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!

pancakes with NO flour at all

Hello there!  I found a great way to make a very healthy pancake that your whole family will LOVE!

I got the idea from paleo mama or the paleomom....I can't remember, I read and look at so many cook books and posts..... but I took it and made some alterations and well I want to share it with you!  My kids absolutely love these and beg for them every morning and they are pretty easy to make!

What  you will need!

2 plantains make sure they are green
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cream of tarter
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon or you could add a bit more if you want a bigger flavour
1 tsp of homemade vanilla extract (when I make some more I will show you how we make home made vanilla extract that is oh so easy and delicious to add to any meal!
4 eggs
1 Tbs of coconut oil or grass fed butter.
fat for heating skillet.

Heat skillet using butter or coconut oil on medium heat.  While skillet is heating up, peal the green plantains and add all your ingredients in a blender....plantains, baking soda, cream of tarter, nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla extract, eggs, coconut or butter....you choose...just put it all in and turn on the blender!  That is it....that easy.....if you want a thinner pancake batter you can add a little milk to it if you wish...add small amounts at a time until you get desired consistency.  But we stick to the thicker batter.

here is my pancake batter 

Cook the pancakes as you would any normal pancake and whala you have a crowd pleaser.  This recipe usually makes around a dozen or so normal size pancakes!

Here is the finished product, ready to be devoured by my hungry little munchkins!  like the cinnamon sticks, I am getting fancy! :o)

TRY THIS AND DROP ME A LINE, LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK, AND WHAT YOU DID DIFFERENT TO MAKE IT YOURS!

UPDATE******UPDATE******UPDATE*****UPDATE*****UPDATE*****UPDATE*****

Here is a quick and better version of the pancakes.  Follow the recipe above but instead   
Use 5 eggs instead of 4
Add one banana 
3 TBS of ground flax 
These are even better then previous posted.

home made chicken stock!

A lot of my recipes, I use bone broth.  I make chicken stock and I also make beef stock from the bones. There are many benefits of consuming bone broth and here are just a few that I have learned.

1)  If you have leaky gut, consuming bone broth helps to heal your gut.

2)  Helps with the appearance of skin and hair, clearing skin and making hair shinny.

3)  Great to consume during colds and flu time!

4)  Many healthy minerals consumed from the bones.

5)  Knowing that you are consuming healthy, natural substance!

Many commercial bone broths have spices and natural flavors which is code for man made chemicals and has nothing to do with natural.  A few bone broths have MSG or rather known as monosodium  glutamate which is a neuro toxin.

Just the other day we did our last and final butcher of the season on our homestead.  We don't like to waste anything, so I take the chicken frames and make good, nutritious bone broth for our family to consume in egg drop soups, chicken noodle soups and for flavoring.  I will share my recipe with you today.   This is a 2 day process as I slow simmer the frames and ingredients for 2 days that creates the deepest, richest best tasting broth!  It sounds like a lot of hard work but is really rather easy.

3 chicken frames in a stock pot and yes I will use the chicken feet as well (but if that is something that isn't your thing...you don't have to use the feet but the feet make very rich broth).
water
salt
pepper
3-4 garlic cloves
2 carrots
2 celery stalks
1 red onion
1tsp of vinegar (vinegar helps to pull out the minerals that are in the bones.

Put chicken frames in stock pot and cover with water.   Add 2 TBS of salt and a dash or two of pepper.  I never measure the pepper add vinegar (optional).   Bring water to a boil and then turn down to a simmer.  Continue throughout the day to check on the water and when water levels begin to lower, add more water.   Keep doing this, every few hours you will need to add water.  At night I will either take the broth off the stove or just put the stove on the lowest setting to keep the broth warm over night and as soon as I wake up, I turn it up to a simmer.   I then add my garlic, carrots, celery, onion to the mix and let simmer all day....the nutrients are pulled out of the veggies, into the broth and help give a nice flavour.   At the end of day two you will have a deep rich golden broth and the aroma will permeate throughout your entire home!  Strain the broth through cheese cloth, and I will usually pick the meat off the bones and use for casserole, burritos later.....  I then transfer to jars, ziploc bags or those bps plastic ball jars that are made for the freezer.  Since it is so concentrated, you will only need to use half that ball jar for soups etx...a little does go a long way.

day 2, the broth is turning into a golden yellow colour!  

The veggies have been added, we are getting close!

Time to eat the Turkey! A Paleo recipe

                                       WHAT TO DO WITH ALL THE TURKEY LEFT OVERS?

Arrgg!   Well, since we have a small farm, we have decided over the past couple of years to raise our own pasture fed turkeys for Thanksgiving day festivities.  There is nothing like a fresh, pasture, fed and humanly raised turkey!   We have sold a few to family and friends but this year we have 16  5 (due to a tragic mishap)  that we will be putting in our freezer.  After our thanksgiving feast and feeding 13 people, we had a lot of turkey leftovers.  Turkey is nice, but I don't think I want to eat it every day for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next week.  So I need to treat my taste buds and add a bit to the turkey.


                                                        Creamy Garlic Turkey over zoodles.    
(yes you read that correctly, zoodles) http://nomnompaleo.com/post/5695132949/zucchini-spaghetti-zoodles-meatballs  Here is where I first learned about them.

Since we eat mainly a paleo and gluten free diet, ( I'll touch more on that in a later post, about gluten), spaghetti noodles from wheat or even rice for that matter is really not an option for our family.  So on a search, I discovered zoodles.  It is a fun and easy way to get veggies into the kids.  The first time I cooked these for the kids, I held my breath in great anticipation as to what might come out of their little mouths (hoping that it wouldn't be the zoodles).  The first thing I heard was,  "this was good, can I have more noodles?"  Exit sigh of relief, enter more zoodles on the plate of happiness!

                                             Creamy (well, its not really creamy) Garlic Turkey with Zoodles

Take your left over turkey out of the ice box and get ready to give it a new identity!
I usually shred up the turkey in smaller bites for this.  I had for my dinner about 3 cups of chopped/cubed turkey.

chop/dice one full red onion, and if you gotem',  dice a couple of leeks.
dice up 2-4 cloves of fresh garlic.  We use a lot of garlic, so I use 4 cloves (Here is a tip that I learned.  Dice up garlic and let it stand for 10-15 minutes before you saute.  By letting garlic sit it allows all the beneficial properties of the garlic to set.  If you chop garlic and saute it directly, you will destroy all the beneficial health properties of garlic! )

Saute the onions, garlic, leeks in grass fed butter or coconut oil.

Once sauteed, add the turkey, salt and pepper to taste. Mix ingredients well together.  I also add 2 tsp. of Turmeric (turmeric is well known to have anti inflammatory properties to it, I add health when and where I can ;0 ).  Add 4 TBS of grass fed butter.  If I can't get my hands on raw organic grass fed butter, I do use Kerry Gold Grass Fed Butter.  You can purchase at most stores.  Add 3/4 cup of original coconut milk to the mixture, stir and allow to simmer on low to medium heat, stirring occasionally.   

                                                            Now for the ZOODLES
Well, you can access the link above for preparation and check out her website, she is one of my favorite go to sites!

For our family of 6 I grated 3 nice sized zucchini with a grater to make shaped "noodles".

Here is the grater I use, its super fast!

Now, the suggestion was you can microwave them; however, I am not a big fan of the microwave and really limit my use to almost NEVER, when preparing food!  

finished product

So here is how I prepared them to optimize and keep the nutritional value of the "zoodles."  I filled a small sauce pot with water and brought it to a simmer/boil.  Once water started to gently boil, I quickly placed my shredded zucchini in the pot and allowed it to boil for 1-2 minutes, don't go past 2 minutes, take off heat immediately and drain water off.  You are ready to serve the zoodles.  If you over cook them you will have mushy zoodles and no one wants that.

Place zoodles on plate and top with creamy garlic turkey mixture, salt to taste, add a little feta cheese and serve up a healthy, left over meal, with a side of roasted brussels sprouts.  

Even our sweet dog, begs for turkey and zoodles :)

Let me know if you tried this and how you liked it, what modifications you used, I always look forward to hearing from you!
Happy eating.