Today is Pie Party Day for a bunch of food bloggers and my contribution is a Paleo Pot Pie. My reasons for today's choice:

In a bit of frustration, I'm also a bit tight on funds and it's only mid-month! (We State workers get paid monthly. It stinks.) So I am using what I have in the fridge in terms of veggies - sweet potato and celery. Feel free to swap out the veggies with whatever you have on hand. Good options: peas, onions, bamboo shoots, carrots, broccoli. Yes, these are not all traditional ingredients found in Thai cooking. You make do with what you have or like.

You may wonder why I would even bother putting a Thai curry into a pot pie. Why not? I wanted to do something new and different. 

Since this was my first time playing around with a paleo pie crust, it wasn't all that successful. Even searching on the internet  didn't pull up any great pie crusts, at least not for a savory pie. It's one thing to mash pie crust to form into a pie plate and then fill it, another to roll it out as a pie top. I tried my best to use traditional pie crust making steps but without grain flours.

This pot pie calls for a top only.

BTW, other Munchie pie posts:

Candied Kumquat Passion Fruit Chiffon Pie

Apricot Almond Galette

Excellent Pumpkin Pie

Pie Party Day - Pie in a Jar

Paleo Pot Pie - Thai Chicken

Filling

1 1/2 cups cooked chicken, chopped

1 medium sweet potato, 1/2 inch cubes

1 large stalk of celery, chopped

1 can coconut milk

2 tablespoons Thai red curry paste

2 tablespoons fish sauce

1 1/2 tablespoons agave syrup

Crust

1/2 cup coconut flour

1/3 cup almond flour

1 teaspoon xantham gum

4 tablespoons butter, cold

1/2 cup ice water

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

In a medium skillet over medium heat, mix together the Thai curry paste and coconut milk until curry is incorporated. Add fish sauce, agave, and sweet potatoes. Simmer for 10 minutes. In a large bowl combine the curry mixture, chicken, and celery. Pour mixture into pie plate.

To make the crust, mix together the flours and xantham gum. Cut the butter into the flour until the flour is crumbly. Slowly add the water a bit at a time until the dough can hold together and be formed into a ball. Roll the dough out on a flat surface using a little added coconut flour to keep it from sticking.

Take the crust and piece it on top of the curry in the pie plate. Brush the crust with melted butter. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes. Remove and serve.

Spring is the time for green garlic. Look quick, because it will be gone from the farmers markets in the next week or so. I've never used it before and so I decided to buy a bunch a try a few things.

I did try some straight green garlic butter sauce on cod earlier in the week, but it occurred to me that maybe I should combine garlics to create something new. I actually wanted to go crazy with a four garlic scampi: regular, roasted, green, and black garlics. I still might due that later in the week, but for now I restrained myself and stuck to green and black, figuring it sounded enticing.

I ate a lot of eggs last month. I was trying the Paleo (Caveman) diet which meant none of my normal breakfast fare that used grains - no oatmeal, cereal, toast, etc.  I pretty much resorted to eggs, either hard or soft boiled. I like a runny yolk and so for the most part I went with soft boiled eggs with fond remembrances of having them at British bed and breakfast places as a child. 

Last month another egg memory came to mind - baked eggs. My first encounter with baked eggs was via my mom-in-law. Anytime we had a brunch, but particularly at Easter, she would do a whole pan of baked eggs. It is an easy way to do eggs for a crowd without having to worry about serving people in batches. 

Tina's baked eggs would fill a 9x13 Pyrex dish. You can easily do a dozen in that size of pan. I'm alone, so I opted for ramekins. Either way, you grease the container and then add your ingredients. This dish is made for creativity and variation. Today I simply added onions, but you can definitely do shredded spinach on the bottom layer and top the eggs with slices of tomato if you like. Add your favorite spices or maybe do the bottom layer with a simple layer of salsa. Some people add a bit of cream, but I don't. It's really all up to you.

As for the Paleo variation, Paleo folks don't do dairy either. So they would eliminate the butter and cheese and use oil instead. 

Baked Eggs

eggs

butter

chopped onion

chopped spinach

Parmesan cheese, shredded

salt, pepper, herbs to taste

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease your container well with butter or oil. Place a layer of onion and spinach in the bottom of the container. Break your eggs carefully atop the vegetable layer. (In a large pan you will be breaking them side by side in a layout like when you do cookies on a cookie sheet.) Sprinkle the cheese on top of the eggs. Sprinkle herbs, salt, and pepper to taste.

Bake in oven for about 10 minutes. 

You will need to keep an eye on them to determine your preference for doneness. Keep in mind that they will continue to cook a bit when you pull them from the oven. I like a runny yolk and so I need to pull them when the whites are almost completely set but a bit jiggly.

I haven't posted in about a week because 1) I have writer's block, 2) I haven't cooked anything, 3) I haven't gone out to eat anywhere, and 4) because I'm on a sugar detox, Paleo diet for the rest of the month of February.

The main focus is on the sugar detox because I have a huge sweet tooth. I know sugar is bad. Dr. Oz says sugar scours the walls of your arteries making it easier for plaque to cling and clog them. Cancer cells also feed off of sugar.  My mom-in-law has had two bouts with breast cancer. The last time she decided to try a new treatment where they filter the sugar out of your blood. She would go and have it done every few months for about a year. Well... she's now cancer free and eats healthy now (she ate healthy before, but even more so now). 

For the rest of the month I am not eating anything sweet (including fruit), dairy, grains, or beans. This means I'm pretty much on a Paleo diet. If you haven't heard of that one, it's also called the Caveman diet with the premise being that all cavemen ate was meat and veggies only. The argument is that our bodies haven't evolved that much over the millennia and that we should go back to eating that way.

Now while one of my friends is a true convert to Paleo, I can't imagine going so myself. I love dairy too much for one thing. But I wanted to do the sugar detox and figured I might as well go full throttle and eliminate the other stuff too for the month.  That's why you see a little tab above for Detox Diary.

Honestly, the meals aren't that difficult. Eggy based breakfasts in the morning, salads or ceviche for me at lunch, and meat and veggies for dinner. I'm snacking on nuts mostly for snacks. It hasn't been too hard on the sweets side during the week. For me the week is easy. It's on the weekends that I get bored and want to bake.

Even though potatoes are a vegetable, white potatoes are a no-no for sugar detox and Paleo because of the high carbs that are easily converted to sugars. Paleo practitioners love to use cauliflower as a substitute. This weekend I tried cauliflower "mashed potatoes" for the first time and decided to make them into colcannon by adding some kale.

Colcannon is an Irish dish of mashed potatoes with cabbage or kale mixed in. As we are approaching St. Pat's Day, it seems appropriate to post this version.

Paleo Colcannon

1 head of cauliflower, cut into small pieces

2 c kale or cabbage, chopped

1 T bacon grease or oil of choice

2 T olive oil

salt and pepper 

Over medium heat on the stove...

In a large pot of boiling water, add the cauliflower and cook until tender. A fork should be able to easily pierce the pieces.  Drain the cauliflower and set aside.

In the same pot, add the bacon grease. Once it has melted, add the chopped kale and saute until wilted and tender. 

Return cauliflower to pot and add olive oil. Mash the cauliflower with a masher or a fork while mixing in the kale. Season with salt and pepper.