Paleo Naan Review

I seem to be really into Indian food these days. My gal pal KAOS is my Indian food buddy. Whenever I had the hankering for my go-to chicken tikka masala, I'd call her with something along the lines of "So I'm feeling like Indian... you in?" It was a good bet that she'd say yes. We had one restaurant that we'd always order takeout from, then head back to her place and watch an Indian movie or something like the TV show Vikings. Both are excellent options, though definitely opposite ends of the spectrum. If you're looking for a good Indian movie, I highly recommend Jodhaa Akbar - it may be 3 hours and 33 minutes long and comes with an Intermission, but it's pretty awesome. I love it. Go watch it! Or if you're looking for something more like the stereotypical Bollywood film where the characters randomly breakout into song and dance, give the Dhoom series a try. I haven't watched all of them, but Dhoom 2 led to quite a few laughs and sighs over the dreamy Hrithik Roshan - he's also in Jodhaa Akbar. Notice a trend?

Anyways, I seem to have gotten sidetracked by an Indian hottie... back to Indian food. I found a recipe for Paleo Naan on My Heart Beets. It went great with the butter chicken from last week.

Paleo Naan! Nom nom nom!

This recipe has only five ingredients! If you read the recipe on the site, it says it contains just three ingredients, but really you need the last two: salt and ghee. The ghee helps give the naan the golden color you expect from naan, and the salt really brings out the flavor. Otherwise, it's a decent attempt at replicating naan, but tastes a bit bland. The downsides of this recipe include cook time and the about of ghee necessary to get the flavor and color looking the way that I wanted it to. The first thing my roommate said when she came home an hour after I made naan was: "Yum. It smells like butter." Yeah, I tend to feel the same way... Butter = yum. It's easy to go a bit heavy on the ghee. This photo below shows what happens when you use too much ghee - still tastes delicious, especially when you're wanting bread, but it is a bit on the greasy side.

The alternative is if you don't use enough ghee. And it basically looks white with a few browned patches, like you can see below. I found that the best amount of ghee was 1 tsp per side. Don't put 2 tsp at once, because then one of the sides looks golden and the other looks pale.

Vegan Cookie Mix Review

Review: Purely Elizabeth - Oatmeal Cherry Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix

gluten-free, vegan, free of refined sugar

Should you buy this mix? Probably not.

I recommend a pass on this one. If you stick to a strict Paleo diet, definitely skip this one. To make these cookies, you have to add in oil (olive or coconut), applesauce, and vanilla extract. I went with melted coconut oil and organic, sugar-free applesauce. The resulting cookie was incredibly crumbly, to the point that I ended up eating the cookies with a spoon. The oatmeal flavor is a bit overwhelming for me, so eating more than one cookie at a time wasn't gonna happen (that's one way of eating cookies in moderation).

Now to the Paleo discussion. This cookie mix doesn't comply with Paleo, but it's one of the most Paleo-friendly cookie mixes that I've found yet. Yes it contains oats, millet flour, and garbanzo fava bean flour, which definitely makes this cookie mix fall out of the range of Paleo. However... instead of using regular sugar, this mix is made with coconut palm sugar which is rather well known in the Paleo realm. Additionally, part of the flour portion of the mix contains almond flour. Again, another popular Paleo ingredient. This was a cheat meal buy for me. Compared to the other gluten-free mixes out there, which are made with a mix of corn or rice flour, potato starch, and soy, this is a better choice for Paleo... in theory at least. In execution, it lacked a certain flair... or... well... cookie consistency. Maybe I did something wrong. It's quite possible. Maybe I um, accidentally added too much coconut oil? I don't know. Maybe my oven operates differently from others. Anyways, I'm sure this cookie worked for someone else. But not for me. So I vote no. It's got potential, but I think I'll stick with making my own cookies.

Ingredients: organic millet flour, organic coconut palm sugar, organic almond flour, certified gluten-free oats, chocolate chips (evaporated cane juice, chocolate liquor, non-dairy cocoa butter), dried cherries, garbanzo fava bean flour, organic chia seeds, baking soda, sea salt.