Breakfasts tend to be eggs and bacon or omelets. Lunch is a big salad with some sort of meat (chopped ham, chicken, taco meat).
When planning next weeks menu remember that April 3rd is National Chocolate Mousse day! Doesn’t that sound good? I’ve already made an avocado chocolate pudding which Ryan and I thought was okay and Xander loved. For the mousse I’m looking at these recipes, one and two. Badly craving chocolate now!
To see what others are making this week check out I’m an Organizing Junkie. Thanks for stopping by.
My fifth book for the Speculative Fiction Challenge is Tortall and Other Lands by Tamora Pierce. This is a collection of short stories, most of which had been previously published but a few were new. Thankfully I had only read two of the stories before so most of the anthology was new to me.
Tamora Pierce is one of my favorite authors so it is no surprise that I really enjoyed this collection of stories. My favorite was The Dragon’s Tale which has characters from The Immortals quartet. This story is told from Kitten the dragon’s perspective and it was so nice to revisit these old friends.
There wasn’t a story I didn’t like, but I really hope she writes more about Adria and Lost, Tonya and Lindri, and Arimu and Sunflower!
To see what other people are reading for the challenge go to
My third book for the Mystery and Suspense Challenge is Heat Wave by Richard Castle. If you’re not a fan of the TV show Castle then you might think that Richard Castle is a real author, he’s not. He is a fictional character on the TV show and this is the book he wrote during the first season. On the show Richard Castle is a famous author who decides to tag along with a police detective, Kate Becket, to get ideas for a new series of books. I love the show, I like detective shows in general but add in Nathan Fillion (from Firefly!) and you’ve got me hooked. The show is smart and funny and as you can tell I love it. But that’s the show. This is the book.
From watching the show I already knew some things about the book, like the main characters name, Nikki Heat. Instead of being partnered with a novelist she is partnered with a magazine journalist and I felt that the journalist character was the weakest part of the book. He just didn’t feel real to me. On the show when Castle comes up with an idea you can see where he’s coming from, how he got the knowledge that led him there. I just never saw where Jameson Rook had gained his knowledge. But that was the only part of the book that didn’t work for me. I loved everything else about it and definitely recommend it, to fans of the show and to people who have never heard of it too. Though, if you haven’t watched it you are sure missing out!
To see what other people are reading for the challenge visit
After a disastrous and unedible loaf of coconut bread using a recipe I found online I was leery of trying another bread recipe, but I really wanted some bread! Since I’ve had good luck with the recipes from
I decided to try Elana’s Scrumptious Sandwich Bread. I had all the ingredients but not the right size pan. However I did have a foil pan that I use for making food to give to my Mom, so I took that pan and squished the sides inward slightly to make it into a smaller loaf size. That seemed to work pretty well.
Sandwich Bread
The bread is very dense and has a nutty flavor, not surprising considering it’s made with almond butter and almond flour. Xander and I both liked it but Ryan did not. I think the taste of “real” bread is too recent for me to fairly judge this bread. It’s not my whole wheat oatmeal bread that I have baked every week for the last couple of years. It’s just not that type of bread, and at this point my mouth still craves that. I think the more that taste fades from memory the more I’ll like this bread and others made with nut flours. As it was, I did enjoy eating with bread today, but it was less the actual taste of the bread and more how I was able to use it.
For breakfast I was able to have my eggs over easy with wonderful runny yolks and I had toast to soak up the yummy yolk goodness! I am rather sick of scrambled eggs so it was a nice treat to be able to have fried eggs instead. For lunch I had an actual sandwich! Though strangely I really craved potato chips with my sandwich even though before going Primal I only occasionally ate chips.
Didn’t quite get around to posting yesterday. Last night for dinner we had the roast pork shoulder that was on the menu last week, I didn’t have room in the fridge to start thawing it until the end of the week. It was really easy to make (though it took a long time to roast) and the meat is wonderful!
Pork shoulder sitting on top of onions and oranges, waiting to go back in the fridge overnight.
All done, literally just falling apart. So tasty!
On the menu this week:
Hamburgers with sweet potato fries. (no buns)
Roast pork shoulder with asparagus
Ham and asparagus omelets
Pepperoni, olive, and mushroom pizza with almond flour crust
Sausage and mushroom tomato sauce over zucchini noodles
Vegetable stir fry with leftover pork
Irish bangers (from Trader Joe’s) with vegetables and fingerling potatoes
Without the pork roast last week our menu sort of changed and we had pizza with the almond flour crust one night. The recipe is from The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook by Elana Amsterdam, unfortunately she hasn’t posted it online. It is a very thin, cracker like crust but I think when you give up grains you’ve just got to say goodbye to that bready pizza crust. This was so much better than the cream cheese crust we’d tried before. If you’re eating gluten free or grain free and like to bake I highly recommend this book. Though I swap out the agave nectar that she lists in most recipes and instead use honey.
Tasty pizza with an almond flour crust.
That’s our Primal menu for the week. To see what other people are having visit I’m an Organizing Junkie. Thanks for stopping by.
Today I baked another grain free treat, a pear crisp. The recipe was from The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook by Elana Amsterdam.
Elana has posted the recipe here. The only changes I made were using olive oil (because that was what I had) and using honey instead of agave nectar (cause that stuff is as bad as HFCS!). It was another easy recipe and very, very tasty! I can’t wait to try the crumbled topping on other treats.
Pear Crisp
I really like the cookbook and Elana’s wonderful Gluten-Free cooking website Elana’s Pantry.
