Monday, February 3, 2014

Grain Free, low sugar Breakfast Ideas

This has been my week for taking action. I've been googling primal recipes as that is the closest I can get to our remineralizing teeth diet. I've been flagging primal and paleo recipes on Pinterest and taking lots of notes. We cheated yesterday for the Super Bowl. Dustin is an avid football watcher, so while I did not grow up watching sports, we now have a tradition where we make certain dishes and sit on the couch together for the big game. Yesterday we had chips and a veggie tray with various dips and homemade pizza. 

I'm spending way too much time in the kitchen and not enough time knitting or reading with the kids or lesson planning or socializing, but I'm hoping that I'll start getting the hang of cooking without grains or much legumes here soon. The main things we are doing differently is getting more creative with eggs in the morning - which does take more time than a soaked pot of breakfast oatmeal. I'm trying to eliminate lunch sandwiches and stick with soups, stews and salads. But the kids are use to eating their tuna salad on bread - and aren't as inclined as I am to eat it with veggie sticks or on a bed of greens but we are working on it. Dinners haven't changed too much. The most noticeable being a lack of tortillas replaced with taco salads, and I'm really missing toasted bread with my soup, cornbread with my chili, biscuits with my stew and garlicky buttery croutons on my salads. What can I say? I'm a creature of habit. Here are some of the things we are eating now. I would REALLY LOVE to hear more menu ideas from those of you who eat a reduced grain/ legume diet.

Our old breakfasts consisted mostly of oatmeal, sourdough muffins, sprouted flour raw sugar zucchini or carrot bread (which I really miss!) oatmeal pancakes or sourdough pancakes on the weekends and one or two days of eggs  - usually on the weekend for D.

Now for breakfast D and I are eating eggs pretty much daily, the kids are eating eggs every other day and getting a sweet breakfast, sourdough muffins, sourdough pancakes or cheese pancakes in between. 

What we've been eating for our grain free breakfasts:
Scrambled eggs with raw milk cheese and scallions or sauteed veggies 
Veggie cheese Omelettes
Veggie skillet: lots of variations but I've been heating up a couple tb. of butter in our 10 inch cast iron skillet, and sauteing a quarter to a half an onion and some bell pepper then adding in several handfuls of spinach and stirring just to coat with butter, then cracking 4- 5 eggs in indentations made by spinach. Sprinkle with raw goat cheese and other shredded cheese. Sprinkle with sea salt, black pepper and scallions. Place a cookie sheet over the top and cook for 3-6 minutes. scoop out onto plates and serve with sour cream, salsa or avacados.
Ham cups; butter muffin pan, lay ham inside to cover, drop in egg and sprinkle with cheese and sliced chives or scallions. Bake at 350 for 15 - 20 minutes. 
Egg muffins; butter muffin pans, whisk eggs as for scrambled with salt and pepper, milk or water, add cheese - I use a half cup of goat cheese to six eggs - ish. chop some scallions and pour mixture into muffin cups - top with shredded cheese and bake at 350 15-20 min. Makes about 6-8 muffins depending on muffin tin size. Lots of variations for these include adding more veggies or meat.
Deviled eggs, egg salad
Miso soup with veggies and eggs dropped in and poached
Home fries seasoned or simply fried in butter with salt and pepper.
Hash browns; I've only made these once using Sally Fallon's recipe where they sit overnight with whey. I want to start making these more often and using sweet potatoes, and making sweet potato hash crust for quiche and egg cups. 
Ricotta pancakes: I'll have to keep track of what I do for these. I take a cup or more of ricotta, add a couple eggs, a couple Tb. of butter, a little vanilla extract, a drizzle of honey and a pinch of salt. I add a small amount of organic all purpose flour. So these aren't technically grain free. Depending on your ricotta, mine is usually pretty dry, I don't always need flour and not usually more than a few Tablespoons. Fry over medium low heat in butter or coconut oil. I thaw our own berries with a small amount of honey to serve along with butter when these are done. KID FAVORITE.
Raw egg Raw milk smoothie: 2 raw eggs, one frozen or fresh banana, wild berries, coconut butter/spread optional, raw milk yogurt/buttermilk/kefir/ raw milk assortment for liquid. We find that this doesn't need any added sugar. Another KID FAVORITE. If I have any leftover I dehydrate it to make a high protein fruit leather.
Bacon

That is the extent of our breakfast menu. I'm looking forward to asparagus this spring with eggs and Hollondaise sauce. I am already missing the idea of homemade granola this summer. I think I am going to try and make a nut dried fruit granola with soaked, sprouted, dehydrated and toasted nuts, coarsely ground with toasted coconut, coconut oil or butter and our own dehydrated cranberries and wild blueberries - which I think will not be as sweet or unhealthy as store bought dried fruit.

 I would love more suggestions for breakfast, lunch and snacks. I've been missing crunchy things. I made a savory squash dip that was pretty good, but couldn't think of what to eat it with other than veggie slices. But now I have an idea. Today I'm making spinach chips because I'm out of kale - they aren't going to be strong enough to scoop a dip. However, I'm planning on making sweet potato chips next and I think they will be able to scoop some dip. I need a mandolin slicer but I'm going to try and make do without one for now. I saw zucchini chips as well. 

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

We have been doing a variation of the primal diet because I developed celiac somewhere between kiddos 2 and 3. We do veggie scramble and egg bakes, frittatas, raw milk yogurt, and fruit for breakfasts. For lunch, we will do tuna salad in an avocado, ham lettuce wraps, meatballs and veggie, sprouted garbanzo hummus with veg, or fruit and veg with raw milk cottage cheese. For dinner we do mostly a meat/veg combo with salad on the side, we grow all of our own meat though (or hunt it) so that makes it affordable. We don't do a ton of meat in one sitting, but this diet does make you blow through the meats. We make bone broths too. We try to do a soup/stew that will last two nights of the week, meatloaf, burgers and sweet potato fries (baked)...also known as boogers and flies....we make our own tamales (which I prefer as a breakfast food with very spicy salsa), curry dishes are popular with me and my husband, not so much with the kids. I also do a lot of smoothies with milk kefir and fruit as a snack, nuts as a snack, ants on a log, and sweet potato "chips"....these might satisfy your crunchy craving....just use a mandolin to slice very thin, toss in oil and salt, then bake to desired crunchiness, you can make kale chips the same way, they never last long here. For desserts, which we rarely eat, we will do homemade ice cream or a coconut manna/dark chocolate concoction that I LOVE (take coconut manna and warm it so you can pour it, I use little silicone ice cube trays in cute shapes, fill the ice cube holes half way with the manna and freeze until set, then top off with either melted dark chocolate or homemade caramel, etc, put toppings on now if you want them to set in...I will use dried fruits or smashed coffee beans...then freeze again until set. These will keep in the fridge or on the counter depending on your indoor temps for a long time. They are just slightly sweet and the coconut manna is really filling, it might be called "creamed" coconut in some places. I usually just do yogurt with raw honey and toasted almonds for dessert. Or you could make a simple zabaglione and pour over fresh fruit....oh, I am thinking of all my good summer recipes now. :) We also use broccoli to replace pasta in a lot of instances, it's good with butter and Parmesan or meatballs with a nice red sauce. Hope this helps! It's quite an adjustment to make, I almost felt paralyzed when I first found out. But it does get easier and you will feel better, eat less, and notice an overall improvement in health. Good luck!

Anonymous said...

I've had a Paleo "tortilla" that was very tasty. It was not the least bit durable, though. It kind of falls apart real easy. I'm not the cook around here, all I can tell you is it takes a lot of egg whites, I think that's why we've only had them twice. They might be good broken up and put in a taco salad?

Pumpkin or sweet potato pancakes are great!The recipe we use calls for nuts. I think, walnuts. I'm not sure. They aren't too bad if you freeze them and thaw them out later, I've even warmed them up right out of the freezer with a toaster once, it worked out ok and was a convenient/time saver. Although I did have to have maple syrup with them (and bacon). I'm not sure I could eat them any other way?

Did I mention plantain chips before? I don't like them, but I know people who do.

I want to try cooking with palm oil. I've read good things about palm oil. Might give stuff a good flavor? Especially sweet potato chips?

I've become a big fan of kale lightly sauteed with cabbage, and sometimes red onion and or carrots, all cooked in olive oil or bacon fat. It's a dinner dish but it's been served with breakfast a couple of times and it was good.

The most helpful thing to do of course is to make big batches and freeze some of it as a side dish or a meal later. It's especially helpful around BBQ time.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Hope that helps.

- PanarchistamericanHelot

WILDROOTSWOMAN said...

Emily, your breakfast ideas look great! I don't have any ideas for you, but I am going to use some of yours! We have been enjoying raw egg smoothies with your wonderful eggs - one of our cartons had some nice-looking, brighter-orange yolks - what a treat! I'd love to say we've been using raw milk, too, but as we don't have goats, well...we do the best we can. As soon as my kefir grains start making kefir that will be what we use for our smoothies. In the meantime, each morning when I strain the grains I use the spent milk in our smoothies. I've been enjoying reading your blog...I think of you often when I am home for so many days in a row and wondering if anyone else loves that as much as I do. It would certainly help if we had some other animals to take care of, but for now, my own "kids" will do. Blessings!

Trish said...

Emily,

A friend who is gluten-free recommended this book:
Nourishing Meals: Healthy Gluten-Free Recipes for the Whole Family by Alissa Segersten. I've had 2 recipes out of it, the first is gluten-free gingerbread. Made with almond butter and sweet potatoes. It is so good, I got the recipe to make it myself. She also made some bread that used teff and some other stuff- it was dense but good. Your kids would probably enjoy it for sandwiches. Good luck.

Ashlin said...

Do a google search for paleo energy bars - they are pretty tasty. Most use a base of almonds and dates with coconut oil, but there is a lot of variety you can choose from.