Paleo Blueberry Muffins

I was desperately craving some blueberry muffins the other day. So what's a girl to do, but start baking?

I am a self-proclaimed baker, not a cook. Don't get me wrong, I can whip up some decent meals, but baking is by far my strong suit - it's intuitive. I know what the various batters are supposed to look like and I just mix in my Paleo ingredients until it looks right. So here's one recipe for Paleo blueberry muffins. I did use maple syrup, but you can easily exclude it if you're on a Whole 30. Yes, blueberry muffins are considered SWYPO (Sex With Your Pants On), but if you've got a craving, I think it's better to let yourself indulge in that craving instead of eating everything else you can get your hands on and then still being dissatisfied. Go ahead... you know you want to!

Paleo Blueberry Muffins

Ingredients

1 cup almond butter

1 cup almond meal

3 Tbls tapioca flour

3 Tbls arrowroot powder

1/2 cup shredded, unsweetened coconut

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

a couple shakes of sea salt

2 eggs

2 Tbls maple syrup

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 cup coconut oil, melted

1 cup fresh blueberries

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325°F.
2. Combine the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet ingredients in another. Once the wet ingredients are thoroughly mixed, stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.
3. Distribute into 10 muffin tins - you can either coat each section with coconut oil, or you can use a muffin tin liner - silicone is easier to separate from the muffin, but paper works well too.
4. Cook for 12-15 minutes.
5. Let cool for a little bit, then devour as if you were cookie monster and these blueberry muffins were cookies. But try to get all of these muffins in your mouth instead of letting them fly all over the place, it'd be a shame to waste such deliciousness.

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.

Roasted Pork Tenderloin with Apples

Roasted Pork Tenderloin with Apples

1-2 lb pork tenderloin

2 Tbls olive oil

1 tsp sea salt

1 tbls Dijon mustard

1 tsp dried thyme

1/4 tsp pepper

2 apples (I used Gala), cored and thickly sliced

1/2 onion, sliced (you can use more than this, but I'm not much of an onion person, so I only use a little)

1. Preheat oven to 425°F.
2. Trim pork to remove the silver skin. Rub the tenderloin with 1 Tbls olive oil, then rub all over with salt.
3. Heat 1 Tbls olive oil over medium-high heat in a cast-iron skillet. Once hot, place the tenderloin in the pan and cook for 3 minutes on each side (there's four sides in case you were wondering).
4. Remove tenderloin from the pan and set aside. Add the apples and onions to the pan and cook for 4-5  minutes
5. While the apples and onions cook, rub the tenderloin with the mustard, thyme, and pepper.
6. Place the tenderloin on top of the apples and onions and transfer to the oven. Cook for 15-20 minutes or until the internal temperature of the pork reaches 145-150°F.
7. Transfer the pork to a plate and cover with aluminum. Let rest for 10 minutes before slicing and serving.