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February 13, 2023

Homemade Paleo Ranch Dressing and Dip

I didn’t grow up eating ranch dressing. Actually, I didn’t grow up eating salad. We did eat fruit (and we probably ate salad too and I just don’t remember). That was Ohio. Here in the south, ranch dressing seems to go with everything! So when …

February 6, 2023

Teriyaki Chicken Wings – For Super Bowl or Any Day!

*This recipe is a blast from the past – 2016 to be exact. That little wing taster pictured below can now legally drive a car. Yes, this breaks my heart a little. She is the number one fan of these wings now and begs for …

January 30, 2023

Italian Meatballs (Gluten free, Dairy free option)

Who doesn’t love a meatball? On top of spaghetti (sing along with me now…), in a crusty hoagie roll (yes, there are gluten free ones in the grocery store now), on the ends of little toothpicks with a yummy sauce at your party. Meatballs are awesome. Yes, you can sometimes find gluten free meatballs in the frozen section section of your grocery store, but they’re tough and not nearly as good as this. Trust me.

Make up a big batch and freeze them for quicker meals down the road.

Italian Meatballs

A simple dish with lots of flavor and lots of possibilities

Print Recipe

Course Appetizer, Main Course, Snack

Cuisine American, Comfort Food, Italian

Ingredients

1 cup almond flour
1/2 cup milk (almond or coconut work well)
2 large eggs
2 Tbsp. Italian seasoning
1 tsp. salt or to taste
1/2 tsp. black pepper
1/2 cup parmesan cheese optional, omit for dairy free
1 lb. grass fed ground beef
1 lb. breakfast sausage
2 Tbsp. olive oil
8 oz. cremini mushrooms
1/2 large onion
2 cloves garlic

Instructions

To a large mixing bowl, add almond flour, milk, eggs, Italian seasoning, salt, pepper and Parmesan, if using. Mix well. Set aside.
Add olive oil to a heavy skillet and heat over medium to medium high.
Chop mushrooms, onions and garlic finely. I like to use my mini food processor* for this.
Add vegetables to skillet and cook, stirring regularly, until much of the moisture has cooked out of them. Once cooked, remove to a bowl and set aside to cool slightly. I usually just pop mine in the freezer for a few minutes.
Add the meat to the mixing bowl and gently break up and mix in with the wet ingredients. Once the vegetables have cooled slightly, mix those in as well.
Reheat that skillet you used earlier, add a touch of oil and cook a small amount of your meatball mixture so you can taste for seasoning. Adjust as needed. You can add more salt or pepper, if you feel it needs more onion or garlic, easily add in garlic or onion powder.
Form mixture into balls whatever size you like. Sometimes we eat these as appetizers for Super Bowl parties and so I make very small meatballs. Sometimes I use them for meatball subs so I make medium sized meatballs. Sometimes I want spaghetti and meatballs and make them a little larger. It's really entirely up to you! I always use **these scoops so my meatballs are all the same size. Scoop out the meat onto a tray or just your counter. Then wet your hands with cold water and roll them into a neat ball shape. The cold water keeps them from sticking to your hands.
Preheat your oven to 425. Line a large, rimmed baking sheet with parchment or foil (this just makes clean-up easier). Spray with avocodo or olive oil spray a cooling rack that fits inside your baking sheet. Be sure to spray that top and bottom of the rack.
Space out your meatballs on this rack and bake until done. For medium sized meatballs, think the size of a golf ball, mine took 18 minutes to cook through.
Alternatively, you can fry these in a skillet in some olive oil and they will taste amazing, but I have found that baking my meatballs helps them to stick together better. They tend to fall apart with all the flipping around in a skillet. Baking is also very hands off, which I appreciate.
Serve with your favorite pasta sauce, over zucchinin noodles or however you like!
These freeze beautifully! I froze mine uncooked for three months, thawed overnight in the refrigerator and they cooked up just the same as fresh.

Notes

I’ve had several of these through the years. They’re a definite workhorse in my kitchen and I highly recommend.

**Scoops for cookies, meatballs, muffins, just about everything!

Keyword Dairy Free, Gluten Free, keto, Paleo

January 16, 2023

Sweet and Spicy Pecan-Encrusted Chicken Tenders

So many years ago, 22 to be exact, my husband took me to Florida and proposed. He also took me to eat at one of the restaurants owned and operated by Emeril Lagasse. That restaurant is long gone, but the memory of that meal lives …

January 9, 2023

Happy New Year! (and 10 tips for a paleo new year)

Welcome to 2023! And welcome to Total Wellness Health Coaching. I’m glad you’re here! Perhaps you’re reading this because you’ve been researching Functional Medicine, various healthy diets, or natural remedies for autoimmune disease. These are all topics you’ll find covered here on this site. In case …

December 26, 2022

Trouble-Shooting: Relationships

When you are living a functional medicine lifestyle, you are probably very tuned into your food choices, your exercise routine, how you manage stress and you make a concerted effort to prioritize your sleep. Sometimes, there’s another piece to the puzzle – one that actually can interact with each of these other areas – relationships.

Is your life filled with healthy, supportive relationships or are you burdened by relationships that drain you and add stress?

Did you know that relationships have the power to improve or harm your health? It’s true! Here are just a few relationship – health connections:

Strong social connections have been shown to lower rates of anxiety and depression.
healthy relationships can help to strengthen your immune system, help you recover from disease, and may even lengthen your life
Loneliness can lead to disrupted sleep patterns, elevated blood pressure and increased cortisol (one of the stress hormones). Loneliness is also a risk factor for antisocial behavior and suicide.

This post is meant as a check-in of sorts on this often overlooked pillar of functional medicine. We have already tackled sleep and stress management. Now, we’ll tackle relationships. We’ll get to diet and exercise last because those are more often covered by everyone else. I wanted to hit on the topics that are often over-looked.

Working to surround yourself with people who support you physically and emotionally is a key component of self-care.

Remember that self-care is a mindset – looking after yourself the way you would look after a loved one. This definition of self-care is especially pertinent when we look at relationships. An important part of self-care is making time to connect with those you love, those who encourage you and make you feel good about yourself.

On the flip side, maybe for you, self-care involves time away from certain relationships.

So how do you go about improving relationships in a way that supports your health goals? In light of the holidays in particular, I am hoping that these suggestions will be helpful.

Set healthy boundaries – most of us have a family member who leaves us feeling less than or brings out the worst in us. We generally don’t have free rein to abstain from these relationships 100%, but you can work to limit your exposure or get another family member on your side who can run interference for you. At the end of the day, you have to protect the relationships that matter most and if that nosy aunt or pushy father-in-law is threatening to wreak havoc on your relationship with another member of the family, it’s time to set up some boundaries.

Heal old wounds – are you carrying a grudge or feeling guilty about the way you have behaved in a relationship? Remember that you can’t dictate how someone else will behave or receive your words, but finding a way to reach out and apologize if necessary in a way that is healing to you can help you release old hurts and maybe even rekindle a special friendship.

Learn to communicate your feelings effectively – telling the other person in the relationship how you feel can be scary, but also very liberating and almost always better than keeping it bottled up inside. Do you need time together? Time apart? Feel like you’re always the one who calls? If the person really loves you and values your relationship, they want it to work as well and have a vested interest in meeting you where you are. Be gentle and humble, but honest, directly explaining your needs.

A few quick Relationship self-care ideas:

To nurture your relationship with your spouse, try to greet them when they arrive at home the way your dog would greet you – that is with unbridled enthusiasm and joy.
Plan a friend date
Pick up the phone and call
Send a card in the mail – just because you’re thinking of them
Offer compliments – be sincere, but still free with the encouraging words
Be sincere and vulnerable. When one person opens up and shares something personal or hard, it encourages others to do the same and often, deep friendships are the result

As always, I’m here to help! If you feel like maybe an unhealthy relationship is holding you back from the level of health you desire, it might be time for more one-on-one work with me, as your health coach. See the package options I offer here.

December 19, 2022

Creamy Almond Butter Fudge

My mom used to make peanut butter fudge and I always preferred that to the chocolate variety. I hope we can still be friends! As you know, the paleo diet excludes legumes, which includes peanuts. I happen to love all things peanut. I also happen …

December 12, 2022

New and Improved Raspberry Almond Bars

Many years ago, I was in a meal exchange group. This was an amazing gift for a mom of little, little kids. There were eight of us and we would each make eight recipes of our chosen dish for the month and then pass them …

December 5, 2022

Gluten Free Green Bean Casserole

Ah, the holiday staple, green bean casserole. I admit that I was never a huge fan of this dish. What I did love were those crispy onions that I could eat by the can full if allowed! But because those onions and that gloopy soup from a can don’t fit with my gluten free and mostly paleo diet, it’s been quite a number of years since I’ve enjoyed this dish.

Last year, I discovered Mom’s Place Gluten Free (not sponsored) and ordered a bunch of different items to try. There are all sorts of breads and bread-like items and most of those are just ok, in my opinion. But what I really do love are their soup mixes. They make cream of mushroom (used here), cream of celery, cream of chicken and onion soup mix. These mixes are not paleo because they do contain some grain flours and many also contain milk powder, but they are certified gluten free and add so much flavor to many dishes. With these little packets of seasoning in my cupboard, I often add a teaspoon or two to recipes that I think just need a little something extra.

The mushroom soup does come in a dairy free version if you prefer that. And if you don’t have time to place an order, but you do have a Trader Joe’s nearby, they offer a Umami Seasoning Blend that would make a good substitute. Perhaps there are other versions of that seasoning blend at your grocery story, but I don’t know of any. If you do, please leave a comment and let us know!

If you’ve been missing green bean casserole since changing your diet, I hope this recipe will bring back great memories and satisfy that craving!

Green Bean Casserole

So much better than the version with the gloopy soup from a can!

Print Recipe

Course Side Dish, vegetable

Cuisine American, Comfort Food, Holiday

Ingredients

2 lbs. green beans cleaned and trimmed
2 Tbsp. olive oil or butter
8 oz. cremini mushrooms sliced
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1/4 tsp. black pepepr
1 lb. bacon cooked and crumbled
3 Tbsp. reserved bacon fat
6 Tbsp. Mom's Place Gluten Free Cream of Mushroom Soup Mix see note
2 cups almond milk or other dairy free milk of your choice
1 cup chicken broth

Topping

1 Tbsp. olive oil or butter
2 medium shallots

Instructions

Bring a large pot of water to boil, add your green beans and cook about 10 minutes, or until bright green. Remove from the boiling water and plunge beans into a bowl of ice water. Once cool, drain and set aside.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Heat the 2 Tbsp. of oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add sliced mushrooms, salt and pepper and cook until the mushrooms are soft and have given up much of their liquid.
While the beans and mushrooms are cooking, cook the bacon until crisp. Drain and crumble it and set aside. Reserve the drippings for making the sauce.
Once the mushrooms are soft, remove them from the skillet, add to the bowl with the drained green beans.
To the skillet, add the bacon grease and melt. Add the soup seasoning and whisk. This will make a thick roux. Once that mixture bubbles, slowly begin adding the milk and broth, whisking constantly. Reduce heat to low and simmer for a couple minutes.
Mix the sauce in with the mushrooms and green beans. Pour into a greased 9×13 baking dish.
Bake casserole for 45 minutes. While the casserole is baking, prepare the shallot topping by heating the remaining tablespoon of oil in a skillet over medium heat. Thinly slice the shallots and cook, stirring constantly, until shallots are crisp, but not burned. Remove from the heat and set aside. Combine with the crumbled bacon.
After 45 minutes of baking, remove the casserole from the oven, top with shallots and bacon and return to oven for 15 more minutes or until ready to serve.
This casserole can be baked at slightly different temperatures and for a little more or less time. It's very flexible so works well with a big holiday feast!

Notes

I use this powdered soup mix in this recipe:

https://momsplaceglutenfree.com/products/gluten-free-cream-of-mushroom-soup-mix?_pos=1&_sid=c1b744498&_ss=r

Mom’s Place also has a dairy free version:

https://momsplaceglutenfree.com/products/gluten-free-dairy-free-cream-of-mushroom-soup?_pos=2&_sid=c1b744498&_ss=r

The flavor in these mixes is outstanding and way better than the canned cream of mushroom soups I’ve tried. If you don’t have time to order these mixes, but have a Trader Joe’s nearby, they have a Umami Seasoning Blend that is a good substitute.

Keyword Dairy Free, Gluten Free

November 28, 2022

Jalapeño Popper Pork Loin

This dish is decadent and rich and oh, so yummy! I make this for a regular, old Wednesday night, but it would be perfect for a special occasion meal or a family, holiday get-together. The red bacon and green jalapeños do have a certain Christmasy-ness …