When people ask what my favourite kitchen tool is, most expect me to say my Blendtec. And while I LOVE this luxurious item, it’s #3 on my list. First and foremost is my food processor. If I had to choose just 1 kitchen gadget, it would be that, without a doubt! But in a very close second, comes my slow cooker. It is an incredible tool for saving time, not to mention making delicious meals!
When I first got my crockpot, however, I struggled with how to use it. Every recipe I found was complicated and involved at least 20 minutes of prep. Or the length of time recommended was only 5 or 6 hours. Since mornings were notoriously busy, and I was gone for a minimum of 8-9 hours every day, I struggled to find recipes that worked for me!
After a while, I started to experiment. Turns out most food can cook a LONG time in the slow cooker…and it only gets better!! Here’s my general formula for creating a delicious crockpot meal, in less than 5 minutes on a busy morning:
Tougher, fattier or bone in cut of meat (e.g. chicken thighs/legs, pork butt steaks, flank steak, beef shanks) seasoned with sea salt and pepper
+
A bit of liquid (either ½ a cup of broth or a can of tomatoes)
+
1-2 chopped onions
Cook on low until you get home.
You can even put in frozen meat if it’s going to cook at least 8-9 hours!
Take it up a notch, if you have a few extra minutes in the morning, by adding in additional root vegetables on top of the meat.
For those of you who appreciate more exact directions, here’s my recipe for easy Crockpot Chicken Stew.
Have you ever thought about how many different variations of flour + dairy + sugar make up our breakfasts in North America? It’s pretty astounding! Whether it’s a bagel & cream cheese, a bowl of cereal, toast with jam, eggo waffles and “maple syrup” (i.e. corn syrup + maple flavour), a muffin and a double double from Tim’s – it’s all the same thing, in a different form. And most importantly, it’s all crap. None of the foods we consider breakfast foods are actually food. They’ve all gone through an incredible amount of processing, and we’re left with nutrient-poor, albeit incredibly tasty, food-like products.
The one exception is eggs so boy oh boy do I capitalize on those when I’m working with clients!
Interesting side note: someone can eat a bagel and cream cheese, or toast and PB every day for breakfast and not get bored of it, but try suggesting eggs every day for breakfast and you’ll immediately get a firm “but I couldn’t eat them every day, I need some variety”. Very interesting…
Anyways, eggs are super awesome in so many ways. They’re full of incredible nutrients, healthy cholesterol (yes I said healthy!) and lots of protein. Still worried they’re causing heart disease? Think again my friends and go read Eat the Yolks by Liz Wolfe from Real Food Liz.
Step 1: Chop VeggiesStep 2: Pile on the Bacon!
As awesome as eggs are for you, they’re also, sadly, a super common allergy. Not to mention they must be eliminated if you’re in the early stages of recovering from an autoimmune condition. And since we’ve already eliminated the other normal breakfast foods, once we eliminate eggs, we’re pretty much without breakfast foods.
Now, when you’ve been following a real food diet for long enough, you start to think of food as food, and meals as meals, instead of breakfast food and breakfast. Heck, my favourite breakfast these days is soup – but that’s probably because bone broth makes my body feel so much better. Oh and soup’s awesome.
However, I can absolutely appreciate when my clients are a little hesitant about eating regular food for breakfast. I used to be a strict “breakfast food before 11am” person – it took me a while to get to soup and leftovers for breakfast. So with that in mind, I’ve created a delicious breakfast hash brown recipe, made with foods that are often consumed at breakfast and is egg-free! I bring you: Harvest Breakfast Hash!
This beautiful dish is filled with delicious goodies. Roasted sweet potatoes, smoky bacon, sweet apples and (this is going to floor my mom) fennel! Let me explain that comment in parenthesis…I hate fennel. Like absolutely despise it! I have always hated the flavour of black licorice, even as a kid, and fennel tastes like black licorice. Interestingly enough, black licorice is in the legume family, and since I have such a severe intolerance to legumes, I like to think my fierce aversion to licorice was my body’s attempt at protecting me! Now if only it had done that with milk…
So last week our food bin brought us a beautiful fennel bulb and I felt sick about throwing it straight in the compost. I had also read recently that roasted fennel is a much more mellow flavour. Also, I had used up all my eggs making banana muffins, so we had no eggs for Sunday brunch. So I figured I’d use the fennel in an egg-free breakfast hash – something I’ve been meaning to try for all my egg-free clients! And heck, if I hated it, I knew my husband would happily eat it all. So what happened?
I loved it!!
If you’re not sure, or you think you hate fennel, try it roasted in this recipe. If you really don’t like it, this recipe is still awesome with out it. Also, if you are lucky enough to tolerate eggs, slap a fried egg on top and let this hash soak up all the yolky goodness!
Harvest Breakfast Hash
2015-02-19 14:34:24
An egg-free, autoimmune protocol-friendly breakfast that is packed with flavour! Makes an awesome side dish or salad topper as well!
Combine sweet potato, fennel, red onion, apple and garlic in a large roasting pan. Alternatively you can use 2 smaller pans or baking sheets.
Add a liberal amount of sea salt and black pepper (if not strict AIP) and stir to combine
Top with bacon pieces.
Bake for 45 minutes, stirring 2 or 3 times.
Broil for the final 5 minutes before serving.
Notes
Omit fennel if you don't like it!
Substitute butternut squash for SCD.
Top with a fried egg if tolerated!
By Amanda Naturally
Amanda Naturally http://www.amandanaturally.com/
So tell me, have you gotten over the breakfast food for breakfast hump yet? If yes, what is your favourite non-traditional breakfast? If not, give it a go and report back!
Even with my 5+ years of experience living a gluten-free, dairy-free lifestyle (I’ve since added some foods to that list, but that’s what I started with), I occasionally still get what I call “dairy-bombed” or “gluten-bombed”. I really do everything in my power to avoid dairy (my worst allergy) because a tiny exposure results in at least 24 hours of extreme pain, followed by 1-2 weeks of slow gut recovery. And since gluten actively causes leaky gut, I avoid it pretty strictly as well, although I don’t have to be as extreme as some people who can’t share a surface though, so I count myself lucky!
The riskiest endeavours are parties, restaurants (especially with a language barrier) and travelling, with travelling taking the cake for most high-risk activity!
First there’s the airport. A real food deadzone, in which you are guaranteed to spend a minimum of 2 hours in before your flight. Surrounded by crap on crap on crap. Very little options, other than a salad or a piece of fruit if you’re lucky.
Then comes the actual flight itself. I don’t even think the stuff they serve you counts as food. As a kid I didn’t even like it – but back then I usually filled up on Smartfood and Mars bars! Depending on the length of the flight, you can be served multiple “meals” of garbage, moulded into food-like shapes.
Upon arrival to your destination, any number of hours later, you might be faced with a language barrier as well.
Yowza. Talk about risky!
This past weekend my whole family went to Quebec City to celebrate my mom’s 60th birthday, and while it was only a 90 minute flight, the travel portion of the day was a good 5-6 hours. So I decided to share exactly what I did to keep my body healthy on this trip! (spoiler alert: I wasn’t perfect, I did have something go wrong, but I was mostly successful. Heck I’m only human!).
Ok so first and foremost. You have to plan ahead. This is seriously a case of:
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
If you arrive at the airport hungry, because you haven’t eaten yet that day, you’re going to end up filling your body with at best, nutrient-poor, inflammatory foods that hopefully don’t contain one of your food triggers. At worst? A full on dairy-bombing (my worst offender).
Rule Number 1: Fuel Up Before You Leave Home
I cannot stress this enough. Have a HUGE meal before you leave your home. Make sure it’s high fat and at least a moderate amount of protein. This will sustain you for hours! We had to leave our house at 6am on Friday, so I set the alarm for 5am, to make sure we would have enough time to eat. A huge breakfast of bacon, bacon-fried eggs and plantain buns, plus lots of coconut milk in my coffee made sure I wasn’t hungry again for at least 6 hours.
Rule Number 2: Pack Snacks
If I was going on a longer flight, I would have packed more meal-like food in a lunch bag, but since we were just hopping over to the next province, I packed non-perishable snacks such as a few packs of Artisana’s individually portioned nut butters and a bag of my homemade Beef Jerky. Additionally, I threw in an apple and some chopped veggies, as well as a can of sardines if I needed it (although this was a last resort, since I didn’t want to be that person on the flight!).
Rule Number 3: Over Pack Food
It’s winter in Canada right now. There is a very likely chance that your flight may be delayed, or you may end up in another city due to weather conditions, which leaves you stranded and desperate for food. We ate about half of the food in my bag, which I considered a win! I would have been able to sustain us for another 5 or so hours on what I had left!
Rule Number 4: Bring an Empty Water Bottle
You know how the flight attendants give you that teeny glass of water that one time on the flight? Advocate for yourself! Bring an empty bottle and ask them to FILL IT UP! I do it all the time! Staying hydrated is key for reducing your risk of airplane-born illnesses. Why? Flying is incredibly dehydrating. The humidity in the airplane cabin is significantly lower than our ideal range, which causes moisture to seep out of our bodies in a futile effort to establish an equilibrium between the two environments. When our mucous membranes dry out, we lose one of our primary barriers against air-borne pathogens. Add a sick traveller who’s hacking up a storm a few seats behind you and you are seriously at risk!
Rule Number 5: Pack Extra Food In Your Checked Luggage
In my checked luggage I packed a whole lot of other food as well. Extra cans of sardines and tuna (in olive oil of course! Watch out for those nasty other oils like soybean or canola.), more nut butter packets, dates, dried mango, cans of coconut milk and a can opener, to be exact! We rented a condo with a kitchen and were fairly close to a grocery store, so we made a trip when we got settled in, to stock up on real food (more on that in my next post). If I didn’t have this option, I would also pack the following:
Larabars
Coconut Butter
Raw nuts & seeds
Protein Powder
A personal size blender, or shaker cup
Coconut oil and/or olive oil
Sea salt
Inka Plantain Chips (found only at Dollarama here in Ontario!)
Kale Chips
A small cutting board and paring knife (obviously in your checked luggage)
Moral of the story is don’t let yourself become a victim of circumstance. Plan ahead and you’ll be fine!
Okay so it was my intention to sum up everything into one post, but at this rate I’ll be up all night writing this! So this has now become a Preparing for Travel post. Check out my second post: 7 Tips for Eating Healthy on Vacation, where I discuss what to do when you arrive at your destination!
When people ask what my favourite kitchen tool is, most expect me to say my Blendtec. And while I LOVE this luxurious item, it’s #3 on my list. First and foremost is my food processor. If I had to choose just 1 kitchen gadget, it would be that, without a doubt! But in a very close second, comes my slow cooker. It is an incredible tool for saving time, not to mention making delicious meals! 
Have you ever thought about how many different variations of flour + dairy + sugar make up our breakfasts in North America? It’s pretty astounding! Whether it’s a bagel & cream cheese, a bowl of cereal, toast with jam, eggo waffles and “maple syrup” (i.e. corn syrup + maple flavour), a muffin and a double double from Tim’s – it’s all the same thing, in a different form. And most importantly, it’s all crap. None of the foods we consider breakfast foods are actually food. They’ve all gone through an incredible amount of processing, and we’re left with nutrient-poor, albeit incredibly tasty, food-like products.
