Category: appetizer

Creamy Coconut-Dill Dip

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Back in May, 2012 (over FIVE years ago!), Heather and I posted a recipe for a coconut-dill veggie dip. The dip was a huge hit with friends and family alike, and it was one of our first encounters where we didn’t carefully read the label and ended up with a brand of coconut cream that was also loaded with sugar. It was a good lesson learned, and we remade the recipe with better ingredients to make sure the recipe held up.

Since 2012, a lot has happened for us: we changed jobs, got married, bought a house, had our son, and we also improved our cooking and photography. With a dinner guest planning to come over Monday evening, it seemed an appropriate time to revisit this recipe and try to make it better. In this we’ve succeeded. This dip is creamy (and protein packed, thanks to Great Lakes Unflavored Gelatin) and runny straight out of the food processor and has the same texture as store-bought French Onion Dip when allowed to rest in the refrigerator. We devoured it with veggies and our favorite olive oil potato chips while our beef and eggplant curry simmered on the stove. Our guest particularly liked it with the chips.

Thanks for joining us over the past five years, and we hope you’ll continue to stick around. Let us know in the comments what has been your favorite recipe!

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Blooming Onion (+14 Super Bowl Snacks)

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Tonight, we bring to you something new and exciting just in time for tomorrow’s big game: a paleo blooming onion! It’s one of our more involved recipes—be sure to have a friend on hand to help—we think it is worth the effort. Who needs a restaurant when you’ve got this recipe?!

We appreciate that fried foods are traditionally not regular parts of our everyday diet, but for special occasions, tapioca starch is really a great product that gets the job done with minimal negative properties.  Sarah, over at The Paleo Mom, has done a nice write-up of different paleo baking ingredients.  Check that out for more info, or just follow along for the recipe—be sure to follow along to the bottom for over a dozen other Super Bowl worthy recipes!

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Prosciutto-Wrapped Beet Sticks

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This was a dish we came up with after having picked up some MASSIVE beets from the farmers market in Culpeper, Virginia when visiting my parents.  They were about to go bad, and we were about to leave town, so we needed something that would be a fun and easy vehicle to cook them.  For whatever reason, prosciutto came into my mind (because it’s like fancy bacon), and this was born.  This used about half of our beet supply, with the other half going into a mason jar for pickled beet sticks.

This is super easy to do, and took maybe 20 minutes total prep and cook time.  Good as a finger food or to put on a plate with a main dish, as you can see above.

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Bacon & Sweet Potato Jalapeño Boats

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This was an experiment that Heather and I have been tossing up back and forth for about two weeks now.  We weren’t sure exactly how to execute it, but we finally pulled the trigger yesterday morning when we decided we were going to attend our first meat-up hosted by Stacy and Matt, of Paleo Parents fame.  We have lived in this area for some time and always had or found an excuse to not go, but it was absolutely amazing!  We also spent some time chatting with The Domestic Man.  Both of these blogs are great resources, if you’re not already aware of them.
If you are in the Northern Virginia area, I highly suggest you attend. If not, try to get together with friends monthly–the positive reinforcement and social gathering is very powerful.


Ok, enough preaching.  We threw these together for the gathering, and while I’m not sure they were perfect, I was pretty happy with the outcome.  The idea started as another “bacon-wrapped jalapeño” fill-in-the-blank, but then grew into a twice-baked sweet potato fantasy.  Here’s what you’ll need to make your own:

  • 2 large sweet potatoes
  • 6 strips Whole30 friendly bacon
  • 10 jalapeños, halved and cleaned
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp pepper
  • smoked paprika (for sprinkling)

 Preparation:

1.  Chop bacon into small chunks, peel (and shred) sweet potatoes, and halve and deseed jalapeños.
2.  Sautee bacon over medium heat to soften (no more than 2 minutes) and then add shredded sweet potato.
3.  Cook for 5 minutes, stirring regularly.
4.  Once cooked through, allow to cool and then place into blender or large bowl to mash.  Add salt and pepper.  At this point, preheat oven to 375ºF.
5.  With a spoon/spatula, fill jalapeño shells with mashed bacon and sweet potato mixture.
6.  Bake for 10-12 minutes.
7.  Remove and sprinkle with roasted paprika.
These were very hot, I think in large part due to the fact that Whole Foods only had gigantic jalapeños. Smaller sized peppers would definitely help.  Also try this mixture in mushroom caps or non-spicy peppers.  It is a great flavor finger food that’s also pretty filling.  We hope you enjoy!