Paleo Schmaleo

L-R, top to bottom: hand shredded salted pork, Paleo brownies, 

porridge (look at that inviting egg yolk)

I'm beginning to realise that being a SAHM (and on no-pay leave at that!) is a privilege, and one I should be thankful for instead of constantly plotting my return to work before FBC's first birthday. Now that we've started solids, every evening at about 6pm when I seat him in his el cheapo bouncer and see him reaching out his hands in anticipation, flapping his arms up and down, eyes widening in excitement when I produce the bowl of puree and his small yellow spoon, I feel a small tug at my heart as I think of how I wouldn't be able to experience all this if I was working. (On that note, I wonder how long his enthusiasm towards sweet potatoes and broccoli will last.) 

Then again, even if I go back to work when he's say 8 months old, the excitement of feeding him solids would probably have worn thin. But there will be other more exciting things like crawling, no? 

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I had one large sweet potato left over from our first week of solids, and didn't quite feel like giving FBC sweet potato again this week (because I discovered that a puree of Packham pears mixed with brown rice cereal is REALLY delicious. Try it.). I'd also made oven baked sweet potato chili fries with limited success earlier this week - they stuck like crazy to the baking sheet, but tasted good nonetheless - and will write about them when sweet potatoes are back on the puree rotation again, if I succeed on my next attempt.

Jon's mum gave me a bottle of coconut oil last night and I also bought a box of organic coconut flour from Mustafa for S$3.50 the last time we went (the brand is Cecil, I think), so what could I do but search for a paleo baked good with sweet potatoes? The first few hits were for paleo brownies, so I made those. And for dinner, I made porridge. Recipes are as follows.

Sweet Potato Brownies (Paleo)

Adapted slightly from Eat Drink Paleo

Ingredients

• 2-3 loosely packed cups grated raw sweet potato (one large-ish sweet potato should do the trick, and you may even have extra, as I did, to steam and add to the broccoli puree you're going to feed one lucky baby)
• 2 eggs (I like this recipe because it doesn't use THAT many eggs, which I understand is uncommon when baking with coconut flour, i.e. such recipes call for upwards of 3 eggs or so)
• 1/2 cup coconut oil
• 2 tsp vanilla essence (I also bought mine from Mustafa, the brand is Heilala vanilla. It's a bit on the expensive side but the taste is phenomenal compared to Red Man)
• 3 tbsp raw honey (you can probably use any type of honey, but we had raw honey which I needed to use up; the original recipe called for a third of a cup of honey (5 tbsp + 1 tsp) but I don't really like the taste of honey in baked goods so I cut it down to 3 tbsp. My brownies weren't very sweet though, so use your discretion)
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder (I used Hershey's. SAHM, remember? How to use raw cacao powder?)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 1/2 tbsp coconut flour

Method

1. Preheat oven to 150C (my oven is fan-forced)
2. Combine sweet potato, eggs, coconut oil, vanilla and raw honey. Mix. 
3. Sift 1/2 cup cocoa powder, baking powder and baking soda into above mixture, and fold in.
4. Add coconut flour, and don't overmix. 
5. Bake (I used a 20cm x 20cm tin) for 25-30 minutes.

I thought these tasted pretty good. I was initially hesitant about making them after testing a small batch of cookies (3T coconut flour, 2T coconut oil and 1T raw honey) to see how I liked the taste of coconut flour and oil. The cookies were too coconutty for me, but other bloggers gushed about how the taste of chocolate masks the taste of the coconut wonderfully so I took the plunge with the brownies. I didn't really find that to be the case though. The cocoa muted the coconut taste greatly, but there was a lingering aftertaste of it, albeit not as unpleasant as it was with the cookies. 

Porridge

Do I really need to tell you how to make porridge? This lady probably does it better than I can, anyway. I've used minced pork before, but for a special treat you should really try making hand-shredded salted pork. I used the cut labelled "Lean Pork", available in the meat section of NTUC along with all the other cuts of pork. It takes some planning because it has to sit in the fridge for 1-2 days, but it has a good flavour. For a really special treat, crack a raw egg into a piping hot bowl of porridge, just like they do at the porridge shops. Serve with ground Sarawak white pepper, soy sauce and a drizzle of sesame oil.

If you prefer aggarating, like me, for about a cup of rice (the cup being a standard 235ml cup), I used about 2 litres of water. My mother's recommendation was to "use a bit more than one cup of THAT cup of rice, you know THAT one (I'm not sure where they come from, those cups - but you know which one I'm talking about? If you don't, ask your mother), and fill your thermal pot about two-thirds full of water (my thermal pot is 3 litres)". I used about 4 cups chicken broth and topped up the rest with water, and also added some dried scallops. Marinating the rice with oil and salt is essential to get that nice, thick and creamy texture without the use of rice flour (what? You didn't know that that's what porridge stalls do?).

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Since I've committed to trying out yoga videos and blogging about them, here are links to the two I did this week: here and here. Enough said. You can see that I'm not really a big fan of yoga.

In other news, woke up early and went for a run last Saturday morning. It feels good being somewhat back in proper running form.