Cheesy Potato Soup with Heart Shaped Carrots

     The one good thing about winter is comfort food. What's more comforting than the potato? A big bowlful of warm cheesy potato soup with heart shaped carrots!
   

DISCLAIMER: This recipe is not health food. It's straight up junky comfort food. 

     First, start cooking some bacon. I always chop the strips before I cook them rather than tear or crumble them after. It makes for more uniform pieces that cook more evenly and you can fill the pan better than strips. After it renders a bit and releases some yummy grease (Why sugarcoat it? Call it what you want, but we all know it's bacon grease...hmmm...note to self: try sugarcoated bacon grease....) stir in some finely chopped onion or shallot. 

     While your bacon and onion (or shallot) are getting lovely and golden browned, start cutting your veggies. I just dice the potatoes in chunks. I like to do some small and some large. I get bored eating same sized bites of everything. I like to mix up the textures a bit. MAKE SURE YOU PEEL YOUR POTATOES! I have found out the hard way that when you put diced potatoes in soups the peels fall off and you get potato chunks and pieces of skin in your soup. It's like trying to eat wet paper. Gross.

Yeah my potatoes sprouted, big whoop. They come off with the peel.

     Now for the fun part. I saw these heart shaped carrots in a recipe I pinned from Pinterest. And seriously, don't all cute ideas spring from Pinterest? The pin I read didn't really explain what to do so I put that fancy Art degree to work and figured it out. First, PEEL THE CARROTS! They won't slip off like the potato skins but they look dirty and gross even if you scrub them. It's super off-putting.

     Starting at the big end, slide in the tip of your knife and run it down to the pointed end. Repeat the cut about a half inch from the first cut. Angle these cuts in toward each other. This will create a V-shaped channel down the carrot. 

     Put the big end of the carrot on the cutting board and make a shallow cut down the length of the carrot down the channel you just created. This softens the edge into the rounded top of the heart.

      Now flip it over and put the V side down. Starting at the big end again, and at the middle of the carrot, angle the point of your knife out away from the carrot and make a cut down each side. It's like the exact opposite of what you did on the other side.

End view, don't try to cut it holding it like this or you'll probably chop off your fingers!

     Now for the third and final step, chop the carrot. I try to keep them about the same size as the potato chunks so they'll cook at the same rate.

Oh, the cuteness!

      Place the veggies and bacon mixture in the pot with some chicken broth. Top it off with enough milk or half and half  to cover them. You could also use cream if, you know, you're trying to gain weight.

      Now season. I rarely measure, I just sprinkle in and taste until I get it right. Remember, you can always add more but you can't take it out, so start off light. I usually start with a pinch or about a 1/4 teaspoon. For this soup I use salt, pepper, garlic powder and ground mustard powder. If you haven't tried ground mustard with cheese sauce I really urge you to try. If you don't have it on hand, just omit it and it'll still be fine...just not as good. Bring it to a boil and then reduce heat.

     Here's the secret ingredient. The classiest ingredient I may have ever used. You may think a cheesy soup would call for some hand shredded imported cheese, since it's right there in the title and all. You will be surprised to know that this recipe does not. This recipe requires only the finest liquid cheese you can find in a jar.

     Don't even think about using Cheez Whiz or a store brand. This is the only liquid cheese I buy. It is velvety and delicious. If you're a food snob, don't turn up your nose. Hear me out. I know this is "cheese product" and not "cheese", but it is tasty. I don't care if you're a great chef classically trained, you still eat junk food. If you're worried what your food snob pals will say, just do what I do. Drive 50 miles to a grocery store out of town. Put on a hat and sunglasses and ask them to put the cheese in a plain brown bag, after you use the cheese, wrap it back in the same bag and while driving to work, throw it out your car window into the river as you go over the bridge. Or you could get over yourself and your ego and allow yourself to enjoy some good old white trash liquid gold.

  Last, but not least, after the cheese has warmed through and the vegetables are done, I add a big blob of butter.

I love serving this up with corn bread. And not just any old cornbread, only Jiffy will do. I like to make it in my mini muffin pan. If they're mini, the calories don't count, right?

There it is, in all it's golden glory!

Cheesy Potato Soup

3 strips bacon (cut into strips before frying)

1/4 of a small onion or one small shallot-minced

5 lbs potatoes (I prefer Yukon gold or russet. They stand up to boiling and make the soup nice and thick, also the gold add to the golden color)

3 carrots

1 quart chicken stock/broth

1 to 1 1/2  cup (approximately) milk or half and half or cream

1 teaspoon salt (to taste)

1/2 teaspoon black pepper (to taste)

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder (to taste)

1/4 teaspoon ground mustard (to taste)

1 jar Cheesy Ragu Double Cheddar

1 tablespoon butter

Begin frying bacon, as it renders down, add onion/shallot. Cook until bacon is done and onion/shallot is translucent.

While bacon and onion cook, peel and cube potatoes and carrots. 

Pour chicken broth in soup pot, add vegetables and bacon mixture. Pour in enough milk/half and half/cream to cover the veggies. 

Add seasoning.

Bring to a boil and reduce heat to medium/low.

Add cheese sauce. Cook until veggies are done. 

Add butter before serving.

Paleo Butter Candies

     When I was a little girl, our whole huge family would get together for Sunday dinner after church and holiday dinners at my Aunt Lena's house. As the youngest cousin, I'm a good 10 years or more junior than practically everybody. This meant my teenaged cousins didn't know I existed. They'd be off listening to music and talking about whatever teenagers give a crap about and I'd sneak off, undetected, to the empty dining room. The men were in the living room with football and the women would be in the kitchen with Butterball.

It wouldn't be until we all sat down to eat that they'd find my tiny fingerprints in the margarine tub.

      My love of all things butter flavored has never waned. That's why I knew I struck gold with this recipe.

Sweet. Creamy. Delicious gold.

   
     I just came across this recipe from Empowered Sustenence last night on Pinterest and had to try it but, of course, I had to tinker. If you know me, you know I can't leave anything alone. This time I gambled and won. I added vanilla and lemon extracts and it's almost, but not quite, lemon frosting. Imagine lemon frosting but instead of heavy and cloyingly sweet with sugar, it's rich and unctuous.

Yeah. Unctuous. I said it.
   
If you are craving something sweet, but not too sweet, this is your new go-to treat. They were super simple to make, didn't take long and...satisfying. Most sweets make you crave more but these are oddly satisfying. I'm guessing it has to do with the fat.

Without further ado,

                                          Paleo Butter Candies

1 block (8 oz) Kerrygold butter, softened (any brand grassfed butter will do)
3 tablespoons honey (raw and local if you can swing it)
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract (the good kind)
1/4 teaspoon lemon extract (again, don't waste calories on cheap junk)
generous pinch sea salt (1/8 teaspoonish)

Cream butter with mixer or immersion blender, add other ingredients and combine well.

Spoon into sandwich bag, or pastry bag fitted with a tip--if you're fancy. Clip corner of sandwich bag, if you're going that route. Squeeze (or pipe, Fancy Nancy) button-sized drops of the mixture onto a sheet of waxed paper or a silpat sheet. Place candies in fridge to set up, about a half hour.

Pop them off the sheet and into a covered storage bowl and keep in fridge...or gobble down immediately.

Up to you.

A commenter on the original blog post mentioned using cocoa powder for chocolate candies. My next batch will definitely be chocolate! Maybe even chocolate with raspberry extract! The variations are endless and my love of butter is deep.

*A word of caution, butter absorbs odors, so be sure to keep these babies covered or they won't be as tasty. Unless you like garlic lemon honey butter salmon candies. I don't judge.
   

Paleo Golden Mushroom Soup

     I always hesitate to call any recipe "paleo" for two reasons.

Reason 1: Some people see "paleo" and read "weird" and automatically dismiss it.

Reason 2: Some extreme paleo eater's head explodes because it contains an ingredient they would rather choke on than eat.

     This recipe is so yummy I think anyone who likes chicken, mushrooms and soup will enjoy it. So I'm posting it and you can call it whatever you like!

 I started with two bags of my homemade broth. I used turkey, but if I'd had chicken I would've used that. If you don't have homemade, storebought is perfectly okay.

I also put in two frozen, boneless, skinless chicken tenders.You can add probably two more before it's a 

not-enough-soup-too-much-stuff situation. I know chicken isn't a typical ingredient in golden mushroom soup but I thought I'd add a bit more tasty animal protein.

That piece of chicken looks like a tadpole! Appetizing, huh?

   

While the broth was melting, I sliced some onion (I had red on hand but a yellow one would be tasty too). I also chopped and added about half of a 16 ounce box of crimini mushrooms (washed and stems removed). Again, substitutes are okay. Any old non-hallucinogenic 'shroom will do.

About now, I seasoned the broth. I added soy sauce (you can sub coconut aminos), poultry seasoning, salt, garlic powder and rice vinegar. I used rice vinegar because it's light, but I think any vinegar other than balsamic would taste okay.

I let it go about five minutes or so and I removed the chicken and diced it up. I also removed that little nasty tendon that's always still attached to the bigger end. Don't you just hate that when you get served one of those in a restaurant? I always want to take it to the chef and show him how to pull it off. It takes like a whole second to do. Okay, tenderloin rant over...for now.

Looks like tofu but I promise it's not.

I let the whole deal cook down about 15 minutes until the veggies were good and soft. I finished it off with a tablespoon of good old Kerrygold butter and let it melt before serving it up. You could totally puree and serve this that way as well.

Mmmmmm!

 Here's the breakdown:

Paleo Golden Mushroom Soup

3 cups chicken or turkey broth

2 boneless skinless chicken breast tenderloins (or one small whole breast)

1/4 cup sliced or chopped onion

8 oz of stemmed, cleaned, sliced mushrooms

1/4 cup soy sauce (or coconut aminos)

                                                      1 teaspoon light vinegar

                                                      1 teaspoon poultry seasoning

                                                      1/2 teaspoon sea salt

                                                      1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

                                                      1 tablespoon butter

Place broth and chicken in pot over low-medium heat. Prepare vegetables and add to pot. Remove chicken and dice into fine pieces. Add in soy sauce, vinegar and spices. Cook an additional 15 minutes. Just before serving, melt a tablespoon of butter in the whole pot.

Paleo Taco Sauce

     As a (mostly) paleo household, we allow ourselves a few non-paleo meals per week. Three meals, to be exact. I am always looking for ways to paleo-fy those meals if possible, or at least as much as I can. Every Tuesday is "Taco Tuesday". We go back and forth on whether we have tacos or fajitas or enchiladas, you get the idea. Sometimes we go full on pigfest with cheddar cheese, corn tortilla chips, flour tortillas, crunchy corn taco shells, etc. Sometimes, we behave ourselves and have taco salad or use lettuce for taco shells. Even if we eat the non-paleo stuff, we still try to eat whole/clean foods. Our last regular grocery store holdout was Ortega taco sauce. We ate half an 8 oz bottle between the three of us, once a week! 

     My husband and I were both raised on the Standard American Diet and Ortega taco sauce was a household staple of my childhood. The three of us can't have taco night without it. Sadly, the third ingredient listed on the label is corn syrup. Corn syrup is a major no-no when it comes to eating clean. It also contains cornstarch which is not caveman approved. So I set out to come up with a recipe for taco sauce that tastes as good as (and similar to) Ortega taco sauce but is made from natural ingredients.

Behold! Here it is.

 Start with organic tomato paste plus 3 cans water (18 oz)

Add salt, dehydrated minced onion, chili powder, cumin, paprika and garlic powder.

Next, whisk in white vinegar and honey. Add crushed red pepper flake or cayenne pepper to taste. Bring to a boil in a medium saucepan. Cover and reduce to medium-low heat and cook for 15 minutes.

Cool and pour into jar to be stored in fridge.

This is actually what was left after tonight's taco feast!

Paleo Taco Sauce

6oz can organic tomato paste

18 oz water

2 teaspoons minced dehydrated onion

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon chili powder

1/2 teaspoon cumin

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1/4 teaspoon paprika

1 tablespoon white vinegar

1 teaspoon mild honey (local is best)

1/8 teaspoon (pinch) crushed red pepper flake or cayenne pepper

Whisk together all ingredients. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce to medium-low heat and cover. Cook 15 minutes. Cool before storing in a glass container in fridge. Makes about 16 ounces.

*Feel free to add more or less of anything to taste, but be sure to maintain the cooking time to reduce the sauce and marry the flavors.

Grain Free Paleo Cereal Recipe

     One of the big holdouts on the whole family completely adopting a paleo lifestyle is breakfast cereal, pizza, and pasta. We only eat pizza a couple times a month and we only have pasta on Thursday nights. Cereal, however, is a daily staple. I may have found a solution with this recipe.
     When we tried veganism, we stopped eating dairy. That was several months ago and we don't even miss it. The hardest part was getting my child on board with nondairy milk. That took a little doing. We did a taste test between almond and coconut milk. The choice was neither. So I started mixing almond milk with some organic chocolate syrup from Trader Joe's for awhile. Next I used those milk flavoring straws and eventually just plain almond milk. Never even went noticed.
    Feeding your child sugar cereal, or even Cheerios, feels awful when you know it's not the best thing for them. What else can you do if they refuse to eat eggs and you want them to have a grain free, protein rich breakfast? I just gave up and kept buying cereal.
     Meanwhile, I found a few recipes for grain free energy bars for lunch. Since I can't get my child to eat meat without prodding, it's not even an option for lunch. I used to pack store bought granola bars but started to feel bad about some of the ingredients. The bar recipe I tried said to refrigerate so I figured if I froze them and packed them they'd be thawed by lunch. What happened instead was a crumbly, greasy mess. Cleaning out the bento box, a lightbulb went off over my head. The mess was tasty and looked like granola. A few tweaks later, I had a granola cereal that's full of protein and fiber and has a little fat and fruit in it as well.

     Without further ado...

GRAIN FREE PALEO CEREAL

8 oz. unsalted, roasted, crushed pecans
8 oz. unsalted, roasted, slivered or sliced almonds
1 cup almond meal (I used what was leftover after making almond milk, but you can use whatever nut flour you like)
1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
1/4 cup dried fruit (I used raisins)
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons honey
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1/3 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup almond butter

Mix all ingredients well and place in an airtight container. Done!

*NOTE: The container is half gone, the recipe makes twice this much cereal.


You are welcome to adjust the ingredients to your tastes/needs. It's not a cake or a bar or anything that needs to set up solid, so the amounts of things don't really matter. This is the recipe I used and it turned out mighty tasty so I plan to make it this way again and again. I used sliced almonds and mashed them up with my handy-dandy Chop & Stir tool. You could also swap out agave or maple syrup for the honey if you want. We like this served with cold almond milk, but I bet it'd be good alone or as a topping for yogurt or ice cream too. Just go easy on your portion sizes or this is not very figure friendly.