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!