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.

Pea-can? Pa-cahn? D-licious. Here’s a recipe for nut butter with a nice twist on what you can find commercially available. And what to do with it..besides inhaling it out of the jar with a spoon? We’ve got you covered there as well. Ants on a Leaf…a fall flavored rendition of your favorite marching insect snack.

Ingredients

• ½ c raw almonds
• 1 ½ C raw pecans
• 2 pitted dates (we used medjool)
• 2 t salt
• ½ orange, zested
• ¼ c almond oil (might take a little more)
• a few tart apples, my favorite is Pink Lady
• dried cranberries or dark chocolate chips

Method

Place the almond and pecans on a baking sheet. Roast on 300ºF for 10-15 minutes, until pecans have darkened and the almonds begin to crack a little. Let the nuts cool. Add the nuts to the food processor, along with the dates, orange zest, salt and almond oil. Blend until smooth. You may have to take off the food processor lid and scrape the sides a few times to incorporate all the nuts.

If your butter looks a little crumbly, add more oil, a little at a time, until it comes together. Once the butter begins to reach a smooth consistency, just let the food processor run a wee bit longer, until it’s as smooth as you’d like it.

Ants on a Leaf

Slice your apples and smear  on the butter, or for a more portable way of consumption: fill a sandwich/snack bag with the butter. Cut off the tip of the bag and squeeze the butter onto your apples as you see fit. Sprinkle the dried cranberries and/or chocolate chips so that they stick on the butter.

I really love pork rinds & cracklings, but it’s next to impossible to find any commercial brands that source foraging piggies. Make my own, you say? I’ve tried that, but it just takes so darn long. When those salty snack cravings hit, sometimes you want instant gratification.

I got the idea while I was braising some chicken quarters the other night. Braising means you brown a piece of meat in a skillet and then stick the meat in a pot of liquid. In my humble opinion, chicken skin and liquid do not like each other. The skin gets so soggy, and that is something I do not enjoy munching on. So I pulled the skins off the quarters, and continued on my merry braising way, frying up the skins as a late night snack.

Concerned about Omega 6? My limited research shows chicken skin ranks up there around almonds.

Find the recipe on Food Renegade.

Upcycling is hipster speak for reusing your trash. I made a pineapple salsa one night (No, I’m not posting the recipe. The web is stuffed full of recipes for it. You don’t need another one from me.), and decided to “upcycle” the scraps from the recipe. Most (if not all) recipes for jerky say, “Only use lean cuts of meat or you will die (←I made that last part up).” Well, I don’t plan on storing this jerky in case of winter starvation, so I opted for a tender, more flavorful cut of meat.

Ingredients

• 2 lbs ribeye, trimmed of the big hunks of fat
• pineapple core & rinds
• cilantro stems
• ginger peel
• S.O.C. (sweetener of choice)
• water
• 3 T coconut aminos or wheat-free soy sauce

Method

In one of your smaller sauce pots add all the ingredients, except the beef & soy sauce. Fill with enough water to mostly cover the ingredients. Let boil until reduced by half. Remove from the heat, strain and let cool.

While the marinade is boiling, thinly slice the steak, against the grain of the meat. Add the meat slices to a zip-top bag, along with the cooled marinade. Let marinate in the fridge for at least 1 day and up to 2.

Follow your food dehyrdator’s directions for the jerky. I don’t know where my manual is, so I just winged it.  I cranked up the heat to 165ºF and turned on the machine. I checked every so often, until the meat was hard to the touch, no squishiness. I turned off the machine and let the meat cool on the racks. Mine took about 5 hours, but I cut the meat super thin. I’ve stored the jerky in the fridge. I plan on eating it all within the week, but I imagine it’ll keep for a month or so.

Brandon and I got home late from the gym the night that the CrossFit Games started. Dinner needed to be  something I could throw together rather quickly, so we could watch the live stream. This recipe is based on the classic paring of cantaloupe or honey dew melon and prosciutto. Didn’t  have any of that, but I did  the most important and delectable South Carolina agricultural export on hand. Peaches are a MAJOR deal in South Carolina. So when it’s summer time, any southern lover of food will undoubtedly have some on hand.

Ingredients

• 3 peaches, cut into wedges
• 4 oz. prosciutto, cut lengthwise, into thin strips
• handful of basil leaves, cut into strips

Method

Place a few strips of basil onto a peach wedge. Wrap with a prosciutto strip. Repeat until you’ve used up all the ingredients.

Over medium-high heat, preferably a cast-iron stove-top or outdoor grill, place the peach wedges seam side down. That means, wherever the tail end piece of prosciutto is, that’s the side that goes down on the heat–it kind of sears the meat to itself, making it easier to flip. Let them cook until they have a nice bit of char. Flip and wait for more char. Flip again, making sure to sear the butt of the wedge, just a few seconds.

GOBlin Deviled Eggs (Goat Cheese, Green Onion & Bacon)

Ingredients

• 1 dozen eggs, hard-boiled
• 4 oz goat cheese
• pinch of cayenne
• salt
• 2-4 T mayo
• 2 green onions, sliced very thin
• approx. 8 oz bacon

Method

While the eggs are boiling, cut your bacon into thin strips (widthwise) and crisp them up in a saute pan over medium heat. When the eggs are done, peel & cut them all in half (lengthwise). Scoop the yolks out into a medium bowl. Whisk together the yolks, goat cheese, mayo, cayenne and salt. Using a small spoon, scoop some of the mixture back into the egg white. With an offset spatula, smooth the top–the goal here is to make it look like the yolks were never taken out of the whites. ← I think this looks nicer for presentation, you don’t have to do it–but it’s definitely more portable this way. Sprinkle with bacon and green onions.

I love corned beef brisket, but it’s rarely stocked in my grocery store. Thankfully, St. Pat’s brings out the corned beef like Easter brings out the spiral ham. So when I see it, I always pick up a few. We made this last year, but I think this year–we totally ‘brought it’ for a Paleo St. Patrick’s Day.

Ingredients

1 corned beef brisket (ours was about 2 ½ lbs)

Method

Set your oven to 200ºF. Unwrap the brisket and rinse off all of the spices. Pat the meat dry. Cut off the visible fat. Place a cooling rack (something that looks like this) on top of a large sheet pan. Cut the brisket, with the grain, into thirds–so you’ll have 3 pieces of brisket. Using a serrated knife start slicing each piece into very thin slices (against the grain). Lay the beef slices on top of the cooling rack, as closely as you can get them, they’ll shrink up as they cook. Stick the sheet tray in the oven for around 4-8 hours, depending on how thick your slices are. Definitely check after 4 hours…and go from there. You’re looking for a dark brown, dehydrated, hard, almost crispy textured beef.

You could totally do this in your dehydrator, ours is locked up in storage, so I just subbed the oven.

This recipe is for all the Paleo kids out there (young + old alike). Growing up, whenever I’d have a spend-the-night or slumber party, my mom would make pizza dough and take us shopping for toppings. We’d spend the rest of the early evening stretching the dough and topping our pizzas. It was soooo fun…to me, anyway. Maybe it’s just because I’ve been obsessed with food since I was like, um…7. I was voted “Most Likely to be a Chef” in elementary school. But who knows what that really means–since I was also voted “Most Likely to be a Gymnast”, and at 5’9″ (I wasn’t that tall in elementary school, but I’ve always been considered tall.), I don’t have any idea where that came from. Still makes me laugh thinking about it…

Ingredients

• 5-7 oz. (about 20-30 pieces) Applegate Farms pepperoni (or other large, preservative-free pepperoni)*
• pizza sauce
• grated cheese, optional

For Supreme

• black olives
• bell peppers
• mushrooms
• green onions (preferred over red or yellow simply b/c they don’t need a lot of time to cook)

For Hawaiian

• deli ham
• fresh pineapple

Method

Get your oven to 400ºF. Lay the slices of pepperoni on a baking sheet and put them in the oven, on the middle rack, to get them crispy–about 8 minutes, flipping them over once. Start prepping your toppings while the peps are in the oven.

The pre-bake step of the pepperoni is super important if you want a crispy pepperoni “crust”. Once you top the pepperonis they just don’t crisp up much…

Once they come out of the oven, place a spoonful of pizza sauce on each pepperoni slice and top with your ingredients.

Place the baking sheet back in the oven and let the toppings get warm and melty, anywhere from 5-10 minutes.

HB NOTE: All the toppings should be sliced, chopped, and/or diced super, super small/thin. Since you’re making little petite pizzas and they’re only getting a few minutes of oven time, you want make sure they get enough heat to get them cooked through. You can get an idea of size from the pics.

*I’ve been seeing the pepperoni in new packaging. The old pack was 7 oz. and it now comes in 5 oz. packs. Just an FYI.

Can you tell we were inspired? Sweet, salty, crispy, gooey. I truly think I could live off of this for the rest of my life…Read the recipe on Food Renegade.

This recipe was written for Food Renegade, a website that is pro-raw dairy. If you do not eat dairy, we have made this recipe with equal parts coconut oil and had great success. I’d venture to say that lard would also work.