Thee Delightful Gluten-Free/Paleo Bread

• 1 ½ cups blanched almond flour
• ¾ cup arrowroot powder
• ¼ cup golden flaxmeal
• ½ teaspoon celtic sea salt
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• 4 eggs
• 2 teaspoon agave nectar
• 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. In a medium bowl, combine almond flour, arrowroot, flax meal, salt and baking soda
2. In a larger bowl, blend eggs 3-5 minutes until frothy
3. Stir agave and vinegar into eggs
4. Mix dry ingredients into wet
5. Pour Scoop batter into a well greased 7.5 x 3.5 magic line loaf pan
6. Bake at 350º for 30-35 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of loaf comes out clean
7. Cool and serve

Wonderful World of Almonds

My family and I have decided to change up our eating habits for a while. We're going to take on a paleo-inspired lifestyle! I love that we're all doing this together, because now I can whip up weird concoctions and they won't give me the "...but why?" look for being so unnecessarily healthy and homemade. So our diet consists of fruits, veggies, meats, seafood, nuts, and seeds. No dairy, no grains. This is going to be fun!! I'm basing a lot of our approach off of the book, "It Starts With Food", which is all about the Whole30 diet, which is pretty much just a paleo diet. Mom just watched "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead", a documentary about a guy who juiced for 60 days and lost heaps of weight and became much healthier... so we bought a juicer and that will be in the diet as well! Goody gumdrops I love new starts :)

So I've been raging through all of these amazing food blogs, pulling and prying ideas and thoughts on the whole thing. I'm starting with almonds.

Almonds are incredible! So many uses from one batch of raw almonds!
I am more grateful than ever that I got a food processor for Christmas. My life has changed.

Almond Butter

1) Simply throw almonds (raw, smoked, salted, roasted, whatever) in the food processor and blend until smooth.

2) That's it, really.


Almond Milk

1) Blanch about 2 cups of raw almonds overnight. That means you toss them into a big bowl of water (enough to cover them) and set in on the counter until morning. 

2) The next day, you can peel the skins off of the almonds really easily. It's actually very satisfying to simply pinch the almond and squeeze out the inner almond into a fresh bowl. Wee!

3) Save your skins. Set them out on a paper towel to dry.

4) In a food processor or blender, toss in a cup of skinless almonds with 2 cups water (purified, preferably) with a teaspoon of vanilla extract (if you please). Blend until smooth.

5) Strain it over your pitcher using a mesh strainer or cheese cloth. Save your tiny-crushed almonds in a separate bowl!

6) There you have it! Delicious almond milk, all natural. Don't be surprised: it will be grainy still. It's not that store-bought stuff!


**EDIT!!... this recipe tastes so much better... throw in a cup of your blanched almonds (skin on) with 2 cups filtered water. Add a Tbsp of creamed coconut, a tsp. of vanilla, maybe even a bit of agave, a tsp of cinnamon, and a pinch of salt. Mix in the blender. Pour over a cheesecloth to strain. So creamy and sweet and delicious!
Almond Paste

1) In case you're not a huge baker, almond paste is wonderful to use when making certain treats like almond-butter cookies and such. 

2) Pour the leftover almond pieces from making your almond milk, back into the food processor to blend it all even tinier for more of a paste. 

3) Seal that into a mason jar for future uses.

Almond Skin Meal

1) Once the skins have dried, toss them in the processor to blend into a fine grain.

2) The skins are wonderfully nutritious (fiber, prebiotics, antioxidants). Stir them into oatmeal, baking recipes or in your yogurt. Yum!

Enjoy!! 

Brown Butter, Bacon, & Chocolate Chip Cookies

Oh boy, this is a new favorite! You can't go wrong with bacon. The salty sweet combination of chocolate and hickory-smoked bacon is absolutely divine. This recipe is so easy, too!

Ingredients
 set oven to 350
 
1 3/4 c. Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1/2 tsp. Baking Soda
12 Tb. Unsalted Butter
1/2 c. Sugar
3/4 c. packed Dark Brown Sugar
1 tsp. Salt
2 tsp. Pure Vanilla Extract (I use Organic Madagascar Bourbon)
1 Large Egg
1 Large Egg Yolk
4 oz. Dark Chocolate, diced or slivered into 1/4" pieces (or whatever you'd like)
1 c. Bacon (fried until crispy, diced into 1/4" pieces)
keep the bacon grease!

Make it!

1) After setting your oven to 350, whisk together your flour and baking soda.

2) Fry up at least 8 pieces of bacon... local hickory smoked is the bomb, if you can find that! Let those get real nice and crispy before transferring them to a paper towel-covered plate to cool. It's great to make extra so that you must eat a few of those delicious strips of pig. Don't throw out the bacon grease. Chop the bacon into small 1/4" pieces.

3) Now, using a skillet over medium flame, toss in 10 tbsp. of unsalted butter, stirring continuously and watching it like a hawk. You don't want your brown butter to become burnt butter. Once it's all melted and golden, transfer that to a heat-safe bowl. Now add in about 1 extra tbsp of butter, and pour in the extra bacon grease that you created. Oh boy!

4) In your mixing bowl, pour your brown butter in, along with your sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, and salt. Mix! This concoction on its own is to die for. Try dipping a piece of bacon in. Mmmmmm...

5) Add egg and egg yolk. Mix until its all very smooth. Let it sit for about 30 seconds, and mix again just to be sure that sugar is really well mixed/dissolved.

6) Chop your chocolate off the block, or from a chocolate bar or use a bag of chocolate morsels. Whatever strikes your fancy. I personally loved chopping slivers off of a quality block of dark chocolate.

7) With a wooden spoon, stir in the chocolate and bacon pieces until its all very combined.

8) Transfer dough balls to a parchment paper-covered cookie sheet, and bake for about 13 minutes. Keep watch! They should be slightly golden on the edges, but gooey on the inside when they're ready to come out of the oven.

Enjoy!!