That’s too much work for me.

A few weeks ago, I saw a recipe in a comment thread on PaleoHacks that was something like “coconut milk with cocoa stirred in”. I don’t remember who said it or in which thread, but paired with my observation that refrigerated coconut milk becomes very thick and scoop-able inspired this recipe.

(Note: This recipe is more like Paleo Peppermint Patty Mousse, but that spoils the alliteration.)

Paleo Peppermint Patty Pudding

You will need:

1 can or equivalent of coconut milk

3 HEAPING Tablespoons of cocoa powder

splash of peppermint extract or peppermint oil (or peppermint schnapps- mmmmm)

drizzle of maple syrup, honey, stevia, or sweetener of choice

a 4 cup or larger bowl

a power whisk, egg beater, mixer, or an indefatigable arm and a whisk

spatula

Pour the coconut milk into the bowl and use the spatula to scrape out every delicious drop. Add cocoa powder. Whisk, whip, beat, or whatever you want to do to blend the cocoa with the coconut milk. When the cocoa is well incorporated into the coconut milk, add a few drops of peppermint extract or peppermint oil (or schnapps) and drizzle in a little of the sweetener. Whisk, stir, or beat to incorporate. Taste. Add more sweetener, peppermint oil, or cocoa powder to taste, and blend until smooth.

Now, most importantly- refrigerate! It only takes an hour or two to set it, and it will settle just a bit in the bowl.  Unlike pudding, you don’t need press wax paper or plastic wrap onto the top to keep a skin from forming, there’s no heating involved, and you don’t actually need to follow this or any other recipe. I intend to try a bit of orange extract with maybe a little orange zest in the future. I might even try squeezing fresh orange juice into it since without dairy it won’t curdle (might turn brown though- we’ll see). A dash of cinnamon could replace the peppermint, or a dash of cayenne with the cocoa.If you don’t have a power whisk (when I bought my stick blender it came with one- this is the model that I bought) you may not be able to get the pudding to this fabulous whipped mousse texture, but as long as you get the coconut milk well blended, it should still set up nicely.

Tip- if you want to do an individual serving presentation, pour the pudding into individual bowls before refrigerating. For some reason, stirring it after it sets makes it deflate a bit into a more normal pudding texture.

As well as being paleo and primal, this recipe is very suited as a low carb pudding, and is DEFINITELY the easiest pudding recipe that I’ve ever seen. Box mix? Who needs a box mix?

(Note: I’m currently freezing some to see if it works as a quickie ice cream, and will post pictures once I get my camera charged up)

Primal Nachos

Primal nachos- I kid you not.

As a new convert to Real Food, I spend a lot of time reading through the #WAPF #RealFood #Primal and #Paleo hashtags on Twitter for more information and new recipes.  A few days ago, RogerDeRok tweeted something about Primal nachos… with bacon instead of chips. Hmmm…

Bacon is made of pure awesome anyway, and what self respecting cook wouldn’t top her home made nachos with bacon? It’s only a step further to make the nachos out of bacon, and it’s low carb, and real food. In fact, if you subscribe to nutrition information that’s found in the Primal, Paleo, Real Food, and Traditional Food movements (as I do), it’s much, much healthier than traditional nachos (depending on the quality of the ingredients). So, why not? (Note to new visitors: I started this site before I started down the real food path and have not had a chance to update old posts- please either ignore old posts or just know that they will be corrected/updated at some point in the future.)

I have not actually read Primal Blueprint, so forgive me if I’ve gotten anything wrong, but I did keep this first batch super simple since you can, of course, doctor up your nachos any way you want.

How to make Primal Nachos:

If you happen to have any left over bacon, simply reheat. If not, cook some fresh bacon until it’s crunchy and firm. You do not want floppy bacon unless you eat your nachos with a fork.

Take your pan, still warm from heating the bacon, and add a splash of milk and a handful of shredded cheese. Stir until all melted and gooey.

Pour the cheese sauce over your bacon.

Top with salsa of your choice (I used home made lacto-fermented salsa).

This is a one pan snack or meal and is really pretty awesome. If I were serving this to guests, I would have used pastured bacon instead of cheaper cured bacon, and I probably would have used Red Leicester cheese for the extra tanginess instead of sharp cheddar. Next time, I will probably add a bit of mustard or a splash of apple cider vinegar for that tang that was missing from the cheese.

Obviously, you can go crazy with this. Sliced black olives, fresh diced tomatoes and onions instead of salsa, and non-Primal types could even crumble up chips as a topping and call them upside down nachos or similar.

One thing to keep in mind when making the cheese sauce is that cheddar isn’t the best melting cheese and will harden or turn mealy if you don’t eat it while it’s still fresh and warm. I’m not sure if there’s a way to fix it without draining the cheese in milk, but you may want to consider blending a cheddar or cheddar-like cheese (like Red Leicester) with a softer cheese, like maybe mozzarella.

That said, it’s about time for me to start working on AndreAnna’s bacon wrapped mini-salmon cakes. Please let me know in the comments if I need to fix anything in this post, or any other ideas that I should try (right now, I’m thinking roasted nori “chips”).

Anyway- I won’t go into a long detailed discussion of where I’ve been or where I think I’m going for now. If you have a desire for immediate information on real food, I suggest that you click that link and browse (clicking as many links on that site as possible is also encouraged).

Though I’ve been more or less good about cooking and eating real food, it’s not always easy when you have a full time job, a side business, lazy tendencies, and an addiction to Frontierville. Particularly if you also participate in any personal hygiene activities, and your job’s hours prevent easy shopping at farmer’s markets or even non-24 hour grocery stores. Even worse if you have a gas oven and the outside temperatures are topping the 90′s.

But this weekend, my husband was supposed to go away all day Saturday, and the temperature was to be under 80 degrees. I planned accordingly. Sadly, hubs got sick and stayed home, but due to the sudden drop in temperature, use of the oven was actually encouraged. Yay!

I made:

1 large loaf of yeast bread based on a medieval recipe (though using modern yeast instead of randomly collected yeast from the air or ale yeast) and I soaked the whole grains in whey over night to lower the phytic acid.

2 loaves of “beer bread” (in quotes because I used one bottle of natural ginger ale for one, and one bottle of natural apple cider soda for the other) of 100% whole grains (whole wheat, spelt, and rye).

1/2 batch of soaked blueberry, chocolate chip, whole grain pancakes (whole wheat and spelt)- again soaking the whole grains in water and whey to reduce phytic acid.

1 meal consisting of thin sliced organic steaks, green squash fried in coconut oil, a veggie mix (broccoli, carrots, water chestnuts) sauteed in coconut oil, and one box of breaded butterfly shrimp (purchased before my real food days, and decided to use up and give hubs a treat).

1 meal consisting of grass fed beef burgers with French fries fried in coconut oil, and sugar snap peas sauteed in coconut oil.

1 whole 4.25lb organic chicken (couldn’t bring myself to pay the price for pastured, though I desperately wanted to) cooked in a Crock Pot with the stock reserved and put into the freezer, and the meat shredded up for chicken salad, to go into the stock, and a little to go into my sprouted lentil tacos later this week. Bones are in the freezer to be boiled again with more chicken bones for more stock later.

1 small jar of lacto fermented salsa which is fermenting on my kitchen counter right now.

1 cup of lentils sprouted for tacos later this week.

1 quart of yogurt turned into yogurt cheese and whey (with the whey being used to soak whole grains and to lacto ferment the salsa, and the remainder being bottled into a pretty glass olive oil dispenser). The yogurt cheese was mixed with the remainder of the salsa that didn’t fit into the ferment jar, and combined with mayo and chicken became our chicken salad sandwiches for work Monday and Tuesday.

While the weekend wasn’t totally real food (for example, a local but not organic or sustainable company’s sausage to go with the pancakes- the chocolate chips in the pancakes were the remnants of an old Hershey’s chocolate chip bag), I also purchased some unusual heirloom tomatoes for the salsa and to slice up for the burgers, I drank a lot of raw milk, and I got oodles of compliments from my husband on the home baked bread. My favorite being “now this is REAL bread, not the stuff you get at the store!” (this being soon after his first taste of grass fed organic milk of which his response was “this is the best milk I’ve ever had!”).

I have yet to make the coconut oil chocolates that I’d intended to make, and I didn’t quite make it to cooking the beets before they developed mold. I’m currently cooking a 2lb meatloaf in the Crockpot using grass fed burger, and will have to boil and mash the organically grown potatoes tonight. But all in all, I’m very satisfied with my weekend’s efforts.

Will I bake yeast bread every weekend? I think not. It’s fun and satisfying, but there are way too many carbs which can’t be resisted (It’s sooo good), and it really does take a lot of time and effort. Will I be lacto fermenting everything I can get my hands on? Probably not- I have no where to store it in our tiny little town house. Will I keep on making things from scratch and make an effort at continuing to eat real food? Absolutely.

And just as a heads up- if you ever run out of real food recipe ideas, try doing a search for “medieval ‘fill in the blank’ recipe” or “SCA ‘fill in the blank’ recipe”. Recipes from before there were fake foods are automatically real food. Expand a bit and add in “Victorian ___ recipe” or “Civil War ___ recipe” and you’ll have real food recipes coming out of your ears!

P.S. I haven’t updated this site in about a year- if you scroll through my old posts, don’t get mad at any outdated information! I plan to go back and fix them with real food information!