You can use Vodka to make that?

Hey there!  Sometimes being gluten free, you can be bombarded with hidden gluten in items as innocent as ketchup, soy sauce, etc.  I am doing more research and hope to post soon the hidden sources of gluten for all my gluten free friends and my friends with celiac.  It has been shocking to say the least.  I love to bake and use vanilla extract.  I recently ran out of homemade vanilla extract, so I thought what the heck, I'll take pictures of the process and post it.  While this is not technically paleo and we do not do paleo 100% of our consumption, it is a fun and easy thing to make and I do use this a lot!

This is soooo easy to do and it will take you probably 5 minutes max to make.  Although here is where the delayed gratification comes in.  It takes about 8 weeks for the vanilla extract to be complete!


Here is what you need

1)  small 8-12 oz. glass bottle with lid, or a small food safe container.
2) 3-4 nice sized whole vanilla beans
3) pure vodka


Here is the process:   Get ready....open up the vanilla beans.  Place beans in glass jar.  Pour vodka in the glass jar to cover the beans.  Place lid on jar, shake and set aside.  The alcohol will pull the vanilla out of the bean and create a dark, rich smelling tasty vanilla extract, with no preservatives!  You will know the extract is ready when the liquid is dark brown and smells just like vanilla extract.

Whole vanilla beans purchased at Costco 

self explanatory! 

Thats all folks!

finished product before the 8 weeks. 

TO ACCESS ALL THE GLUTEN FREE PALEO DELIGHTS THAT ARE ADDED ON A REGULAR BASIS, JUST CLICK ON THE LABLE SECTIONED TITLED RECIPES GF AND PALEO STYLE AT THE BOTTON OF A POST AND YOU WILL HAVE ALL THE RECIPES THAT I HAVE POSTED TO DATE.  MORE AND MORE WILL BE ADDED AS TIME GOES ON!   THANKS FOR STOPPING BY!

yum yum paleo/gluten free lasagna

Some people find our life style a bit crazy and a bit mind baffling saying "what do you eat if you eat a low carb, gluten free very little to no sugar lifestyle?"    I totally get it...when we first new that for health reasons and food allergy reasons that we had to go this way, I about cried.  But now there is no looking back and we have felt and seen so many changes to our health.  We still eat carbs and get them from fruit, but there are very few limited times that we obtain carbs from beans, rice etc.


We do low carb diet and so lasagna is something that I really new I was going to miss and had to find a new way to enjoy lasagna.  I should have been Italian, my Scottish German heritage and my taste buds just don't match up.  I have been playing around with some ways to make the foods we love staying in the confines of our lifestyle.  I found one that is a real winner even for one of my picky eaters!


1 onion
3 cloves of garlic
1 package of portabelle mushrooms
grass fed butter
spaghetti sauce
1 pound of grass fed beef
1 pound of pork sausage
6-8 zucchini I find that 8 works better since they shrink when baked.
salt and pepper to taste

Dice the onion and garlic and saute them in a skillet with mushrooms.  Once browned set aside.  Cook the sausage and the beef and salt and pepper to taste.  Once browned add the onion and garlic back and and mix well together.

In the meantime wash your zucchini and slice thin long ways into long thin strips.  These zucchinis will act as your lasagna noodles.  Once the zucchini noodles are sliced, lay them in a pan and bake them on 400 for 15-20 minutes until brown.  By doing this you are drawing out the excess water in the zucchini and trust me you will want to do this for your lasagna, if not you will have way too much water in your lasagna.  Once the lazhini noodles are browned you are ready to assemble your lasagna.  You simply assemble the lasagna as you would normally but you are using zucchini noodles instead of lasagna noodles.

Here are the lazhini noodles in the oven ready to be browned

Here they are out of the oven, they are barely browned but just enough to take out the extra water. 

At the end I add a bit of raw grass fed cheese and just melt it, we get this from an amish farmer and just melt it.  Dairy isn't much on the paleo side, BUT from time to time we like raw, grass fed homemade cheese!  This is a very healthy dish and there are no left overs!  Plus it is a great way to get veggies in :)
Try it, leave a comment and let me know what you think!


Stay tuned for more paleo and gluten free delights.  I am working on a paleo/gluten free bread with a whipped cinnamon honey butter.  I just need to test the recipe one more time before I publish it!  Also, next week starts our maple syrup season!!!!   Above freezing temps during the day and below freezing at night is the time we tap our trees!  We will be tapping our maple trees and producing our scrumptious maple syrup I will be taking pictures and blogging on our entire process of maple syrup production from our homestead!