Daily Archives: April 9, 2012

Paleo Chocolate Chip Cookies

Listen, this definitely falls into the “treat” category, but it is a worthwhile treat in my opinion. Usually I am an abstainer from treats and would rather just have the real thing. You won’t find a lot of recipes around here for Paleo Desserts and such, because I’d rather just not eat dessert and then every once in a while have the kind of dessert I *truly* love (read: cake. always. every time.)

But sometimes you need to shake things up a bit. This weekend I had a hankering to bake (which RARELY happens in my house, I’m much more of a cooker than a baker) so I tried my hand at this recipe. Frisky Lemon is such a fun blog to read, by the way, stop by and check it out!

Now back to the cookies: They couldn’t have been easier, and I have to tell you the addition of cinnamon to the batter almost gave the cookies a flavor reminiscent of caramelized brown sugar. I think without it, these would just taste like cookies made from almond flour. The cinnamon is the ingredient that really makes magic! So hat tip to Allison for coming up with some real baking brilliance. If you and your friends are cookie lovers, you now can mail cookies to someone with Chocolate Shipped Cookies.

Ingredients

2 eggs, beaten
8 Tbsp butter, melted in the microwave
1 Tbsp vanilla
1/3 cup raw honey
1 1/2 cup almond flour
1/4 cup coconut flour
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
2/3 cup dark chocolate chips

Method

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, line a baking sheet with parchment (always a must with Paleo baking!)

2. Mix melted butter, eggs, honey and vanilla in a medium sized bowl.

3. Sift together all of the dry ingredients (except chocolate chips) directly onto the wet ingredients, stirring occasionally to mix the batter.

4. Fold in chocolate chips.

5. Your dough will be sticky/gooey — that’s ok. Spoon 2-3 TBS of batter on the parchment for each cookie.

6. Bake for 15-20 minutes. Mine came out perfect at 16 minutes.

7. Enjoy with an icy cold beverage of choice!


On Easter Weekend + Epiphanies

You’d be pleased to know that Operation: Have A Relaxing Weekend went off without a hitch!

Friday night we enjoyed a rainbow colored dinner and a bottle of wine while playing our New Favorite Game, like dorks. Since we both had Saturday morning off (which doesn’t always happen) we stayed up late. Ok, and maybe we opened a second bottle of wine.


Is that a heart in your wine glass or are you just happy to see me?

Saturday morning we slept in a bit and then headed over to open gym at American River CrossFit to do a workout that had looked particularly heinous this week. Our gym has an A and B track of workouts. Since we are currently doing the A workouts, and since we like torture, we decided to do this workout that had been programmed for the B track:

8 Rounds For Time (YIKES!)
10 Burpees
15 Jumping Lunges
20 Double Unders
25 yards of Shuttle Sprints

About 30 minutes later the aftermath looked was a sweat angel of fairly epic proportions:

Is it just me or does the outline of my body remind you of the old 80s kid’s game Cootie?

It was a GREAT workout, albeit a sweaty one. Afterward we headed over to Old Navy because I got a hot tip on some adorable workout tank tops that were on sale for $14. I’m going to workout in them this week and if they are as awesome as they are cute, I’ll let you know!

When I walked in to Old Navy, sitting right in the front of the store was the dress that I had been eyeing and tweeting about all week. In the size I wanted! (Or at least the size I thought I wanted, you never can tell with Old Navy!)

Luckily it fit, so obviously I had to buy it. Adults need Easter Dresses too, right? (And Easter shoes!)

photo

Saturday night was another night in and I toyed with a new recipe for Paleo Chocolate Chip cookies as a treat. OHEEEEEMGEEEE you guys, they were super delicious!

Last night's dessert: Paleo Chocolate Chip Cookies + Coconut Almond Milk. DELICIOUS!

Especially with a little shot of Coconut Almond Milk on the side — the treat of all treats! I’ll post the recipe later this afternoon because it was totally worth sharing!

Sunday morning we headed out to my mom’s for Easter Brunch, which is a family tradition no matter where you are or who you are with. Every year on Easter we eat eggs benedict, period. No questions asked. The end. You drink some Bloody Marys, you discuss how damn good the Hollandaise is at home vs. in restaurants, you cook together and most importantly you enjoy the day!


And this year was no different! And it was because everything went just according to tradition, that I had a major epiphany that I thought I’d share.

You see, 2 years ago we were celebrating Easter this exact same way up at my aunt’s house. Like I said, it’s TRADITION! We were making Eggs Benny, laughing in the kitchen and hanging out all together. It was April 2010 and it was right around that time that I had first heard of this crazy way of eating called Paleo. I was reading a lot of Bodies in Motivation (right before I started writing over there) and a number of people had hopped on this bandwagon of Ancestral Eating (Paleo/Primal/Whatever) and I thought to myself “THESE PEOPLE ARE NUTS.” I distinctly remember eating eggs benedict and thinking why would I ever even consider giving up bread? Or these traditions? Or these awesome moments with my family to “eat like a caveman?” It all just sounded so stupid and I had a smug little laugh to myself.

Here is a picture of Garrett and I from that day:

Here mom, a non off center self portrait.

Here is a picture of us from yesterday:

Sadly, we are still sort of awkwardly un-photogenic. 🙂

But along with that, we are 140 lbs lighter between the two of us, we are almost 2 years entrenched into a fitness routine that we enjoy together 3-5 days a week, and we are the healthiest we’ve been, um…well, EVER. Do you know what we also did right after this picture? We ate eggs benedict, we enjoyed some bread, and we participated in family traditions that we have been participating in together for the last 7 years of our relationship. Easter still looks exactly the same, even though we’re Paleo.

There are many moments in life that still look EXACTLY the same, despite the fact that our diet only includes lean meats, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds. When you say that out loud to people (or when you read about it on the internet like I did years ago) it sounds pretty extreme. But in practice, it’s actually only an accumulation of small tweaks here and there and that we stick to 80-90% of the time. I thought to myself yesterday: I am so glad we stopped letting the “fear of missing out on food related events” be the excuse we used that kept us from trying something new.

The point here is not that you MUST try Paleo (ok, well maybe I want you to try it a little bit…haha!) But more importantly, what I do want to encourage is that if you are putting off making a change in your health because of Fear of Missing Out — take the plunge and try something different if your health is an area of life that you think needs a little work! It can be so hard to make a change, and sometimes it seems like we are hard wired to hold on to an excuse like that as a crutch — and why sabotage yourself like that?

For me the best change I ever made was going Paleo. But for a long time I let my fear of being a person on a “Special Diet” keep me from giving it a try. But I’m not a person with a “Special Diet.” And you won’t be either. I’m just a person who eats what I want, when I want, but I have chosen the Paleo Framework to be my compass. Two years ago I didn’t even have a compass, but there was no doubt in my mind that I was lost. This Easter, I was consciously deviating from my normal course. I enjoyed bread (gasp!) and muffins from a box (shocker!) and drank stiff drinks with abandon. The difference was I knew exactly where I stood…and more importantly, I knew exactly how to get back on course.

And I wanted to share that for those of you who consider making a change. It can be scary to chart a new course or deviate from the route that your friends are going down. But if you are letting the fear of change, the fear that things would be too extreme, or the fear that you would miss out too much hold you back — I just wanted to let you know that the view over here is just as awesome so GO FOR IT ALREADY!

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