Author: Melissa Van Dover

Crockpot Pulled Pork

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Pulled pork is hands down delicious. Thankfully, while it takes a while to cook it’s relatively low maintenance to get it going. I’ve made pulled pork on a grill, in an oven and now a crockpot. So far I think the crockpot is the easiest. My other favorite piece about making pulled pork is that it lasts you a few days if not the whole week, which means that you’re less likely to eat something bad.

INGREDIENTS

8 – 10 lbs pork shoulder
1/2 – 3/4 cup orange juice
1/4 – 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 orange rind grated
3 tbsp honey
1 1/2 tbsp paprika
1 1/2 tbsp chili powder
1 1/2 tbsp cumin
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp black pepper
3 – 4 cloves garlic, diced

RECIPE

Turn your crockpot on low.
Place your pork shoulder in the crockpot.
Pour liquids over the pork and then cover pork with rind, spices and garlic.
Rub your spices over the pork to make sure it is thoroughly coated.
Let pork cook for roughly 9 – 11 hours or until pork easily falls apart when separating with a fork. (I let mine go overnight while I was sleeping and pulled it in the morning.)
Remove pork from crock pot and place on a cutting board. Pull the pork using two forks, use one fork to hold the pork still and the other to shred.

I eat my pulled pork with guacamole on sweet potato buns but dress yours however you’d like! This will make enough pork for two for 4 or 5 meals.

Enjoy!

Melissa Van Dover

@melissavandover | melissavandover.com

 

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Sweet Potato Buns

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This is officially my new favorite, “must-know” recipe. I’ve been off of wheat for a while, it started before I even began Paleo because I’m allergic to wheat. One of the biggest issues I ran into when giving up wheat was not having buns. I switched to lettuce wraps for my burgers for a bit but honestly I was never very crazy about them. Finally, I just gave up and did no bun.

These sweet potato buns are great for everything that needs a bun. They’re delicious and they’re incredibly easy to make. Not to mention they passed the Husband Test, I actually had to hide them from him because he was eating them all!

INGREDIENTS

2 large sweet potatoes*
2 tbsp coconut oil, melted**
salt or cumin for seasoning

Notes:
*Remember you’re trying to make circles so if you can find nice even sweet potatoes it’ll help in the long run.
**If you have a brush for marinades or sauce it’ll make it easier to put it on the sweet potatoes.

RECIPE

Preheat oven to 425°F.
Line a baking sheet with tin foil or parchment paper.
Skin sweet potatoes and slice into 1/4″ slices. (As a note you can still roast the ends and eat them but they may be a little too small to make buns.)
Place sweet potato slices on baking sheet and brush with coconut oil, flip and repeat.
Sprinkle with salt or cumin if you’d like to season them a little, honestly they don’t need much.
Place in the oven. In total you will cook the potatoes for roughly 30 – 35 minutes, flipping once halfway through. (You can test one to check if it’s done by inserting a fork, it should easily poke through the sweet potato flesh.)
Remove and let cool.

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I paired this sweet potato bun with guacamole and pulled pork, it’s delicious.

Enjoy!

Melissa Van Dover

@melissavandover | melissavandover.com

 

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Baked Beet Chips

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I love beets. This was actually a recent love for me, when I was younger I never had a desire to try them but now that I have I can’t get enough. I made apple chips a little while ago and I decided it would be a good time to try out beet chips as well.

As a note: this recipe makes roughly enough to fill ½ a sandwich size, ziploc bag.

INGREDIENTS

3 – 4 beets
salt for dusting

RECIPE

Preheat oven to 200 degrees F.
Line a baking sheet with tin foil or parchment paper.
Wash beets, peel and slice them to roughly ⅛” thickness, the thicker your slices the longer they will take to cook.
Lay slices flat on baking sheet.
Dust with salt to your liking, I found a light sprinkle worked well for me.
Bake for 1 hour.
Remove from oven and flip slices, dust with additional salt.
Place back in the oven and bake for another 1 – 2 hours.
Remove and let cool.

Towards the end of your baking time you may want to periodically check your beets, ensuring you don’t burn them. These are great with a little dressing or vinaigrette for dipping.

Enjoy!

Melissa Van Dover

@melissavandover | melissavandover.com

 

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LIVE RADIO INTERVIEW APRIL 24TH ON AT A GLANCE TALK RADIO

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Happy Wednesday Everyone!

It is with great excitement that we invite you to tune in to At A Glance Talk Radio Friday, April 24th at 8 pm PST.

We’ll be chatting with Radio Host, Rodney Bardin, LIVE about PALEO Cleanse!

He has read the book and wants to learn more. We can’t wait to chat with him during this 1 hour live Radio segment and we hope you can join us!

To listen live, visit  On the Air (KCTY FM 107.7) and hit the ‘play’ button up toward the right corner of that site.

Click the image below for details on all the stations you can tune into to catch this interview:

Screen Shot 2015-04-22 at 2.26.26 PM

 

To good health,

Camilla and Melissa

@thepaleopact #PaleoCleanse

2. PALEO Cleanse Cover ImagePALEO Cleanse made the Amazon Best Seller list!

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Lemon & Dill Fish Marinade

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As with most of my recipes I try to keep them simple. Between working full time and writing during my free time I keep myself pretty busy and I need fast, easy dishes. Fish is always an easy dish because you can marinade it during the day, throw it in the oven for a few minutes and it’s ready to go. This is a simple, fresh marinade that is perfect for the upcoming summer months.

INGREDIENTS

2 – 3 fillets of fish
2 lemons
1 – 2 stems of dill
1/2 tsp salt

RECIPE

Place fish in a container that has a lid.
Squeeze lemon over fish.
Pull dill leaves from stem and sprinkle over fish, discard stem.
Sprinkle salt over fish.
Cover and let marinade for 2 – 3 hours or all day.
Cook fish to specifications and enjoy.

This fish will leave you feeling fresh and rejuvenated!

Enjoy!

 

Melissa Van Dover

@mvandover | melissavandover.com

 

2. PALEO Cleanse Cover ImagePALEO Cleanse made the Amazon Best Seller list!

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Baked Apple Chips

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Baked apple chips are probably my new favorite snack. I will admit that they take some time to make but they’re very low maintenance while baking. You’ll spend a few minutes preparing them and then you’ll throw them in the oven, flip them once and let your oven do all the work. Also, all you need are apples and cinnamon!

As a note: this recipe makes roughly enough to fill a sandwich size, ziplock bag.

INGREDIENTS

2 apples (I picked out honeycrisp but feel free to use whatever kind you like)
cinnamon for dusting

RECIPE

Preheat oven to 200 degrees F.
Line a baking sheet with tin foil or parchment paper.
Wash apples and slice them to roughly ⅛” thickness, the thicker your slices the longer they will take to cook.
Discard seeds and stem.
Lay slices flat on baking sheet.
Dust with cinnamon to your liking, I found a light sprinkle worked well for me.
Bake for 1 hour.
Remove from oven and flip slices, dust with additional cinnamon.
Place back in the oven and bake for another 1 – 2 hours.
Remove and let cool.

Towards the end of your baking time you may want to periodically check your apples, ensuring you don’t burn them. I found that at the end of my baking time the apples were still slightly soft when warm but when I let them cool they hardened further becoming more chip like.

I hope you enjoy this snack as much as I did.

Enjoy!

Melissa Van Dover

@mvandover | melissavandover.com

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Health First Radio Interview

https://www.mixcloud.com/CFIS/health-first-march-9-paleo-cleanse-im-already-disturbed-please-come-in/
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This past Monday, March 9th; we sat down with Health First Radio’s Dave Fuller to talk about our book Paleo Cleanse and the paleo diet. We just received the link for the interview and we’re so excited to be able to share it with you!

Listen to the interview: http://bit.ly/HealthFirstPaleoCleanse

The interview is just about 30 minutes long and provides some great insight into the paleo diet, Paleo Cleanse  and our own experiences with both. This won’t be our last interview, so make sure you stay tuned for more of our upcoming events.

In the meantime here are a few photos from our radio interview adventure!

Interview preparation:

Health First Radio Interview

Celebrating a successful interview: 

Health First Radio Interview Celebration

To good health,

Camilla and Melissa

@thepaleopact #PaleoCleanse

2. PALEO Cleanse Cover ImagePALEO Cleanse made the Amazon Best Seller list!

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Use It All!

http://www.herbalextractsplus.com/beet-root.html
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The concepts of “Nose To Tail” eating and limiting the food you waste are huge in the Paleo community. “Nose To Tail” eating and trying to harvest all of the fruit and vegetables you’re consuming are also great mottos to follow because of the added nutrients they present in one’s diet.

Below I’m going to provide a few items that are outside of the normal western diet, these can help you in your quest of eating “Nose To Tail” and harvesting as much from your fruits and vegetables as possible. I’ll also give you some great ideas of ways to utilize animal or plant products that cannot be consumed.

Animal organs are a great source of nutrients and are often overlooked when cooking.
Animal bones can be used to create broths for soup.
Plant greens such as beet greens are delicious, not only can you eat the beet but you can also make a salad out of the beet greens.
Vegetable skins such as sweet potato skins can often be consumed and provide nutrients that may not be found in the flesh of the vegetable.
Oils are great for cooking or skin care and often come from many fruits and vegetables you’re familiar with.
Save the seeds  from your fruits or vegetables and take a stab at making your own garden.
Rinds often serve as great presentation dishes, take a look at my post on making a fruit basket to see how.

These were just a few examples of ways you can use more of the animals, fruits and vegetables you consume. Have an idea that we didn’t mention, please share it with everyone by commenting below.

Use it all!

Melissa Van Dover

@mvandover | melissavandover.com

 

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Make Your Own Fruit Basket

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Now this isn’t exactly a recipe but it’s fun and lets you do something with all those fruit rinds you’ve been throwing away. It’s also a great idea for a party, I made it at my Super Bowl party this year.

SUPPLIES

1 watermelon
a melon baller (an ice cream scoop will work as well)
a bowl
a knife
toothpicks
any other fruit you want

DIRECTIONS

Cut your watermelon in half the short way.
Use the melon baller or ice cream scoop to scoop out the flesh of both halves of the watermelon and place in a bow, set the flesh aside it will be used to fill your basket up later.
Place one half of the rind aside, this will be the bottom of your basket.
Take the other half of the melon, you’re going to use this to make a handle for your basket. Place this rind cut side down and using your knife cut a strip from the middle. (I used honeydew melon rind in my picture, if you do this you’ll probably need to connect two strips with a toothpick to make it big enough to sit over the bottom of your basket).
Once you have your handle stick a toothpick into the bottom end of each side of the handle and stick it into the bottom of your basket.
You should now have a basket with a handle.
Now it’s up to you, you can cut flowers or decorations out of the rest of the fruit and connect it to your basket for decoration using a toothpick.
Cut up the remainder of your fruit, mix with your watermelon and stick into your basket to serve.

Have Fun!

Melissa Van Dover

@mvandover | melissavandover.com

 

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How To Make Paleo Gravy

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Gravy is delicious and can bring so much flavor to a variety of things. Gravy doesn’t have to be reserved for just turkey, you can add it to almost any form of meat you’re cooking. One of my favorite things to add gravy to is meatballs, not that tomato sauce isn’t good but sometimes I want something different.

Now I’ve heard a variety of negative remarks when it comes to making gravy. The first is that it’s too difficult to make, this honestly just isn’t true. The second is that you need flour, well yes that helps but thankfully we have tons of Paleo flours that will work just fine. So no need to worry about gluten!

Lets get started…

INGREDIENTS

meat renderings (i.e. the juice left over from your meat after you cook it)
tapioca flour
chicken or beef stock (this is to help fix a few issues we’ll discuss below)
whisk

RECIPE

Pour your renderings into a frying pan and place over low heat. (We’re talking low heat, you may see a few bubbles but you don’t want boiling.)
Add 1 tablespoon of tapioca flour and whisk it to incorporate thoroughly.
Here’s the trick, you are going to repeat the previous step until your gravy starts to thicken. (I would wait a minute or so between each tablespoon because gravy is one of those things where all the sudden it will start to thicken).

Here are two issues you may run into and how to fix them:

  1. You need more gravy than you have renderings!- simply add either beef or chicken stock to your renderings prior to adding tapioca flour. This will give you more gravy in the long run, you may also want to add a touch of salt and pepper to ensure your gravy is appropriately seasoned.
  2. You put too much flour in and now it’s like goo!- slowly whisk in either beef or chicken stalk. Make sure you do this slowly, it will help to thin out your gravy and get it to the right consistency.


Enjoy!

Melissa Van Dover

@mvandover | melissavandover.com

 

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