breakfast Archives • Ant & Anise

Quinoa porridge: comfort food with the power to soothe

Mom’s breathing, which had been labored for several hours, got shallower, and the space between breaths took longer. With my hand on her forearm, I watched her face and listened as her breathing slowed even more. In, out, pause. In, out, pause. Then in, out, longer pause. In, out, longer pause.

And then, just like that, she stopped breathing for good. I waited a few more seconds, but that was it. The last breath. And the end of a very long, incredibly painful journey through Alzheimer’s disease.

That was on March 29, Good Friday. And that is why you haven’t seen much going on at Ant & Anise lately. My mom, Ann, is Eve’s sister. Or was, I should say. I’m not used to the past tense with her just yet….

The Paleo Diet Challenge: Day 31

Final day of the challenge. Big sigh.

(Okay, I suppose technically it was a 30-day challenge…but with July having 31 days, it didn’t make sense to me to not make it through the entire month.)

It’s been up and down for the last few weeks — my feelings about Paleo eating, my weight, my anxiety levels about what to do for dinner (not the big questions in life, I realize) — and I’m glad the challenge coming to an end. There are a number of positives I’ll take away, no question.

But today, the last day, it’s about my quest for making a Paleo-friendly bread, something that has eluded me so far.

I wish I could say that, after trying a number of recipes and combinations of Paleo-friendly flour substitutes this month, I found a killer recipe. A Paleo bread that I could toast up and enjoy, if not with peanut butter then with another nut butter, to make it like the pre-challenge breakfasts I used to have. Yeah!

The recipe I settled on was for Paleo biscuits, and overall it was pretty decent. The biscuits were moist and had a good crumb, and they toasted up quite well. Score! (They did stick miserably in the muffin cups though, despite being well greased. I had to chisel them out with a knife, which was not fun. Arg).

I toasted one up and topped it with almond-cashew butter. Morning coffee at my side, I had high hopes that this biscuit would be the one to replace my beloved (wheat) toast.

Another big sigh. Turns out it was just not meant to be. It’s not that I didn’t like the Paleo biscuits. It’s that they weren’t amazingly good, either.

As a former baker and lifelong pastry maker (and eater), I realize I’ve set the bar for good bread fairly high. That doesn’t mean that it’s not possible to make a great Paleo bread, just that I haven’t found the right recipe. But I like a challenge, obviously. On the Paleo bread front, we’re not done yet.

With the challenge coming to a close, I’m going to take a few days and gather my thoughts on what I thought of it all, the good and the bad. Stay tuned.
More on the Paleo diet challenge:
Why I’m doing it in the first place
My plan for the 30 days

The Paleo Diet Challenge: Day 29

Oh, wow. Wow. I think I’ve found a new ally in the kitchen, for baking anyway: Blanched almond flour.

So far I’ve had success using a coarser almond meal in the morning glory muffins, where a denser texture is perfectly okay. But for some baked goods, a finer grind, something closer to actual wheat flour, is what’s needed. I hadn’t had any luck in local stores trying to find this (which I thought was odd, considering I was trying places like Whole Foods, Galloway’s and Famous Foods). When I spotted a recipe on the Urban Poser blog for Paleo cinnamon rolls that looked absolutely delicious, finally I was motivated enough to get my credit card out and place an order online for the blanched almond flour.

I’m so glad I did.

The blanched almond flour is super fine, noticeably finer than the almond meal I’d been using. I made a few changes to the cinnamon roll recipe, but they turned out really, really ridiculously well. Better than I expected. I love it when that happens. They’re definitely not like the stretchy pull-apart kind of buns, like the ones I devoured when I was at UBC.

These were more biscuit-y for sure. But they were soft, and, with the cinnamon-honey-pecan center, they were so good that I didn’t care about them not being so soft and stretchy. Not one bit.

The Best Paleo Cinnamon Rolls

I agree -- these are the best cinnamon rolls around when you're going Paleo. This recipe is adapted from The Urban Poser.

Ingredients

3-1/4 cups blanched almond flour (I used Honeyville brand)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup coconut oil
2 tablespoons honey
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1/4 cup honey
1/2 cup pecans, finely chopped
1/4 cup currants or raisins (optional)
4 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350F.
In a large stand mixing bowl, combine the almond flour, salt and baking soda. In a separate bowl, beat together the coconut oil, honey and eggs.
Add the egg mixture to the almond flour mixture. Blend together with the paddle attachment until the dough is smooth. It will be quite sticky.
Sandwich the dough between two large pieces of parchment paper. With a rolling pin, roll out the dough into a rectangle, approximately 9×13 inches. Peel off the top piece of parchment paper.
Drizzle the honey evenly over the dough, then spread the honey out with your hands so that it covers the whole surface. Sprinkle the chopped pecans and currents or raisins (if using) evenly over the dough, then sprinkle the cinnamon on top.
Starting at the long edge closest to you, carefully roll the dough like a jelly roll, keeping it as tight as you can at the beginning. The dough isn’t elastic like a wheat dough, so go slowly and gently, patching up small holes in the dough if you get them.
Once the dough is completely rolled up, even it out a bit with your hands, being careful not to tear the dough. With a serrated knife, cut slices about 1-1/2 to 2 inches thick.
Lay the rolls cut side down on a parchment lined baking sheet. Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until the rolls are golden on the top and the dough in the center of the rolls is soft but not doughy.
Remove the rolls from the oven and let cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes. Transfer them to a cooling rack and let them cool completely.
If you like, drizzle the rolls with a glaze. (I went outside the Paleo rules here and made one with powdered sugar and milk.)

Notes

When you're ready to cut them from the roll, get a ruler out to measure out even slices so they bake uniformly. If these bake too long, they'll get really hard....like hockey pucks. Watch the oven, and err on the side of having these slightly underdone.

More on the Paleo diet challenge:
Why I’m doing it in the first place
My plan for the 30 days

The Paleo Diet Challenge: Day 25

So, Paleo Diet Challenge Day 25. What I think is that simple is good.

Even better: Sometimes, simple is best. I’m not sure if it has something to do with expectation management again, although I suspect it does. But it seems that, very often, the simplest meals give me the most enjoyment. They punch above their weight, as you’d say.

It’s not the special occasion dinners that I’ve either toiled over for hours that are, in the end, the best. No, more times than I can count it’s been the unexpected mid-week dinners, the spontaneous why don’t we go there? meals or the why don’t I just try this? dishes that surprise, and surpass, my expectations. Those are the ones I remember, long after.

Such is the case with the breakfast sausages. For years, I’ve secretly liked the sausages that you would find on, say, a McDonald’s Sausage McMuffin or Tim Horton’s Breakfast Sandwich. (Hmmm, I guess it’s not such a secret now.) But I would never darken the doors of those places to actually order a breakfast sandwich. I could never bring myself to do it, ever. And when I do go out for brunch, my automatic response says ‘bacon’ when I order, just because you never know what kind of sausage they might have in the kitchen. They are definitely not all the same, right?

Maybe that’s why I was pleasantly surprised to see recipes for breakfast sausage in many of the Paleo cookbooks and blogs out there. They’re simple to make, and while they’re not something I would usually think of to make for brunch, it turns out that they’re really good. Amazingly good, in fact. Even better than bacon? Very possibly.

I’m happy because now these previously-forbidden delights can be mine, without having to drive through a drive-thru. I can actually make these at home. Light bulb goes on. And really, part of my prejudice with fast food is strictly on a geeky grammar level. (I’m with Grammar Girl, spelling t-h-r-u is kind of equivalent to dotting your i’s with little hearts.) But these breakfast sausages were well worth the wait, and are grammatically correct to boot. Whew.

Paleo Breakfast Sausages

Adapted from Paleo Comfort Foods by Julie and Charles Mayfield.

Ingredients

1 pound ground pork
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tablespoons red onion, finely chopped
1 teaspoon fennel seeds, lightly ground or chopped
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon salt
fresh ground pepper to taste
1 tablespoon fresh sage, finely chopped
1 tablespoon fresh thyme, finely chopped
1 tablespoon fresh parsley, finely chopped

Instructions

Preheat your barbecue to 400F*. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a medium mixing bowl, combine the pork with the garlic and onion. (You can use a spoon, but I find using your hands gives you a more uniform result, quicker. Plus it's kind of fun.)
Add the fennel seed, cayenne, paprika, salt and pepper and mix until combined. Add the sage, thyme and parsley, and mix again to combine.
With your hands, form the mixture into 8 patties and place on the parchment-lined baking sheet.
When the barbecue is up to temperature, place the patties on the grill and cook for 3-4 minutes. Flip them over and continue to cook for another 3-4 minutes, or until they're browned and firm. Remove from heat and serve.

Notes

You can also cook these on the grill or in a frying pan, and that's how I initially did them. I preferred using the grill so that any excess fat drips away. If you don't have a barbecue, I imagine broiling them on a rack on top of a sheet pan would work quite well too.

More on the Paleo diet challenge:
Why I’m doing it in the first place
My plan for the 30 days

The Paleo Diet Challenge: Day 21

This challenge is a funny thing. For the past 3 weeks I seem to swing between two feelings: One is being energized and quite optimistic about finding a new way of eating, which might turn out to be better for me. (Is it a pathway to get off the daily Synthroid pill? Perhaps.) I really like the discovery of new ways to use ingredients that I never would have thought (like almonds as flour, cauliflower as rice), so there’s a certain adventurousness that I’m enjoying.

The other is spending a fair amount of time being frustrated about what’s allowed and what’s not. I like food a lot, obviously. But thinking about this Paleo diet almost constantly, how to make it interesting, working it into our daily lives without it being too much of a jolt, has been consuming way too much of my mental energy these days. Thinking about it is almost more challenging than actually doing it. Strange, hey?

(And, of course, there’s the still-unsuccessful quest for a decent Paleo bread. One that I can eat as toast, for breakfast. I thought I was losing my bread craving, and maybe after 30 days it will be curbed at least a little, but every so often it bubbles up and sends me on a new search for Paleo bread recipes.)

I’m thankful for the few times that I am able to eat out successfully, meaning I can order something that doesn’t need a lot of special instructions. Hold the bun! Can I get that wrapped in lettuce? Like you might expect, breakfast and brunch are a good time to eat out for Paleos, simply because eggs play a starring role. This Californian omelette from Milestones, with bacon, avocado salsa, diced tomatoes and cheddar, was a good example of a restaurant meal that didn’t need any strange requests, aside from skipping the toast. All I had to do was refrain from eating the potatoes. Whew.

More on the Paleo diet challenge:
Why I’m doing it in the first place
My plan for the 30 days

The Paleo Diet Challenge: Day 11

The answer to my question yesterday seems to be a definite maybe. Like a lot of things, it’s tough to nail it on your first try.

I’ve done a fair amount of searching for Paleo bread recipes in the past week and a half. The first thing that struck me is the amount of eggs involved. There are typically many, many eggs in Paleo bread. I guess it makes sense, really, because without any gluten to give some structure and help it rise, the bread needs something to achieve a texture that is lighter than, say, a door stop. With cakes and other baked goods, eggs are definitely the go-to ingredient when you want light and fluffy, particularly when you beat the whites separately and fold them in to a batter. (Just like we do with our waffles.)

When I came across a recipe for a grain-free sandwich bread that uses coconut flour and flax meal, and the accompanying picture looked great, I thought fabulous! Here I go, with the promise of enjoying a nice slice of Paleo toast in the morning.

Unfortunately, the result was less than stellar.

The loaf actually looked pretty nice, especially with the sesame seeds sprinkled on top. The texture was pretty good as well, denser than a regular bread but I was expecting that anyway. No, it was the eggs that sunk this one. It smelled quite eggy when I sliced it but when I toasted it up, the eggy smell really intensified and was, for me anyway, pretty off-putting. Instead of enjoying the toast I almost gagged. Yuck.

Note to self: When a bread recipe calls for 7 eggs in one loaf (7!), you will not like it.

To help erase my first Paleo baking disaster I consoled myself by making some banana bread, which was delicious, nutty and dense. Maybe I’ll just stick with quick breads for now.

Paleo Banana Bread

Adapted from Comfy Belly's banana bread -- I left out the oil, cut back on the honey, and ended up with a very enjoyable, very moist (but not greasy) loaf. One thing I enjoy with baking without wheat flour is not having to worry about over mixing the batter (and therefore ending up with a tough quick bread). Mix away to your heart's content! Within reason, of course.

Ingredients

3/4 cup almond flour
1/4 cup coconut flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
2 ripe bananas, mashed
2 tablespoons honey
1/2 cup pecans

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350° F. Line a loaf pan with parchment paper.
Blend the dry ingredients together in a medium sized bowl. In a stand mixing bowl with the paddle attachment, beat the eggs together for 2 minutes, then mix in the mashed banana.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix well to ensure the batter is well blended. Stir in the pecans.
Add the batter to your loaf pan and bake for 40 minutes, or until browned and a cake tester inserted in the middle comes out clean. Remove from oven and let cool before slicing.

More on the Paleo diet challenge:
Why I’m doing it in the first place
My plan for the 30 days