Honey Ginger Apple Shredded Pork

Ingredients

• 2 lb pork roast
• 1 yellow onion, sliced
• 2 apples, cored and sliced
• ⅔ cup beef or chicken broth
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 2 tablespoons freshly grated ginger
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon smoked paprika
• ½ teaspoon pepper
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
• 1 bay leaf

Instructions

1. Pull out your crockpot.
2. Rub spices & ginger into meat.
3. Add your broth, honey, then onions, then pork, then apples then garlic clove, and bay leaf.
4. Cover, cook for 8-10 hours on low or 6-8 hours on high.
5. Use tongs or a fork to shred your pork.

Cocoa Toasted Cauliflower

Ingredients

1 Head Fresh Cauliflower
1 tsp. Smoked Paprika
1 tsp. Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
1/4 tsp. Salt (to taste)
1/4 tsp. Pepper (to taste)
2 Cloves Garlic, minced
3 Tbsp. Coconut Oil

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 F. Cover baking sheet with parchment.

Cut cauliflower into florets and place in large mixing bowl.

In Microwave safe bowl, mix remaining ingredients and microwave from 20-30 sec.

Drizzle over florets and toss to coat for 2 full minutes.

Spread in single layer on baking sheet and roast for 25-35 min. until starting to brown, stirring 1 or 2 times.

Tom Kha Gai

Ingredients

• 3 cups (24 fluid ounces) sodium-free chicken stock
• 1½ lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite size pieces across the grain
• ¾ lb (12 ounces) fresh or canned straw mushrooms (drained)
• One stalk lemongrass
• 5-6 fresh bird’s eye chilies (more or less depending on your heat preference)
• 2-inch piece of fresh galangal, sliced thinly crosswise
• 4-5 fresh kaffir lime leaves
• 4-5 limes
• ¼ cup fish sauce (but have more ready)
• ½ cup fresh cilantro leaves
• 1½ cups (12 fluid ounces) full-fat coconut milk

Instructions

1. First, concentrate the stock. Put the chicken stock in a wide and shallow saucepan (to ensure fast evaporation), bring it to a boil, and reduce it over medium-high heat until the liquid measures half its original volume. [If you have access to very, very good chicken bouillon granules which are not all about salt and very little flavor, by all means, dilute double the amount you normally use in 1½ cups of plain water and use that in place of the concentrated chicken stock.].
2. Halve (or quarter) the straw mushrooms into bite-sized pieces; set aside. [You can also use white button, cremini, and oyster mushrooms. Any meaty, mild-flavored mushrooms will do. Portobello mushrooms are fine flavor- and texture-wise, but even with the gills carefully scraped off they still turn the broth into an unappetizing shade of gray. Do not use shiitake; the flavor is way too strong for this. Also, I would never use any kind of dried mushrooms which will change the flavor profile of this dish quite drastically, and not in a good way.]
3. Cut the lemongrass stalk into 1-inch pieces and smash them with the side of a large Chinese cleaver, a pestle, or any heavy object lying around in the house; set aside.
4. Do what you just did to the lemongrass to the chilies; set aside.
5. Remove the stems and the tough veins that run through the middle from the kaffir lime leaves, and tear them up into small pieces. You can also bruise them a little. Set aside.
6. Juice 2 limes; set aside. (You may need more; you may not. It’s better to have more than you need than not enough.)
7. Put the coconut milkinto a 4-quart pot, followed by concentrated chicken stock, kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass pieces, and galangal slices.
8. Bring the mixture slowly to about between 160° and 180°F (slightly below a simmer), allowing the herbs to infuse the liquid.
9. Keeping the temperature steady, add the mushrooms and the chicken to the liquid; adjust the heat to maintain the temperature. The liquid should never at any point come to a rapid boil. Don’t worry; at 160°-180°F, your chicken willbe thoroughly cooked.
10. Stir gently to ensure that the chicken is evenly cooked.
11. Once the chicken is cooked through, throw in the smashed chilies and remove the pot from heat immediately.
12. Add the juice of 2 limes and the fish sauce to the pot, stir, and taste. Add more lime juice and fish sauce, if necessary. The soup should be predominantly sour, followed by salty. The sweetness comes from natural sugar in the coconut milk.
13. Stir in the cilantro leaves.

Found @ http://shesimmers.com/2010/11/tom-kha-gai-recipe-tutorial-for.html

Taking the next steps.

After learning and implementing the paleo basics into your life it's time to take the next steps.

The first crazy paleo thing to do, I'd say, is start making your own gut healing bone broth.  We make bone broth almost once a week in the slow cooker.  We collect our bones from the week plus buy some especially for our broth and then stick it in the slow cooker with some onions, garlic, celery, carrots, peppercorns, apple cider vinegar (to help release the minerals) and whatever else we have in the fridge to use up.  I will know you are doing it right when you become obsessed with getting it more gelatinous each time you make it.  And then you will start buying odd things like chicken backs, chicken feet, marrow bones and oxtails for your broth.  We often drink our broth at night, it's very relaxing.  Or we use it to make soups and stews or in any recipes that call for stock or broth.  I give it to Max to drink in his sippy sometimes. We make sure to drink it like crazy if we start feeling sick or get a gluten exposure.

Then next thing to do start fermenting.  We started by making homemade raw sauerkraut.  It took ours about 3 weeks to finish.  We try to eat it daily.  I usually have it with my eggs for breakfast.  We tried the traditional  recipe with caraway seeds and the roasted jalapeno and garlic recipe first.  We are just about to start our next batch of the fall recipe.  I hope in the coming weeks to start some new fermenting projects including kimchi, pickles, water kefir and kombucha.

The next odd step that we plan to take is to eat liver and other organ meats.  That's right we bought grass-fed beef liver.  We plan to mix it with ground beef and make burgers.  Liver is better for you then almost any other meat you can eat they say.  It's better than taking a multivitamin.  Of course it is something that I have never eaten before.  But I'm excited to add more superfoods to our diet.

Where to start.

Many of our friends and family have seen our lives changed by this lifestyle and want to try it out.  And I certainly want to be of help and for them to experience this too.  But where do you begin?

I would say to get a book from the library or buy one depending on how committed you are.  I would recommend Practical Paleo, the e-book we started with Paleo Plan or It Starts with Food.  Now clean out your fridge of anything that will go bad in the next 30 days.  Give it to someone who hasn't seen the light.  Or wait until you use up everything first.  Then you should probably pack up things in the cupboards that might be triggers.  You don't have to get rid of it (yet).  I'm just asking for 30+ days here.  Just be sure to put it somewhere for later, if you decide that this isn't for you. Then you will need to get a meal plan together.  You gotta know what you will be eating or you might just fall back on old standbys.  Then go grocery shopping.

I would recommend this first 30+ days you treat as a Whole 30.  Whole 30 is an idea from the book It Starts with Food.  It's strictly Paleo.  It includes only whole foods.  This means no Paleo-ish things.  This isn't the time when you figure out how to make paleo pizza or that there is paleo bread.  It also means no sweeteners of any kind.  It's a cleanse of sorts I suppose.  As in It Starts with Food after 30 days you stay strict but have one day where you have dairy, to see if you have a reaction to it.  If not then you know you can add it back if you choose or you know it will not cause a problem if you want a little cheese here and there.  A day or two after trying dairy, do the same thing, while staying strict have a day that you add gluten and see if it causes a problem.  You can also try this with legumes and non-gluten grains.  Pay attention to your body to see how these things make you feel and decide what works best for your body.

Now if you are like us this 30 days will have you sold.  And then you will clean out your pantry and start trying recipes for paleo treats and paleo bread.  You will want to buy every paleo recipe book you can find. Or maybe you will decide it isn't for you and now you know.

Paleo Perks.

Everyday we talk about the amazing things that are different with this "diet", as opposed to the MANY others we have tried.  And I do mean many diets.  We had a habit (ok I had a habit) of reading diet books or finding something online and trying them out.  We would do really well on any one diet for about 6 weeks.  At 6 weeks we started getting a little lax when we were out or rewarding our self with a treat.  Then would get on the slippery slope back to the way were eating with too much fast food and not planning our meals at home.  Before long we were back to the standard american diet (SAD).

This time it has been completely different.  We haven't had slips.  We get annoyed when a situation comes up that we have to eat out, and we always make the best choice.  There is not even a temptation to have a treat of ice cream or french fries. This is just how we live now.

Another odd thing about this is that on most other "diets" we would lose a bunch of weight the first week. Then less and less.  We would find a plateau in there that would last for a while.  This time there has been no plateau.  We didn't drop a huge number and then wait for the weight loss again.  We have just had a steady weight loss.  And a good amount every week too.

Those are the two big ones.  Some of the other things I have noticed are things like steady blood sugar.  We can fast or go a long time without eating without getting crazy hungry or having spikes or dips of blood sugar.  My hair is growing like crazy.  Less body aches.  Better skin.

I've already mentioned things like having more energy, filling satisfied, and not having cravings. I also love the idea of Paleo total health.  Things like sleep are stressed.  Playing and sunshine are so critical.  And Paleo exercise doesn't mean slaving away at the gym all the time.  

6 Weeks.

We are just about to finish up our first 6 weeks being "Paleo".  I thought when we started this that we would just be doing this for 6 weeks to "jump-start" our weight loss and then go back to the "healthy" eating we have always known.  However we are never turning back to that way of life that hadn't been working for us. It only took us probably 2 and a half weeks to figure out this was the way we wanted to live.

When I first looked into Paleo I thought it was so restrictive.  I never imagined that why whole grains, Greek yogurt, low-fat cheese, beans and the like could be so bad as to restrict them forever.  These are things we had been programmed to think are health foods.  I was one of these people who had to eat some grains in my day or I got grumpy.  If I had a salad for lunch then snack better be some Triscuits or I might go crazy.  And I will be honest day 3 was my carb hell.  I was jumping out of my skin with "withdrawl".  But when I woke up day 4 it was gone, and I haven't had any problems with carb cravings or anything.  

Once we figured out the science of this it really made perfect sense.  But once we realized how much more energy we had, how satisfied we were and how easily the weight was falling off we were sold.  And then came the day that Josh had some gluten.  That was the light bulb moment of it all.  Josh has a very large gluten problem.  Very large.  He feels like this has been a problem his whole life.  Never feeling satisfied when he ate because he wasn't absorbing nutrients, so his body was calling for more all the time.  I also have an insensitivity but not near as bad as he does.  (I'm also convinced that most people have at least some degree of insensitivity.)  Josh will be the first to tell you that he feels like a totally different person as far as energy levels and being satisfied when he eats.

All of this knowledge makes it such an easy choice to eat for health and energy for the rest of our lives.  No more dieting.  No more trying to figure out what works for us.  We have found it.  And losing an average of 4-5 lbs a week doesn't hurt either.