I just got back from a 15 minute walk around the block, and am now attempting to eat a super health egg salad before my next meeting. Who hates Monday? Not me!

What do you do to make your Monday awesome?

Easy Egg Salad

Serves 2

Ingredients

4 hard boiled farm fresh eggs
1/2 C mayo
Salt and pepper to taste
dash cayenne (optional)

Directions

1. Peel eggs and smash with a fork
2. Stir in mayo, salt and pepper. Add cayenne to taste.
3. To serve, scoop on top of a bed of spring greens.

This is an amazingly simple coconut flour bread. Whenever I’ve made nut flour breads, they usually end up dry and flaky. Not this one! This is moist and perfect for sandwich bread.

Coconut Flour Bread

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups coconut flour
• 1 cup ghee
• 2 tbsp honey
• 12 eggs
• 1 tsp unrefined sea salt

Directions

1. Preheat 350° F
2. Soften ghee while oven is preheating.
3. Mix dry ingredients together in a medium sized bowl.
4. Mix wet ingredients together and then, using a hand blender, mix thoroughly with the dry ingredients.
5. Butter a loaf pan and pour batter into pan.
6. Bake 40 mins.

Delicious, cinnamony muffins are a perfect fall treat. With fresh apple chunks mixed in, it stays moist and fresh.

Cinnamon Apple Muffins

Serves: 24 Muffins

Ingredients

4 Cups Almond Flour
1 tsp Sea Salt
1 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 C Arrowroot Powder
5 tsp Ground Cinnamon
1/2 C Ghee
1 C Honey
2 Egg
2 TBSP Vanilla
4 Medium Apples, cored and diced into 1/4-inch cubes

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Line muffin pan with paper liners.
2. In a large bowl, combine almond flour, sea salt, baking soda, arrowroot powder, and cinnamon.
3. In a smaller bowl, whip bacon fat, honey, eggs and vanilla together.
4. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold in apples.
5. Spoon batter into the paper liners.
6. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until muffin tops are golden brown.
7. Let sit for 20 minutes, then serve with a pat of butter.

Recipe altered from Elana Amsterdam’s book: The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook

I scoured the grocery store Wednesday after teaching my 4 p.m. yoga class desperately looking, but unwilling to ask, for peanut sauce. I couldn’t even find a Jiffy and sugar version of peanut sauce! Not that I would have stooped so low…

So I trudged home, hungry and still dreaming of grilled chicken with steamed greens dipped in peanut sauce. They say hunger is the root of all tasty recipes… and so it was the case on Wednesday. I measured and mixed and taste tested until I came up with this recipe, a recipe Elav said triggered a childhood memory. I think that’s a good sign.

I invite you to test this recipe and leave comments! But first, a confession: at the Savvy Recipe Development talk (just one of the wonderful events at the Nourished Food Blogger Conference) it was recommended to test a recipe three times before publishing it. And I only tested my recipe, um, once. My only excuse is that I haven’t had time to get through 10 servings of really, really good Peanut Sauce since Wednesday. But I’ve made a huge dent.

Enjoy!

Peanut Sauce

Makes 10 servings

Ingredients

3/4 C Peanut butter (or other nut butter)
1/4 C Coconut Milk
1 1/2 Tb Lemon Juice
1 1/2 Tb Liquid Aminos
1 1/2 Tb Water
1 Tb Honey
1 Tb Apple Cider Vinegar
1 Tb Garlic powder
1 1/2 tsp Fish Sauce
1 1/2 tsp Ginger powder
1 tsp Yellow Curry powder
1/2 tsp White Wine Vinegar
1/4 tsp Real Salt

Directions

1. Using a food processor, like this Cuisinart Food Processor, mix all ingredients.
2. Taste test and adjust as necessary.
3. Use on top of free range, organic broiled or grilled chicken or as the marinade for free range, organic pork chops.
4. Enjoy and…
5. Leave your comments below!

Linked to: Real Food Wednesday

One of my younger sisters spent a few months in Australia a few years ago. The summer Elav and I moved in with my parents for our in-between-school-and-job section of life, she introduced us all to these Australian burgers. They are delicious!

Aussie Burgers

Serves 4

Ingredients

4 grass-fed beef patties
4 slices pineapple
4 fried free-range eggs
2 large beetroot or 4 small beetroot
mayonnaise

Directions

1. Roast beetroot in the oven: slice thinly and bake at 350° F for approximately 30-40 minutes.
2. Grill or fry the beef patties and pineapple.
3. Fry the eggs.
4. Layer the burger: beef patty, mayonnaise, pineapple, egg and beetroot

If you love my Creamy Bake Salmon recipe, you’ll love this Creamy Cabbage recipe. It’s a mild side dish that goes well with almost any main (grass-fed, sustainable of course) meat dish. In fact, I thought about it as I was typing and I would suggest it goes well with ANY meat dish!

Creamy Cabbage

Serves 4+

Ingredients

1 small cabbage
1 red bell pepper
2 TBSP butter
2 TBSP water
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
6 oz Neufchtle or Cream Cheese, cubed
1 1/2 tsp Herbs de Province

Directions

1. Cut up cabbage and bell pepper into strips and place in a pot large enough to accomodate the vegetables.
2. Coat in butter, add water, salt, pepper and herbs de province and turn to medium heat.
3. Cover and steam for 8 minutes or until cabbage is tender, stirring occasionally.
4. Add cubed cream cheese and stir in until creamy.

Linking to: Melt in Your Mouth Monday, Hunk of Meat Monday, Monday Mania, Mangia Mondays, Market Yourself Monday, Inspire Me Monday

*Sigh* It’s been a very long time (well, 9 days) since I’ve really taken time to plan a meal and then carry my plan out. If you’ve been following Wellness Hammock’s blog and reading my recent(ish) posts, you’ll already know that I have been slipping a bit in my responsibilities as Blog Writer & Owner.

No more! My studio is open (you can visit The Yoga Place here) and I am still busy, yes, but it’s manageable.  The studio looks really good–there are still a few things to take care of but those are relatively small items. Yesterday I started 5 loads of laundry, ran the dishwasher, cleaned the kitchen and took the trash out. So I feel like I can be a good housewife again, starting with this meal!

Who doesn’t love a good stack of free range and grass-fed beef ribs?

Tender Oven Baked Short Ribs

Serves 4

Ingredients

4 Free-Range Beef Short Ribs
Filtered Water
Sea Salt
Pepper
Garlic

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 300°F.
2. Place ribs bone side down in a dish large enough for the meat to be in one layer (don’t stack on top of each other). Add about 1/4 inch water to the pan.
3. Season to your liking (may I suggest garlic, salt, pepper?) and then cover with lid or tee-pee a strip of aluminum foil over the pan.
4. Bake 4 hours.
5. Remove pan from oven, un-foil the make-shift lid or remove the actual lid, then place back into oven at 350°F for 15-20 minutes.
6. Enjoy!

Linked to: Real Food Wednesday, Taking a Timeout Thursday

Tomorrow early in the morning I’ll be driving down to UW-Milwaukee for a 2 day Reiki level I & II course. Since I’m conscious about both food and money, I usually plan my meals ahead of time so I don’t have to go out to eat.

So here are my easy-to-travel meals:

• FRIDAY
• MORNING: Bacon, Eggs & Cheese Muffin + hard boiled egg + raw milk
• LUNCH: Leftover pot roast with cooked carrots and cabbage + raw milk
• DINNER: I’ll be with distant family (through marriage) this night, so I’m not sure what we’ll do.
• SATURDAY
• MORNING: Bacon, Eggs & Cheese Muffin + hard boiled egg + raw milk
• LUNCH: Tuna salad (nervous about this one: the cayenne pepper accidentally poured out of the shaker) + raw milk + apple
• DINNER: hard boiled egg + a little dish from a local coop + raw milk

Photo Credit: http://www.metroparent.com/Metro-Parent/August-2010/Slashing-Your-Travel-Food-Budget/

This dessert has been passed down from generation to generation—er, at least from my mom to her daughters. What makes this dessert great? It’s necessary to make it a few hours in advance, so it’s perfect for when you have company and don’t want to scramble at the last minute as the whole meal pulls together.

I have been noticing a trend throughout all my recipes: I always point out how great it is when a dish can be made a head of time. And I’m coming to grips with the fact that I may never be a gourmet cook. And that’s OK.

As long as simple dishes like this taste nearly as good as Tiramisu, I’ll be happy. Doesn’t take much!

P.S. This isn’t a GAPS appropriate dish. It might have been the pasteurized dairy or maybe the sugary cookies that clued me in. The hubbles likes when I make this dish though.

Layered Triple Ginger Cookie Dessert

Serves 6

Ingredients

1/2 box Triple Ginger Snaps Cookies (from Trader Joe’s)
1 pint whipping cream
vanilla, to taste
liquid stevia, to taste

Equipment

Hand mixer

Directions

1. Pour the whipping cream into a medium or large sized bowl. With the hand mixer, whip the cream until it forms peaks.
2. Stir in a few drops of vanilla or stevia.
3. In a serving dish or bowl, spoon a little of the whipped cream into the bottom. Layer with the cookie. Then layer with another spoonful of whipping cream, another cookie layer, etc until the dish is full or the ingredients run out.
4. Cover the dish and place in refrigerator at least 5 hours to soften cookies. Sitting overnight works best.

Linked to: Momnivore’s Dilemma, Taking a Time Out Thursday,  Full Plate Thursday, Real Food Wednesday

One common concern for people who are on a grain-free or limiting diet is that they will be hungry all the time. Breads, pastas, rice–those were all fillers! What do you eat instead of those?

This BLT Salad is an example of how easy it is to replace the excess grains with more vegetables. On the full GAPS diet, certain kinds of cheeses, like cheddar, are acceptable as well as most vegetables and meats. You  may add mayo if you’d like, or make sure your mayo doesn’t have sugar or soybeans or other illegal GAPS ingredients.

Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato Salad

Serves 4

Ingredients

1 head romaine heart lettuce
1 pound  organic, nitrate and nitrite-free bacon
5 tomatoes
Shredded raw cheddar cheese

Directions

1. Cut bacon into 2-3 inch strips, place in a frying pan over medium heat and cover with a lid. Flip once to brown evenly on both sides.
2. Take out three bowls. Wash and cut up romaine hearts into bite sized pieces and place in a bowl. Do the same with the tomatoes. Then shred the cheddar cheese and place in a bowl.
3. Arrange lettuce on each plate, then add a few stripes of bacon. Top with tomatoes and cheese and enjoy!