Month: December 2016

What’s Cooking with Our Paleo Family, Christmas Edition

What’s up, paleo friends? I hope your houses are full of sugarplums and Christmas magic! Around the Heinze household, we have been knee-deep in our annual tradition of using all the almond flour and maple syrup on the planet to make dozens and dozens and dozens of cookies. Here are just a few…

Paleo Spritz Cookies
Paleo Cut-Out Sugar Cookies
Raspberry Almond Squares
Chocolate Peppermint Cookies

This year I branched out and tried some candy as well – with mixed results. If you check the blog often or follow me on Facebook (and you should be doing those things :), then you will have noticed some of the goodies we’ve been cooking up over here. Like this chocolate orange fudge.

Chocolate Orange Fudge

But just for fun, and to show you that even superstar food bloggers like yours truly make mistakes in the kitchen, here are some of my holiday baking failures…

Caramel pecan turtles – I tried multiple batches of these and just could not get the caramel to set up. But, all hope was not lost. We melted these babies down and used the sauce to top our favorite non-dairy ice cream. Someone may have eaten it with a spoon right out of the bowl. Ahem.
The perfect lemon square eludes me again this year. I tried this recipe several times last Christmas as well and just can’t seem to get it right. The taste is awesome and I will be posting the lemon curd recipe for sure, but as a whole, these lacked that crispy base a good lemon square needs. And the lemon layer needed to be thicker. But at some point, I run out of time and resources and have to put off further attempts.
This is not what a pan of fudge should look like. I think something went wrong. 🙂
This is a pizza casserole with cauliflower crust on top. This looks great, but it was awful. Way too cauliflower-y and way too garlicky. We smelled like garlic for days after eating this. But hey, the cheese and pepperoni on top were good.

Thankfully, I’ve had great success in the appetizer department this year. I will get the recipes up for you by New Year’s Eve. But in the mean time, here’s a sneak peak…

Piggies in Blankies – everybody loves these! The pastry curst was amazingly good.
Sausage Balls – yep, those delicious morsels of goodness you remember, but minus the biscuit mix. These are soooo much better!

And still to come are mini quiche Lorraine in prosciutto cups. I hope these turn out well, because my mouth is watering just thinking about them!

We’ve been on Christmas break over here and my kids think I’m practicing to become the world’s next dictator. Maybe I am. Bwahahah. In all seriousness, I have found that the only way I can manage to have a productive day is if I map out the day hour by hour. This might totally drive some of you free spirits crazy. But for a planner like me, it’s the only way to go.

Plus, I have a little experience with this kids out of school business and know that if there is not structure and order, there is chaos. And if there is chaos, there is anger and yelling and very, very little Christmas cheer. So it’s lists and schedules for us. And it’s been working beautifully.

The experts tell us that kids like order and discipline. As we wade through the painful process, I sometimes doubt that wisdom, but in the end, it always turns out to be true.

Here’s what I do: In the morning, I open my iDevice, start a new note and type away, breaking the day down into reasonable chunks that work for us. I give assignments for me and for the kids, that way we all know what we’re supposed to be doing at any given time. Then I send it to the printer and our day is planned. Voila! Of course, we are flexible, but pretty much, we’ve been sticking to our schedule each day and we’ve gotten a lot accomplished. Here’s an example:

If you need a last minute Christmas gift for your mom or best friend or husband or anybody really, may I suggest the best new paleo cookbook out on the market in 2016? You can download Your Paleo Holiday right now. No shipping charges. No waiting! It’s chock full of recipes to get you through your Christmas festivities and beyond.

There’s lots more good stuff in store for 2017. I have some super informative articles planned for you and of course, lots and lots of new recipes, so keep checking back regularly. And spread the word to your friends!

I’m going to go put my feet up for a while, but I will get those appetizer recipes up for you in the next few days. In the mean time, I hope you enjoy this holiday season with family and friends. We celebrate because we have a God who loves us to much that He came down in the flesh to live with us. The presents and the family time and the food are wonderful, but this Good News is truly why we celebrate. And what a great reason it is!

“Don’t be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Christ, the Lord.” Luke 2:10-11

This Week with Our Paleo Family, December 13, 2016

I sincerely hope you all had a happy and healthy Thanksgiving, full of delicious food and stress-free family time. As for my gang, we took off the day after T-day and headed for Florida. We were all ready for some rest and relaxation. Why did we think going to Disney World would provide those two things???

Before we embarked on the Most Magical Place on Earth, we spent a day at the Kennedy Space Center. What an awesome experience! If you have never been or if you have never taken your children to a NASA visitor’s center, I heartily encourage you to do so. I was never taught astronomy in school and we only briefly touched on the history of the space race, but I learned all about it alongside my children during our science studies these past couple of years. These studies ignited a fire (pardon the pun) in all of us for this fascinating piece of history. If you don’t know much about astronomy or our space program, check out a couple books from the library, study up and go visit. You will be blown away.

In the coming weeks, I’ll do a full recap of our trip and how we managed to eat mostly paleo and totally gluten free while we were away.

For now, I just wanted to pop in and say, “Hi.” I have lots of recipes in the pipeline and just recently published is one you will definitely want to try: Paleo Chicken Pot Pie.

This recipe makes a huge amount so it’s perfect for splitting into two pans and freezing one for a hectic day down the road. Or just enjoy lots and lots of leftovers. If you have turkey in your freezer from Thanksgiving, this would be a perfect use for it.

The crust in this recipe is to die for. I think most of the credit for that goes to the lard I used. If you haven’t tried US Wellness Meats, I heartily recommend them. Everything we’ve ordered has been amazing and their lard is simply the best. This is my honest, un-endorsed opinion.

As we transition from Thanksgiving festivities to full-blown Christmas celebrations, it’s time to start thinking about cookies. You probably thought I was going to say something about giving back to others. I absolutely endorse that as well. There are so many worthy causes to which we can donate our material resources and/or time and I encourage you to seek them out.

But here on the Our Paleo Family blog, my goal is to empower you with recipes that will get you through whatever life throws at you, be it a family dinner, a pot luck celebration, an office party, or just your average Wednesday night. It is holiday time and I know lots of people include special foods in their celebrations. In my house, we bake and eat and give away lots and lots of cookies. My first batch of the season was these amazing Paleo-ish Fudge Bars.

These cookies are super rich and stay delicious for a very long time, so they’re perfect for making early in the season.

If you need more treat ideas, have a look at these recipes:

New and Improved Paleo Sugar Cookies

Seasonal Shortbread in Fun Shapes

Raspberry Almond Squares (gluten, dairy and egg free)

Paleo Chocolate Peppermint Cookies

I’m working on several new varieties for this season:

lemon squares

peppermint bark cookies

caramel, pecan clusters

press cookies

Right now, my oven is on strike, but keep an eye out on the blog as I get these recipes just right and publish them here. If you need more celebratory recipes to get you through the season, I encourage you to download my holiday recipe book, Your Paleo Holiday. It’s full of recipes for Christmas, New Year’s and beyond. All the recipes are gluten free and most are completely paleo.

New Cookbook

And for those of you who need Christmas cookies in your life, but don’t have the time to make them, let me do that for you! You can order any of my cookies, see the list here, but the molasses gingerbread in cute little gingerbread man shapes or the shortbread in fun holiday shapes would be perfect for your next party or just munching on at home.

My oven’s decision to quit on me has greatly interfered with my plans, so I don’t have pictures of these gingerbread men and pretty shortbread snowflakes, but I’ll get them for you soon.

Don’t forget to squeeze in lots of veggies between all those cookies. That’s my public service announcement for today.

Check back soon for more fun recipes!