Pumpkin Granola and Working at the VA.

What's UP, everybody?!  Let government furloughs and pumpkin recipes roll in!  I'm just kidding about the furlough thing...that sucks.  Yes, I work at the VA, but I'm a nurse, so I get to keep coming to work. :D  Can you imagine if they decided to stop paying us and we decided to not come into a job we aren't going to get paid for?  Riiiiiiiiight.  Bad news.  

K, good news...Paleo PUMPKIN Granola!  PALEO!  My girlfriend has decided that I need to sell this stuff.  She is very serious.  Let me give you the recipe before she talks me into it.  I have modified it pretty significantly.  I make my own pumpkin pie spice...not because I'm amazing, but because it's SUPER easy.  I picked up a jar of pumpkin pie spice the other day in Marshall's and, no shit, there was sugar, cornstarch, and all kinds of shit I couldn't pronounce!  Here is a good one.  Make it yourself:

• 4 tbsp ground cinnamon
• 4 tsp ground ginger
• 4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 3 tsp ground all spice

Mix it all together and put it in a recycled spice jar, then use it here:

Okay, I got the original recipe from Juli @ PaleOMG, but I've modified it quite a bit.

Pumpkin Granola

Ingredients

• 1 cup whole almonds
• 1.5 cups pumpkin seeds (pepitas), divided, so pay attention!
• 1.5 cups pecans, divided, again...pay attention!
• 1 cup roasted cashews
• 1 cup walnuts
• 10 dried dates, pits removed
• 1 cup pumpkin puree
• 2/3 cup coconut oil, melted
• 2/3 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
• 2/3 cup maple syrup
• 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 Tablespoons pumpkin pie spice
• 1 teaspoon of pink salt

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
2. In a food processor or high speed blender, add 1 cup EACH of almonds, pumpkin seeds, and pecans.  Pulse until it's about half nut flour, and half nut chunks, then dump it into a large mixing bowl.
3. In your processor/high speed blender, add the dates, pumpkin puree, coconut oil, maple syrup, vanilla vanilla, and all spices. Puree the shit out of it.
4. Add pumpkin mixture and coconut to your nut mixture and mix well.
5. Hand-chop the rest of the nuts or just break them a couple of times with your fingers so that you have larger chunks and add them to your mix.  
6. You might feel like this is a "batter" and way too wet to ever make granola, but TRUST ME, this will work!
7. Place parchment paper on a large baking sheet and pour HALF of your granola mixture on top. Use a spatula to spread out the mixture evenly so everything will cook at the same time.
8. Place in oven and cook in 15 minute intervals, taking out the granola and stirring it every time to be sure it doesn’t burn.(Fold the outside edges in, then chop it up with your spatula to even it out again, then smooth it out with your spatula.  Eventually it will be too crumbly, just keep stirring!)
9. LET COOL. Letting the granola cool will help it harden up.  If you let it cool and it's still too soft and chewy, put your oven on 150 and let the granola sit in there for a couple of hours.  Stir it one more time, then turn off the oven and let it sit in the oven over night.
10. Eat all by itself or top it off with coconut milk, almond milk, or even dairy milk (if you do that).

Disclaimer post!

I think I'll probably end up linking to this post a lot because it turns out that my blog is very different from others out there.

1.  Links contained in posts:  I do not need to "finance my blogging activities".  If I post a link to something, it's because I think it's worth checking out.  I will not post links to stuff JUST in the hope of making a commission.  I will only post affiliate links to stuff that I actually own and would recommend. 

2.  This blog is mostly for me, and for pointing things out that I think you should check out.  If I use curse words or tell you something sucks and you don't like that, then I'm sorry for not being sorry.  I'm entitled to my opinion.  If you want to tell me that I suck and my opinions suck...you're entitled to your opinion too, but I'm probably going to delete your comment.  Same goes for if you're an asshole to someone else who has left a comment.  Be nice, people.

3.  I'm not in the business of taking credit for someone else's hard work!  I make every effort to give credit where credit is due.  If I have neglected to mention where I got a recipe, or if I've posted wrong information about something, then I have no problem standing corrected.  I will sometimes completely change a recipe to my liking, but I will always try to remember to post where I got the idea, at least.

Paleo Halloween?! Pickled mice and hot cocoa, anyone??

Still trucking along on my Whole 30.  Dude, I thought being Paleo 80/20 was good for my energy level, but DAMN!  I seriously get home, change my clothes, then start doing all kinds of shit until dinner time. 

My Bulletproof coffee is still disgusting, but I'm drinking it every day.  I also ordered 2 pounds of beets through Good Eggs because I knew I needed to consume them somehow.  (Disclaimer about links I post.)  On Sunday, I made the Beet Kvass out of #Fermented ...Look how pretty!: 

 

  

 I also made the Beet Simple Syrup from Butter Nutrition, but I forgot to take a picture. Other stuff I forgot to take pictures of that I made on Sunday: Hot Cocoa Mix from Feed Me Rachel (DUHlicious in coconut milk), Carrot Breakfast Muffins from Elana's Pantry (Holy SHIT those are good), and This Curry Awesomeness from Paleo Pot.  

OOH!  We LOVE Halloween at my house and everything seems to take on a Halloween theme this time of year.  I also made Pickled Mice.  Relax.  They're radishes!  4 cloves of garlic, a Thai chili, and radishes!  Oh, and a grape leaf on top...and that's a glass candle holder keeping everything under the brine.  It was 75 cents vs. the glass discs you find online for $8.  I hope there isn't anything weird in it that will leach into the radishes...?

Halloween Central!  Black kitty cat included!

LuRong "Paleo Challenge" and Whole 30

Okay, I have good news and I have bad news.  Since you're not here to tell me which you want first, then we're going to start with the bad news and finish on a good news note. :)

My Crossfit box is all swept up by the LuRong Paleo Challenge.  8 weeks of strict Paleo eating, doing prescribed workouts (can scale) and over $100,000 in prizes!  Sounds awesome, right?!  Well...I didn't dig into it too much before saying I was in.  I made the commitment, then went to the site to sign up, and guess what??  It costs $50 a person.  Wait...it gets better.  It's only $47 for registration and your "first month's supply" of their supplements.  Crock of SHIT!  I go to the FAQ section and find out that on top of that, you only qualify for those prizes if you're competing in the upper levels of the workout.  Riiiiiiiight....I get it now.  You're hawking these non-Paleo approved supplements (there isn't a single one that's fully endorsed by the Paleo community), making us pay for them, then what??  Why don't you just let me fill you in on this because it was part of my training as a nurse:

They're collecting stats to market their product.  The people that pay $50 just for the challenge and no supplements?  They're the control group.  WE are paying THEM for a research study.  It's genius, really, but I'm onto them.  Our good Paleo doc, Chris Kresser sees it too.  They don't actually tell you any of this unless you dig deep into it, or actually make the commitment to register...on the second page of the registration is where it all comes together.  Fucking crooks.  If that ISN'T their intention, then it sure looks really bad that they're trying to use the Paleo label to hawk their shit.

Good stuff!! 

Whole 30.  I started September 4th.  Now...I know you're not supposed to weigh yourself but once at the very beginning and once at the end, but I can't help it.  I'm pretty sure I lost 4 pounds the first week.  I say "pretty sure" because I usually weigh myself in my chonies first thing in the morning, and today I had already started eating/drinking, and I was wearing my clogs....those weigh like 3lbs...srsly.

I'm so sick of black coffee.  The SECOND this W30 is over, I'm putting a TABLESPOON of coconut sugar in that shit.  Thankfully I have been having Bulletproof Coffee, so it's at least got some butter and MCT oil blended into it. Blech.

Well, this got really boring and wasn't particularly funny at all, so just go back to my post on Samoa cupcakes.

Primal Docs and Knee Socks

So, I joined Primal Docs.  I love the idea that there is a community out there of seriously legit doctors that "get it".  Imagine going to your regular doctor and telling them that you put butter and oil in your coffee, cook with bacon fat, and only work out 3 days a week for about an hour.  Yeah, right.  I'd probably just rather lie so that I don't have to hear a bunch of shit about how I should be eating my daily ration of whole grains. *farty noise*

Since I mentioned my Bulletproof coffee above, I feel like I should give you an update on that as well.  Dude...it's fucking amazing.  It took me a while to notice the effects...slowly, but surely, I did.  This coffee was the in-season, organic cherry on the dairy-free ice cream that I needed.  After YEARS of wanting to take a nap in the afternoon and just crash on the couch when I came home from work, I FEEL AMAZING.  Yesterday, I came home and did 3 loads of laundry and made something awesome from the Paleo Parents, and still had to force myself to go to bed at 10pm.

Update #2:  Gumball Poodle knee socks.  These things rule!  In case you didn't know, I used to weigh almost 300 pounds.  Yikes, yeah, I know.  Well, something that happens when you were fat and you lose a bunch of weight is that your calves are still huge.  It's so stupid.  Your boobs get tiny and your calves stay fat.  WTF.  Say goodbye to shorts...forever.  I won 2 pairs of Gumball Poodle socks and thought that would be a perfect way to test them out since most knee socks look all deformed when you wear them over big calves...like...you can't tell what they're supposed to say.  It's gnarly...and that's only if you can actually pull them up that far.  #fatgirlproblems  I love these so much, I'm going to let you see what they look like on me!  You're welcome.

Cheap-O Paleo

Big ups to Gumball Poodle and KnickerRocker!  I was one of the lucky winners of their Facebook contest and recieved 2 pairs of SUPER cool socks and a $25 certificate to KnickerRocker. I've heard that the Gumball Poodle socks fit over big fat calves, so I'll update you after I Crossfit in them.

Okay, onto business.  Every blog post I read from my Paleo people lately talks about two things:  How to afford Paleo, and how to not spend every waking moment in the kitchen.  Well, I have an answer to both.

How to afford Paleo:

1.  MEAL PLAN.  This is the most important one and I'll elaborate in the next section...You only buy what you need because you have a list in front of you saying exactly how much you need.

2.  Google is your BFF.  Find local farmers.  Write them emails.  Buy their shit in bulk and have it delivered.  Google how to freeze/ferment/preserve your veggies for use all year 'round...on that note, cook seasonally if you don't have a giant freezer.

3.  Amazon is your BFF.  Subscribe to the shit you buy regularly.  I hear Amazon Prime is a good investment, but I've yet to see it pay off because I always buy over $25 worth of stuff and get free shipping on the stuff that qualifies anyway.

Okay, so on to the most important part...MEAL PLANNING:

I'm not in the business of blogging.  I don't make a profit on anything that I mention in my blog, so if I say it rules, it's because it rules, not because I make a dollar for every person that buys it/reads it/whatever.

Once A Month Mom changed my LIFE!  She offers several different menus...PALEO, Gluten Free, Dairy Free, Vegetarian, etc.  This might sound really intimidating, but this woman has thought of everything and walks you through how to cook once a month.  You prep a bunch of food (some cooked, some raw that you throw in the crotchpot or whatever).  You don't need as much freezer space as you might think.  I recently picked 40 pounds of organic strawberries at Swanton Farms and still had FOUR 1-gallon bags of whole strawberries in there when I did my once a month cooking.

You can CUSTOMIZE your menus for the amount of people in your family!!  This is genius.  Srsly.  You can't be totally technologically impaired because it involves some intermediate computer skills (I had to read her tutorial...I'm kind of a ditz), but at some point, you put a number 3, for example, into a box and everything miraculously changes to accommodate the size of your family.  All  you're responsible for after your cooking day is side dishes and a few breakfasts/lunches/snacks, etc.

I could go on all day, but only you can decide to do it.  You cook for an entire month in one day.  That's it.  

www.onceamonthmom.com

I think you have to pay for a nominal membership...like $8 a month or something.  It's worth every penny just for the chopping list...or the organized shopping list...or the moment to moment instructions for the whole day...

Okie dokie...this got really long and I have Friday-itis, so I'm going to try and get out of here early and bomb over to Santa Cruz. 

Dear Stalker,

Dear Stalker,

It wasn't as awesome as you think it was.  Move on.

Hate,

Tara