Whats for dinner? -Taco Pie

On the menu tonight, Taco Pie

Don’t you ever get tired of hearing “what’s for dinner?” I know I do. So I have started meal planning and putting it on the fridge so I can avoid this question. When I started meal planning my go to site was/is Pintrest! Love it. I have so many boards of food, Chicken dishes, Pork, Beef, Seafood and even Vegetarian. A little bit of everything anything that I think we might like to eat. Eating Paleo is not restricting at all as some people say, if anything it gives us more ideas and there are millions of recipes out there. I found this little beauty on there and couldn’t wait to try it. Here is all the information you will need. Hope you like it as much as we did, and if you try it out, let us know how it went.

The first time we made this recipe we used crust #1 and it feel apart and made a good mix of flavors. Next time we are going to try crust #2 so I will tell you how that goes. (i'll add pictures once we try it)

I got the recipe from Paleo Newbie and the second pie crust from Coconut Mamma

We changed the recipe a little to fit us and to the fact that honey just cut up everything and put it in a bowl at once. I thought it was better this way however because it blended the flavors nicely. The taco seasoning recipe was a huge hit and honey just loved it, I ended up making a huge jar of it to keep in stock for all the time use!

Ingredients:

Taco Seasoning:

·         1tbs chili powder

·         1tsp sea salt

·         1 tsp ground black pepper

·         1 tsp oregano

·         1 tsp thyme

·         1 ½ tsp cumin

·         ½ tsp paprika

·         ¼ tsp garlic powder

·         ¼ onion powder

·         ¼ tsp red pepper flakes (optional, we didn’t use because my honey doesn’t like it to hot)

Taco Pie Crust #1

·         2 cups of almond flour

·         2 eggs – whisked

·         1 tbs coconut oil

·         1-2 tbs of taco seasoning (see above)

Coconut Flour Pie Crust

Directions for Pie Crust #1

1.       In a medium bowl combine almond flour, whisked eggs and coconut oil into a dough (I used a wooden spoon, then my hands)

2.      This will make a 9-inch pie crust, or enough for about 4 ramekins

3.      Grease pie pan or ramekins

4.      Mix dough and form for which ever vessel you will be using for pie

5.      Press into pie pan or ramekins to form a crust

6.      Bake at 350-degrees F unfilled for about 8-10 min

 

Ingredients for Pie crust recipe #2

·         1/2 cup Grass Fed Butter, Melted

·         2 Eggs, Preferably Local Pastured

·         1/4 Teaspoon Sea Salt

·         3/4 Cup Coconut Flour

·         1-2 tbs of taco seasoning (see above)

Directions for Crust #2

1.       Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a medium bowl beat butter, eggs, taco seasoning and salt together with a fork.

2.       Then add coconut flour. Stir until dough holds together.

3.       Gather the dough into a ball, and then pat into a 9″ greased pie pan.

4.       Prick the dough with a fork.

5.       Bake for 9 minutes.

Taco pie filling

·         1 pound of grass feed beef – browned

·         1 small onion

·         ½ red pepper diced

·         ½ green pepper diced

·         2 tbs taco seasoning (see above)

·         ½ cup of tomato sauce

·         1 can (14 oz) of diced tomatoes or diced tomatoes with green chilies – liquid drained

·         1 avocado- diced

·         1 Large mushroom

 

Instructions

1.       First combine ingredients for the taco seasoning in a small bowl - set aside

2.       Brown ground beef

3.       Drain fat from pan and rinse beef

4.       Add in the taco seasoning and the onions until completely cooked and onion renders down

5.       Time to make the crust... depends on what crust you choose follow instructions above

6.       While the crust is cooking add all other ingredients to the beef

7.       Mix and let cook together for 5 mins

8.       Remove crust  from oven and add the taco filling from the pan

9.       Return to oven and bake at 350-degrees F for another 20 mins

10.   Break up the crust from the bottom to combine with taco filling

11.   Enjoy!

 

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The 5 stages of Hunger

It was a typical Friday night for me and my man, sitting at home doing nothing. We decide to go in to town to see my mom and family, we get there and no one is home. So I call my little sister and they have all gone out for dinner. Well just great, we drove all the way here and now we just have to go home. It has been a few months that we have been on our real food journey, and I have been craving a burger. You know a big greasy burger with some salty fries and a pop. First off, I haven’t eaten Mc D’s in well over 4 months and I haven’t had any pop for much longer. So for me to have this craving, it wasn’t just a ‘well I could have one’ my stomach was like ‘WE ARE HAVING ONE.’ The kind of cravings that take over your whole body and you can’t think about anything else but what it is. So your thought process begins...

Stage 1: Bargaining

Well I haven’t had it in a long time, what will it hurt. I will just get one small burger, small fries and no pop. Yea no pop that will make it better. No I’ll just go home, I am not that hungry…But I really do want a burger…

Stage 2: Thinking facts

Then you remember about the article that told you that the pickles are made from 7 different ingredients. That the meat is pretty well made of nothing that is going to nourish your body, and that your know you’re going to be hungry in an hour. That last time you had one you had an upset stomach and you had to race to the bathroom as soon as you got home…

Stage 3: Tricking your mind

You try to convince yourself that you are starving and will die without it. You tell yourself, that no matter what you get it won’t satisfy you like that burger will. You think about the first bite and the salt on the fries, how can I not have it plus I don’t know how to make fries at home…

Stage 4: What else could we do

You think to yourself that you could just make a burger at home, yea that’s better. But wait, we don’t have hamburger, lettuce, mayo or anything else to go on a burger for that matter. Ok that’s fine we will buy it. So you rack your brain about the cost. Isn’t that what it all ways comes down to, money? So now your $1.49 cheese burger has now turned in to $20….

Stage 5: To do or not to do

So you convinced yourself that this is what you’re going to do. You’re pulling closer to it; you can see the big bright shining M like a beacon in the dark summoning you towards it. You look around at all the different restaurants and think, ‘I should not be down here’. You pull in to the drive threw…..

Now this is the deciding move, once you go into the drive threw there is no turning back. Skylar pulled up to the drive threw and pulled a little to the side. He looked at me and said “Now are you really sure you want to do this?” He looks at me, the gears in my head just going a mile a minute. Going through all these stages again in my head and a little out load, throwing a million different ideas at him. He calmly looks at me again and repeats “Are you really sure you want to do this?” I start to panic and the guilt sets in and I haven’t even done anything yet. I say… well it was more of a soft shout “NO! Get me out of here!” He pulls the car forward and we leave, with the golden arches in my rear view mirror, I feel better.

However my stomach is still growling, so to the super market we go. We travel down to the meat section, with our $10 budget in hand. Meat $7.00. Wait, that can’t be right I still need more things…

We spent the next hour wondering around looking at food, trying to figure out what we could possibly do to satisfy my craving. Pre-made burgers? Sandwich? Fish sticks? By this time, my stomach is so load I can barely think. We both just get to overwhelmed and we ended up, after over an hour or shopping around, leaving the store with sandwich meat.

We are going to have black forest ham sandwiches; we have all the ingredients at home. And I have been wanting to make mayo for a few days now, this is the perfect time to try. Well 11pm is not a very good time to try and use your food processor, especially when you live in a basement suit. Ok no mayo, and the bread if frozen….

Anyway, we ended up having these super awesome delicious sandwiches and we both felt very good about our decision to stay healthy.

We have both come a long way, I know it doesn’t sound like it but we have, but we have. When Skylar and I first started dating we used to eat at Mc D’s at least twice a week! We did that for years, and when we decided to make the change to real food, we cut it out cold turkey.

We cut out eating out at all! I decided that learning to cook and make food that not only nourished our bodies but made us feel good, was way more important. It has been hard; I am not going to say that it’s super easy when it’s not. But since we have switched we have both noticed huge differences in lots of aspects of our life. We feel more energized, we don’t really get headaches anymore and when we eat we just plain feel better. Skylar has been struggling for a while with his stomach, whenever he eats his stomach goes rock hard and it’s very painful. He had tried a few different things, like taking pills before he ate, taking gut and bloating meds but nothing worked. Ever since we went organic he has not had one issue. He likes eating again and he never has to deal with weighing eating over pain again. We are in transition now to go Paleo because of my dairy problems and it has done amazing things for my energy level that alone is worth it for me. I just have to remember that next time a get a craving.

Have you ever been tempted to go to the Golden Arches?

What was your outcome?

 

PS. Food for thought...

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Movie Monday – The Pagemaster

Continuing our theme of childhood favorites here is another one plucked right out of the imagination of a child. The Pagemaster.

 

A cowardly boy who buries himself in accident statistics enters a library to escape a storm only to be transformed into an animated illustration by the Pagemaster. He has to work through obstacles from classic books to return to real life.

I still to this day love watching this movie, I was over at my mom’s house the other day and I stole it off her shelf and took it home. Think she will notice? Well I did tell her and she does want it back, looks like I will just have to buy my own copy. Haha

I love the story of this movie and it’s so well thought out its amazing. The graphics for its time were amazing and they are one of the first film makers to use this technology. They also created a lot of the software just for the movie to take live action and mix it with animation. One of the amazing things they did when animating the film was always making it look like you were in the books. The Cliff is made of books, the stairs, the dragons insides all out of books. Don’t even get me started on the Pagemaster himself. Amazing. His beard is scrolls, his clock is a book, shear genius. If you haven’t seen this movie I really suggest it.

I give this movie 5 Stars and a lifetime of childhood memories :) Let us know what your favorite childhood movie was/is, we would love to hear from you. Have a good week everyone!

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Life is a Roller Coaster Ride

Have you every tied to do something new before? I bet you have, everyday people do and try new things. Have you ever done anything that was our of your comfort zone? Some people have different levels of fear and can and will do more crazy things than others. Some people have been sky diving, not this girl, although someday I wish to be able to try it. Some people go there whole life without doing something out of their comfort zone and their ok with that. Some people don’t live in a bubble and are happy that way too. Not me. I love trying new things but I like my bubble because it is safe. It keeps me in control and nothing ever goes wrong in the bubble right?

Wrong. It doesn’t matter if you like or bubble or not. Life is not always going to be a straight road. It’s going to twist and turn and have its fair share of hills and valleys, I know mine has.

Source

My life up until now has been a roller coaster ride, with little time on the straight stretch. I am constantly learning and doing new things that 2 or even 3 years ago I would have told you couldn’t be done. And just when you think you’re coming up on the end of the ride and your coming up to the landing, the car zooms forward and up another hill you go.

My roller coaster ride has been full of adventure. After Grad I moved two provinces away to be with my boyfriend, away from all my family and friends. It wasn’t so bad and I made new friends and talked on the phone with my family. We ended up staying there for a few years, had a few jobs, still not knowing what I wanted to do. I meet some amazing people that put me on the right track to a career in photography! Sounds fun right. I worked at Wolly world photo lab to learn the behind the scenes of the developing the film. Then I worked as a photographers assistant, learning all the editing a post processing. When I moved back to BC, I had a wonderful opportunity to become a manager at a studio in town. Dream come true, Manager at a Sears Portrait studio. I worked so hard and became the #1 studio in all of Canada out of 365 studios! The Vic President of the company even came to meet me in person; he loved my work and had tons of great advice for me. With him also came a job offer, Regional Trainer. Pretty much my job would be go to different studios all over the province and train people to be better photographers. Talk about a huge ego booster. Since I was little all I ever wanted to be was a teacher, best of both worlds with this new opportunity. It was all planned and set in action, I was going to start on Saturday…However that’s where I saw the landing and then plunged in to a very deep valley.

It was Thursday afternoon on April 10^th 2014, when I got in to my car accident.

You see life doesn’t always give you heads up when things are going to change, one minute it will be sunny and next you’re caught in a rainstorm. Life if not about crying about the weather it’s about how you can learn to love the rain. To see the small joys that you get when it rains, like rainbows, flowers and green grass. Because it’s not always going to rain but it’s not always going to be sunny either. It’s what you do with the day that matters.

You only have one life to live. And whether you decide to live it in your bubble, outside of it or both, your life is what you make it.

Things for me have been on the slow, slow, slow ride back out of the valley, just about to see day light again. And you can be sure that when I reach the sun again I will not complain about the sun in my eyes, but just enjoy the warmth on my face.

 

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Movie Monday & New Addition

This month the theme for Movie Mondays is going to be childhood favorites. With Christmas fast approaching everyone that I know is reminiscing of the ‘good ol’ days’ back when there were no bills or car payments to worry about. Back when life made sense and you didn’t have to care if something didn’t work out.

Isn’t it so funny, when you’re a kid all you think about is ‘I can’t wait to grow up so I can do…’ and now that you are grown up you want to go back to when you were a kid. Silly how that works, but I guess you always want what you don’t have.

Well back in the day and still to this day my favorite movie is….

Mary Poppins!

Plot Summary:

The movie combines songs, colour and sequences of live action blended with the movements of animated figures. Mary Poppins is a kind of Super-Nanny who flies in with her umbrella in response to the request of the Banks children and proceeds to put things right with the aid of her rather extraordinary magical powers.

I love it, Julie Andrews is amazing and has a wonderful voice. Dick Van Dyck is hilarious and keeps the movie funny and light. My favorite part of the movie would have to be the chimney sweep scene, if I can only pick one.

Step in time!

If you haven’t seen this movie here is the video.

This movie has always been a favorite of mine and I look forward to the day my children can enjoy it as well. For me this movie is

5 Stars!

 

Also there is going to be a new addition to this little blog of mine. I have partnered with my beautiful little sister to do a monthly book review. She loves to read and she reads such a wide verity of books, that I thought it would be fun. This month she has picked…

The Iron King by Julie Kagawa

Meghan Chase has a secret destiny; one she could never have imagined.

Something has always felt slightly off in Meghan's life, ever since her father disappeared before her eyes when she was six. She has never quite fit in at school or at home.

When a dark stranger begins watching her from afar, and her prankster best friend becomes strangely protective of her, Meghan senses that everything she's known is about to change.

But she could never have guessed the truth - that she is the daughter of a mythical faery king and is a pawn in a deadly war. Now Meghan will learn just how far she'll go to save someone she cares about, to stop a mysterious evil, no faery creature dare face; and to find love with a young prince who might rather see her dead than let her touch his icy heart.

So if you feel like reading along you can look forward to her review of the book at the end of this month.

Hope you had a wonderful weekend, see you again soon.

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The Temptations

You know what one of the hardest things about going on this real food journey…the temptations. The cute cookies, the chocolate cakes and bakery treats.

You see them everywhere and man do they ever smell so good. It takes so much will power to turn away and most days my 'will power' is already over there licking the icing. So you think to yourself ‘it won’t be so bad’ ‘I’ll just have a bite, I deserve a treat’ and every time as soon as it hits your stomach you regret it. Your stomach throws its fists up in anger and cries like a little baby ‘why do you keep doing this to me.’ Next thing you know you’re drinking 3 cups of organic peppermint tea to sooth the screaming beast that is your stomach.

So why do we do this to ourselves? Why do you endure the pain of a sugar overload for that tiny piece of cookie?

Sadly I don’t know, sadly I am still in this stage of my real food journey. The most important reason we went Paleo is because I am allergic to dairy. It makes my stomach to summer-salts in anger and I regret it from the moment it touches my lips. My body is having a real hard time detoxing; I have grown up eating sugar and grains, I love it, but it just doesn’t love me back. Everyone says that this is the worst part and totally is. If you don’t have a good support system it will be very easy to dismiss this way and just go back to the easy road. It may seem like the easy way now, but when your health gets bad and your living on pills and can go for a walk with your dog, it is the hard way.

I also keep trying to remind myself about the ‘down the road’ effects. All the positive effects this life style will lead me to be way better then that sugar cookie with a cute ghost on it. I would much rather spend an extra $3.00 for grass-feed natural no hormone beef then pay for a $50 months’ supply of pills from the doctor.

Tonight I was thinking though, can’t I make these treats so they won’t upset my tummy? Sure you can, I found tons of recipes on Pintrest and pinned them to my Food-Dessert board. So next time I see a yummy treat instead of thinking of all the reasons why I need it. I am going to think of a way that I can make it and eat it.

So that is my new goal, to learn to make treats that I can eat and enjoy. I am looking forward to this new journey, I hope that you will follow along and even share some recipes you have tired.

I was part of a Wellness Summit this past month and I learned so much amazing information, I can’t wait to share with you. One of the speakers Mary Shenouda from Paleo Chef had great advice about changing the mindset and making this life style work for you. One quote she made really stuck, she said,

“Stop Cheating & Start enjoying. Cheating puts a negative spin on it and follows with guilt. Make it a treat day. Make your favorite snack with chocolate or cookies. But still use Paleo ingredients so it’s still good for you but you are treating yourself. Don’t make them during the week; make them on the weekend to treat yourself.’

Check out her blog to help you change your mindset and get some tips and tricks. Thanks for stopping by, we would love to hear from you. Leave a comment and share your favorite recipe that helps you when you’re going through the cravings.

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I am back! - Blog under Construction

Hello Everyone!

I know it has been a very long time, but I am back! And with a fresh new blog plan! During the next few weeks you will see tons of changes on this little blog of mine. Some of you have messaged me wondering where I had gone, and I am here to tell you that I am back for good! I have had a crazy CRAZY year and I can’t wait to tell you everything that is going on and what has happened.

The blog name will change and the dress it's wearing but it will still be me, just in a new outfit!

So please stick around for more updates and regular posts soon to come!

 

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What I have been up to..

It seems as though time just flys these days and there is no time to even rap your head around the fact that time is wizzling by. That has been my life for the last little while and Iam just starting to come up for air. I have been working non-stop and have been trying to enjoy my life in the process, which all of you know is some times difficult. I down loaded this blogger app for my phone so I hope to stay more up to date with posting. I really do love blogging and I miss it a lot these days. Iam always thinking, oh that would be awesome for my blog but never get a spare minute to pull out my computer and jot it down.
So here are some pictures of what I have been up to and I hope that I will get back into the habit of writing on my lovely blog again.

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