It’s been an eventful week, though I haven’t been posting much since Easter because we were pretty much living on leftovers the whole time. E.J. started a new job last week which has him commuting again, so now both of us need quick grab-and-go lunches that we can heat up easily at work. I knew I wanted to make more of our favorite chili, but I also wanted to try some new ideas out that would be easily portable.
Since E.J. loved the lemon cake so much last week and it didn’t seem to impede his weightloss progress too much, I decided to try this Banana and Blueberry bread recipe from Little Green Spoon.
The bread is moist and has a lovely texture without being overly sweet. I used our local honey in it, and it’s really hard to eat just one slice… the only challenge I had was that the outside of the loaf got pretty dark while the inside was only barely cooked through, and I struggled to get it out of the pan having used just coconut spray. In the future, I might dust it with a little coconut flour also to help it come out easier.
The other new recipe I tried this week was this Awesome Paleo Lasagna from Paleo Newbie. E.J. was jonesing for some Italian food and wanted lasagna, which initially sounds like it would be really hard to do… no pasta & no ricotta – what’s a paleo chef to do? Well, you saw I’ve already substituted zucchini or eggplant for noodles, so that’s not too hard, but if you look for ricotta substitutes online it looks like the answer is soaked cashews. This is something I’ve seen in several other recipes, and I admit it just seemed weird. How can blended up cashews taste anything like cheese? But I have to admit, when you blend up the cashews in this recipe with the spices and spinach, you really do get something that tastes a lot like ricotta.
And when you layer that in with an amazing meat sauce (I used fresh herbs from my garden instead of the dried ones called for and it really does make it superb) you get a flavor that mirrors the real deal – all of the happy taste buds with none of the guilt. Now that’s what I’m talking about!
I divided the pan up into individual containers and now E.J. and I have pre-packed lunches for the week. Happy Cook Day!!
