Paleo "Breaded" Chicken Marinara with Roasted Green Beans

This was a recipe that just sort of evolved.  I had chicken breasts defrosting but I was faced with 2 dilemmas:  1.  I didn't want chicken...again and 2.  I had zero inspiration today.  Let me give you a little background pretty much everyday I ask my husband what he would like for dinner; sometimes his ideas inspire me (like tonight) and other times I turn my nose up and make something completely different.  Tonight when I told him I had chicken defrosting he goes "do we have any bread crumbs?  Because breaded chicken sounds goods?"  Apparently he has issues with short term amnesia and has forgotten that I'm no longer buying bread so therefore we don't have any breadcrumbs.  But he was on to something and so my recipe evolved.

Here is what you will need:


Chicken
2 chicken breasts I fillet them to make a total of 4
1/2-3/4 cup of roasted unsalted almonds
2-3 tbsp coconut flour
1 tsp oregano
sea salt & pepper to taste
1 omega 3 enriched egg
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut milk
Sauce
1 can organic unsalted diced tomato
1 clove garlic minced
2 tsp oregano
2 tsp basil
1 tsp thyme

Preheat oven to 425°, line baking sheet with foil and spray w/cooking spray or olive oil. Add almonds to food processor and finely grind.  Be careful not to let it grind up too long or you will end up with some really fantastic almond butter.  Once ground, add coconut flour and pulse several times to combine well.  Add mixture to a large plate, add oregano, sea salt and pepper.  In a shallow bowl combine coconut milk and egg, whisk well to combine.  Add chicken to egg mixture, dredge in almond mix and coat chicken well.  Bake for 15 minutes.

While chicken is baking add tomatoes, garlic, oregano, basil and thyme to a sauce pan.  Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes.  I didn't want a "chunky" sauce so I used an immersion blender to puree the tomatoes.

While the sauce is simmering I roasted to green beans in a large saute pan with a couple tbsp of coconut oil. 

Spoon the tomato sauce over the chicken and cook for another 5 minutes.  Sprinkle fresh basil and parley over the top and serve with the green beans or veggies of your choice. 

A botched recipe and lack of creativity

So I saw a recipe on another blog today for coconut flour tortillas and seriously I think I was salivating as I looked at the pictures.  I LOVE tortillas and could eat them every day warmed with a little butter....ok, back to the reality of my life now.  I decided to make these, I hype them up in my mind to be the greatest most fantastic thing I will eat this weeks.  Well fast forward 10 minutes I take the tortilla off the griddle and put a little butter on it and it tastes....terrible.  How can this be, the pictures looked so yummy.  Frantically I rechecked the recipe and I doubled the amount of coconut flour, not sure what I was thinking.  Maybe it was the 2 year old hanging on my leg begging me to pick her up or the boys "wrestling" in the living room that I was sure the police would come out because of all the screaming.  Oh, well I will try again, so disappointing. 

My kids and I are getting back on track with the meals.  My husband is at work and won't be home until Friday evening so it gives us plenty of opportunity to clean things up in the eating category.  Tonight's dinner was a quick and easy put together, seriously it took about 15 minutes. 

I buy the chicken breast from Costco, they are so conveniently packaged with 2 breast per package.  I separate each package after I buy them (I think 8 packages in each pack) and freeze them in an old grocery bag to keep them together in the freezer.  Feeding a family of 5 isn't cheap especially since I stay at home and we rely on one income.  Most nights, I butterfly the breasts so that gives us 2 fillets per breast.

Tonight I diced the chicken and sauteed it in coconut oil  over med high heat.  Once the meat was cooked through I added a can of diced tomatoes and let it simmer on low for about 10 minutes (mostly because I got side tracked with the kids and forgot about it....oops :)  My kids LOVED this, they wanted raw carrots as their veggies so with very little prep and cook time they were good to go.  I ate mine with some leftover artichoke tapenade and diced avocado.  I have to say it wasn't they best meal I ever made but it definitely wasn't the coconut tortillas.  Take home point, sometimes the simplest meals will surprise you and Paleo doesn't need to be fancy, or quite frankly creative. 

The last few days have been incredibly crazy busy making it hard to stick to a Paleo plan.  Definitely much harder to have my children sticking to it.  Thursday simply due to a lack of planning they had to eat some "chicken" nuggets that I had in the freezer that I bought at Costco a while back.   It was so crazy how I noticed a difference in their behavior and attitude within a 1/2 hour after eating them.  In fact they were so wired I could hardly get them to calm down and go to bed that night.  I vowed never to do that again because I cherish the time I get to myself after the kids go to bed and to spend another hour to hour and a half fighting with them to go to bed isn't what I want to do at night.  But alas life seemed to have taken over and here it is Saturday and I have managed to feed my kids at least 1 paleo unfriendly since then. 

In the last 2 weeks I have noticed such positive changes in my kids.  I decided to start feeding my family a Paleo diet because it made sense.  I kept coming back to the questions of "if I and finding this healthy enough and reaping such positive benefits WHY an I not including my family in this?"  My 4 1/2 year old is such and enjoyable but very trying little boy.  I love him more than life itself but his behavior has been the forefront of issues within the family.  He is/was a 4 1/2 acting like a 2 year old, his lack of impulse control has been such an issue with him.  Granted he has a 2 year old sister that we could attribute his behavior to and maybe some regression but I wasn't buying it.  My gut was telling me there was something more going on.  All these thoughts go through your mind, does he have ADHD?  Autism Spectrum Disorder?  Seriously I was thinking about this everyday and it isn't something that a mother wants to think about.  Ever.  After some research, Listening to Robb Wolf podcast like a freakin' stalker I kept coming back to the question Was gluten and/or grains contributing, increasing or causing these problems?   My husband went back and forth on this issue, at the time he wasn't eating Paleo and I don't think he had any desire to despite seeing all the positive changes in me.  Our deciding factor came after a phone call from our sons kindergarten teacher, he kicked a kid in the head on the playground.  We could no longer attribute his lack of impulse control to "kid" behavior.  I was afraid that going to the pediatrician about this again would result in the usual "American Way" and put him on medications; which in my mind that is the very last thing I want to do.   Paleo was so kind to welcome my kids into its' lifestyle. ☻
I noticed differences in my kids within a couple of days, the biggest change initially was a huge increase in their appetite.  We are seriously going to go broke just trying to feed my 6 year old.  Breakfast alone for him the other morning was 2 paleo pancakes, 2 eggs, and 3 pieces of bacon.  He was still asking for more food but we were out of time and had to leave for school.  My younger son has had a great 2 weeks at school, no behavior issues to speak of.  He seems to be more focused on his school work  and he has just been such a pleasure to be around.  My kids are 2 full meals Paleo and I'm working on the 3rd.  Lunch seems to be the biggest challenge but we keep trying.

So if I had just 1 or 2 more hours in a day I truly believe that I can be super mom.  But alas there isn't so I will have to keep trying and not give up on this.  I vow to be more organized and start planning ahead a little better. 

Thursday's Eats & Workout

Today has already been a much better day, I'm feeling well rested and less stressed.  Again I wasn't overly hungry for breakfast again, not really sure what is going on but I'm trying to eat a little bit so I don't go on a ravonous hunger binge at 11am.

Breakfast:  1 cup coffee black
                         1 piece of bacon
                         Small amount of left over roterisse chicken.

Snack (post workout):  1 fruit leather

Lunch:  Roterisse chicken, leftover chicken apple sausage and 1 piece of bacon left over from breakfast.  Mixed with 1 tbsp spicy mustard.

Dinner:  2 Omega 3 enriched eggs with artichoke tampenade on top and roasted butternut squash.  I failed to plan ahead for dinner so eggs are a good safe standby.

I actually made it in for a work out today.  4 mile run at a nice easy pace followed up by squats galore.  I wanted to take it easy since today is the first day my neck is feeling better and my back is still nagging at me a bit. 

Wednesday's Eats

I have been feeling very challenged lately in maintaining my Paleo lifestyle.  Notice I call it a lifestyle, it's not a diet, I feel that calling something a "diet" gives it a negative undertone and it is just setting yourself up for failure.  As with anything in life sometime things make us go astray from what we know is good for us. Me for instance wants oatmeal chocolate chip cookies like something fierce.  So for the next several days I will be putting it out there of what I am eating everyday to keep myself accountable-and yes this will include everything even my occasional nightly libations ☻

Sleep:  Around 8 hours I'm really trying to follow Robb Wolfs sleep recommendations of 8-9 hours in a very dark room and to wake without an alarm clock.  I have 3 children 2 of whom need to be up by a certain time to get to school everyday, which includes me getting up to make them an nice Paleo breakfast to start their day.  So what I'm getting at is this...I wake to an alarm clock. 
Last night I got a pretty solid 8 hours and woke to the alarm at 6:30am feeling pretty good.

Breakfast:  2 cups of black coffee.  I didn't feel much like eating and I attribute that to the crappy food I ate last night after my kids went to bed. 
2 pieces of bacon and coffee was breakfast.

Snack:  Handful of trail mix

Lunch:  3 Organic Omega 3 eggs hardboiled, 2 tsp mayo, 1 tbsp spicy mustard for an egg salad.

Snack:  More trail mix love this stuff but it is just pure evil.

Dinner:  Chicken strips with spicy mustard, roasted green beans.  Chicken strips were "breaded" with an almond meal & coconut flour mix and baked.

1 vodka & diet tonic

No workout today, I've been nursing a pulled neck muscle.  Back to it tomorrow hopefully.

Pork Chops and Applesauce

My husband loves pork chops and applesauce.  Not my favorite thing to eat but eating chicken every night gets a bit old.  Last night when I asked him what he wanted to dinner you can guess what his response was.  I'm not a big fan of store-bought applesauce for many reasons, the taste is often to sweet without enough spiciness.  Then to add in the sugar usually high fructose corn syrup, preservatives and other crap, I pondered whether I could create my own and keeps it "semi" Paleo and I call it that because I did add some honey and apple juice.
This turned out to be a hit, with my husband and 2 of 3 kids.  That darn middle child is fighting this tooth and nail.  In the future I will use a different kind of apple I wasn't crazy about the way the Gala apples cooked down, maybe Fuji since it is a much firmer type apple.  I hope you enjoy this recipe, I served it with cauliflower "Fried" Rice you can find the recipe at http://everydaypaleo.com/2010/09/27/how-hot-is-your-kitchen-another-cooking-demo/
Here is what you need:
4 Pork chops bone in thin cut
2 tbsp olive oil
 lemon juice
sea salt & pepper
5 organic apples, I used Gala cored & cubed
2 tbsp coconut oil
2 tbsp cinnamon
2 tsp fresh ground nutmeg
2 tbsp coconut flour
1/2-1 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tbsp organic raw honey
1/2 cut 100% apple juice
1 cup water
Here's what you do:
Combine olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper with the pork chops and set aside.  I let mine sit for about an hour or so.  Meanwhile in a large saucepan, heat the coconut oil over medium high heat and add apples.  Saute for 3-4 minutes, you are just trying to bring out the natural sugars of the apples and get a little carmelization.  Add cinnamon, nutmeg and flour; combine well.  Add the apple and lemon juice, honey and water.  Bring to a boil and reduce to simmer.  I let mine simmer for about 1/2 an hour.  Just before serving, I mashed up half the apples to make give it the more traditional applesauce appearance.  For the pork chops I heated 1-2 tbsp of coconut oil in a large saute pan over med high heat, cooking about 7 minutes a side.  Pork chops were served with the applesauce on top and the cauliflower fried rice.  This was a hit with the kids and my husband.  As a side note, the applesauce is fabulous as a cold leftover, the kids and I even had some for breakfast the next day.  Enjoy!

I'm a 35-year-old mother of 3 wonderful but utterly exhausting children. oldest son is 6 1/2, my younger son is almost 5 and my completely adorable daughter (a mother's opinion only) is 2. I have been eating Paleo since February 2010 and I'm not going to lie; some days it is really easy and others it is such a struggle.
When I started this eating lifestyle change I went about it alone, my husband and kids stuck with the "normal" eating routine. Along came "The Paleo Solution" by Robb Wolf and everything has changed. I have made the decision to make it a family lifestyle change. I am the cook of the house, in theory they should eat what I cook right??? Well in a perfect world  "Of course!" would be the answer. I elected to switch 1 meal at a time to Paleo, mostly in attempt to make it easier on myself. My husband the self-proclaimed veggie hater has been such a trooper and I'm really proud of him. Dinner DONE! Breakfast...well it has been a challenge. It has only been 3 days, but small progress has been made. My middle child is the hold out; not sure where he gets this stubbornness from. :)
I decided to start blogging in attempts to keep myself accountable to my eating, voice my struggles and to have this serve as a stress relief outlet.  I love cooking and working out so I will try to include recipes too.  Bear with me, as always it's a work in progress.