Paleo Biscuit: 7/20/2015: 10 minutes

This was my first time paleo trying any kind of bread substitute. I made paleo biscuits with mainly eggs and coconut flour, although there were other ingredients too like oil and baking powder. It only took me 10 minutes to mix up these biscuits because they didn’t have many ingredients and didn’t require any additional prep or cooking.

Although these biscuits were good and I ate all of them, they were rather egg like (which gives foods a strange spongy texture) and the biscuits were very sweet because of the coconut flour. Generally I use coconut flour when I am making desserts because it is a very sweet flavor and often gives a distinct coconut flavor (which isn’t generally savory). To modify this, next time I would use a recipe that instead has almond flour (more almond flour than coconut flour because coconut flour is much more absorbent), and I would use only 1 egg and replace the moisture with coconut or almond milk to give it a smoother and more realistic texture.

Although the purpose of going paleo is similar to the Whole30 lifestyle, which is not only eating good food but also having a mentality about only eating fresh foods, I like paleo baked goods a lot. I am willing to add them because I am not doing paleo by choice, rather I am doing it for medical reasons, and they are easy to have around the house as a snack. I appreciate the Whole30 mentality, yet I am not fully ready to embrace it because of my time constraints and because I believe that as long as you’re still eating healthy it’s okay to treat yourself to a fake sweet once in a while.

Cows Milk Yogurt: 7/15/2015: 1 hour

On my diet, especially on the modified paleo diet that I’m on because of my autoimmune disease, it’s extremely important for me to keep the number of good bacteria in my stomach and intestines up. Because of this it’s required that I make some kind of yogurt because it’s a great source of good bacteria (much better than probiotic pills because it has a wider range of good bacteria). Since this, although I have switched to making goats milk yogurt more recently I have continued to have a steady supply of yogurt on hand because of its extreme benefits and because it’s so easy to grab and so filling for something paleo.

Because the coconut milk yogurt didn’t work the first time I switched to cows milk yogurt. Although I am lactose intolerant, cows milk yogurt actually has no lactose in it as long as it is cultured for 24 hours because that is enough time for the bacteria in the yogurt to eat the lactose. I first had to boil the milk to get rid of possible contaminants, and then wait for it to cool to the right temperature before I could put the bacteria in (I didn’t want to risk killing them again!). Fortunately, this time the yogurt turned out great, although homemade yogurt is much more runny than store bought yogurt which takes a while to get used to. My first batches of cows milk yogurt were especially runny and sour because I didn’t understand the proper time to keep it in the yogurt incubator and waited much longer than necessary. Yogurt like this is better to put in fruit smoothies, or it needs to be sweetened considerably with honey and vanilla extract to make it edible (although at this point the consistency is closer to kefir than store bought yogurt).