TwoFaced: Maple Glazed Cinnamon Almonds

When Jenna and I were deciding on this week's TwoFaced ingredient, my only request was that it be the kind of thing I could turn into a quick, easy snack.

It's not that I'm lazy (not this time, anyway), but I'm on the road this week for work and then to see my family for Thanksgiving, so the last thing I needed was a ton of leftover paleo enchiladas or some other delicious brainchild of mine rotting in the refrigerator. Instead, I wanted to make something I could easily take on the road to curb those "I'm travelling so the calories in this soft pretzel/sub sandwich/artery clogging guilty pleasure of choice don't count" cravings. 

Jenna and I chose almonds for this week's TwoFaced venture, so it was pretty obvious what I had to make. This time of year always reminds me of my mom's cinnamon sugar pecans. She makes huge batches of them and gives them out as Christmas treats. They're sweet and crunchy and delicious and not at all paleo. So, as I'm wont to do with my mom's recipes, I decided to doctor it up into something more paleo friendly. 

This whole recipe only took about 3 minutes to put together. It literally took the oven longer to preheat than it did to whip these up! For paleo-friendly sweetness, I used maple syrup to coat the almonds. For a seasonal taste, I added a few teaspoons of cinnamon, but you could also use pumpkin pie spice.

When they come out of the oven, you'll have a few of these great brittle-like chunks. You could break them up into individual almonds, but what in the hell would you do that??

For more paleo culinary genius featuring the almighty almond, check out The Paleo Project!

Maple Glazed Cinnamon Almonds
Makes a lot

• 1 bag of roasted, unsalted almonds (the roasted almonds have more flavor, but if you buy unroasted almonds, you can toast them in a dry pan for a few minutes until they're fragrant)
• 2 Tbsp. good maple syrup
• 2 tsp. cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice 
• pinch of sea salt (optional)

1.) Preheat your oven to 300 degrees F. Line a cookie sheet with foil or parchment paper.

2.) In a bowl, combine almonds, maple syrup and cinnamon. Using a silicon spatula, mix until the almonds are well coated. Taste the almonds and add more cinnamon if you like.

3.) Spread almonds onto foil-lined cookie sheet into an even layer. Sprinkle with a pinch of sea salt if you like. Roast in the oven for about 20 minutes, stirring about halfway through.

4.) Allow almonds to cool for about 5 minutes before breaking into pieces.

TwoFaced: Paleo Coconut Banana Pancakes

My mom has a YouTube channel, did you know that? Our need to share tutorials, recipes, hobbies, and our entire selves with the internet must run in the gene pool. I'm telling you this not only to generate more views on her channel, but to also serve as a prologue to today's TwoFaced challenge recipe. 

My mom lives with a gluten allergy which means she abstains from a lot of the same things I do as a Paleo enthusiast, but that doesn't stop her from getting creative in the kitchen. A couple months ago, she posted this recipe for an Egg White Oatmeal pancake. Looks good, right? I realized that with one small tweak (leaving out the oat flour and replacing with more almond flour), I could open a litany of paleo pancake possibilities. To kick things off, I wanted to feature our TwoFaced secret ingredient, coconut. Thus, I present to you, Paleo Coconut Banana Pancakes. Cue the Jack Johnson music:

Making them even more irresistible, I topped them with coconut whipped cream, coconut flakes, and sliced banana, natch, though to be honest, they're just as good served naked.

These were so fegging delicious...and I'm not just saying that because it's (a variation of) my mom's recipe. Unlike other paleo pancake recipes I've tried, these cook and taste like the real thing. Another perk? They reheat pretty well too, so you can make a butt-load of 'em and refrigerate them for the next morning's breakfast. Or if you eat your feelings, a late night snack binge.

These pancakes will definitely make you feel like you've hit the Motherload. <--See what I did there??? Eh???

When you're done looking at my food porn, check out what coconut concoction Jenna dreamed up!

Paleo Coconut Banana Pancakes

Makes about 8 silver dollar pancakes

See the video here

• 1/3 cup egg whites
• 2 tbsp. maple syrup
• 4 tbsp. almond flour
• 2 tbsp. unsweetened shredded coconut
• 1/2 mashed banana
• coconut oil

1.) Using an electric whisk, beat egg whites and maple syrup into medium-stiff peaks, probably about 3-5 minutes.

2.) Add remaining ingredients to egg whites and beat just enough to combine.

3.) In a large pan, heat enough coconut oil to cover the pan. Using an ice cream scoop, spoon batter into pan. Cook pancake on each side for about 4 minutes.

4.) Serve with coconut whipped cream, sliced banana, and maple syrup.

Two Faced: Bacon Meatballs

Having featured a vegetable and a fruit in our previous Two Faced posts, Jenna and I decided to tackle pork this week. After all, meat is the axis upon which the paleo world turns. And if meat is the axis, bacon is the gravity. Or something. Look, what I'm getting at is that I made bacon meatballs this week. Yeah, meatballs, which are already delicious, filled with the king of all meat, bacon. It's like, meta-meatball.

 I did the most obvious thing you could do with meatballs and ate them on spaghetti.

Well, technically, it was spaghetti squash. This IS supposed to be a paleo recipe, after all. 

 Oh, and to keep it extra paleo, I made my own marinara (with mushrooms). Watch out for those bottled marinaras...they can be loaded with sugar.

Then again, if you don't give a crap what you're putting into your body, you could stuff these into a loaf of french bread and cover them with provolone, because god knows that would be delicious!! I know, I know. I'm a TERRIBLE paleo-pusher blogger. This whole "Two Faced" concept is taking on a whole new meaning.

Here's hoping Jenna does a better job of properly motivating her readers.

Bacon Meatballs

Makes about 24 large meatballs

• 1 package good quality bacon
• 1 pound ground sausage
• 1 pound ground beef (preferably grass-fed)
• 1 egg, beaten
• 2 tsp. dried oregano
• 1 tsp. garlic powder
• 1 tsp. onion powder
• a pinch of salt and pepper

1.) Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2.) Chop bacon into two inch chunks. Chop fine in a food processor. It should be pulsed into the size of grains of rice.

3.) In a large bowl, combine ground bacon, sausage, beef, egg and spices really well with your hands.

4.) Shape meatballs into large ping-pong-sized balls.

5.) In a large frying pan (with no added oil), brown meatballs on all sides in batches of of 4-6 at a time (or however many your pan holds). Remove from pan and transfer to a foil or parchment-lined baking sheet.

6.) When all the meatballs have been browned and placed on the baking sheet, finish in the pre-heated oven for about 10 minutes.

7.) Serve over spaghetti squash with you favorite marina and garnish with basil.

Two Girls, One Ingredient: Butternut Squash

Dear Anyone Born After 1993,

As a child of the 80's, having a pen pal was a basic rite of passage, like learning to swim or the first time you hear a swear word. You see, people born after 1993, once upon a time, there were no computers, no smart phones, and certainly no internet, let alone lolcats! A time when we actually learned how to write in cursive. The horror!! So, what did we do in such uncivilized times to keep ourselves busy, besides hunting buffalo and squirrels (and yes, that is a reference to Oregon Trail)? Well, our parents set us up with a pen pal--basically a perfect stranger from the opposite side of the world, with whom we could trade HAND written notes about school, home, and other boring crap that kids want to talk about. Sometimes there were even real live pictures sent too! Sure, it tapered off after about 4 or 5 letters, but it was always exhilarating to get a piece of mail with your name inscribed on it while it lasted.

Sadly, pen pals died out when Facebook and the social media outlet du jour came to dominate any chance at human interaction we otherwise might have had. At least, that's what I thought until I was introduced to Jenna at the Paleo Project. Wouldn't ya know, it was a Facebook friend of mine that first introduced me to the Paleo Project earlier this year, and I've been girl crushing ever since. It started with a bit of mutual comment posting on each other's blogs, and over time morphed into guest blog posts, Facebook friending, and even texting!! Yes, little, tiny people born sometime after the year 1993, it's a modern-day version of a pen pal!

Jenna and I discovered we shared a love of several things, including but not limited to creating innovative and delicious paleo eats, blogging, and staring at pictures of ourselves. Which is why, dear dear little people born post-1993, we've decided it best to combine our forces and delve head first into a new joint-venture: Two Faced! The concept is simple--each week, we take one ingredient and each put our own spin on it. That's it. Start here, end there. Or vice versa. Whatever, it doesn't matter. All that really matters are people sharing common human experiences, isn't that right, people barely able to vote? 

So with that, I implore you to unlock the chains of modern technological advancement, take your thumb directly out of your ass, and join the HUMAN experience. Unless of course, you're online reading this blog and that blog. The human experience can wait another 15 minutes. Trust.

XO,

Melissa

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For this edition of Two Faced, we're tackling the very versatile butternut squash. I stumbled across this recipe for butternut squash fries, and unlike one of my favorite recipes for sweet potato fries, this one promised crispy "fries." I played detective to find out if it's true.

Firstly, you need a butternut squash--duh! You're only using the top, straight section here, so the taller it is, the better. Having recently become the proud owner of a mandolin slicer, I used mine to cut the squash into fries. They came out a bit thin, but hell, it was less work for me!

So, the crispy fry thing. Let's talk about this. Like sweet potatoes, squash has a high water content, making it difficult to roast in an oven without become soft/mushy/soggy/insert-undesirable-fry-texture-word-of-choice-here. The cure? Sweat 'em. Like you would sweat an onion in a saute pan. In case you're a total trainwreck in the kitchen, what that means is lay the fries on a pan covered with paper towels and generously sprinkle kosher salt all over them to draw the moisture from the fries. Eventually, they're gonna look like they're sweating worse than a whore in church.

The recipe I used suggested letting them sweat for about 30 minutes, but honestly, there was still a good amount of moisture left in mine. I could totally see doing this for several hours, or even overnight, but I was short on time, so I didn't do that. 

Once they've sweated, you then need to thoroughly pat them dry. I worked in small batches and used countless paper towels. Again, I wonder if sweating them longer would help.

The next trick to getting a crispy fry, supposedly, is not to roast the fries, but to broil them. The recipe strictly says to use a scant amount of oil (coconut or olive), but frankly, I would recommend skipping it altogether. Even though I only drizzled a bit onto the pan directly to prevent sticking, many of my fries still came out soft. Next time, I'm going to pass on the oil altogether and broil the fries on parchment paper.

Now, all that aside, these did turn out really tasty, and some were even near crispy! I thought about making a sage aioli to go with them, but after trying them with ketchup, there was no need. Served this way, they actually DO taste like real french fries. You can see the full version of the recipe here.

Head on over to The Paleo Project to see the amazing pie Jenna whipped up!