Bacon Broccoli Chicken Bake

This is one of the freezer meals that came in handy while I was pregnant. It's easy to make a bunch of these ahead of time and then pull them out of the freezer on nights when you just don't feel like making a mess in the kitchen. 

 

Ingredients

• 4.5 cups diced sweet potatoes
• 2.5 cups diced boneless skinless chicken thighs
• 2 cups broccoli florets
• ⅓ cup cooked, crumbled bacon
• ¼ cup sliced onion
• ¼  teaspoon salt
• ¼  teaspoon pepper
• ½ teaspoon garlic powder
• ½  cup coconut cream
• 2 Tablespoons grass fed butter

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Grease an 8×8 baking pan.
3. Layer ingredients starting with half of potatoes, half of chicken, half of broccoli, half of bacon, and onion 
4. Season with half of the salt, pepper, and half of the garlic powder.
5. Repeat the layers and seasoning. Then pour coconut cream over ingredients and cut pieces of butter all over the top.
6. Cover with foil and bake for one hour or until chicken is cooked through and potatoes are tender.
7. Remove foil and bake uncovered for 5-10 more minutes. 

Teriyaki Chicken Sliders

These sliders are super easy to prepare ahead of time, making them great for a quick lunch, or a casual dinner. The Paleo bun takes only one minute to cook, and it packs all the health benefits of the flaxseed (don't tell the kids). Plus you just can't beat the taste when it soaks up all the delicious juices from the chicken.

For the chicken: 

Ingredients

• 2 chicken breasts
Glaze
• 1/4 cup + 1/2 tbls honey
• 1/3 cup coconut aminos
• 1 tbls olive oil
• 2 tbls raspberry jam
• 1 tsp almond butter
• 1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 tsp sesame oil
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/4 cup sweet onion, diced
• 1/8 tsp crushed red pepper
sesame seeds, topping

Place your chicken breast in the crockpot. Combine all of the teriyaki glaze ingredients and pour over the chicken. Cook on low for 4 hours. Remove chicken, shred, and return to sauce. 

For the bun:

Ingredients

• 1/4 c. almond flour 
• 2 Tbsp. flaxseed meal
• Pinch sea salt
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 Tbsp. grass-fed butter
• 1 Large egg

Directions

1. Melt butter 
2. Whisk egg and then slowly drizzle in the melted butter.
3. To the egg and butter add almond flour, flaxseed meal and salt. Mix well with a spoon.
4. Sprinkle with baking powder and mix one more time.
5. Spoon into ramekin or large mug and microwave for one minute.
6. Remove from microwave with dish towel and invert on a cooling rack.
7. Once cool, split in half and enjoy!

For those of you who don’t have a microwave or limit microwave use, this can be baked in the oven at 350 for 15-20 minutes. 

Paleo "Spaghetti" & Meatball Cups

This was originally a recipe that I found online and made a few changes to. I used ground turkey and it came out amazing, but you could also use ground beef. These are seriously little cups of comfort food heaven!!  

Ingredients

• 1 spaghetti squash, cut in half lengthwise and seeds removed;

• 1 lb. ground turkey or ground beef

• 4 egg whites, whisked;

• 1 egg;

• ½ tbsp. dried parsley;

• ½ tbsp. dried basil;

• ½ tbsp. dried thyme;

• Coconut oil

• Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Ingredients for the tomato sauce 

• 2 cups good quality tomato sauce;
• 1 garlic clove, minced;
• ½ tbsp. dried parsley;
• ½ tbsp. dried basil;
• ½ tbsp. dried thyme;
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper;

Preparation

1. Preheat your oven to 350 F.
2. Place the spaghetti squash on a baking sheet, cut side down, and bake for 45 minutes.
3. Combine the ground turkey, dried parsley, dried, basil, dried thyme, and egg, and season to taste with salt and pepper. Mix everything until well combined.
4. Roll the meat into meatballs of about 1 inch in diameter.
5. In a bowl, combine all the ingredients for the tomato sauce and season to taste.
6. In a large skillet placed over a medium heat, sauté the meatballs until browned on all sides.
7. Add the tomato sauce to the skillet and cook for 7 to 10 minutes, or until the meatballs are cooked through.
8. Once the spaghetti squash is cooked, use a large spoon to scoop the stringy pulp from the squash and place in a bowl.
9. Lower the oven’s heat to 350 F.
10. Mix the egg white with the spaghetti squash, and then fill each cavity of a muffin tin with the squash mix, pressing down in the middle to make a “nest” for the meatball.
11. Place one meatball on top of each muffin and place in the oven for about 20 minutes.
12. Serve with remaining sauce drizzled on top of each meatball bite.

Easy Homemade First Foods

I'm just beginning to integrate more and more solid foods into my daughter's diet. Sometimes I buy her premade food, but I prefer to make my own so that I know exactly what she's getting. Plus, it's more fun to get creative and experiment with different flavors! Here are my top five simple vitamin-packed baby food recipes that I've started her off with:

Carrot-Apple Chicken
Ingredients:
1 small apple (cored & seeds removed)
1/2 small onion
12 oz carrots
8 fl oz water
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp olive oil
14 oz chicken breast

• Peel and chop the onion, carrots, and apple
• Heat the olive oil in a saucepan and sautee the onion until soft. Add the chopped carrots, water, and bay leaf, and bring to a boil.
• Reduce heat, cover, and cook for 10 minutes.
• Cut chicken into cubes and add to the saucepan along with the chopped apple. Cook for another 10 minutes.
• Remove bay leaf and puree the mixture in a blender.

Vanilla-Cinnamon Sweet Potato/Pumpkin Puree
Ingredients:
1 medium sized sweet potato
1 cup pumpkin puree
2 tsp vanilla extract
cinnamon to taste

• Bake your sweet potato in the oven, or boil it on the stove until easily punctured with a fork.
• Combine all ingredients in a blender and puree until smooth. If the puree seems too thick, add water in 1/4 cup increments as needed.

Apple/Green Bean/Broccoli Puree
Ingredients:
2 apples
1/2 cup broccoli florets
1/2 cup green beans

• Core and chop the apples, trim and chop the green beans.
• Place apples, green beans, and broccoli into a steamer pot over boiling water and cover. Cook for 10 minutes or until all vegetables can be easily punctured with a fork.
• Place all ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth. If the puree seems too thick, add water from your steamer pot in 1/4 cup increments as needed.

Sweet Potato/Pear/Red Pepper Puree
Ingredients:
1 sweet potato
1 red bell pepper
1 pear

Peel and chop the sweet potato.
Seed and chop the pepper.
Core and chop the pear.

• Place sweet potato in a steamer pot over boiling water, covered, for 10 minutes. Add red pepper, pear, and steam for another 5-10 minutes, or until the pear is tender.
• Add all ingredients to the blender and puree until smooth. If the puree seems too thick, add water from your steamer pot in 1/4 cup increments as needed.

Apple & Coconut Milk
Ingredients:
6 apples
1/2 cup canned coconut milk (full fat)
1/4 tsp clove

• Peel, core, and chop apples.
• Place apples, coconut milk, and cloves in medium saucepan and heat over medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until apples can be cut in half with the back of a spoon.
• Place all ingredients into blender and blend until smooth.

Salted Caramel Iced Protein Coffee

I found myself craving an iced coffee treat today, but wasn't about to leave my house to go spend money. So I started looking around my kitchen to see what I could throw together. 

Sometimes if we don't finish our whole pot of coffee in the morning I like to pour what's left into ice cube trays and freeze it. We also always have flavored sugar-free syrups in the cupboard, so that got the wheels turning, and I came up with this concoction! 

Ingredients:

16oz unsweetened vanilla almond milk

2 scoops vanilla protein powder

4 frozen coffee cubes

2 Tablespoons sugar-free salted caramel syrup 

In a shaker cup mix up your almond milk, protein, and flavored syrup. 

Pour over the frozen coffee cubes, and wait a minute or two for it to start melting. 

Stir and enjoy!! 

You could use any kind of flavored syrup, I just really like the salted caramel with the vanilla protein. You could also put it all in the blender and have your own sugar-free protein frappacino!! 

How to Calculate Your Macros

I get asked a lot about macros. The main question that I get is "how much should I be eating of each?" The difficulty in answering this question is that this ratio is unique to every individual. It changes based on height, weight, goals, and your body's specific metabolism and nutritional needs. It took me a long time of playing around with different percentages before I got it dialed in just right, and even then, these percentages change daily based on my activity and energy levels.
I can however, provide a general overview that will serve as a starting point for those who are new to calculating their macros. Then once you get comfortable with the process, you can start tooling with different ratios and observing your body's response.

First of all, I would like to address exactly what a macro is. "Macros" (short for macronutrients) are made of the big three nutritional building blocks: Protein, Carbohydrates, and Fat. Every food is made up of some ratio of these three nutrients. Foods are obviously also made up of other nutrients such as vitamins and minerals (known as MICROnutrients), but for now we are only interested in the macros.

A lot of people follow the diet philosophy of "IIFYM", also known as "If It Fits Your Macros".  These are the "flexible dieters" who overlook the nutrient density of foods when they calculate their ratios. On the IIFYM program, pizza and beer could be a regular meal staple. For our purposes I emphasize the consumption of primarily whole foods when calculating macros. That is not to say that you have to do the same, but I prefer to get the most nutritional "bang for my buck" when I'm fueling my body for workouts.

Doing The Math
Most nutrition programs recommend that everybody start out with a 40:30:30 ratio of carbs, proteins, and fats. That's 40% carbohydrates, 30% protein, and 30% fats. In order to calculate the number of grams of each, you want to start with your protein. Different programs will recommend different methods of calculating this number, but it generally goes off of your weight. I recommend that most people start with 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. Honestly, most programs recommend less, I just find that this is the easiest way to get started. Weigh 130lbs? Eat 130 grams of protein. Weigh 200lbs? That's 200 grams of protein. Simple.

Once you have your protein calculated, it's easy to figure out how many grams of carbs and fats you should be eating. First you need to multiply your grams of protein by 4, since there are four calories per gram. Lets say you weigh 150lbs. 150x4=600, so that gives you a daily caloric intake of roughly 600 calories. You should ideally be taking in the same number of calories in fat. Each gram of fat contains 9 calories, so divide 600 by 9, and you get approximately 67 grams of (healthy) fat each day. The last piece of the puzzle is carbohydrates. You want to be eating 40% carbs each day. To calculate this, you take your 150 grams of protein and divide it by 0.3. This is the 30%. Then take that number and multiply it by 0.4 to get 40% carbohydrates. In our example, this works out to 200 grams of carbs each day, or 800 calories (since there are 4 calories per gram of carbohydrate). Next you can add all three together for your daily caloric intake. For this scenario it comes out to be 2,000 calories, with a macronutrient break down of 200/150/67.

This is just a starting point. These numbers will obviously vary based on the individual's body fat percentage, activity level, metabolism, and fitness goals. While ideally we would be balancing these ratios at every meal, that can be overwhelming when you're first starting out. I always tell people to first try to meet these goals with your overall daily food intake before you start stressing out every time you sit down to eat. Otherwise you find yourself worrying more about playing food tetris with your macro ratios, rather than enjoying a delicious meal with your family.

If at the end of the day your ratios are a little off, don't stress about it! Your health will not be destroyed because of one bad day. It is more a matter of making these things a habit over time which determines success.

Once you feel like you've gotten the hang of it (I recommend giving it a few weeks to see how your body responds), then you can start tweaking your numbers here and there. However, your protein should stay the same. Regardless of whether or not you worked out that day, whether you are cutting or bulking, protein should always stay constant. Playing around with your levels of carbohydrates and fats will produce the most changes in your body. But again, if you experiment with a new ratio you need to give your body a few weeks at that new percentage in order to see if you are putting on muscle, decreasing your body fat percentage, or maintaining your current build. If your body's response is not in line with your goals, then start adjusting.

The bottom line is that there is no magic ratio. Every person's body will react differently to different macro percentages. The key is to find what works for you, and to be patient. It can take a long time to get the hang of it in order to elicit the kind of physical response you're looking for. It can also get tedious weighing and measuring everything that you eat. Pay attention to your body's cues, and simply shoot for overall balance in the beginning. The best way to see results is to stick to real, whole foods, and avoid those foods that you know do not align with your health goals.

Honey Mustard Chicken Marinade

This is a recipe that I found online some time ago and adapted. It's the perfect mix of savory and sweet, plus it's easy to make in the morning and then throw on the grill when you get home. 

Ingredients

10-15 skinless chicken thighs (depending on how much leftovers you want)

1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil or coconut oil

1/3 cup organic Dijon mustard

2 tablespoons of organic honey

1 teaspoon of ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon organic sea salt

Place chicken thighs in a medium sized bowl. Place all of the marinade ingredients in a bowl and mix with a spoon until well combined. Pour marinade over chicken thighs and mix until all chicken is well coated. Place glad wrap or foil over the bowl and marinate in fridge for at least one hour. The longer you marinate the more delicious.

When you're ready to cook, this is great on the grill! 

Or you can place the chicken on a foil-lined tray and pop it in the oven for approximately 40 minutes at 400 degrees! 

Paleo Sesame Chicken!

This is a recipe that I modified slightly from one I found a couple years ago on veggiesbycandlelight.com. It's made in the slow cooker, so it's great for when you're pressed for time. I actually made a few batches of this while I was pregnant and stuck them in the freezer for those hectic postpartum weeks. I like to go easy on the aminos because I'm sensitive to salt, but you can adjust it to your individual taste. It also goes great with cauliflower fried rice, or sautéed broccoli! Enjoy! 

INGREDIENTS

• 2 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken thighs (** or breasts)
  
  
• Sauce
• ⅓ cup coconut aminos (** or low-sodium soy sauce** or less if you're sensitive to salt) 
• ⅓ cup honey
• 2 Tbsp tomato paste
• 1 Tbsp toasted sesame oil
• 2½ tsp minced garlic
• ½ tsp ground ginger
• ¼ tsp red pepper flakes
• 1 tsp sea salt
• ½ tsp cracked black pepper
  
  
• Garnish
• toasted sesame seeds and/or sliced green onions

INSTRUCTIONS

1. In a small bowl, whisk together the sauce ingredients
2. Rinse the chicken and trim any excess fat. Place in the crock pot
3. Pour sauce over chicken, flipping each piece to ensure all sides are coated.
4. Cook on low for 4 hours
5. Remove the chicken and cut into bite-size cubes
6. Remove the sauce and transfer to a small saucepan. Over medium heat, let it simmer for 20 minutes, or until it has reduced by half and is thick and shiny.
7. Toss cubed chicken in thickened sauce, and let sit at least 10 minutes before serving.
8. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and serve over cauliflower rice, stir fried veggies, or brown rice! 

Paleo Honey Biscuits

I love this recipe as an easy side for family dinners. These biscuits go great paired with anything from a holiday meal, to a casual barbecue. And they are seriously addicting!! 

You can also make them using coconut oil instead of butter, but real grass-fed butter just tastes SO much better in this recipe. Just a heads up though, these biscuits always tend to go fast, so I like to make at least a double batch, if not more! 

• 1/3 cup sifted coconut flour
• 1/4 tsp sea salt
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 cup very cold butter or melted coconut oil
• 4 eggs
• 1-2 TBSP honey (to taste)
• 1-2 TBSP maple syrup (to taste)

 

1. Preheat oven to 400
2. In a medium bowl, sift coconut flout, salt and baking powder together.
3. If using butter, cut cold butter pieces into the dry ingredients until you get a coarse mixture
4. In a small bowl, whisk together eggs, honey, maple syrup (and coconut oil if you are using this instead of butter)
5. Add wet ingredients to dry and gently fold. If you are using butter, you will have a lumpy mixture
6. Spoon batter into some lined muffin tins and bake for 12-15 minutes until golden brown