Creamy Tomato Basil Soup

Last Sunday, I went into work for 7.5 hours. On my way home, I was thinking about what I had at home and what I could make for my meals for the week. My mom had mentioned having soup earlier in the day, which made me think about tomato soup. I went through the pantry inventory stored in my mind, and decided I wanted tomato basil soup. I had everything at home that I would need, excluding the fresh basil, which I had to go to two stores to find. Ridiculous! Anyways, here's what I did, and honey, it tastes good.

Creamy Tomato Basil Soup

1 15-oz can of diced tomatoes, no salt added

1 15-oz can of crushed tomatoes, no salt added

1 12-oz can of tomato sauce

1 8-oz can of tomato paste

4 cups chicken broth

1 1/5 tsp ghee

1 cup finely diced onion

1 cup finely diced carrots

1 clove garlic, smashed and minced

~5 leaves fresh basil

1 tsp oregano

1 pinch sea salt

fresh-ground black pepper

1/2 cup coconut milk

Place all of your ingredients, excluding the coconut milk, into a crock pot. Stir, then cover. Set on low for 8 hours. After cooking, use an immersion blender to break down the ingredients into smaller pieces (if desired). Stir in the coconut milk and serve with a chiffonade of basil. Enjoy!

I just happened to have 5 different types of canned tomato products at home. You could use one of the jumbo cans of crushed tomatoes and use that in place of the 2 15-oz cans of diced/crushed tomatoes. Also, if you like your tomato soups to have a little chunk to them, stick with diced tomatoes instead of crushed tomatoes or the tomato sauce. It's what you make of it, so have fun.

Against All Grain Chocolate Chip Cookies

While I was in Atlanta for Thanksgiving, my parents and I hosted a drinks and desserts event at our home. I threw Paleo out of the window and made my pumpkin trifle and pumpkin chocolate chip bars, to go with the giant tray of chocolate that my mom tossed together and the blueberry-lime cake and fruit tarts that our friends brought. I wasn't intending on partaking in any sweets (I tried, but it's hard sometimes), but because I knew that my best friend's boyfriend is Paleo as well, I did make a batch of chocolate chip cookies, Because I was feeling a tad lazy and didn't want to come up with my own recipe at the last minute, I use the Real Deal Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe from Against All Grain.

It turned out well. Honestly, the people who came over said that if I hadn't have told them about the whole non-grain aspect of the cookies, they wouldn't have known. Instead of grain, the recipe called for almond flour and coconut flour. Personally, they were a little dry/fluffy for my taste (I'm a chewy cookie sort of gal), but they did taste pretty good. I only got the chance to eat one, because everyone else ate the rest, but I do recommend it.

Some things to note about this recipe...

1. The recipe does include dairy - grass-fed butter and dark chocolate. (The recipe uses both Enjoy Life chocolate chips and dark chocolate.

2. The resulting mixture ended up very sticky. I recommend using two spoons to kind of scoop up the mixture, get it roughly golf-ball sized, and then get it onto the parchment paper-lined tray. I'm not sure how to describe the process that I used, but it was kind of like scooping the mixture from one spoon to the other repeatedly until it formed the shape I was looking for. Yeah, that's a terribly explanation, but that's the best I got without a video. Something to work on?

Sweet and Spicy Cabbage Tacos

The sweet potatoes, carrots, and cherry/grape tomatoes adds some sweetness to the heat from the ground beef seasoning. If you like dishes that give you a little kick while also providing you with soothing sweetness (thanks to the sweet potatoes in particular), give this a try.

Sweet and Spicy Cabbage Tacos

1 lb grass-fed ground beef

6 leaves of green cabbage, carefully removed from the head of cabbage (you don't want any tears in your taco "shell")

1/2 sweet potato, diced

1/4 onion, chopped (I'm not a huge fan of onion, so feel free to add more if you like it)

1/2 cup carrots, chopped

1 cup broccoli florets,

1/2 cup sliced mushrooms

1/2 cup cherry or grape tomatoes, sliced in half

1/4 cup red bell pepper, chopped

Taco Seasoning (http://adventurepaleo.blogspot.com/2012/05/guacamole.html)

1 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (add another 1-1 1/2 tsp if you really like spice)

2 tsp cumin

2 tsp paprika

2 tsp oregano

1 tsp chili powder

1 tsp garlic salt

1 tsp pepper, freshly ground - See more at: http://adventurepaleo.blogspot.com/2012/05/guacamole.html#sthash.Nekjm48U.dpuf

1. Mix the taco seasoning and raw beef together in a bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit in the fridge for an hour or so.

2. Remove the seasoned beef from the fridge, and toss into a pan on medium heat. Once the meat is thoroughly cooked, drain the fat and transfer the beef to a paper towel-lined plate.

3. With what fat remains in the pan, throw in the sweet potato, onions, carrots, and broccoli, but don't add the mushrooms, red bell pepper, or tomatoes yet. Sprinkle with salt and cayenne pepper for a bit more flavor. Cook for 5 minutes. (I know that I'd usually cook the onions until they turn translucent before adding other veggies, but I figured that that these veggies all could do with roughly the same amount of cooking time and I didn't feel like doing this is too many stages).

4. Add in the mushrooms and tomatoes, cooking for a couple minutes.

5. Then return the ground beef to the pan. Heat for a couple more minutes or until the beef is thoroughly warmed.

6. Add a couple spoonfuls of the ground beef mixture to one of the cabbage leaves, curl up the edges, and dig in.

Slow-Cooker Paleo Pad Thai

Hi, folks!

If you're from the US, I hope you had a great Thanksgiving! If you're not, well, I hope you had a great week anyways. You probably didn't overeat like the rest of us. I really enjoyed my week; I took the entire week off from work. It was glorious, but it's back to the grindstone tomorrow morning. I've been working a lot these days, given that I'm currently performing two roles at work. Nothing like taking on a second job part-time while your first job gets busy. I've been eating horribly, that is when I do eat. To be completely honest, my life prior to vacation basically consisted of waking up, going to work, eating lunch while working, going home, and going to sleep. I was only eating one real meal per day and snacking for the others. I've barely been working out and I need to change that. So I took today to clean up my room a little bit, try to prep for the week, and relax before getting busy again. Right now, I'm currently watching/listening to "The Perfect Human Diet." I highly recommend checking it out. It's on Amazon Prime and Netflix, just so you know.

With that, I'll leave you with an easy recipe that I threw together once I returned from the airport last night.

Slow-Cooker Paleo Pad Thai

1 1/2 lb chicken

1 1/2 tsp extra-virgin olive oil

Chicken Seasoning

1 tsp ground black pepper

1 1/2 tsp salt

3/4 tsp cayenne pepper

Sauce

1 cup coconut milk

1 cup chicken broth

3 Tbls sunbutter (sunflower seed butter)

1 Tbls coconut aminos

2 tsp fish sauce

1 1/2 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp cayenne pepper

3/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes

2 bunches green onion, chopped

"Pasta"

2 zucchini, julienned

2 carrots, julienned

1/2 sweet onion, thinly sliced

Optional Toppings

chopped cashews

green onions

cilantro

1. Heat the olive oil over medium-high heat in a pan on the stove. Chop the chicken into roughly 1" pieces. Season with salt, black pepper, and cayenne pepper. Place the chicken into the pan and brown the chicken. It doesn't have to be thoroughly cooked yet because you'll be cooking more later.

2. Mix together the ingredients for the sauce in the crock pot. Stir until the sunbutter has broken down and is fully combined.

3. Stir in the browned chicken.

4. Place the "pasta" ingredients on top of the sauce/chicken. Do not stir to combine.

5. Cook on low for 6 hours. If you have a programmable slow-cooker, you probably don't have that option, but just set it on low and check it after 6 hours. If you cook it too long, the "pasta" will brown a bit more than you might like.

6. Remove from the crock pot and serve with any of the optional toppings if you so choose. It'll be a bit spicy, but sneakily so (at least to me). Enjoy!