Mad Scientist!

Mwahahahaha! It's aliiiiiiiiiiive!!!!!!!!

Or, you know, it was alive before it ended up on my skillet. (Apologies, vegetarian comrades. Poor taste. I mean, you know, the joke, poor taste. Not the steak. The steak was delicious.)

ANYWAY.

This past weekend, I set some time aside for those cooking experiments I promised myself (and you) I'd do. Here's a breakdown of what happened....

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TORTILLA FAIL

Sadness. So many wasted ingredients. I'm pretty sure tortillas aren't supposed to look like this:

Attempt 1:
Coconut flour, almond meal, water, salt, baking soda
It looked fine on the pan but then crumbled to bits
when I tried to flip it. Cue sad trombone.

Attempt 2:
Coconut flour, salt, egg, water.
I tried to make a firm dough and roll it
out before frying. It held on the pan better,
but was crumbly and hard.

I tried finding a good recipe, but all of them use regular flour or corn meal. I saw one recipe that used guar gum, too. Guar gum would make the dough gooey, but it comes from a bean, so ...

Sigh. Who knew a paleo tortilla would be this elusive??

I will do it. *crosses arms defiantly*

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PANCAKE WIN!!

Super fluffy, too!!! Here's the recipe I invented. You can sweeten them more or less, according to your taste :-)

This makes about 6-8 pancakes:

4 tbsp coconut flour
3 tbsp almond flour
2 tbsp agave syrup
1.5 tsp baking soda
1/3 stick of melted butter
4 eggs
1 pint raspberries
+ water (added bit by bit)
+ butter (to fry on)

Basically, mix everything. Make the batter syrupy so it's not runny, but a bit firm. Fry on low heat, on melted butter so your pancake doesn't stick.

I didn't add the raspberries until the pancake was on the pan. That way I could stuff them in without having to mash them, and I could have as many as I wanted ;-)

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MMM... CHIPS...

Seems easy enough to slice something thinly, slap some olive oil and salt on either side, and stuff it into the oven at 350 degrees until brown.

And by "seems", I mean, "is".

These are potato chips.

Potatoes are one of the veggies you have to be sparing with on this diet, but today was the first I'd had a potato in a while. I got two batches from about 3 medium potatoes.

I put olive oil on the pans and on each face, and then sprinkled salt where I wanted it. I even tried rosemary and thyme and other spices :-)

So far, I've also made chips out of sweet potatoes and eggplant (yes, readers! THAT eggplant!). I've had good results all around!

I tried bananas once, too, but the sugar in the fruit made them burn quicker, and the oven didn't dry the fruit. I don't know if chips are possible with sweet fruit. I think fruit chips are made through dehydration. I'll try again on a lower oven setting to see what happens. :-)

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GUACAMOLE-MOLE-MOLE!

I have few things of in my life I'm proud of as much as I'm proud of Saturday's guacamole. I... NAILED... it!

Recipe:
2 avocados (though, I ate a slice or two while making it)
1 plum tomato
1/3 sweet onion (or not sweet, if you like the tang)
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
salt/spice to taste

Mash up the avocados (I did it with a fork. You can show off and use a blender.) Get the avocado as smooth as you can. Dice the tomato and the onion finely, but don't mash it. Add the vinegar. Or, lime if you have it. (I didn't, but I regret nothing.) Salt/spice to your liking.

It's also another kind of personal victory for me. I finally succeeded at picking avocados that ripened perfectly before I cut them open. *insert sweet dance here*

So, I'm giving myself TWO points for this win!

Plus, the guac went pretty darn well with the chips I made ;-)

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I am so happy with the food I've made!

This weekend, I also made a cabbage dish which I'll talk about another time, and macaroons that burned and failed, which I'll talk about never again.

I can't wait to see what's next! Among other ideas, I've got apple chips and muffins in my cross hairs. So many experiments to be had! This Paleo diet is far from boring!