Yummy Waffles

I was perusing through my kitchen cabinets the other day when I came upon a waffle iron. Of course I immediately got a huge craving and decided that I had to create some Primal Waffles.

Here is what I came up with and it will definitely not disappoint. These were quite good. It has been long enough since I had a “normal” waffle so it is hard for me to compare but I would say that these are easily as good if not better!

Old… OLD World Waffles

Ingredients:
- 8oz Organic Cream Cheese
- 1 cup almond flour
- 1 half cup shredded coconut.
- 4 eggs
- 1-2 teaspoons vanilla
- dash of cinnamon

Waffle Syrup:
- Fruit! Any you like but I have found that frozen strawberries that are put in the microwave and then chopped and mashed makes a great natural syrup!

Directions:
1. Pulse half cup of shredded coconut in a food processor or blender until you have a kind of coconut flour. (some people may remember this from some of my other recipes) This makes a great coconut flour that is full fat and less dry than pre-made almond flour which is usually de-fatted.
2. In a mixer or mixing bowl, combine all ingredients and mix well to create a batter.
3. Cook your batter on the waffle iron. If you dont have a waffle iron, you could probably make them pancake style in a pan on the stove.
4. Enjoy them how you like them! We did some organic butter and the heated frozen strawberry natural syrup.

Came out perfect!

Dairy Free, No Sugar Added Custard

Do you miss puddings and custards in your primal world? We have a local egg custard here known as “Flan” and for some weird reason, I have been craving it. Here is a custard recipe that I have been putting together. I finally got the proportions perfectly where I like them. If you like yours sweeter, all you need to do is add more bananas! This recipe is about as simple as it gets.

Ingredients:
- 2 bananas
- 1 can coconut milk
- 3 eggs
- Cinnamon

Directions:
1. Combine all ingredients except for cinnamon in a mixer and mix well.
2. Pour into custard or souffle cups (coffee cups or other oven safe containers work fine if you don’t have custard cups).
3. Sprinkle top with cinnamon.
4. Bake in oven at 350 degrees for approx 45 minutes. Custard will balloon a bit and you may see some liquid… its ok, it will work itself out.
5. Chill.
6. Serve and enjoy.

This makes a tasty treat! Careful though… it is easy to overeat lol.

12 Tasty Nutrition Grenades

The incredible edible egg. What more can be said about this delicious wonderful food.

Excuse me for a second while I go all Bubba on eggs. Eggs, eggs salad, hard boiled eggs, eggs over easy, eggs benedict, eggs sunny side up, scrambled eggs, eggs and bacon, eggs over medium, poached eggs, scotch eggs…

Ok well you get the idea.

I love eggs. Eggs are delicious, cheap, easy and versatile.

I recently had someone tell me “I don’t wan’t to eat eggs every day”. My first thought… “Why not”? I eat eggs every day and a lot of them. You don’t have to eat eggs prepared the same WAY every day, but I don’t see anything wrong with eating eggs every day.

First off, buy good eggs. The cheap eggs .99 cents per dozen or whatever are pretty much crap. Buy uncaged well fed (not with grain or corn) chicken. I read somewhere that those run of the mill cheap eggs have a omega6/3  ratio of 20/1 which is… well terrible. Happy chickens provide awesome eggs. Dark and varying yolk colors is a good sign you are getting good eggs. Even if you buy top of the line omega 3 rich eggs, you are still only going to be paying $3-$4 per dozen eggs. Compared to $.99 this may seem expensive but really when you consider the price vs. nutritional content, it is still a steal!

When I need to save money?… I increase the egg consumption. When I need a portable snack?… its hard to beat a hardboiled egg. A lot of people ask me what they can snack on when they don’t want to overdo the nuts or fruit. Its pretty hard to beat a hardboiled egg… and they are quite filling with all of the fat and protein.

Summary… Eggs=Good

Actually, eggs = freaking awesome.

Any good thoughts out there on eggs? Whats your favorite way to crack an egg? lol

I give you... the McSoG

Do you ever miss yourself a good breakfast sandwich?Yummy bacon and pork sausage and egg with a gooey runny yolk. All able to be eaten without a fork? Well here is an option for you. The Sausage egg and bacon McSoG.

These turned out tasty AND filling… almost too filling lol.

Ingredients:
SoG Coconut Griddle Cakes
- 1 cup finely ground unsweetened coconut. Easy to make by throwing shredded coconut in a food processor.
- 1 egg

Sandwich Fodder:
- Bacon
- Sausage patties
- Eggs any way you want em. I like fried.
- Or any other of your favorite breakfast foods

Directions:
1. First you will need to make the Coconut griddle cakes. These can be eaten on their own like pancakes but warning: they tend to be a little dry (great with butter and fruit though!). Mix the fine coconut and the egg together in your bowl. This will give you a nice batter. Cook on the stove in a little bit of evoo like pancakes. See picture below.

2. Next, cook up your innards. Pretty self explanitory on the bacon and sausage. Cook the eggs however you like em. See picture below.

3. Stack it in a sandwich. See picture below.

4. Enjoy your pile of deliciousness!

These are easy to make and kick the crap out of McDonalds breakfast any day!

Piece of Cake

I binged a bit this weekend. You heard right… the SoG and a binge… not often you hear that put together. By binge, I mean that I had about 50g extra carbs this weekend and a little extra natural sugar from fruit…. so nothing too bad but for me a binge none the less. The culprit was this… Gorilla Cake. I could not help myself. I ate 5 pieces!

I had some leftover bananas from making the Caveman BNBs and I decided that I wanted to make a pie/cake with them. Wow… this… one.. is… good. I used these quantities to make 1 batch which i divided into 9 pieces. Each piece worked out to (by my calculations) about 180 calories, 10g carbs, 15g fat, 4.5g protein. A little high in natural sugar so I wouldn’t make too much of a habit out of eating these but they are definitely a great option for treating yourself or even a visiting or resident grain/sugar addict.

Ingredients:
Crust
- Dash of Cinnamon
- 2 Tblspoons organic butter (or coconut oil if you prefer)
- .5-1 cup almond flour

Filling
- 3 bananas
- 2.5 cups of unsweetened shredded coconut
- 1/4 cup coconut milk
- 2 eggs
- Dash of cinnamon

Directions:
Crust
1. Melt butter or oil and mix almond flour and a dash of cinnamon into a dough.
2. Press your dough very thinly into your baking pan. (I used the Pyrex one you see in the picture below).

Filling
1. Process 2 of the cups of shredded coconut until fine. (I used my food processor.
2. Combine fine coconut, unprocessed coconut, bananas and eggs in a mixer (I was trying out my new kitchen aid) Mix until liquid pudding texture. (if you don’t have a kitchen aid, you may need to uses a blender or processor to goo up your nanners.

Put it together
1. Pour your filling into your pan with your crust
2. Sprinkle top with a dash of cinnamon
3. Bake at 350 degrees until done (mine took about 30 minutes).
4. Serve warm or cold! Enjoy

Ready to go in the oven

This recipe seems similar enough to Caveman BNBs but is delicious enough to deserve its own post.

I need to learn to take better pics

I have often said that bananas would make some wicked Caveman Cookies (see Caveman Cookies here and here). I decided to put that to the test. Instead of cookies though, I made bars as it is even a little easier.

I generally try to avoid bananas as they are higher than I like in natural sugar. This came out to where they are packed with a delicious banana flavor but actually have little enough banana in them to where they are like 1.5g of natural sugar each… not to shabby. (Bee, maybe these are easy enough to solve your bar dilemma?)

Ingredients:
- 2 Bananas
- 3 cups nuts. I used 2 cups almonds and 1 cup cashews
- 1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
- 2 eggs

Instructions:
1. Combine all ingredients except eggs in a food processor.
2. Pulse until well mixed. You want it pretty well chopped but chunks are delicious so not too much.
3. In a mixing bowl, combine mixture with eggs.
4. Press into an 8×8 pan.
5. Bake at 350 degrees until done. Mine took about 30 minutes.
6. Cut 4X4 so you have 16 bites/bars. (or however you want to divide it up.
7. Enjoy!

I think these are absolutely delicious. Let me know what you think!

Carrot Cake Caveman Cookies

Got a new flavor of Caveman Cookie for you… Carrot Cake. These are less sweet and more savory which means that I like them a lot. Best I can figure, each of these bad boys only has about 1g of sugar (natural from the carrots) in them.

Ingredients:
- 2 cups mini carrots
- 2 cups almonds
- 1 cup shredded coconut
- 1 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla. (I think it would actually be better with 2 tsp vanilla but I have not tried it yet).
- 2 teaspoon Evoo or Coconut Oil
- 3 eggs

Directions:
1. Combine all ingredients except eggs in food processor. Pulse until small but a little chunky.
2. Combine mixture with eggs in a large mixing bowl.
3. Form into “patties” and place on a baking sheet. I made 10 with this batch.
4. Bake at 350 degrees until done. Mine took about 40 minutes.
5. Enjoy!

As I said, I really enjoyed this version as I tend not to be too big on sweet. You could probably find a way to sweeten these up a bit if that is what you are looking for though. Maybe that 2nd teaspoon of Vanilla or some berries would do the trick.

P.S. I am convinced that banana caveman cookies would be absolutely amazing. I haven’t made them myself because of the sugar content in bananas but if you eat bananas then I would definitely recomend giving that one a try! Actually bananas would probably be pretty darn good in these carrot cake caveman cookies.

Have you made you some Caveman Cookies yet? If they weren’t so easy, I would package them and sell em! lol

Sorry for the blurriness

In the tradition of primal peach patties, I bring you Caveman cookies. These are a little more moist than the peach patties for those of you that were looking for something more moist. Once again the wife is enamoured with them while I am not overwhelmed (although I do admit they are pretty tasty).

The flavors shown above are Apple, Apple Strawberry and Apple Blueberry.

Apple Caveman Cookies:
Ingredients
- 1 granny smith apple de-seeded
- 1 cup almonds (or other nut)
- 1/2 cup shredded unsweetened coconut
- 1 teaspoon evoo
- 1 Egg

Directions:
1. Combine all ingredients except for egg in a food processor and pulse.
2. Mix in egg.
3. Form into patties. (I made 5 per batch)
4. Bake at 350 degrees until done. (Mine took 45 minutes. These definitely have more moisture than the peach patties)

Apple Strawberry, Apple Blueberry or Other:
- Add in 1/2 cup of berries for pulse. (I used freeze-dried because I had them).

These were very easy and turned out quite good. The wife is happy.They would be pretty good with a dash of cinnamon or nutmeg as well.

I am Rich!

I know that there have been a bajillion “Eat on a budget” posts around the blogosphere over the past couple months. I figured that instead of regurgitating the same old advice, I would sit down and think about how I personally would actually save money on the grocery bill if I had to.

Here is what I came up with:

1. Drop the booze.Booze is a wholly unnecessary evil in the grocery budget. While a glass of red-wine here and there is great for anti-oxidants, you really don’t need it to survive. Booze adds up to a lot of money when you look at it.

2. Cut back on the fancy coffee.I buy fancy organic coffee and espresso. Fact of the matter though is that there is free coffee at my workplace. It may not be the best or most flavorful but it does the job. I could easily cut back on buying expensive coffee from the grocery store in a pinch.

3. Cut back on expensive meat cuts and increase eggs and less expensive meats.You really don’t need a freezer full of porterhouse steaks to eat primally. Pick up several pounds of ground meat (be wary the trans fatty ones). Eggs are also a great, inexpensive, healthy protein and fat option. Also, bone-in full skin poultry is pretty cheap! Ditch the expensive boneless skinless chicken breast and buy a whole chicken. Not only will you be getting more nutrition from it but you will be saving yourself a ton of cash. I actually recently stopped buying canned tuna which is getting awfully expensive($1.99 per can for real tuna in water – Most canned tuna is in vegetable broth with soy) and started buying extra eggs instead to save on some grocery cash.

4. Save money on your produce.Buy the produce that is in season. Grok only had what was in season available to him anyways. You really don’t need 6 different veggies in every meal (although it is delicious). Focus on one veggie one week and another the next. Certain veggies are almost always a steal too… like a good head of romaine lettuce. You can fulfill your veggie needs inexpensively.

5. Shop the sales. You can almost always find one vegetable, fruit or nut that is on sale for a great deal. Stock up on that one! For example, almonds are on sale at my local grocer for $3.99 per pound. This is a heck of a lot cheaper than the other nuts at about $7 per pound so right now I am focusing on almonds for my nut consumption. When they go back up, I will switch to another nut that is a better deal. If I was limiting myself to say… walnuts, I would be missing out on $4 per pound!

6. Buy in bulk where possible.If you have the freezer space, buy a 1/4 of a cow… it will save you a ton in the long run. Ground meat is also usually significantly cheaper if you buy it in bulk. Other bulk deals to lookout for are nuts, fruits (the pre bagged apples and oranges and grapefruit… etc), almond flour etc.

7. Do it yourself.Many of the foods that you may be buying pre-made can be made from scratch simply and easily at home. They are often more nutritious this way too. For example, I have started making my own mayonnaise… this is saving me a ton of money. My homemade mayonnaise is also WAY healthier than the store bought which is made from soy oil and some chemicals and bleh. Some other do it yourself items that are easy and will save you cash… salsa, guacamole, jerky, salad dressing etc.

8. DON’T save on the grocery bill.That’s right, I said don’t save or skimp on the grocery bill. What could possibly be more important to your health and well being than eating well? Look first at other areas in your life that you can save… movies (a movie ticket is worth like 5 pounds of ground beef), premium television, nights out at the club wherever. Prioritize what is most important to you and if it is your health, then start saving in some of the areas towards the bottom of the priority list before your start diving into the grocery budget.

Anyways, I hope this has implanted some ideas in your head and got the gears turning. I also hope that this is a little more involved and personal than some of the other “budget eating” posts you have read.

What are some other ways that you save dough on the grocery bill?

Just looking at this makes my mouth water!

Egg salad is an absolutely delicious way to get a primal meal in. It also happens to be one of the absolute easiest things you can make. I have my wife addicted to it so we have this almost on a daily around here.

Ingredients:
-6 Hardboiled eggs
-3 tablespoons Mayonnaise. Extra kudos if you make your own. Here is a great mayonnaise recipe courtesy my good web buddy Marc at Feel Good Eating!
- 1-2 tablespoons Mustard. Almost any kind will do. I tend to prefer deli mustard because of the big seeds but dijon or any other works fine.
Optional Ingredients:
Onions
Celery
Paprika
Anything that strikes your fancy

Instructions:
1. Peel shells off of hardboiled eggs and place eggs in a large bowl.
2. Using a fork, smask the eggs into pieces. You want it to be somewhat chunky so don’t over smash!
3. Add mayonnaise and mustard to eggs and mix well. Mayonnaise can be adjusted to preference (less for drier egg salad and more for pastier). I tend to eyeball it. Mustard can also be adjusted (less for blander or more for tangier). Again, I tend to eyeball it.
4. (OPTIONAL) I usually skip this part as i enjoy plain egg salad. Add in other features such as chopped celery or onions. A little bit of Paprika is also pretty darn good in egg salad.
5. Enjoy!

See? SO easy.No excuse not to treat yourself and give this one a try. This can easily be thrown in a Tupperware and stored in the fridge or taken with you as well.

What additions do you like to make to your eggs salad?