Chocolate Coffee Banana Donuts

Delicious and surprisingly Paleo. They taste like banana bread.

Ingredients

  • 3 bananas
  • 5 dates, pitted
  • 3 eggs
  • ¼ cup coconut flour
  • ? cup honey
  • 2 tbsp coconut oil, melted
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • ¼ teaspoon baking soda
  • ¼ teaspoon baking powder
  • pinch of salt
  • ½ cup dark chocolate chips, melted
  • 1 teaspoons ground coffee
  • coarse sea salt (to top donuts-optional)

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
  2. Place bananas, honey, and dates in a food processor and blend until smooth.
  3. Then add the eggs, coconut flour, oil, vanilla, cinnamon, baking soda and powder, and salt to your food processor and puree until completely combined.
  4. Grease your donut pan and pour ingredients into pan. My ingredients made 6 perfect donuts.
  5. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until completely cooked through (poke a toothpick through one to make sure it comes out clean.
  6. Let cool.
  7. Once donuts are cool, melt your chocolate in a shallow bowl and mix in your ground coffee.
  8. Now dip the top of your donut directly into the melted chocolate, then top with a bit of coarse sea salt.

PaleOMG – Chocolate Coffee Banana Donuts

Cranberry Orange Scones

Ingredients:

  • 2 Cups Almond Flour
  • 1/2 Cup Dried Cranberries
  • 1/4 Cup Unsweetened Shredded Coconut
  • 2 Tbsp Raw Organic Honey
  • 1 Tsp Baking Soda
  • Pinch of Sea Salt
  • 1 Egg
  • Zest of 1 Orange or to your taste liking

Process:

  • Preheat oven to 375 Degrees F In a large mixing bowl, combine your almond flour, sea salt, baking soda, cranberries, and shredded coconut
  • In a smaller mixing bowl, mix the egg and the honey until well blended
  • Add your wet ingredients to the dry and mix well
  • Knead the dough with your hands if necessary to ensure an even distrobution of ingredients
  • Add in the orange zest and continue to knead to mix well Form dough into two circles approximately 1/2 inch thick to look like mini pizzas, they should be about 6 inches across Or you can make fun designs like I did, get creative and share Cut each circle like a pizza into 6 or 8 slices depending on the size you want the scones
  • Transfer to a parchment lined baking sheet
  • Bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown and cooked through
  • Transfer to a cooling rack and Enjoy

From Civilized Caveman Cooking

Paleo: week 1

It has been one week since Esther and I embarked upon our dietary self-experiment. The contents of our refrigerator certainly are different now, more meat than I have ever remembered. I have eaten fish, pork, beef, chicken and shellfish, and I was reminded how tasty bacon is. My co-workers have asked about my digestive health, and I can report that there have not been any changes, everything is working normally. Esther and I have both found that we have more constant energy throughout the day, no more two o’clock slump like I had habitualized. We both agree that there is also a clarity that has been visited upon us. I don’t want to over emphasize what could be normal changes with the season or a good night sleep, but the energy and clarity changes have been significant enough to note. It has been very hard a handful of times to resist the temptation of gluten-filled, sugar-coated delights, and while I can guarantee that I will have a gluten at some point in the future, the only thing that has suffered since giving it up is my inner child. One week down, three to go.

Where’s the beef?

When I converted to Buddhism, I became a vegetarian. My perfunctory understanding of Buddhism led me to this. If the first precept of Buddhism is “Abstain from harming life”, it was reasonable to see vegetarianism as an appropriate lifestyle change to accompany my religious change. So I have not eaten meet (Outside of the Grandmother Clause incidents) for about 3 and half years, which means the family has not eaten meat with any regularity in that time.

But starting today things are changing.

1.

Hazel has become friends with a neighborhood child. She goes over to their house to play and on Monday of last week, she came home with an electric blue raspberry lips and tongue. Not unusual for a child, but she hadn’t eaten her dinner, oh well. That evening after we put her to bed, had our normal evening routine which includes telling Hazel to get back in her bed, we realized when we went to bed, several hours later, she was still awake. The next day, we found out that she had not had just one electric blue raspberry candy, but several candies. She says five, but that has become her default number to be thrown out to any question in which a numeric response would be appropriate, so our guess is that the actual count is much higher. Not unexpected for a two year old, but clearly the sugar had an effect on her system. Saturday, I took Hazel to the movies, we enjoyed watching RIO, but I made the mistake of getting some Skittles, which she wanted and called me out several times during the movie when I was trying to sneak them.

That night, she was wired, again.

The next day, Easter Sunday, I knew she was going to have a lot of candy, but I underestimated how much she was going to eat. When it came time to go to bed, we had to fight to keep her in bed, she was asking for more candy, like a two year old should. She kept getting up and coming out of her room, even when we warned her that if she got up again, we would have to take drastic measures, particularly in regards to her Easter candy. Needless to say, she was up out of her room less than 2 minutes later. Last chance had been had. Time to pay the piper. I marched her downstairs, we got the bag full of candy out of the fridge, I gave it to her and told her to put it in the garbage. She did (I retrieved the candy (in the bag) and took it to work).

It was the hardest thing I have ever done as a parent. She cried. A lot. She sobbed. She wanted her mother, not me, understandable.

I felt like an ogre.

After Esther and I talked her down, we eventually went up stairs, put her back in bed, gave her a kiss and then listened on the monitor as she retold the dark room about what I had done. Talk about feeling like you’re being punched in the gut. Monday, we have a friend over for dinner followed by desert of chocolate cake and reduced cherries. Fantastic. And not two minutes after the sweet, sweet cherry hit Hazels lips, she was tearing around the house like a sugar-hopped up maniac.

Clearly, Hazel reacts quickly to sugars, and clearly they last for a long time. Something needs to change. I don’t want her to be rapid cycling between sugar highs and hypoglycemic crash. I want her to be a little more even. I know she is going to have more energy that I do, she is two, but the range in her energy needs to be leveled out.

2.

I have been listening to Dan Benjamin’s shows from the beginning. I knew he was Buddhist, he published a great primer on meditation. I figured he was vegetarian because he seems to be pretty serious about his meditation practice. So when he starts talking about being on the Paleo diet, I was confused. So confused I sent off an email to him. (Wording be remembered, not actual transcript)

Hey Dan,

Very interested in your being Paleo and Buddhist. How does that work? Doesn’t the first precept say “Do not kill?”. Just curious. Love your shows.

Jered

I didn’t get an email back, but a few months later, he how he integrates being Buddhist and eating Paleo. I wasn’t convinced, but it did get me thinking and reading. The most succinct explanation of eating meat and being Buddhist I read on Urban Dharma.

What is boils down to is:

Towards the end of the Buddha’s life, his cousin Devadatta attempted to usurp the leadership of the Order of monks. In order to win support from other monks, Devadatta tried to be more strict than the Buddha and show Him up as indulgent. Devadatta proposed to the Buddha that all the monks should henceforth be vegetarians. The Buddha refused and repeated once again the regulation that he had established years before, that monks and nuns may eat fish or meat as long as it is not from an animal whose meat is specifically forbidden, and as long as they had no reason to believe that the animal was slaughtered specifically for them.

3.

I will gladly admit that I was naive in my initial interpretation of the first precept. In my transition to Buddhism, I needed something to focus on, some way to remind myself of what I was believing and why. I am now much more wise with regards to my religion and have done much more to have a deeper understanding of what my belief system means. And. Something has to change with my daughter’s diet. Being a vegetarian leads pretty easily to being a starchitarian.

Function: noun

Definition: a person who only eats starchy foods (like bread or french fries)

Word History: starch and -tarian (from vegetarian)

Example Sentence: The starchitarian loved potatoes.

And that diet is not good, plus it has a lot of sugar which I want to reduce in Hazel. So. Esther and I have gone Paleo. I am eating meat again. For 30 days. If I don’t feel significantly better or Hazel’s energy level hasn’t evened out, we will go back to eating a primarily vegetable based diet. I am going to blog about what I eat and how I feel.

More to come.