Category Archives: Paleo

Spaghetti with Beef and Zoodles

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This awesome WonderEsque Spiralizer Tri Blade Spiral Slicer + FREE Cleaning Brush came in the mail today for  a product review. You can read my Amazon review By Clicking Here.

zoodles

I love spaghetti but I can’t handle the gluten in the pasta. I have tried the gluten-free ones, but they really raise my blood sugar. I have heard about the “zoodles” or noodles make out of zucchini.

Zoodles

zoodles
zoodles

 

Here is a little video of me making my zucchini noodles with the WonderEsque Spiralizer.

Now the simple recipe

I made my sauce the usual way.  ⇒A jar of organic sauce from the store.⇐ ☺️ added some cooked grass-fed ground beef and let  it simmer on the stove while I made my zoodles.

I didn’t cook my zoodles because I knew the hot sauce would. I wanted them to stay firm like an aldente noodle. Plus raw is better for you.

zoodles

The zucchini noodles did release some moisture when the sauce cooked them a little, but that was okay.

zoodles
look at that “noodley” goodness

So it was a simple as that. No cook and gluten-free noodles for your spaghetti sauce.

I’m curious to see what other recipes I can make with my spiralizer. I would love to hear you ideas and favorite recipes. Just leave a comment below.

bon appetit

Get one on Amazon Here

(NOT an affiliate link)

#wonderesquespiralizer

*I was provided with a discount coupon for this product in exchange for my honest and unbiased review. I am NOT paid for the links to Amazon*

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Freedom Super Foods Organic Raw Cacao Powder Review + Recipe

Freedom Super Foods Organic Raw Cacao Powder

Raw – Organic – Kosher – Cold Pressed

 

  • Produced in a FDA approved facility that is free of the 8 major allergens
  • Non fermented beans
  • Antioxidant rich superfood
  • Magnesium, Potassium, Iron, Copper & other nutrients 
  • Highly alkalizing 
  • Sourced from small sustainable family farms
  • 60 Day no questions asked guarantee

 

I couldn’t wait to open up my bag of raw cacao powder from Freedom Super Foods. Inside the bag was this beautiful fine, silky smooth chocolate powder. Yum… It smelled heavenly!

Organic Raw Cacao Powder

 

I had to taste it right out of the bag. I didn’t know what to expect since it was unsweetened and raw cacao powder. It wasn’t bad. It had a nice dark chocolaty rich flavor.

I thought to myself “I need to make some brownies!”

When you order your bag of raw cacao powder you will also get an e-book with some recipes in it. There is a brownie recipe included but it has gluten in it. I needed a Paleo recipe for brownies, so I researched online and tested a few recipes and came up with my own super moist and chocolaty Paleo gluten-free brownie recipe. I hope you love these brownies as much as I do. I really love the flavor the raw cacao powder gives the brownies plus I feel good about all the nutrients, flavonoids and antioxidants that are  in the cacao powder.

freedom super foods
image from freedomsuperfoods.com

FreedomSuperFoods.com

To purchase your own bag of Freedom Super Foods Organic Raw Cacao Powder on Amazon click here.

 

Cacao
image from freedomsuperfoods.com

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

The Dreaded Weight Loss Plateau

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I did it! I finally broke through the dreaded weight loss plateau.  Everyone always says don’t weigh yourself, don’t worry about what the scale says.  Well easier said than done.  I had tried for so many years to lose weight and so many diets that I had grown impatient.  I kept seeing or reading about so many people losing weight eating a Paleo diet that I thought the weight would just melt off quickly.

The first few times I weighted myself I would see a loss of a pound or so and I was ecstatic! It was finally happening, I was losing weight.  People were starting to notice and complement me.  My clothes felt a little looser.  I was starting to feel so much better and my energy level was increasing, that all felt so good.  Then it happened…the dreaded weight loss plateau.

I weighed myself  and I weighed the same as last week. So I waited two weeks and I still weighed the same.  I thought to myself well maybe I am just retaining some water, that’s what everyone always says when their weight fluctuates. When you have a lot of weight to lose like I do you can be easily discouraged by thinking how long it will take to lose so much weight.

Another week, no weight loss.  So I thought to myself, I am feeling so good, my energy level is up and my blood sugar levels are going down.  My mood, anxiety and depression are so much better.  My physical aches and pains are almost non-existent.  I have a lot to be thankful for and the weight loss with come again, just keep on keepin’ on.

I decided to start walking around the yard in the evenings to get a little exercise and sweat out some toxins.  I hadn’t really been paying attention to my portion sizes of what I was eating; it was hard enough just cutting out all the junk food, gluten, dairy, soy and legumes.  So I became more aware of what I was eating and how much I was eating, and I quit worrying about weighing myself.

Then It happened.. I broke through the weight loss plateau!  I was out in the yard taking pictures of flowers and my mother was looking at me and she said you really need to pull your shorts up, they look like they are falling off of you. Then I realized just how loose they actually were, and I thought to myself, I’m gonna go weigh myself.  Sure enough I had lost almost 6 lbs. since the last time I had weighed.  I was so excited, and proud of myself for sticking to it.  All of my old pants and shorts were too big, it was so satisfying to remove them all from my closet and get new smaller clothes. Yippee!

I haven’t weighed myself since that day, now I know what is really important is my health and how I feel, not what the scale says.  Don’t get me wrong, I will weigh myself again, cause it is exciting watching the numbers get smaller, but the scale will not dictate my success now.

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Gotta Chop Paleo Almond Butter Cups Recipe

If you are like me, you love a yummy chocolaty treat every once in awhile, and boy do I love almond butter cups! They are so creamy and chocolaty and just melt in your mouth.  Before I went Paleo I used to be addicted to peanut butter cups. They were definitely a weakness of mine. I couldn’t stop until I ate almost the whole bag. I paid for that with skyrocketing blood sugar soars up into the 400’s mg/dl. I would feel so sick and be so sleepy I would be in bed the rest of the day trying to recover. High blood sugar is so hard on our bodies, read more here

Well, I finally found a solution– My Gotta Chop Paleo Almond Butter Cups!.  Eating a Paleo diet has definitely saved my life, and probably my FEET.  Being diabetic, nerve damage and poor blood circulation from high blood sugar is one of the reasons so many diabetics loose their feet and legs.  I don’t want to be one of those people, so I decided to take control of my life again and start eating a clean healthy diet.

The reason that I made almond butter cups instead of peanut butter cups is because peanuts are not a Paleo friendly food.  Peanuts are not nuts, but they are legumes and they contain phytic acid, lectin, and aflatoxins. Also, so many people have peanut allergies and problems with digesting them.

The Gotta Chop Paleo Almond Butter Cups Recipe contains organic and more healthy ingredients than those over-processed store bought candies with all their needless chemicals and they taste great too.

Guacamole Pico de Gallo Recipe

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It is Tuesday afternoon and I need a little pick me up.  I am feeling a bit snacky, so I search the kitchen for something to make.  I found an avocado, tomato, onion, jalapeño, and some organic blue corn chips, so I thought why don’t I make a little guacamole pico de gallo…yum!

Guacamole Pico de Gallo recipe —

I chopped up my onion, tomato, avocado, and a little jalapeño and added them to a bowl.  I added some sea salt, ground black pepper, garlic powder, a dash of cayenne pepper, and a little drizzle of cold pressed extra virgin olive oil and gently mixed everything together.

I grabbed my bowl of guacamole pico de gallo and my chips and a good book and headed outside to find a nice shady spot to sit and read and enjoy my yummy snack I just whipped up.  What a beautiful day it is outside, and it just got better with my healthy little snack.  Hope you enjoy your day too, and try some guacamole pico de gallo too, you will be glad you did.

chip with guac pico de gallo

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Gluten-Free and Loving It

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As I am walking around the yard I think to myself how long it’s been since I have had the energy to even go outside, much less walk around.  It is unbelievable how much my life has changed since I started eating organic clean whole foods and cut GLUTEN completely out of my diet, I am gluten-free and loving it!  I am eating a low-carb, high-fat LCHF mostly Paleo diet trying to get my diabetes under control, and so far it’s working.

I tested my blood sugar level and it was 127 mg/dl.  Now that may not sound like a perfect number, but it is truly a miracle for me.  For example, I looked at my calendar where I track my blood sugar readings, and on February 16, 2014 my numbers where as follows– my first reading of the day after fasting all night was 231 mg/dl, then the rest of day it only got worse– 334,476,434,492,431, and finally 343 mg/dl.  I felt terrible ALL the time.  I don’t ever want to go back there again!

I love how I am feeling now, my mood is so much more calm and positive, and I am starting get energy and an actual desire to get out of bed, even get out of the house in the day time.  It has been years since I have even gone out in the sun, and now I know how important getting a little sunlight is so my body can make its own vitamin D.

I love flowers with all their beautiful colors and fragrances, they just make me happy.  I especially love finding wildflowers. I have noticed that now I enjoy walking around the yard taking pictures,  picking blackberries, or even doing some light yard work or gardening.  Oh yeah, and a big bonus, I am actually loosing weight.  I love the new me.  Here is a little slide-show of my recent photos.

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Dark Chocolate Bark with Coconut and Pecans

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It was a beautiful stormy day here in Florida today.   I love listening to the distant thunder and watching the storm clouds roll in.  Since I would be inside today I thought why don’t I try out a new recipe.  I found an organic 85% cacao bar in the pantry, so I thought I would make some dark chocolate bark.  I melted my cacao bar in a bowl and added some finely shredded unsweetened coconut and some ground up pecans from the fridge.  I then spread the mixture thinly on some parchment paper and dusted the top with a little more coconut and pecans.  I placed the parchment paper on a plate for stability and put it in the fridge to cool until hardened.  When the bark  chilled and was hard enough I broke it into pieces and put in a small glass bowl…so cute and yummy.  I think next time I will add a little coconut sugar to sweeten it up a bit, 85% cacao can be kinda bitter.  When picking out your cacao bar be sure to read the label, almost every bar I looked at in the store contained soy, or soy lecithin!

Dark Chocolate Bark
Dark Chocolate Bark
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Hippocrates Said It Best

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Hippocrates said it best — “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”

That quote from Hippocrates keeps popping up everywhere I look nowadays. I thought to myself… is the universe trying to tell me something? The answer to that question is yes! The more I embark on this journey of totally changing my lifestyle it becomes more clear to me. Food has become so abundant, so easily accessible, so instant, that I never missed a meal or opportunity to indulge. Food was not being “my medicine” it was being my entertainment, my pleasure, my vice. I was on a downward spiral of obesity, diabetes, depression, anxiety, and just overall poor health. I was miserable!

Well now I am following the wise words of “the father of western medicine,” Hippocrates, and healing my body with the food I eat. I am losing weight, gaining energy, and getting a new zest for life. I was so addicted to processed foods, sugar and gluten that I thought I would never be able to break free. But an amazing thing happened once I rid myself of those toxins… I no longer craved them! It is ridiculous the amount of toxic ingredients that are in the over-processed foods we eat. I honestly don’t know how the FDA allows such things in our foods. Even our healthy fruits and vegetables are a risk to eat now with all the genetic modifications being done to the seeds. Our bodies were not designed to eat these GMO’s. Choose organic when possible to avoid ingesting copious amounts of pesticides and GM foods. Eliminate processed foods with all their chemicals. I have also eliminated gluten, soy, and dairy. I eat an organic whole food Paleo diet now, this is what works for me now, but as I stated earlier, this is a journey and who knows what the future holds… but now I am listening to my body.

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It’s Cookie Time…

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My favorite time of day… cookie time!  Well I got my sister to whip up another batch of her  yummy Paleo friendly cookies from her secret recipe.  This time I helped and even  added a few of my favorite ingredients to the mix.  I added some unsweetened finely shredded coconut and I chopped up some of my Dark Chocolate Enjoy Life Bar to make little chocolate chips in my cookies.  They smell so good just coming out of the oven, hot and fresh — yum yum!

Cookies

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Happy Easter

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Hope everyone had a HAPPY EASTER.  I made my first raw-vegan cupcakes.  I got the recipe from FullyRawKristina on YouTube.  It was really fun trying something new, and totally raw-vegan.  I am not a vegan at this time, but who knows what the future holds.  I am trying different ways of eating to see what actually agrees with my body.  I know for sure that anything I do eat will be organic, non-gmo, soy free,  and gluten-free.  I have also cut out most dairy foods too, but sometimes a little cheese slips into something,  but  not very often.

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