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Hey there! I'm Holly. A 40+ year old insurance-nerd wife, mom, beauty lover, and about a million other things in between.
This is the place where I share about our lives, what I'm currently loving, books I'm reading, plus-size style, beauty recommendations, health + fitness endeavors and anything else I'm finding interesting at the moment.
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Category Archives: Recipes
Paleo Banana Bread Muffins
My friend Katie (who is as talented in the kitchen as she is when it comes to music) sent me this recipe for grain free, dairy free banana muffins and it was so good I had to pass it on. Especially for all of my friends at ARCFit who are currently doing a 6 Week Paleo Challenge. Sometimes we all want a little treat for breakfast or with our coffee and one can only have eggs so many times before it gets old right? (My second favorite breakfast: this smoothie.)
Confession: the first time I made these I threw in a few dark chocolate chips so they weren’t 100% Paleo, but the next batch I made was just plain and they were still so good! Flavorful and moist (god I hate that word, but it’s a necessity when describing recipes like this!) it tasted just like my favorite banana bread. I even served them to my mom and aunt last weekend (who aren’t even Paleo) and they raved.
Also, they’re a cinch!
(Recipe makes 12 servings)
Ingredients
1/2 cup coconut flour
6 eggs
1/3 cup honey or agave — whatever floats your boat
1/3 cup olive oil
2/3 cup crushed walnuts (optional)
2 bananas
1 tbsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Mix all together adding finely chopped bananas last
Pour into silicone muffin cups, or greased and lined muffin tins
Top with some nuts
Make a juvenile joke about your love of nuts
Bake 20-25 min.
Hot out of the oven, these will knock your socks off!
Paleo* Eggs Benedict Over Spicy Sweet Potato Hash
My Grandma Marian taught me a number of very important life lessons:
*A good hostess always has cookies in her freezer.
*If you keep the empty expensive bottles of booze you can always refill them with the cheap stuff in a pinch. (Which I only did in college, I promise!) And of course,
*A lady never refuses a second serving by saying she is “stuffed,” but rather she delicately reclines and says she’s “had plenty.”
More importantly though, she taught me about the magic of poached eggs in hollandaise.
My family usually chooses to brunch on Easter, forgoing the ham dinner with all the trimmings for a stiff Bloody Mary (or two) and a Hallelujah. As an a non-religious adult, I always kind of forget about Easter (what with the changing dates and all of that) but when I realize it’s coming around I never forget my grandma’s tradition: Eggs Benedict!
Since going Paleo I have definitely come to embrace the egg, but I never take the time to poach them — and for no good reason since it is so much easier than it looks. A pan of simmering water with a splash of vinegar, dropping the egg right in, and then giving it exactly 2 minutes before you rescue and plop it atop various accouterments. This year I skipped the English Muffin and set it on canadian bacon over the world’s most amazing Spicy Sweet Potato Hash.
It was so good, I’m making it again for Garrett this week for dinner since he was in Reno all weekend and missed out.
For the eggs:
This video breaks down poaching eggs quite simply. Plus at the end she puts in on a “nice, tasty crumpet.” And how can you not love that? I like a 2 min egg though, just FYI. I always fear I will ruin the egg, and it always ends up working out just fine. Vinegar is kind of a miracle worker.
For the Hollandaise:
In a blender mix 3 egg yolks, 1 TBS lemon juice, 1/2 tsp of salt, and a few shakes of cayenne pepper. Melt 1/2 cup of grassfed butter (That’s why it is Paleo* — but this is a special occasion thing, don’t get freaked out!) and slowly pour in the melted butter as you blend up the other ingredients. This will make enough sauce to coat at least 6 eggs and may change your life.
For the hash:
Cook up 6-8 diced up slices of bacon in a pan. (Dude, just cook 8.) Remove the bacon bits and add one diced red onion and diced red pepper. Saute until softened. Add 3 diced sweet potatos. Mine were small-medium sized. Generously season with salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder and add a dash of chili powder for flavor and cayenne pepper for heat. Cook over high heat until potatoes are at your desired texture (everyone likes their taters a bit different). I did mine for about 20 minutes, tossing them around occasionally so they browned but didn’t burn.
For the entire experience:
Throw the hash on a plate, top with canadian bacon you have warmed in the oven, add your perfectly poached eggs, cover with hollandaise, add some cracked black pepper to the top, and die of happiness.
You will not regret it. But I assure you, after two of those eggs, you will delicately recline and say you’ve had plenty.
It’s a breakfast (or dinner in our case this week) of champions!
Crock Pot Asian Pork Lettuce Wraps
One of the things I missed most when I first went Paleo was the ability to throw a chunk of meat in the crock pot, cover it in sauce, serve in on a freshly baked roll and call it dinner. Most pre-made sauces are loaded with sugar and since I no longer eat anything on a bun, my crockpot gathered a bit of dust while I transitioned. But when I rediscovered my love for lettuce wraps (HOLY MOSES those are good!) I busted out my crockpot again and sang love songs to it because it makes my weeknight life so much easier.
After a few trials and tribulations, and some super disgusting dinners (which, HELLO, seem like an extra betrayal when they happen in the crockpot because you come home expecting dinner to be ready only to find out that you have to figure out a Plan B!) I finally came up with a a combo of yummy flavors that has found its way into the regular rotation in our kitchen. And a bonus, it gets Garrett to eat pork with a smile! Although you could certainly substitute chicken in this dish and get great results.
Asian Pork Lettuce Wraps
For the chunk of meat
2-3 lbs of pork shoulder or any type of pork roast (or this would be super good with chicken thighs or chicken breasts)
Liberally salt and pepper and if you’re feeling really crazy throw in 3-4 smashed whole garlic cloves. If you don’t feel crazy, just sprinkle on some garlic powder
For the sauce
Mix all of the following:
4 TBS Coconut Aminos (or Soy Sauce if that’s your bag)
2 TBS Almond Butter (Peanut Butter would be fine too)
1 TBS Honey (I eyeball it)
2 TBS Vinegar (I’ve used a bunch of different ones, just to get some acid in there)
2 tsp Sesame Oil
1 TBS Sriracha (or more if you are real spicy)
1/2 tsp of Black Pepper
1 TBS minced ginger (dude, I totally used the jarred stuff sometimes, go for it!)
Recipe Steps
1. Put prepared chunk of meat in crockpot
2. Pour sauce over it
3. Resist the urge to add more liquid (you will want to, don’t you worry you don’t have to)
4. Set and forget (well for about 4-6 hours at least on your low setting)
THIS, internet, is how I like my crock pot recipes. Short, sweet and tasty!
When it is done cooking shred with a fork and serve atop your favorite lettuce and add the garnish of your choice. Because I am usually lazy on the weeknights, I throw on some pre-shredded cabbage or broccoli slaw and slice up a bell pepper for some color and call it a day. You could do any toppings you want — chopped peanuts, jicama, cilantro, shredded carrots. And Garrett says don’t forget the extra hot sriracha sauce! But that guy is crazy for heat, so take his advice with a grain of salt (and a glass of water!)
Dip Dip Hooray!
With the Super Bowl coming up I am pretty darn excited. I have to confess though that my excitement doesn’t really stem from the football. Sure it’s fun to watch, and of course I love the commercials, but what I really love is having an excuse to eat appetizers for a meal! It is literally on my Top 10 list of Favorite Things. YUM!
This year I have other plans so we aren’t having a get together like we usually do, but I am definitely leaving Garrett a few munchies so he doesn’t starve while yelling at the television. I was thinking up my menu the other day and it dawned on me that I should share my recipe for the easiest most crowd pleasing dip EVER. Despite its humble ingredients, I’ve never met anyone who didn’t love this.
Dill Dip
2/3 Cup Sour Cream
2/3 Cup Mayo
1TBS Dried Dill
1 TBS Dried Parsley
2-3 TBS minced green onions
1 TBS Beau Monde (Super random spice, but readily available in grocery stores. Also good just mixed with cream cheese as a spread on crackers!)
Mix the following together in a small bowl. Then place in serving dish and Enjoy!
And because it is the season, here are a few other places where you can dunk those chips, crudite, or baguettes.
Caramelized Onion Dip from 101 Cookbooks
Hot Spinach Artichoke Dip from Paula Deen
Roasted Tomatillo Salsa from Tyler Florence (Garrett will eat this with a spoon!)
Do you have a favorite dip I can add to my arsenal? Do tell!
Damn Good Chili
I don’t know what you do for fun, but I like to cook things and sometimes inspiration strikes at weird times. Maybe I need some other morning friendly hobbies, I don’t know. Sometimes Matt Lauer just doesn’t do it for my like my Le Creuset does.
Can we all just pause for a minute and think about where I can find a job where all I do is cook, read, drink coffee, and sometimes watch bad reality television in the morning? I would be an EXCEEDS Employee. Excuse me while I go update my LinkedIn Profile.
Anyway, this morning I was up early and since I had some extra time I made some chili. It occurred to me that I should share this chili recipe here for three reasons:
- It is Easy — so easy you can sleepwalk through it at 5am and have lunch ready by 6am!
- It is Very Customizable and Packs some Major Vegetable Punch in One Pot— flexible with the ingredients you have on hand, and efficient.
- It is Damn Good.
That is quite the trifecta, I think — so here we go.
| Damn Good Chili |
Ingredients
- 2 TBS Fat of Choice
- 1 Large Onion
- 3-4 Medium Carrots, small dice
- 1-2 Small Zucchini, small dice
- 2 Small Yellow Squash, small dice
- 1.5 lbs Ground Beef
- 2 Cloves Garlic, chopped
- 2 Tablespoon Chili Powder
- 1 Tablespoon Paprika
- 2 teaspoons Red Pepper Flakes
- 2 teaspoons Cumin
- 1 Tablespoon Salt
- 2 teaspoons Pepper
- 1 14 oz can diced tomatoes with their liquid
- 1 14 oz can tomato sauce
- 1 Cup Beef Broth
- 1 Tablespoon Apple Cider Vinegar
- 2 Bell Peppers (any color), small dice
Instructions
- Heat Fat of Choice in large, heavy bottomed pot over medium heat
- Add Onion, Carrots, Zucchini and Yellow Squash and cook up until they get soften, about 5-7 minutes
- Add ground beef in to brown and break up into crumbles with spoon. Continue until beef is mostly cooked
- Add garlic and all seasonings through salt and pepper and toss with the meat and the vegetables
- Add diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, broth and apple cider vinegar
- Bring pot up to a boil and then reduce heat to simmer
- Simmer, mostly covered but with lid a little cocked for 45 minutes
- Add bell peppers
- Simmer with the lid completely off for 15 more minutes
- Serve with toppings of your choice — My recommendations are: avocado, black olives and diced scallions. YUM!
Green Smoothies: Breakfast of Champions
5 days a week, I always start my day with this amazon green powder smoothie– and at least one day a week I hear something about it:
“What the heck is that?”
“Did you make that yourself?”
“What’s in that?” or the ever so tasteful “That looks gross.”
And the truth is — it does kind of look gross. It looks like lawn clippings mixed with water or something, and just typing that made me dry heave a little. But it is the best tasting, most-efficient, on-the-go breakfast ever so I remind myself regularly that food doesn’t always have to be pretty to be delicious. And this Breakfast of Champions is definitely delicious. If you are not sold on the delicious factor, what if I told you it had 2 CUPS OF SPINACH in it. I mean, hello, when else are you going to eat 2 cups of spinach?? If you are like me, probably never, since I don’t even like spinach that much. But in this smoothie? You can’t even taste it! So here we go…
Add the following to a blender and give it a whirl:
1 Cup of Almond Milk (I used unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk, but you could use plain too)
1 Frozen Banana
1 Scoop of Protein Powder of Your Choice (you need an emulsifier so it’s milkshake-like)
1-2 TBS of Almond Butter (You could use Peanut Butter if you have it on hand)
2 TBS of Ground Flax Seeds (Or anything else you’d like to sneak in)
2 Cups of Spinach
You all, it tastes like a giant peanut butter and banana smoothie but you just ate 2 cups of spinach. How badass is that? Plus, with the almond butter/milk/protein powder combo you will not be hungry until lunch, I promise.
IT. IS. AWESOME!
And if nothing else, Popeye (and your mom, no doubt) would probably be proud.
Red Wine Sangria
I don’t know how you all organize your recipes but I have four main systems. I have a D-Ring binder (Down with the O-Rings!) in the kitchen for recipes I have printed out from the internet (that is overflowing by the way — what did I do before food blogs?), I have an accordion file of family recipes and random 3×5 cards, and then I bookmark recipes I want to try at delicious.com.
The fourth system is, well…less of a system and more of a compilation of random scraps of paper scribbled from god knows what source, newspaper clippings, and ingredients to try scrawled on the backs of envelopes. Cooking is sort of an organic process around here at times, what can I say. So before I start with the cooking talk today, can we pause so you can tell me: How do you organize your recipes? I’m dying to know, please please please enlighten me!
Whew! Thanks!
Ok so you probably saw this coming, but this following recipe is from that 4th Realm of Organization so unfortunately I can not politely tip my adaptation hat, but since I have made and tinkered with this recipe so many times I feel comfortable making its official name Holly’s Refreshing YET DANGEROUS Sangria. And may I suggest serving it anywhere you want to get the party started.
Now I’ll admit it starts off with some arbitrary ingredients:
Not pictured: a can of orange juice concentrate and sugar to taste. I forgot to include those because I had already had a glass of this when I took these pictures, so sue me.
After assembling this motley crew, the concocting couldn’t be easier:
*Slice the following fruits in wedges and juice over a pitcher: 1 lemon, 1 lime, 1 orange. Throw them in the pitcher — it looks pretty.
*Add one small can of chopped pineapple with its juices
*Add frozen berries to taste (any berries will work, pick your poison. I like to get crazy and add a lot.)
*Add 1-2 cans of ginger ale (you could probably use Sprite too, but I haven’t tried it. If you do, let me know.)
*Add 1/2 cup of orange juice
*Add 1 bottle of red wine (my advice, go inexpensive — but not too inexpensive)
*Add sugar to taste (I usually add a few tablespoons, if you like it sweeter, add more! This recipe is easy like that.)
****and here’s where things get a little nutty*****
*Add 1/2 to 1 Cup of gin or vodka. (My suggestion, Bombay Sapphire, and 1 Cup, but that’s just me, your raging alcoholic hostess. You can decide what’s right for you.)
Stir, refrigerate until chilled, and enjoy with friends.
I have never had anyone not like this Sangria, in fact quite the opposite. I have received some pretty sloppy hugs and kisses over it, so my last warning to you is be careful who you serve it to.
Now drink up!
Brussels Sprouts with Bacon and Walnuts
Ah, Brussels Sprouts! Nature’s cruciferous little cast-off. How can you hate something that is so cute???
Growing up in my house, brussels sprouts (and please note the ‘s’ at the end of brussel so that you won’t be rudely corrected by some bitchy cooking aficionado as I was) were strictly verboten. My father had an unfortunate choking incident with them after being forced to eat them as a child, and let me tell you if there is anything more powerful than a traumatic childhood food memory, I don’t know what it is.
Just about everyone I’m acquainted with has some story about a time they were forced to eat something, and now as adults they staunchly refuse to partake if for no other reason than ‘because they can.’ As a child this meant no brussels sprouts in our house, at the request of my father, and no seafood of any kind at the request of my mother. The latter is kind of a humorous story for another time, but rest assured I have all but overcome my mother’s hatred of fish and now could live happily as a pescetarian.
But today I want to talk about brussels sprouts. Deeply delicious brussels sprouts. And if right now you are thinking that I am at least one card short of a full deck — I urge you to resist judgment, at least until the end of this post. I mean, it involves bacon, people. We can reserve judgment if it involves bacon, can’t we? Okay, so let’s get started with these little delicacies…
So the first rule of Brussels Sprouts Club is Never Talk About Bruss…wait, that’s not right.
The first rule is No Boiling or Steaming. If I can impart even a small culinary nugget of widom on you today, let it be this: If you think you do not like a vegetable, please try it roasted at a high temperature with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper. If you think you REALLY don’t like a vegetable — roast it in bacon drippings. This is sound advice, I swear.
You see that shiny goodness on your brussels? That is the magic of bacon! And it is the result of you rendering about 8 slices of chopped up bacon (or “lardonnes” if you want to be snooty about it) in an oven proof pot or pan (I use a 7 qt Dutch Oven) and then removing those slices of bacon and adding about 2lbs of cleaned brussels sprouts. While you are at it, give them a little shower of salt and pepper…and don’t be shy about it. Good seasoning is key here — especially with the salt.
At this point you are going to pop that bad boy in a pre-heated 400 degree oven for about 30 minutes — and the trick here is that you want the sprouts to be in a single layer so they actually roast, not steam. Steaming makes for a soggy sprout and we want ours to be crusty and delicious when it’s done. After about 30 minutes your sprouts should be cooked but not completely browned, and at this point you will take them out and throw in what is left of the bacon bits you rendered earlier (c’mon…you know a couple of those pieces made it into your belly, you are only human after all). Then you want to throw in a little more than a handful of chopped walnuts (whatever looks good to you, you can’t screw that part up) and put them back in the oven altogether for another 10 minutes.
After 40 minutes of roasting they will look about like this:
And they will smell even more incredible! At this point, Garrett and I just grab forks and go straight for the pot. I will assume you are far more civilized than we are, but if not — I really can’t blame you.
Caramely, nutty, roasty, and of course BACON-Y people, BA-CON-Y. I just can’t emphasize that enough.
Can you give them another shot? Seriously. This recipe might change your life.
Cranberry Margaritas
A few of you have emailed me regarding the Cranberry Margaritas that I mentioned in the comments of Jennie’s Christmas Menu post. I am planning to make these for Christmas to go along with our Mexican Themed Dinner (Pork Tamales, Beans, Rice, etc) but frankly I wish I was drinking now! Anyway, here is the recipe:
Merry Cranberry Margaritas
adapted from Sunset Magazine
1 1/4 cups cranberry juice cocktail
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups (6 oz.) fresh or frozen cranberries, rinsed
3/4 cup lime juice
3/4 cup tequila
1/2 cup orange-flavor liqueur
3 cups coarsely crushed ice
Pour 1/4 cup of the cranberry juice into a shallow bowl. Pour 3 tablespoons sugar onto a flat plate. Dip the rims of 4 to 6 widemouthed glasses (6- to 8-oz. size, suitable for margaritas) into juice, then into sugar. Set the glasses aside.
Reserve 12 cranberries. In a blender, whirl until smooth and slushy the remaining cranberries, cranberry juice, sugar, lime juice, tequila, orange liqueur, and ice. If necessary, blend in 2 batches, then mix. Fill glasses; garnish with reserved berries. Serves 4 to 6.
Photo courtesy of fabulousfood.com
