So stoked on this Paleo Banana Bread with Pears and Honeyed Chocolate Sauce, for reals, it’s gluten and grain free, super moist and indulgently delicious. All I wanted today (and most days) was something rich and chocolately, warm and comforting, with a nice hot chai, and it doesn’t get much better than this banana bread folks. We have these two bountiful pear trees bordering our driveway, most of them are still unripe but one was ready, I wanted to make something special with the first pear of many to come. The bottom of the bread is caramelized gooey pears, which is surprisingly easy to achieve with a little coconut sugar and oil, the loaf pops right out, truly worthy of a pat on the back, a nice book and a cozy blanket. Monday moods.
We had to go to the court house today for a little ‘business’, apparently babies aren’t normally guests at such places since no change table was present anywhere. All the serious lawyers were ogling Mavi’s monkey pants, and he had plenty of smiles to share with all. What a gift children give to the world with their endless joy. The little one is starting to eat some solids, we’re taking a bit of an unconventional route and holding off on the grains and fruits. Instead, pastured egg yolks and grass-fed beef liver are the first foods. Quite the stretch from Pablem and other processed baby gruel. The reasoning behind this is that babies don’t produce amylase, the enzyme needed to break down all carbohydrates. Babes are much better equipped to digest protein and fat. At about 6 months they don’t have any iron stores left from when they were still inside momma, stealing all her iron for their journey outward. Liver is rich in iron and many vitamins, and the egg yolk from pastured chickens is high in healthy brain building cholesterol and lutein. I’m grateful to have this knowledge for our son, I’m sure at his age I was downing cheerios and goldfish, and I actually remember those vanilla baby cookies that one would just suck on until they disintegrated, yum?
Banana Bread with Pears and Honeyed Chocolate Sauce
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 50 minutes
Ingredients
For the banana bread
3 ripe bananas,mashed
2 eggs
1/4 C almond butter, raw or roasted
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp sea salt
3 Tbs+1 tsp coconut oil,melted
2 Tbs coconut sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 C dark chocolate chips
1 ripe pear, thinly sliced
1/3 C coconut flour
For the chocolate sauce
2 Tbs coconut oil, melted
2 Tbs cacao powder
2 Tbs honey
pinch of salt
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350F or 170C
Combine bananas,eggs,almond butter,vanilla, baking soda,sea salt, coconut oil and 1 Tbs coconut sugar until smooth and creamy.
Add coconut flour and baking soda until well incorporated, then proceed to mix in the chocolate chips.
In a loaf pan spread 1 tsp coconut oil on all sides until well coated and sprinkle a Tbs of coconut sugar over top, spread pear slices evenly over top.
Carefully pour the batter over top of the pear slices and smooth it all out.
Bake for 50 min. until a toothpick comes out clean.
Makes about 10 slices
For the chocolate sauce
Combine all ingredients and leave at room temperature to thicken. Stir well before pouring over your finished banana bread.
This salmon is ahhhh-mazing. It tastes way better than the candied salmon from the market loaded with weird preservatives and junk. Bourbon glaze is good with just about anything, I mean really, it’s syrupy liquor tainted goodness that you will want to douse everything in, yes, even salad. Maybe even brownies, if you leave out the savouries. The salmon is broiled to crispy perfection, and coated with a thick layer or glaze, some sesame seeds and greens onions, the whole marvellous dish comes together in under 30 minutes. That is, if you don’t nearly light your house on fire like I did, but at least we got to test the smoke alarm. J is a firefighter so while I frantically wave the door open and closed trying to do…something, he actually deals with the situation and I love him for it. My track record for starting fires is, ahem, not favourable. But J got over my negligence as soon as he took one bite into this melt in your mouth nom nom salmon.
It’s the time of year where the Kokanee salmon spawn, what a beautiful sight of red fish flowing in the river. A feast for the grizzlies and black bears of the region, not to mention the eagles and osprey. There are a few places around us to go and marvel at the fishies. This time of year is always challenging in that summer is over, you can feel the haze of endless sun dissipate. The shift occurs so rapidly you barely notice it until the tip of your nose is red and frozen and your little babies feet now need to be covered with a pair of woolies. And here we are, my favourite time of year, pumpkins, colours everywhere, calm acceptance that the sun still shines and the world is turning. You can expect more soups and roasted delights, comfort foods and pumpkin spice being churned out, especially once we get all settled in to our new nest.
Bourbon Glazed “Candied” Salmon goes great in a salad, I made a dressing with a Tbs. of the glaze, olive oil, apple cider vinegar and a touch of dijon mustard which was tantalizing. This recipe was inspired by the one at How Sweet Eats with a few little tweaks and a whole lot of extra smoke.
Oh you are going to love these morsels of ooey gooey comfort! They are so akin to my favourite childhood chocolate chip cookies that it sort of scares me. Because they’re not, these cookies are blow your mind grain free goodness, no weird hydrogenated oils or any of that nonsense. Simple to put together but very difficult waiting for them to cool. I shed a tear for my pops who’s doing a ketogenic/atkins diet and couldn’t indulge, his strength in resisting these babies is inspiring.
The original recipe is from Slim Palates Josh Weissman, he adds a touch of flaked sea salt to each cookie to really amp it up. The original recipe calls for raw almond butter, he says it adds to the caramelized effect. All I had was roasted almond butter so I used that and it turned out just lovely. Its up to you- either way these cookies are a hit and will find a permanent home in my cookie collection.
4 ounces dark chocolate coarsely chopped (I recommend 70-85% the actual cookie is fairly sweet so a darker chocolate contrasts best) or chocolate chips
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350F and line 2 baking sheets with parchment.
Combine coconut or cane sugar with the almond butter until smooth, add baking soda,vanilla and salt.
In a separate bowl combine the egg and egg yolk, add to the almond butter mixture and combine until well incorporated.
Mix in the chocolate chunks.
Drop about 1-11/2 Tbs of the dough onto baking sheets, make sure to leave adequate space between cookies as they spread out quite a bit. 6 cookies per sheet works well, or you can do it in batches.
Bake for 10-12 minutes and allow to cool for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.
3.2.1311
The past 2 weeks have been a veritable whirlwind whipping by. Seriously hard to believe it is September and the leaves are commencing their shift into auburn shades. I missed you all, the writing, the sharing, all that good stuff. Along with our transition into a new community, we’ve elevated our internet prowess to the high speed variety. Now I can actually have more than one window open at a time, hip pity hip hooray! Integration is slow and steady, smiling faces welcome us and the mountains here give you even more of a feeling of sitting in the palms of mother nature herself. Living in a small town seems to be more impact prone than a rustic woodland cabin but I am already seeing the opposite is the case. No more driving 20 minutes for a dollop of cream, now we can just go for a stroll. With a manageable amount of garden to tend, and a plethora of local producers around, I feel we’ve found a lifestyle that we can sustain. The blessings showered by my parents to help us make a little home were monumental and so appreciated. Thanks to my crafty dad we now have a hefty island to roll around to places with the best light for photographing all the gorgeous food we procure. I promise next summer we’ll have our sh!t together and you can actually have fun and go for some hikes and adventures!
This Almond sauce I make always makes everyone happy. It’s multi-purpose, I make a really similar sauce for my pad thai, but you could use this sauce for satay dipping sauce for skewers, salad dressing, stir-fry sauce, roasted sweet potato…My parents are visiting, so I toned down the hot chili spice and focused on creating a flavourful umami dish even the pickiest of eaters will love. I’m betting even kids would gobble down this sweet & sour almond chicken. Roasted sweet potatoes are the perfect side, they soak up all that luxurious sauce just perfectly.
As the move continues I realize how much stuff we have amassed in the past year, and just how much of it is unnecessary. It’s nice to have a well stocked kitchen, and I’m a sucker for cool gadgets and pretty things but I’m realizing I could fare pretty well with just my cast iron skillet and the vita-mix. Those are the two things I would bring to my desert island if it had electricity. And a stand up paddle board, those are rad, I really want one wide enough that you can do yoga on the water.
This meal is a cinch to whip up, it’s paleo friendly, but you’d never know.
½ tsp sambal chili sauce of ½ of a bird chili, seeds removed
1½ tsp lime juice
1 Tbs tamarind concentrate
2 Tbs honey or coconut sugar
1 tsp fish sauce
1 Tbs coconut aminos or tamari
1 tsp rice wine vinegar
1 Tbs tapioca starch (optional)
Instructions
Preheat oven to 400F
In a blender or food processor add almonds,coconut milk,garlic,chili,lime juice, tamarind,honey, fish sauce, coconut amino or tamari and rice wine vinegar and blend until smooth.
For a thicker more gravy like sauce, mix 1 Tbs tapioca starch with 1 Tbs cold water to form a paste and add this to your sauce.
Heat a skillet on high and add coconut oil, place chicken skin side down and lightly salt. Allow skin to get nice and crispy, about 3 minutes per side.
Yes I just made that word up, Manguac, it’s great right, hilarious, it’ll be the next hummus I swear you’ll love it that much. Because what grows together, goes together, not that mangoes or avocados grow in my backyard,though maybe someday. So here goes, you’ve had mango salsa, now welcome mango guacamole, a new hero sidekick to top your grilled summer goodies. Manguac is splendid with grilled fish, BBQ chicken, pork chops, on a burger or veggie burger. I also just eat it with some fresh local greens as a salad, pack it to the beach and you are set!
An amazingly seasonal addition to this dish would be fresh local corn, honestly the corn right now is bonkers. Every summer I get that max. 1 month of the freshest, tastiest corn on the cob, I add it to everything. The best way in my opinion is grilled corn covered in butter or ghee. Yum. But grilled and added to this manguac is divine and makes it all the more delicious.
If you haven’t seen this video on how to easily peel a mango, check it out, the method of scraping the mango against a glass actually makes perfect sense.
Rrratatouille, it’s worth making, not only is it a palatable way to enjoy a smorgasbord of summer vegetable abundance, just the word ratatouille is fun to say. I love to enjoy ratatouille in a number of ways, traditionally it is a slowly stewed dish with herbes de provence, but I also love roasting it and layering the veggies all pretty like. The addition of pesto is magnifique, and unless I can find a fresh bouquet of herbs de provence I will use pesto to add the pizazz required for a special french dish such as this. You could also try adding brazil nut pesto instead of sunflower for an extra selenium boost. Now the possibilities for enjoying ratatouille are many. I love it as a simple elegant side dish with a roast chicken, or with poached eggs on top, ratatouille is also really nice with a soft cheese like chèvre and drizzled with balsamic reduction.
Heirloom tomato season is my absolute favourite, just look at those glistening sweethearts. The mad harvest is on, you can feel the end days of summer in the air. The time is now to enjoy the bounty and nourishment that summer gives us, replenish your stocks for that time that we’ll just pretend doesn’t even exist…
What I’ll miss most about summertime…
-the livin’s easy
-my baby can’t even crawl yet and I’m certain that won’t last into the Fall
-jumping in the cool but not too cool river everyday
-the abundance of local food and wild food everywhere
1/2 of a medium sized zucchini, cut into thin slices
4 medium sized tomatoes, cut into thin slices
1/2 of an onion, cut into thin slices
1 sweet pepper, cut into thin slices
Instructions
Pesto
Add basil, sunflower seeds, garlic,parmesan, olive oil and salt to a blender or food processor and process until smooth.
Ratatouille
Set oven to 375F
In a skillet or baking dish assemble layers of eggplant, zucchini, tomato,onion and peppers, working your way out to the edge of the vessel.
Sprinkle with salt and fresh cracked pepper and drizzle 1/2 C of your pesto over top. The seeds will get nice and toasty in the oven and the garlic basil flavour will penetrate all your lovely layers. Bake for 20-25 minutes
Hey I'm Chantelle, my alter ego would be a mermaid if I wasn't such a terrible swimmer. I love writing authentically and cooking in my pyjamas. My favourite pastimes include eating avocados, travelling the world and hanging out with a toddler.
The best gooey paleo chocolate chip cookies 
