Fast Paleo and Banana Fauxmeal

I'm not usually a big recipe girl. I'm lazy, a pretty good "throw it together" cook, and use whatever I have on hand. Unfortunately though that lends itself towards having a lot of the same meals over and over. I think that often moms tend to get into a big food rut. Spaghetti, tacos, soup, etc. week after week. And I think in many ways once you go paleo, and especially in the beginning, it's even worse. You come up with a handful of paleo meals that you actually are fine with eating often without getting sick of them and that's an easy paleo place to be. But what fun is that? I want to try short ribs. And pork belly. And I want almond flour crusted asparagus. And Indian food. And thai food. And more Italian food (Everyday Paleo Italian please hurry up and be released! And she's doing Thai food next I think. YAY~!)

So I'm going to start trying new recipes. UGH. I really don't want to LOL. It's easy to just make roast or meat sauce over green beans. Mexican meat and veggies with premade guacamole I can make and enjoy in my sleep. I have six kids. Trying new recipes is just one more thing to add to my plate. I want to pout and tell myself not to do it. Ugh again. At the same time I want my family to enjoy food. I want my children to leave my home for the world as people who can cook great tasting food for their friends and family. AND on top of it what a waste of the amazing paleo blogs, cookbooks, and paleo recipe sites.

Today I tried a new recipe. It's not a huge intricate dish. In fact it's so simple I'm almost embarrassed to put it as my "tried a new recipe" post. At the same time both my daughter and Cassie and I were raving about how yummy it was and what a treat it would make for those rare breakfast days I think I'll die if I eat another vegetable with my breakfast (yes those days DO happen!). I love kale and can eat it literally every day but once in a while (usually close to a hormonal time of the month) my body says "carbs please". I'm learning (and it's tough I tell ya) not to be afraid of those times and am trying to say "sure body, just this once". I always feel better when I am not afraid of the carbs.

Okay so I got the recipe off the Fast Paleo website. It's a recipe sharing website. Um.... love. Like other recipe sites it has all sorts of categories of food but FastPaleo has a couple awesome different categories as well. One is 21 day Sugar Detox recipes! I plan on doing this soon so I was stoked to see that. It also has a Civilized Caveman recipes. Honestly that man cranks out an endless stream of amazing looking recipes. How cool that the site has a section just for that. Now in theory he might run the site but I don't have any idea if he does. And there's a game section. Going and shooting a moose is definitely paleo. And with a husband who likes to shoot squirrel I need to start reading that section.

Anyways, so onto my anti-climactic recipe HA! "Faux" meal. It's supposed to be oatmealish. I'm not sure if it's oatmealish but it's DElish. I didn't take a picture because I didn't have any nuts, any fruit, etc. to put on it and it just looked like plain ole mush. So I'm going to use her amazing picture and wish I had fresh strawberries when I made mine. But I won't post the recipe so you can run over to Fast Paleo and then to her site.

This recipe is truly the easiest thing you could ever make and BOY how it satisfied the carb monster that was hounding me. SO delicious. And it wouldn't be expensive to make enough for everyone. And if you were to get cheap marked down more black bananas, it could be cheap. I just bought a huge thing of slightly overripe bananas for 29 cents a pound. Cheap. But it's super sweet, soft, warm, yumminess. And honestly with a little dark chocolate crumbled on top? Now THAT would have rocked my socks off. Strawberries and chocolate? Yeah that's the kind of breakfast this hormonal gal needs. No comments and emails about nutrient density with my chocolate banana split breakfast that I'm pining away for now.

The recipe basically has three ingredients and since I forgot baking soda mine was only two ingredients. Nom nom. Here's the Fast Paleo link to the recipe. And to the author's site OurPaleoLife which has amazing recipes too.

The next couple recipes on my Fast Paleo queue are Sweet Potato French Toast and Butterscotch Cookies. Those cookies look so good!

So that's that. Later peeps.

Time Saver Tip - Roasting Frozen Veggies

I hear a lot that I must spend forever in the kitchen. I really don't. unless I'm making salmon cakes. Argh that takes a long time. Last night we had rosemary roast and roasted spicy bacon green beans. And let me say it was downright amazing. I just finished up a bowl of it for breakfast with my bulletproof coffee.

The roast I threw in the crockpot the night before so that was cake. When it came time to make the green beans they took about I'll say... 2 minutes. And yes they're frozen. And yes that makes life easier. And yes when they're in season at the farmer's market I will spend more time on green beans. But for now I embrace the frozen green beans. We need to let our kitchen work for us instead of us working hours in it when you have a large crazy family like mine.

Cooking enough green beans for a family of six went like this.....

- Dump two bags of green beans on nice seasoned Pampered Chef cookie sheet.
- Drizzle with bacon grease
- Sprinkle with crushed red pepper, garlic powder, and salt

*notice that A. I don't worry about them being a single layer, they are piled kind of high. B. How icy and cold they look and C. my little 3yo helper who decided raw frozen green beans with bacon grease on them was delicious. He ate more than just that one. *

Bake in 350 degree over for about 40 minutes.

Eat. Nom nom. Honestly the bacon flavor on the green beans is just delicious! And that little spicy kick? Yum.

So dinner last night took me basically enough time to set up my meat the night before, and throw in a huge batch of green beans. When you throw them in frozen they get somewhere in between steamed and frozen. They start kind of icy so they steam a little and the ones on top get all roasty from the bacon grease and heat.I spent about 5 minutes in the kitchen cooking last night. Tops.

I've done this with frozen broccoli as well and you can't pile it quite as high or the bottom ones get soggier than I prefer. But I will roast some tonight and see how long it took to cook.