Real Food Lunchbox: Cinnamon Apples & Leftover Roast

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Anissa Quinn
5 years ago
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1 Real Food Lunchbox: Cinnamon Apples & Leftover Roast Chef Dom Planetbox Lunchbox. Chef Dom s real food lunchbox today just a mix of leftovers from dinner last night and trying something new with the apples coating them in cinnamon great little trick as tastes yum and hides any slight browning that might be going on with the apples by morning. This is a great tip I picked up from Belinda at The Root Cause: Cinnamon apple chunks Kumara (sweet potato) chips Leftover lamb roast Chia pudding with blueberries Sicilian olives. The Planetbox lunchbox is not sold as leak proof. But I ve found no problem using

thicker liquids like chia pudding. Of course at Dom s age he s not swinging the bag around over vigorously. But I ve given it a fair shake as a test and it stands up to it.

2 thicker liquids like chia pudding. Of course at Dom s age he s not swinging the bag around over vigorously. But I ve given it a fair shake as a test and it stands up to it. Coconutty Paleo Porridge (With Hidden Cauliflower) Paleo Porridge (with Cauliﬂower!) This is something you might not have tried before for breakfast. We like it hot or cold (cooked and then cooled). It s a substitute porridge but made with a cauliﬂower base! Sounds weird right? Chef Dom and I ﬁnd it super-delicious. But give it a go and let us know what you think!

3 Note that there are of course loads of diﬀerent ways of mixing and matching diﬀerent ratios of these ingredients. Keep them all white to mimic normal porridge or mix up with fun coloured nut butters. You can put in more or less cauliﬂower to taste. We use 1 cup or more. Just be sure your banana is ripe if you want to mask the cauliﬂower taste! Bananas are great at covering the taste of veggies and adding texture to these porridge type dishes. Dried apples are also good for this. Just use them in moderation as they are fairly high in sugar. Also we often add in an egg or two to up the protein content using real food. Use egg whites only to keep it looking porridge like or just chuck in whole eggs. This is really quick and easy if you have blended up/grated the cauliﬂower in advance. I ﬁnd much easier to blend up a whole cauliﬂower at start of week and pop in fridge airtight container then easy to use as ﬁller in porridge or as rice with stir fry or as mash potato. Cauliﬂower is such a versatile vege!! You could also make it the night before and keep in fridge eat cold or just heat up the next day. If this one is too cauliﬂowery for you then you might prefer our Mint Chocolate Paleo Porridge (also using cauliﬂower as a base). Quick & Easy Paleo Porridge (With Hidden Veggie) Print Prep time 5 mins Cook time 5 mins

4 Total time 10 mins Totally yum whole food breakfast recipe try it and see if the kids even notice there s a veggie hidden in here! Author: Dom s Kitchen Recipe type: Breakfast Type of food: Paleo Serves: 2-4 What you need: 1 cup cauliﬂower, grated ¼ cup of coconut, dessicated ¼ cup coconut, ﬂakes (or more desiccated) ¼ cup LSA (ground linseed, sunﬂower seeds, almond seeds or variation of similar crushed seeds/nuts) 2 ripe medium size banana 1 cup milk (we use coconut milk or coconut cream) 1 cup water Optional ingredients are: extra milk or cream (to add to mix or to serve with) coconut butter, chopped nuts, dried apple, coconut ﬂakes or cashew nuts. What to do 1. Add all ingredients to blender and blend on high for 2 minutes or until pureed.(you can skip this step if you are ok with it being crunchy). 2. Transfer to saucepan on stove top and bring to simmer and then cook for couple of minutes. 3. Stir through some chopped coconut ﬂakes, dried apple and coconut butter. 4. Serve with milk/cream and whatever else you like on top! 5. So yummy and delicious. 6. You can cook in microwave too of course if you like just leave room at top of bowl for porridge to expand in cooking!

5 Soft Boiled Eggs What are your favourite breakfasts? We eat eggs for breakfast nearly every day as they re so quick and easy. One of our favourites is soft boiled eggs with bacon and brussel sprouts and then something to dip with either kumara fries, asparagus spears or like here homemade grain-free bread. I barely got a chance to take these pics as Dom was very keen to get going with eating this meal! He s been very interested in chickens lately since I ve been talking to him about them: where they live, what they eat and why we buy free range eggs whenever possible (or preferably get eggs from a friendly neighbour).in fact Dom s actually decided we should get chickens (and a few other animals) of our own which of course is a brilliant idea but unfortunately not very practical in our current set up! Check out the text message I received from Dom s pre-school teacher a couple of weeks ago on this subject smile emoticon.

Dominic with his egg for breakfast and paleo toast. I noticed from the comments on our original breakfast post that a lot of you can t eat eggs or are not wanting to eat them all the time.

6 Dominic with his egg for breakfast and paleo toast. I noticed from the comments on our original breakfast post that a lot of you can t eat eggs or are not wanting to eat them all the time. If you can t eat them then that is sad and does make a real food breakfast a little more tricky frown emoticon. But hopefully you ll be inspired to look at some new options from some of the other ideas we ll be posting. If you can eat eggs then it really is the easiest way to have a real REAL food breakfast and there s no issue in eating them every day.

7 Making school lunches Love it or hate it? Planet Box Lunchbox with Sausage and Baked Cauliﬂower One of Chef Dom s lunches from a week ago: Roasted Cauliﬂower Grapes & Feijoas Sausages & Lettuce (Free range organic beef meat) Tomatoes Home-made Mayo Chocolate Bliss Ball Wondering who else has been enjoying not having to make school lunch

8 boxes this holidays? I kind of have a love-hate relationship with them. On the one hand I ve worked out what works and what doesn t (for the moment at least) and, because we ve been eating 95% real food without packages for over a year, the actual putting together of a real food lunch box is not taking so much time. I ve deﬁnitely found that having a lunchbox with little spaces to put in food directly (a bento box concept) makes it much easier to get the portions right and then I can see easily what s been eaten and what hasn t. Also on the positive, I get a lot of satisfaction out of putting it together and having it come back (mostly) eaten. On the other hand even with an ice pack (and the stainless steel box chilled in the fridge overnight) it s never the same as if you just got it out of the fridge and I still often run low on food that I know for absolute certain will work. Although we do turn to trusty favourites often (meatballs, chicken drumsticks, kumara fries, kale crisps, fruit, tomatoes and olives) there are always some new things. I suppose that s because we re often trying new foods for dinner times for fun and so (because most of Dom s lunch box is leftovers) there are often newish things in his lunchbox. All of this has the net result that I still seem to need to turn on my lunch-box brain in a way it doesn t always want to be turned on. What about you? Are you a lunchbox lover or hater (in so far as making them goes) or a bit of both? Super-Delicious Crunchy Grain-Free Granola

9 Crunchy Grain-Free Granola Here s one of our breakfast ideas. This one is very much a case of do it how you

10 like it as no hard and fast rules on what goes into it. This is something we use more as a snack that a breakfast meal but if cereals are your thing and you are looking for a replacement for the traditional sugary option or for a sometimes meal or transition too then this is a great option. It s actually really not that hard and so satisfying to use bread or cereal that you have made yourself. We posted one of our favourite grainy grain-free breads last week and this is a granola recipe you could have a go at over the weekend. This recipe is more of a special one as it uses butter/oil and maple syrup and the ingredients are on the pricey side. You could go for something plainer by leaving of the oils/syrups out and/or doing a raw mix with some desiccated coconut and/or more coconut ﬂakes. Plus obviously you need to make this ahead of time so its all ready to go in the morning! Super-Delicious Crunchy Grain-Free Granola Print Prep time 15 mins Cook time 30 mins Total time 45 mins

11 There are endless variations to making granola. You can substitute the nuts/seeds to suit your preference. The one we have in the pictures here is the nut ﬂavour with added coconut ﬂakes and freeze dried berries. Author: Claire D Recipe type: Breakfast Type of food: Paleo Serves: 14 serves (1/2 cup) What you need: MIX 1: Make a crunchy mix with 4 cups of nuts and seeds (50:50 good) and 2 cups of coconut ﬂakes. For example: 1 cup almonds ½ cup macadamia nuts ¼ cup brazil nuts ¼ cup walnuts 1 cup pumpkin seeds 1 cup sunﬂower seeds 2 cups coconut ﬂakes MIX 2: Make a wet mix: For a cinnamon ﬂavour use: ½ cup coconut oil (or melted butter but we prefer the oil taste) 3 Tbsp chia seeds 2 Tbsp maple syrup (or honey but we prefer syrup taste) 2 tsp natural vanilla extract 2 tsp ground cinnamon Optionally, for a nut ﬂavour add to above mix 2: ½ cup almond (or other) nut butter we use Ceres ABC Spread OR, for a chocolate ﬂavour add to above mix 2: 2-3 Tbsp of cocoa Extra: 1 cup coconut ﬂakes optional but recommended to add more lightness 1 cup freeze dried berries also optional

12 What to do 1. Preheat oven to 120 degrees celcius and line a large roasting or baking tray with baking paper. 2. Pulse together the nuts and seeds in a food processor (not too much just so they are all chopped roughly). Or you can chop them of course by hand. 3. Mix your choice of sticky mixture in a large bowl. (If using a nut butter you may wish to heat the butter through before adding it to the mixture so that it s more spreadable.) 4. Pour the dry nut mix into the wet mix and then combine to be sure that you get all the nut mix well coated. 5. Spread the combined mixture over the baking paper so its spread as thinly as possible. (Minimise the ﬁnger licking!) 6. Bake for approximately 20 minutes or until turns a golden-brown colour. (You need to keep an eye on it and possibly stir it half way through especially if you have put in the coconut ﬂakes.) 7. Remove from oven and wait for mixture to cool. For the nutty mix you ll probably need to break (if you ve not been stirring) into the size clumps you like. 8. Add in the extra coconut ﬂakes and (if you like) the freeze dried berries. 9. Store in air tight jar to enjoy later topped with milk and/or full fat yoghurt as a meal or sprinkled on top of fruit or just as small stand alone snack. TIPS: All ovens vary and you don t want to burn these ingredients so check after 5 minutes and every 5 minutes thereafter in case you want to stir things around. It should be ﬁne unless you use desiccated coconut in which case deﬁnitely check often possibly every 3 minutes. We don t usually stir as prefer chunky texture but I do keep a close eye on it. If you prefer the mixture more free ﬂowing then deﬁnitely stir things up during cooking. You can easily make this recipe sweeter with additional maple syrup or other sweetener of choice or dried fruits. Try though to use the least amount of

sweetener you can to start with you can always add more sweetener when serving or the next time you make it. You could be surprised how little sweetness kids (and you!

13 sweetener you can to start with you can always add more sweetener when serving or the next time you make it. You could be surprised how little sweetness kids (and you!) can get used to even if something tastes more plain to you initially. Perfect Apple Cinnamon Paleo Porridge The weather where we are is deﬁnitely turning colder which led to us making some porridge this morning. But the great thing about this porridge is that it tastes great hot or cold so whatever the weather is where you are you can still give this a go. This porridge is grain-free and can be dairy free depending on milk you use. The key to making it painless is preparing the night before Apple Cinnamon Chia Porridge

14 Some tips on this recipe: 1. You can use a microwave instead of stove top and in that case just cook for aprox. 5 minutes but stirring every minute or so. Use a large bowl to avoid spillage. 2. If you are cooking the mixture then you can add 1-3 eggs to bump up the protein. If you care what colour is then use the egg whites and save the yolks to add to something else. You need to stir a bit to get the eggs spread throughout mixture. 3. If you don t want to use all the mix you can keep it in the fridge for up to 3 days (perhaps longer but that s as long as we ve done it using coconut milk). 4. A banana or just half a banana really helps to make the texture of the chia more oat-like as a porridge so we usually always add that as well as another ﬂavour. Hope you enjoy this as much as we do! 1.0 from 1 reviews Perfect Apple Cinnamon (Or Any Other Flavour You Like) Porridge. Print Prep time 10 mins Cook time 5 mins Total time 15 mins Serves 4-6 depending on serve size and what you add to the base. (Base mixture made up comes to aprox 4½ cups.) Author: Claire D Recipe type: Breakfast Type of food: Paleo

15 Serves: 4-6 serves What you need: 2½ cups coconut (or other) milk. (We use one standard can coconut CREAM plus and add 1 cup water but you could just use coconut milk or coconut cream for very thick porridge or another kind of milk.) Look out for the brands of coconut milk or cream that don t have additives in them such as Ayam. ¼ cup desiccated coconut ¼ cup chia seeds ¼ cup sultanas ½ cup ﬁnely chopped walnuts or almonds (best to buy like this or use processor to mill to ﬁnely chopped) 1 cup grated apple (or other fruit of preference e.g. feijoas or banana mashed/blended or any mix of these or you could do cinnamon chocolate using cocoa or maple cinnamon with maple syrup etc etc) 1 Tbsp lemon juice 1 tsp vanilla extract 1 tsp cinnamon Pinch salt Extra ¼ cup of water or milk for cooking with. Optional: Handful coconut threads/ﬂakes or other nuts or fruit to use as topping. What to do 1. Night before mix all the ingredients together and leave to soak overnight in jar (or jars) with lid(s) on best will mean less discoloration of any fruit you use for morning. (This is optional to save time in the morning.) 2. In the morning tip the soaked mixture into a saucepan. If the mixture is very thick you may like to make it go further by adding ¼ ½ cup of water (or milk for thicker porridge) but don t make it too watery. Bring to a simmer over medium heat stirring. Once simmering then you can cover and simmer for 3-5 minutes. (If you did not soak the mixture overnight you will need to simmer mixture for good 5-10 minutes to get the chia seeds to puﬀ up fully.) 3. If you prefer a smooth texture to your porridge and have the time then you

16 can put everything in the blender/food processor and give it a whizz. If you have soaked overnight you can do this before cooking. Otherwise you can do it after cooking before you serve BUT do not put sealed lid on blender/processor with hot ingredients you need to have air being able to escape. 4. Optionally top with coconut ﬂakes or threads or fruit or your favourite nuts. Chef Dom s Tips: 1. You can use a microwave instead of stove top and in that case just cook for aprox. 5 minutes but stirring every minute or so. Use a large bowl to avoid spillage. 2. If you are cooking the mixture then you can add 1-3 eggs to bump up the protein. 3. If you care what colour is then use the egg whites and save the yolks to add to something else. You need to stir a bit to get the eggs spread throughout mixture. 4. If you don t want to use all the mix you can keep it in the fridge for up to 3 days (perhaps longer but that s as long as we ve done it using coconut milk). 5. A banana or just half a banana really helps to make the texture of the chia more oat-like as a porridge so we usually always add that as well as another ﬂavour. Making Banana Nice Cream

17 Super delicious nice cream on hot summer day. This is so simple it s not really a recipe. Just take three ripe frozen bananas (prefrozen in cut pieces is easiest) and blend with one ripe avocado and 1-2

and match anything other than the bananas in the above mix. 2.

18 tablespoons of honey. Either eat immediately or place into a mould to freeze and then enjoy on a stick! TIPS: 1. Actually just putting a stick through a whole banana and chucking it in the freezer makes for a delicious banana ice-block just as is so obviously you can mix and match anything other than the bananas in the above mix. 2. For mixture as above you would want to chop and freeze ripe-ish bananas beforehand (preferably from overnight but 3 hours minimum). 3. When freezing place in single layer in container (or double layer with baking paper or cling ﬁlm) so that you can break the banana apart easily to put in the blender.

19 A little taste-tap as Dom calls it. Got a yummy REAL FOOD recipe you would like to share? Or think this recipe tasted no good? Or EVEN BETTER di you LOVE this recipe?! No matter what you thought, post your comments below! Carrot Cake Bliss Balls

20 Fun to make and fun to eat. With the holidays we ve had extra time to mess about in the kitchen and hence the

21 number of more time consuming meals and snacks we ve been posting here. And also because it s the holidays we probably have been making more treat type concoctions. But these balls do have a vegetable in them! And they re really easy to make once you ve assembled the ingredients just blend and roll and pop in freezer for couple of hours or overnight. You can really mix and match the ingredients to suit your taste. Use a base of 2 cups of carrots then add 1 1/2 cups or so of nuts (here we used almonds + cashews + walnuts) with 1/2 cup coconut (we used threads) and something sticky (we used 1 cup medjool dates + 2 tbsp coconut oil blended processor) with 1/2 tsp cinnamon + 1/2 tsp vanilla extract. You want the mixture sticky then roll in dissected coconut. Make sure you soak the dates prior in hot water for 10 minutes then drain before using. Super Quick Chia Puddings

22 Chia Puddings Ok so here s a super easy breakfast meal. But of course the trick is that you need

23 to prepare this the night before. And by prepare I just mean at least add the chia to your liquid or you can go ahead and mix all the ingredients together so its ready to serve in the morning. In a later post well go over chia porridge which you can make up in the morning. Chia seeds expand up to 17 times their original size. They re a rather trendy food at the moment and can be eaten either sprinkled on top of food or as thickening agent by soaking them in the liquid ingredients like here. We love coconut milk/water or coconut cream for added indulgent taste. For those of you curious as to where they sit in Paleo/Primal eating (as I was) check out Mark s Daily Apple website. He concludes they re Primal but not such a superfood as might be made out. Also from another source that I trust ( it s clear that you would want to avoid chia seeds on a strict auto-immune protocol diet or if dealing with any ongoing gut issues. Super Quick Chia Puddings Print Prep time 5 mins Cook time 10 mins Total time

24 15 mins Author: Dom s Kitchen Recipe type: Breakfast Type of food: Paleo Serves: 2 serves What you need: ¼ cup chia seeds ¼ cup desiccated coconut 1½ cups (or 1 can) coconut (or other) milk ¼ -1/2 cup water (depending on how thick you like it) ½ 1 cup of any ingredients you love to add from sweet to savoury our favourites are banana & cinnamon, blueberries or stewed or grated apple with cinnamon. What to do 1. Mix all the ingredients together. 2. Pour into individual bowls or jars. 3. Leave in fridge for at least 2 hours (we usually make night before). Chef Dom s Tips: We usually make up a larger batch of plain chia and keep in a container in the fridge and use up over the week (we usually have chia a couple of times a week). Then in the morning you can either cook the chia over stove and/or add in favourite ﬂavours and enjoy. You can add tablespoon of cocoa or one serve of protein powder for something diﬀerent.

25 Product Review: Farro Foodkits On the menu: Farro Fresh Pork Belly with Fennel & Apples one of the new delicious meals in Farro Foodkits. We were lucky enough to get sent one of these kits to try. Certainly makes meal prep super easy! Have you tried one of them?! Farro Fresh Pork Belly.

Paleo Porridge Mint Chocolate

Paleo Porridge Mint Chocolate Mint Chocolate Paleo Porridge with Banana Yes I know this probably sounds weird but believe me it tastes totally delicious! * I ve set this out as a recipe for paleo porridge