Our Paleo Eating for the Week: The First Week

Hi Everyone! I know I didn't post much this week, but it's because I didn't really have much to say! The weekend was chill and I've just been hard at work with my Performance Nutrition Challenge. I submitted my first week's data to my Coach, and unfortunately the numbers didn't quite match. When I put my information into the challenge spreadsheet the calorie outcome was way low. I'm not sure what caused the discrepancy, but I assure you I've been eating a lot and eating well! Here's a sample of what I've been noshing on this past week.

The first day on the challenge caught me off guard since I forgot to plan! Whoopsy! But I was able to scramble and throw some turkey slices and mushrooms in a container, along with some fruit (eaten with nuts of course!). The little packets of mustard you see in the background are key to this meal! ;)

I also made some homemade paleo banana nut muffins. I replaced the chocolate chips for nuts for obvious reasons. This particular recipe uses the perfect mix of coconut flour and almond meal. For some reason I find using only coconut flour makes things a little dry and only almond meal makes things a little greasy!  

For dinner one night I roasted an entire bag of brussel sprouts...

While Justin sauteed some onions and mushrooms...

We had this with my hubby's broiled rib eye, yum! I swear he has perfected this method and the end result is a big, juicy steak with the perfect crust!

While we were prepping the rib eyes we were also making the next night's meal. Crock pot chicken provencale:

It's what you would call a "dump" recipe in which you just dump things you have in your cupboard/fridge. (i.e.: canned tomatoes, chicken breast, chopped garlic, Italian seasoning, etc.) Here's a shot of the finished product we ate the next day. Justin had his with cannellini beans, I obviously had mine without.

The next evening Justin was in the mood for meatloaf so I looked for a paleo version of meatloaf that omitted breadcrumbs. Fast Paleo with their smokey bacon meatloaf recipe to the rescue again!

I ate it with a huge salad with vinegar and olive oil!

Look at that meatloaf! That bad boy is seriously a brick!

I'm really thankful that Justin has been open to making paleo dishes for me. And the fact the enjoys the paleo meals himself is an added bonus! It's great how giving up eating out for Lent combined with my nutrition challenge has sparked new creativity for us in the kitchen!

Our Attempt at Chicken Cordon Bleu

A few weeks back we had cooked an entire spiral ham. Needless to say, we had a ton of leftovers. Besides, making egg muffins (which I'll feature on the blog soon!) I wanted to find recipes that featured ham/pork!

I got this recipe from Hopefully Homemade and she called it, "Chicken Cordon Bleu - Loosely Paleo." However, the neat thing about this recipe is that you can make it a paleo as you need it to be! If you don't eat ham/pork you can use another meat! You can use cheese from a grassfed source if you have it, or just omit cheese altogether and have a meat roll-up (chicken and ham) as I like to call it. I think the official name is a roulade. ;) Anyway, the possibilities are endless!

So here are the ingredients:
6 boneless chicken thighs (we used chicken breast)
6 slices bacon (instead of wrapping it in bacon, we stuffed it with ham)
5 oz goat cheese (we just used the swiss that was in our fridge)
1 egg
1 Tablespoon water
3/4 cup almond meal (for my husband's, he used bisquick)

The following ingredients are for your selected dredge:
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon dry minced onion
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
A pinch or two of dry mustard powder

Lastly, some toothpicks and a glass or ceramic baking dish

Eek. Since we didn't have toothpicks (I know, what house doesn't have toothpicks? Ours apparently!) we tried to MacGuyver some using coffee stirrers.

Justin displaying said coffee stirrer...

 

 

And the rigged up "toothpicks"

 

I don't cook much but I was able to help out by letting out my aggressions on flattening out the chicken breasts...

 

Here's a close up of Justin wrapping up the ham and cheese. It a bit tricky because we stuffed them to the brim!

 

He can hardly contain his excitement!

 

Here's a shot of Justin dredging the chicken in the almond meal with the egg in the background.

 

Obviously mine are the brown ones (almond meal) and his are the white ones (bisquick)

 

We baked it at 375 for 30 minutes or so. Sorry, I can't remember how long exactly since I like to stare at the food while it cooking...I kid...kinda... :) However long we cooked it we were happy for the results! Look at the crispy coating!

 

With that ooey, gooey meaty goodness!

 

A close up shot of all the insides!

 

 

And a shot of the complete meal!

 

Overall, I would say the meal was a complete success. But for someone who eats as voraciously as Justin does it was like Russian roulette, since the stirrer/toothpicks were kind of hard to see while eating! Whoopsy. Just imagine taking your next bite not knowing when the next toothpick/coffee stirrer might hit! LOL, next time we'll invest in some long bamboo skewers or at least some toothpicks with flags to prevent any possible eating injury ;)