Maple Almond Bacon

I recently went to brunch and they have Maple Pecan bacon. It was so yummy. My oldest can not eat pecans so I thought I would recreate that bacon at home for her with a nut she can have. This is very simple to make. The salty sweet crunchy flavors and texture combined is satisfying, the almonds and bacon both get a little caramelized from the maple syrup.  This bacon is great for breakfast, brunch, on top of a salad, on top of a creamy soup, or served as hors d'oeuvres. 

Steel Cut Tropical Oats

Talk about "Throwback  Thursday", today I had a bowl of oats that was much like what I used to make for my toddlers and babies. Except of course, at the time theirs looked like this:

Pancake Cupcakes- Let's call them muffins.

It's back to school time! I'm rather sad. We've been having so much fun checking off our Summer Bucket List. I'm also excited to see what the year brings, what the girls will learn. I know they will have so much fun. To get ready for school I have begun filling our freezer full of things like-

Mini meatloaves

Chicken Sliders

Meatballs- 1

Black beans- a huge pot to freeze for fast meals

Pancake Cupcakes

Chicken tenders

Chicken drumettes 

Chicken on a Stick
Sausage, Potato, and Cheese Handheld pockets or pies (I'll post these soon)
Frozen Garlic Pasta
Mini Handheld Pork Pies

Calzones

Muffins- like Pumpkin Cream Cheese

Pancake Mini Muffins

More freezer posts

I will only do a few things at once so the girls aren't eating food that's been frozen forever.

Asian Sesame Chicken Salad

One of my favorite salads is this Asian Sesame Chicken salad. The dressing has a little tang, some kick from the jalapenos. Not a lot, but you can leave the Jalapenos out if you like. The dressing can be made ahead of time, leave the cilantro out and toss it in the salad at the last minute.
Since there's no egg or mayonnaise, this salad is great for picnics, I hope you'll try it.
I always make extra wonton strips because everyone keeps eating them off the plate!

Mom's Soaked Almond Snack

My mom has eaten almonds this way for a long time. The girl will just sit there, peeling and eating along side her when she visits. There's really no recipe or anything like that. Just one ingredient, well, two if you count water. The almonds plump up and get a little bit softer. The taste is like almond milk. It's a great snack.

We have kept these in the fridge after soaking for about 5 days. But really these are so easy to make, you can soak just enough to eat for the next day. If you have a mason jar for sprouting, that will come in handy for soaking and draining. But it's not essential to have.
Have you ever tried these? Really good!
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Fresh Cranberry Relish

MMM. This is a nice change from Cranberry Sauce or Cranberry Compote. It's a refreshing uncooked relish, great made a day or two ahead too. I like it just as a salad by itself, on a sandwich, with turkey, stirred in yogurt even. Play with different combinations of flavors. I liked the warmth that ginger puts in this, my mom had a sore throat and loved the ginger in it. I hope you'll try this it's really good!

Cranberry Orange Nut Bread

I've posted this bread before in 2010. My pictures aren't great now, but they sure are better than they used to be! This time I did put white chocolate chips in part of the batter, I also made mini muffins that I wanted to freeze for the girls. But, they ate them all! I don't add nuts because Diva is allergic. 

This bread freezes very well and cranberry season is so short so it's nice to make an extra loaf to store next to the bags of cranberries you are hoarding storing for later. I did change the recipe a little bit, I wanted to see if I could pump up the orange in this. So I used frozen orange juice- undiluted. Not having two slices to test my theory I'll say you can use either. Both breads are yummy.

This bread is also great for gift giving. Bake it in mini loaves, a regular loaf pan, or in muffin tins.

Pecan Pie (No Corn Syrup)

This pecan pie is rich, it sets up beautifully. The Lyle's syrup gives it a deep caramel flavor. This pie is perfect for anyone that can't have corn syrup, or wants to avoid it. I prefer the flavor to a traditional pie with corn syrup. I use five eggs, you can get away with 4 eggs but I use five to ensure it sets beautifully. A little less sugar 3/4 cup would be fine. I didn't have two full cups of nuts but about  1 3/4, I like lots of pecans in my pie. If you want to add molasses you can add a tablespoon. Brandy can be left out completely.
I hope you try this pie it's so good.

I have these two other pecan pies blogged also

Pumpkin Pecan Pie
Pecan Pie with Brandy and Molasses
Pecan Pie

Do you like Pecan pie? What is your favorite pie?

Spinach Cheese Pinwheels, and more!

I found this recipe on the back of my Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry box. The original recipe calls for Muenster cheese, I use whatever is on hand. In this case a Mexican four cheese blend. For the frozen spinach, I let it thaw, then wrap it in a clean kitchen towel or paper towel and SQUEEZE the water out. You want it to be DRY. If you don't like Parmesan cheese, sometimes I think it's too strong, leave it out and use 3/4 cups of shredded cheese.

Mix up fillings as you like, use pesto, different cheese, jalapeno/cheese/cream cheese, pepperoni and cheese, shredded chicken/bell peppers/cheese, dried fruit and nuts chopped up, so many options!

Do you use a lot of puff pastry? What's your favorite thing to make with it?

How about 

Palmiers

Spinach Feta puffs

Lemon Herb Chicken

Cherry Turnovers

Star Wars pastry Puffs

Beef Wellington

GPAC Pumpkin Cream Cheese Spice Cake

 It's PUMPKIN season!! YAY! I LURRVE pumpkin. Go type in "Pumpkin" in the search box to your left, and you will see how much. Pixie my four year old saw sugar pumpkins at the grocery store and started clapping, "they have pumpkins!!" So yes, pumpkins are a huge deal here. I either bake, steam, or put them in the crock pot to processes them. Then the seeds- NOM NOM, roasted of course.

Oreo Almond Butter Pie

This pie. This pie came about when DH and I were taste testing Barney Butter. It was smooth and creamy where it needed to be. The crunchy almond pieces gave it a great "just like chunky peanut butter" taste. So good, even I could eat it off of a spoon. I would not do that with peanut butter.

DH said, "you should make a pie with this. I love peanut butter pie." OK. I have never made or HAD a peanut butter pie. I'm not a fan of peanut butter. I would never opt to eat one. But he said it's peanut butter, cool whip, and ice cream. I think he said ice cream. But anyway. I looked at him and said. "Hmmm. That sounds OK. Maybe with an Oreo crust, since we have 8 (don't judge BOGO coupon) packages in the pantry." His eyes got wide, I think that was my go ahead. 

Almond Milk

This is so much better than store bought almond milk. I am not sure why I haven't made it more. When I was younger my mom would make soy milk and that was much better than store bought.  I'm not sure what my deal is. Especially since this is less expensive than store bought.

Because this is just almonds and water, use fresh raw almonds and good water. I say good water because we have to filter ours. It sometimes has a funny taste.

I don't sweetened my almond milk but you certainly can. This is good just as in, with a sprinkle of cinnamon, a little vanilla, in coffee, smoothies. I have tried it in cereal because I haven't been eating cereal.

Cinnamon Spiced Almonds (Bread Machine)

I love candied nuts. So good, but so expensive to buy premade! I love making these in my bread maker/ bread machine, but you can do them on the stove top also. I like almonds when I use the bread maker because they don't break up as easily as pecans and walnuts. Because the paddle in the bread machine does break some of the nuts up. You do need to have a bread machine that has a jam cycle, and you will also need to keep an eye on the nuts so they don't burn. So do NOT just set this on the jam cycle and leave your house.

GPAC Satay Sauce- Peanut/nut free

This sauce ROCKS. It's so good. Perfect with chicken satay, lettuce wraps, as a dip for vegetables, and salads. Or try it over noodles. I use Sunbutter, you can use almond butter if you tolerate almonds.
Thai Kitchen makes a paleo/primal compliant curry paste.

Click to find more Whole 30

Paleo

Primal 

recipes here on Give Peas A Chance, or use the search function. 

Nutella Pillows

Nutella wontons/pillows. If you like raspberries, heat some raspberry jam, raspberries and a little lemon juice in a small pan. Let cool and serve as a dipping sauce. Any fruit will work for this.

Recipe and previous post HERE.
Do you like Nutella? What is your favorite way to eat it? 

Fudge Balls

These are Fudgey Babies as seen HERE. I love this recipe I can't wait to come up with more variations! I added more nuts than called for. They were perfect. Very satisfying for my sweet tooth.  No added sugar, no preservatives, full flavor NOM NOM. I rolled them and put them in the fridge. They could go in the freezer but I just put them in the fridge. If I were making a bigger batch I might freeze them. Make sure your dates don't have added sugars, preservatives, salt. Check your vanilla also- unless it's real it probably has sugar or corn syrup in it.

1 c walnuts (120 grams)- I used 160 grams
1 and 1/3 cups pitted dates (230 grams)
1 tsp vanilla extract- I used 2 teaspoons
3-4 tablespoons cocoa powder, regular or dark - I used 40 grams 4 Tbs

Place everything in  a food processor and process. My mixture wasn't really that wet. But I used my cookie school and once I formed them into balls they held together perfectly. I rolled some of them in cocoa powder... and ate three right away. 

Variations I'm want to try

Cashews, Cherries, Cocoa powder, almond extract

Dark cocoa, walnuts, cinnamon, cayenne, vanilla

Almonds, coconut butter, cocoa, coconut flakes, vanilla

Tropical would be fun- coconut butter or a tiny bit of coconut oil, cocoa, macadamia nuts, dried papaya
Blueberries would be yummy also.

Make Granola in your bread maker, or not.

I've made granola in the oven. Honestly it's such a pain. Opening the oven to stir and mix it, spread it out so it doesn't scorch. No thank you. Then... in walks in my bread machine. Which I only use to knead and rise dough in. Ok and make pumpkin butter every once in a blue moon. So, back to the granola in the oven. It gets hot. Constantly stirring to make sure it doesn't burn. Avoiding the oven so I don't get burned. Wasting all that energy/heat. Well... in the jam cycle the heat isn't that high of heat AND the paddle is constantly moving stuff around.  So, I goggled it and TA-DA! Check this out HERE,  scroll down when you get there. Easy peasy. I have a recipe from DH's Grandma D I'm going to try out also.

Parmesan Broiled Basa Fillets

DH and I really liked this dish! The older girls thought it was OK, they said they liked their fish in parchment better. Pixie girl, who's 15 months now :-0, thought it was de-lish also. So we will be having this again. Check out the optional almond meal topping also!

Cinnamon Walnut Baklava

I hope to catch a break and post more pictures and a recipe soon... it's yummy! MIL is here helping stage the house to sell right now...

OK I lied, I am tired and need to get to bed, so no more pictures of this goodness. HOWEVER the recipe can be found here at Martha Stewart Living. MIL helped me make them they are rich and yummy! Below is my adapted version.