyes tear up with supreme joy.
Better than the food was certainly the company. So a big thanks to all the Cityzens who participated, but a special thanks to Thomas and Jackie who did a lot of work getting the party set up. Also, a special thanks to our Corporate Sponsors, Thomas Snow of Capital Community Proprieties and Mathew Freeman, Financial Advisor with Morgan Stanley for the booze. Everywhere we go, we seem to run the place dry of Hard Cider. I’m not sure if it’s good to feel impressed by that, but I am. Well done! Regardless, I think I speak for everyone in saying it was a terrifically fun night. I’m never ceased to be amazing at the ever-expanding talents of our young, but quite Old City. This past weekend our culinary repertoires were on full display.
The great community we have here has led Erin and I (Sean) to start thinking about ways we can expand the walls and facilitate more growth, conversation, and joy within this ‘lil Old City of ours. I’m happy to announce that our City, as Old as it might be, is creating its first Neighborhood! This Neighborhood will be the gathering point for discussions and ideas related to the lives we live outside the gym. Fresh off the heels of our 21 Day Paleo/Primal challenge, we all saw the improvements a Paleo approach can make in our diets. Imagine if we take a similar approach to stress, to our weekend activities, to our relationships, or to any facet of our life outside the gym?
The Paleo lifestyle isn’t just about what you eat. It’s about families gathering around a table, not a TV for dinner. It’s about walking to the coffee shop 10 blocks away, not driving. It’s about putting that phone down and enjoying the company of your friends and family. It’s about taking your shoes off and remembering what it feels like to have grass between your toes. The Paleo life is about getting good sleep, maintaining low stress levels, improving your relationships, feeling great, looking great, and living great.
And it’s because of all of these reasons that our new Neighborhood is going to be called Neighborhood Paleo.
Neighborhood Paleo is your local resource in the Old City community for paleo lifestyle discussion, recipes, and idea exchange. Conversations we have at the gym can inspire new recipes and lifestyle-changes – now we don’t have to wait for that 7pm class to ask Betsy what inspired her to wrap chicken with bacon! As “neighbors” within Old City, Neighborhood Paleo will be our place where we cheer each other on, not just in the gym, but also in life. Because at the end of the day, what’s the point of being part of a great community if it isn’t preparing you for all areas of life?
Luckily for us, one of our very own Old Cityzens is quite the Paleo enthusiast. You might have seen her interpreting at one of our lectures, or used her to facilitate communication at one of our socials; she’s none other than the one and only Julianna!
Julianna is going to be the Director of Neighborhood Paleo, posting weekly blogs to spark conversation. So without further ado, Miss Julianna Lovik:
I can’t express enough how I excited I am to get the chance to lead this great Neighborhood! Adopting the paleo lifestyle has changed my life in profound ways, and I’m still learning so much every day. It has become an ongoing journey for me, and I cannot emphasize enough how strongly I believe in what Sean mentioned above: using Paleo to really live life to the fullest and rediscover what is truly important. So, I’ll explain a little about why I am so passionate and excited about this opportunity, and then I’ve included some delicious recipes for the dishes I brought to the potluck!
I’ve spent about a year now scouring every book, magazine, blog and podcast I can get my hands on about the paleo diet and lifestyle. I have meticulously experimented with paleo baking and cooking techniques to the point of obsession. I love to learn about all the systems of the body and how our everyday life choices and behaviors affect these systems. And on a grander scale, I am fascinated by how going paleo has improved my efficacy for positively contributing to the world and for the role we are naturally designed to play within it. My hope with Neighborhood Paleo is to take you all on my journey of exploration into paleo topics so that we all can learn together how every aspect of our lives can be viewed through a paleo lens with the ultimate goal of living better. I also hope to highlight sources of inspiration, enlightenment and education that we have right within our own Old City Neighborhood, to remind us that some of our greatest resources are the people around us and the diverse experiences we each have. I so look forward to embarking on this journey with you!
To kick it all off, I’ve included two recipes for the dishes I brought to the Paleo/Primal Potluck this weekend. One was inspired by a conversation I had with another athlete at the gym – Kat, who mentioned her love of sweets and baking and expressed a desire to collect some paleo-friendly baking recipes. I share this love for sweets with her and banana bread is one of my go-to paleo baked goods – it’s easy to make and tastes great – so I made paleo banana bread muffins for the party to give Kat a recipe to add to her paleo baking collection. There’s also a surprise ingredient in the recipe that I threw in to make it extra PALEO as well!! 😉
Paleo Banana Bread Muffins
1 cup Tapioca Flour
1 cup Almond Flour
1 cup Coconut Flour
2 VERY ripe bananas, mashed
4 eggs
½ cup bacon grease, in liquid form – my surprise ingredient! (you could also use coconut oil or butter or your favorite paleo baking fat instead of bacon grease)
1/3 cup full-fat canned coconut milk
2 heaping tablespoons of honey
1 TSP Vanilla extract
1 TBSP Cinnamon
1 TSP nutmeg
1 TSP baking soda
1 pinch of sea salt
½ cup chocolate chips (I use a soy-free, gluten-free, almost-paleo brand called Enjoy Life. Although these contain a bit of sugar, this company is well-known in the paleo baking blogosphere and when used in moderation is a great alternative to most other chocolate chip companies)
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
- Grease your cooking pan – I use a muffin pan with paper cups and a little coconut oil spray – set aside
- Combine all dry ingredients except the chocolate chips into a bowl, make a well in the middle of the bowl (wet ingredients will be added to this)
- Combine mashed bananas with wet ingredients in separate bowl
- Using a hand mixer, pour the wet ingredients into the well in the dry bowl and mix until a batter is formed. You can also use your own brute strength and a baking spoon if you don’t have a hand mixer or just want to constantly vary your functional movement skills over broad time and modal domains…although it probably won’t be performed at a very high intensity J (Had to plug the CrossFit mantra at least once in this first post!)
- Add the chocolate chips to the batter
- Spoon batter into the muffin tins – I suggest filling them but allowing some room for them to rise. Tapioca flour and baking soda in this recipe will cause a perfect little rise in the completed muffins, so allow a little space for this to happen in the muffin tins. The batter will probably be pretty thick, so you will probably be scooping little balls rather than actually “pouring” a liquid batter.
- Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes, remove and allow to cool
You can see from the pictures that I added a little slice of banana and a few chocolate chips on the top of each muffin to garnish them. I often do this when bringing a dish to potlucks and gatherings as a way of “labeling” what’s inside the food. I wanted people to be able to look at the muffins and figure out from the garnish that bananas and chocolate chips were inside. Unfortunately they ended up looking like little lemons. Don’t let that deceive you – there is no lemon in these little muffins!
Curry Chicken Salad
2-3 lbs. of chicken thighs (I often brine (salt water bath for 24 hours) white meats before cooking them, which I did with the chicken I brought to the potluck for 40 minutes, but you don’t have to)
¾ cup full-fat canned coconut milk
1 peeled shallot
3 peeled garlic cloves
1 ginger “branch” – I use 1-2 inches of ginger, peel it and chop it up into little pieces
1 ½ TSP cumin
1 TSP coriander
¾ TSP Turmeric
1 pinch of nutmeg
6 dried Thai chilis
3 TBSP paleo fish sauce (most fish sauces are not paleo, one company I’ve found to be paleo is Red Boat)
1 Raw Jicama, finely diced
1 granny smith apple, finely diced
1 carrot, julienned
½ red onion, finely diced
½ cup homemade paleo mayonnaise – you can find many paleo mayo recipes online – my favorite is a simple one by Sarah Fragoso, of the blog Everyday Paleo: http://everydaypaleo.com/homemade-paleo-mayo-cooking-demo/#more-2577
2 heaping tablespoons of honey
1 package of cherry tomatoes
- In a blender or food processor, combine the shallot, garlic, ginger, cumin, coriander, turmeric, nutmeg, chilis, and fish sauce until a yellow curry paste is formed.
- In a stew pot, combine the curry paste, coconut milk and chicken, and cook until the chicken is cooked through
- Immediately when chicken is done, remove the thighs, dice them into small pieces and return to the curry coconut milk mixture, set aside and allow the chicken pieces to soak up the liquid, while preparing the other ingredients
- Finely dice and combine the jicama, apple, carrots, and onion in a bowl
- Once the chicken has sat for a while and soaked up the liquid, combine it with the diced vegetables
- Add the mayonnaise to the vegetable and chicken mixture
- Slowly add the honey, stirring between each tablespoon and tasting to make sure not to add too much
- Garnish with cherry tomatoes (I also used endive in the photographs)
This salad is really delicious eaten on its own or atop a bed of leafy greens as an entrée salad. I thought about eating it on endive but the bitterness of the endive overpowered the flavors of the curry and the coconut milk, so I don’t recommend that. Instead, mild-flavored mixed greens are a great compliment to this salad.
That’s all for now! If you have any feedback, suggestions, or ideas start the discussion by posting your thoughts in the Comments section! Welcome to Neighborhood Paleo!