Phew!

I've been slacking a bit; sorry. This week was the first week of the fall semester, so it's been a bit chaotic for me.

I didn't take any pictures of Cave Baby's Sunday lunch. But here is Monday's. She had taco meat (I promise you that this is not all we eat here. She is on a taco meat kick, and I'm not about to stop her. I like that she's being decisive and making healthy decisions on her own.), carrot sticks and 1/4 of a banana with almond butter.

After lunch we went out to get some vitamin D before nap. Cave Baby picked one of the last two apples from the apple tree and mowed down. Nothing like sunshine and fresh picked fruit!

I had class Monday night, so I packed a dinner for Cave Baby, who went to my Aunt's house. In her dinner was an almond butter and no-sugar-added strawberry jelly sandwich on Paleo bread (by far my favorite Paleo bread recipe!), carrot sticks, raisins, a Double Chocolate Mocha cookie, and two Lindt 70% cocoa chocolate squares.

Tuesday Cave Baby was with her daddy for breakfast and lunch (I packed leftover Paleo pizza and carrot sticks for her to have at lunch time, and her dad still had some Paleo pancakes that I'd sent over for breakfast). For dinner she had Italian turkey sausage and cabbage noodles. I just thinly slice the cabbage and season it with sea salt, pepper and curry powder, wilting and frying it in a cast iron pan on the stove.

Yesterday's lunch was leftover Italian sausage and cabbage noodles with a Double Chocolate Mocha cookie.

Yesterday after nap Cave Baby and I went to Barnes and Noble and looked at books. Cave Baby thoroughly enjoyed the "stage" in the children's book area and had me sit and watch her "perform." After that we went grocery shopping and by the time we got home, it was getting late! I reheated some leftover cabbage noodles for her, and grabbed some Paleo chicken nuggets from my stash (I'll post the "recipe" below), gave her a ramekin of Paleo Ketchup, and some yummy cherries (her favorite).

Today for lunch Cave Baby asked for ::surprise:: taco meat. I obliged. So she had taco meat (made from ground chicken), grapes and crispy brussels sprouts.

I have a beef shank in the crock pot, but Cave Baby is going to my Aunts this afternoon so that I can get my Crossfit in. I doubt it will be ready by the time we leave, so I'll likely be packing up some leftover taco meat, carrot sticks and cherries for her.

Here's the chicken nugget "recipe." Please note that I don't measure anything, and I just kind of "wing it."

Chicken Nuggets
Ingredients:
Boneless skinless chicken breast/s cut into bite size pieces
Almond flour
Seasoning (I use sea salt, pepper, garlic and onion powder)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put almond flour and seasonings in a gallon size ziplock back, seal and shake like crazy to mix thoroughly. Put the chicken in the bag and shake like crazy to coat all of the chicken well. Place chicken on oiled (olive, coconut or grape seed)(tinfoil lined to make cleanup easy) cookie sheet, and bake for about 15 minutes, turn over and bake for another 10-15 minutes. Voila!

These freeze really well. They reheat well, too. Just pop into a 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes. They're great to have on hand.

Hope everyone's had a fantastic week and will have a great Labor Day weekend!

She asked for pizza...

Still not feeling up to par, I was planning on just heating up some of my Paleo chicken nugget freezer stash for Cave Baby's lunch. Cave Baby, however, was adamant about wanting pizza. Let me just say that I'm not a mother who gives into their child's every whim. But I do like to do things she likes with food, and I thought cooking would be a good way to help snap me out of this sickie feeling. She asked for pizza three times, so I obliged.

Paleo pizza with some leafy greens. Cave Baby was offered a peach for dessert.

Paleo pizza seemed like such a task when I first started eating Paleo. It seemed that I was dirtying a ton of dishes, spending a preposterous amount of time prepping and cutting and cooking, etc. It just seemed like a really big task. I don't know if I have it together more than I did when I first went Paleo, if I'm more used to cooking everything from scratch, or if it just doesn't take as long as it originally seemed, but today I realized that this is a really easy thing to make. And doesn't take a lot of time. I've tried a few recipes for pizza and this is what I've come up with:

Crust:
1 cup almond flour/meal (I used pecan meal because I had it on hand and I'm running low on almond flour. It made the crust darker, but it's equally delicious)
1 egg
Sea salt to taste
Olive oil (I don't measure it, but I'm guessing it's about a tablespoon)
Italian seasoning (I'm just using McCormick which has marjoram, thyme, rosemary, savory, sage, oregano and basil)
Garlic powder (of course you could use fresh) to taste (I used probably 1-2 tsp)
Onion powder to taste (I used about 1 tsp)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet or pizza stone with parchment paper. This is a necessary step. Whisk the egg with a whisk or fork, and then add everything else. Mix/combine it thoroughly. Form it into a ball, and then press into a circle on the parchment paper. Bake for about 15 minutes.

Before preparing the sauce, which takes basically no time, start your toppings. Cave Baby doesn't like much on her pizza. She absolutely can't handle veggies on her pizza, so I stick with meat for her. When I have pizza I like to have tomatoes, baby spinach, mushrooms, peppers and black olives on it. But Cave Baby literally gags if she takes a bite containing the aforementioned ingredients. So I just do sausage and/or bacon for her. I often put some baby spinach in the Magic Bullet with the pizza sauce, but didn't think about it today until it was too late.

As soon as I put the crust in the oven, I put the turkey Italian sausage on the stove. I used Jenny-O. I cut the meat from the casings before putting it into the pan (the casings can be difficult for cave baby to eat, especially on a pizza). And that was it. I just browned it.

While crust is baking and meat toppings are cooking, make the sauce. Now, it's hard to find prepared pizza sauce that doesn't have sugar or other "special" unwanted ingredients, but I actually have found some. The problem is that it comes in a big can and I use all of a couple of tbps when making a big pizza. It's organic, so it doesn't last long in the fridge either, which means it often goes to waste. I've found that just using tomato sauce (check to make sure it doesn't have sugar in the ingredient list) works well for me. I put some tomato sauce in a bowl, add some Italian seasoning (McCormick that I mentioned earlier), garlic powder, sea salt, and pepper, and stir it up. As it sits, it softens the herbs.

Once the timer goes off indicating that the crust is ready to be topped, pull it from the oven and top it! I just spread the sauce on, and then topped with the sausage. Put it all into the oven for another 10 minutes. All told, this took about 30 minutes from start to finish. And Cave baby got her pizza. I have a lot of left overs, too, which is nice...especially since school starts this week!

Enjoy!

Finished! It looks dark, not because it's burned, but because I used pecan meal . This was the perfect personal pizza size, and cut beautifully into 8 toddler-sized slices.

Cave Baby

Starting my Cave Baby blog to write about the food that I make for my precious little Cave Baby.

Tonight's menu:
Stuffed peppers and roasted broccoli. For dessert Cave Baby will be offered an almond butter blondie with whipped coconut milk.

I made stuffed peppers, but knowing that Cave Baby is not a pepper fan, I kept some of the "stuffing" in the pan and tossed in some No Oodles (noodles made only of yam flour and water).