It started with me trying to kick regular migraines, a nagging joint injury, and unstable blood sugar levels when I was hungry. Then Patrick jumped on board to lose weight. We felt so good, we bribed encouraged Ty and Grace to try.

While it’s been a little challenging missing our grain-heavy favorites, we have mastered pancakes.

Ingredients

Nuts (we’ve used any combo of cashews, almonds, walnuts, and pecans)*
Primal flour (think coconut or quinoa)
Oil
Baking Soda
Baking Powder
Salt
Apple cider vinegar
Vanilla
Eggs
Milk or Water

*You could probably get away with either nuts or flour. I like to grind my own nut flour due to cost but it never seems fine enough so I always add a little commercially ground flour to improve the texture. I also add hemp hearts sometimes.

Making the batter

1. Preheat a non-stick skillet to medium-high heat while you mix the batter.
2. Grind nuts and flour together in a high-powered blender or food processor. I usually do enough to make about 2 cups worth.
   
3. Add about 3/4 tsp each of baking soda, powder, and salt. Grind again to mix.
4. Add 2 tsp of vanilla, 1 TBSP of oil, 1 egg per cup of dry ingredients, 1 tsp of vinegar, and enough liquid to form a pancake batter.
5. Blend well.

Cooking the Pancakes

Grease the pan using whatever fat you desire. I just pour the batter directly from the blender. I find Primal cakes tend to take a little longer to cook than traditional pancakes. You can adjust the thickness if you need to. I also add extra pecans to mine.

Serve with real maple syrup or agave (that’s how we roll).

The first step is to make large cookies (think a tad smaller than a CD) using your go-to recipe.

While the cookies are baking, decorate CD sleeves with stickers, stamps, or markers.

After the cookies are cooled, insert one into each decorated CD sleeve. Voila!

Ingredients:

1 lb. ground beef
1 lb. chopped raw maple flavored bacon (You could probably cook it first if you wanted it crispy for texture.)
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
2 eggs
1/4 cup onion flakes
2 TBSP minced garlic or 2 cloves pushed through a press
salt and pepper to taste

1. Put all ingredients in a sturdy gallon-sized zip top bag.
2. Massage all ingredients until well-mixed.
3. Cut corner off of bag and squeeze mixture into patties.
4. Cook well in skillet or grill.  (The bacon keeps them from drying out.)
5. Melt a slice of cheese on top (optional).
6. Serve on lettuce or bun.

I let PJ page through the book and choose our first project.  He loves being in the kitchen so he chose to make corn cakes (found on page 24).  The recipe called for corn tortilla flour (which we didn’t have) or all purpose flour (which was out because we’re trying a gluten-free diet for Ty this summer) so we used fine corn meal.  The only other ingredient was water in the original recipe.

Normally the gluten in the flour would be enough to make the dough stick together but since we were just using corn meal, mixed a tablespoon of flax meal in 3 tablespoons of water to act as a binder.

I gave each child about 1/4 cup of cornmeal is a bowl. I should have put a teaspoon of salt in too. Then I let them dump their flax meal water mixture in and stir.

We added more water or cornmeal as needed to make a dough.

Then they flattened with their hands on a plate. Our “dough” more like wet sand than a typical dough. Flatter is better for cooking but much harder to get off the plate in one piece.

Next, we pan fried them in canola oil. They taste much better if you cook them until they are crispy all the way through like a thick chip.

We melted cheese on some, tried one plain, and dipped some in salsa. They probably won’t make our meal rotation but it was a good learning experience for the kids and doubled as snack!

To see other books we used, click here.

To see the overview of the unit, click here.

What you’ll need:

• Enough thinly sliced chicken breast meat to feed your family.  I prefer boneless skinless.  I had 2 honkin’ pieces that I cut thickness-wise to make 4 pieces.  Then I pounded them with a meat tenderizer to make them even thinner.
• Enough honey roasted peanuts to cover the chicken.  I used about 2 cups.
• Garlic powder (I only had garlic salt which worked too)
• Soy sauce
• Honey
• Vegetable oil

How you do it:

1. Use a food processor to grind the peanuts into chunky crumbs. 
2. Place crushed peanuts in a shallow dish and mix in about 2 teaspoons of garlic powder.
3. Mix about a cup of soy sauce with 1/3 cup of honey.
4. Coat the bottom of a large skillet with vegetable oil and heat to medium.
5. Rinse chicken and press into peanut crumbs, coating all sides.
6. Place chicken in heated skillet and drizzle with glaze.



7. Saute chicken until brown and crispy and cooked all the way through.  (If you use thicker cuts of meat or have your skillet heated too high, you may have to put the chicken into a 350 degree oven to finish cooking through so you don’t burn the glaze. Our first batch was a little extra carmelized :))



8. Serve with brown sticky rice and veggies.

RED: Salsa.  Fresh, jarred, mild, spicy.  There are so many options.

ORANGE/YELLOW: Cheesy chicken dip.  Combine melted Velveeta, a little bouillon, and cooked chicken.  We did ours in the crock pot with raw chicken, bouillon, and Velveeta cheese chunks and let it cook all day on low.

GREEN: Guacamole.  If you don’t want to make your own, I recommend Wholly Guacamole.  I halved and pitted an avacado, scored a grid into each half, scooped it into a bowl with lime juice, garlic, red onion and pepper.

BLUE/PURPLE:  Use blue corn chips.

Place all the colors in separate bowls on the table and let the kids assemble their own. You may be surprised at how adventurous they are. I was!

We love shrimp here.  The other night I was in the mood for Asian-inspired shrimp. 

Here’s what we did.  I’ll apologize in advance that I do not provide many real measurements.

SHRIMP:
Thaw and peel shrimp, if necessary.  Toss them in a bowl with a beaten egg white.  Roll them in a mixture of bread crumbs, Asian 5 spice powder, garlic powder, and toasted sesame seeds (or whatever else Asian-tasting things you want to put in). 

Place them in a single layer on a baking sheet and spray them with cooking spray.  Cook at 400 degrees until opaque.  Ours took about 10 minutes.

NOODLES:
We used cellophane noodles. Basically you just need to head to the Asian section of your store and look for potato starch, mung bean or cellophane noodles. Our package this time looked like this.

Cook them like you would spaghetti but only boil for about 3 minutes or flexible. While they’re boiling thow together soy sauce (~1/2cup), a clove of crushed garlic, brown sugar (~1/3 cup), and a tablespoon of sesame oil.

Toss the cooked noodles in the sauce and serve with the shrimp. You can also stir fry some veggies for a well-balanced meal.  Voila!

Anyway, you’ll need:

• Enough chicken breat to feed your family.  If you use more than 2 pounds, I would adjust the next ingredients accordingly.
• 1 jar of nacho cheese or queso
• 1 can of cream of chicken soup
• 1 can of black beans
• 1 packet of taco seasoning
• Tortillas or rice

1. Place chicken in lined crockpot.
2. Mix cheese, taco seasoning, and soup.  Pour over chicken.
3. Cook on low for 6 to 8 hours or high for 4 to 6 hours.
4. Mix in beans and cook until beans are warm (30 minutes or so).
5. The chicken will probably shred after being slow-cooked.  Serve over rice or rolled up in tortillas or dip with nacho chips.

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We’re self-proclaimed foodies.*  A couple months ago, a bunch of our foodie friends decided to start a Gourmet Club.  About once a month, someone volunteers their home and picks a food theme.  The rest of us scour our recipe boxes, the internet, and magazines to find a new recipe that matches the theme.  While there are no hard and fast rules, the idea is to make something different that you wouldn’t normally make.  We use the term ‘gourmet’ pretty loosely.  We figured it was less expensive than going out to eat all over town which is kinda what we had been doing.  I don’t think we’ll ever give up Restaurant Week though.

*people who love to try (eating and makeing) new foods, appreciate complex tastes and creative combinations, and have unspoken rules about ordering at restaurants to ensure you try the maximum amount of different foods given the number of people sitting at your table.

The first time, we did tapas.  Our hostess made all the food that time and I don’t really remember what we had.  But it was yummy.

Second go ’round was at our house.  I picked Asian.  I know, shocking.  I provided bulgogi (Korean barbecued beef), korean radish salad, and japchae (cellophane noodles, also Korean).  We also enjoyed shrimp lettuce wraps, satay, and black coconut rice.  The real benefit of Gourmet Club is the fellowship and we spent hours playing board games after all the Asian was put away.

This past weekend, we did polish.  Polish night consisted of pierogies (baked not boiled), haluski, sweet kielbasa, and a polish dessert.  It’s been really fun hanging out over different kinds of food (most of which I don’t have to cook or pay for

FAQ’s

1. What other themes will you try?  It’s really up to the next host but we did toss around gourmet versions of kids food for next summer.
2. What do you do with your kids?  We take them.  Our other foodies (mostly young marrieds w/o kids) have been very gracious about letting our children invade their space.  It’s great when we host because we can put them to bed and keep partying.
3. What if you don’t like the food?  The best part of the potluck aspect is you should be bringing something you like.  That way you’ll at least like one thing.  I will say though that even my super picky husband ate and liked the haluski which had cabbage and he normally doesn’t do any cooked vegetables. That’s the fun!  You don’t know what you’ll find you like.

If you’re reading this thinking it sounds like fun, it is.  And you should start .  It’s really easy and takes very little coordination on anyone’s part.

Ingredients
1/2 pound medium shrimp (that was about 4 per person for a family of 5)
1 cup chopped cooked chicken (optional, I had leftovers from a roasted chicken dinner earlier this week)
Box of pasta (I used whole wheat penne)
2 TBS of fat (I save chicken fat but butter would work)
2 TBS of flour
2 1/2 cups of milk
1 cup of shredded Parmesan cheese plus some for finishing (I use the pre-shredded bagged variety)
1 TBS of Old Bay (or to taste)
1 tsp of red pepper flakes (optional if you like spicy)

1. Peel and/or detail shrimp if necessary.
2. Steam shrimp (if not cooked).
3. Cook pasta.
4. In a medium saucepan, melt fat and whisk in flour.  Cook on medium heat for about 2 minutes.
5. Gradually whisk in milk.  Bring to just a boil and then simmer until sauce thickens.
6. Add Old Bay, Parmesan, and pepper flakes.
7. Toss meat, pasta, and sauce.  Sprinkle with Parmesan.
8. Serve with a veggie or salad.

Cost breakdown

Shrimp…$4

Pasta…$1.50

Parmesan cheese…$2.50

(Everything else I used was negligible or from my pantry stock)

Total…$8.