Ok, not gonna lie friends, I’ve been coming up with some winners lately. The zucchini pancakes were delightful, and the easy 5-ingredient pork & pea soup was out of this world.
Today we have reached new heights in the easy quick paleo/primal-friendly dessert category. These paleo banana chocolate chip chia seed cakelets are pretty freakin scrumpsh.
You could also get away with having cake for breakfast if you’re feeling indulgent. They’re pretty high in protein and fiber, plus some healthy fat and not much sweet stuff at all. Just 1 ripe banana and 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips (divided between 6 servings).
This recipe was created by Liivi Hess, ThrivePrimal.com
If you try these, let me know what you think! Did you use all good-quality ingredients? Would you alter the recipe at all? Do you think these are healthy and nutritious enough to fit in with your paleo/primal-oriented diet? Or are they just for a rare treat? 80-20 rule! ;) Enjoy!!
Eating fermented foods is a must if you want to optimally digest and absorb everything you eat. Our ancestors ate cultured and fermented foods constantly, so we would have a steady stream of friendly bacteria coming into our system. Nowadays these traditional foods have mostly fallen by the wayside, along with their plentiful benefits.
Everyone should eat fermented and cultured foods, but particularly if you suffer from any sort of chronic health issues. I find it really helps my digestion!
Why it’s worth it to DIY instead of buy
Store-bought probiotic foods or capsules will never be as fresh or contain as many friendly bacteria as what you make at home. Plus they are super expensive.
They are also frequently pre-pasteurized, and then the culture is added back in. This is a crappy unnatural way of doing things according to the requirements of the food industry. Making things yourself gets you the biggest health benefit and saves you the most cash.
FACT: The fermentation process of sauerkraut causes the vitamin C content to multiply by 10 x! Sailors historically ate sauerkraut to avoid scurvy because it was so nutritious and didn’t spoil easily.
How to make sauerkraut in 3 steps
First collect your stuff.
Cabbage (any size and type will do, organic is best)
Knife and chopping board
Large mixing bowl
Large glass jar (bigger than your cabbage. I normally use a medium-size cabbage and a 2L jar)
Another smaller jar that fits inside the mouth of your large jar. I normally use something like a tall skinny olive jar or sauce jar.
Salt (Pink Himalayan Salt is best, but sea salt is still better than table salt)
If you use whey, your sauerkraut will be ready in 3-4 days. If you don’t, it will take 1-2 weeks.
Step 1: Chop
Take off the outer 2 leaves of your cabbage and set them aside – you’ll need them later. Then go nuts and chop your cabbage as small as you can be bothered chopping it. The pieces definitely shouldn’t be any bigger than 1cm x 1cm, but they can be as small as you want (but not puree!). If you have a good food processor you can use that too.
Step 2: Salt and Sit
Get your bowl and plunk in about 1/3 of your cabbage, then sprinkle a big tablespoon of salt over it. Put in another 1/3, then another tablespoon of salt. Last 1/3, then 2 tbsp of salt. The rough guideline here is 4 tbsp salt per 1 kg of cabbage. Generally this would mean 3 tbsp salt for a small cabbage, 4 tbsp for a medium cabbage, 5-6 tbsp for a large cabbage.
Then let your salted cabbage sit for about 20 minutes. The salt draws the moisture out of the cabbage.
Step 3: Knead and Pack
Spend about 5 minutes or so kneading, squeezing and punching your cabbage to get as much juice out of it as possible. The goal is to get enough juice out to cover the cabbage once it goes in the jar.
Pack it into the jar as tightly as you can, pushing it down to get any air out. Add a few tbsp of whey if you’re using it.
At this point see how much liquid you have – you might need to top up with a little more whey or water (filtered/purified if possible). The liquid should be 1-2 cm above the top of the packed cabbage surface.
It’s imperative that the liquid covers the cabbage bits since we are going for anaerobic fermentation (no air contact allowed!).
Grab the cabbage leaves you saved earlier, fold them and place them on top to make as good of a ‘lid’ as you can. This is to keep the cabbage below the liquid. Weigh down this lid with your smaller jar. Put some water in the smaller jar to keep it weighed. Check that all of the chopped/packed cabbage is below the liquid. This is important to avoid mold. It’s ok if the cabbage leaf ‘lid’ pokes above the liquid, because you won’t be eating it.
How to check that your sauerkraut is ready
That’s it! Now place it in a cupboard or a cool dark place out of the way somewhere. Wait for 3-4 days if you used whey, or 1-2 weeks if you didn’t.
It’s always safe to taste, as long as there is no mold. You’ll know it’s ready when it starts to taste kind of sour, fizzy, and a lot less salty. When it’s lost enough saltiness for you, take out the weight and the leaf lid, put the lid on the big jar and keep the sauerkraut in the fridge.
A few tips:
If your big jar ends up being pretty full, I recommend putting it in a big bowl while it’s fermenting. There will be gases produced and the liquid level might rise. The big bowl is in case of overflow.
Keep checking it to make sure everything is below the liquid. Add a little water if it’s looking a bit dry.
If you see mold, most articles I’ve read recommend throwing out the whole batch. If you’re not sure whether it’s mold (ie a small white floating patch) you could scoop out a significant area surrounding it, and then continue fermenting. If the white stuff / mold doesn’t come back after a few days, it should be safe.
As a general rule, if there’s no mold it’s safe to eat. Mold is a risky area and if in doubt, just get rid of it and start again. Next time make sure you pack the cabbage down really well, put enough liquid in, and keep everything consistenly below the liquid level.
How did it go?
Share your tips, questions, comments, experiences below. Is your digestion better? Skin clearing up? Immunity boosted? Sauerkraut rocks :)
First things first, let’s start with why you don’t want to go buying that typical protein shake from Walmart or GNC or Herbalife or Isagenix. As explained in this article by leading natural physician Dr. Mercola, commercial protein powders often contain concerning amounts of heavy metals like mercury and cadmium.
Also if you read the ingredients, you will find a long list of things like artificial flavours, sweeteners, thickeners, texturizers, gums, and waxes. Plus the protein is from non-organic milk, so you’re getting all the hormones and pesticides from that. Consider that in making the whey the milk gets concentrated, so those chemicals get concentrated too.
Finally, they are high-heat processed so the protein molecules become denatured and aren’t as useful to the body. Basically commercial protein powders are a massive waste of money, and could actually be toxic.
But isn’t whey isolate best?
When we were initially researching the best protein powder, Dave Asprey the Bulletproof Exec was recommending cold-processed cross-flow microfiltered whey isolate. This was supposed to be the cleanest, purest source of protein to eliminate all those nasty toxins & ingredients mentioned above.
However, excuse my dumb non-sciencey language, but whey isolate is basically a “chemistry molecule”. Kind of like taking a vitamin C supplement instead of eating an orange. It’s just one constituent of the food and the body doesn’t quite know what to do with it. When you eat the whole orange (or get all the proteins from natural milk), your body understands how to use it most effectively. (Dave Asprey has now changed his recommendation to a less-processed form, see more below – his product is my second best go-to)
Ok, so real-food protein powder is better
Will gets all the credit for finding our current favourite, and in my opinion the Best Paleo Protein Powder. He wanted to get more muscley and wanted to do it in a healthy way. Sounds good to me! ;)
He found that Protein 17 is the most minimally-processed, well-sourced, real-food based protein powder on the market right now (that we know of!). When they use minimally-processed complete milk proteins, you’re getting all the goodness of the milk, (not just the “chemistry molecule”! ha.) This includes enzymes like lactase, and minerals like magnesium. Protein 17 is actually a pretty good source of magnesium, which is something our diets often lack.
From the Protein 17 website:
I like how Protein 17 gives the most information about exactly how the whey powder is processed. There are a number available that say they are organic and grass-fed, but they don’t specify nearly as much about how the delicate immune-supporting proteins from the milk are minimally processed so that they remain intact.
They even explain on the container how there are no additives to make it blend with water (like most protein powders have), so it’s necessary to use a mixer or magic bullet.
It currently has 207 five-star reviews on Amazon which I found pretty dang impressive and clearly those folks are super-discerning customers. The only grass-fed organic whey on Amazon that has more reviews (Tera’s Whey, 275 reviews, 4.5 stars) doesn’t specify their processing methods, so I’m not as apt to trust it.
The second best choice for Paleo protein powder
If you see anything on your protein powder that says it “mixes easily with water” or “dissolves instantly”, that should be a red flag for additives. However, if you can’t deal with having to blend Protein 17 every time, my next best recommendation is Upgraded Bulletproof Whey.
It also contains coconut MCT (a healthy fat) for brain-power and colostrum for immunity.
Dave Asprey is a badass and does his research to the max, so I would be open to trusting and buying his products. In fact I have his Upgraded coffee beans, toxin-free vanilla, and MCT oil.
If whole foods are better, why would you use protein powder at all
Good question, and totally valid point. Generally speaking we certainly stick to whole foods 95% of the time, (and real food 99% of the time! except maybe the very occasional hung-over McDonalds feast. GASP! Yes, I said it!)
However, as discussed above, Protein 17 is pretty darn close to a whole food. And 3 other things come into play here:
convenience – sometimes we just need grab-and-go nutrition!
cost – having protein as a supplement helps save a bit on buying whole meat, poultry and fish
“eatability” – Will wants to consume more protein for muscle-building, but a normal person in a normal daily life can only physically eat so much. While lean muscle is awesome, neither of us really want to eat 1.5 lbs of meat at every meal. And that would get mighty expensive.
What we use protein powder for:
to add nutrition to our “paleo treats” recipes like muffins, loafs and pancakes, as well as to smoothies. We make baked stuff for easy breakfasts sometimes (see one of my recipes here)
Will has a protein shake every day after working out (raw organic grass-fed milk and Protein 17) for manly muscley purposes
That’s basically it. What do you use it for?
Share your experience with paleo protein powder
What are your thoughts on using protein powder as a smart nutritional supplement? What protein powder do you think is best? Has protein powder helped you achieve your goals? Has this article enlighted you to reconsider your approach to protein powder? Let me know your thoughts below!
You have got to try this pancake recipe!!! I whipped it up this morning and man are they tasty…the zucchini adds a little bit of nice moisture to the mix, as sometimes gluten free pancakes are sort of dry and sawdusty (especially with coconut flour because it absorbs so much moisture).
A great bonus is that they actually stay together and you can flip them nicely in the pan without them falling apart. They turned out beautiful!
I served them with a sauce made of frozen blueberries and fresh whole cranberries simmered in butter with a tablespoon of honey.
This recipe was created by Liivi Hess, ThrivePrimal.com
If you make this, let me know what you thought! How did they turn out for you? I think the temperature of the pan and the butter is pretty important for getting that nice crispy golden texture.
I’ll be posting instructions on how to get Upgraded (high quality toxin free Madagascar) vanilla and also how to get or make grass-fed organic raw whey at some point soon.
Ok people, this recipe is seriously delicious. Will and I whipped it up basically by accident last night to use up some leftover pork, and then re-heated it for dinner this evening. As it was warming up on the stove, I was seriously drooling even though I wasn’t even that hungry. It smells DIVINE. Like a platter of fried chicken and BBQ pork all smothered in tastiness.
And it is —SO—EASY—. 5 ingredients, that’s it! Heaps of veggies hidden in there, plus the super healing and immune-boosting nutritional punch of chicken broth. The one catch is you want to try and make your own good organic chicken broth if you can.
The easy way to have homemade bone broth in the fridge at all times…
We are in the routine of collecting all the bones from any good organic meat and fish that we buy. We put them in the freezer in containers sorted by type, and as they fill up, once or twice a week we just chuck one type in the slow cooker. Top it up with water and a splash of apple cider vinegar, and leave it on until the next evening.
We usually start it on High overnight, and the next morning turn it down to Low for the day. When we get home later, we scoop out the bones with a ladle or slotted spoon, and pour the broth into jars or containers. So easy, and you end up with lots of broth to keep in the fridge or freezer.
If you’re not up to making your own broth, just snag some good clean organic chicken broth from the store. “Clean” meaning no additives!
Real Food Recipe: Delicious 5-Ingredient Wintry Pea Soup
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 45 minutes
Yield: 4 servings
A quick real-food dinner to whip up on wintry evenings. It stores or freezes really well so make lots and store in containers for easy future meals.
Ingredients
3 big organic pork servings, or 3 big slices of ham (we used leftover pork shoulder from a Christmas dinner; you can use any type but just make sure you can chop it up into small-ish cubes)
2 cups homemade organic chicken stock
2 cups organic celery
2 cups organic carrots
1.5 cups dried split peas
2-3 cups water
pink himalayan salt to taste
Instructions
If your pork is not already cooked, cut into cubes and cook it a bit in the bottom of your pot with some butter.
Measure the peas into the pot and add 2 cups water, 2 cups chicken stock. You may need to add more water if it begins to look dry as it cooks.
Finely chop or food-process the carrots and celery and add to the pot.
Bring the whole thing to a boil, then down to a simmer and leave it for 30 minutes or so, until you can sample a pea and it's cooked soft.
Add salt to taste, and serve. Yum!
Notes
RECIPE TIP:
Add some chopped garlic, a bay leaf or some herbs such as marjoram, thyme or sage for even more savoury flavour.
KITCHEN TIP:
Prep this recipe really quick and then get other stuff done while it simmers! Pack breakfasts, lunches and snacks for work, get the dishes done, do some squats, clean the litterbox, etc! So it really only takes 15 minutes of "active" cooking time!
This recipe was created by Liivi Hess, ThrivePrimal.com
I do realize the picture doesn’t look that appetizing…but what picture of soup ever looks that good? It always just sort of looks like mystery mush. You’ll just have to trust me on this one!
A note on split peas and carbs
I’m not sure about the paleo or primal-ness of split peas; I’m guessing they fall fairly low on the list, or in a gray area. They’re sort of a vegetable, sort of a legume. But based on stuff I’ve heard from Daniel Vitalis and Arthur Haines, I feel that primal hunter-gatherer types at least in the Americas seemed to gather a lot of wild grain and legume type foods. And lately I’m making a point of not being afraid of carbs. Not going overboard either, but having a healthy serving of lower-GI carbs in the evening is just fine.
After fully enjoying all the tastiness of multiple holiday parties over Christmas and New Years (no guilt or deprivation here!), needless to say my digestion has been a little off. More sugar than usual, and less fresh, whole and fermented foods have led to a bit of trouble with gas and constipation. I also started to feel a little bit of Candida symptoms today.
My clean eating dip recipe
I decided to whip up a tasty nutritious dip that would shut that right down, plus help boost my immune system and heal any inflammation that sugary holiday treats have left behind.
Real Food Recipe: Super Tasty Anti-inflammatory Anti-Candida Immune-boosting Dip
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Yield: Enough for 2 people for a snack. Multiply the amounts if you're making for a party.
A tasty snack or party dip that is just as healthy as the veggies you'll be eating it with. Treat this dip like a prescription to give your immune system a boost, bring down inflammation and stop Candida symptoms.
Also delicious as a burger patty topping, sauce for baked chicken, or as a dip with sweet potato fries.
Smush, peel and chop the garlic cloves as finely as you can. Leave them to sit for a few minutes while you prepare the other ingredients.
Pile everything else into a medium sized bowl.
Add the garlic, and mix well. Scoop it all into a clean bowl to serve. That's it!
Notes
Kitchen tip:
Chopping the garlic and then leaving it to sit for a few minutes allows the active ingredient, allicin, to increase by 8-10 times. This helps the garlic give you an even stronger immune and anti-Candida boost.
Nutrition tip:
Use this anti-inflammatory dip to alleviate symptoms of headaches, hangover, joint and muscle pain, indigestion, cold and flu, or Candida.
Recipe tips:
If you're not into spice, exclude the Frank's Red Hot. However, you should try to include the cayenne pepper as its medicinal ingredient (capsaicin) activates the medicinal ingredient in turmeric (curcumin) for stronger anti-inflammatory effectiveness.
Try adding in other tasty whole-food ingredients such as fresh herbs, lemon juice or hemp seeds for a different flavour.
This recipe contains lots of awesome active real food ingredients which should help with symptoms like headaches, joint pain, acne, digestion problems, tooth decay, and cold/flu viruses. It does this by providing natural anti-inflammatory and immune-boosting compounds as well as probiotics, good fats and minerals. Oregano oil itself has over 32 anti-inflammatory compounds in it! ** Make sure you only buy therapeutic-grade essential oils, as the ones you buy at the health food store are only for smell are not safe to consume. However therapeutic-grade ones are potent medicines for the body.
Treat it like a prescription and eat every last tasty drop! You’ll be scraping out the bowl with your fingers, trust me!
I’ll be the first one to put my hand up and say I feel like I’ve spent a lot of my life struggling against my body. Having a naturally stockier build, or ‘sausage body’ as I like to lovingly call it, I definitely went through a chubby phase in my tween years.
Struggling to lose weight & feel good
It’s a classic story a lot of people can probably relate to, men and women alike. Working through puberty, wanting to look good and feel attractive, all while being bombarded by all sorts of confusing, conflicting and media-hyped messages about fitness and nutrition. I remember always being told that if I exercised enough, I could eat whatever I want. However, being a bookish kid, I usually didn’t exercise much, but still wanted to eat tasty snacks. So I would feel guilty about food and always be trying to “eat less and exercise more”.
How guilt-inducing, frustrating and exhausting is the Eat Less & Exercise More approach?!
All too many people, myself included, find that that whole thing only ends with disappointment and hating your body even more. It’s high time for a better strategy.
Surprise: you’re an animal!
Here’s a thought: last time you went to the zoo and you were looking at those chimps and gorillas, did it strike you how similar they are to us? How despite all our fancy clothes and perfumed soap, we’re really just animals too?
Animals don’t sit around stressing about whether they ate too many bugs or leaves, they just know what’s right for them to eat, and how much, and they just go on enjoying life with a fit, muscular, healthy body. Shouldn’t we feel that way too? Wouldn’t that be incredibly liberating?
If we look at ourselves as the ‘humanimals’ that we are, living in our habitat, we can gain insight into what our genes are programmed to thrive on, and understand why we may seek out or crave certain foods. From that basis of simple knowledge, we can move forward eating and enjoying food care-free, while having that fit, healthy, happy body.
Understanding the ‘humanimal’ mind
You’re going to be so relieved after you read this. There is a solid scientific reason you crave, dream about, and feel drawn to all those tasty sugary naughty junky foods. Your brain is literally programmed to be able to pick them out of a crowd.
The reason is that we’ve evolved very little since we were hunter-gatherers, living off of the land and what we were lucky or clever enough to find/kill that day. Therefore if we were scanning the landscape and there is a calorie-rich food source visible (let’s say some nice sugary berries) our eyes snap right to it and we feel alarms in our brain like “FOOD! RIGHT THERE! OMG FOOD! EAT! EEEEEAT.” This is because in general the hunter-gatherer approach would be to eat more when food is available, since we don’t know if it will be available tomorrow.
Well, your brain has precious little, if anything, different from that hunting-gathering ancestor of yours. So you get precisely those same EATRIGHTNOW signals when you slap eyes on an ooey-gooey grilled cheese sandwich, or a picture of a chocolate cake. (I started drooling typing that, wow. There’s the animal brain for ya!)
Cravings are not a bad thing
We’ve been taught and guilted into feeling like whenever we crave a food, we are naughty naughty bad and we should just quell that down and control ourselves. If we give in to cravings we will just be fat and ugly forever.
Newsflash: those cravings are literally programmed into your DNA. They are your body telling you what it needs right now.
But, this message comes with a very important caveat. These days, our body’s signals can be a liiiiiittle bit confused, what with our modern flashy environment and unnatural foods and chemicals and distractions, etc. So, your body may be telling you that you “need to eat 2 burgers and an ice cream after yes definitely the ice cream”, however there is a lot at play there.
You also may crave more food after you’ve just eaten because the food may not have been very nourishing, or you may be needing water. Therefore your body sends signals to eat more because it is seeking more water or nutrients.
It doesn’t know how to tell you “I need vitamin C!” or “Feed me some omega 3’s!”, all it can say is “eat!” and hope that it can get some of what it needs from there.
Our ancient brains are overwhelmed in this modern world
Studies show that historically food would definitely not have been constantly available, and we would have been a lot more programmed to be able to survive off of fat stores. We would be easily able to switch to burning our body fat to get us through a few days of not finding much food.
The problem is nowadays we have food available constantly. Our monkey brains are programmed to pick out high-carb, sugary foods to be able to survive and get energy fast, but now we’re literally surrounded by those foods, at arm’s reach, ALL the time. And our monkey brains still want them just as bad.
Foods high in carbs and sugars convert to fat the fastest when we eat them. They are a quick easy source of energy and our bodies just love to store them away for later use. That includes a sweet potato or whole-grain cereal just as much as a cupcake or chocolate bar.
Because these foods burn the fastest, they often leave us in the lurch. We swing from “Mmm yummy i’m full that was delicious” to “OMG I am HANGRY, FEED ME NOW”, waaaay too fast.
The thing is, once you understand WHY you have cravings and get hungry way too often, it’s so easy to re-program your approach to work WITH your genes and that crazy monkey brain.
It doesn’t need to be complicated. The monkey brain is simple, and we can have it in our palm in no time. How to get there you ask? It’s all about breaking the sugar/carb addiction, and choosing more nourishing foods.
Eat good quality protein – Organically raised, happy, free-range animals and fish. Dairy and eggs from the same.
Get good sleep – Those hunger signals we were talking about before get just sooo much more confused when you are tired. The energy has to come from somewhere, and if you’re not rested, you’re going to be mighty tempted to get it from a chocolate chip muffin.
Use a proven plan – I love programs like the 21 Day Sugar Detox, which is wildly popular and gets rave reviews left right and center. It’s a fast and well-tested way to press the reset button and learn how to work WITH those genes instead of against them.
Lose the body shame! – Once you understand what you’re genetically programmed to want, you realize it’s not your fault. Using a simple program like the 21DSD teaches you to be confident in the right food choices, enjoy eating, and get on with living life! Enough said!
I hope you’ve enjoyed these guidelines on how to make your genes work for you.
If you want a well-engineered plan to take away all the mind-sweat and give you an excellent kickstart, more info on the 21 Day Sugar Detox can be found by clicking the image below! Cheers!
