Easing into a new meal regiment: Paleo

shaumom wrote: »

Roasted veggies are a great staple to add to your paleo diet. You can find charts or websites that show different temperatures and times to roast different veggies, but in essence, it's a teeny bit of an oil rubbed over them, the option to rub salt or other herbs over them, and then you just roast them until done. They caramelize a little bit, develop a deeper flavor.

But roasted veggies can be blended up in the blender and used as a sauce over meats or other veggies. Or the blended up veggies can be added to broth to make nicer soups, or to make more complex sauces, or to put over baked, mashed root veggies (like sweet potato), or added as a good ingredient to one-pot dishes. They taste nice on their own, too.

A super easy, tasty paleo compliant soup is this: put one large onion and one med-large eggplant in a shallow pan and bake until completely cooked through and soft. Don't even peel them, just stick 'em in.

When they are soft, let them cool, then peel and blend them up in a blender. Add the blended veggies to a couple cups of chicken or veggie broth, heat, add salt and pepper and a squeeze of lemon to taste, and soup is done. The roasted onion especially gives it a really deep flavor that's quite nice.

Some other ideas:
- green chile, beef, and pumpkin or squash fry up - there are many recipes you can find with those three ingredients (you might have to specify squash).
- roasted chicken with sweet potato mash or fries plus a salad.
- Add slow cooked mushrooms for some umami flavor when you might otherwise have used soy sauce
- If you don't have an electric ice cream maker and can afford one (I think you can get some cheap ones for under $30), these are AWESOME. Because all you have to do is get some fruit. If it is soft, blend it up and make sorbet out of it. If it is not soft, cook it until it IS soft, then blend it up, let cool, and make sorbet out of it. It makes it easy to get a really healthy, super quick dessert when your sweet tooth might kick in and make it a challenge. We just made sure we had ripe fruit and typically didn't even put in sweetener of any kind. A nice one was cooked apples, mixed with cinnamon and or cardamom/cloves/nutmeg - it tasted kind of like if you made apple pie into a sorbet. :-)
- If you try what they are calling 'zoodles' now - zucchini, or carrot, or squash that is peeled with those spiralizer kind of peels, so they are thin strips like noodles - the roasted veggies over those are great.
- pesto of all kinds - you can make a super easy pesto-like sauce for meats or veggies or zoodles with this basic recipe: leaves (herbs, spinach, etc...) or easily blended up greens of some kind (I've seen cauliflower florets used) +nuts or seeds (pine nuts are traditional with basil but I've seen things like walnuts and broccoli) + oil + salt/seasonings. Just blend them all up in a food processor (there are tiny ones that are sometimes less than $20 on sale) or in a mortar and pestle and use like regular pesto. Since there is no cheese with this, stronger tasting herbs, or more seasonings, may be useful. You want it strong, because only a little bit gets used.
- Look up common staple sauces or condiments for various countries. Various Asian countries, middle eastern countries, and African countries have some really awesome condiments that can be completely paleo. Like there was one I came across - can't remember where - that was basically a ton of lemon juice, oil, and chopped garlic that is just topped onto meat or veggie dishes and tasted wonderful.