Ingredients

• 1/3 c yellow mustard
• 1 T mayo
• 1 t yellow curry powder
• 1/4 handful of cilantro, chopped
• 1-2 t honey

Method

Mix together and serve as a dipping sauce.

My little sister hates mushrooms. She’ll eat an onion like an apple, but won’t touch a mushroom. I know they’re not the same thing, but still…I don’t get it. She happened to stop by our house when I was pulling these babies out of the oven. I tore off a piece the size of a dime and said, “Here, try it.” I didn’t think she would…she did. Then she proceeded to eat 3 more. I don’t think I’ve converted her over to the fungus side, but I think I’m one step closer.

Ingredients

• shiitake mushrooms
• salt

Method

Preheat your oven to 300ºF.

Line a baking sheet with a silicone liner, silpat or parchment paper.

Remove the stems from the mushrooms (and save them for the next time you make stock).

Lay the mushrooms, top side down, gill side up, on the lined baking sheet and sprinkle them with some salt.

Place in the oven and let them roast until they’ve become thin and crispy, about 20 minutes.

You’ll want to consume these pretty soon after you pull them out of the oven. The longer they’re exposed to air, the softer they’ll get. You can always re-crisp them in the oven, but if they get too brown, they’ll taste slightly burned.

Oh my gosh, I love this squash. I wish I could pick the pieces off the screen and put them into my mouth. I miss it. I was literally scraping every last bit of squash into my mouth. It wasn’t pretty.

Ingredients

• 1 acorn squash
• extra virgin olive oil
• salt & pepper
• red pepper/chili flakes
• 1/3 c balsamic vinegar

Method

Preheat your oven to 400ºF.

Line a baking sheet with a silicon liner, silpat or parchment paper.

Slice the acorn squash into circles. Slice the circles into half moons. Remove the seeds either via knife, spoon or hand.

Douse squash half moons in olive oil, salt, pepper and chili flakes.

Place in the oven and bake until tender, about 15 minutes, under tender, but not mushy.

While the squash is baking, pour the balsamic vinegar in a small sauce pot and heat to a simmer. Let the vinegar reduce by at least half. The goal is a syrupy consistency. You won’t necessarily be able to see that consistency while the pot is over heat, so if you think it’s reduced enough, take it off the heat and while it cools you should be able to see it thickening. If it’s not thickening, give it some more time over the heat.

Do NOT put your face over the top of the vinegar while it’s reducing. The vinegar releases some kind of horribly bothersome vapor. Not fun.

Drizzle the reduced vinegar over the squash.

As the month of January is winding down, I assume the Super Bowl is somewhere nearby. I don’t know when the Super Bowl is (Yes, I know how to Google, I just don’t care enough.) or who’s playing (don’t care about that either). I unapologetically know jack shit about football and I plan to keep it that way, but I imagine a sub 30 minute meal made of pork would be a welcome addition to the table o’ football grub.

Ingredients

• 1 lb ground pork
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 1/2 c almond flour
• 1 jalapeño, finely diced
• 1 t chili garlic sauce
• 2 green onions, finely chopped
• handful cilantro
• 1/4 t sesame oil
• 1/3 c mayo
• s&p

Method

Preheat your oven to 350ºF.

Add the ground pork, egg, egg yolk and almond flour to a mixing bowl.

Now, the rest of the ingredients (minus the mayo and sesame oil) are for both the meatballs and the dipping sauce. Chop once, use twice, right? So halve up everything and mix one half in with the meatball mixture and the other half in with the mayo and sesame oil.

Stick the dipping sauce in the fridge while we finish up with the meatballs.

Line a baking sheet with a silicone mat or parchment paper. Use a small ice cream/cookie scoop to portion out the meatball mixture onto the baking sheet.

Place the meatballs in the oven and bake until cooked through, about 15 minutes.

Turn the oven on broil and brown the tops of the meatballs.

***Updated***

Cheese. Considered a cheat by Paleo Purists. We hate the word cheat, by the way. So much so that we’ve written an entire post about it. Dairy is a gray area in Paleo Land and therefore considered a “Scarlett Letter” ingredient. We know that. But we have functioning brains, and decide for ourselves when and how we consume dairy. You can do whatever you want, it really doesn’t affect us. Love you, but can the dogma please. That being said, if your functioning brain tells you not to eat dairy, then we’ve added an avocado cream recipe that makes a mighty fine cheese alternative.

Ingredients

• 5 poblano* peppers
• 1 lb. fresh chorizo**, casings removed (slit the back of the sausage with a knife and unwrap the meat from the case) and crumbled
• 4 oz. mushrooms, diced
• 1 small yellow onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• handful chopped cilantro
• 3 oz. raw sharp cheddar
• 2 oz. goat cheese

• 2 avocados
• 1 lime, juiced

Method

Preheat your oven to 450ºF.

Slice the tops off your poblano peppers (reserve them, minus the stem), then cut them in half, lengthwise. Remove the white membrane and the seeds. Coat in a little bit of fat and place in the oven to soften. We’re trying to roast and soften ‘em up before we stuff ‘em.

While the peppers are working in the oven, saute the chorizo, onions, garlic, mushrooms and the chopped pieces of the poblano pepper tops, until everything is soft, about 15 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the cheeses and cilantro.

Take the peppers out of the oven.

Using a spoon, stuff the chorizo filling into each pepper and place back into the oven to melt the cheeses and warm everything up.

If you don’t eat dairy, this is a great cheese substitute:

To make the avocado cream, use a fork to mash up the avocados with the lime juice. Serve with the rellenos.

*Poblano chile peppers are mild mexican chiles. Think of it as the less bitter, mexican version of green bell peppers. They’re found at most grocery stores, around the other chile peppers.

**If you can’t find fresh chorizo (dried chorizo is hard and usually labeled Spanish, fresh is soft and usually labeled Mexican), you could substitute fresh andouille or make the chili recipe from the chili cheese dog recipe.

Last Saturday was a busy day. After breakfast we knew we’d have no real time to eat again until that night. So we threw together the biggest, most protein and fat packed meal we could possibly conceive. It was enough food to keep a cowboy full for hours…believe me, I feed one. It’s the usual suspects here: eggs, sweet potatoes, sausage, cilantro and avocado. I was inspired by our Baked Bibimbap to make a baked version of Huevoes Rancheros. Runny yolks oozing alongside crispy, sweet potatoes and salty sausage. I’m sorry if you’re bored by my constant use of these ingredients, but I obviously am not bored (and I’m not sorry either :p). They can do no wrong in my book.

Ingredients

• 1 lb breakfast sausage
• 2 medium sweet potatoes, diced
• 5 eggs
• 1 avocado, diced
• handful cilantro
• hot sauce
• raw cheese, optional
• s & p

Method

Preheat your oven to 400ºF.

In an oven safe skillet, we used cast iron, crumble and brown the sausage.

Once it’s brown, use a slotted spoon to remove the sausage and let it hang out while we cook the sweet potatoes. Try to reserve as much of the grease as possible.

Toss the sweet potatoes into the sausage grease and let them get crispy and cooked through.

Add the sausage back into the pan.

Make a few wells in the pan–one well for each egg. Crack your eggs into the wells.

Place the skillet in the oven. We’re just baking the skillet long enough for the eggs to set, about 5 minutes.

Now, turn the oven to broil and hit up the top side of the eggs for a few minutes, but don’t let the yolk cook all the way through–unless you don’t like runny yolks. But man, oh man, the runny yolks go down really nicely with the crispy sweet potatoes. Just sayin’.

Remove the pan from the oven and douse the whole thing with avocado, cilantro and hot sauce.

Serve by scooping out an egg, along with its neighboring goodies, with a large spoon.

The cheap, leafy green veggie that is often overcooked into slimy, tasteless mush. Did you guess collard greens or did the title give it away? Hmmm. We only eat them once a year (shame on us), New Year’s Day (some silly ‘good luck’ tradition), well…maybe with BBQ every once in a while too. So I imagine the aforementioned description is most people’s idea of collard greens and is likely the reason why it’s a low-level, bottom of the totem pole kind of vegetable. It bothers me that kale is the new “vogue” vegetable–while collards are closely related and much, much cheaper. They are the underdog. So, collard greens, this is our ode to you and a peek into their un-slimy, un-mushy, un-tasteless (tasteful?) side.

Ingredients

• 1 bunch of collard greens, roughly 8-10 cups of leaves
• 1 lb fresh chorizo, casing removed by slitting with a knife and un-peeling from the meat
• 1 quart chicken stock
• 1/2 c apple cider vinegar, we use Bragg
• 1 T coconut aminos or gluten-free soy sauce
• 1 T hot sauce
• s & p

Method

In a medium-sized soup pot (you’ll need a lid, so choose accordingly), brown the chorizo (you may need a bit of fat to help get things going).

While the chorizo is browning, prepare the collard greens by removing the leaves from the thick, fibrous stems. You can do that by cutting away the leaf with a knife or just tear the leaf with your hands. Make sure the collards are in bite size pieces though, no one wants to have what looks like seaweed dribbling down their face while they eat.

Add the stock, vinegar, soy sauce and hot sauce. Place the lid, slightly ajar, over the soup pot and let everything cook together, about 20 minutes, until the collards have wilted down and softened. Taste and adjust seasonings, you may want more vinegar or hot sauce.

While there is nothing wrong with going out and buying chicken necks and ox tails to make stock with, I assume many people don’t utilize what they’ve already got sitting in the fridge to make a perfectly yummy, if not superiorly flavored, homemade stock. We roasted prime rib for dinner one night and I simply tossed the leftover hunk of meat (including the bones) in a pot of water, added some cheap vegetables, and came back 4 hours later to a pot full of liquid meat gold.

Ingredients

• 1 hunk of leftover, cooked, bone-in meat (chicken, beef, duck…whatevesss)
• handful each of roughly chopped carrots, celery and onion
• flavorings like: fresh garlic, fresh thyme (left on the stalk), peppercorns, salt

Method

Fill a large soup pot with about 4 quarts of water. Dump in the meat, chopped up vegetables and flavorings.

Let the pot simmer for about 4 hours, until you have about 2-3 quarts of liquid meat gold, I mean stock.

Place a fine mesh strainer over the top of a large bowl (the bowl needs to be big enough to fit the liquid). Pour the stock through the strainer. Discard the meat and sad looking vegetables. Place the bowl in the fridge overnight, or long enough for the fat to come to the surface and harden.

Skim off the fat with a spoon. You don’t need to be too anal about this, a few baby blobs here and there isn’t going to hurt anything.

Use immediately or store in the freezer. If you’re going to put the stock in the freezer, be sure to leave enough room at the top of your freezing container to allow for the expansion of the liquid…don’t fill it to the brim or you’ll be sorry.

I knew I wanted to make egg nog cookies. I started assembling the ingredients, pulling out the cans and bags I needed, reached in the fridge for the eggs, and nada. We didn’t have any. This is an e x t r e m e l y rare occurrence in the Keatley household. Alas, I decided to carry on with the plan and see what I could concoct sans nature’s perfect food.

Yield: ~16 cookies

Cookie Ingredients

• 2 c almond flour
• 1/3 c coconut oil, melted
• 1/4 c sugar
• 1/2 c canned, full fat coconut milk
• 1 t baking powder
• 1 t cinnamon
• 1 t grated nutmeg

Icing Ingredients

• 1/2 c canned, full fat coconut milk
• 1/4 c palm shortening, melted
• 2-3 T powdered or liquid sweetener of choice
• 1/2 t grated nutmeg
• 1 T brandy (optional)

Method

For the cookies

Preheat your oven to 350ºF.

Mix together all the cookie ingredients. Use a cookie scoop to dole out the mixture onto a silpat (or silicone or parchment paper) lined baking sheet. These cookies won’t spread, so don’t be afraid to plop them close together. Place in the oven and bake until golden brown, about 20-25 minutes.

For the icing

In a bowl or 2 cup measuring cup (something with a spout would be ideal so you can just whisk, chill and pour the icing), whisk all the ingredients together and place in the fridge until it’s had enough time to chill and thicken. Once chilled, pour has much icing as you’d like over the top of the cookies.

Does a gluten-free lifestyle mean you have to miss out on beer braised bratwurst from now until eternity? Of course not. There’s always the gluten-free hard stuff. But either way, gluten-free or not, I’ve never really thought beer braised brats tasted like much more than just…brats. So we’ve decided to amp up the flavor by using hard apple cider in place of the beer. Hard apple cider is naturally gluten-free and full of delicious caramel, fruity flavor, a near perfect compliment to sausage, onions and peppers.

Ingredients

• 2 T butter
• 1 yellow onion, sliced thinly
• 1 red or yellow bell pepper, sliced
• 1 lb fresh bratwursts
• 1, 12 oz. bottle hard (or not hard) sparkling apple cider

Read the recipe preparation on Food Renegade here:

http://www.foodrenegade.com/cider-braised-brats-onions-peppers/